The Underground Palace

Chapter Six - Underground Palace

'Alex?' whispered Oliver.

'Yeah?'

'Are we still in England?'

Alex looked around and shook her head.

'No, I don't think so,' she answered. Oliver felt like crying, where were they?

Alex and Oliver had woken up and found themselves standing in a dark and gloomy stone corridor, laden with empty and dusty cobwebs. It smelt like sewage and wet dog, it wasn't nice. Up ahead, flaming torches lined the walls every few yards or so. Oliver looked at Alex, who was staring transfixed at a broken spider web slowly swaying in the air, pushed by a breeze flowing through the cracks in the walls.

'Are we dreaming again?' he asked. Alex looked down at the petrified boy's fingers, which were nervously tapping against his semi transparent thigh. They were ghosts just like before again.

'We must be, but I don't understand. I thought you and I only saw the others last time because magic transported us to them, so we could be together,' whispered Alex. All of sudden a thought entered Alex's mind and her hopes soared.

'Do you think they could still be-'

'No,' firmly stated Oliver, 'I watched them die. They all died.'

'But what about your fire? I watched that bed burn almost to ashes but when you stopped it, the bed looked as though it had never been touched-'

'I know what I saw,' said Oliver with hatred. Alex immediately fell silent and looked away. Oliver had anger issues and she didn't want him to start another fire any time soon.

Awkwardness fell upon the two children. Alex remembered Kirsty's screams of pain and knew Oliver wasn't lying when he said Glen had died too. But the idea that her cousin, her best friend, was dead was too hard to believe. Call it denial, Alex didn't care, but she wanted proof. She turned back to Oliver.

'We need to see where we are. We're here for a reason and we have to make the most of it,' she said. Oliver eyes widen and he looked down the gloomy corridor petrified. He nodded dutifully.

'I understand,' he whispered. Alex nodded and took a deep breath. It was time to find answers. She took a step forward but Oliver tugged her backwards. His limbs were shaking.

'Whatever happens, we'll stick together, right?' he cried. The image of Glen standing in his room, in front of his open window, immediately resurfaced to Alex's mind. Alex sniffed and forced herself not to cry.

'Always,' replied Alex.

Together, Alex and Oliver stepped forward. They were scared, how could they not be? They were scared of the unknown. Every day in their lives so far they had been use to a routine; for Alex it was school Monday to Friday, work on Saturday, do whatever on Sunday and homework when her mother reminded her. Oliver, however, was use to something completely different: wake up, work, lunch, work, dinner, sleep and occasional sudden beatings handed out by the mean old hand of Guntur. The smash of a whiskey bottle and a series of swear words and you knew you were done for. But it was different now, and the children knew that, they were never going to go back to their ordinary lives. Forward was the only way to go, forward to where though, they did not know.

But five minutes later, forward, they realised was the only direction. The corridor had not veered left or right at all. They had not come across any doorways or junctions. Their so-called "adventure" was taking them nowhere.