CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 1

Down.

Down.

Down.

Rachel fell into the dark hole that encapsulated her body. She spiraled around and around as she twirled and somersaulted through the never-ending blackness. She couldn’t help but think of herself as Alice from

Alice in Wonderland

, one of her favorite movies. Visions of the Cheshire Cat, The Hatter, the Queen of Hearts, and the Mock Turtle swirled around in her head. She didn’t know what would be on the ground when she landed, but if it were anything like the fantasy world Alice landed in, she was in for a real surprise.

As she continued to fall, now gaining immense speed, her hair blowing around and around in her face, she began to see a strobe light flashing in front of her eyes. She blinked and rubbed her face, not knowing what to make of it. The light continued to get brighter and brighter and then it started changing colors from white, to blue, to dark red. Then the strobe stopped and the light became constant and as bright as ever. It was so bright she had to squint her eyes to keep them open.

THUD.

Rachel hit the ground with a bang and a huge cloud of dust rose around her. She sat there for a moment trying to pull herself together. She pulled her ratty, wind-blown hair out of her face and while coughing loudly she swatted away the dust that clouded her lungs. As she looked around she realized that the red light had disappeared and she was left sitting in a dimly lit room with no windows or doors.

She blinked her eyes, trying to make sense of the space she had just landed in. She pinched her skin quickly to make sure this wasn’t a dream since it all seemed too improbable to really be happening.

“OUCH!” she yelled at herself after the pinch.

The echo of her voice chimed off the walls of the room and she heard it reverberate over a hundred times.

“Hello!” she called out, listening to each echo as it went from loud to soft around her.

“Is anyone there?” she asked, listening for a response other than her own.

She stood up and looked around, wondering how she didn’t get hurt having fallen so fast and landed so hard onto the stone floor. She dusted herself off and noticed a few scrapes on her legs and blood oozing from one of them. She quickly touched it with her pointer finger and licked it away, enjoying the taste of her own blood. She slowly straightened, feeling her bones and muscles aching from the fall, but not enough to keep her down. She arched her back backwards into a stretch and held it for a few moments to get the kinks out. She then spun both of her arms around in circles and stretched them out behind her neck, trying to regain a sense of stability in her body.

Suddenly, the walls around her, which were close together and made her feel a little claustrophobic, began expanding. The room had quadrupled in size within minutes and showed no sign of stopping.

Out, out, out they stretched until they suddenly came to a screeching halt and a loud beeping noise rang in her ears. She wanted to hide in a safe corner of the room, but there wasn’t one. She couldn’t do anything but couch her body into a tuck position on the floor and wait for the beeping to stop and the walls to remain steady. She began to feel a bit frightened of this “wonderland” space she’d fallen into but knew deep down in her gut that these feelings would only inhibit her efforts to successfully find Benji and to make it out alive.

As the room became still and silent again she knew this was her only time to make her move. She couldn’t just sit there all day, she had to get up and find Benji. She stood back up on her feet and began looking around at the four walls, each made of grey-colored stone with two small flickering lanterns in the center of each wall. The floor was bare with only the same stone beneath her. There were no rugs or carpeting, but then again she didn’t expect there to be since she’d fallen into a hole in the earth. She didn’t expect it to be furnished like a

Martha Stewart Living

magazine.

She didn’t know which way to turn, as there was nowhere to go but up, and just as she looked up, the ceiling hole where she’d fallen closed above her head. It sounded as if it were made of a manhole cover as it scratched its way closed.

Now, standing in the near darkness, she waited and listened for any signs of life or movement around her. She walked over to one of the walls and looked at it. She then reached her hand out to touch the stone with the tips of her fingers. As she did this her fingers touched the sharp, cold stone and then her hand went straight through the wall. She put her hand out further and watched as her arm went through the wall as well. She outstretched her other hand and it too went through. She tried this with her feet and her legs as well, but then pulled them back in out of fear she’d fall again into another strange room or land with no way out.

She waited for a moment and then thought she had nothing to lose. If she didn’t go through the wall to see what was on the other side she’d be stuck in this room forever alone. She couldn’t bear the thought of it and leaped forward with her eyes closed through the stone wall, praying that there was something or someone on the other side.

When she opened her eyes on the other side of the wall she was glad to realize that she had not fallen or gotten hurt like she anticipated she would. She was okay. Her body was intact and her skin was not bleeding as it had been from the long fall down the rabbit hole.

She looked around at her new surroundings and saw it was a long hall of mirrors. She felt dizzy looking into them, as if she were in the funhouse at Rye Playland. Some mirrors were wavy and some moved in circles around her. She didn’t know if this room was made to disorient its visitors but it was surely disorienting her.

Then she heard footsteps running in the distance and quickly turned her head to see who and what it was. She couldn’t believe her eyes. It was Benji running through the end of the mirrored hall and into the blackness that followed it.

“Benji!” Rachel yelled.

She waited for him to reply, but he didn’t.

“Benji! Turn around, it’s me!” she said again, hoping for him to reappear.

“Come back! I’m here to save you!” Rachel said.

The room went silent and the sounds of his footsteps were no longer audible. She couldn’t understand where he’d gone so quickly and why he didn’t turn around once she yelled his name. Did he not hear her? she thought to herself. Or maybe he was ignoring her, or better yet, maybe he thought she was an intruder or a person of great danger and it was she he was running from not realizing it was his beloved.

In any event, she knew she had to follow him. She started walking down the hall where she had heard the footsteps and seen a glimpse of Benji, but the mirrors around her kept moving and she began to fear she’d gone the wrong way. She couldn’t tell if she was going right, left, forward or backward as she started moving through the space. She began to feel dizzy as she saw her reflection rotate around her.

As she headed toward the end of the hall where she thought she saw Benji, she realized she had gone around and around in a giant circle and she’d gotten nowhere. She feared that perhaps she hadn’t seen him after all, and it was all a figment of her imagination.

Then she heard the footsteps again coming from the other end of the mirrored hall.

“Benji!” she yelled out before she even turned around to see who it was.

She quickly turned her head to see if it was him, and there he was, standing at the end of the hall, his reflection shining back at her in all the mirrors. She couldn’t tell which was him and which was his reflection. Either way, she had spotted him.

He turned and looked her way.

“Rachel?” Benji said in a questioning voice.

“Benji! It’s me!”

“What are you doing here? I told you not to follow me!” Benji said, running toward her.

“How could I not follow you down? Did you think I would leave you to die here alone? I can’t be without you. I love you!” Rachel yelled running toward him.

“It’s dangerous down here!” Benji said. “Be careful!”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“You shouldn’t have come down here!” he yelled back at her in what sounded like an angry voice.

“I thought you’d be happy to see me!” Rachel said.

“How can I be happy to see you when you are now in danger? You are not safe down here, you must get out of here. NOW!” Benji replied.

“But Benji, I’m not going to leave you!” she said, still running in his direction.

She couldn’t believe how long the hall was as she huffed and puffed, out of breath, toward Benji. It was as if she was running but getting nowhere.

“YOU TWO! You better get out of here or else…” a loud booming voice came over a loudspeaker.

Rachel stopped in her tracks and so did Benji. She looked at him, not knowing what to do.

“Who’s that?” Rachel asked quietly.

“I don’t know who he is, but I can assure you, he’s not a friend to us,” Benji replied quickly.

“GO YOUR OWN SEPARATE WAYS!” the voice repeated loudly over the speaker.

“Benji! NO! I can’t leave you!” Rachel yelled out.

She could barely control herself and her emotions at this point. She’d been through way too much to leave him now and give up on their future together. For all she knew this might be the last time she’d ever see him.

“You have to go, Rachel. I’ll be fine…I hope,” Benji said to her with an outstretched hand. “I love you. That is all you need to know!”

“I’m not leaving you!” Rachel said.

“IT’S NOT YOUR OPTION, RACHEL. YOU MUST GO!” the voice said, as if part of their conversation.

“Who are you?” Rachel yelled back into the air.

She didn’t see anybody there aside from Benji and couldn’t understand where this voice was coming from.

“Who are you?” she repeated.

“THAT IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS,” the voice said back in an ominous tone.

“Rachel, this is not the time to talk back. You have to leave!” Benji cried out.

Then, all of a sudden, as if it were all a mirage, Benji let out a yell and fell through a hole in the floor. The echo of his voice filled the air as he fell farther and farther out of her sight. She ran toward the hole but by the time she had gotten there, his echo had died and the hole closed as if it had never happened.

“Benji?” she yelled out toward the floor. She knelt down over the hole and started touching it with her hands, crying and banging on it to open.

“Open up!” she cried. “Benji! I need you.”

“BENJI IS GONE!” the voice rang out.

“He’s not gone!” Rachel yelled back. “Please let me see him again!” she begged. “Please! You don’t understand.”

“I UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING!” the voice said. “YOU MUST GO NOW, RACHEL!”

“Where?” she asked.

She felt weird asking a strange voice such important life questions, but she knew he was her only hope now. Maybe he was not all that bad and maybe he was just trying to help? She could only let herself think of the positive in this crazy situation.

Then, all the mirrors around her fell to the floor and shattered into millions of tiny little pieces.

“What’s happening?” she shouted, trying to avoid getting cut on the glass that surrounded her body.

“THIS IS A WARNING…” the voice said. “DON’T LET ME TELL YOU AGAIN. YOU MUST GET OUT OF HERE!”

She looked around at the walls which stood bare around her and then looked down at the glass beneath her feet. She knew she couldn’t walk away if she wanted to. She was practically stuck on the few inches beneath her feet with no glass. If she moved in any direction she would surely mutilate her feet and legs. Standing there in a panic she began to cry. She knew she was going to be stuck here forever and possibly die here.

She couldn’t believe it. One moment she was only feet away from the love of her life and the next she was standing alone with no sign of Benji. She replayed the past few minutes over and over in her head and thought about what she should have done differently. If only she had run into his arms they might be together at this moment. Maybe she would have fallen down with him instead of standing here amongst the shattered mirrors alone. She was getting angry with herself as she thought about it and knew she had made a huge mistake. How could she have been so close to him and let him escape her yet again? It was as if their love were a forbidden fruit and she was never to obtain it.

“GO!” the voice yelled again. “YOU MUST LEAVE!”

“Where?” Rachel said, motioning to the floor around her.

Then as if by a pure miracle the ceiling opened and a bright shining light appeared above her.

“YOU MUST GO UP,” the voice said.

Rachel felt a strong current pass through the room she was standing in and her hair began to blow strongly upward. The current started swirling the shards of mirror up in the shape of a twister yet miraculously none of the pieces hit her as they left the room. Then, once the room was clean again, the current grew even stronger and lifted her out of the room, swirling and twisting back through a long bright tunnel up toward the clouds. She could see the sky at the end of the tunnel and hoped and prayed that she would be okay when she emerged. The sound of the wind surrounded her as she continued to spiral her way through. Then she felt the current die down as she neared the bright light at the end.

She was free. The tunnel had closed and she stood on a patch of grass that sat next to her family’s mausoleum. She looked around her and saw no signs of broken mirrors and no signs of the tunnel she’d just come out of. She looked around as if it were all a dream although she knew that it wasn’t. She didn’t know what to do now, and then, in the distance she heard a voice calling her name. She turned around and couldn’t believe who it was. There before her was the face of her grandmother.