Debris litters the floor, papers, broken glass, and things that might once have been toys or bones.
We sink down against the far wall, huddling together for warmth that never quite reaches the cold inside us. Our shoulders press tight, Mattie sitting beside me, and I rest my head on her shoulder.
Sarah, the brunette, curls against my other side, her head heavy on mine as she slips quickly into uneasy sleep.
“That truck,” Lena whispers to her friend Lotty, voice shaking in the dark. “That’s how I was taken when I was five. That’s how I was groomed. The music… the lights… it always started like that.”
My eyes stare unblinking into the thick blackness across the room as I listen carefully, every word sinking into me like hooks.
“What if that woman on the beach was right?” Lena continues, barely audible. “What if this place shows our deepest fears? What if they’re ghosts of our pasts, come back to finish what they started?”
“There’s no such thing as ghosts, Lena,” Lotty tries to reassure her, but her voice wavers. “Maybe there’s something in the air here that’s making us hallucinate. Maybe that’s why it’s a dead town and everyone left.”
I blink slowly, the fear in my head ringing louder as I mull their words over and over.
I press closer to Mattie, but the warmth doesn’t chase away the anxiety I feel.
Sleep feels impossible now, because if Ninth Isle really does show us our deepest, darkest fears…
…then the worst is still coming for each of us.
Suddenly, a slow, drawn-out creak drifts through the ceiling directly above us, and my head tilts back on instinct, eyes fluttering open.
It sounds like footsteps testing weak floorboards.
“What… what was that?” Mattie whispers sharply, her wide eyes flicking upward too.
My own breath stalls completely, staring and unblinking as a thin trail of dust drifts down, catching in the faint sliver of grey light like falling ash.
Then… the noise stops, and silence swallows the room again, heavier than before.
I’m not sure how long we’ve been huddled in here now, and I don’t know if I slept at all or if the dark simply took pieces of me while my eyes were closed.
All I know is that my body feels like one big bruise and my face throbs with deep, infected pain, the stitches pulling cruelly at the tender flesh of my lips every time in inhale.
I lift my head from Mattie’s shoulder and turn to look at her, but her blue eyes are still glued to the ceiling, as if she’s seeing something moving up there that the rest of us can’t.
After a long moment she finally meets my gaze, and the horror between us feels electric.
I raise a shaky hand and press my fingertips softly against the swollen, puckered skin where the stitches hold my mouth shut, and the discomfort flares hot and sharp.
Mattie’s gaze drops to my ruined lips, and she swallows hard, throat clicking.
“Maybe there’s an old shop or something somewhere,” she says quietly. “Somewhere we can cut those. And possibly find some weapons. God knows we’re going to fucking need them.”
She shifts first, stiff and reluctant, and I follow with a low groan in my throat.
We creep toward the boarded-up window, then press close to the narrow crack where two warped planks don’t quite meet.
The sky has lightened to a bruised grey, where dawn is trying and failing to break through. The rain hasn’t stopped, and it keeps falling in steady, indifferent sheets, drumming against the cracked buildings outside.
Mine and Mattie’s eyes scan the abandoned street below, but nothing moves. No shadow gliding between towers, and no warped ice cream truck driving through the weeds.
“Shops,” Mattie whispers, pointing with a shaky finger. “A few blocks down. It looks like a convenience store, and maybe a hardware place.”
I lean in closer, peering through beside her, and spot the stores sitting there in the distance, dark and silent, their windows splintered.
Yeah, there’s supplies, and hopefully safety, yet I can’t help but think the idea feels like bait.
