Horror’s severed head — emancipated from her shoulders and perched upon a pile of red plastic roof fragments, with trailing tendrils of blonde hair spilling from her loosened bun, and twin tracks of blood drying upon her chin like a pair of long red fangs — finished the delivery of her not-so-veiled threat, closed her blood-slick mouth with a soft wet click, and awaited our response.
We five — myself, Raine, Evelyn, Twil, and the Praem Plushie tucked up inside Evelyn’s dressing gown — braced for absolute, unthinkable, screaming madness.
Eyes darted left and right, checking our collective backs and the perimeter of the woodland clearing. Raine kicked Horror’s corpse again, watching carefully for any sign of movement, knuckles tight on her machete. Twil sniffed the air in rapid little motions, wolf ears perked high and alert, bushy tail gone stiff. I wished dearly for all my tentacles, or even just one, tipped with bio-steel and dripping paralytic toxin; I wished my left shin was not throbbing like a headache in my calf muscle, drawing all my energy downward as if sucking my blood into the earth; I wished Evelyn was not forced to shrink down into her wheelchair, helpless and afraid, relying so closely on the rest of us to protect her. Seeing her afraid was worse than my own fear.
Seconds ticked by. Twil swallowed loudly. Raine turned on the spot. Horror’s head pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows.
Warm sunshine beat downward through the woodland canopy, falling from the sunless sky of the Eye’s gnarled and wrinkled underside; a soft breeze trickled through the leaves, tickling the hairs on the back of my neck, helping to dry my damp clothes. Beyond our little clearing and the shattered ruins of the pavilion, the woods themselves were cloaked in a blanket of total silence, unbroken by birdsong or furtive scurrying or the sound of insects.
Horror’s apparent threat did not result in the appearance and arrival of half a dozen armed nurses or Knightly security guards, nor in the sudden eruption of the woods into a teeming menagerie of implausible monsters. Her corpse did not rise to its undead feet; her head did not grow legs and rush toward, nor did her eyes glow like warning lights and attack us with superhero heat vision from her rather reduced position down on the ground.
In short, nothing happened.
“I think we’re in the clear,” I hissed. “I think Horror was being rhetorical.”
Raine let out a long sigh, spun her machete in one hand, and gestured at Horror’s head again. “Heather, sweet thing, you give me the go ahead and I’ll crack open her skull and cut out her brains. There’s no way she can survive that. No way.”
Evelyn snorted loudly, sitting up straighter in her wheelchair, rousing herself from the swamp of sudden fear. “That kind of logic will not serve us well here. Give it up, Raine.”
“Yes,” I said, trying to sound diplomatic. “Raine, please wait. She’s not exactly dangerous right now. Unless she starts screaming for help or something, I suppose.”
Twil hissed, “Don’t give her ideas!”
“S-sorry,” I stammered. “I just— this is a little— well, you can see for yourself.” I gestured at Horror’s severed head. “I’m having a little bit of trouble thinking around this.”
Horror sighed, then tutted softly; how she achieved the necessary motions for either of those things, I had no idea.
“You girls may believe whatever you prefer,” she said, her voice a wet gurgle of clotted blood. “But ignoring reality will not help anybody out of this mess you’ve created. I assure you, even like this I am more than capable of standing up for myself.”
“ … was that intentional?” I asked.
Horror frowned delicately. “Excuse me?”
“‘Standing up for yourself’,” I echoed. “You can’t be serious. That has to be on purpose.”
“Bloody hell,” Evelyn grunted. “Please, Heather. Don’t encourage this.”
Twil butted in, leaning past Evee. “You’re a head! What are you gonna do to us, huh? Roll over here and bite me in the ankles?”
“Don’t you give it ideas either, Twil,” Evelyn said. “You’ve seen The Thing, I know you have. I thought you’d have a more expansive imagination regarding the potential of a disembodied head.”
Twil opened her mouth to retort, then paused and went pale. Her big bushy tail had been wagging with excited agitation, but suddenly it stopped dead. Her wolf ears went flat as well. She stared at Horror’s head with renewed caution, baring her teeth and narrowing her eyes. “Shiiiiiit,” she hissed. “You don’t think it could do that, right? Like, not for real, right? Shit, don’t give it ideas, Evee!”
Evelyn rolled her eyes. “That is exactly what I just said to you. Keep up.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I have no idea what you’re talking about. ‘The Thing’?”
Twil grimaced at me. “It’s an old horror movie. With this like—”
“Don’t,” Evelyn snapped. “Heather is more intimately connected to the logic of the dream than we are, as far as our best guesses. The less she knows about that, the better. Don’t put ideas in her head either.”
Twil shrugged. “Sorry, Big H. We can have a movie night when we’re out of this shit.”
I frowned down at Horror’s head, trying not to imagine the possibilities, but it was too late; Twil and Evelyn being needlessly cryptic had already filled my mind’s eye with vile potential. Perhaps the head would grow massive and roll after us like a big fleshy boulder. Or maybe it would whip out a gigantic tongue, barbed with venomous spikes. Or perhaps it would sprout spider-like legs from the ragged hole of the neck, and skitter through the trees in pursuit as we fled.
None of those things happened either; Horror just stared at us with an unimpressed frown.
Raine said: “I still want to finish it off for real. We could burn the brains. Turn her to ash.”
“Yeah!” Twil said. “I’m with crazy-mode Raine on this one. Let’s fucking kill it again! Come on! Finish it off like a vampire or some shit!”
“Can everybody just stop for a moment?” I said, raising both my hands. My left shin hurt so badly that I was having trouble thinking. “This is a golden opportunity, don’t you see? We have Horror … ‘incapacitated’, to put it lightly. We can ask her whatever we want. We could find out exactly where Maisie is being held. Or where the other six of me have gotten to. Please, don’t finish her off, not yet.”
“Huh,” Evelyn grunted. “I don’t think that’s very likely. She’s not going to tell us anything.”
“Quite!” Horror announced, her throat emitting a slick wet gurgle up through her mouth. “If you think I’m going to assist you girls in your petty act of rebellion, then you can think again. I shan’t be providing you with any information on the workings of the hospital, nor the staff schedules, or internal layouts of non-patient areas, or—”
“What are you?” I said.
Horror stopped, blinked several times, then squinted in concerned confusion. “Excuse me?”
Her voice was almost genuine, as if worried that a kind and gentle patient had finally gone over the edge into true delusion and insanity. Even her squinty frown hinted at true compassion. The hook was always baited, even when she was just a head.
“It’s a very simple question,” I said slowly. “And I would like you to answer it to the best of your abilities. What are you?”
Horror bit her lower lip. “Oh. Oh, Heather. Oh, you poor thing you—”
“What are you?” I repeated again, louder and harder than I had intended, my temper fraying quicker than I expected. Pain was making me rash. “I’m not even asking a metaphysical question, not yet. We’ve separated your head from your body, yet you’re still alive and still talking. Twil made a very good point earlier — there’s no air moving across your vocal chords in order to make sound. You’re clearly not a human being, or if you are then you’re very different to most human beings, who generally can’t survive decapitation. So, Horror, if that even is your real name, please answer my question. What are you?”
Evelyn sighed. “Heather, none of this is real. She doesn’t have to obey physical constraints.”
I held up a gentle hand toward Evee. “Yes, but if we’re talking to her, we need to work within the boundaries of the dream. Let her answer.”
Horror’s lip-bite turned into a deep grimace, followed by a sigh through her nose. The whole head twitched sideways, as if trying to tilt upon her detached neck.
“I’m a nurse, Heather,” she said. “I’ve always been your nurse.”
I rolled my eyes. “Right, technically correct, which is the worst kind of correct. Or is this a metaphor? ‘Horror’ is the nurse which delivered my life to me?”
Twil snorted. “Human beings don’t keep talking after having their heads ripped off. Come on, you fuckin’ roly-poly ball. How are you like that and not dead yet?”
A wry little smile creased Horror’s lips. “You’ve clearly never met very many exceptional human beings, Miss Hopton.”
Raine picked her way across the wreckage of the collapsed pavilion, until she towered over Horror’s severed head. Horror tried to look up at Raine, but her eyes could only roll so far and her head could not tilt backward.
“Raine,” I said gently, warning her off. “Please don’t. We can get something useful out of her, I’m certain.”
“I’m gonna pick her up,” Raine said. “Not in the way I’d prefer, of course.”
I winced. “Be careful!”
“Yeah,” Twil laughed. “Watch out for the teeth, she might bite!”
Raine reached down, grabbed a fistful of Horror’s thick blonde hair, and lifted the severed head from its perch. The ragged stump of her neck did not drip blood as she rose, clean and dry, nothing like a meaty, flesh remnant of a person who had just died. A nub-end of white spine dangled from within the torn flesh. I felt a little nauseated, but managed to resist the urge to avert my gaze. Evelyn swallowed loudly. Twil went, “Ugh!” and spat on the ground.
Raine lifted Horror until they could meet eye-to-eye, then cracked a grin. “Hey there, nursey. Not exactly how I wanted to get up close and intimate with you, slam-piggy. But hey, up close like this, do I make you feel … light-headed?”
“Raine!” I spluttered. “Don’t flirt with a severed head! That’s disgusting.”
Evelyn let out a long grumbly sigh. “No, no, she has a point. However loathe I am to admit so.”
“A point about what?!”
“About undermining whatever is going on here,” Evelyn said. “Raine’s insults appeared to work, earlier. But I draw the line at puns. Do not do that again, Raine.”
“I’m not so sure they were meant as insults,” I muttered.
Horror pursed her lips at Raine. “I’ll thank you not to be so crass when I’m in such a vulnerable position, Miss Haynes. I thought you were the ‘gentlemanly’ type of butch lesbian, always willing to help a girl in need, always there to leap in and be strong and dependable when one of your conquests needs you. Does that not extend to me? I have been conquered, after all, haven’t I?”
“You don’t count,” Raine said. “And I ain’t sticking my fingers into your neck hole, either.”
“I think you will find my neck hole is none of your— excuse me?!”
Horror burst into a splutter of outrage as Raine lifted her further and then peered at the underside of her severed neck, eyeing the mass of ragged flesh. Raine shrugged and lowered Horror again, then glanced over at the rest of us. “Very little blood,” she said. “Spine’s severed real neat, too. Doesn’t really match the violence of Twil ripping her head off.”
Twil blinked twice, wolf-ears swivelling, then muttered, “Um, sorry?”
Evelyn frowned at her. “You don’t remember doing that?”
“Nah. I mean, yeah, I do,” Twil said. “I remember it perfect like, but uh, sorry if I fucked up somehow?”
“Not what I meant,” Raine said. “Not your fault or anything. Just weird. Here, come on, nurse-bot. Not that you’ve got any choice.”
Raine ambled over to the rest of us, holding the head high enough so we could all see Horror’s expression — pursed lips going white with anger, brow furrowed hard and deep, eyes tight and narrow. Raine stopped a good few feet away, severed head outstretched in one hand, machete held low in the other, forearms still stained with faint crimson from butchering Horror’s corpse. Though she had not claimed the kill herself, she looked like a hound who had brought her mistress the severed head of her slain foe. My throat closed up and my heart fluttered at that sight; part of me wished I had my real life mobile phone, so that I might capture the moment forever with a camera. But making electronic records of murder and butchery was probably not a very good idea, even in a dream.
“Thank you for fetching her, Raine,” I said. “Good girl.”
“You wanna interrogate her?” Raine said. “Go right ahead.”
Evelyn groaned.
Horror let out a sharp little sigh. “Murder, theft, gross bodily harm. Mishandling a corpse, desecrating the dead, unlawful removal of organs. And now kidnapping! And you girls are worried about bad puns? You are in so much trouble I don’t think you realise how deep you’ve gotten, you—”
“Technically it’s abduction,” Evelyn snapped. “It’s only kidnapping if we demand a ransom for you. And it’s only abduction in the first place if we take you somewhere without your consent. Do you want us to toss you back on the pile of rubble? You’re quite welcome to it, I doubt we’re going to use it again.”
Horror closed her mouth and squinted at Evelyn.
“Thought not,” said Evee.
“I see your father’s legal habits have rubbed off on you, Miss Saye,” said Horror. “How very equivocationary of you. It’s a pity you can’t put those talents to use in service of society instead of—”
“What are you even doing?” I said. “What is this?”
Horror’s eyes flickered to me. She couldn’t turn her head, so Raine adjusted her angle.
“Giving my thoughts on the current situation,” said Horror. “What else is there to do in my regrettable condition?”
“You’re taunting us, or trying to taunt us, though rather ineffectually. You’ve got bits and pieces of Raine’s innermost anxieties, and also Evee’s apparently, but you’re acting sloppy, not using your techniques very well. I think we’ve broken you, whatever you actually are. We’ve broken your purpose in the dream. Haven’t we? What are you?”
“I already told you, Heather!” Horror tutted. “I’m a nurse. I’m your nurse!”
“I fuckin’ hate this,” said Twil. Her wolf ears had gone limp, same as her tail. “When you beat a mid-boss, it should either stay dead, or get up again with a second health bar. This is just bollocks. Come on, Big H, let Raine finish her off.”
“I doubt that would work,” I said, staring into Horror’s unimpressed eyes. “We overcame her once, but the dream doesn’t want her removed. The script, the play, whatever it is, it’s worked around her defeat in order to keep her going. I’m sorry to be so absurd about this, Twil, but I suspect if we cut her head open and finished her off, she might come back as an actual ghost. Or something even worse. At least like this she’s easy enough to contain.”
“‘Contain’?” Horror echoed, pulling a scrunchy frown. “Contain!? What are you going to do now, girls? Tie me up? Drag me along on your adventure? Oh no, absolutely not. I think you will find me a most uncooperative captive.”
I sighed at her. “Yes. You’re hardly a lady of infinite jest and most excellent fancy, are you?”
Horror frowned at me with incomprehension. “I’m sorry?”
I smiled in a tiny victory. “Hm.”
“Heather?” Evelyn said.
“Yeah,” Twil added. “What was that, some kind of code?”
“Sweet thing?” Raine said. “Clue us in?”
“Shakespeare,” I said, still smiling. “Well, misquoting Hamlet, actually. There’s no way to test for sure, of course, but I’m trying to figure out what exactly Horror is. If her origin lay with me, there’s no way she wouldn’t know that line. She would have responded in some fashion, she would have recognised Shakespeare. I … I think?”
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Twil said, “Big H, like, I respect you and all, but that is some mad unscientific bullshit.”
“I know,” I said with a sigh. “But it’s a start.”
“You got a theory on what she is, then?” Twil asked. “Or why the hell she’s still talking to us, like?”
Evelyn broke in before I could answer, with something I had not figured out: “She’s an element of the dream, and we have adjusted that dream. That’s why she’s still talking.” Evelyn glanced around at the rest of us, wearing an expression like this should be obvious. “Think about it for a moment. We’ve just redefined the dream, rewritten the tone and the atmosphere, by waking Twil.”
Twil pointed at herself. Her tail wagged from side to side. “Eh, what? Me?”
“Yes, you,” Evelyn said. “Because you’re a werewolf.”
Twil frowned. “Eh? What does that have to do with a severed head still talking?”
“You’re both horror genre elements,” Evelyn drawled. “Ha! Ironic right? ‘Horror’ genre? Maybe that was on purpose. Heather should understand this, even if you don’t. We’ve introduced two new elements to the dream, a werewolf and a murder, and the dream has reacted accordingly. Not to even mention whatever the ‘Lillies’ brought with them, though that element does seem to be purged for now. Regardless, we’ve shifted the genre of Sevens’ ‘script’. We caused this.” She gestured at Horror’s severed head. “We solved one problem by introducing an entirely new category of problem.” She huffed. “Typical of us, I suppose.”
Horror said, “Well, I’m glad you realise your own powerlessness, at least.”
“Oh, we’re far from powerless,” I said. “Evee just spelled it out. We’ve redefined part of the dream, part of the genre. And you, you can’t even acknowledge that with your words, because you’re not actually a person.”
Horror raised her eyebrows.
Twil, however, drew a wincing breath between her teeth. Her tail was coiled upward behind her back. “Woah, woah, Big H, hold up a sec here. I know this is a dream and all, but like … isn’t that a bit of a slippery slope? Kill her, sure. Cut pieces off her to feed to Zheng, alright, fine. But like, she’s still a person, yeah? Don’t go down that road, yeah?”
“Not in this case,” I said, speaking to Horror. “Because I think I’ve figured out what we’re looking at. I think Horror may be part of the Eye.”
Raine tilted her head in silent question. Twil scrunched her forehead into an uncomprehending frown.
Evelyn muttered, “Haven’t we already identified the Eye’s personal avatar?”
“Yeah,” said Raine. “And she’s a lot hotter than Horror here.”
“Huh!” Horror spluttered.
“Well, yes,” I said, then spluttered too, correcting myself. “Um, I mean— uh, yes, we’ve identified her, indeed. Not yes she’s hotter than Horror. Not that— I— no, I refuse to make a judgement on that.” I huffed, abandoning the subject. Raine cracked a grin and winked at me. Evelyn just rolled her eyes. I rallied back to the real topic. “Seriously, think about everything we’ve seen here so far. We now have three examples of people split into multiple parts by the dream. Myself, first off. Then Praem, who’s been split in two. And now Twil, who was in three, and now reunited back into one. Who’s to say the Eye hasn’t been subjected to the same process? The ‘science gilf’ we saw, maybe she’s the ego of the eye, the primary decision maker, the personality. And the nurses — or rather, the whole institution of Cygnet Hospital — is the id, or superego, or maybe both?”
“Don’t sound so sure,” Evelyn said.
I cleared my throat, feeling self-conscious. “I haven’t decided yet, but it makes sense.”
“No it don’t,” Twil said. “Come on, Big H, is that what they’re teaching you in English lit or something? Id, ego, all that shit? Freud wasn’t actually right, you know? It’s all a metaphor or something.”
“Yes, yes, I know that, but I’m using it as a metaphor. We’ve been puzzling over what the nurses are, what they embody, or represent. Our current working theory about the patients — not that I can be sure — is that they’re all the people and places the Eye has absorbed and trapped in Wonderland, turned into metaphorical human beings, though most of them are probably Outsiders totally beyond our imaginations. But what are the nurses? Eye cultists? I don’t think that makes any sense. Nobody has ‘loyalty’ to the Eye. The institution, the nurses, all of it — what if all of that is the Eye? Including Horror.”
Horror listened to my theory with a curiously bored expression. We all peered at her, as if expecting her to crack under the pressure of detailed interrogation. But I knew she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. It wasn’t that she didn’t care, or that she was just that mentally tough, or unafraid of us, or anything like that. No, she simply could not ‘crack’ under discovery. She was her role in full, not simply a player upon the stage, following Sevens’ script or the Eye’s unfolding mind. The dream would not let her die. She was a primary component, and could not be removed.
Eventually she cleared her throat and said, “You girls are very creative, I will give you that. I’m actually rather impressed by all this fantasy. But unfortunately it’s very unhealthy to let you run away with these fictional models of the world.” She sighed heavily and focused on me. “Heather, I had held out hope that you were being led astray by your friends, but now I discover to my dismay that you are the ringleader. I didn’t expect this. I’m very … ” Her eyes scrunched with mocking sorrow. “I’m very disappointed. Very concerned. You must give up on this. The only way out is to head back indoors and give yourself up. It will be painful and scary at first, but in the long run it is the right thing to do, both for others and for yourself.”
Evelyn snorted. “And she’s still like a broken record.”
“Yeah, shit.” Twil laughed a little. “She’s not exactly convincing. What the hell was I scared of?”
“Horror,” I said. “Look at me, please.”
Horror looked.
Horror’s eyes were slightly bloodshot, as if she’d had a long day at work. The trailing strands of her hair and the twin tracks of blood from the corners of her mouth made her look like the head of a giant comedy spider. Her eyebrows kinked upward as I stared — and stared and stared and stared, testing my theory in a new and instinctive way, gripped by an impulse I could not explain. The others had fallen silent. I felt their eyes on me, but I didn’t look away. My own eyes began to water slightly as I resisted the growing urge to blink. Raine watched me carefully, like a loyal hound who realised her mistress was working on some greater plan.
The sunshine was beating down upon us now, as if the storm’s passing had cleared the atmosphere for a true summer’s day. My hair was mostly dry and even my sodden slippers were starting to feel less mushy. Beneath my yellow blanket and my ugly brown jumper, I felt sweat prickle under my armpits and down my back.
Was this merely the effect of the warmer air? Or was I locked in a staring contest with a portion of the very thing we had come to Wonderland to stare back into?
The wound in my left shin throbbed harder and harder with every heartbeat. Wordless silence and protracted concentration gave my mind no distractions to spare me from the aching cut in my flesh, surrounded by stiff muscles and barely-healing tissues. I felt myself begin to buckle, listing to one side, eyes open and watering with effort.
A hand reached out and steadied me — strong as steel, soft as velvet, unerringly there at my side. I straightened up, drawing on that aid, until my chin was once again held high and my eyes were wide. Horror could not escape.
“You’re going to help us,” I said. “Whether you like it or not.”
Horror blinked.
I let out a ragged breath and finally rubbed at my watering eyes, blinking hard to clear my vision. The powerful supporting grip left my arm, but now I could stand on my own feet, though the pain in my shin was still distracting me and threatening to scramble my thoughts.
“Ahh, ow.” I winced. “Oh, I think that might have given me a headache as well. Thank you, uh—”
I glanced to my left, to confirm who had helped me, assuming that the firm grip had belonged to Twil; after all, Raine was holding the severed head aloft and Evee was down in her wheelchair, her meagre strength in reality reduced by the cruelty of the dream.
But nobody was there. Twil was still beyond arm’s reach, both hands firmly on the handles of Evee’s wheelchair. Evelyn’s hands were tucked deep within the folds of her grey dressing gown. Raine was in front of me, at the wrong angle.
The Praem Plushie was peering over the right-hand arm of Evelyn’s wheelchair, regarding me with flat, disc-shaped, inanimate eyes.
“Oh,” I croaked. “Thank you, Praem.”
“Eh?” Twil blinked. “Hey?”
“Heather, what—” Evelyn started to say, then noticed that the Praem Plushie had somehow gotten out from inside the protective swaddling of Evee’s dressing gown. “How did she get there?” Evelyn tutted, picked Praem up, and returned her to a safer place, snuggled down in Evee’s lap.
“Heather,” Raine purred. “What just happened?”
“Nothing,” I said, straightening up again. “Just my leg wound bothering me, it’s … it hurts, a lot. Praem offered some moral support.”
Evelyn grunted a vague affirmative; Raine nodded seriously, accepting the strangeness of the situation without further question. Twil grimaced as if we’d all gone mad.
Horror cleared her throat gently, and said: “It is admirable that you girls stick so closely together. Even in the most dire of circumstances, from which you cannot possibly hope to extricate yourselves, you soldier on, shoulder to shoulder. This kind of solidarity would serve you well in life. Mm. What a pity, what a pity … ”
Twil pulled a big squinty frown. “Is it just me, or has she changed her tune a bit? That was almost like a compliment.”
“I won the staring contest,” I said.
“And what does that mean?” Twil asked.
“I don’t know, actually.”
Evelyn said: “Every act is a redefinition of the dream, a new line in Sevens’ bloody play. Go on, Heather. What are you thinking?”
I took a deep breath, then stared into Horror’s eyes again. This time she blinked right away. Surrender.
“She keeps trying to get us back on track,” I said slowly, thinking out loud, piecing together disparate notions as I went. “Not our track, but her one, the original script for the dream. She wants us to surrender ourselves, give up, return to the insides of Cygnet Hospital, so on and so on. She’s a narrative device to re-route us whenever we start to stray. Look at how she kept turning up whenever I would get close to freeing somebody or achieving something. But now we’ve neutralised her, we’ve written her into a corner. The dream won’t let her go, won’t let her be dead or gone or whatever. But she can’t do anything else except keep attempting to return us to the original path. She’s a bit like the Eye, in that respect. When observation is all you can do, you’ll keep doing it, no matter what. Horror was telling the truth when she answered my first question. She is a nurse.”
Evelyn cleared her throat. “This is all very plausible, Heather, but what use is it to us?”
“Where is my sister?” I said to Horror. “Where’s Maisie?”
Horror frowned. “You know that already. You know exactly where—”
“Answer the question, please.”
Horror sighed, paused, then said, “In the Box.”
“And what is ‘the Box’?”
Horror blinked in surprise. “Are you being silly with me, Heather?”
“I assure you, I am being completely serious. What is the Box? Please answer.”
Horror’s eyes glanced at Twil and Evee, then back at me. She tried to roll her eyes upward into her head so she could look at Raine, but that was an impossible feat for a severed head. Finally she looked back at me, and spoke slowly and gently, with the kind of care one reserved for small children or the very sick.
“The Box is the most high security part of Cygnet Hospital,” she said. “It has several names, some of them official, but the staff all call it ‘the Box’. It’s the reason all of the rest of the hospital exists, after all, at least legally and administratively. The rest of the hospital is an afterthought by comparison. The Box is a kind of special containment facility, for those very few and very unlucky girls who are simply too dangerous to ever rejoin society. They’re packaged up in there, with no way out. Like a sealed box. You must have seen the entrances, Heather? I was told you were wandering around, clearly looking for them, and I know you blundered into at least one. You’ve even spoken to some of the guards, though they were very circumspect and closed-lipped about that particular encounter.”
“I remember. And that’s a good sign, by the way,” I added for the others. “The Knights keep trying to protect us, which is good.”
“Huh,” Raine grunted. “This ‘Box’, is it even more high security than the prison?”
“Yes,” I said. “Big sci-fi style vault door. I ran into it earlier, just once. I think there’s external entrances too, all guarded by the Knights. If Lozzie’s revolt works and we can get the Knights openly on our side, we might be able to get into the Box without too much trouble.”
Horror said, “I wouldn’t be too certain of that.”
“What else is in the Box?” I asked. “What kind of security? What are we talking about here, cameras and blast doors, or laser guns, or something else?”
Horror let out a little sigh. “I’m afraid I can’t say.”
“Answer the question, please.”
“I’m afraid I can’t say.”
Raine raised her machete and caught my eye, asking a silent question. I shook my head. “No, Raine. I don’t think torture will even work. Horror, why can’t you say?”
Horror smiled, a little awkwardly. “I’m only allowed to take a set course inside the Box. I’m not allowed to deviate, or ask questions. I even have to hand over my mobile phone before I enter! Can you imagine that? It’s like being inside a nuclear missile silo or something, like on that one show with the people underground? No? Oh well, you’d know the one if you’d seen it. All very serious stuff. So no, I can’t say what they might have in there. I can tell you that your sister is not the only resident of the Box, but that’s all, really.”
“And Maisie is in there?”
“Yes. I’m not lying. You already knew this, Heather, you knew all of this, you—”
“There are six more of me,” I said. “Six more Heathers. Where are they? Are they in the Box, too?”
Horror let out a terrible sigh. “Oh, Heather. You are so very alone. There’s no—”
“Where is the Director’s office?” I skipped straight to the next question, trying to disorient her.
Horror raised her eyebrows. “The Director? You’ve got no business seeing the Director. She won’t be interested in you at all—”
“Where is her office?” I repeated.
Horror paused, rolled her eyes, then sighed. “I don’t suppose you can do any more damage there. Very well. The Director’s office is in the second basement level, just below the laundry rooms. You can reach it easily from the main staff room. There’s a lock on the door, though. Ordinary staff have no business down there and—”
“And where is the Governor’s office?” I said.
Horror stopped.
For a single second it was as if her head was finally, truly, actually dead. The jaw hung slack. The eyes went glassy. Tension left the muscles in her cheeks and around her mouth. A single droplet of blood fell from the stump of her neck and landed upon the wood chips.
“Horror?” I said.
The nurse’s skull animated again with a gulp, nervously wetting her lips with a flicker of bloody tongue. She blinked rapidly, light returning inside her eyes.
“You don’t want to speak with the Governor, Heather,” she said. “For your own good. You don’t want to do that.”
“Where is the Governor’s office?” I repeated. “Answer the—”
“I know, I know!” Horror said, her whole tone switching from exasperated adult to almost pleading. “I’ve not exactly endeared myself to you with the things I’ve said, and I’m loathe to help you in this absurd quest you’ve dreamed up for yourselves, but you do not want to speak with the Governor. I don’t even know why I’m telling you this, really!”
I opened my mouth to push again, but Evelyn said, “Heather, wait. You, Horror, whatever you are. Why don’t we want to speak with the Governor?”
Horror swallowed, eyebrows knitting as if considering her answer with great care. “It is exceedingly difficult to get her full attention. She’s always so distracted. But once she’s aware of you, she never forgets you. And she has all the power in the hospital, in the end. If she distractedly decides that your time here is up, then poof! You’re done! Hiring and firing, disciplinary actions, job title changes, all of it! She can have patients removed and moved around at will. Whole wings re-assigned for new purposes. And the worst part is that she’s not even really interested! She doesn’t care! She’s got some special project involving all the patient data, past and present, and that’s all she cares about. So she makes decisions on a whim, and you do not want to be in the way of that.” Horror sighed. “Though I suppose you don’t care anyway, do you? You’re already criminals now. Oh, dear. What am I saying?”
We all shared a concerned glance. Twil grimaced, wolf ears flat, tail raised and wrapped around her own arm. Evelyn sucked on her own teeth, drumming her fingers on the arm of her wheelchair. The Praem Plushie seemed to peer out of her grey dressing gown, examining Horror.
Raine just nodded slowly, and said, “Well, Miss Gilf Eyeball has already seen us. So we’ve got no problem there.”
Horror said, “She must not have been paying proper attention to you. I’m telling you girls, you do not want—”
A sudden shout echoed through the woods, somewhere far off to the right of our little clearing; the voice sounded neither urgent nor panicked, though the exact words were lost on the gentle sunlit breeze.
We all froze. A moment later another voice answered — words once again a wood-choked blur, but undeniably an affirmative of some kind.
“Shit, shit!” Twil hissed. Her tail was standing straight up, fur all a-bristle. “Who the fuck is that?!”
“Nurses,” Raine said, calm and collected but speaking quickly. “Or guards. Or worse. They’re looking for us. Looking for Horror. Time to move.”
Evelyn snapped, “We need to get under the cover of the Fadestone, quickly. Or get out of here!”
Horror sighed. A certain smug gloss returned to her expression. “I told you girls, there is no way out of this predicament which you have created. If you would only—”
“What do we do with her, then!?” Twil jerked a thumb at Horror’s talking head.
“We take her with us,” I said.
“Eh!?”
“Oh, great,” Evelyn grumbled. “I was expecting that.”
“We take her with us,” I repeated. “Leaving her here is not an option. For all we know whoever is on their way might be able to glue her back together or reanimate her or something.”
“We can stop her from re-spawning,” Raine said. “Quick thinking.”
“Yes, I … I think? And at least this way we’ll know exactly where she is.”
“Excuse me!” Horror said. “May I—”
“We can’t take the whole corpse with us!” Twil said, gesturing at the rest of Horror’s now very mangled body, missing one arm, chest cut open, covered in blood and viscera. “That’s gonna get found! It’s not like there’s a convenient locker to stuff it in, either!”
Evelyn snorted. “Can’t you dig a hole, Twil? What good are your claws for?”
“Yeah,” Twil said, sneering. “‘Cos obviously I know all about digging holes in, oh, what, sixty seconds?!”
“It’s fine!” I said. “We can leave the corpse here. The head is the part that’s still alive. That’s all we need.”
“Excuse me?” said Horror. “I would like to—”
“Hey,” said Raine, cracking a grin. “What’s one more corpse? We’re already wanted women, after all. I’m used to that. All women want me.”
Twil and Evee both groaned. The Praem Plushie vanished inside Evee’s grey dressing gown. I just blushed.
“Raine,” I said. “We need to move, quickly. Can you … ?”
Raine cracked another grin just for me, then nodded. “On it, sweet thing.”
Horror started talking again as Raine walked back toward the corpse, over to the two neatly wrapped packages — Horror’s served arm and stolen heart.
“You girls should be surrendering yourselves to the proper authorities!” she snapped. Raine reached down and grabbed the third towel, the one she’d used to wipe the blood off her hands. “I shan’t be providing you with further help or directions or even so much as a- mffff! Mm-mmm-mfff! Mm—”
Horror’s words choked into silence on the folds of the towel Raine stuffed into her mouth. Raine then quickly bundled up the head inside the rest of the towel and tied the ends together to create a neat little sphere. She grabbed the other wrapped packages, the bloody parcels which contained Horror’s severed right arm and the meaty lump of her heart. Then she crossed back to the wheelchair and grabbed a final towel, using it to fashion a sling for all three of the wrapped-up pieces of Horror’s body. She positioned the sling over her own back, then filled it with arm and head and heart, so the grisly packages would not be revealed by a curious glance.
“Cool, cool,” Twil said. “Not fucked up at all, not fucked up, nope, nope. Not thinking about it. Not thinking—”
Another shout echoed through the woods — still distant, but closer this time. Whoever or whatever that was, they would be here within minutes.
My left shin throbbed with each beat of my heart; even fresh adrenaline was not enough to quieten the wound now. I took slow, deep, difficult breaths. No time to rest.
Raine reached over and fished Horror’s stolen keys out of the canvas bag on the back of Evelyn’s wheelchair. “Ladies and squid-girls, wolves and magicians, we got the keys to go anywhere. And the invisibility trick to get there without getting seen. We need to find an infirmary or something, some kind of sick-bay, for Heather.”
“Zheng first,” I repeated my previous instructions.
“Yeah,” Twil agreed. “I wanna get Evee indoors, get her dried off proper.”
“I’m fine!” Evelyn grunted. “And this isn’t real damp, none of it’s going to kill me.”
“We’ll never get that wheelchair up the stairs to Zheng’s room,” I said gently. I reached over and braced one hand against Raine’s shoulder, so as not to sag to my left, easing my weight off the wound in my shin. “So I think we’re going to have to split up temporarily. Twil, I want you to wait with Evee, somewhere … we’ll find somewhere. Raine and I will head to Zheng’s room with the meat, and try to free her.”
“Hey, what?” Twil said. “Nah, Big H, come on, we all just got together again! We gotta stay grouped up proper. And that leg of yours is right fucked. Stop trying to hide it, we can all see.”
I shook my head, taking deep breaths to force down the pain. “Twil, we can’t get that wheelchair up those stairs, even if we will be invisible. And the access lift is a coffin full of rust, I’m not risking that.”
Raine said, “Sweet thing, let me go do it myself. I can move faster than you. Sneaking missions are kinda my thing right now. And your leg—”
I shook my head again. “No. It’s Zheng. It has to be me and you, Raine. Not just one of us. It has to be us, both, both of us, both … ”
Raine looked down at me, smiling gently. “Heather, that leg is—”
“Raine, you are a good girl and I love you. We need to free Zheng, ASAP. All this is snowballing faster than we can manage, and we have to be ready for the next stage of Lozzie’s revolution. We need Zheng free.”
“Sweet thing,” Raine purred. “With these keys we can find a proper infirmary and get you stitched—”
“Infirmary later,” I hissed.
Another muffled call and response rang out through the woods behind us. I reached for Evee’s wheelchair, to complete the circuit for the Fadestone, to make good on our escape.
“Zheng first,” I said. “Now let’s— oop!”
Raine grabbed my arm — not roughly, but with enough force to hold me back and spoil my balance. I would have gone slamming down onto my wounded leg if it wasn’t for Raine’s free hand, her support beneath my grip, her strength holding me up. I stumbled into her.
I found myself pressed against Raine’s chest, my nostrils filled with the smell of blood and sweat on her skin, my hands feeling her heartbeat beneath her ribs. Her free hand went around my back, stronger than I remembered.
Raine looked down at me, not smiling, not amused, not a good girl.
“R-Raine … ”
“Infirmary first,” she growled. “Executive decision.”