I let the hatch door fall and spread the hay back over it, straightening. With the pounding of my heart and my frantic movements, I don’t notice the heavy footfalls behind me until they’re directly at my back.
“You weren’t supposed to see that,” a deep voice says, and it’s familiar, their name on the tip of my tongue. But before I can turn around, something hits me in the back of the head, hard, and I’m unconscious before my knees hit the ground.
Thirty-Six
The cold has made ahome in my bones. I can hardly remember a moment when I wasn’t shivering.
Snow started falling at some point, coating the car, the debris, and me in a thin layer of white. I have called Harper’s name so many times, my voice decided to up and leave, but she hasn’t responded. Thinking about what that might mean turns the pounding in my head up to a thousand.
The silence switches itself out for sirens. Through the haze coating my vision, I see the lights, red and blue. Loud noise and bright lights and so many voices. Hands gently lifting me onto something flat, and then more light, right in my eyes.
“We’ve got a pulse here.”
I wait for them to give the same call from down in the ditch. But it doesn’t come. And I am too cold, too tired, to hold on to the light any longer.
Ringing. My ears are ringing. My head throbs, and my thoughts are slow and sticky, like someone doused them in molasses.
Everything comes back to me in pieces.
Nora’s house. Ingrid’s voice. A walk through the dark, a barn, a hatch, and then—
Somewhere off to the side, an incessant beeping—a heart rate monitor—speeds up, following the tune of my rising panic. I peer through slitted eyes, but the light above my head is a piercing white. I squint, trying to bring my hands up to cover my eyes.
My arms won’t move. Something thick and sturdy encases both my wrists, and a quick shift of my legs tells me those are bound, too.
“Sorry about that,” a voice says, muffled through the pounding of my heart. “I wasn’t expecting you to wake so soon. I’ll have to adjust your sedatives.” The bright light winks out overhead, leaving only a stripe of lighting across the ceiling. Much less piercing, but it does nothing to alleviate the panic sparking every nerve in my body. Fear balloons so wide in my chest, I swear it’ll spill out of my mouth. If I were braver, I’d open my eyes. Take in whatever nightmare I’ve woken in. Opening my eyes means acknowledging that this is real, and it can’t be real.
“I am sorry about all this,” the man says.
His footsteps shuffle as he moves around. When a shadow cuts through the light behind my eyelids, I force them open.
And everything in me crumbles.
I am in a room that could arguably be a doctor’s office, if regular doctor’s offices had lighting a bit too dim and mismatched old equipment.
Standing to the side of the exam table I’m strapped to is Oliver Holden.
Horror tastes like tar, clogs my throat, and thickens my tongue.
Holden. Paige and Mom’s childhood friend. The friendly neighbor always willing to help at the bookstore, always giving my aunt moon eyes.
If I had free hands to pinch myself awake, I would do it. But I can’t move. I can’t move, and I can’t think.
This whole time, the boogeyman hasn’t been lurking in the woods. He’s been at the neighborhood block parties.
“Why?” I ask. I mean to ask,Why are you doing this?andWhy are you doing this to me and to Jasper?But the words refuse to come together in my mouth. Probably from whatever Holden is pumping through the IV sticking out of my arm. I can see it, liquid sliding down from a bag and into my veins, turning me to cement.
“You have to believe me when I say I never wanted you or Jasper to be involved. I care about Paige and your mom,” Holden says. He’s so casual, like we’re at the bookstore or in my kitchen. “But family comes first.”
He comes to lean over me, making it impossible to look away.
“You don’t have to do this,” I say, and my words come out more like a croak. Except I don’t even know what he’s doing. Not really. Only that he is the one doing it.
Not a monster. Not a creature in the woods. Just a man.
“You think I enjoy this?” Holden stops at the edge of the table, leaning so he can meet my eyes. “I never wanted this. Never wanted to—” He pauses. “I’m trying to keep my daughter alive.”
I shake my head. Tears well in my eyes and slide down my cheeks.
