THIS BOOK WILL KILL YOU

28_seenoevil_

There's no station up here, no building at all. There's a forest, trees towering over me like the arches of a church. It infects the metal escalator, moss growing on the steps, shoots pushing up from the cracked tiles. I stumble off at the top, spinning in delirious circles. It's like somebody has ripped a section of the subway and planted it here decades ago. I can still see the concourse below me, people milling back and forth. Their shouts drift up on currents of warm air, calling me back, but I ignore it.

She's up here.

Because it's working, isn't it? Cara was right, the stories are a map, a way of finding her. She thinks she's safe here, she thinks we can't reach her, but we can.

I slide _thetubegame_ back into the bag and rummage until I find the next one, _threedeadthings_. This story isn't instructional, like the last one, but there's a secret coded into it.

I have to find the statues first, of course. But when I turn around to face the forest I see that they have found me. There are three wooden statues there, where there were none before. They are all facing me, their crudely carved features drenched in shadows that make them look utterly real. On the left is a bird, its wings angled across its beak.

"Inside the skylark you will meet the first daughter," he said. "And she will ask you a question, but you must not reply."

In the middle is a hare, its face a mask of grief, its paws clamped to its ears.

"Inside the hare, you will hear the second daughter whisper to you, but you must not listen."

Next to them, slightly taller and leaning in, as if ready to strike then both down, is a creature I cannot identify. Its body is a sheep's, I think, sitting upright, its face covered by a huge pair of human hands, horns poking through the fingers.

"And inside that one, the bad one, the mother will lie down beside you but you must not look at her. If you do all these things then she will show you something incredible."

It's so awful that I have to close my eyes. I have to force myself to claw in a breath. There's a crack of wood, a rustling, and when I look again they're closer, they're almost on top of me. It's impossible, of course, because they are held tight by vines and brambles, the forest growing up and over them—so much so that the three little doors in their stomachs are half buried. Two of the doors are closed, only the mother's is open.

I read the story again, then I walk in a circle around the three statues. They're the length of a fully-grown man, no more, and in the gaps between the warped wood I can see the interior, as green and mouldering as the outside. They're empty, all three of them.

Except they're not, are they?

I don't want to do this, but I have to. I don't even know what would happen now if I followed the escalator back down and tried to get back on the train. Maybe I'll end up as one of those faceless people, riding the quiet from station to station to station until time grows old and tired.

Anything is better than that.

It takes me a while to pry open the first door, I have to dig a path for it in the heavy soil with the knife. I'm not sure if I have to go in all three, but something tells me it won't work otherwise. It's weird, because when I finally wrench it open enough for me to squeeze through I can't see anything, it's choked with darkness. I walk to the side and stare through the slats, seeing the interior just fine, but through the door is nothing, just nothing.

Clambering down onto my hands and knees, I push my head through the door. It stinks of old wood here, of decaying things, but it's not a bad smell, just a forest smell. The door's too low for me to crawl in so I slide the knife into my pocket—the stories too, because I won't get the bag through the door—and drop to my belly, feeling twigs push into my stomach.