“Trav!” Colleen shrieks in my ear, momentarily still from shock. “Where is he?”
A wave begins to form, rising and rising in the water. In a quick movement, the surfers paddle hard for it, and even from the beach I can feel their desperation, their terror. They scramble for the wave, riding it to the shallows, as the people gather in a loud line on the beach, yelling encouragement.
Two surfers make it back, sprinting to the shore as soon as their feet hit the sand. The third staggers like a sleepwalker, dripping blood. His knee buckles; his eyes roll back in his head. A woman rushes for him, shrieking as he collapses into a bloody heap on the sand. She throws herself beside him, placing a hand on his shoulder, shaking him. “He’s in shock!” she yells out. “Someone call an ambulance!”
The other two surfers hover over him, eyes wide and vacant.
“I’ll do it,” a man calls back, digging into his shorts pocket, pulling out a phone.
“His arm…” someone calls out, voice heavy with horror. “My God, hisarm.”
The beach is tense, silent now. Mothers snatch their toddlers into their sunburned arms, slinging towels over their shoulders, ushering their older children to pack up,quick, quick, quick. Don’t look.
A teenager huddles under a beach umbrella, knees pulled tight to her chest, speaking tearfully into her phone. “Mum…come get me.” Her voice breaks. “Please.”
A bundle of school-aged kids flee to waiting parents, sand flying beneath their feet.
“You need to get here,” the man hisses into the phone, staring grimly at the surfer, “and you need to get herenow.”
Only Colleen and I notice the final surfer emerging from the water. Trav. Waves crash behind him, spraying foam as his surfboard cuts through, gliding to shore. He almost looks like a part of the ocean itself. The sun glints off the water, and the black fin rises behind it like a towering shadow.
For a moment, it looks like the shark is hunting him down. But Trav glides effortlessly back to shore, and the fin hovers in the hull of a cresting wave before sinking back to the depths.
Trav watches the injured surfer from the shallows, seawater dripping from his chin. He makes no attempt to help. Instead he eyesthe bleeding boy with barely concealed hunger, veins pulsing in his throat. There’s a damp sheen on his skin like he’s sweating out poison and failing. His eyes are dilated and darting rapidly, lips curling back like a wolf that’s gone too long without a good, bloodied meal.
Or a shark.
Colleen calls his name over and over like he’s a child trapped in a fever dream. He ignores her, runs his tongue under a spiky incisor, eyelids half closed.
And I stand on the shore, thinking.
I know why the sharks don’t want him.
He’s one of them.
Chapter 25
I found the note sticky-taped to the back of my bedroom window.
You’ve been gone so long you missed everything.
Trav.
I replaced his note with my own.
Meet me at the Wicked Woods tonight.
I squint at the sunset, and a fat bead of sweat drips onto my fist. The bats screech in the ghost gums, wings pulled tight against their teeth. I shiver under the tree shadow, watching the crows clambering up and down its powder-white branches. They call for the night, their whole bodieshungryfor it. Their nighttime orchestra has begun, and tonight, nothing in the world could stop the dark.
My town is stirring, casting off the sunset like a shirt that doesn’t fit.Bring me the dark,it insists.The darkness is ours. The darkness ismine.
The Wicked Woods shudder with the weight of the madness, and I’m stretched so fucking tight that if the bats screech any louder, my bones will burst out of my skin to tumble through the red dirt, and I will be nothing more than a feast for the crows. There’s something right about that.
I spit on the red dirt and wait for Trav against the backdrop of a blood sunset. I see us as children, him with his matted blond mullet, my dirty-blond hair to my waist, sprinting through these woods, lighting it up with fire and our madness:We’re coming! We’re coming! Watch out!
We were so young, then. Hungry for everything.
Sometimes, to avoid Dad, Heath and I slept at the cabin. Luke and the older boys would wander down, drunk off stolen cans of beer, and pass out on the cabin floor. Heath remained alert enough to check on me throughout the night. Trav and I slept under the stars as they blazed above and the nights dragged and burned, like a sun refusing to set. I’d wake in the morning with his hair in my mouth, his cheek in the hollow of my throat.
