Page 37 of House of Hearts

I notice that wrongness immediately after recovering from my fall.

The rough landing tears my tights, ripping the black fabric at my knees and exposing the bruised skin beneath.

I hiss at the impact and smear the cuts clean with the sleeve of my blazer.

After the last twenty-four hours, I’m sure my body is a Rorschach inkblot of bruises beneath my clothes.

I don’t have time to check, though, because the instant I sit up, I take stock of the bizarre world around me.

The hedges are the same, but there’s a dizzy lurch in my gut and a strangeness sticking to everything I see.

It begins with an otherworldly ripple of the grass and continues with the gate behind me, padlocks clattering a discordant melody against the bars before everything goes silent.

I look up, and even the sky is wrong. The sunset is long gone, stars flickering like stop-motion animation, constellations rippling past in a blur.

And then it’s sunrise, the sun a bloody cough against the white fringed dawn.

This can’t be happening.

Except it totally is, and I have no choice but to grip the ever-changing gate behind me to keep my wobbly legs upright.

My body rebels against all of it—the changing sky and the world slipping between my fingers.

I make the mistake of looking back out through the bars and immediately want to throw up.

It’s my high school, but it isn’t. It’s stripped down from a century’s worth of modernization, the streetlamps replaced with old-fashioned gas lamps; the flag banners winked out of existence.

Second by second, the campus molts beyond my recognition.

Buildings broken down and remade, the tower yet to be built.

It all gives way to a vast stretch of nothing and no one. Thick fog rolls in from the left and blankets the campus in gray. I narrow my eyes and squint into the gloom. The fog swallows what’s left of the campus until there’s no world beyond the maze, no north or south or east or west. Only here.

Here stretches on forever. It’s like being trapped within a cloud, a shapeless blur until images lift from the mist, appearing before me like memories playing out on a vintage projector. Two strangers meander down a beaten path beyond the maze, their bodies corporeal and yet fuzzy around the edges.

They stroll closer toward me, but neither person acknowledges my presence in the slightest. They’re both swept away in conversation, speaking as if I don’t exist beside them.

“His name is Oleander Lockwell, is it not?” a young woman’s voice pries. “The lover you’re meeting with. He’s a student here.”

My entire body goes tense. For a dead girl, Anastasia Hart is very alive right now at her sister’s side.

Rosacea colors the apples of her cheeks, a bright flush of pink against her ivory skin.

She’s more than an urban legend. She’s tendons and flesh and bone; a girl my age, alive and breathing and oblivious as to what’s to come.

“What of it?” she sniffs, her wide-eyed stare giving her face an ethereal, Renaissance quality. Her bright red hair is bundled high atop her head, crowned with a series of intricate braids. She’s beautiful, but her shoulders slump, her fingers toying self-consciously with a loose curl.

“Did you know he was engaged once before?” her sister asks. “The girl died.”

Helen couldn’t be any more her opposite. Everything about her is confident, vibrant, electric.

Anastasia wrings her hands helplessly at her side, her mouth thinning into a severe tight line. There’s a tense beat of silence between them, an unspoken challenge flaring hot in her eyes. “Is a man not allowed to experience tragedy?” she asks after a telling moment.

“I never said that, but it’s odd for him to have fled town after and then pursued you, don’t you think?” Helen challenges, her expression a mingled mess of desperation and steadfastness.

“It’s odd for you to concern yourself with him,” Anastasia replies tartly, her eyes darting briefly to mine, but apparently seeing nothing beyond the rustle of greenery. I shiver all the same. “You don’t know him.”

“It’s my duty as your sister—”

“To spoil my happiness?” she snaps, her hands balled tightly and her nostrils flared. “Is that your great familial duty?”

Helen captures her sister’s fists in her own hands. “My duty is to keep you safe, Ana!”

Tearing herself away, Anastasia gestures dramatically at her body, her fingers a flourish from top to bottom. “Do I look harmed? Do I look as though I might be in any sort of danger? I’m happier than I’ve ever been, and you’d do well to stick your nose elsewhere.”

Helen blows a measured breath between her teeth. “Any other man. Go for anyone else other than him. He’s bad news. I need you to listen to me.”

Ana’s expression teeters beyond rage and sends her into a deep, watery-eyed chasm.

She sniffles, and the high planes of her cheeks color further.

“Who would you have court me? Christopher McNally? Oh, wait, yes, that’s right, he’s smitten with you.

Bernie Hawthorn? Hmm, no, that’s right, he also favored you.

It’s easy for you to look for another suitor when you have the whole world vying for your attention. ”

Helen balks. “That isn’t what I meant.”

“No, I know what you meant, sister. I finally found my own slice of happiness, and you wish to dash it. So what is it now?”

“He is only with you for your inheritance!”

Anastasia leaps back like she’s been struck. “You’re right. How on earth could someone ever love me without motive? Impossible, I’d wager.”

Helen’s eyes widen, and her lips curl back into a grimace. “That isn’t what I meant!”

But Anastasia doesn’t linger long enough to listen. She storms out of focus, their forms dissipating into wisps of smoke.

I stagger away from the scene and wring my hands nervously.

It’s one thing to hear about the sisters, or even catch ghostly glimmers of them throughout campus.

Seeing them here in the flesh is another matter entirely.

This is really happening, isn’t it? What will I find when I get to the center of this maze?

Ana’s still-warm corpse, her heart freshly carved out of her chest?

Or is she somewhere inside now, waiting for me to arrive?

Wherever she is, I’m not showing up empty-handed. My fingers twitch at the stolen knife in my pocket, and I brandish it now, letting the cool silver of the blade shine through the gloom.

I won’t go down that easily.

With the fog limited to the world beyond the gate, I might have the advantage of the sun inside the maze, but that doesn’t make navigating it any easier.

The greenery high above my head eclipses me as I walk the path.

I feel microscopic in the face of it all, no different than an insignificant blade of grass rustling below.

I wade through the maze as best as I can, but either my memory has grown murky or the paths have shifted position.

The latter seems more likely as I round the corner and am immediately spat back out to where I was several steps ago.

The paths aren’t the only things changing.

Time moves differently, and clearly we’re not in the twenty-first century anymore.

I’m not even convinced we’re in the nineteenth century, really.

It’s a forgotten fairy-tale hour, the thirteenth strike of a clock where we slip between worlds and logic ceases to exist.

I throw a look over my shoulder before rounding the next corner.

I can’t shake the creeping, crawling sensation of being watched.

This is typically the point where I’d talk myself out of my fears and chalk it up to paranoia, but in here?

Logic’s out the window. Through the thicket of dark green hedge, I imagine a set of eyes blinking through the gloom.

Some hidden audience trained on every wrong turn I make, laughing to themselves as I lose my direction and my sanity all at once.

I’m met with another fork in the road, and I suck in a sharp inhale as the trail rustles behind me.

It could be nothing, but I swivel around regardless.

Alone. Of course I am. I flood my lungs, hold the air, and push it out.

Slow, methodical, a testament to the fact that I’m still alive.

Every inch of this place is a twisted illusion, spinning me in desperate, nauseating circles.

I flash back to my Ovid lecture hall listening to Dr.Sampson prattle on about princesses and Minotaurs. I feel like Theseus. I wanted revenge, and now here I am, in the belly of the beast. I’ll stab my way out.

My thoughts drift to the words our teacher left us with. “It only takes two facing mirrors to build a labyrinth.”

What did he mean by that? I never had the time to pause and figure it out, and by the time the next class rolled around, I’d been too absorbed in my own issues to pay his lesson any mind. Frankly, I’m surprised I haven’t run into my own twisted reflection in this madhouse.

It’s horrifically quiet, every crunch of earth beneath my feet almost deafening in the silence.

The only other sound is the beating of my heart.

I press a hand to my chest like I might be able to stifle the noise.

This is the same frozen-over fear I had as a child, my head beneath the blankets, a monster lying in wait beneath the bed, but this time the bogeyman isn’t a figment of my own childish imagination.

This time it’s real.

The silence doesn’t last long. The sound begins with a howling uptick of wind and then moves to a rustle in the grass. Branches sway, and footsteps squelch in my wake.

“ Violet! ” a voice calls out, and I’m reminded of my very first time in this maze. That night felt like a ripple in time, a flickering candle that blew in and out with the breeze. The maze wasn’t ready to spirit me away yet, with its two worlds sitting parallel to one another.

“Violet!” My name is called again, and I recognize the voice. It’s fantastical and dreamlike. It’s Calvin, and yet…it isn’t. Just how I knew my mother wasn’t the woman on the other end of the line. “Violet! Where are you?”

I’m all goose bumps as I twist around to see if I’m still alone. I can’t help the nervous chatter of teeth and the live-wire trip in my veins.

The thought of Anastasia Hart possessing Calvin has me shivering.

I can see it all in my mind—the moment when she overtakes him, lifting his body and dragging him here to this strange upside-down world with me.

Anastasia is a cat with a mouse, not content with simply killing me.

She’d rather throw me in the air and bite my limbs off one at a time before scooping out my heart.

I tighten my grip on the blade. I’m not completely helpless, but I still feel horrifically vulnerable in this moment.

My name comes from all directions now. It rumbles beneath my feet, echoes from my left, and launches from my right.

The hedges—once a uniform, never-ending stretch of green—pulse with new life.

There’s a taunting splash of pink and purple against the dark foliage as violets bloom all around me.

Their petals unfurl like a hundred tiny mouths, all of them wanting to latch on to me, to kiss, to bite.

Vines lasso around my legs, and I nearly trip in my attempt to break free.

I squash the petals beneath my heel for good measure, and it’s then that an idea takes root inside me.

I don’t have the time to weigh the odds. I only have time to lay the bait.

“Where are you, Calvin?” I shout back, my grip clammy on the hilt of the knife. I inject as much naive concern into my voice as I can. “Calvin! Help!”

Everything crashes to an abrupt halt. The violets rot, petals furling inward before burning black and crumbling into ash.

The maze stops twisting and turning; the hedges stop pulsating like a beating heart.

And Calvin’s stolen voice goes quiet. We sit in horrific, anticipatory silence, the only noises my jagged breath and the deafening pulse in my throat.

I don’t have to wait long.

Just as quickly as it all ended, it ripples back to life.

“Violet!” The voice has returned, but it’s distorted like a broken record. It shifts and takes shape in the air, growing closer and closer until all the little hairs on my body prickle to attention. I don’t need to turn around to know I’m no longer alone.

Every inch of my skin begs me to stay rooted, to not turn and give life to my monster under the bed. Against all instinct, I have to look.

“There you are, darling.”