Chapter 3: The Soundless Scream

Chapter 3: The Soundless Scream

The golden light of the perfect afternoon had turned venomous. Leo shoved the half-folded blanket into the picnic basket, his movements jerky and hurried. A primal, prey-animal instinct was screaming inside him. Run.

“Leo, what was that?” Emilia’s voice was a thin, trembling thread. She kept looking over her shoulder at the empty patch of tall grass where the wrongness had been.

“Nothing. A trick of the light,” he lied, his voice a low, urgent command. “Just help me. We’re leaving.”

He grabbed her hand, his palm sweaty against hers. Her fingers were ice-cold. He pulled her along, half-stumbling away from the willow tree, away from their carved initials, away from the sudden, inexplicable dread that had poisoned their sanctuary. They just had to get to the path, to the open space, back to the world of cars and streetlights and other people.

He took five quick strides, pulling her with him, and ran headfirst into nothing.

The impact jarred him to his teeth. He staggered back, his nose throbbing, a grunt of pain escaping his lips. He threw a hand out, expecting to feel a wall, a pane of glass, anything. His fingers met only empty air, yet he could not move forward. It was like the world had simply stopped in front of him.

“What the—?” He pushed again, planting his feet and shoving with all his might. His muscles strained, his face flushed with effort. It was like pushing against a mountain. The air before him was as solid and unyielding as granite.

Emilia, seeing him struggle, reached out a tentative hand and gasped. “It’s… everywhere.”

She was right. An invisible, perfectly smooth dome had sealed them in, enclosing their little clearing by the creek. They were trapped. A fly in a jar. A specimen under a bell.

Panic, cold and sharp, lanced through Leo. He pounded on the unseen barrier with his fists. “Hey! Hello! Is anyone there?!”

His voice was swallowed. The sound traveled no further than his own ears, flat and dead in the supernaturally still air. He could feel the vibrations in his own skull, but the world outside was deaf to him. He turned to Emilia, his eyes wide with a terror that mirrored her own. She was mouthing his name, but he heard nothing. The silence was absolute.

That’s when they saw the jogger. A man in a red tracksuit, earphones in, pounding the gravel path on the other side of their invisible prison.

“Help us!” Leo screamed, waving his arms frantically. He beat his fists against the wall, the impacts making no sound, leaving no mark. The jogger’s eyes flickered toward them, and he slowed, a confused frown on his face. He could see them. He could see their panic. But he couldn't hear their pleas. He took out an earphone, tilting his head.

On the other side of the soundless divide, the jogger’s mouth moved. Leo could read the words on his lips. Are you okay?

Before Leo could mime a reply, the man’s expression shifted from confusion to slack-jawed disbelief. His eyes weren't looking at them anymore. They were looking just behind them.

Slowly, his heart hammering a sick rhythm against his ribs, Leo turned.

It was standing by the willow tree. The smudge from the grass had resolved itself. It was tall, impossibly slender, wrapped in a flowing robe that shimmered with the chaotic, swirling colors of oil on water. Its head was a sleek, featureless helmet of pure black obsidian that seemed to drink the golden light from the air, a perfect void in the shape of a face. It floated a few inches off the ground, its very presence a violation of every known law of physics. One of its arms extended slightly from its iridescent robe—a long, grey, utterly smooth limb with no discernible wrist or elbow.

A jointless hand.

The line from the future poem blazed in Leo’s mind, a prophecy delivered five years too early. This was the Gardener.

Time seemed to warp and stretch. On the other side of the silent barrier, more people were gathering. The jogger had been joined by a young family, the father pointing, the mother pulling her children behind her. Their faces were masks of horror and fascination. They were watching a silent movie, a pantomime of impossible terror.

The Watcher—for that was the only word that fit—glided toward them. It moved without walking, its passage utterly silent, its shimmering robe undisturbed by any breeze. There was no malice in its posture, no anger. There was only a chilling, clinical purpose. It was a scientist approaching a petri dish.

Every instinct in Leo’s body screamed at him to protect Emilia. He shoved her behind him, his body a trembling, inadequate shield. He grabbed the only thing he could—the hardback book of poetry from their picnic basket—and hurled it at the creature. The book flew through the air and then simply stopped, inches from the obsidian helmet, held suspended by some unseen force. It hung there for a second before dropping limply to the grass.

The creature didn't even seem to notice. Its focus was entirely on Emilia.

Leo let out a raw, soundless roar of fury and charged, his fists flailing. He might as well have been attacking a hologram. His blows passed through the shimmering robe, meeting no resistance, feeling nothing but a strange, static coldness. The creature was insubstantial, a phantom.

And then, it solidified.

The long, grey arm shot out and backhanded him. The force was immense, inhuman. Not a blow of anger, but one of casual dismissal, like a man swatting a fly. Leo was thrown backward, crashing into the invisible wall with a sickening, silent thud. The world exploded into a starburst of pain behind his eyes, and he slid to the ground, his head spinning.

Through a dizzying haze, he saw the creature glide past him. It stopped before Emilia, who was frozen, her face a mask of pure, catatonic terror.

And then the light came.

It wasn't a beam from the sky. It was as if threads of solid light materialized in the air around her. They were thin, silvery-white, and moved with a horrifying, intelligent purpose, weaving themselves into a cage of impossible geometry. They wrapped around her wrists, her waist, her ankles, lifting her effortlessly from the ground.

She was rising.

Leo scrambled to his feet, his vision swimming. He saw her face, tilted down toward him. Her eyes were locked on his, wide with a terror so profound it transcended sound. Her mouth was open, forming his name, screaming a plea that was lost to the suffocating silence. It was a perfect, beautiful, soundless scream.

Outside their prison, the small crowd of townspeople was now a frantic mob. People were shouting into their phones, pointing, screaming. But their hysteria was a distant, disconnected reality. Here, inside the dome, there was only the silent Gardener and its prize.

Emilia rose higher, toward the weeping branches of the willow tree, enmeshed in her cage of light. The Watcher floated beneath her, a silent, obsidian-faced shepherd guiding its catch.

Then, just as abruptly as it began, it was over.

Emilia Hayes, the girl with the poet’s soul and the sun in her hair, simply vanished. The cage of light dissolved, and she was gone. The Watcher shimmered, its form blurring like a faulty projection, and it too faded into nothingness.

The invisible wall evaporated.

Sound rushed back in a deafening wave. The screams of the crowd, the distant wail of approaching sirens, the frantic chirping of birds reclaiming their territory. Leo fell to his knees, the grass cool beneath his bloody knuckles. His own ragged, choked sob was the loudest sound of all.

He stared up at the empty sky, at the space between the willow branches where she had been. He was alone in the center of a circle of horrified strangers, the architect of a nightmare no one would ever believe. His life, and the heart of Red Horse, had just been torn out, leaving behind nothing but a soundless scream that would echo in his soul forever.