Reggie clutched desperately to her expression of fascination. Her facial muscles had begun to twitch with the effort, but her family doctor hadn’t seemed to notice. He droned on.
“And really I spent the whole year, maybe even my whole time at University studying…”
Reggie would rather listen to screeching chimps than hear another word.
“Just book after book…”
She assumed that his wife and children had stopped listening to him years ago. And when he had seen Reggie’s constructed look of interest, it had caused a landslide of words.
“After book after book. I really was dedicated all the way through…”
Reggie cursed her parents for forcing her to attend this party in their place and for instilling in her, such great manners. She draped her arm over her midsection and turned the cocktail glass in a clockwise direction. Her silky, patterned dress clung to her and left her arms bare and goose bumped.
“I wrote notes in a notepad.” He snorted a laugh “that must sound ancient to you!”
She shifted her weight to her toes, unearthing her heels from the dirt. Reggie couldn’t take it any longer; she drained her glass and raised an eyebrow at the doctor. “I’m dry.” She said.
The doctor, red faced from alcohol, gave her a gallant bow and departed to bring her another drink. She watched his quick strides toward the bar and for the hundredth time that night, wondered why she was here.
With a sigh, she did a desperate 360 scan of her surroundings. The glow of the full moon over the property was punctuated by fierce bursts of garden lights, which were spread systematically throughout the property, illuminating random trees, flowerbeds and the many scenic walks. Some of the guests had embarked upon them, drinks in hand. But the majority of the party lingered near her, around the outside buffet and bar.
Reggie smiled; everyone seemed to be occupied. She delicately placed her glass upon the ground and walked away.
She picked a path at random and rounded a corner, slipping out of site. Reggie enjoyed the almost too cold air, the clear sky, and the crunch of her heels on the gravel. The blaring garden lamps illuminated plump plants and closed up buds, rough bark and bright, green leaves.
To her right, across a patch of flowers, Reggie spotted the entrance to a maze. She removed her shoes, leaving them on the path and waded toward it, between the flowers. Her skin bristled as she approached, she felt a sparking of excitement.
Reggie strode into the maze and shivered in the cool shadow of the hedges. Two paths stretched out to her right and left, barely lit at all. The night seemed intent on taking all it could, Reggie felt a small tremor of fear but could not bear another moment at the garden party.
Reggie felt as though she were within a current and took the path to her right. She considered whether it was wise to get lost at this time of night, especially when no one knew where she was. But the thought felt distant and unimportant and so she dismissed it. She turned left at another fork and trailed her hand along the smooth leaves of the hedge.
Reggie felt the grass, soft and silky beneath her feet and turned based upon pure impulse. When she reached a dead end, she simply retraced her steps and picked another direction. Filling her imagination with all that could lie within the middle of the maze, she quickened her pace.
Another dead end loomed over her, Reggie was about to retrace her steps when she noticed a flaw in the base of the hedge. She heard a twig break somewhere begin her and gulped. The large hole in the plant, was about her size if she were to crawl. Reggie squatted down, she could see right through to the other side and wondered whether it was the middle of the maze. Reggie got into the crawling position and half rolled her eyes at her own childishness. But she also felt an almost forgotten stirring, that of a mystery yet to be uncovered.
She was Alice staring down the rabbit hole.
Besides, she figured that no one could see her and a tiny, enchanted adventure was just what this night required.
She ducked her head and began to crawl through the hole. Sticks lightly grazed the back of her dress while rocks and twigs dug into her knees. The smell of dirt filled her nostrils. When she reached the other side, she got to her feet and frowned.
It wasn’t the middle at all; it didn’t even seem to be a part of the maze. Reggie felt unnerved, the hedges were unruly and ragged here, creating monsters in the darkness.
It was like an in-between place. A miscalculation. She considered crawling back through the hole, but this makeshift path did seem to continue on for a while and in the direction of the maze’s middle. So she decided to follow the slim path to its end, just in case it was a shortcut. Reggie pushed out her chest in false confidence and continued on.
The path narrowed further but Reggie squeezed through sideways. Branches pushed at her lips, threatened her eyes and poked her cheeks. She tried her best not to think about the cost of her dress.
Finally she entered into less constricting area, though she could tell it was still not a planned part of the maze. Reggie rubbed her arms and took a few more steps forward. What did she think she was doing?
A darkened shadow in the corner sent her heart galloping. She squinted at it, realized it was a small tree, but was not comforted by its looming presence. The tree was untouched by moonlight. It stood hunched over, its branches curved forward as if it was holding itself in. The dense leaves hung down, almost like willow branches and scraped along the ground.
Reggie couldn’t tell what type of tree it was or what it was doing here. She edged closer, and with her fingers she pulled back the cloak of leaves. Reggie pulled her phone from her bra and turned on the screen light. She let the leaves swing closed behind her.
Reggie shined the phone light onto the trunk, and gasped. She stepped back, her pulse pounding. Caught between the impulse to run and investigate, she raised a timid hand, but could not bring herself to touch the surface of the tree.
Every inch of wood was intricately carved with human faces. The entire trunk and every branch was a crowd.
Some were smiling gleefully, others shrieking in horror. Others seemed to be frozen mid sentence, while some closed their eyes in defeat. There was every expression Reggie had ever seen. None were larger than the palm of her hand and some were as small as fingernails. There was not a space between them and every single face was so detailed that Reggie half expected them to begin talking to her.
There were hundreds of wooden eyes staring at her. She felt a fluttering in her chest, this was it.
“What magic do you have for me?” Reggie whispered, her voice a shock in the velvet darkness.
She waved her light over every grain of the tree in front of her. She touched every face with her fingertips and then her palms. She couldn’t make sense of it. Had someone carved these faces? Had the tree grown them? What mystery lay beneath this bark? What did it mean and why was she here, witnessing it?
Reggie crouched below a low branch and glided her phone’s light over the other side of the trunk. She paused, her mind snagged, and went back to a spot she’d just swept past.
It was blank.
There was a space, round and smooth. A missing face.
Reggie leaned in closer, her nose just inches from the blank space. She held the light as close, now illuminating her own face as well as the spot on the trunk. Her eyebrows raised and her mouth parted.
Reggie’s phone flashed and fell to the ground, leaving the tree and Reggie in darkness.
She tried to reach for her fallen phone. She tried again. And again.
It was so dark and her eyes had not yet adjusted. But that wasn’t the problem, her arms didn’t seem to be working. Reggie took a deep breath, or what she thought was one. She couldn’t feel her chest expanding and contracting, but was somehow still breathing. Her face was stiff and unmoving. She could feel a frenzy rising in her but pushed it down with reason and logic. She’s just woken from a dream and couldn’t yet move, she’d drunk more than she’d thought, her body was numb from the cold… Reggie used all of her strength to move her body, to move a single muscle, to make a single sound, but nothing worked.
Slowly, her eyes began to adjust to the shadowed night beneath the cloak of the tree. She could see the branches hanging down around her, even though she hadn’t been facing that way at all.
Reggie couldn’t work out what was happening and she couldn’t keep her panic at bay any longer. She tried to scream, but there was only silence She was petrified, she could not move a millimeter, nor even whisper a sound. She could not move because she no longer had a body. Reggie could not call out because her face was as hard as wood.
The missing face was her own.
Reggie’s expression was frozen as it had been the moment the tree had claimed her. Frozen forever in fascination, beneath a cloak of branches in a hidden corner of the maze.