This trip, this escape to nature, was to be a time for clearing her mind. She’d realized she needed it when she starting debating running with Craig, kidnapping him really. That wasn’t fair to any sports scholarships he might get.Is that worth more than keeping away from his dad?In reality, she thought anything, any cost, was fine if it would keep Craig away from his father.
But now Margaret was trapped by the mangled door of the driver’s side, which had bent into the steering wheel.Leon will argue this is somehow my fault.Maggie thought about the car careening out of control, the brakes not engaging. Someone had cut the line.
Leon tried to kill us.
My son.
He tried to killmyson.
She’d tried to force the seatbelt to let loose. She’d even tried tearing at it with her teeth. Nothing worked.
So she waited. When Craig returned, she’d get checked out, and they’d run. There was no other choice now. Leon was clearly dangerous.
But then, she fell asleep or maybe passed out. She couldn’t say which really, but the sun finished setting, and her son hadn’t come back. Was he in danger? Had he collapsed? What if he had internal injuries and was lying out there in the woods dying?
She felt stronger, though, like whatever exhaustion she’d had was letting up. She shoved at the car door, smacking it over and over as if she could do what her son couldn’t.
“Craig! Where are you?” she yelled.
She needed to get out, to find her son, to get him to safety.
After a blink that made no sense, a knife was somehow in her hand. Maybe she was hallucinating, or Craig had left it there, but she’d forgotten…?
Whatever the reason, Margaret sawed through the seatbelt to get free. “Craig! Can you hear me?Craig!”
Desperation to get to her son was mounting toward a panic attack as the car door exploded outward. She looked for Craig, expecting to see him with the paramedics or police or something.
“Craig?”
Silence greeted Maggie as she lurched out—ready to crawl through the forest to find her son. She landed on her hands and knees on thepine-needle-covered ground. No one was there. No vehicles. No Craig. No one at all.
How did the door rip off?
She looked for a… bear? Nothing else she could think of other than a machine would be powerful enough to tear the door off the SUV.
As Maggie tried to brace herself on the vehicle’s wreckage, she realized it was gone. The SUV, the crushed undergrowth she’d plowed through, the broken glass—it wasallgone. All she had was the knife.
“Craig! Where are you?”
But as she climbed the hill, she discovered that she was no longer near the road either. Nothing made any sense. She couldn’t get to her son without finding help, though.
Somehow, Maggie was outside acastle. Tall spires and towers jutted into a blue sky, and balconies clung to the sides of the stone like hastily affixed iron ornaments. Windows taller than a person peppered the whole of the place in regular patterns. Some looked to be stained glass, and others were thick glass that looked opaque from here.
It wasn’t the Biltmore, which as far as she knew was the only proper castle in the state of North Carolina. This was a building that had the look of ages and ages passing. The stone exterior was worn from rain, or time, or both. It was out of place here in the North Carolina forest, and she was not sure how such a thing wasn’t on the map.
Maybe they can help find Craig… or maybe he’s here, too!
Something about that answer was wrong, but she couldn’t say what it was. Very few things made sense currently. All she knew was that she was separated from her son, and that was enough for her to press forward toward a misplaced castle in an out-of-season forest.
Because, although there was still a forest, her mangled vehicle was gone, and the trees looked different. Wrong species or whatever a person called types of trees. There was a castle, no car, and Maggie was certain something here was terribly amiss.
“Careful, now,” a man in what appeared to be some sort of historical costume said. “The trip can make you queasy.”
“My son—”
“Craig’s quite fine,” the man said. “Let’s see toyounow, Margaret, hmm?”
Maggie studied him as he helped her into a wooden wheelchair and rolled her along the bumpy ground right into the castle. Tall, muscular enough to rescue people from accidents—but he wasn’t wearing a paramedic or firefighter’s gear. He had on what looked like a graduation robe, sans hood.Was there a university here?He certainly didn’t look like any professor she’d ever had with a tattoo on his throat and hipster hairstyle.
