“There’s creatures! In the woods!” he shouted frantically as they ran.
Elsie took her eyes off the way ahead and scanned the nearby bushes; she saw it too: A head appeared, a bulky torso. “Run!” she shouted. “Faster!” Spikes of fear shot through her limbs, and she charged forward.
Their pace quickened; still, they saw the figures in the trees, as if silently watching them, following them.
Just then, they heard a shout sound from the trees ahead: It was Carol and Roger, their voices united in a single, surprised exclamation. A great crash followed the sound quickly, and the trees ahead were seen to shake wildly.
Nico aimed the flashlight dead ahead, and they followed the two older men’s path through a thick stand of salmonberry stalks to arrive at a small and very empty clearing. The surrounding bushes seemed undisturbed; it seemed as if the two men had simply entered the clearing and disappeared completely. Nico shone his flashlight wildly in every direction, trying to puzzle out where the two men had vanished; the beam fell on a figure, his face darkened, between two tree trunks.
Ruthie and Oz yelled, simultaneously. Nico wheeled the flashlight to the other side of the clearing to reveal another looming, darkened figure, watching them silently from behind an ivy-covered stump.
“Who are you?” shouted Rachel. “What do you want?”
Elsie stepped forward, having seen another figure in the near dark. There was something vaguely strange about him, she decided. Before she was able to get a clear view, a small click sounded below her feet. She looked down, just in time to see the world erupt from beneath her toes and carry her skyward.
It had happened too quickly, really, for anyone to reckon exactly what had transpired. By their minds, the six Unadoptables and Nico, they had simply been standing in the middle of the clearing, seemingly surrounded by mysterious, silent watchers, when, the very next moment, they were dangling an easy thirty feet above the forest floor. All they’d heard was a wheezy creak, a snap of a branch, and they’d been conveyed thus, heavenward, dangling in the ether. A quick catalog of their situation revealed that they were in some sort of net, woven from very organic-looking material, a net that had bagged the six of them as if they were the evening’s groceries. What’s more: A survey of the surroundings alerted them to the presence of both Mr. Swindon and Carol, who were swinging in a similar webbed container, not ten feet away from them. Jumbled together like action figures in a pillowcase, the captured seven had been forcibly entwined, and Elsie felt Harry’s elbow locked around her fibula; the surprised face of her sister was dangling directly above her, and the girl’s long black hair was draping into Elsie’s mouth. They all groaned, as one, as they tried desperately to unlock themselves from one another, still in shock from their sudden change of circumstance. Elsie, her face pressed to the mesh of the net, looked down on the mysterious figures that had surrounded them, waiting for them to approach and claim their quarry.
A groaning could be heard from the opposite net. Martha cried out, “Carol! Are you okay?”
“I’m okay, dear heart,” came Carol’s voice. “Just a little bruised up is all.”
“Quiet, old man,” shouted Mr. Swindon.
“Why?” Carol was heard to say. “What are you going to do? Gnaw my arm off?”
From the looks of it, the net that had captured Carol and Roger Swindon had cinched very tightly, owing to the lesser cargo, and the two men were immobilized in an unwilling bear hug.
“What happened?” Elsie shouted.
“Was this your doing?” Nico yelled at the opposing net.
“Quiet!” shouted Roger, considerably perturbed. His plan had clearly gone very south, very quickly. He began to mumble to himself loudly; Elsie made out the words “Wigman” and “Bicycle Maiden” and “Wildwood,” interspersed with the sort of swear words one usually hears emanating from grumpy biker gangs.
“As soon as we get down from here,” threatened Nico, “we’re going to give you the what-for, so help me God.”
“We won’t be getting down,” said Roger. “Or at least we won’t be getting down alive. We’re in Wildwood now, kiddies. There’s no telling what baleful souls have captured us.” He laughed an ironic sort of laugh, one that sounded as if it had been steeped in sulfuric acid. “I’d chalk this up to brigands, but the Wildwood bandits are no more. Must be some other desperate, starved creatures. No doubt we’ll all be making some tribe of cannibals a decent meal come morning.”
Elsie shivered at this suggestion. She looked down at the figures surrounding them; she found it strange that they had not advanced or said anything. “Hello?” she called out. “Who are you?”
No answer came. Roger, with some difficulty, moved his head so he could see the ground below. He made a surprised exclamation, having just now seen the silent figures watching them writhe in their nets. “It can’t be!” he shouted. “I wiped you out! I saw to it myself!”
The figures in the darkened patches between the trees gave no response.
“Show yourselves!” shouted Nico, exasperated.
Finally, after some time had passed, the sound of crunching footsteps in the dark alerted them to someone—or something—drawing closer. They all ceased their mutterings and shiftings and trained their eyes into the muddled distance, trying to make out who their captors were. Elsie grasped the vines of the net and stared out, watching carefully, breathlessly, as a humanoid shape emerged from between two wide tree trunks, bathed in the dark. She blinked her eyes rapidly, willing them to grow accustomed to this blackness, lit only by a sliver of a moon (Nico’s flashlight having fallen during the capture; its batteries had spilled out into the blanket of vines on the ground), which
cast the forest floor in a dim white sheen. A stand of ferns parted; the form walked through it slowly, a stalking creep, and Elsie’s heart rate began to quicken, her racing imagination set loose to envision whatever horrific creature it chose, bent on whatever terrible, wicked desire her mind could conjure. And suddenly, just as she’d dreamed up the worst possible fate for her and her friends—something that involved a large cast-iron pot, a fish paring knife, and, oddly enough, a kind of reptilian creature with a lightbulb for a head—the glow of the slim moon glinted against a pair of wire-rimmed eyeglasses perched on the figure’s nose, and Elsie let out a gasp.
“Curtis!” she shouted.
CHAPTER 23
The Lonely Crag
Prue must’ve fallen back asleep; she dreamed of Alexandra, the Dowager Governess. The woman stood over her, a motherly smile on her face. Alexandra reached out her hands to Prue, lovingly, and Prue was shocked to see them transform, slowly, into long vines of ivy. The horrible vision was soundtracked by the ever-present ticking noise she’d heard coming from the silent Caliph in the hold. In her dream, the ticking suddenly transformed itself into a language, clear words that were both English and not English. She woke with a start and saw that a plate of food had been slipped beneath the bars of her door. A dim light was shining through the gray of her porthole; dawn was breaking.
Prue sat up and saw that the Caliph had remained unmoving from his position, a strange statue holding guard, throughout the night. Prue grabbed the plate of food—rice and beans, it appeared—and began shoveling the savory stuff into her mouth. She was famished, she suddenly realized. Adventuring really had a habit of throwing off one’s eating schedule.