Deviation Actions
Description
Chapter Ten
One Inside Another
Abigail’s heart was beating so hard and so loudly, she was scared it would burst out of her chest. She clenched and unclenched her fists, fighting down the urge to scream. Then she staggered to her feet and stood in the middle of the room.
“There must be a way to escape,” she said, desperately looking round. “There must be!”
Henry sighed. “I’ve already told you,” he said dejectedly. “I’ve searched everywhere. Inside and out. There is no escape from here. We’re trapped, Abigail. Trapped forever.”
“But every prison cell must have a key,” Abigail said, more to convince herself than Henry.
Her eyes were scanning the room now. She was making a mental note of everything that was there – the sofas, the chairs, the sideboards, the jewelled pleated lampshade hanging from the ceiling. But it was the sight of her mother’s collection of rare Russian dolls standing inside a cabinet that suddenly made her mind whirr. She thought about those dolls and how each one decreased in size so that one could be placed inside another.
One inside another. The thought buzzed around inside her head like an angry bee. One inside another.
Suddenly Abigail made a loud snapping noise with her fingers. “Hang on,” she said, turning to Henry excitedly. “Am I right in thinking that everything inside the house has been replicated?”
Henry nodded his head. “Yes, everything,” he replied. “The furniture, the pictures on the walls, the ornaments on the shelves. Everything has been copied.” He looked puzzled for a moment, stroked the bottom of chin and said, “But you already know that, so why ask?”
Abigail took a long, deep breath. “Because if everything inside the house has been duplicated,” she said, “then logically there must be another snow globe somewhere. A copy of the original.”
Henry sprang to his feet. His eyes were white-rimmed with excitement. “And you think the other snow globe might be the key?” he asked, almost breathlessly.
Abigail shrugged her shoulders. “It’s possible,” she replied.
“It’s in your bedroom,” Henry said. “I saw it there earlier.”
Quickly, the two children scrambled up the stairs and retrieved the snow globe from Abigail’s bedroom. They carried it back down to the sitting room and placed it on the middle of the coffee table. There were two figures inside the globe, standing in front of the house. One was a model of Abigail and the other was a model of Henry.
“So what do we do with it?” Henry asked, staring at the snow globe and scratching the top of his head.
Abigail was twisting her fingers. “I’m not sure,” she replied. “If we shake it and cause another snowstorm, we may end up inside.”
“Stuck inside a snow globe inside a snow globe inside another snow globe,” Henry said, looking confused. “We could be making things worse.”
Abigail glanced at her mother’s Russian dolls again. “Yes, you’re probably right,” she said.
They stood in silence for while, staring down at the snow globe and thinking fast.
It was Henry who spoke first. “Maybe we just need to break the magic spell,” he suggested “Literally speaking.”
Abigail frowned. “You mean break the snow globe?” she asked.
Henry nodded his head. “Yes, smash it to pieces,” he replied. “Destroy it.”
Abigail stood and thought about this for a while, gently tapping the bottom of her chin with her fingertips. There really didn’t seem to be any other option.
She turned to Henry. “Would you like to do the honours?” she asked.
Henry grinned and reached for the snow globe. “With pleasure,” he replied, then picked it up and weighed it in his hand. After summoning up every ounce of strength in his body, he hurled it like a cricket ball against the wall above the fireplace.
There was a loud crashing sound as it hit the brickwork and then shattered into a thousand tiny pieces. Shards of glass and droplets of water were sprinkled across the floor, sparkling fiercely like precious jewels in the orange glow of the firelight.
Abigail breathed in sharply. “I hope we’ve done the right thing,” she said, crossing her fingers.
There was a loud cracking noise outside, like a thunderclap, and suddenly the floor beneath their feet began to lurch like the deck of a ship. Several ornaments tumbled from the sideboards and tiny hairline cracks were snaking across the ceiling. It felt like an earthquake.
The two children huddled together in terror.
With another loud rumble, the windows shattered suddenly and dizzying swirls of snowflakes rushed into the room. Cracks and fissures were now spreading across the walls, and chunks of plaster were falling from the ceiling and crumbling into dust. A wide fissure opened beneath and, screaming until their lungs were fit to burst, the two children tumbled into a chasm of all-consuming darkness - a void of nothingness that went on and on forever.
To be continued...
