Twisted Heart (28 page)

I turned to Holly to make another appeal. It was only seconds since I last looked, but now a figure wrapped in a red blanket stood beside me. One side of her skull-like face was painted black, the other was white. Her dark, hollowed-out eyes glittered.

‘Holly?’ I gasped.

Beside the red-cloaked, skeletal woman there was a tall figure with a winged mask covering his face. He was naked except for a short wrap around his hips and turquoise beads around his neck.

These ghosts had appeared out of nowhere and Holly and Channing had vanished.

‘They were there and then they weren’t!’ I told Orlando as soon as Amos’s ritual was over and I could make my way across to my group. It felt as if every second was vital.

‘Come inside, tell us what happened,’ Jude said, leading the way back into the social centre with the other guests.

My heart raced. ‘Honest to God, you have to believe me. I was talking with Holly and she suddenly vanished!’

‘You don’t know where she went?’ Grace asked. We’d stopped just inside the entrance, under the row of stuffed animal heads on the wall.

‘Are you listening to me? She vanished! Channing was with her. When she was here, it wasn’t really her any more – she couldn’t even breathe without asking permission!’

Slam! My brain disconnected.

Next to a roaring fire, the bear-head opens its mouth and roars. I see the ribbed, vault-like roof of its mouth, the white glisten of its teeth. Bears are amongst us, lumbering on their hind legs, lurching, swiping their claws.

‘I’m here with you,’ Orlando reminded me quietly.

He said exactly the words I needed to hear. He was cool and calm. I thanked my lucky stars. Then slam and split again.

Outside in the trampled snow there are animal tracks and blood. The wolf man with matted hair and slavering jaws is sated. He drops on to all fours and slinks away.

‘OK, so we break up the group and look for her,’ Jude decided. ‘Grace and I will stay here and check the restrooms, kitchen, pool room – everywhere. Aaron, you check the lake shore where the guys were dancing. Orlando, Tania, you take the trail up to the cabins.’

‘So let’s go.’ Aaron was already halfway out of the crowded room, heading back to the lake. ‘We meet back here in fifteen minutes.’

‘And what do we do when we find her again?’ Orlando checked with Jude. ‘Do we force her – knock her out, drag her to the parking lot and drive away with her?’

‘Dude, be serious,’ Jude sighed. ‘As a first move, we talk to her and persuade her to listen to what Aaron has to say.’

‘Will that work?’ Orlando asked me.

‘Maybe. I agree with Jude – right now it’s still our best option.’ Anxious to get away from the taxidermy on the floor, I led Orlando out into the snow.

‘Check back in fifteen minutes,’ Grace reminded us as we headed towards the forest trail.

Orlando and I ran up the slope towards the cabins where I’d last seen Jarrold, leaving behind the sounds of partying – the music, the laughter. The rough trail was dimly lit by more braziers, which shed pools of light on gnarled tree roots and loose rocks. More than once we stumbled and fell.

‘Take it easy.’ Orlando reached for me as I tripped. A thorn bush broke my fall but I got back on my feet and ran on without bothering to pick painful thorns out of my palm. ‘Where are we headed?’ he asked.

‘Channing shares a cabin with Jarrold,’ I explained. ‘They live at the end of this trail. Maybe Channing brought Holly here.’

We ran on without speaking but thinking plenty – me frantic to find my friend before she got swallowed up for good by Amos’s army of dark angels, Orlando probably reacting badly to the ‘J’ word. In any case, he slowed down and was a couple of paces behind me when I saw two figures standing on the trail ahead. Instinctively I ducked off the track and hid behind a tree.

‘What happened?’ Orlando joined me in my hiding place.

‘Sssh!’ Cautiously I took another look. ‘It’s Ziegler.’

‘And?’

‘Jarrold!’ My heart lurched and my mouth went dry. The two guys were about fifty metres away and talking urgently. Jarrold was speaking, gesturing back towards the lake. Ziegler listened, interrupted with quick questions and finally put up a hand to stop Jarrold’s flow of words. Then, as Jarrold disappeared on to his cabin porch, Ziegler turned and walked towards us.

Swift and easy he strode bare-chested down the track as Orlando and I cowered behind the tree. We were edging deeper into the shadows, trying not to make a sound, as wrong-footed and stupid as kids caught stealing candy.

‘Tania.’ Ziegler stopped a couple of paces from our tree. Without question he’d spotted us before we dived sideways into the bushes. ‘We’d prefer party guests stayed close to the social centre. There’s no access to the cabins – I’m sure you appreciate our reasons.’

With our tails between our legs, Orlando and I followed Ziegler down the track. Without mentioning his conversation with Jarrold, Ziegler made small talk with Orlando, talking him through some of the lesser-known guiding principles at New Dawn, such as no guests allowed inside the cabins after dark. As soon as we reached the social centre, he delivered us like naughty children to Aurelie.

‘I caught them on the cabin trail,’ he told her with a raised eyebrow before he strode off again.

‘Oh dear!’ Aurelie was amused. Her laugh was musical and beautiful, like everything else about her. ‘Ignore Richard. His interpretation of the rules can be a little …’ Shrugging and leaving her sentence unfinished, she took us inside, under the moose head with its great antlers and glassy stare.

How do they do that? I wondered. How do they predict your every move and take away your power to act? Before either of us had time to think it through, Aurelie had drawn Orlando on to the dance floor again.

I was by myself with no time to lose, had maybe five minutes before the pre-arranged meeting with the others. Whereas before my heartbeat had been spiky and rapid, I felt that now it had flat lined into heavy dread.

Jarrold betrayed me. This was the phrase that played in my head and made me nauseous. He tricked me with the poor-me, get-me-out-of-here-and-bring-the-walls-tumbling-down tactic, when all along he’d only wanted to discover the reason I was here.

To rescue Holly, I’d told him. And now he’d relayed this information straight back to Ziegler, who would tell Amos, and our plan would collapse. Yeah – Jarrold betrayed me.

‘Tania!’ Aaron dragged me out of my freefall. He appeared in the doorway in his white shirt and vest, breathless and excited, gesturing for me to follow him. ‘Holly – I’ve found her!’

‘Where?’

‘By the lake.’

‘Alone?’ I asked as we ran towards the shore.

‘No. Still with Channing. I don’t know what they were doing – maybe collecting driftwood for the fires. Come on, Tania – that’s why I came looking for you. You have to make some kind of scene, divert the guy’s attention while I talk to Holly.’

‘We need more people,’ I protested. ‘Let’s go back – get the others.’

‘No time. You have to do this for me.’

‘OK. Go ahead.’ The dread was still dragging me down. I had no clue how I would get Channing away from Holly, or what Aaron could say to change Holly’s zombified mind.

Aaron stopped in the shadows, a few metres short of the pebble beach. He gave me a few seconds to make out the two figures by the edge of the lake – one in a white robe tied at one shoulder and the other with a high, fan-shaped headdress. They stood together, hand in hand in the moonlight with their backs turned, gazing out over the calm water.

‘Go!’ Aaron urged.

No way! I told myself even as I took my first step on to the pebbles. This is not going to work.

‘The moon is waning,’ I heard Channing tell Holly. ‘And see the shooting star directly overhead? And another?’

‘It’s like they fall into the lake and fizzle and die,’ she sighed, resting her head on his shoulder in cosmic harmony.

Then Channing heard the crunch of my footsteps, alerted Holly and together they turned and waited.

‘Hey, Channing. Ziegler sent me to find you,’ I faltered over my words. Who was I kidding? Was this really the best I could do?

Channing didn’t reply. He just went on waiting.

‘He needs you.’

Holly glanced up at his hooded face without releasing his hand.

‘It’s Jarrold,’ I stumbled on. ‘He went missing again. Ziegler needs you to find him.’

Channing nodded and eased his hand out of Holly’s. He moved slowly towards me, his face hidden by the hooded mask. ‘Did they search all the cabins?’

‘Ziegler did. He doesn’t want to raise a general alarm because it would wreck the party. He said could you check the boats moored in the inlet?’

‘The boats?’ Channing echoed, staring into my eyes, reading my twitchy body language. He noticed Holly try to follow him up the beach. ‘Hold it right there,’ he told her without turning. ‘Tania will stay here with you. I’ll be back in ten minutes.’

The plan worked! It might have been a feeble strategy, but Channing was falling for it and leaving, cutting over the top of the small headland into the next bay, using moonlight to find his way.

The second he was out of sight, Aaron emerged from the shadows. Holly saw him and at first she didn’t react. She looked uncertain, almost as if she didn’t recognise the guy who until earlier that week, had been the love of her life and actually she was trying to recall where she’d seen him before.

Reacting to her confusion, Aaron’s instinct was to try to take hold of her and embrace her, like a parent trying to protect a child. ‘Jeez, what did they do to you?’ he murmured, cradling her head against his chest.

She gave a small cry and pushed him away. ‘No!’

‘Holly, it’s me and Tania! It’s OK, we know what’s happening here – the mind tricks they play. But it’s not too late. We’ll get you out.’

‘What in the world are you talking about?’ She frowned and turned down the corners of her mouth. ‘This is New Dawn. There are no mind tricks. No one’s making me stay.’

‘No, Holly – listen!’ Aaron knew he had only minutes to get through to her. ‘You know how I feel about you – how much I love you. I don’t always say it out loud, but you know, we both know that’s the way it is – me and you, period.’

‘Once upon a time, maybe,’ she said quietly. She was refusing to give him eye contact, sighing, turning away. ‘Not any more.’

The night sky is full of dark angels. Their tormented souls are the distant stars that twinkle dimly then fall and fade. They are the shooting stars, glorious for a short time, but then spectacularly exploding, falling, falling. I reach out to catch one. My hand is empty.

Aaron wouldn’t give in easily. He loved her, poor guy.

‘You and me!’ he repeated. ‘Not you and Channing or you and anyone else. I’ll get you out of this place and you’ll soon see what’s been going on. You’ll be yourself again.’

‘Myself?’ Now she was angry, turning on him and lashing out with her tongue. ‘You say you love me, Aaron, but that’s so pathetic. You don’t even know the meaning of the word. All your emotions are shallow. I know, because mine were too before I met Channing. He taught me that yours is an everyday, conventional kind of love – let’s go to college then get married, have babies, be happy ever after. But I’m not an everyday girl and that’s not what I want any more. I want something deeper, richer, finer than you can ever give me!’

Wow, she scythed Aaron down, flattened him, turned and left him for dead. She began to follow Channing over the headland.

I left him on the beach and ran after her. ‘Stop. You’re not going anywhere!’

‘Tania, let go of me. You’re like the others. You had your chance and you blew it.’

‘What chance? What are you saying?’

‘With Jarrold.’ She was still in a rage. The wind had blown her hair loose and it was flying across her face. ‘He saw something special in you, the same way Channing chose me. You could have been standing beside me now – me and Channing, you and Jarrold – not fighting me and making stupid attempts to so-called rescue me!’

We stood there on the dark headland, surrounded by ice and snow. The lake stretched out towards the horizontal line of the distant dam. Stars twinkled and were spent.

Footsteps came running from both sides.

‘Holly, if you stay here you’re going to die!’

‘No. I’m going to live a life so special you wouldn’t believe. It’s going to be out of this world!’

Channing came scrambling over rocks, up the slope from the inlet where the boats were moored. Aaron had recovered from Holly’s onslaught and was running up the hill after us.

‘These are dark angels!’ I yelled at Holly. ‘Ziegler, Channing, Amos! They’re dragging you on to the dark side. Can’t you see what this is all about?’

The wind blasted us. It howled through the trees, cold as death.

Aaron reached us first, but not in time to take a hold of Holly and drag her back to safety. Channing bounded the last few metres up the rocks, almost as if he was flying, or as if the wind had lifted him off his feet and propelled him on to the ridge. He landed between us and Holly, threw his arms wide. A strong gust tore the hood from his face and we stared into his amber eyes.

‘Back off, don’t touch her!’ Aaron launched himself at Channing, shoulder-charged him and aimed to knock him off the ridge. He hit solid muscle; Channing didn’t move. So Aaron locked arms with his enemy, wrestled him and tried to unbalance him. Channing resisted easily. He flung Aaron to one side, fixed me with wolf-like eyes.

His eyes blazed, the pupils were narrow. Shadows fell across his lean face.

Aaron came back at him from behind. He charged a second time. Channing felt his full weight but was able to flip him aside with one arm. And this is Aaron we’re talking about – a mountain climber who tackled fourteeners, who was tall and strong as anyone in our high-school year, totally fired up, ready to kill to save the girl he loved.

Aaron and Channing were locked together on the dark ridge, wrestling, punching, dragging each other to the ground, rolling against a boulder. We heard the thud of fist against flesh, the stamp and scuffle of boots, the exhalation of breath. Channing was up on his feet, unharmed. Aaron lay groaning on the ground. I ran to try and help him, felt myself cast aside, slammed against a boulder close to where Aaron lay.