Dead Voices

Mr. Voland, Ollie wanted to say. Help me. But she didn’t say it. Something about his slow, satisfied smile choked the words back down her throat. Instead she said, “Where am I?”

“Behind the mirror,” he said. He was still smiling gently.

Behind him, Ollie glimpsed Coco frantically trying to shake her mother awake. But Ms. Zintner didn’t wake up. Brian was trying to do the same thing to Ollie’s dad.

He didn’t wake up either.

Cold terror filled Ollie. She stared at Mr. Voland. He smiled back at her. “Is my dad okay?” she whispered.

“Just asleep,” he said. “But he will not wake. Not tonight.”

Ollie’s mouth was completely, utterly dry. “You,” she croaked, licked her lips, tried again. “Who are you?”

“I think you know,” he said.

She did. She didn’t want to. She didn’t want it to be true. But it was, and she did. Stammering, Ollie said

, “But you—you were different. The last time.”

His smile was colder than the freezing lodge. “I never look the same twice,” he said. “Where would the fun be in that?”

Now she recognized the smile. Ollie, if she lived to be a hundred, could never forget that particular smile. How could she not have known? How could she not have recognized him the second he walked into the lodge?

But maybe he hadn’t wanted her to recognize him. Maybe he knew how to hide somehow.

“You—” Ollie could barely bring herself to say it. “You’re Seth. You’re the smiling man.”

Seth laughed, and it was Mr. Voland’s warm, happy laugh. But then his smile widened until it wasn’t a smile at all but a specter’s gruesome grin, all teeth. “Discovered at last,” he said. “I wondered how long it would take you.”

Ollie slammed the side of her fist against the glass of the mirror. But it was completely solid under her hand, and she was on the wrong side of it. Mr. Voland—Seth—didn’t even flinch. “No one outwits me, my girl,” he went on. “And you didn’t outwit me last time, mind you. You had help.” He raised his hand. Something small and dark dangled limp between his fingers. It was her mother’s watch. He’d taken it—when had he taken it? Ollie touched her wrist, felt the bare skin where her watch had been. She thought of reaching for the Ouija board in the dark, so distracted by the slide of the letters that she hadn’t noticed . . .

“It was you!” Ollie snapped, realizing. “You stopped her from talking to me! You stopped my watch from working! She was saying BEWARE about you. You scared us, you tricked us, you lied to us! The whole time, everything that’s been happening here, it’s been you.”

Seth bowed to her in a theatrical and old-fashioned kind of acknowledgment. “Of course it was me. Well, except for Mother Hemlock. She’s real enough.” He grinned. “Such a helpful old thing, that hag. But mostly it was me.”

Ollie slammed the side of her fist against the mirror again. “Give me my watch! Give it back! Give it back!”

“Not so fast, my girl,” said Seth, coming close to the mirror, speaking low and fast and deadly earnest. “We are going to play our game again. The game of wits. The game you cheated at last time in the corn maze. With the help of this very watch.” He held it up again between two fingers. “This time you won’t have your cheat. And you have until dawn to find your way back through the mirror. If you don’t find your way, well, then you’ll stay right where you are.”

She was silent, staring at him in horror.

Seth continued: “Your friends can try to help you if they choose, but if they help and you fail, then you all will be trapped on the other side of the mirror. However, if your friends lie back down and sleep like good little boys and girls, then they will wake up safe and sound with no memory of you at all, and everyone will go home safely.”

Seth rubbed his hands together, looking absolutely delighted with his game. “What will they choose, what will they choose?” he singsonged.

Ollie could hardly speak around her dry throat and tongue. “And,” she whispered. “And my dad? What will happen to him?”

Seth pursed his lips. “Oh,” he said. “No grown-ups allowed in this game, my dear. The adults, all four of them, will sleep until dawn. If your friends play and you lose, then the grown-ups will wake up three children short with no idea what happened to you. So sad. Another tragedy in Hemlock Lodge.” Seth wiped a theatrical tear from his eye. Ollie hated him like she’d never hated anyone in her entire life.

“However, if your friends go quietly to sleep,” he continued, “then I will make sure that the adults forget all about you. Your father won’t be in the least unhappy. You will just be his little dead daughter, who died along with his wife in a tragic plane crash. He will go home and marry Coco’s mother. Your friend Coco will be his little daughter. He will live long and happily.”

“And if I beat you?” Ollie asked, wishing her voice sounded strong and fierce instead of being a thin, appalled croak.

A lifted brow from Seth. “You won’t beat me,” he said gently. “It’s not impossible, mind you; it wouldn’t be a game if winning were impossible. Highly unlikely, however. Of course, should the unlikely happen, your prize is to be restored to the lodge, storm over, the watch on your wrist, your friends with you, all safe and sound. It won’t happen. But that is the prize. In the meantime, I can be generous. You may have one minute to talk to your friends. Say goodbye and all. Convince them not to help you, lest they be trapped there with you. Then—let the game begin.” His smile was wide and joyous, the way a wolf grins, pouncing. With a neat dramatic gesture, he fastened Ollie’s watch to his own wrist. “May the best of us win.”

Ollie, shocked, afraid, wanted to scream at him in fury and terror, to slam her fist on the mirror again. But she held herself very still and breathed. In, out.

Ollie’s mom had taken her to do scary things all the time when Ollie was little. Climbing huge trees. Climbing boulders. Jumping off rocks into deep water. Olivia, she would say, when you’re scared, it means you’re thinking of the future. You’re thinking of what might happen. If you’re doing something risky, you can’t think of the future. You must only think of now. And if you only think of now, then you won’t be scared.