Labyrinth Fan Fiction ❯ To Defeat the Rotting Labyrinth ❯ Disappearance ( Chapter 2 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

After dinner, Sarah settled into her cozy desk chair with her laptop computer open and ready for some heavy-duty, nitty-gritty writing. She rolled over to the coffee table to retrieve the glass of juice she had placed there earlier, and rolled back. The book was sitting on her keyboard. She set the glass down and made a sound of frustration. She picked it up and threw it across the room. It hit the wall with a neat little thump, and landed on the floor with a flapping noise. She huffed at it, and turned around towards her computer again.
It, again, lay on the keyboard. She sighed and stared at the book. “Alright, Jareth,” she murmured. “I'll bite.” She picked up the book, closed her laptop, and opened it. She perused the lines that she knew so well, reading most of them over again. She skipped some pages, skimming through most of it. In just a half an hour, she came to the end. She skimmed over it, hummed at her wasted time, as nothing was different, and was about to close it when something caught her eye.
At the end, there was an entirely new page. She turned the page, and stared. The final page was titled “Epilogue” and it was written in red ink. It looked fresher, newer than the regular print only a few pages before, and she flipped backward to check. In shock, she read the new inscription.
“Dearest Sarah, I hope my efforts have not been in vain and that this reaches you in time. I apologize for the book's insistence in advance, but it is of utmost importance that you return to the Labyrinth. We need your help. The Labyrinth as gone into disarray, and everything is decaying around here. We can't tell why, because we don't know. Jareth has g -”
For a long while, Sarah stared at the red ink. It was not signed. It stopped after the g. She read it again, hoping that maybe more print would show up if she read it over and gave it time. It still stopped after the g. It was still not signed. She blinked at it, and sat up, closing the book. “Jareth has what?” she murmured. She looked up at her window, expecting to see a handsome barn owl. Instead, there was nothing. Not even a dark shadow of a goblin crossing against the windows. It, for some reason, made her uneasy.
How long had it been since she had seen Jareth in his owl form? Weeks, months? ...Years? It had become such a regular thing to see the owl that she had stopped noticing when he did show up at all. It had become so old-hat that she didn't notice when it didn't happen at all. She sat back in her chair, and her mouth ran dry. There was something wrong. She immediately got to her feet, and started for the door. She stopped with one hand on the banister.
“What are you going to do, Sarah?” she mumbled to herself. “Go back and find out what's wrong? Find who sent that and figure it out?” She stopped, and put both feet on one step. She looked back at the little red book. “Or... See this for what it is. Jareth wants me back in the Labyrinth just so he can capture me again.” She sat down hard on the sofa. “I won't fall for it. I will not.” She picked up the universal remote again, and resolutely turned on the television, ignoring the book on her desk. She tried to shake the feeling of wrong and concern that stemmed out from her belly, but there was nothing for it. There was something wrong.
She went upstairs. There must have been something wrong upstairs. She did find something wrong. There was a terrible commotion. She was immediately aware that Karen was crying, and that Toby was clinging to Robert's leg with a vice-like grip. She stood in the doorway, not sure what to do. There were policemen in the kitchen, and a sheriff in the living room with her father. She looked at Karen again and said softly, “Karen?”
Karen sobbed. “Oh, Sarah,” she choked out. “Sylvie's gone.”
Sarah stared at Karen for a few moments. She moved forward and hugged her stepmother. “Everything will be fine, Karen,” she reassured the older woman. “The police will find her.” Inside, a burning anger was bubbling to the surface. That rat had her little sister this time, her innocent six-year-old sister that was perfectly able to remember everything, and she had done nothing wrong this time. She had not wished her away. She had not wished for anything.
The police left some hours later, and Sarah returned to her room. She grabbed an old back pack and stuffed it full of various supplies – a flashlight, extra clothing, a jacket, an umbrella, other odd necessities that she thought she might need. The last time she had gone into the Labyrinth, she had gone wholly unprepared. She would not make the same mistake twice. She went upstairs into the kitchen to bring some food. She took some snack foods, a water bottle, and a loaf of bread. She could hear Karen weeping upstairs. “I'll bring her back, Karen,” she whispered.
With the back pack full, she picked up the book again, and clenched it in her grip. “I wish I were at the gates of the Labyrinth in the Underground,” she said sharply, closing her eyes. As she opened them, she was there. At least, she thought she was there. She dropped her back pack and the book. “Oh, my God. What happened here?”
The gates the Labyrinth, previously small, smooth, and made of a reddish clay, were now tall, black, and covered in carvings of chimeras, griffins, and other various vicious-looking creatures that Sarah could not name or place. She approached them carefully. They writhed against one another, and a few of them caught sight of her and screeched. She took several steps back, and almost tripped over her own things. She looked down, and then around. It should have been a windswept hill, but it was now a sandy desert full of harsh, thick-grained red sand that could almost be gravel. There was no outside garden anymore, no Hoggle spraying down faeries with his nozzle. The pond that she had caught Hoggle relieving himself in last time was now a barren hole filled with dust and mold.
Sarah swallowed thickly. Something had gone terribly wrong in the Labyrinth. She gazed upward at the castle in the center of the Goblin City, and found that it too had changed. The spires had grown and reached into the clouds, black and twisted like cruel claws scratching at the sky. It looked far more intimidating than it had been when she was fifteen. She took a deep breath, and whispered the name, “Hoggle.”