Quiet, someone hisses.
I open my eyes, taking in Betz on one side of me and Rodney on the other. Betz’s hands are stained with blood. Every place she touches leaves a red print. I’m covered with them. Rodney is also bloody, smears of it on his face and shoulder. A tourniquet has been wrapped around his forearm, damp with gore.
Come on, Quinn, he whispers. We’re getting out of here.
They throw my arms over their shoulders, not caring how it hurts so much I want to scream. I swallow the sound, choking it down.
As we leave, I get a glimpse of Janelle, lying right where I left her. She’s on her side, head lolled, eyes wide open. One of her arms is pitched forward, stretching across the blood-drenched grass, almost as if she’s begging me to stay.
We leave without her, the three of us crossing to the cabin. Betz and Rodney do all the work. I’m just along for the ride, woozy from blood loss, delirious from pain. I’m so helpless that Rodney’s forced to lift me up the deck steps.
The two of them whisper over me as I’m planted upright again.
Is he there?
I don’t see him.
Where’d he go?
I don’t know.
They grow quiet, listening. I listen, too, hearing only night noises—the last of the season’s crickets, bare branches crackling, the ghostly whisper of falling leaves. Everything else is silent.
Then we’re moving again, faster this time, crunching over a pile of glass near the door before bustling into the cabin.
Amy is just inside the door, propped against the wall like a discarded doll. She even resembles a doll. Eyes as blank as plastic buttons, arms limp at her sides.
Don’t look, Rodney whispers, his voice breaking. It’s not real. None of this is real.
I want to believe him. In fact, I almost do. But then we step in a slick of blood and I skid forward, releasing a yelp. Rodney slaps a hand over my mouth. He shakes his head.
Then we’re on the move again, into the great room, toward the window by the front door.
Where are we going? I whisper.
Rodney whispers back. As far away from here as possible.
The three of us stand at the window, watching. For what, I don’t know. Until suddenly I do.
Craig is outside. Running in a crouch toward the SUV that brought us here. The SUV where all our cell phones have been stowed. Craig opens the door slowly, hands shaking, recoiling when the interior light pops on. Then he’s inside, starting the engine.
Now! Rodney yells.
Betz flings open the front door and we hustle outside, caught in the SUV’s headlights, our shadows looming large against the front of the cabin. I turn to look at them—three dark giants, menacing and tall.
A fourth giant joins them.
He holds a knife, its shadow on the wall three feet long.
Suddenly I’m being jerked back toward Pine Cottage. There’s more screaming. From Betz. Maybe even from me.
Inside the cabin, Rodney slams the door shut and slides the ratty armchair against it. Betz and I return to the window. The SUV’s headlights sweep over us as Craig steers it into a
U-turn.
He’s leaving! Betz yelps. He’s going without us!
The SUV gets about ten feet before it slams into a large maple next to the driveway, shaking loose leaves that rain onto the windshield. Steam hisses through the dented grille. The engine sputters and dies.
Inside the SUV, Craig is slumped over the steering wheel, his chin pressing on the horn. The noise breaks the night silence with a steady blare.
The shadow with the knife is upon the SUV in an instant, flinging open the door and dragging Craig from the front seat.
The blare of the horn stops. Silence reigns again.
Despite his collision with the steering wheel, Craig is still conscious. Yet he doesn’t make a sound as he’s shoved to his knees beside the SUV. He simply stares forward, his eyes sparking with terror.
I turn away from the window, suddenly dizzy. I collapse against the wall, sliding down it, feeling the floor rise up to meet me. Just before everything again goes dark, Craig finally screams.
Later.
I don’t know how long.
I’m on the floor in one of the bedrooms. My room. I recognize the quilts on the wall. Water trickles beneath the door. I don’t know where it’s coming from. A burst pipe? A flood?
All I know is that I’m wet and bleeding and more scared than I’ve ever been in my life. When I whimper, Rodney says, You’ll be okay. We’ll both be okay.
He’s huddled beside me, one of the quilts from the wall thrown over his shoulders. There’s blood in his beard.
Where’s Betz? I whisper.
Rodney doesn’t answer.
Outside the room, everything is quiet. Even the crickets. Even the trees and the leaves. But then a sound emerges on the other side of the door.
Footsteps.
Slow, cautious ones that slosh through the water in the hall. Each one reminds me of my mother’s mop sliding across the kitchen floor.
Slick-swish.
Slick-swish.
They stop just on the other side of the door.
I look to Rodney, my eyes asking the question I dare not speak. Did you lock the door?
He nods. The doorknob rattles.
Then something slams against the door, bending it, wood bulging outward. Fear lifts me to my feet as the door is rocked by another slam. It bursts open and I see a knife, glinting darkly.
I scream.
I close my eyes.
The knife pushes into my gut. Filling me. A steel-sharp rape. I take a rattling breath through gritted teeth as the blade is pulled out and I slump to the floor.
Quincy, no!
It’s Rodney, pushing past me, throwing his body in front of mine. I don’t open my eyes. I can’t. The lights have gone out. All I can do is listen to the scuffle moving out of the room and into the hall. I hear Rodney grunting and cursing and shoving.
Then a single, strangled yelp.
Then nothing.
Later still.
I wake again in the wet room. My room.
The cabin is silent. So are the crickets and trees and leaves. Everything’s either dead or fled. Everything but me.
I sit up, the pain at my stomach surpassing the pain at my shoulder. Both still bleed. My dress is soaked by both blood and water. Mostly blood. It’s thicker.
Somehow, I get to my feet. Somehow, these weary legs take me through the open door. And somehow, I remain upright in the hall, even after I spy Betz dead in the other room, liquid from the knife-pierced waterbed spilling over her.
Rodney is further down the hall, also dead. I avoid looking at him when I step over his corpse.
It’s not real, I whisper. None of this is real.
I don’t see Him until I’m all the way into the great room, standing by the fireplace, shivering from cold and blood loss. He’s on all fours next to Amy, like a dog sniffing at a carcass, wondering if it’s worth consuming.
Strange sounds rise from the back of His throat. Tiny whimpers. The dog’s in pain.
Then He notices I’m there, head whipping around to face me. The knife is on the floor beside Him, black with fresh blood. He grabs it, lifts it over His head.
I was leaving, He says, breathing hard. I heard screams. I came back. And saw—
I don’t hear the rest because I’m too busy running. Terror and hurt and rage burn through me, mixing together, bubbling under my skin like a chemical reaction. I keep on running.
Out of the cabin.
Into the woods.
Screaming all the way.
CHAPTER 42
The memories arrive all at once. A zombie horde back from the dead, grasping at me with peeled-skin hands. I try to fight them off but can’t. I’m surrounded, overwhelmed and convulsing as memory after memory returns. All those sounds and images I had kept at bay for so long. They’re all back, lodged into my mind, unshakeable as they play over and over in an endless loop.
Amy and her dead doll eyes.
Craig being dragged from the SUV.
Betz and Rodney with their palpable horror and desperation. They saw more than I did. They saw it all.
Yet I saw something they couldn’t. I saw Him. Crawling around Amy, whimpering, grabbing the knife, raising it.