Andrew closed his eyes, a tremor stabbing up his spine. Real. This was real and people were going to get hurt.
Clemens frowned, but kept directing Andrew up the stairs.
Another scream came, then shouts followed by pounding feet.
Anger flashed in Clemens’s eyes. All the suave young teacher charm had flattened, as if without an audience, he felt no need to wear that mask. “Let me guess, more senior pranks. The discipline in this school isn’t just pitiful, it’s negligent. Is your friend Rye behind this?” He gave Andrew’s shoulder a sharp shake. “Snap out of it. Hysterics will do nothing for you, you entitled little shit.”
They reached the top of the stairs and Clemens shoved Andrew toward the principal’s office. Every door lay shut, the storm outside rendering the halls dark and close. A thick, wet smell spooled from the carpet, and Andrew felt fungi and damp dirt stuffing up his throat. He reached out to steady himself against the wall.
His fingers sank into spongy moss.
No…
He shied away as Clemens looked down and swore in confusion.
“What is… are those leaves on the floor?”
The lights flickered off, on.
Off.
They stood still in the dark, the walls too close as the paper seemed to breathe in and out. Clemens peered up at the lights, annoyance knotting his brow. Only Andrew saw thevines slithering out of the wallpaper, bloated and green, poisonous leaves unfurling as they reached toward his ankles.
Andrew jerked away.
Clemens’s expression went hard. He snapped his fingers, as if Andrew were a dog meant to heel, and started to snark a new threat.
A vine snatched at Clemens’s leg and yanked.
He went down with a garbled shout, slamming onto the carpet. Vines snapped over his legs, his wrists, and his confusion turned to panic. He yelled. But Andrew backed up. A small terrible part of him didn’t care if the forest attacked Clemens. He should hate himself. He should hate Thomas for leaving him when they should have stayed together. He had to run, he had to get out, get to Thomas—
Brambles caught against Andrew’s pants, and one lashed across his forearm, pinning him to the wall. He tore at it, but his fingers only shredded fleshy vegetation. Maggots burst out and scattered across his sleeves. Andrew yanked at it uselessly, frantic now, as the lights flickered on and off faster and faster. His heartbeat pounded against his ribs, and the broken pieces of a scream lodged in his throat.
Clemens’s swearing turned vicious as he unhooked vines from his clothes and flung them away. But more grew. And more.
The stairs creaked.
As one, Andrew and Clemens turned toward a shape growing from the dark, pushing its bulk between the spasming lights and swelling vines devouring the walls.
Then every bulb blew with a shriek.
Andrew choked on a cry. He needed this to stop.
The Antler King stepped out of the shadows. It came toward Clemens, one heavy step at a time, its skin waxy underneath the smeared grime of the forest. Spidery arms shot forward, too long for its broad shoulders. The weight of its antler crown buckled its neck and, as Andrew stared with bile rising up his throat, this close he could see the way crown had been driven in upside down. The tips splintered into the monster’s skull, blood running pitch-black from its eyes.
It was a nightmare and it was alive and there was nowhere to go.
The monster snatched Clemens by the throat and hauled him upright. His feet dangled midair, his scream a terrified wheeze.
Andrew tried to melt out of sight, but his back only hit the wall as more vines closed around him. One wrapped around his middle, another slithered over his collarbone and tightened around his throat. Tendrils crept toward his bloodied ear. Soft green leaves brushed skin and began to push—push—toward the hot pulse of his eardrum. He shook his head madly, but the vines slithered with insidious persistence. He’d die pinned to the wall.
He wanted to scream for Thomas.
Instead, he mouthed a frenzied chant.Take Clemens as the tithe. Take him, take him, take him. Please—
The Antler King reached up slow and methodical and broke off a piece of its own horns. It still held Clemens by the throat, its claws puncturing into skin so blood oozed from Clemens’s neck. The monster twisted the piece of antler as if to inspect it. Then it rested the tip between Clemens’s wide eyes.
Clemens burbled a throttled cry. He was begging. Weeping.
