Page 113 of Pretty Nightmare

“That’s not possible.”

“And yet there is a house in Vicksburg, Mississippi with a set of triplets.”

“I’ve got it all ready, Nick.” I whisper this as I lean my head against the phone. “All I need is a ride down to Pearl Springs and then it’s a straight shot into Mexico. I can take it from there, OK? Please. Do not fuck it up for me now.”

“I need to talk to Wendy, Nathan.”

“I understand. And once I get Indie away from Old Home, I promise, I will go back for Wendy. This is all in the plan. OK? Nothing has changed. She’s not in any danger.”

“She works for them. She has no idea who they are.”

“Things have changed. They’re getting suspicious. They know something is up. They can feel it.” I turn back around to face the phone and clench my teeth as I whisper, “Which is exactly why we need to do this now. If we wait any longer then Carter—”

“If you leave now, you’ll save Indie. But Carter will get Wendy instead.” Nick pauses for a moment.

I turn and scan the parking lot again. Because I feel it now. I feel the off-ness of this day. “Not if you get him first.” I say the words absentmindedly as I scan the streets for that little girl.

She’s here. I know she’s here.

“That’s exactly why I need you, Nathan. Your exit strategy is on hold. I’m texting you the address. I want you in Vicksburg by tonight and I want it taken care of. Then I will send the jet. And then you can leave. I have a truck for you to pick up. Texting the location now.”

The call drops and my cell phone buzzes an incoming text in the same moment. How did he even get this number? I bought this new cell at the gas station last night.

I slam the payphone into the cradle—“Fuck!”—then pace the little walkway under the thin awning that provides mere inches of shade from the hot summer sun above me.

Back and forth and back and forth. Always looking for people out of place.

You’re being paranoid, Nate. This life is finally getting to you. You’re gonna start seeing things, and hearing things, and none of it will be real. You’re gonna slip right into the insanity, just like all the others.

I pick the phone back up, slide two more quarters down the slot, and take a risk.

She answers on the first ring. But all I hear is breathing.

“Wendy?” I say tentatively.

Silence.

“Something’s wrong. I need—”

She hangs up.

I slam the phone back down again. “Fuck!”

I spend the next ten minutes pacing in front of the phone. Always on the lookout for those shadow people my grandfather first told me about as a kid.

He knew what Indie was the very first moment he opened the front door to answer a soft knock and saw her standing there. I remember him telling me, way back when I was eleven or twelve, that she was not really a girl. I didn’t believe him. Of course she was a girl. She looked just like a girl to me.

That was back before I started remembering things so I didn’t think much of it.

But then Adam came over not long after that. I was chopping wood and my grandfather was too sick to get out of bed. And Adam told me the same thing, just… not as plainly as my grandfather had.

She is not an ordinary girl, Adam had said.

He was trying to tell me she would not be my girl.

But it was too late by then. She was already mine. And had been mine since the very first time I saw her in the woods. It just took everyone else a little longer than me to figure that out. Because none of them were there when I first met Indie.

None of them except—