Chapter 21: Holy the Sea
Digging 'round the deep, only missing out on sleep,
Chasing 'bout my head like the wolf that found the sheep,
Don't go digging 'round there, you be slipping bit too much,
Milling muck and mud with the mind that lost its touch…
Pros and Cons to letting the Goblin King court you:
Pros: He's gorgeous and clever and interesting and into the infuriatingly ordinary mess that is Sarah Williams.
Cons: He's Jareth.
The graphite tip hovers over my notebook, my pencil a razor-sharp needle as it's freshly sharpened. I scratch my head before writing the rest down, inscribing my torrent of thoughts onto paper. If anyone were to be helpful in this particular situation, it would be Jamie. She has an opinion on everything, and it's usually a clever one—an attitude I'd never foresee myself. Though, for once in my life, I'm not sure what she would say about this.
He's rich, I can practically hear her chime. He's a sexy king with stacks upon stacks of cash!
Well, I'm somewhat sure.
"He's old," I announce to no one in particular, if not the mental version of my best friend I'd just composed.
I sit alone in my living room, burrowed between two fuzzy pillows on the couch. My notebook rests before me on the coffee table alongside a mug of chamomile tea, the steam swirling above like groping fingers.
I can practically hear her laugh at this, in the way she would when she's caught spiked irony within my words.
And I'm sure David Bowie is as spry as a young teen?
Shut up, mental Jamie. The rock star's aged well enough.
I might just be a figment of your imagination, but these lips still speak the truth.
Even my own imagination—as personalized and infinite as it is—can't fathom a situation in which I win an argument against Jamie Madison. Then again, I won't be having this argument with her anytime soon, since I wouldn't dare drag her into a circumstance as scandalous as this: where I've been granted the option of dating our English teacher—an English teacher who happens to be monarch to a vast alternate world known as the Underground, where creatures both horrifying and dangerous serve as his subjects.
And I thought it was bad at 'teacher.'
Cons: the Labyrinth.
My pencil hastily scribbles the name, unnerved by just the thought of such a place. My skin crawls at the following stream of images in my head: the Fireys, those angular creatures with limbs like toy pieces, slipping off and on like wardrobe variations. I see them dancing, shaking and twirling around me in hectic designs. I feel my hands clasp their skulls as easily removable as toothy hats…
I sit bolt upright, my entire body awakening on the couch. My heart beats to the impatient rhythm of my own fear. Suddenly agitated, I shove at the surrounding pillows and adjust my location. The fire crackles soundly across the room, casting dancing shadows against the carpet and walls. I avoid examining these shadows, as my easily-inspired imagination cannot be trusted with the sight of such things.
Don't be afraid, Sarah, the Fireys had warbled maliciously. They had wanted my head; they wanted to play with the Labyrinth's newest target while all I wanted to do was find Toby. I wince at the mere thought of this, shuddering in the dimness of the living room.
Oh, God, please let me forget…
I can't sit still anymore. There's no way in hell I'm about to subject my nerves to the fire's bouncing shadows and my head's rootless thoughts. I tug myself away from the cushions and toward the kitchen, searching for a glass of water. My throat's dry and aching for some form of cold liquid to soften the parched surface.
Dad and Karen are out on another one of those weekly dates while Toby's tucked into bed. The house is virtually open for my leisure, yet I choose to debate whether or not I should give permission for a full grown man to 'court' me. This is so messed up. Then there's my imagination, approaching sneakily from the darkness and threatening to pounce at any given moment. The Fireys. Their crackling laughter. Removable heads.
I can't stop thinking about that stupid Labyrinth.
Why can't I be like every other teenage girl when her parents aren't home—throw a bag of popcorn in the microwave and watch Dirty Dancing?
I grab a glass from the cupboard, slap the faucet on and stare as the water gushes down the sink. My fingers poke at the stream, waiting until it's cold enough. When it's decent, I switch the faucet off and take a small, dainty sip of the water.
And then I hear a voice.
You used to wake up to tiny bite marks on your fingers.
The words are not spoken aloud, yet they slice the kitchen's silence and hiss through my mind. Despite the water, my throat has suddenly become dryer than before. I inhale it like it might evaporate any second.
You used to think it was fairies. You used to think they'd come to play.
My free hand grasps the counter's edge, anxious for a sense of support. The glass trembles in his grip.
But you'd wake up with blood on your lips.
"Shut up!" I suddenly shout, my voice echoing off the house's walls harshly. The sound ricochets down the hall, like a response shouted back at me. I cover my mouth and glance at the clock. It ticks methodically in the corner, like a white face amongst the obscure backdrop: almost midnight. Karen will kill me if she returns home to a fully conscious and wailing Toby.
Within the kitchen's gloom, I remove my hand slowly—and wearily— as if trying to recapture the sound I'd let escape.
Sarah William is a psycho bitch.
The glass slips from my hand and shatters to the floor, crystal fragments scattering across the tile. My hands have spontaneously become numb, as though to suggest the circulation is cut-off and I'm left with a pair of tingling fingers. And broken glass. There's a heaviness in my chest, as well, trying to drag me downwards to the floor.
For a desperate second, I almost try to convince myself that I'm fine. I'm better now, really. I'm no longer woken to the sounds of my horrified screams—not like I used to.
Sarah Williams, you cannot hide from your own mind.
I see it then, standing stationary in the kitchen entryway. It is burnt and brown as a walnut, small as a child, withered as old bark. There are two wrinkled arms hanging loosely at its sides, and a set of pointy fingers on each one. It looks up expectantly, a wicked smile gathering within the darkness.
Its words reverberate inside my head again.
Sarah Williams, return to the Labyrinth.
We stare at one another in a dead silence for several long seconds, the air between us as electric as a thunderstorm. The goblin's jaw unhinges to reveal row upon row of broken edges, a bloody tongue, and more words.
Sarah William, we are waiting for you.
It runs, and I chase it.
My legs feel as dense as concrete and my feet as heavy as lead yet, nonetheless, I pursue the goblin creature. We dash up the staircase and through the hall in a fury of stomps, like how a hound would chase a fox through the underbrush. I want it dead. I want its little neck pinned between my foot and the floor, and I want the creature to take the Labyrinth away, all of it—every last detail wedged within my recollection.
It spins around the corner into Toby's room and I follow promptly, the blood throbbing through my veins in loud pumps. It's gone, however, by the time I enter the bedroom. Alternatively, I'm met reluctantly with a sheet of eerie blackness.
And an empty bed.
"Toby?"
My voice is husky and thin, weakened with terror. I yank back the covers but there's nobody underneath, only the outline of a small child who had once been at rest. I'm tempted to scream as noisily as it's realistically possible, but the sound catches within my throat; the air from my lungs is gone. And so is my brother.
Yet, there is a sound. It is like a shriek but only softer and less human. I rotate my body gradually, aiming my attention to the far corner of Toby's bedroom.
In a pile on the floor lies a small pool of blackness. It is as shapeless as a puddle of rain on a cement sidewalk, only black. I want to run away—I don't know where—but my feet are glued to the carpet, my eyes locked to the grotesque mass. Loosely and with warped convulsing, it rises. I watch the figure form limbs that are adorned with feathers as black the naked night's sky. An owl, I think, but the colour is too menacing, too threatening.
A crow.
The body of a man, the face of a bird. It lifts its head and screams, black feathers sprouting as violently as poisonous weeds. The creature steps forward, cloaked in the night's gloom, with eyes a pair of hollow pits dug with bone. My body feels weightless, the ability to move returning.
I run.
I don't know if it chases me—whether or not it sprints with distorted limbs or flies with damaged wings. Either way, I refuse to dare a peek over my shoulder. To look back would be to look back on another one of the Labyrinth's cruel hauntings—a gift that I have no choice but to accept in a spell of fear. But I can feel it there, both the warmth and coldness of its presence melting into my skin.
Sarah.
I find myself in my parents' room, pressed against the balcony's wrought-iron edge. The night is breathtakingly beautiful, with glittery stars that twinkle in the sky like an assortment of newfound treasure. As there are a few seconds of peace, I stare. I lean over the balcony and let my eyes seep into the stars, temporarily mesmerized by their beauty.
But I'm alone. And the surrounding serenity translates into a kind of silence that only the dead can speak.
Sarah.
I turn, expecting to find the ugly creature looming above me with a pointed beak and horrifying intentions. But I am met with nothing. My eyes are spontaneously overcome in an extensive universe of blackness—a horrible place that consists of blackness and blackness only, as it is all that I can see. I am surrounded in oblivion.
I spin my body around a few times, waiting impatiently for something—anything—to appear. A person, an object, a light, whatever. But nothing comes. And I realize, with a clash of murderous anxiety, that I have no one to rescue me. Considering I have told no one of the troubling turmoil within my mind, I have enveloped myself in utter isolation.
Don't look now, but you're alone in the darkness.
And I fall.
There is a sharp pain once my eyes rip open, as though they have been sewn shut with a needle of crust and dried tears.
And I'm staring at my bedroom ceiling—the plain, empty and indifferent ceiling that I have grown to despise; it is the same ceiling I am confronted with after a horrid nightmare each night. Repetition is such a fucking drag.
I lay in my bed and wait for the Crow Man and shrivelled goblin to reappear. I wait for their faces to materialize beside my pillow and finish off whatever they had planned in the first place. But minutes pass and they do not arrive, and it occurs to me they aren't real—only a figment of my disturbed imagination.
On the other hand, this isn't to say they will never return, because they probably will. Perhaps in the identical forms in which I've met them tonight, or something else entirely. Maybe the two of them will distort themselves into something different, like two more monsters that I have never seen before and will wish to never see again. And maybe, if I don't run fast enough, they'll succeed in capturing their victim.
Cons: He brings me nightmares.