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.
I worm my way inside, the darkness consuming me. It's absolute, it's like I've gone blind. I have to pull myself deeper, the agony in my finger unbearable as I claw at the dirt, at the wet wood, moss gathering beneath my nails.
There's no end, it goes on, and on, and when I try to angle my head around I can't see the door behind me either.
Fuck.
The panic detonates inside my chest, my stomach. I'm retreating, pushing backward, but I think my T-shirt is caught on something because it's bunching around my neck, as tight as a noose.
Fuck.
Only it's not my T-shirt because whatever is there is moving, coiling around my throat, cold fingers working their way over my chin and pushing into my mouth, tasting of dirt, of age, of death. I scream through them, scream because I can feel her beneath me, her birdlike body moving under mine, her face right there, dry lips nuzzling my forehead.
Ohgodohgodohgodohgod.
"Is it safe to come out?" she asks, a voice of rustling leaves.
Ohgodohgodohgodohgod.
"Inside the skylark you will meet the first daughter," he said. "And she will ask you a question, but you must not reply."
Youmustnotreplyyoumustnotrreplyyouustnotreply.
"Is it safe?"
I can't move my hand over my mouth, there's no space. But I bite my lips between my teeth, bite hard, bite until I can taste blood. Her face nudges against my face like a cat. I can feel the ridge of her nose. I can feel the wet bulge of her eyeballs, her lashes tickling me as she blinks. Her hands still work their way around my mouth, my ears, my eyes.
She suddenly lurches, her body shaking so hard it throws me up against the roof of the coffin. There's still movement there but when my head drops down it's worms I can feel, a knotted mess of them. I dig down, pushing back, feeling them mush between my fingers but I don't care, I just drive myself back, cracking my elbows and my knees and my skull against the wood until the day is right there, until it catches me.
I make it to my knees but no further. I cup my head in the filth of my hands and the sobs just pour out of me, torrential. I can't breathe past them. I can't do anything except ride through them, wait until there's nothing left inside. I stay that way even when I've calmed, spitting the taste of the dead thing from my mouth.
Then I turn my head and look at the second statue. I understand its expression now, because I'm wearing it too. Lines of grief have been hacked into my skin and my eyes, my face is swimming with horror.
But I go in. Of course I do. I grunt and swear and scream my way into the darkness of the hare, crawling for five full minutes before the dead thing bubbles up from the soil and wraps me in its arms. I'm almost not quick enough, I almost can't get my arms up in time, but I ram my fingers into my ears just as it begins to talk to me.
"No!" I say, as loud as I can. "Nonononono." But I can still hear her, I can still hear the soft whisper of her voice as she speaks to me. "Nonononononono." I can hear her cries, I can hear her desperate, pleading calls for help. "Nonononononono." I'm screaming the words now, screaming them into her face with everything I have until she too erupts into a soup of worms and maggots.
I almost don't have what it takes to make it out. I'm too weak, and the tunnel is too long. I don't know how much later it is that I feel the softness of the forest floor beneath my boots, the warmth of the sun on my ankles. Those last few feet are the hardest but I do it, birthed like a mewling, breech-born baby, rolling onto my side with the statues behind me. The escalator's still there.
The third statue's still there, too. I can feel it watching me. It is watching me, because when I flop onto my back its long wooden fingers have opened and its black eyes blink at me from underneath.
"I'm coming for you," I think I say.
I know that if I lie here for a minute more I'll never get up again, the weeds will grow over me and I'll live here forever, in the shadow of the statues, three dead things for company. So I crawl to the little door in the third statue and push my way into the darkness there. It's the same story, I'm almost used to it now. This one feels worse, though, it feels smaller, the ceiling so low that I can't even take in a full lungful of stale air. I imagine the statue folding itself over me, compacting me inside it, digesting me, and I'm groaning with the horror of it as I push deeper, and deeper, and deeper.
Until the ground grows soft, crumbling beneath my touch. I dig at it, feeling it drop away from me, and there's light there, like I've burrowed my way into an underground room. The earth's falling from beneath me now and I panic, wedging myself between the walls of the tunnel, frightened of falling.
There's nothing beneath me now but light, and I'm not falling, I'm not falling because there's something holding me in place here, face-down and staring at the sky.
The sky.
I can see the clouds moving across it and I can hear people too, speaking a language I don't understand. I'm about to call out to them when I remember, screwing my eyes shut. I feel a cold shape lean over me, clamber in beside me, its body cold.
"See me, and all this can end," says a woman's voice. "See me, and I will spare you."
I shake my head, and as soon as I do a handful of soil lands back inside the tunnel, hitting me in the face as hard as a slap. I spit it out, coughing hard, feeling another one land on my chest, another on my neck. They're landing fast and hard and I grab at it, trying to throw it back out, but gravity has reversed, it keeps bouncing back up, choking me, blinding me, and all I can hear is laughter as the tunnel fills with soil and stones. It's over my head now, I can't breathe, I can't breathe, I can't—
The world twists, spinning like a tumble dryer, the soil peeling away, the tunnel peeling away, the whole world peeling away, and I'm lying on my back on hard, cold, asphalt, the sky still overhead. I sit up, bile burning from my stomach, hanging from my lip.
I'm not in the forest any more, I'm back in the city, back in my city. I know it's my city because I can see the entrance to the Mall just up the street, I can see the window of the Starbucks where Flint and I meet. It's my city, but it's empty, there's not a single person in sight.
Except that's not true, because somebody is watching me. I can feel it on the nape of my neck as if I've carried a dozen spiders with me from the forest. I don't want to turn around, but I do. I don't want to turn around because I know what I'll see there, but I do, and I'm right.
"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."
She will show you a building, I think. She will show you her home.
And it's right there, the tower from my dreams, the place where the witch lives.