"Run!" Jace grabbed Aurora's hoodie and shoved her backwards. "Don't stand there looking at it, just run."
Aurora tried to run on the wet slippery road. Her mind, which was used to video games, was yelling at her to retreat because the enemy was attacking, but her body felt very slow. She turned and ran back in the direction they came from, towards the big, open campus lawn. Behind her, the weeping woman screamed again, this time, it was an angry wet sound. Aurora could hear the heavy noise of wet feet hitting the wet floor. The monster was fast, much faster than an ordinary human could be.
"Left!" Jace yelled from behind her. "Go through the Architecture building!"
"It's blocked! There's a fence" Aurora shouted back, breathing heavily. She remembered the campus map from the real world. The Architecture building had been closed down for construction.
"This is no longer the real world. There's no obstruction." As if knowing what she was thinking, Ben answered her.
Aurora turned, with her shoe lace sliding on the gravel. Jace was right, in the version of this scary University, the construction fence was not on the ground, it was floating high up in the air instead, twisting like a ribbon. The path was open, but the ground looked strange. The pavement was broken, showing dark, throbbing lines beneath the concrete.
"Jump past the cracks, and don't step on the veins." Jace warned, swinging his baseball bat widely to keep the monster away.
Aurora leaped over a crack in the ground. She landed hard and kept running. She quickly looked over her shoulder, the weeping woman was catching up. The flare Jace dropped on it was fading away already. The monster didn't even need its eyes to find them, it was following the sound of their heart, their running footsteps, and their heavy breathing. It wasn't even alone anymore. From the dark areas near the floating fence, other shapes were pulling away from the wall. They were called Hollows, and looked like flat, black paper cutouts until they turned sideways. They had no faces, just fuzzy noises where a face should be. They started moving quickly, as they were drawn by the loud noise.
"There's a crowd of them!" Aurora choked out as she called out. "jace, they're too many."
"I know!" Jace was breathing heavily now, already getting tired from fending off the monsters. "Just get to the grass." he continued.
They burst out of the alley and onto the main lawn. In the real world, students played Frisbee and rested here. The grass here was gray, and it was moving. Each blade of grass was about a foot long, sharp like a needle, and swayed even without wind. As Aurora's shoe touched the grass, the blades turned towards her.
Snick.
A blade cut out, slicing out her jeans.
"Jace!" Aurora screamed, stumbling. "The grass.... they bite???"
"Make your knees high, lift your legs and don't drag your feet;" Jace ordered.
It was like a nightmare obstacle course. She had to run fast while lifting her knees high to reach her chest with every step , like a tough training exercise. Every time her foot hit the ground, she felt the small, sharp blades trying to cut through her shoelaces. Chesh, the two-tailed cat, had no trouble. The cat bounced across the tops of the grass blade, looking at them with eyes that seemed to say, 'Hurry up, slowpokes.'
"Chesh help us!" Aurora cried out, almost losing her mind from fear.
The cat stopped, and turned its two tails towards the weeping woman chasing them. The tails moved quickly, and a puff of black smoke shot out, instantly glowing into a cloud of darkness. The weeping woman ran into the smoke and shrieked again, sounding confused.
"Good kitty." Jace gasped. "Okay, we bought ten seconds. The library is just across the...."
He stopped, and Aurora ran into his back.
"Why are we stopping?" she asked.
"Look," Jace whispered, pointing his bat ahead. Between them and the Library, stood the fountain. In reality, it was a bronze statue of the university founder holding a book. Here, the status had no head. And instead of water, the fountain was spraying out thick, black liquid that floated upwards. It went against gravity as it was twisted into the purple sky.
But that was not the real problem. The problem was the person standing on the edge of the fountain. He was wearing a plaid shirt and had messy brown hair. He was facing away from them, looking up at the black water spinning above.
"Ben?" Aurora whispered. The name came out before she could stop it.
The figure didn't move.
"Aurora, don't," Jace warned, grabbing her arm. His voice was quiet and urgent. "That's not him. Look at how he's standing, look at his hands."
Aurora focused her eyes in the darkness. The figure's arms were too long, they hung down past his knees. And his fingers.... they were moving quickly in a steady, strange way, they were tapping against his legs as if he was playing a piano.
It's a monster with his face." Jace hissed. "It's a trap, let's go around."
"But what if it's not?" Aurora felt a tear run down her cheek. "What if his arms look like that because they're broken?" she continued.
The logical part of her brain knew that Jace was right. The body parts were too long to be human. But the heart is a foolish stubborn organ.
"Ben!" Aurora called loudly.
Jace swore in frustration. "Are you trying to get us killed?"
The figure at the fountain stopped moving its fingers. Then at a slow terrifying pace, it began to turn around.
It had Ben's face, his eyes, and it even had that small scar on his chin from where he fell off a bike in third grade. But when it smiled, the smile kept stretching. It went past his ears, nearly splitting his head in two.
"Aurora," the thing said. It did not use Ben's voice, it used a perfect copy of her voice from the car ride. "I think someone broke into my room."
"That's not Ben."Aurora muttered, disappointed by the scene before her. The hope in her chest broke, replaced by cold, sharp sickness.
"Run!" Jace pulled her to the right.
The monster with the face of Ben gave out a loud cry that sounded like an alarm and leaped forward. It crossed the distance of the fountain in one jump, landing on all fours in the biting grass. It crawled towards them like a spider, its limbs falling widely.
"To the Moat." Jace yelled. "The mirror will slow it down"
They ran so fast. Aurora's lungs were burning so badly that she tasted blood. The pain in her hips from her earlier fall ached badly as she was overwhelmed by the pure terror of being eaten by these monsters. The Library fortress loomed ahead. It was a huge rough concrete building protected by glowing blue barriers. But separating them from the safety was a Moat. It wasn't water, it was a twenty foot wide ditch filled with thousands of sharp mirror pieces. Some were very big, like door frames. Others were tiny splinters. They moved and scraped against each other with a sound like bones being crushed.
"How do we cross?" Aurora asked over the wind.
"The path of vanity!" Jace pointed forward.
Among the moving sea of broken glass, there was one narrowed path made of smooth, unbroken mirror. It was like a twisting, dangerous bridge that looked slippery as ice.
"Don't look down." Jace warned. "If you see your reflections, don't look into his eyes, just run."
Jace went first. He jumped onto the mirror path, balancing himself with his bat like a tightrope walked. Aurora followed after him. Her shoe hit the smooth surface, it was slippery. She stumbled, swinging her arms to keep balance. Below her, in the jagged ditch, the broken pieces reflected parts of her. An eye here, a hand there, all were looking at her and they were all whispering.
Join us.... fall... sleep...
"Don't listen!" Jace yelled from ahead, he was already halfway across.
Behind them, the monster with the face of Ben reached the edge of the moat. It walked back and forth, hissing.it seemed scared of the mirrors.
"It can't cross. It seems as if it hates reflection." Aurora realised, and a sudden feeling of relief washed over her.
"Don't get overconfident... move!" Jace shouted.
Aurora took a step, then another. She was finding the rhythm already. Left foot, keep balance. Right food, slide. She was ten feet from the other side, ten feet from safety. Then her phone buzzed again.
Bzzt. Bzzt. Bzzt.
It wasn't a text, it was a phone call. The vibrating phone startled her, making her foot slip on the polished glass.
"Whoa!"
She fell and slammed into the mirror bridge, her hands hitting the glass to stop herself from sliding into the ditch of sharp pieces below. Her face was pressed against the mirror. At that moment, she opened her eyes. Right beneath her, instead of glass, was a face. It was her reflection. It was a woman with blonde hair, and her neck was bent at an impossible angle of ninety-degree.
It was Karen. The reflection of Karen smiled, her deep blue eyes staring directly into Aurora's.
"Gotcha." the reflection mouthed silently.