The Slip was warm and moist. Life unfolded and flowered. Apple blossoms drifted through the air and coated the forest floor in false snow. Sunlight filtered through a green canopy. Among the gnarled roots and discarded petals, a squirrel carried out his spring chores. Bara longed to stay where she was until dream-close, but that wasn’t the purpose of a Slip visit. She left the soft shade and found a well-trodden path. Her slipper-shod feet walked upon a patchwork of gold and brown.

A familiar sound joined the chirps and chatter of birds—girlish giggles. Cassandra and Louise. They were the demon’s first victims. Brynndalin had sucked the life energy from their teenage bodies and left behind dead husks. Their psyches inhabited the Slip. They were horrible bullies alive. Dead, they continued to taunt Bara, but now she deserved it. She’d set Brynndalin free and set in motion the events that led to their death. Still, she’d have welcomed the terrible twins at their worse, rather than greet the figure who stood before her now.

From the trees stepped a girl of four or five, dressed in a red peat coat. Heart-shaped dark glasses with white frames covered her eyes. Or where her eyes should have been. Under those glasses were empty sockets.

Here was a doppelgänger. Bara’s younger self, but not really. The tot had the same red-gold hair and the same determined set to her small chin. That was where the similarities ended. This was the Wisp—Brynndalin—the demon. She took many forms in the Slip: wolf, spectre, anything the dreamer feared. Bara’s eye-less younger self was a favorite.

Brynndalin didn’t speak but offered a plump hand. From a real child, the gesture would have softened the heart. Bara felt only fear and revulsion but did take the hand. They left the path and traveled east, cutting through undergrowth and heading deeper into the forest, deeper into the Slip.

Ferocious gusts replaced the warm breeze. Saplings bent near in half. Trees were robbed of their young sprouts. Branches and leaves littered the forest floor. The demon led the way. Brynndalin gripped her hand like iron and pulled her along like steam.

Bara brought up her free hand to protect her face. Shins were banged and ankles twisted. There was no protesting and no retreat. An open mouth meant breath stolen by the wind and the taste of dirt and debris on the tongue. Only their hair protested. Two heads of red-gold blew bedraggled flags and marked their progress through the forest.

Their journey came to an end in a clearing.

Bodies of fallen giants—tress ripped from their roots—lay across the forest floor. The largest blocked the way. Brynndalin let go of Bara’s hand. She removed her glasses to reveal those empty black sockets. Her bow-shaped mouth turned up at one corner. Like the child she pretended, she stuck out her tongue and sputtered a silver-spittled raspberry. Beginning at her face and down into her torso and legs, she dissolved into the vapor. Droplets turned to silver dust. The wind picked up and blew the dust away, a metallic sandstorm in the forest.

Brynndalin was gone but the nightmare wasn’t over. Bara rounded the largest fallen tree to its exposed root system and found what she always found, the statue of her mother, ever immovable. Below on the surface of a small pond was its fleshy reflection. Bara reached out to the statue and felt for warmth. Only cold. She knelt next to the pond’s edge and skimmed her hand across the surface. The mirrored image fractured into a fit of ripples. The water stilled. Beth Cavanagh’s reflection reformed and once again mouthed the same two words, over and over.

Save me. If only Bara knew how.

***