Breenan Series Box Set Page 6

  Ellie was in a shallow depression beside a steep slope, a hedgerow nearby flickering with movement in the unearthly light from Corann’s lantern. The light caught the edges of a crude stone doorway. Aidan stiffened beside her.

  “This is Glengarry barrow,” he breathed. Ellie stood still, arms down and palms up, as if in supplication. Her eyes were closed and her chin lifted, expressionless.

  “What does that mean? And what is Corann doing?” Gwen whispered back. Corann ignored Ellie, instead pacing back and forth in front of the doorway behind her, his face frowning in concentration. After a few paces, he stopped and stared at the sky, where a waxing moon rose above the horizon. Corann gave a satisfied smile, and turned again to the doorway. He placed the lantern on the ground and reached one hand to each of the doorway’s top corners. Immediately the impenetrable darkness within the doorway glowed with the same light as the lantern, which flickered weakly as if in response. Corann lifted his hands in triumph and turned to Ellie, who remained unmoving. The light grew brighter and brighter.

  Gwen found herself squinting, shielding her face with her hand against the light.

  “What’s going on?” she said to Aidan, her heart pounding. She didn’t understand how Corann had made the doorway glow, or why Ellie was motionless in the clearing. Gwen heaved herself up, eyes shut tight against the light, and brushed away Aidan’s restraining hand on her arm. She stumbled around their protective bush toward the other two, leaving Aidan behind. “Ellie! Ellie!” she yelled as she tripped over her hem and sprawled headlong on the grass. She squinted toward the barrow. Ellie and Corann’s silhouettes grew smaller as they walked into the light through the doorway. Gwen closed her eyes in pain at the brightness. Seconds later, the light disappeared and darkness reigned at the silent barrow.

  Chapter 6

  Gwen stared into the black emptiness of the stone doorway, disbelieving. How could Ellie just disappear into nothing? Her brain refused to comprehend.

  Cracking twigs popped behind her, and strong hands hauled her upright.

  “What the hell just happened?” Aidan’s voice was hoarse. In the light of the rising moon, he appeared as pale and wide-eyed as Gwen felt. He looked around the clearing, still gripping Gwen’s upper arm with clenched fingers. Gwen carefully pried them away and ran the last few steps toward the doorway.

  “Ellie! Ellie! Where are you?” Gwen cried out. There was nowhere Ellie could hide. The stone lintel opened to nothing but a blank wall of dirt. Gwen felt around desperately, scrabbling at the dirt and running her fingernails along the edge of the stone doorway. Her body was almost shaking with head-to-toe tingling.

  “There’s no way in. Trust me. I grew up here and I’ve been all over this barrow. It’s completely sealed.” Oddly, Aidan’s voice reassured her despite its message. It was a solid reminder of normalcy after Ellie’s disappearing act.

  “She can’t have just vanished.” Gwen stood back and surveyed the doorway, nails digging into her cheeks in agitation. “Unless she did…” Gwen thought of her own experiences of the bizarre. She knew there was more in the world than could be readily explained. Could Corann do strange things too? Her brain was both woolen and electrified all at once. “What did Corann do just before they disappeared?”

  Aidan replied, his voice confused and wary. “He paced a bit then touched the doorway.”

  “That’s right, at both corners.” Gwen walked back and forth in front of the doorway.

  “What are you doing?” Aidan stared at her, looking alarmed. He rubbed his arms distractedly as if he were cold. She continued pacing.

  “What if they did actually—disappear into thin air?” Gwen said carefully. “I’m trying to recreate what Corann did. Ellie’s missing under very unusual circumstances, and I like to keep an open mind.” She turned to face the door. “Here goes nothing,” she said, and reached up to put one hand on each corner of the stone lintel.

  For a long second, nothing happened. Aidan’s soft breathing was the only sound disrupting the quiet of the night. The image of Gwen’s mother floated to the surface of her mind, unbidden, frozen forever in graphite lines. Did Gwen’s strangeness come from her? How did Corann fit into this enigma?

  The dirt wall Gwen faced turned a fathomless black before beginning to glow with an increasing brilliance. Gwen stood paralyzed in front of the doorway, her arms outstretched. Aidan gasped.

  Within seconds the light was dazzling. Gwen closed her eyes and stepped back, breaking the connection. The light continued to brighten. She backed away, bumping into Aidan who had his eyes closed against the light. She clutched at him.

  “I have to go through,” she said. “I don’t know what the hell is happening, but that’s where Ellie’s gone. I’m her best friend, and if anything happened to her I’d never forgive myself.” She didn’t mention out loud that she was starting to feel responsible. Not only for not doing anything about the uneasiness she’d felt about Corann, but also from the growing sense that all this had something to do with her mother. How, she had no idea.

  “I know.” Aidan took a deep breath and let it out with a whoosh. “I’m coming too.”

  “What?” Gwen was taken aback. “Why?”

  “I can’t let you go in by yourself. And—I’ve always felt there was something strange about Glengarry. Now I want to find out what it is.”

  Gwen shook her head in disbelief but didn’t argue the point. She had no idea how long the doorway would stay open for, and Ellie was getting farther away with every minute.

  “Okay, let’s do this.” She shook her shoulders in an attempt to psych herself up. “Hold onto me. I don’t want to get separated.”

  “Yeah, and we don’t know what’s waiting for us on the other side.” Aidan put his hand on Gwen’s shoulder. “Sorry, not an appropriate comment right now.” He squeezed her shoulder and she looked at him. His eyes were determined. “Ready?”

  She nodded, and they walked into the light.

  ***

  Gwen shuffled forward blindly, her arms outstretched. Aidan gripped her shoulder tightly, his hand a solid anchor in a sea of the unknown. They continued deeper into the barrow until the light dimmed to almost nothing. Gwen opened her watering eyes. At first the only sense that came clearly was hearing, as Aidan breathed heavily behind her and her own heart pounded in her ears. She blinked a few times and her eyes focused.

  They were surrounded by a dense forest. The moon shed no light, hidden as it was behind layers of canopy. Gwen was strongly reminded of the forests at home, vastly more primeval and dense than the deciduous groves she’d seen in England so far. Massive conifers soared high above their vision, untouched for centuries. Heavy moss clung to tree trunks and dripped off low-hanging branches. The forest was dark and close, sounds dampened by an excessive undergrowth of fallen trees and shadowy bushes. A small pool glinted dully from an errant moonbeam between two fungus-covered stumps.

  Gwen swallowed a shout to Ellie. She felt distinctly unwelcome here. It was silly, she knew, but she had the impression that the forest itself watched them. It was not a comfortable feeling.

  “Where are we?” Gwen whispered.

  Aidan’s hand slipped off her shoulder as he turned to look behind them. Gwen also turned and frowned in disbelief. Before them was a doorway, crudely constructed of three rough-hewn stone slabs. It was a doorway to nowhere, with nothing behind it. Aidan ran his hands along the side of the frame.

  “How the hell are we supposed to get back?” He stuck his hand through the entryway. When nothing happened, he walked through. His pale face looked at Gwen in shock and despair.

  “Let me try my hands on the door,” Gwen said, gesturing Aidan back through the doorway. When he obliged, she put a hand on each corner of the doorframe, expecting a light to start glowing. The entry stayed stubbornly dark.

  Aidan stepped forward.

  “Let me try.”

  Gwen moved, and he paced three times, then stepped into the same position. Nothing happe
ned. He screwed up his face in concentration, looking as if he wanted to will the doorway into submission, but to no avail. The darkness of the forest pressed in on all sides.

  The way back was sealed.

  “I don’t understand.” Aidan gripped his hair in both hands and exhaled swiftly. “How did it work before? How did you and Corann do it?”

  “I don’t know,” Gwen said miserably. She stiffened. “Ellie!” Gwen swung around, appalled at herself for momentarily forgetting the reason they were there. “Where did they go?” She scanned the forest, but it was silent, keeping its secrets.

  Aidan paced around the doorway, distracted for the moment. He bent over a low bush briefly, spiky branches and spiny leaves black in the darkness. He straightened, pointing at a broken patch where the branches had been forced aside.

  “They went this way, if I had to guess,” he said.

  Gwen started forward, and then turned to the doorway almost involuntarily. She and Aidan stared at it then glanced at each other with identical expressions of fear.

  “I could mark it with some trick lights,” Aidan said finally. “It might become a doorway again, so we shouldn’t lose it. Although I reckon we’ll need to find Corann first to figure out how it works.”

  Gwen nodded her agreement, and watched as he pulled something out of his pocket and reached up to the top of the horizontal stone. When he removed his hand, blue fire flickered brightly on the lintel.

  “How long will it last?” she asked, desperate to find Ellie but unwilling to leave their only tie to reality, no matter how tenuous and untrustworthy.

  “Oh, a good long while,” Aidan said, avoiding her gaze. “Come on, let’s find Ellie and that conjuror she calls a boyfriend. They can’t have gone far. Just be sure we can see the flame from wherever we are.”

  They reluctantly turned and trudged into the undergrowth in the direction of the broken branches. They hadn’t gone five steps before Gwen stopped, cursing under her breath.

  “Stop a sec, I have to tie up this damn dress before I trip.” She wrestled it up and hooked the sides securely into the waist sash Ellie had fortuitously deemed essential to the costume. “Okay, I’m ready.”

  They continued through the forest, clambering over slippery logs and stepping into stagnant pools of water, soaking their shoes. After the third time she tripped over an errant vine snaking across her path, Gwen figured the forest didn’t want her there. After her sixth fall, she knew it. The forest breathed malevolence, like an oozing dank life-form from some fetid bog. Massive tree trunks leaned toward them, encased in rough bark encrusted with diseased-looking fungus. Long strands of moss caught in her hair and brushed against her cheek in an unwelcome sensation, like the stroking of dead fingers. Her breath caught in her throat when Aidan stopped short in front of her, his hand out to stop her.

  He whispered urgently, “There are eyes. In the bushes. Everywhere.”

  Horrified, Gwen looked around. Little glints of wetness appeared two at a time, multiplied many times over. She gripped Aidan’s arm instinctively.

  “Okay, let’s just back up slowly, back to the doorway,” Aidan said quietly. They took one step backward, and stopped abruptly when a howl pierced the thick air like a knife slicing open a curtain. Gwen stopped breathing. All the little eyes blinked and vanished.

  “That was a wolf! I thought there weren’t any wild animals in England,” she hissed at Aidan.

  “We’re not in England anymore, can’t you see?” Aidan’s eyes were wide, and he darted his head back and forth as if looking for an escape route. The wolf howled again, directly behind them and closer now.

  “What do we do now?” Gwen’s voice came out in a squeak. She clawed at the part of her mind responsible for rational thought, desperate to keep herself under control in the midst of her panic.

  A beat passed.

  “Run,” Aidan said. He grabbed her hand and they broke into a frenzied scramble forward, over tree trunks and under branches. Gwen fell more times than she could count. As the howling grew louder, Gwen felt like a scurrying mouse with a cat on its tail. She tripped again and Aidan hauled her up, wrenching her shoulder in his haste. She cried out in pain, and then clapped a hand over her mouth. Aidan pulled her forward again urgently, putting his arm around her waist instead. There was a brief silence, broken only by their gasps of fear and effort and the unavoidable noise of their passage through the undergrowth. The howl returned, almost at their backs. Gwen splashed through a muddy pool, sure that it would be the last she would trek through.

  A great snarling erupted behind her. The howling stopped and the snarling was interspersed with yelps and barks. Aidan stopped and turned. His jaw dropped. Gwen whirled around.

  Not sixty feet behind them, two enormous animals fought in the gloom. White fangs gleamed and eyes and snouts glinted. Wet streaks appeared on the wolf’s flanks as the other animal tore it apart with sharp claws. The wolf’s attacks slowed, and it finally succumbed when the other animal sunk its teeth deep into the wolf’s neck. The wolf fell to the ground with a final thud as the other animal extracted itself from the killing wound. It put a paw on the wolf’s flank, and slowly raised its massive head to look directly at Gwen and Aidan. Surrounded by a thick mane of curling fur, an oddly misshapen lion’s face glared at them. Then, emanating supreme disinterest, the lion bent its head and ripped open the wolf’s stomach. It tore out a long string of glistening intestines and started chewing.

  Gwen grabbed Aidan’s hand.

  “Come on,” she breathed urgently into his ear. “While it’s busy.” She prodded Aidan out of his position of frozen disbelief and they stumbled away as quietly as they could. Gwen kept her ears tuned to the wet chomping noises of the lion’s feast.

  They pushed forward until the lion’s sounds had long since faded. Gwen thought in despair of the doorway and the little blue flame, flickering against the darkness. There was no way they’d ever find it now. Were they stuck in this terrifying world-within-the-barrow forever? And how would they ever find Ellie, if she were even still alive?

  Chapter 7

  Aidan stopped ahead of her. They hadn’t spoken since the lion, but he broke the silence.

  “We should stop and rest.” He pointed to a huge tree with a gaping hole in its trunk. “Let’s check out that hollow for shelter.” Gwen nodded tiredly and he pulled another flame out of his pocket.

  They peered into the tree’s chasm. It was empty, and looked roomy and dry. The tree was somehow still alive, growing around the crevasse in its middle. They crawled in and squeezed awkwardly together. They sat in silence, listening for noises outside. Finally Gwen spoke.

  “Any wild ideas about where we are?” She stared out of the hole, searching for any sign of movement. The lack of noise did not reassure her. “I’m drawing a blank.”

  A minute of quiet ended when Aidan took a big breath.

  “I have a theory. It’s mad, but this whole night’s been mad.” He paused. Gwen turned to look at him, but the darkness within the tree was profound. He continued. “There are legends about the barrows, Glengarry in particular. The stories go that the barrows are portals to another world.”

  “To the people of the barrows,” Gwen whispered, her heart contracting. She felt rather than saw Aidan’s head turn to look at her.

  “You’ve heard the stories, then.”

  She gave a humorless chuckle.

  “No, just looking up barrows on the internet.” She didn’t mention her father’s story. She was sure it had no connection. There was no reason to tell Aidan. None at all. Her stomach squirmed guiltily. Could she have prevented all this madness somehow? Were the signs all there, and she didn’t piece them together fast enough?

  She hugged her knees more tightly to her chest.

  “Do you really think we’ve stumbled into some kind of magical otherworld? That we were whisked away to a parallel land? That magic is real?” She stopped abruptly, remembering her own strangeness. Was it any less crazy than
everything that had happened to them tonight?

  Aidan was quiet for a long while. Gwen kept vigil. Eventually he said, “I can watch for now if you want to sleep. We can’t move anywhere until morning.” He paused, and then said quietly, “If there is a morning in this world.”

  Gwen closed her eyes and tried to ignore Aidan’s last comment. Her nerves were still jangling, but the stress and exertion of the night had drained her.

  “Are you sure? Anyway, I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep sitting in this tree.”

  Aidan extracted his arm from between them.

  “Lean against me, if you like,” he said, arm raised. She tentatively put her head on his shoulder. He was warm and solid, and she found herself relaxing into him. He carefully laid his arm across her shoulders.

  Gwen said sleepily, “This was all just a ruse to get your arm around me, wasn’t it?”

  Aidan laughed softly. He shifted slightly and they settled together. Gwen gave a deep sigh.

  “I hope Ellie’s okay,” she murmured into Aidan’s chest.

  He squeezed her gently.

  “I have a feeling she has one of the locals for a guide,” he said.

  Gwen shivered.

  ***

  Gwen awoke clutching Aidan’s chest as they lay in a tangled heap in the tree hollow. She sat up, carefully extracting herself from the sleeping Aidan. He looked exhausted, his lashes pale against the shadows under his eyes. Gwen let him be and looked around their temporary home in the dim light filtering through the tree’s entrance.

  The tree’s walls were rough and crumbling, releasing a dry dust when she touched the sides. Above them stretched a whole city of spider webs, and she was intensely thankful that they had not encountered them the previous night. She got up gingerly and crawled outside, careful not to disturb Aidan. It was morning, and the forest was dim and cool with a thick fog enveloping the trees. Gwen could see clearly no farther than twenty paces before the trees turned to indistinct silhouettes and were swallowed by the mists. Gwen shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. The forest was no more welcoming by day than by night. There was no sign of strange animals or glinting eyes, it was true, but there was also no birdsong, and a dull thickness prevented sounds from traveling any real distance. The greens and browns of the vegetation were washed with a grey murkiness that the dim daylight did nothing to dispel. Hanging mosses dripped with moisture collected from the fog, the wetness splashing with damp squelches into muddy pools. It was an ugly, forbidding place, Gwen decided, and she wondered miserably where Ellie was in all of it.