A footstep sounds.
More than one.
Getting closer.
I shut my eyes, listening harder than my ears should’ve been capable of, straining to hear a rhythm, four pats in the dirt at a time. I know there aren’t wolves here. There aren’t grizzlies or wolves or any animals that would be dangerous here.
But it’s two steps at a time.
I force my eyes open.
Against the moonlight, a shadow falls across the tent. Terror burns in my throat and I bite my tongue to keep the sound down.
It’s just Natalie, I tell myself.
The figure takes another step forward. Its side view changes to a front view, the figure staring right at the door.
I put my hand on Beck’s shoulder, but I can’t move my muscles enough to wake her. It’s like being trapped in a nightmare, the monster slithering its way toward easy prey. I always thought I’d be prepared. I always thought I’d run, grab a weapon, be smart enough to not get in the monster’s path in the first place.
The figure stares. The wind howls, blowing the figure’s long hair into the silhouette.
The woman in the parking lot. The woman on the road. The person who cut our fuel line and killed my friends.
This can’t be real.
A screech sounds and I finally scream.
Beck flails up in bed: “Fuck, sorry, sorry, sorry!” She fumbles in the dark, stretching the limits of our sleeping bag bed.
It’s an alarm tone.
I look at the tent door. The figure darts off in the opposite direction, the receding footsteps barely audible under Beck’s phone.
“I usually run in the mornings,” Beck mutters. “I thought I turned that fucking thing off.”
“It’s okay,” I whisper back.
When Beck turns the alarm off, all I can do is settle my fingertips over my heart, feeling the reverberation. I’m alive, I’m here, and that really happened.
Someone was out there, and that someone reacted to Beck’s alarm going off. I don’t think that’s something some witch or ghoul or demon does.
That’s what a human being does.
There was a person outside our tent.
“You okay?” Beck asks.
Less than a year ago, my friends stayed in this campsite and died. And now there was a person outside our tent.
Like they were waiting for us.
Eighteen
By morning, every pain I felt accumulating midway through the night aches three times as hard. My bones scrape the ground as I try to sit up. It’s cold in here, and even knowing it’s going to be colder outside, I need to escape this tiny space. I scoot my way out of the shared sleeping bag and grab my phone, moving as silently as I can so as not to wake Beck. The tent zipper squeals loudly, but Beck’s breathing stays even. I’m not sure why I cringe at the sound, as if there would be some dire consequence to Beck waking up when I do. I don’t even know what time it is, only that everything from last night—talking about our social traumas, sharing a sleeping bag, the figure outside the tent—feels more like a medication-induced dream than any reality.
But one whiff of the fresh pine air and I start to feel more settled in my body and life again. The chair beside the embers of our fire feels more comfortable than anything I slept in last night, despite the frame digging into my sitz bones. I need coffee, but I don’t know where to find any. We might have to go into town for that, so instead I settle for the next best thing to keep me okay: Winona Ryder interviews. I’vedownloaded enough that I can watch them without service. Both our portable chargers are full battery, and we’ve hardly used them so far, so I sacrifice a bit of battery to keep myself calm.
I pick one of my favorite interviews out of the ones I’ve accumulated over the past year or so of my special interest. I select one from the early ’90s, from when she didDracula. Something that feels “out of time.” One with a soft-spoken female interviewer in a mauve blazer. Winona wears a light brown suit, perfectly fitted, with a daring masculine edge down to the dark brown necktie. When she faces forward in the first few seconds, her dark hair seems to almost be styled in a boy’s cut, slicked back like she’s in a prep school. It emphasizes the sharpness of her cheekbones, how her ears stick out ever so slightly, the curve of her lips, and the darkness in her eyes. A tech calls for them to pause in the first few seconds, giving a sweep of her profile. Creamy skin, strong jaw, a little furrow in her brow that ends in a pencil point, giving an eternal look of someone a little concerned. She wrings her hands and before she starts speaking, she grimaces out a smile with teeth, something more endearing and heartbreaking.
