With my thoughts miles away, I was distantly aware that the door was cracked open, but too preoccupied to notice the clatter mused in the silence.
Without a warning, the silence was rent by a strident voice unlike any I had heard before. I startled. The watch in my grip slipped through my numb fingers. It took me a slow second to miss the muffled thud it should have made against the floor.
A slim hand caught it and threw it back to me. The next second the hot air was trilling at my ear. “Watch again, little careless!”
My head spun up with a spasm of instinct, right knocking onto a jaw, as hard as steel, making me head lighted and leaning backward.
“OUCH—” the tremolo voice shrieked.
My ear seemed to be pierced and her figure was bounced three feet away from me with a surprising speed before my sight managed any details of her movement.
“YOU—” The voice was mad, as if I’d just murdered her jaw. She cried, gibbering a string of words that completely out of my comprehension before dramatically gulped into a sob. “You—you dare…how you dare…murdering my perfect face! My face—my…face disfigured…Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah… what a rude thing you are—YOU… AH—MY FACE!”
Dazed, I flinched away to avoid the splash of slobbers and a causal look revealed a young, willow lady with ivory-colored skin and long pale blonde hair. That wasn’t the woman who save me in the front of door? But why did her blow sound so much Different?
“I..I.. am sorry, Mr…s?” I rubbed my head, wonder the choice of gender. But I had barely finished when I found I was somehow forced backward against the edge of the counter. Her delicate face was abruptly enlarged, the tip of her nose just a finger close against mine.
“Who are you, careless?” she glared down at me, her eyes slitting in a very threatening air, however I felt quite ridiculous. Then a foxy silhouette ran across my head—when I was kid, my favorite thing was to hang around in this weird house on the sneak. And it brought Feng’s secret to me. I knew he had a few secret customers at hand. She was the one of them. I did remember Feng called her “Fox”
What kind of woman was willing to have such name? I wondered. The good smell breath blew onto my face in the contract with her soft voice that made the goose bumps on the nape of my neck.
“You are Old Feng’s friend.” I guessed.
“FRIEND?” as if my words stirred her nerves. Her voice went abruptly higher into a sardonic tone. “He told you like that? I am his friend—how low exactly my appetite would be so that I’ll land my friendship to that traitor?”
Mind slipped across the word “traitor”, didn’t catch anything. “Then, you must be FOX.” I was quietly sure about that now because she just acted what she did several years ago.
“FOX? THAT’S HOW HE CALL ME LIKE THAT?” she spat.
I didn’t say anything. Other people might not understand why Old Feng was making a fuss about decoration, but I had lived with the Feng too long not to know how touchy Feng’s friends were, sometimes even slightly out of the ordinary. The ‘out of the ordinary’, of course, contained some crazy violence.
She was still glaring at me, who tried to keep my expression neutral. If I didn’t say anything stupid, I might just be in for the treat of a lifetime. I waited for the lady to reintroduce herself ceremoniously, but she merely continued to glare. I decided to break the silence first.
“So—guess you want to visit Old Feng?” I swallowed.
Fox didn’t deny it.
“As I fear you waste your journey today. He’s not here.”
She screwed up her face as though feel not pleasant about this answer.
I moved, pace by pace, trying to squeeze myself out of this awkward distance. “Today is Big Day. Phoenix Feather has been rented for Ghost-Hunting Game and Dinner Party. Old Feng is not party animal. So he might be absent till tomorrow.”
“That might be not bad news.” A cunning smile pulled up the corner of his lips. She leaned away. The sudden broad space made me daze. “It’s been years I’ve not set my step here. It looks extremely change a lot.” He paused, paced around.
“It always looks freshly different.” I grunted under the breath.
“Maybe it’s a nice chance to steal a glance at those rubbish that bird collected.”
I’d just sent a “You-wish” sneer when all the locked draws suddenly bumped open. Eyes round, mouth dropped, I froze in the spot.
For seconds of mind-bug, I didn’t want to believe, but I could not refuse to witness a crazy woman was wondering casually across the lines of draws, picking up something and throwing them away quickly as if they were plague.
“Aha, he is still so nostalgic.” She shot a sneer. Then she simply rolled along the closet, rummaged occasionally.
“Crazy you…what…what are you doing?” I was too shocked to find my tongue.
No respond. She picked up a stone, then tossed aside soon before dig another one out. Those glittering antiques were not her type, but she preferred humble pebbles.
“Hey, did you hear me? Get away from here, that’s not your things!” I hissed, the sound was like the teeth gritted. I thought I knew what was going on behind the teeth: a furious battle as two of people’s fundamental instincts came into conflict. I couldn’t resist the temptation to get a peer at those glittering things from his sept. On the other hand, for what this mad lady did, the fury from Old Feng might be not what I could bear. Finally, Old Feng’s outrage was overweight temptation, after all life was primary.
I rushed forward, pushed drawers back closed while threatening her to leave. But there were too many drawers to close, and she was incredibly moving fast. My pace was almost unable to catch up with hers.
“Stop! You--, Old Feng will kill you!”
“Nope, he will kill you.”
Damn it correct, no one even saw him come here...
When she started to harass the fifth closet, a small iron casting box slowed her action. After a serious of mad rummage, she still could not unbolt the box. Instead of being disappointed, I noticed a hint of excitement flashing across his eyes. “Psychotic…” I gasped, flung myself right into her. The impact knocked her stagger two steps backwards. The box slipped through her grip, four hands shot at once. Mine was faster, but still half second later, the glazed surface sweep across the tip of my fingers and the box cleaved apart. A pink stone bounced out, rolling toward my feet.
Silence. Dead silence froze the hall.
We both tensed. Seconds ticked. Then a tiny, little click as though a mirror cracked. Something very ominous beat through my veins. The next moment a crisp of crack confirmed it. The pink stone crashed into fragments.
The only voice in my head was: I was dead.
It repeated like a ghost whisper, echoing the whole space. I looked blankly at Fox pick up one fragment, muttering. “Weird, weird, it’s empty. How could be…?”
Was there something inside? I was hazed. So I bent down to pick up a fragment as well. The crust was transplant red, but I traced no trail that proved there wrapped some life before. As my finger fiddled with the edge, the icy surface sent a shiver of horror jostling down my spine.
Suddenly, adrenaline, I realized, long absence from my system, drumming my pulse faster and fighting against the lack of sensation. It was strange—why the adrenaline ran as I touched the crust? It was almost as if were an echo of the last time I was lost in the lane at that seven-year-old night. I saw no reason for fear, or maybe a little bit.
“It….such….a…long…time…” a whisper mused in the farthest place down to nowhere. My head snapped up. All of a sudden, what clearly hit my sight froze me on the spot. A scarlet, gnarled, evil mask was floating in the air behind Fox, two empty eye-holes watching me. For a time, I felt my life had stopped for one long minute, or two.
My feet staggered one step backward automatically. However, some part inside was struggling to push me forward.
“Fox—” I swallowed convulsively, but chocked at the end.
The air seemed to be weird, and it smelled like something rotten or dead rat, intruding me from each pore on my skin. My nose winced. Bit by bit, like a sleeping pill, a swell of exhaustion washed over my head. The view of shapes around me started to sink into a black gulf in the shadow of the eye-hollow on that mask as I stared at it. It must have been the loud pin that my soul made. Thousands of quiet whispers rushed into my head like a mob, nagging in my ears which made the hair on my head stand on end.
A high, shrill wail pierced my lips and pulsed in my heart. The sound scraped through the air and left a feeble pain in my throat. Then I knew I was screaming.
From far away, the very opposite of my own scream, a heartbroken plead companied. The wash of desperation drowned mine at the meantime. I wriggled to move my muscle, from whatever it was, but it was too late. I couldn’t move.
Over my head, a glaring crimson moon blinded my last sight. Then dark fell.
The next minute, when my eyes poked open, I found I was spread-eagled on the damp earth, each muscle as hard and cold as the stone, as if a dead body lying there. A chink of sky was visible overhead; it was frigid, dappled amaranthine of watered ink, somewhere between night and dawn, everything was normal except for a glinting hilt of a sword protruding upward, splitting.
A SWORD—
A gush of sickness attacked as my eyes traced the blade, slipping down where it erected—it was deep in my heaving chest!
There was a high-pitched scream in my ears. I stared blankly at a blurred face for two seconds before I realized who was crying. “WAKE—WAKE UP…” The growl rattled me. Someone secured my arms in the steel grip, shaking me violently. The sky wobbled, and disappeared. The wave of sickness was back with the impulse of puke. A violent choke gushed with the gulp of fresh air into my mouth. I gasped heavily. Hands instinctively traced the place where the sword stood. But there was nothing.
“WAKE UP, PLEASE—OPEN YOUR EYES!”
Nothing? How could be? I felt it… remembering that sword, I felt a twinge of pain, and my eyes squeezed more tightly shut. I was still dreaming, it seemed, and it felt abnormally real.
Something cold touched my forehead with softest pressure. I realized that it felt too real, too real to be a dream. The stone arms I imagined wrapped around me were far too substantial.
“Shhh—little mud, it’s okay, it’s me. Open your eyes, look—look at me!” the voice was so familiar. I wrenched back my eyelids to dispel the illusion. It took less half a second for me to realize that, as long as I was truly insane now, I enjoyed the delusion while it was pleasant. I blinked again—Fox’s face was just inches away from mine. His low voice was anxious. “Little mud?”
Delusion spoke. The face, the voice, the scent, everything—it was so much better than dream. The beautiful figment of my imagination watched my changing expressions with alarm. His irises were orange. This surprised me.
I blinked twice, desperately trying to remember the dim picture under the scarlet moon. I was part of my dream, and that sword…I felt as if an ice cube had slipped down into my stomach at the very thought…
“What’s wrong? Hey—don’t fake, talk to me.”
I closed my eyes tightly and tried to remember what I looked in that dream, but I couldn’t recall much of them…all I knew was that at the moment when the sword was glittering was just that sword, I had felt a spasm of horror which had awoken me…or had that been the pain still in my chest?
There should have been something else, like someone was talking something. For there had definitely been someone else, I watched the silhouette overhead. It was all becoming confused. I put my face into my hands, blocking out fox’s face, trying to hold on to the picture of that dimly lit night, but it was like trying to keep water in my cupped hands; the details were now trickling away as fast as I tried to hold on to them…was it a dream?
“C’mon, it’s not a dream. Hallucination, it’s what it let you see! So slit your eyes open, if you don’t want to be drowned again.”
I took my face out of my hands, snapped my eye open. “…ha…lluc..nation?” as I spoke, I found my throat seemed to be hurt and it was hard to squeeze the words out. “What-do you…mean it?”
His breath relaxed, and I didn’t miss the surprised glint in his gaze. “You want know?”
The sudden pain from fingers. I looked down and found Peachy was pecking on the back of index finger. His little head inclined to squint. Perhaps meeting my notice made him let out a nervous hoot.
My head was getting clearer. “Eugh…hallucination?” I muttered for a while, and tried to make sense in a logical way. “Do you mean I passed out?” I shook one hand free out of his grip, which still caught my arms as a support. “-how…whatever, that mask really scared me to death…”
“Wait, what mask?” his eyes tightened, but he smiled more naturally this time. “not butterfly?”
I swayed my head, running my fingers over the temples. “I wished to see butterfly. Damn it, what exactly is in that stone? Isn’t something poison nerves to create some crazy hallucination?”
His face turned wary in an instant. “Acadialite Monarch never create hallucination.”
“What’s Monarch?”
She hesitated. Her face, shining with an odd golden cast from the light out of the window, was torn. As she spoke again, she chose her words with care. “We used to call Papilionaceous, and now butterfly is more familiar to you.”
“It’s a fossil?” I hooted.
“Of course not, she’s just sleeping, not dead. Oh, for god sake, why did I explain it to you—” she was suddenly frustrated. The strangest expression crossed her face. “Are you sure you saw not butterfly?”
The muscle around my face relieved, and then twisted. “Yeah…though I can’t convince you minutes before, now I can.” I swallowed hard, merely staring at the place behind her.
Following my sight, Fox looked around and back with her sincere, confused expression. “What?”
My head swam as I looked for the appropriate word. “Mask…”
The blank look still haunted her face.
She couldn’t see it? What crap it was? Was that hallucination again? Questions bombarded in my head, but my muscles had been locked down as if fro impact. The fault line in my chest rippled. The pain of it took my breath away.
She shook my shoulder, trying to loosen my rigid pose. “Hey, what’s wrong?” She winced. The grip suddenly tightened. “What…here.”
I waited, still frozen.
The silence filled in when Fox set me free to my foot. Her one arm stretched out in front of me as a protecting posture. I didn’t allow myself to see. I fought to keep myself in the present second only.
“Listen…little mud,” she whispered. “whatever is fooling your head now, just stop it right the moment, like whispers, or something you said as mask, just stop listening, stop watching, cut every clues connecting with outside. Just breath, remember your breath—yes, do it. Good girl, slowly, yes…now can you feel your feet?”
“A yak…” finally I found my voice. The word burned my throat a little on the way out. If that wasn’t some poison trick, I was 100% sure that I was staring at a mammoth monstrous yak, probably third as tall as a normal size and at least six times as wide-long tangles of bushy white hair on its body rose up like porcupine quills, eight bronze horns stood in a line along down the spine, right against the air; and its face was not strange, covered under an evil red mask. I could feel the ghost of the eye-holes, waiting to rip itself wide again as soon as I watched. I thought it didn’t look like a hallucination this time. “It’s…right behind your back.”
Her eyes flew around again, and back, studying my face as she spoke to make sure I was not mad. “There’s nothing in the nook.”
“Jesus cry, are you blind? Such a big mountainous thing!” I flipped my head around. There it was, pawing the floor ready for a dart. “Please don’t tell me it’s my hallucination again.”
Her eyes narrowed, her jaw tightened.
“I can’t see it.” She confessed. Peachy twitter to echo her.
“You can’t?” I shook my head, trying to removing that yak out of my sight. But it didn’t work. “Oh, crap, there’s drug in the stone, it must be that harass my head, to let me see a creepy mask.”
“That is funny.” that’s not the comment I wanted.
“It never made sense for me to such thing either,” I explained, my voice breaking twice. “Eugh—that’s creepy, I feel it is looking at me.”
“Don’t look back!” she ordered.
She caught my face securely between her iron hands, ignoring my struggles when I tried to turn my head away. “Despite his figure is quite defensive to our sight, except you, little lucky, I do smell something around here, nearly close to us.”
“You smell?” I wondered the word. “Oh—no, you’re effected, too?”
“No—of course not, how did you get that point? Kill your drug assumption, there’s nothing about that! Now, listen to me.” she pause, assuring I was really listening this time. “This is a little far more than you can understand, and obviously it’s not a good timing to explain. We are hurry to escape to somewhere safe if you don’t want to be a food…”
“What food…”
“Shhh—no more question, okay? Now when I say run, just do it, okay?”
My head shook weakly. “I am afraid my legs are overloaded. They are limp.”
She arched one perfect eyebrow. “Trouble as you are…” then she closed her eyes and laid her palm over my thighs, speaking something I couldn’t understand, under the unmoving lips.
“Er—what are you doing?” I asked, pretending not noticing her weird movement. “Okay, no more question. But there’s one I just couldn’t help asking—why can’t you see it? What’s the use of its mask? Of the importance, what specie it is? Does it bite? What—”
“NOW—RUN!”
It felt like something inside was activated by her words. I was suddenly on my feet. And before I realized, the room was whirling. My feet scrambled swiftly as full of gas. I half-shrieked as soon as the shelf threw itself to me, shooting through two octaves. But the imagined pain didn’t catch me; instead a bone-cracking embrace was around my waist before Fox threw ourselves out of the way.
“You’re far clumsier than I imagined.” The wind weakened her voice. But it was hard to ignore the humor in her tone. “Maybe I shall give more spell.”
I snorted. “Thank you, Harry Potter. Guess our problem is a lot worse than a handful of Dr. Who getting himself into trouble.” A clang of metal collides exposed behind us. My head snapped around and I saw a broken drawer fly toward her back. “Watch out!” my voice merely mused when another drawer broke out right in the way of that one. Then a loud crash sound followed.
Suddenly something rang a bell. “BAG—MY BAG!” I wrenched my body around, trying to grab my bag that was buried in the fragments. Then everything seemed to be ended before I saw it happened. My bag suddenly shot to my face before my fingers reached it. My eyes rolled on the bag covered with wooden shards up and down. How did it fly out of the piles? How… but I gave up just the next instant. There were too many creepy things junking together at hand.
Fox wheeled her sleeve again. Lines of drawers that had been closed by me bounced open again, quietly setting back the monstrous yak. It exactly bought time for us to rush out of the hall.
As safety caught us. Her smoldering voice was jarring in the ear again. “Who’s Harry Potter?”
I felt as if I were about to explain something, there would be thousands of why following and then thought better of it. My teeth clicked together and I spoke through them. “Just nobody, forget it! I just want to know what is that? I mean, why can’t you see it, but I can?”
“What does it look like?” his tone was cold.
“General monster features…” I flew a quick glance around the shoulder. “Basically look like a yak, its back full of horns, and mask covering its face—the most grotesque part—WOW, WATCH YOUR LEFT!”
Meanwhile, the grip around the waist tightened. And then I felt I was lifted like a feather. The ceiling started to rotate and the lines of grid windows leapt up and down like wave before the corner of my eyes got an instant picture when the yak lunged. “Jump—jump, jump!” I shrieked. For a blinking second, the place where we’d been was smashed into a big dent.
“Crap!”I managed to choke out. Insanity, I thought I saw a fish tail was swaying on its buttock. The tail was as sharp as the knife, clipping the fragments of the shards shooting toward it.
“Maybe we shall call the police—” my sentences broke by another shower of sharp fragments of gray stone, showering down on my head, scratching my exposed skin. Then Fox’s huge body soared ten feet high and crashed into the rocky wall. A massive backhanded blow that caught me full in my chest dragged my shoulder with a hard pull. I fell onto the floor with breath whoosh from my lungs. My bag rolled down my right arm and I caught it reflexively. My fingers clenched around the long belt as my own survival instincts kicked in.
A low whimper escaped through Fox’s teeth behind me. “Fox?”
Responding me was the increasingly frequent metallic snaps and gasps. I tried to look around, but the movement only triggered a wave of nasty pain across my shoulder. Convulsion ran through my body. I rolled into a panic ball before shocked hissing pulled my mind back. I struggled to sit up. My free fingers trudged along the crippled arm toward where pain stood, only got full hand of warm liquid, spilling out of a long gash. That’s not good. It slowed my action. Worse was yak was lurching around, back toward me, its empty eye-holes brilliant with fury. It glared at the limp mountain of tattered-robe Fox between us, and its paws—mangled, broken claws—curled into talons. Its mouth opened, widened, its teeth glistening, as it prepared to rip out his throat.
A second kick of adrenaline hit like an electric shock, and everything was suddenly very clear.
The fight was too close. Fox was about to lose her, and I had no idea if I would get a narrow escape to call the police. She was creepy, but she still needed help. A distraction. Something to give it an edge. My fingers touched something hard across the bag. I fumbled and dug out my cell phone. Something belled inside. Wish a flash would catch its attention, to delay its pace. I prayed it would work that way as I clicked the phone life and switched it into camera mode. “HEY—MONSTER, WATCH THIS” then, taking multiple shots!
Yak was distracted by the sound of the flash. Its mask, holding still for one tiny portion of a second, met mine. Fury and curiosity mingled strangely in its expression. I wasn’t sure how I heard the low sound with all the other noises echoing off the stone wall. My own heartbeat should have been enough to drown it out. But in that same short second, the mutual confrontation broke violently apart. It happened so quickly that it was over before I could follow the sequence of events. Yak had flown out of the blurred formation and smashed into my direction.
Simultaneously, Fox—all but invisible with speed—had twisted forward and caught the yak by the tail. It had looked like Fox planted his fingers against yak’s body, and pulled—
The long corridor was filled with yak’s piercing shriek of agony.
At the same time, Fox whisked his sleeve to give a backhanded blow, arousing hurricane in the air that swirled around my waist like an invisible hand and threw down to the stairs.
Then the zigzagging staircase was everything. I coiled and rolled like a stupid ball. Until something hard and cold blocked the way, the impact sounded like an explosion and it threw me against the counter—this one snapped in half. I moaned, pictures churning in the head to make me daze.
It took me a slow minute or longer to get on my feet. My arms groped in the shards for support, and the metallic cube made me realize I was still clutching my phone. The time flipped on the interface made I suddenly remembered the urge—Shawl was still here, somewhere, and the other buddies.
That was not good.
My fingers blood stained and weak were suddenly busy. They danced on the keyboard, missed several time for the fire-alarming remote control, half hoping they were hanging around far away from the north floor.
Finally the shrill of fire alarming pierced the silence. Metal ground against metal; then a lurching shudder shook the floor beneath me. I fell down at the sudden movement and shuffled backward on my hands and feet, drops of sweat beading on my forehead despite the corner of the room. Sinking to the floor, I pulled my legs up tight against body, hoping this alarming warn would dispel them out in time.
Then the phone suddenly buzzed. My fingers shivered at the name that flashed. It was Shawl.
“Kitty-ear—where are you?” there was no greet. His voice was full of frustration and annoy. But it’s so good to hear him now.
Overhead a thundering bound ran over the ceiling. I clung the phone, unable to say anything. I was afraid my shivering tone would divulge my plight. As I took the third deep breath, with the greatest effect to ignore the pain, and dread, I said. “I just get outside. Shawl, where are you?”
“I am in the east wing…” another loud thud overwhelmed his voice. The shower of ash rained from the ceilings. Peach whooshed from somewhere, twittered, shooting here and there like a fireworks before it fell into my coat.
Silly bird. I cursed, grabbed it and tucked into my pocket. Ducking out of the way was uneasy as the pitch of branch rebounded off the floor a few feet in front of me.
Adrenaline jolted through my veins. Pulling my bag into my chest, I took refuge under the counter before Shawl’s growl from the other side of phone startled me. “Trouble—trouble—what’s the sound?”
“Signal is blank sometimes…” I spit the word faster, sending half attention on the looming sound overhead, half focus on the conversation with Shawl. “…the balcony collapsed…where are you?”
“We all stuck in the south corridor. The door was shut down…”
The sudden absence of sound was the only warning.
My deep rush breathing cut off, and I tugged myself deeper against the counter, and listened hard. Fox was suddenly in front of me. It only scared me almost drop my phone. “Jesus cry—you’re piece and sound…” a second stab of thrill clutched my throat. So I threw my arm around her neck and only knock my head onto the counter.
“Easy, little mud,” her voice sounded a little hoarse. She pulled me out of there, braced me awkwardly. “You, such a bold, clumsy girl, dare to challenge that thing just by a black box? What is that? Kind of flashing. You know you might get yourself killed, don’t you?”
My fingers rubbed the collar around her chest, then tensed. “Eugh—YOU ARE MAN?”
A soft blow knocked my head. “Where is your attention with?”
“So…you killed that monster?” I ruffled the hair, glaring at him
“Not yet,” he flinched, let me free to my feet. “I trapped it in the roots of phoenix tree. They will not buy much time for us. Come on, we need to get out of here.”
“…trouble, who’s talking to you…” Shawl’s hiss floated from the phone in my grip. Damn it, I forgot kick off the phone.
Fox jumped to his feet. A low warning sound ran in his chest. And I rethought my impatience.
“Po… Policeman!” I dared to peer at Fox, who suddenly right beside me. He stared down at me with nothing but discontent showing in his eyes. “They’re going to break in. So stay there, don’t move, they’ll find you!” kicking it into silence mode, I tucked phone into my bag before turning to face him. “What?”
“Shhh, he’s coming!”