Foxglove Read online

  A twig snapped under her feet.

  Maddie jumped and looked around, realizing that her surroundings were no longer familiar. She’d never been out in the woods at night before, and it took on a whole different persona. There were no more comforting rays of sunlight, no more seas of soft green ferns. Instead, she found only darkness and tangled branches, cold and sharp in the porcelain moonlight.

  And it was so quiet. Maddie always imagined that walking through the forest at night would be like one of those cautionary videos they showed in high school about the importance of traveling in groups and covering your drinks at parties, but this was different. The silence was penetrating as she scanned the trees.

  Where the hell is the trail? she thought.

  She decided to double back. She must have missed it, that’s all. There was nothing to worry about. The trail was still there, right where she’d left it. She kept her eyes on the ground as she picked her way through the bushes, searching for the narrow line of packed earth that would lead her home.

  Her confidence slowly fell as the minutes ticked by. By the time 11:30 rolled around, she was forced to admit that she was hopelessly lost. All she could do was pick a direction and walk. The forest preserve was big, but it didn’t go on forever. Eventually she would hit a road, and she would either make it home or the cops would pick her up and take her.

  Stupid forest, she thought. Stupid field. Stupid flowers. Stupid pool.

  She tromped through the brush. By the time she got back, she would probably be covered in poison ivy.

  The forest came at her with all the tenacity of a pack of wild dogs, tearing her top and scratching at her legs. Mosquitoes bit at every inch of her exposed skin, and it felt like the temperature had dropped fifty degrees.

  All she could think about was getting home to a warm bath and a soft bed, but deep down she knew that, more likely, the night would end in back seat of a patrol car. Desperate for comfort, she reached for her headphones, hoping that a little music would lighten the mood.

  As she fumbled with the cords, the ground dropped away and she fell down a steep, damp slope. Her phone went flying, and she landed with a wet smack in ten inches of stinking mud.

  “Craaaap,” she groaned, flinging mud off her hands. She tried to stand, but her feet slipped out from under her and she splattered face-first in the muck. She rolled over, sputtering, and wiped her fingers across her eyes.

  This, she thought, is as bad as it can possibly get.

  Stifling the urge to cry, she took a deep breath, crawled to her knees, and prepared once again to get to her feet.

  As she lifted her head, a pair of dark figures descended the slope across the bog.

  Her eyes could barely make them out. They seemed to blend into the moonlight, shifting rather than stepping as they moved. One of them was a man, tall and thin like the skeleton of a long-dead tree. A narrow braid of white hair hung down to his waist, bright against his dark clothing. A pair of tall, Renaissance-style boots rode up his calves, and a sword hung from his belt. The woman was paler than wedding fabric, with a shock of coal-black hair worn short at the top of her head.

  Maddie froze. Something deep in her soul began to scream as her eyes fell on the woman’s chilling features. A well of fear churned in the center of her chest, and a vine of terror coiled around her heart, strangling as it squeezed.

  She had to get away. She didn’t know how she knew, but Maddie’s blood raced in her veins as she looked around wildly, eyes darting around the swamp as she searched for some avenue of escape, but before she could get to her feet, the woman turned. Her gaze swept across the stagnant pool and settled on Maddie’s face as she brought up her arm and pointed.

  The man began to move.

  Maddie ran.

  Bad End

  Maddie hurled herself across the ground, plunging through dirt and rotting leaves. As she heaved herself forward, she heard heavy squelching behind her, the sound of boots charging through mud.

  She glanced back and saw the man, sliding through the muck with unnatural speed as the mire parted in front of him. Maddie threw herself to the edge of the slope and climbed. Dirt slipped between her fingers and crumbled under her feet. She desperately pushed against the earth, her heart pounding in her ears. Her fingers stung and bled as she clawed her way up the muddy incline, scrambling with every ounce of her strength until she caught hold of a dangling root sticking out of the ground. She started to haul herself up.

  Another yard, another foot, another inch. Her thoughts raced as she pulled herself out of the bog. The sloshing was louder now. He was close.

  Move, Maddie! Go! Now!

  A gloved hand closed around her ankle.

  Maddie screamed as the man dragged her back down the muddy slide.

  “Get away from me!” she shouted, kicking wildly.

  As they landed at the bottom, the man let go of her and leaned down, reaching for her arm.

  Maddie thrust her foot into his groin. He grunted and doubled over, sinking to his knees in the thick, murky water. Maddie scrambled backwards before turning and throwing herself back onto the slope. She gritted her teeth and rammed her fingers into the dirt, forcing her way up.

  Who are these people?! She thought. Drug dealers? Rapists? Murderers?

  The thoughts flashed through her head alongside a thousand bloody ends to her life. She reached up, and her palm smacked against dry earth. She grasped at a branch and climbed.

  As she crawled over the top, the ground suddenly lurched, like a great serpent writhing awake at the bottom of the sea. The earth swelled and broke, flinging Maddie up and back through the air. As she splashed back down into the wet, her head struck a rock beneath the surface. Bursts of light broke across her vision, and she sank, dizzy and limp.

  The man stood over her.

  “Running won’t do any good,” he said.

  His expression was like stone.

  Maddie tried to lift her head, but she could barely move. She brought her arms up weakly as the man took her by the shoulders. Her thoughts swam, lost in a cloud of pain and confusion, and when she tried to speak, her words came out in gibberish. Blood oozed from her temple as the man dragged her across the mud hole and dumped her in front of the woman.

  The woman looked down at her. “I’ve been waiting a long time to see you again,” she said.

  Maddie’s mind shrieked as the other-worldly terror seized her again. She forced her mouth to form words. “Who are you? Why are you doing this?”

  The woman lifted an eyebrow. “Who am I?” she said, giving a little smile. “I was with you when you were born. You were mine once, Foxglove, and now you will be mine again.”

  “Will you get on with it?” the man whispered harshly, eyes flicking across the darkness between the trees. “We don’t have time. The others will be coming.”

  The woman’s face twitched, and she took a long breath. “Patience,” she said. “When the time comes, I will know.”

  The man shot a glance down at her. “Well it better get to be time in a hurry.”

  Maddie tried to sit up.

  “Don’t fight,” the woman said, pressing her down. “It will be over soon.”

  Maddie pushed against her. The strength was returning to her legs and arms.

  The woman turned to her companion and said, “Hold her.”

  The man turned and looked at Maddie. For a moment, a ghost of sympathy passed across his face.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  Kneeling down and resting his hands on her shoulders, he pressed her into the mud. As Maddie thrashed, the man grunted and put his whole weight against her. He was too heavy for her to throw off. With desperate fear, Maddie hurled her voice out into the night, praying that someone would hear her screams.

  The woman gave her a disappointed look.

  “You needn’t bother with that,” she said. “There’s no one here to help you. I’m afraid you’ve come a long, long way from home.”

  Maddie sh
outed until her throat burned. The woman calmly reached into her robes and drew out a jug of black liquid. Vile odor flooded the air when she pulled out the stopper, and Maddie gagged. With her other hand, the woman pulled out a knife. The blade was broad and fat and chipped from black stone.

  Maddie shrieked.

  The man glanced up at the trees again. He looked afraid. It was only then, in her wild-eyed fear, that Maddie noticed the trees. They were enormous! The trunks were like skyscrapers, their branches spreading out in a canopy of leaves that blotted out the sky.

  Her bones quaking, Maddie slowly turned her eyes back to the woman.

  “Where am I?” she asked.

  The woman slid the knife down Maddie’s collar and answered, “One step closer to home.”

  The blade sliced open the fabric of Maddie’s tank top, cutting down through the sports bra covering her chest. The man looked away and shut his eyes. His mouth moved noiselessly, repeating, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

  Maddie shouted again, screaming into his ear. “If you’re so sorry, then HELP ME!”

  He held her down, but he strained as though his own muscles were working against him. The woman cracked a smile, and his neck went taught, pulling his head around to face her as his eyes pressed themselves open.

  “I…can’t!” he said, forcing the words through his teeth.

  The woman closed her eyes as she lifted the jar and drank. The smell forced its way into Maddie’s nostrils and down her throat, a combination of rotting meat, old grease, and blood. Maddie gagged as the woman swallowed the entire contents of the container, and exhaled a sigh of disturbing pleasure. Maddie’s stomach heaved, and she threw up onto the ground. The woman took no notice. Instead, she tilted her ear skyward as if listening for a distant signal.

  Maddie wrestled against the man, casting her eyes back and forth from the man to the woman. “Don’t do this, please! I don’t understand! Please, stop!”

  The man’s face was paralyzed, skin stretched to the point of tearing. A choked rattle emerged from his throat.

  The woman’s eyes opened, revealing empty pools of penetrating, seamless black. Maddie froze in terror as the woman’s veins grew darker, blackening like they were filling up with soot. The darkness grew until it spread across her face, flooding down her neck and shoulders until it draped like ebony lace over her entire body.

  “It’s time,” she said, setting the point of the knife against the mud-encrusted skin of Maddie’s chest.

  Maddie pressed herself into the mud, a final, futile effort to escape as the woman lifted the knife and stabbed her through the heart.

  Fear and anger. Desperation and regret. The shock blew them all away. Maddie felt a tugging motion as the woman sawed the blade back and forth. She felt… strange, like she was draining out of herself. The woman murmured softly as the world began to fade. Maddie couldn’t understand the words, but the language was somehow familiar.

  Her eyes drooped and fell shut.

  Dead. Missing. Was that all? she asked herself.

  Her last thoughts were of a dim epitaph, a few faded lines on a crumbling headstone. Here lies Madeline Foster, just another girl who wandered off and never came back.

  Had she the strength, she would have wept.

  The man’s weight lifted, and in the final moments, Maddie heard the sound of steel clanging against steel. A shout broke through the dark as the lights went out and the world slipped away.

  Into the Woods

  “She’s waking up.”

  “Hold her still.”

  “How can she be awake?”

  “She shouldn’t even be alive. Just hold her.”

  Maddie felt a weight on her shoulders and warm wood against her back as gold light poured, burning, into her eyes.

  Hot… so hot. Water.

  Her mind was swimming as a rhythmic thumping brought her attention back to the voices in the room.

  “Is this even going to work?”

  “There’s no way to know, but we have to try.”

  So many voices. Maddie rolled her head to the side. A woman with long blond hair stood nearby in a bright green robe. Something in her hand dripped with cloudy water. Maddie tried to focus on it, squinting through the light, when she became aware of a discomfort rising in her chest. At first it was dull, more like an ache than a pain, but as the seconds passed it grew sharper and hotter until it felt like she’d been doused with boiling water. Her muscles tensed and she writhed, struggling to crawl away.

  The weight on her shoulders shifted, holding her tight.

  “The shock is wearing off.”

  The woman came to the table. Dark eyes stared down at Maddie, and blackened veins showed through her skin.

  “Then we have to hurry,” she said.

  Maddie winced. The pain in her chest burned like hot coals as she lifted her head and looked down.

  She stared into a bloody hole.

  The world swirled away into blurred spirals of light and color. She screamed as searing pain rolled over her and her back wrenched up into a bridge.

  “There she goes!” someone shouted.

  “Hold her!”

  Light crashed down like an avalanche of fire as the woman pressed her hands into Maddie’s gaping chest. Maddie’s eyes rolled back, and the room disappeared in a wash of gold and white.

  When she woke up, the room was gone. Only the blond woman remained. Maddie found herself lying in a bed wearing a soft linen nightgown, the front of which was undone, revealing a long, bloody scar running down the center of her chest. The woman dabbed at it gently with a brush soaked in thick, brown paste.

  She looked up at Maddie.

  “It wasn’t a dream,” she said.

  The soft grain of wood met Maddie’s bleary eyes as she glanced at the walls, ceiling, and the floor. It was like the whole room had been carved from a single piece. Maddie could even see the lines of tree rings running along its surface. Warm, orange light filled the air.

  Maddie let her eyes drift back to the woman.

  She asked, “Am I dead?”

  The woman let a smile slip out through the golden waves of her hair. Her eyes glinted playfully, and there was a kind of humor in her expression that put Maddie at ease.

  “If you were dead, you wouldn’t have a scar,” she answered.

  Maddie tried to sit up, but a jolt of pain raced up her chest and she gasped.

  The woman put a hand against her shoulder. “Lie down. You’ve got a lot of healing left to do.”

  “But who are you? What happened to me?”

  “My name is Maeve,” the woman said. “What’s yours?”

  “Maddie. Maddie Foster.”

  The woman kept dabbing at her chest. “What happened is a question for another day,” she said. “For now, you need to rest.”

  She reached out and put a hand on Maddie’s forehead.

  Maddie’s eyelids drooped. The bed was so soft, the pillows felt like they’d been stuffed with clouds, and the light warmed her like a softly burning flame. She shut her eyes and drifted off to sleep.

  When she woke again, the room was empty. She tried once more to sit up, only to discover the same shooting pain she’d felt before. She lay back against the pillows and examined her surroundings.

  The room was tiny. The furniture barely fit: the bed, a nightstand, a narrow wardrobe, and a short dresser with a little round mirror, all carved from bare, natural wood. Across the room, a wooden lattice led out to a small balcony. Maddie’s gaze drifted over the bed to where the room’s dim light bloomed out from a huge orange mushroom protruding from a cleft in the wood.

  Maddie stared at the over-sized fungus, and memories of the night before bubbled up in her mind like wisps of steam from a pot of warming water. She remembered the huge trees with leaves that covered the sky. She remembered the woman, black-haired and pale-skinned. She remembered the man, compliant but also terrified. And she remembered the knife…

  Maddie fumbled wi
th her shirt, pulling open the fabric and looking down. The scar lay like a snake on her chest. She yelped and felt a churning in her stomach. She leaned over the bed and puked, crying out in pain as her chest throbbed and her muscles spasmed.

  The door opened. Maddie heard a shout, and a pair of strong hands propped her up as she finished emptying her stomach. When she looked up, soft brown eyes met her own. A girl not much older than she sat down on the edge of the bed. Deep brown hair fell in loose tangles over her strong, narrow features, spilling over the shoulders of a brown linen dress bound tightly with a thick, green belt. And her skin…

  Maddie pulled away.

  At first glance, the girl appeared perfectly ordinary. The deep tan of her skin did a fine job of concealing the peculiar detail that had drawn Maddie’s attention. Pale rivulets of green ran along her arms, through her wrists, and along the edges of her brow and temples. Her veins were the wrong color. Maddie looked down at her own. Pale blue. Pale blue was correct. Green was not.

  Maddie watched the girl in bizarre wonder as she helped Maddie back onto the pillows before leaning down to clean up the mess. Her almond-shaped eyes were long, and in the dim light of the room they seemed to glow.

  “What… are you?” Maddie said.

  The girl straightened up. “My name is Rain. I’m a friend.”

  “And where am I?”

  The girl pursed her lips, hesitating for a moment before she stood up and took a step back.

  “I’ll get Maeve,” she said.

  And then she left, leaving Maddie staring after her, dumbfounded.

  Maeve returned a short while later, carrying a tray with her medicine bottle and brush. Fragrant steam wafted up from a shallow bowl beside them. Maddie’s stomach rumbled as the woman set the tray down on the nightstand and sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “Are you hungry?” she said.

  Maddie took a long look. Maeve’s veins and eyes were the same as Rain’s. She winced as Maeve leaned forward and fluffed the pillows behind her so she could sit up. Picking up the bowl, Maeve filled the spoon and held it to her lips.