That the house they returned to appeared to have aged fifty years in the short time they’d been gone was only the first indication that something strange was going on. Fred was more than eager to leave, and he doubted the others wanted to stay any more than he did. The best thing to do was to grab their belongings and get out, preferably before their hosts came back from… wherever it was they were hiding.

If only it could have been that simple, but when they’d arrived, they’d unpacked their bags, putting their meagre belongings in drawers, and the walk-in closet. Now they had to gather everything together again, pack their bags, re-roll their bedrolls, which they’d taken the opportunity to air out a bit… All those preparations would take time, but back in their room they knuckled down to the task, each of them dealing with their own gear.

Fred was sitting on the sofa beside Varian, both of them busy with their own tasks, when he thought he heard Scott calling for him, shouting for help, saying he was hurt. When had Scotty left the room? The last Fred had been aware of, the boy had been sorting out his bedroll, but now there was no sign of him.

The weird thing was that Varian didn’t appear to hear anything, and if Scott was in trouble, Fred would have thought their leader, with his extraordinary senses, would have been the first to respond. But Varian was just sitting there, securing the pockets of his bag, as if nothing untoward was going on. He didn’t even respond when Fred spoke to him, just continued his methodical preparations as if everything was perfectly normal. It was as though he was in a world of his own, completely shut off from whatever was going on around him.

That was a problem for later though. For the moment, Scotty had to be Fred’s priority; the boy was his good friend Paul Jordan’s son, and while Varian might be the one they all looked to for leadership, in Paul’s absence, Scott’s safety was Fred’s responsibility. Whatever trouble he might be in, Fred had to find him, help him. Dealing with Varian’s sudden and unaccountable lack of awareness would have to wait.

Finding Scott was simple enough; he was in the house’s cobweb strewn main room, at the bottom of the staircase, flat on his back on the ground, a heavy dust and plaster covered wooden ceiling beam pinning him to the floorboards. It must have fallen on him! They’d all seen how the house was crumbling, but still, they’d had no idea it had become as dangerously unstable as this!

The boy was moaning in pain, pleading for help, ineffectually trying to shove the massive beam off himself, but it looked like solid oak, and it had to be a good eighteen inches by twelve, and easily fifteen feet in length. The damage it might have done when it fell… Fred’s mind was whirling with potential injuries: Broken pelvis or hips, possibly both, cracked or broken ribs, internal bleeding, and depending on how Scotty fell, possible spinal injuries…

That Scott could feel pain was encouraging, but Fred couldn’t begin to assess his patient until he could move the beam out of the way, and it looked like he’d be doing that alone. There was little Scotty could do to help, Varian was in some kind of trance, and Fred had no idea where Willaway was, hadn’t seen him in a while… That was another problem that would have to wait until later. Shifting the beam off Scott was the first order of business.

Fred tried to lift it, but without success, so he tried pushing it instead, using both hands, muscles straining with the effort. Still nothing. He placed the heels of his hands together, palms pressed against the top and side of the beam, trying to push and lift at the same time, and for a brief moment there was some slight movement, but then the weirdness level escalated again as Fred realised his hands were now fused together just below his wrists. Worse, even as he tried to pull them apart, the skin on his palms stuck together!

Scott needed his help, but there was nothing Fred could do without the use of his hands. He tried using the vertical bars of the banisters to tear his hands apart, but the wood was too weak, too badly deteriorated, the whole banister rocking alarmingly, close to breaking point. And still Scott, trapped beneath the beam, pleaded for help. Fred had never felt more useless!

Then, just as the young doctor was going out of his mind, he heard Varian’s voice in his head, telling him none of this was real. The stone was testing them, filling their minds with illusions, their own nightmares made manifest; all they needed to do was stop feeding into them, ignore them, think only of each other.

It worked. Just like that, Fred’s hands separated, and when he looked to the floor at the bottom of the stairs, where Scott had been trapped beneath the fallen beam, it was gone as if it had never been there, and Scott was sitting on the floor several yards away, in front of a dust-covered wingback armchair with worn upholstery. It was a relief to see him safe and uninjured.

Had they passed the stone’s tests? It was difficult to be sure, but for now that wasn’t important. They needed to get their stuff and get out of there, before anything else happened to them. They’d all had more than enough weirdness to last them a good long while.


The End