21 Drop The Needle TENSION

Title: Book of the Baba Yaga
Genre: Middle reader adventure/fantasy

Lead-in: Sam has been taken to a room where she is told she will begin to learn about herself. She then has the following experience.




Sam saw that her chair had changed into an intricately carved wooden throne. She ran her finger over the bumps and grooves of the armrest.

"Ouch!" Pain shot up her finger as though it had been stabbed with a needle. Then another, more animal-like cry escaped her - the carvings were now tiny snakes, each one writhing in place. The snake that had bitten her twisted its tiny head to look at her through glowing emerald eyes. Sam lept to her feet, clutching her throbbing finger.

"Your life is the dream, Samantha Liffey," the snake hissed. "When you gonna wake up?"

Then the throne melted away, turning into a pool of ice on the floor. It spread under her feet, making them ache with cold. Sam slipped and fell against the wall as the room lurched and the pen dropped from the table, rolling down the floor and coming to rest at her feet.

It floated up to arm level in front of her. She quivered, otherwise unmoving. What do I do?

"Draw!" A voice boomed through the room and Sam looked down and saw Will in the ice as if he were on the other side of a window. But he’d changed. He had two clocks where his eyes had been and his mouth looked like a black hole, spinning away into nothing like the line in the Salem Boundary. The clocks in his eyes showed 11:27. The drumbeat quickened, taking her heart with it.