Read Online Mist & Whispers by C.M. Lucas - Free Book Online

– their bags, their phones, and to Anya’s relief, the riddle .
    She turned to the others. ‘What was that?’
    The sound of her voice seemed to shake Stephanie from her numb state, and she began to freak out. ‘OH. MY. GOD. What just happened? Where are we? How did we even get here? Where the hell did Burrow Mump just go and where did those trees come from? Oh my God! We’ve been abducted! Aliens! ’
    ‘Steph,’ Tim began, but her hysterical rant bowled right over his effort.
    ‘No, seriously, Tim, I’ve seen it on TV – people just get taken. One second they’re there and the next, hours have gone by and they’ve no idea where they’ve been or what kind of weird experiments have been done on them! Oh my God!’ she cried again, fanning her face in a panic. The bangles around her wrist clinked together repeatedly as she flapped. ‘What if they’ve put, like, little aliens inside us to grow and, like, a few days from now they just burst right out of our bellies – ’
    ‘STEPHANIE!’ Tim shouted, holding both her arms at her sides, trying to steady her. ‘Calm down. There will be a reasonable explanation for what just happened, okay? Let’s just take a minute and think about this logically.’
    Anya didn’t believe in aliens but all the same, she was looking forward to hearing Tim’s logical explanation. After a long silence she soon realised he didn’t have one.
    ‘This is just absurd,’ Michael spat, pacing around. ‘There must be someone around here somewhere. I’m going to try and find out where the blazes we are and then I’m going home. I’ve had enough! I don’t know who’s behind it or how they did it but clearly we’ve become the butt of some cruel joke!’ He stomped off into the trees, snapping twigs and pushing branches out of his way.
    ‘I suppose we better follow him,’ Anya said, and they trudged into the forest after him, Stephanie still panicking and Tim trying to calm her down.
    The forest was deathly still.
    Usually, walking around the woods in the dark would be enough to put anyone on edge, what with rustling bushes and haunting hoots amid other common wilderness sounds, but here there was only silence. Unnerving, unnatural silence.
    A ghostly grey fog hung in the gaps between the trees, making it difficult to see where they were going.
    After a good hour of walking past the same murky swamp, Anya threw her bag to the ground. ‘Michael, we’ve been walking for ages and we’re getting nowhere! Let’s just get some sleep and carry on when it’s light?’ He ignored her plea and carried on along the swamp’s edge. ‘Come on, we’ve been awake for the last twenty-four hours!’
    Michael stopped and looked to Stephanie and Tim. Anya suspected they would side with him, just as they had back in the attic room at Erimus Hall, silently. She was surprised when Tim spoke up.
    ‘We are pretty shattered.’ He looked exhausted, having only just managed to convince Stephanie that she wasn’t harbouring alien spawn. He dropped his rucksack and gestured to his much happier girlfriend to do the same.
    ‘Fine!’ Michael snapped. ‘But I’m leaving at first light. Anyone who doesn’t come with me will have to make their own way home!’ He threw his own bag down away from the others and laid his head on it like a pillow.
    ‘I think he’s still angry at me for getting us into this mess,’ Anya whispered to Stephanie as they settled themselves down to sleep.
    ‘Don’t worry. At least you didn’t end up here on your own. I’m scared enough with all of us here; could you imagine what it would be like to do this alone? No, it’s better this way. Friends should stick together.’ She turned in towards Tim and closed her eyes.
    Friends . Anya had never thought of Stephanie as a friend before; just her boss. But in that moment, surrounded by the bleakness of the unknown and eerie forest, the word gave her comfort. She closed her eyes and drifted into the world of