Disclaimer: Once again, I do not own The Labyrinth or anything in it.
And just to be safe: smoking is bad for your health and also illegal if you happen to be underage.
A/N: Thanks for the great reviews! They're really encouraging!
Chapter 3: The Visitor
Tabitha sat back in her chair and rubbed her aching eyes. Hours of focusing on the computer screen had left her nearly blind in the growing darkness. She lowered her hands from her face and looked around the room. The thin, grey light of late dusk was filtering in through the sliding glass doors behind her, draining the color from everything it touched and splashing shadows, like water, on the walls. The only color in the room came from the digital clock mounted on the wall above the computer. The numbers were neon blue, and shone oddly bright in the grey, washed-out room. Tabitha squinted at the clock, but her eyes blurred the numbers so badly she couldn't make any of them out.
It didn't matter. She had been writing for hours and her head ached, she needed to take a break wether she wanted to or not. Reluctantly she got up from the desk and made her way through the fading light into the kitchen, mentally analyzing the scene she had just written. This story of Sarah's was burning its way through her mind. She had been writing and rewriting for days, the words and revisions pouring out hot and unending from her fingertips. She could see it all so clearly, and it had possessed her mind like a fever to the extent that even when she was at work she was thinking about it.
She had been going at a breakneck pace for nearly six days now, beginning her writing when work let out around two o'clock and continuing until late in the night. Sometimes she would go until one or two in the morning, breaking only once or twice out of sheer necessity. The story was nearly done now, which was good because she was beginning to falter. Her fingers were tired and the creative well of her mind was strained. Soon she would have to stop and rest or writer's block would seize her out of sheer exhaustion.
She poured herself a glass of iced tea and returned to her study, purposefully passing her computer and opening the sliding glass door. A cool, stiff breeze had picked up since the early afternoon, and it plucked at Tabitha's clothes and hair as she stepped out onto the balcony. It felt refreshing to her, like running water on a hot summer's day. With a sigh she relaxed against the balustrade and set her glass on top.
The dusk seemed darker than it should be, somehow. Tabitha looked up at the sky and saw heavy black clouds hanging there, blotting out the stars. A sudden rumble of thunder rolled in the distance, long and loud. The skin on her arms and legs prickled, and the fine hairs at the back of her neck lifted uncomfortably. Her hands gripped the railing as she stared ahead at the pale place on the horizon where the sun had recently set. Lightning flashed. She was just being edgy again, she told herself firmly, she had spent way too much time thinking about the Underground lately. She took a deep breath and forced her thoughts onto other things.
She thought of the office where she worked part-time and what she would need to do the next morning when she went in. The second installment of the money she earned on her most recent novel had come in, so she was in a decidedly comfortable place financially. So comfortable that she really didn't need to work at anything but writing anymore, but she had discovered that it was a bad idea to for her to stay at home all the time. If she did not have something that demanded she get out and talk to people, she would fold up on herself and get lost in her own little world. She needed other work and human contact to save her from complete isolation and thinking too much.
When she was allowed to think too much her thoughts got depressing and sometimes dark. Too much empty time, she had learned as a teenager, could lead to dangerous things.
But now her thoughts had come full circle, and she was thinking about the somewhat dark, dangerous things that lived in her past. She went back into her office and dug up the single pack of cigarettes she had been living off of for the past four years. She tapped one loose and put the pack away, then retrieved her only lighter from her makeup bag. Lighting the cigarette, she returned to the porch and leaned into the railing again.
Smoking had never been a very addicting habit for her. She had tried it a bit when she was thirteen, but hadn't liked it much. It wasn't until her first year in college that she established it as a casual habit. She had tried it again out of sheer stubbornness, deciding that she was adult enough to do as she liked and take the consequences. It was with equal stubbornness that she would put her foot down and refused to smoke if she did not want to. If her friends did not like it they did not have to be around her. To her surprise, most of her friends respected that.
Over the course of her freshman year she had smoked less and less, until it just seemed unnecessary most of the time. Since then she had hardly touched a cigarette, but it was surprising how swiftly old habits could find you in times of stress. When she became really anxious about something, the urge for a cigarette fairly galloped into her thoughts. She blamed it on the fact the she had developed the habit during one of her most stressful years in college.
That aside, she was anxious tonight. She couldn't exactly say why, but the thunder was making her heart pound. She took a puff off the cigarette and sipped at her iced tea, perhaps a little too quickly to be natural. Her thoughts turned to the book. She had wondered and worried about its disappearance for years, and now she found she had a reason to worry. Well, perhaps it was a little too late to worry about Sarah, since the worst had already happened to her. Jareth's image flashed in her mind, his lips twisted into that superior, mocking smile. She shook her head to clear it, and rubbed her eyes.
Damn him.
Of course he would chase Sarah. A pretty girl like that. . .
Abruptly she threw a barricade in front of those thoughts, shoving them back as hard as she could. What did it matter what he did, or who he chose to chase? Luckily, Sarah was strong enough to get through it on her own. There was no need to indulge in envy over Sarah's looks, they gave her enough trouble as it was.
All the same, those thoughts toyed on the edge of her mind as she tried once more to think of other things. She thought about the missing map and photograph. She knew for certain that they had been folded up in the book when she put it in the lock box. Whoever had removed it from the box had taken them, she was sure. It was the only explanation. The real question was; who had taken it out of the box? And why set it on the desk? Had it been meant for Sarah all along?
Jealousy, hot and rough, reared it's ugly head for a moment. Why Sarah? Why was she so special? Tabitha had been the first to crawl through challenge after challenge in that place, and what had she come away with in the end? Nothing but her memories and a disturbing knowledge of the Underground. Which was more than she could say for her grandfather.
Shame took her then, and she wrestled the jealousy down. Who they paid attention to was none of her business. Her business was merely to pay a debt owed. Her heart grew heavier and she stood rooted to the spot, her head bowed. She really needed to finish up that bit of writing and hand it in. The sooner she did, the sooner she would be free of this incident and she could try to move on with her life. Again.
Thock, thock, thock- Tabitha's head snapped up at the sound of something steadily striking the balustrade. From the far corner of the balcony to her right came a solid, perfectly clear crystal about the size of a billiard ball, bouncing along the top of the railing as if it were made of rubber. It struck the wood loudly with each bounce, like a hammer striking a nail. She froze, staring at it in horror, as it moved steadily along the rail toward her. It neatly cleared her glass of iced tea, struck the wood between her hands, and continued on its way to the opposite end of the balcony. It bounced one last time at the end of the rail and vanished over the edge.
Though she listened hard, Tabitha never heard it strike the ground below. Her heart pounding, she waited for some sort of follow-up to that. Tense, she kept her ear cocked for a voice behind her, her eyes strained to see if anything was moving in the darkness. Nothing happened. Seconds ticked away into minutes, and minutes clustered together into a quarter of an hour, and still nothing appeared out of the darkness to speak with her.
She released the railing and picked up her glass, her hands shaking slightly. Dropping the cigarette to the floor, she ground it under her heel and darted into the house, slamming the glass door closed behind her. In one fluid motion she turned and pulled the vertical blinds closed, twisting the wand until they shut out the night. The only light in the room was dim and flickering, emanating from the pipe-maze screen-saver on her computer. She turned and flicked on her desk lamp, trying to calm herself down. The warm yellow light was a bit too dim for her nerves, so she turned to flip on the overhead light.
In the doorway near the light-switch, unnaturally still, stood the figure of a man cloaked completely in black. She stumbled backwards into her desk-chair, a scream lodged in her throat. The figure did not move. His head was completely covered by an ink-black hood that draped over his face. His hands could not be seen in the folds of his cloak, and only the faintest tips of shiny black boots peeked out under the hem.
She stared in wide-eyed horror, unable to breathe. She opened her mouth, words forming on the tip of her tongue, but before she could speak the house was rocked by an intense crash of thunder. Lightning flashed a white so bright it streamed in around the blinds. The furniture rattled and scraped against the wood floors. One of her bookshelves pitched forward and spilled its contents on the floor before following them down itself with a mighty crash. The electricity flickered then went out, stranding her in sudden darkness.
There was a moment of heart-stopping silence. She could hear nothing but her own ragged breathing. Her eyes were fixed toward the doorway, but the figure had vanished in the blackness. She stretched out one hand and felt around for her desk lamp, hoping against logic that it might switch back on if she tried. With her other hand she felt about for something to use as a weapon. Her fingers wrapped about something slender and smooth on the floor near her chair. It was wet and cold, and made a hollow, bell-like sound when it bumped against the chair leg. She clutched it, bringing it quickly in front of her and holding it in a manner nearly forgotten in twelve years. As she did, something cold and wet splashed down on her knees, causing her to jerk back into her seat again.
Another crash of thunder roared overhead, followed immediately by an intense flash of lightning that briefly lifted the darkness from the room. In that short moment she found herself staring up at the figure. It was diving at her. She screamed then, scrambling back against the chair so hard it tipped over backwards and dropped her into the fallen bookshelf. Something icy cold struck her heart and the darkness spun wildly behind her eyes as she collapsed. Funny, though. She didn't feel anything beneath her. She didn't really feel anything at all anymore.