Running through the woods at night wasn't anything like Hollywood would like the gullible viewers to believe. There is no creepy moonlight streaming through the gnarly branches, illuminating light fog around the uneven, bumpy ground, on which the female protagonist always inevitably trips. Reality is a silent, inky darkness, with trees so close to each other that a run is more of a hurried stumble so as not to break one's nose on the rough bark.
But what choice did she have, with that THING following right on her heels? She stumbled through the forest, the crunch of dry brush and her heavy, panicked breaths her only company, until even they lost their sound. She couldn't fathom stopping now, couldn't bear the thought of IT catching up to her and…
She almost fell forward as the tree canopy opened up and a clearing emerged. It was still dark, but distant starlight managed to illuminate some of her surroundings. Inadvertently slowing down, she tried to get her bearings and froze.
It was that tree again. Right in the middle of this surprisingly spacious patch of grass grew an enormous gnarly yew, so wide it must have been over a thousand years old. Its evergreen branches swayed gently in the night breeze, and yet made no sound. This entire forest was deadly silent in anticipation of… something.
She felt a shift behind her, which pulled her out of her stupor and got her legging it across the clearing. Keeping her head down was the plan, watching for any stray roots lest she trips and IT catches up to her. However, she thought she saw something out of the corner of her eye. At most a few meters away from the trunk, she felt this strange compulsion driving her to take shelter under the ever-expanding branches, probably a remnant of her ancestors performing religious rites in these sacred places. Yew trees are well known for standing through the test of time, their hollowed dead trunks perforated with new life again and again through the centuries.
Something wet dropped on her head, and she instinctively tried to brush it off. Looking down, her hand contained the only colour she had seen in this cursed place: blood red. She immediately looked up in surprise to see the previously black and white branches blooming with small berries, some of which began to drop around her in a bloody rain. However, she knew the red part of the berries wasn't the poison; it was the seeds. She had been to enough yew trees to hear that particular warning from the groundskeepers.
Being pelted from above by tiny red parcels, she was almost at the trunk now. Her feet slowly got mired in sticky mud, making running even more difficult than back in the thicket. The THING chasing her, however, seemed to slow down its pursuit, keeping a distance from this tree. Sighing with relief, she slowed down for a moment, her heart pounding in her chest like a racehorse. She leaned her forehead to the tree, hugging her salvation and began to laugh, tears streaming down her face and dropping down into the red pool of mud and juice around her feet.
But… something wasn't right. The tiny voice inside her head, the one that makes your skin prickle before lightning strikes a tree next to you, or the one causing you to flinch right before something drops where you stood, kept ringing like tinnitus in her ears.
"Remember, kids, the seed is the poison, not the red berry around it. You can try some yourself if you are brave! See how the juice is clear and gloopy? It's surprisingly very sweet. We sometimes call them snottleberries."
Her laughter died down as she processed that memory. The blood red mud around her, and the pellets colouring her platinum blond hair crimson, were still coming down like some sort of rain from the evil dead. She tried to back away in horror when the ground gave, and she dropped, pulled down by this mud, her only pocket of vision rapidly moving away. And the last thing she saw was the purple light of dawn beginning to illuminate the night sky.
***
Nastya woke up from a sharp pain in her head. Her bleary vision finally focused on the fact that her feet were tangled up above her and her upper body resting on the wooden floor of her bedroom. The first light of dawn barely lit the room, reflected from her jewellery tree, and the silver projected specks of light throughout the lavishly decorated walls. Like a disco ball or a church window.
It took a few seconds to maneuver herself upright and catch her breath. She felt nauseous and unsettled, having had barely three hours of sleep. The pounding headache was exacerbated by the windchime swaying by the window. She stumbled towards it, tripping over the cardboard boxes and swearing under her breath and yanked it from its perch. It had pink butterflies and unicorns circling the fuchsia metal pipes. Nastya leaned on the windowsill and tossed the horrid thing into an open box by the vanity. The previous owner of this room was probably 8 years old, so it wasn't surprising that the décor would be garish.
She crossed her hands around her chest, shivering in the early morning chill of what was lining up to be a cold and dreary day. Her thin nightgown was barely shielding her from the elements, but she wouldn't be caught dead in cotton pyjamas. After a brief respite, she shuffled over to the vanity and began to get ready for the day.
Before any physical ablutions were performed, Nastya opened a decorative Russian wooden box and pulled out her old fraying tarot cards. The edges felt like velvet, and the colours in the images were lightly faded, but they still retained their character. This deck was one of the only things left of her mother, and Nastya stroked the backs of the cards gently three times before shuffling them for a reading, as she had done for nearly a decade. The back was a matte black print with a bright red flower design, similar to the box they were stored in. She emptied her mind and let her hands do the work, relaxing into a meditative state and waiting for the right time, focusing on that bizarre dream. Suddenly, a card flipped out of her shuffling hands and practically hopped onto the table before her, face down.
"Eager to talk today, aren't you?" She chuckled as she flipped the errant card over.
Upright Tower.
Nastya winced, knowing that this card is one of the few irrefutable "bad" cards in a tarot deck. Its standard meaning is the sudden, violent, external world-breaking event. The image showed the wooden bell tower of Moscow burning during the Napoleonic wars and people falling from it, wreathed in flame.
She shuffled the card back in the deck. Maybe her dream had unsettled her so much that it affected her daily reading. This sort of thing happened often. She shook off the nightmare with a whole-body shiver and decided to try again.
Shuffling for a good two minutes, she waited once again for a card to flip out. This time, she closed her eyes. She heard the tell-tale flip and opened them, only to see the same card staring back at her, now face up.
"...OK. Pretty insistent. Let's try one last time, shall we?"
Nastya put down her deck and stood up. She spent around 15 minutes tidying up her bedroom, still ransacked from all the urgent unpacking she had done yesterday. A few squats and jumping jacks later, she returned to her deck rejuvenated and awake to try one last time.
Same shuffle, same flip. Please… please be a fluke.
She heard the flap of the card landing on her vanity table. She opened one eye to peek at the result, dreading the knowledge that it would once again be…
The Tower.
Nastya sat there in silence for a few minutes before combing her fingers through her hair and breathing in heavily. Three out of three. No doubt about the outcome. The cards have spoken, and their meaning is a radical, horrifying change.
By the time she tidied the room and herself up enough to head down for breakfast, it was 7 in the morning. The table was fully set for two and brimming with various breakfast staples from Europe. There were the scrambled eggs, soft-boiled eggs with "soldiers" on the side, English style, bacon, cutlets, pirogi, sauerkraut and all sorts of small but nutritious dishes, on elaborate decorative plates. Anita outdid herself today.
As Nastya sat down, Anatoly leaned over to her right and poured a full mug of coffee, with two sugar cubes obtained from a silvered sugar pot. She was impressed with how the staff adapted to the new house so swiftly, considering they had to move quite rapidly into this middle-of-nowhere Maryland town. She took a mental note to allocate a bonus for this month's pay to all the staff. She began eating in silence, as was her custom in the morning, until Nikolai finally sauntered in wearing a dressing gown.
His hair, even uncombed, lay in perfect long silver-blonde strands across his shoulder, and his fluid gait did not reflect the fact that he must have just woken up. Nastya, fully dressed, combed and made up, still looked like an exhausted housekeeper compared to Nikolai's nonchalant I-just-woke-up-like-this vibe. Their eyes met, and he smiled. It had been a while since she saw him smile genuinely, and Nastya revelled in the sudden feeling of closeness and warmth.
"Sleep well?" he asked in Russian and began heaping his plate with food.
"Not really," she answered while sipping her coffee.
Nikolai frowned in her direction but returned to his seat with a full plate regardless. He didn't press the issue, knowing that she would eventually formulate the perfect sentence and get to the point.
"A vivid nightmare…" she explained, seeing a nod of acknowledgement from Nik and continued, "...and a relevant tarot."
Nikolai sighed. "You know it's your fault you stress yourself out, right? These tarot readings just make you more paranoid."
"I got the Tower."
Nikolai froze mid-bite.
"That's… one of the bad ones?"
"Yes, dummy."
They ate in silence for a few minutes before Nikolai eventually put down his plate and looked up at her.
"You do know this is all fake? Don't stress out over a random chance…"
"I got it three times in a row…" She retorted, putting her cup down on the table a little too hard, slipping up in her iron self-control. "That cannot be a simple coincidence."
She felt her twin's stare without having to look up at him. The coffee, black and viscous, swirled in her cup as she contemplated the gravity of that statement. She heard a light sigh and clanking of cutlery once more. Apparently, Nikolai was done trying to convince her otherwise.
"How about you? Sleep well?"
A moment of hesitation. That didn't bode well at all.
"Fine," Nikolai answered, while helping himself to seconds. Nastya knew that this particular answer carried a lot of meaning for her brother. It could be straightforward some of the time, but mostly it belied a plethora of not-actually-fine feelings that were just waiting to be dug up. But for once, she did not feel like picking up the proverbial shovel.
"Good. I am glad we are both ready for the new school year".
About half an hour later, she found herself bundling into the back of a black BMW, with their chauffeur, Alexei, adjusting the mirrors. Nikolai, now fully dressed and groomed, looked like he was ready to go to a red carpet. Even though he was just wearing a simple white button-down shirt and black trousers. In contrast, Nastya had her plaid skirt, thick tights, ankle boots (with heel, of course) and a vintage Victorian-style blouse. Which in turn was covered in her favourite mink coat.
Nikolai threw a glance at her outfit and frowned.
"Aren't you going to cook in that?"
Nastya looked back at him, confused. "What are you talking about? It's September, and we aren't in California anymore. How are YOU not freezing?"
Nikolai stared at her in that uncanny way he did, head slightly tilted, perfectly messy hair tumbling down one shoulder, an elegant eyebrow lifted in question.
"I think you might be coming down with a cold. It's like… 20 degrees outside."
Nastya stared back at her brother incredulously. Did he not feel the constant chill wind even when standing in the sun? She shivered slightly and tugged the coat closer to herself.
Maybe this cold, dreadful feeling she has been having all morning was the aftereffects of her dream. Or maybe it was a physical ailment. She smirked, knowing that the latter was her wishful thinking.
They drove to the school in silence, both of them staring out the windows and taking in the scenery. They have not had the chance to see Burkisttville by day, as their hasty relocation took most of the evening and night. The dense foliage by the side of the road eerily reminded her of the woods in her dream. She wondered if she would find the yew tree clearing here as well. She pulled out her phone and began a cursory search to see if any protected trees were registered in the area, but found nothing. She could feel occasional glances from Nikolai, but he knew better than to disturb her when she was this focused.
In no time at all, they pulled up to their new high school. They could see from behind the tinted windows that all the other students were gawking at the fancy car, and some were taking pictures. She shared an unspoken look with Nikolai. Their new start at this school would probably be the same, but they were both hoping the ending would be vastly different from the shitshow in California.