Luna’s gaze settled on the house at the other end of the square. It looked ancient, even older than the other houses, with a ragged roof and crumbling stonework that looked on the verge of falling down. The narrow entrance had no door; there was only a black hole in the wall. Luna raised her arm to point. “There.”
“Is that the way out?” I asked. I kept my voice down. I had the feeling something might be listening.
“Yes,” Luna said. She sounded absolutely certain.
The doorway was maybe twenty paces away. Luna didn’t move towards it and neither did her parents. “What’s wrong?” I said quietly.
Luna didn’t reply for a second. “You remember when you first brought me into Elsewhere?” Luna’s voice was distant and she gazed at the house in front of her, talking as if to herself. “You told me my curse didn’t work here.”
“Yeah.”
“I thought about that, afterwards,” Luna said. “I couldn’t figure it out. I mean, my curse is part of me. I can’t live without it, Arachne told me that. So how can I be here if my curse isn’t?”
I looked at Luna but she didn’t meet my eyes. “Well, I figured it out,” Luna said, staring towards the house. “My curse is here. Just not in me.”
The darkness behind the house moved and something stepped out of the shadows.
It was beautiful.
Looking back on it, that’s the first thing I remember. There was a kind of perfection to it, a purity. It stood taller than a man, its stance hunched with its arms hanging to its knees, but it moved with a smooth, loping grace that hinted at speed and power. It was hairless, its skin bare and pure white, and the fingers were curved in a way that made me think of claws. The head was wolflike, with a lengthened muzzle and two pure white eyes that glowed with a pale light. Despite its size, its movements were almost silent.
The four of us stood dead still. The creature kept moving at a steady pace, keeping its distance from us as it circled counterclockwise, its eyes fixed on us. The only sound was the click of its claws against the stone.
As the creature kept circling, we had to turn to keep it in view. It wasn’t making any effort to hide and its pale shape stood out clearly in the gloom. “What’s it doing?” I said at last, very quietly.
“I don’t know,” Luna whispered. She was staring back at the thing. Its eyes had no pupils so I couldn’t be sure, but I had the feeling it was looking at her.
The creature had gone a quarter of the way around us. “Cutting us off?” I said, then shook my head. “Doesn’t make sense …”
“We should go,” Luna’s mother whispered. She shook Luna gently. “Come on.”
Luna didn’t move. “It’ll get behind us,” her father murmured. “Run, cara. Quickly.”
I shook my head. Somehow I knew this thing was faster than we could ever be.
The creature was almost opposite from where it had started and we’d turned through a hundred and eighty degrees watching it. The doorway was behind us now and we were between it and the creature. We had a clear line of retreat. As if she’d been thinking the same thing, Luna took a step back.
My hand shot out to catch her. “No.”
Luna stopped, but she didn’t take her eyes off the thing. “It’s where we’re going,” she said.
It was true but my instincts were warning me of danger. This thing had started its circle from next to the door. If it had wanted to block our exit, it could have just stood there. Why had it moved? Unless it wanted us to-
A horrible suspicion hit me. I focused, narrowing my eyes, and froze. The creature was leaving a trail of silver-white mist as it walked and the mist wasn’t fading, but staying. I looked about and understood. The barrier of mist started in front of the house, blocking the way to the exit, and it was two-thirds of the way around us. The creature was drawing a circle around us. As soon as it finished, we’d be trapped. “Luna!”
I heard Luna inhale sharply as she saw it too. As she did, the mist shimmered into visibility, as though by seeing it we’d broken the spell. The mist looked silvery, harmless … just like Luna’s curse.
I don’t know if Luna’s parents knew what the mist was but they knew what it meant. “Luna!” her mother cried.
“We have to go!” her father shouted. He ran towards the quarter of the circle still open.
There was a flicker of movement, almost too fast to see. Luna’s father’s chest came apart in a gout of blood, droplets spattering onto the stone. The creature loomed above, bright red staining the white skin, and snatched the man up in its claws before fading back into the mist, gone before I could move.
“No!” Luna screamed. “Dad!”
“Artur!” Luna’s mother screamed. “ARTUR!”
Luna made as if to run into the mist but I grabbed her. “No!”
Luna struggled. “Let go-!”
Something came flying out of the mist. It made a wet thump as it hit the ground and bounced, rolling and leaving a red smear behind it. It came to rest at Luna’s mother’s feet. She looked down and screamed. Two empty eyes stared up from out of it, glazing.
Luna went rigid, staring in horror. Her mother kept screaming as I looked about wildly. The mist swirled, obscuring the square, and I couldn’t see where the thing was. The edges of the mist had almost closed the circle and only a narrow gap was left, leading towards an alley-way.
Luna’s mother saw the narrowing gap and ran towards it, still screaming. “Don’t!” I shouted.
The creature appeared out of the mist before she’d gone five steps, faster and quieter than anything so big had any right to be. Its claw ripped through the woman’s stomach to burst out of her back with a damp snapping noise, and Luna’s mother jerked as she was lifted off the ground. The creature held her weight impaled on one arm without difficulty, its empty eyes staring into hers as her mouth worked, trying to speak, then with a lightning motion it snapped its jaws around her throat and ripped it out. Spurts of blood painted red streaks on its skin as it dragged the body off its arm with a horrible scraping, cracking sound before fading back into the mist.
Luna didn’t scream this time. She was frozen, stiff and staring. I looked around to see that the mist had closed around us. I couldn’t see the exit. “Luna. Luna.”
Silence. I moved back to back with Luna, trying to look in every direction at once, my instincts still screaming at me to watch for danger even though my head knew it was useless. The thing was inhumanly fast; if it wanted to snatch me I didn’t have a hope of stopping it. “Luna!”
Luna stayed rigid against my back. I took a deep breath and stepped around to look at Luna face to face, leaving my back exposed. Her eyes flicked up to meet mine but they were horrified, blank. “It’s not real,” I said quietly, putting every bit of belief into my voice that I could. “They’re shadows, phantoms. That’s how this place works. It strikes at your fears, where you’re weak. Your real parents are still alive, out in the world, but if you want to see them again you have to get out of here!”
Luna shivered. Her eyes came back into focus and she stared at me. Then her eyes shifted to focus on a point over my shoulder and slowly, very slowly, she looked up.
A horrible empty feeling opened up inside my stomach. I turned around.
The creature was standing right behind me. The mist had closed in and now we were at the centre of a ring barely twenty feet across. The creature was almost twice my height, the empty white eyes looking down at me, and it smelt of something cold and ancient. Red blood made ghastly spatters on the white skin, but it was already fading and I knew that in only a few minutes the blood of Luna’s parents would be gone. Just as mine would be.
The creature moved. I’d like to say I did something brave but I didn’t. I shut my eyes.
Nothing happened. One heartbeat, five, ten. I opened my eyes to look.