Deva lifted a sleeve, inspected the layers of slime, then grinned. “You got a hose?”
Beth snorted. “I got better. I got some spare clothes in the trunk. But you’re changing in the lot. No way you’re tracking that onto my seats.”
Carol groaned, but I didn’t argue. Honestly, the idea of peeling off my disgusting hoodie right there was more relief than embarrassment.
When we reached her car, Beth tossed us the clothes, then added, “And next time, you’re driving.”
ELEVEN
Alice
This was what people meant by utter blackness. It had eaten up everything, like a greedy animal that left just enough for me to remember what sight was. I couldn’t see my hand even when I put it up to my nose. Maybe the problem was that I couldn’t stop shaking, and I couldn’t stop thinking. It seemed like my thoughts filled the world now. My pulse clanged in my ears like a tolling bell, and my breath kept catching on something in my chest, the way threads snag on a hangnail.
It was cold. My toes, even in my bunny slippers, had gone numb, which was almost a relief compared to the stinging in my knuckles. I pressed my hands into the pockets of my cardigan and hunched my shoulders, trying to compress myself into the smallest possible thing. Cardigans weren’t made for this kind of night. Neither was I. I had always been a homebody, a lover of comfort and doughnuts and old library books.
I counted breaths. I made it to thirty-eight before I gave up, because the silence was not a silence at all. There was noise. Animal noise, insect noise, the whine of nerves, and beneath that a hum so low and steady I at first mistook it for the ground’sown heartbeat. The air tasted green, sharp with sap and rot and something else, something like burned sugar. That made me think of Henry, and then I wanted to cry, but I was too cold for tears.
“Okay,” I said, out loud, and the word jumped back at me from the dark in a thin, echoing whimper. “Okay. You have a plan. Remember the plan. You walk. You find a path. You project. Emma’s waiting.” The sound of her name steadied me a little. I pictured her in her kitchen, probably still in her pajamas, with the morning paper folded into a perfect square and her coffee mug steaming. She would be the first to feel me, if I could manage to get through.
My first step crunched on something dry. I held perfectly still, waiting for the noise to bring down the wrath of the forest or whatever watched from between the trees. Nothing came. I shifted my weight, and this time my heel bit into soft moss. Another step, another patch of bracken that snapped under my bunny slipper. It made me wince every time, but the alternative was staying still, and I knew where that led. I had read enough of the old stories to know. Don’t ever stop in the dark. Don’t ever let it catch you.
I tried not to think about how I had gotten here. I was pretty sure I could guess, but putting the words to it made the knots in my belly worse. I remembered my last night with Henry, curled up on the sunken couch with a bowl of popcorn between us, the big screen glowing with some old Star Trek rerun. I remembered the way he looked at me when he thought I wasn’t watching, his eyes all soft and full of that Henry love, that was just so pure and perfect.
I hugged my cardigan tighter and kept walking. The dark began to unravel a little, and I realized I was in a clearing of some sort.The trees around me stood close together, their trunks silvered in the thin, anemic light that barely trickled through the leaves. I wished for a flashlight, or even a candle, but I had neither. The woods had taken everything but me and the clothes I wore.
I tried again. “Emma,” I whispered, and this time I concentrated. I imagined her face, the way her nose crinkled when she was annoyed, the stubborn line of her jaw. I pictured the kitchen, the smell of cinnamon and toast, the morning light catching in her hair. I pictured the old rotary phone on her wall, and I tried to push my message through it.
The headache started small, a little fist of pressure right between my eyes. I ignored it and pushed harder. “Emma. Emma, if you’re listening. I’m in the woods. I don’t know which woods, but it’s cold, and I’m scared, and—” I bit back the next word, because I knew she would hate to hear me scared. I tried again, softer this time. “Please come.”
I waited, shivering, for a sign. There was nothing but the shuffle of my own feet and the endless undercurrent of animal things. If Emma heard me, she gave no sign. I wanted to try again, but the ache in my head had started to pulse. I reached up and kneaded my temples, fingers moving in slow, desperate circles. If I could just get her attention, she would know what to do. She always did.
I took another step, and this time my foot caught on something solid. I tumbled forward, landing with a thud that knocked the wind out of me. My face hit the moss, damp and clammy against my cheek. I lay there, stunned, until I heard the sound. It was not an animal, not the shriek of a bird or the snap of a twig. It was a steady, rhythmic thump, like footsteps. Heavy, deliberate footsteps, coming from somewhere ahead of me. I scrambledup, ignoring the grit in my mouth, and spun in a slow, panicked circle.
“Okay,” I whispered. “That’s fine. Perfectly fine. Not alone. That’s good. Or not. Maybe not.” I couldn’t see anything, but the sound didn’t stop. If anything, it came closer. I backed up until I hit a tree trunk, the bark rough against my shoulder blades. I pressed myself into it, hoping to melt into the wood, become invisible. My heart tried to leap out of my chest, and my head pounded in time with the footsteps.
They stopped. For a moment, the world went quiet, a breath held too long. Then a light appeared in the distance. Not a lantern, not a flashlight, not anything normal. It glowed blue white, a perfect orb hanging in the air, casting long, sickly shadows. It hovered, pulsing gently, and I watched in horror as it began to drift closer.
I tore free, losing a bunny slipper in the process, and bolted through the clearing. My breath came out in ragged gasps, and my legs threatened to give way with every step.
TWELVE
Emma
I woke up suddenly, shockingly. My body went straight upright, lungs dragging air in by the bucketful. Beside me, Daniel’s hand shot out across my waist, pinning me to the mattress like I might try to bolt for the door. He’d gone from hibernation to full combat alert in the time it took for my first breath.
“Emma,” he said, and it didn’t even sound groggy. Just a thick, brambled concern, laced with an old policeman’s ready suspicion.
“Sorry. Sorry. Bad dream,” I said, or tried to. My mouth barely opened. There was too much of a shudder in my chest, and I was still trying to remember what reality was.
He sat up, scanning the bedroom as if the dream had left some physical evidence behind for him to tackle. “What happened?”
I sagged, then, and let my head hit the pillow again, shoving sweat-plastered hair from my eyes. The room still held some of that panic, but nothing except the two of us and the low gleam of the hallway nightlight waited in the dark.
“It was just a dream,” I said, quieter. “It’s nothing.”
Daniel’s hand traveled from my waist to my shoulder, warm and heavy. “If it was nothing, you wouldn’t sound like you just ran a marathon. Was it…?”
I knew what he meant, and didn’t want to answer, so I did the thing I did best and looked at the ceiling instead.
