“What? What is it?” I ask, rushing toward her.
“Oh my god, she’s dead!” Pam cries, clasping her chest as if holding her heart in place. “Gracie, it’s Gracie! Help, someone please help!”
Gracie is dead.
The words don’t make sense. They’re too horrible, too unbelievable. They can’t be true.
For half a second, I freeze. I can’t process anything. Even Allie doesn’t react immediately. We both stand still, immobilized, staring at Pam—who looks like a statue herself.
Finally, my eyes move from Pam to the open tent flap in front of her. The fabric is rippling gently in the breeze, faintly dappled by the moonlight.
Something dark is smeared across the nearest tent wall, much too solid and thick to be a shadow.
“It’s happening, oh god, it’s happening. We have to get out of—” Allie stammers and takes a clumsy step backward, just as a loud crash and more screams come from along the line of guest tents.
Pam, Allie, and I all turn in time to see one of the guest tents bow inward, collapsing like it’s been hit by a hurricane. Another high-pitched, frantic scream erupts. A sickening gurgling sound is followed by slick, wet thuds, so close I want to run as fast and far away as I possibly can. It’s a sound I never, ever want to hear again for the rest of my life.
The sound of a knife stabbing flesh.
Reality closes in on me. Someone is being stabbed, mere feet away from us.
Just like Gracie was stabbed.
Just like I’m going to be stabbed if I don’t do something, fast.
Allie wheels toward shore, taking off at a sprint. As I spring forward to follow her, Pam pushes past me in a panic—sending me hurtling onto a pitch of gravelly sand at the base of a car-sized boulder. I scramble to stay upright, the debris grinding beneath my feet while screams ring out from all directions, swelling above the unrelenting roar of Anvil Falls.
It can’t have been more than a couple of seconds since Pam rushed past me, but it feels like an eternity when I realize that in my struggle to regain my balance, I’m the only one left by the tents. From the shore, someone is screaming, “Get into the rafts!”
I want nothing more than to run, to follow them. But a silent alarm in my head warns me not to make any sudden movements right now. Because in the last two seconds, something has changed.
The tent nearest me, where the stabbing sound came from, has stopped shaking.
Body fizzing with adrenaline, I start tiptoeing sideways along the boulder, trying not to make a sound as I pick my way across the minefield of small rocks and dead branches at my feet. If I don’t rush, don’t make too much noise, maybe I can skirt past without notice—then run like hell.
Keeping my eyes locked on the half-collapsed tent, I slink a few more steps toward the chaos on the beach. With each movement, I look down to find my footing, then back up at the tent, its billowing fabric sprayed dark with liquid.
Just then, a shadow shifts inside the tent, and I hold back a scream, forcing myself to keep inching past, praying whoever is in there can’t seemyshadow.
I imagine launching into a run and turning my back on the shadow.
Then I imagine the blade of a knife slicing into my back.
As I step out of the uneven footing and onto the sand, I suddenly realize I can hear—between screams from the beach—snatches of heavy breathing coming from inside that tent.
The shadow shifts again. A zipper runs. The fabric walls shudder.
In what feels like slow motion, I watch as the shadow turns into a figure, bending as it exits the bloodied, collapsed tent. My brain can barely make sense of what I’m seeing.
I have to run, but I know he’ll catch me. He’s so close I can still hear his breathing over the sound of the falls. My feet feel glued to the sand.
“Hey!” shouts a male voice from behind me, back near Gracie’s tent. Between the screams onshore and the blood pulsing in my ears, I can’t tell if it’s Josh or Bryan. But it’s the sound of that voice that finally unfreezes me, and I bolt for shore.
Clutching my half-empty water bottle like a weapon, I race toward the frantic voices near the rafts, away from the figure rising up from the crumpled tent.
Whoever was in that tent is dead.
Just like Gracie is dead.
