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Chapter 1
Crack in the Wall
It
was after her. Colinda could feel It breathing down her neck. It
wouldn’t be long, she knew with terrifying certainty, before It
had her. But she wouldn’t give in. She couldn’t. She was the last
hope. Yet, why she was, she couldn’t remember. Someone ran beside
her, someone dear, yet who it was—was forgotten as well. This
someone had less chance of escape than Colinda.
She willed herself
to run faster, yet she knew it wasn’t enough. She would have to use
her last resort. The one someone, she had forgotten this person too,
had taught her and had told her to use only if there was no other
escape possible. And there was no other escape now.
Her legs were giving
out. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the other stumble. Now was
the time. She stopped, muttered a few syllables, and then threw
something off of her head. As the ground gave in under her feet, she
knew they would both be safe from It, for a while at least.
Collie sat straight
up in bed, sweat drenched, heart pounding. Would these dreams ever go
away? This had been the worst one yet. She shuddered, trying to drive
It’s maniacal laughter out of her head. It was in
almost all of her dreams, and always something to be feared.
She glanced at the
clock. 6:00. She might as well get up now, although no one else would
be awake. No one, that is, except Dad, who was probably already at
work. She sighed. Why did she have such a hard time thinking of them
as her parents? Why, for her, did Mother and Father mean two people
whose faces refused to materialize in her head?
She slipped out of
bed, silently, so that she wouldn’t disturb Susan, who slept in the
bed on the other side of the room. She eased out of the room, and
tip-toed down the hall to the bathroom that she and Susan shared.
She flicked on the
light, and, for a second, just stared at her reflection. She always
stuck out like a sore thumb among the rest of the family. While they
had olive complexions, her skin was the color of pale rose petals.
While they had brown eyes, hers were the clearest blue. While they
had dark brown or black hair, hers was a soft, golden blond. And sore
was very much an accurate description, as a white scar on her left
cheek reminded her. Even after a year, her scars still pained her,
even though she had no idea where they came from.
She had no idea
where she came from. She knew that Susan’s parents—her
parents she reminded herself—had found her a year before,
unconscious in their front yard. But how she got there, but why she
had been unconscious, she had no idea.
Her scars had been
open sores at the time, and, as she had been told, she had spent
weeks in the hospital before she had woken up. Even then, she had
been unable to sate their curiosities, for she could remember only
that her name had been Collie. Funny thing was, she thought of
herself as Colinda in her dreams. At the thought of her dreams she
shuddered again.
Susan was a good
sister. It was mostly because of her that her parents—their
parents—had adopted Collie. Collie did love her new family, but had
such a hard time thinking of it as her own. Who were her real family?
Where were they? And how did Collie end up in the Liano’s front
yard? Questions like these constantly plagued her, but there seemed
to be no answers.
She pulled her
nightdress over her head, and reached for the clothes she set out the
night before. She pulled them on quickly, ran a brush through her
hair, and then headed downstairs.
She had the run of
the house right now, since she was the only one up. Mr. Liano—Dad—was
already gone, as she had expected. She was usually up at this time,
for those dreams plagued her. She had been having them as long as she
could remember—which was only a year—and she hated them. Yet,
somehow they seemed to hold some sort of key to what she had
forgotten. She seriously doubted they were memories, for they were
all far too fantastic. She did magic in many of them, like the one
that morning, and in others, others did magic. They had to be only
allegories, at most.
Perhaps something
had been chasing her a one point. Perhaps someone dear to her had
died, as she had seen in one dream. Perhaps—no, there was no way to
explain the ones that showed people being turned into animals, they
were just way to weird.
She tried to
distract herself with a book. But that only led her to contemplation
on the fact that, while she had no memories, or knowledge of science
or history, when she had woken up, she was already an advanced
reader, and her level in math had been quite high. She had a brain
full of hard facts, with no memories to soften it. She threw the book
down in frustration. Why couldn’t she concentrate this morning?
She wandered into
the kitchen to fix herself some breakfast. Toast sounded good, so she
popped two slices into the magical thing called the toaster. No,
magic didn’t exist, she reminded herself; toasters were science,
not magic.
Why did she do that?
Why was she constantly thinking things of science as of magic?
Her whole life was a
puzzle, and there seemed to be no solution. How had she gotten into
the Liano’s front yard? Why had her dress, though very badly torn,
as was her skin, been silk? Why had she spent four weeks in a coma
that didn’t really affect her, other than a slight weakness?
Somehow she knew the memory blank was due to something else. Why did
she have that memory blank?
The toaster suddenly
popped behind her, jolting her out of her dismal thoughts. She
plopped the toast onto a plate, then scraped some butter onto them
and squirted some lemon on top of that. She didn’t know why she
liked sour stuff so much, but she personally found sweet stuff
unbearable.
When she finished,
she could still hear a scratching sound. At first she ignored it and
took a big bite out of her toast, but as it grew louder, she had to
investigate.
It was coming from
the living room, so there she went. When she got there, her jaw fell
to the floor in astonishment—and horror. A large crack had appeared
on one wall, and was rapidly becoming larger. When it reached the
ceiling and floor, the two sections of the wall began moving apart,
revealing an enormous chamber that should have been impossible, as it
was an outside wall.
Without thinking,
she began walking towards it. Before she knew it, she was in it.
Suddenly, the grating sound stopped. Then it started again. This time
the walls were moving in the opposite direction. They were closing!
She tried to run out, but it was closing much faster than it had
opened, and her limbs seemed to be stuck in some sort of jelly.
Soon, she was
trapped in total darkness.
Okay, she could
admit it. Walking into a room like this one was stupid. Why had she
done it? She walked towards the other wall, away from the wall
through which she had entered, trying to get a feel for the prison in
which she had found herself in. It seemed to take forever before her
outstretched fingertips touched something solid. This seemed to be a
big room, and—this was funny, the wall seemed to be a solid stone
surface, rough and unhewn.
This was getting
weird, almost like her dreams. But it wasn’t a dream. Her name was
Collie. She was never Collie when dreaming. No. There had to be some
other, weirder reason for this. She glanced around, and saw a distant
flicker of a light, which she hadn’t seen before.
Slowly, she began
walking towards this. More carefully this time, unsure of what she
might find. Eventually she got to the unsteady flicker that was a
sorry excuse for a lamp. All she could see with it was the black
frame of the lamp, a key on a ribbon hanging from a hook in the wall,
and a doorknob.
She tried the door,
it was locked. Then she realized that the key must go with it. So,
once locating the place to do so, she inserted the key, turned it,
and turned the doorknob. This time it turned easily, and the door
swung effortlessly away from her. The scene that met her eyes could
never have been prepared for.
On one side of her
was a rushing sheet of water, a waterfall, which threw rainbows onto
the rock cliff on her other side. Her feet were on solid enough
ground, but a lovely lake surrounded her. If it hadn’t of been for
a series of stepping stones to the shore, she would have been
stranded.
Beyond the lake,
well flowered grass stretched for a ways, then was replaced by a
forest. Not a thick, foreboding forest, but a pleasant wood, full of
singing birds and such. Above her stretched a clear blue sky. The sun
was rather low in one horizon.
She removed the key
from the keyhole, intending to put it back on its hook, but the door
suddenly swung shut. She examined the cliff and didn’t even see a
crack to show where the door had been. She shrugged and put the
ribbon around her neck instead.
She began to pick
her way across the rocks, towards the shore. Suddenly, she heard
someone call her name, “Collie!” and she lost her balance and
fell in.
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