Somewhere, between the Weeping Woods which hedged Amityville’s borders and the dank stone well at its center, something… curious… has begun to manifest itself. At first, it’s barely noticeable; small things that catch your eye as you meander away from the gymnasium, the muffled music and delighted screams from the spirit week party beginning to ebb into an eerie, marshy quiet. The dirt path you’re taking, for example… now, when had it turned this dark, dusty red? The grass, too, seems different. It seems to be more alive than you remember, thick and healthy and yet at the same time still sinister, the tendrils growing darker and darker as you walk. Curiouser and curiouser… the further you go, the more you begin to notice it, that difference in the air you can’t quite place, like you’re about to stumble onto something… something strange, something…
Wonderful.
So by the time you meander into the glade, you had hardly realized you’d been lost at all.
The Student Council had been hard at work, hadn't they.
By this point, the grass was no longer the dead, unkempt spikes which made up most of the school’s grounds. Here, it has grown into a lush, tangled landscape of deep grey-blue, long and gnarled and blackened but still very much alive. It grows in long, dense carpets, reaching tall enough to obscure your view behind you, and yet you notice that, somehow, it looks like it has grown uneven, jagged and angular in a jarring way, like someone has taken a machete to it. And weaved lovingly within it, crimson flowers, like droplets of blood. Behind you, you can hear whispers – cruel little snickers following closely in their wake – but when you look around, there is no one. No one but the flowers, their heads bobbing in the breeze that isn’t there, black spines like teeth gnashing together to n** at your heels.
But perhaps you’re imagining things. While the air is crisp and cool, almost cold, even to dwellers in perpetual-autumn, the air smells sickly sweet. A light mist hangs low to the ground, clinging to the grass and veiling the flowers, but it’s the black, wispy butterflies that catch your eye, circling around you like buzzards.
But the real focus is not what’s behind you… but what lies ahead.
Before you, stands the most handsome rabbit you have ever seen. Or… he would have been. Time has not been so kind, it seems; what used to be fluffy white fur is matted thick with dirt, thicket seeds clinging to his haunches and tail. One beady black eye has gone clouded from disease or injury, turning it a sickly, milky blue. The way he stands makes you feel like he might run if you step closer, but the way he stares at you, maddeningly, beckons you closer all the same, towards the dark, covered slide which plunges off the side of the hill. Stepping closer gains you nothing; you can see no bottom, more mist and darkness shrouding it. You, do, however feel as though you might fall…
… it’s thrilling.
Welcome to Wonderland.
