The Creeping

A curtain of clouds drifts over the moon. There are only flickers of its light on the tips of waves that keep getting higher. A voice shouts above the buzz in my head and the lapping water. It’s a ghost’s wail, carried to me on the current of the wind. “Hooooold ooooon!”


The words float out in front of me, and I see them bright violet against the darkness that surrounds me. They shimmer and dip into the water, sinking down, like Zoey’s body wants to. I try to keep my hold on the dock, but my fingers slip.

Rather than Jeanie weighing me down, Zoey is. I hold her tighter, even if she’s an anchor who’s drowning us both. This is my Zoey: savage, hot-tempered, and loyal. I won’t let her go. My legs are dead as we slip under the surface. I can’t keep us afloat, so I just keep us together.

Bubbles escape my nose. We sink deeper into the inky depths. Burning-hot fingers wrap around my neck. Nails dig into my skin, and I open my mouth to scream but gulp water instead. It’s the Creeping come to finish me off before a peaceful death can find me. It tightens its grip. I gag. A backdrop of hellish red is all there is.

I close my eyes just before I break the surface, too tired to see what sort of monster has me now. No, no monsters. Monsters don’t exist. Bad people do, so they don’t have to.

The hard lip of a boat scapes down my back as I’m hauled over it. I feel Sam’s warm lips pressed to mine. I’d know them anywhere. He’s breathing air into me. Water runs from the corners of my mouth, and I cough until the pith of my lungs feels shredded and dry. Sam is staring at me as my eyelids flicker open. The relief does something beautiful to his face. He goes from gaunt and pale to strong and determined with the oars of the boat in his hands. My tongue is numb as I try to hack the words out. Sam is here. Daniel and Caleb are here. Sam is in danger because of me.

“Daniel killed Jeanie,” I gargle through fat, clumsy lips. Sam’s smile corkscrews, and I know he heard me. The words make me dizzy. My head clunks against the bottom of the wooden boat. Zoey’s slumped against me, the flurry of her heart rapid and light. Her head rocks with the boat’s rising and falling, knocking against my temple, hammering an SOS into my skull.

At times I know what’s happening, other times I don’t. Shane is here. He came to Cole’s. Sam found him, and they ran through the woods searching for me. In the same woods as the Creeping because of me. In the same woods as Daniel and Caleb. Monsters everywhere and nowhere.

Shane stands grimly on the shore, fists propped on his hips, bracing himself against the wind. I’m aware of my mouth moving, vomiting a jumble of warnings, accusations, pleas, and nonsense sounds. He should have known it was Daniel. He should have kept me safe. He should never have given me Jeanie’s case file. He sent an innocent man to jail. I try to clamp my lips shut as I cry something about the Creeping.

Sam with his hands in my hair, stroking it, husky voice cooing in my ear. I’m rocking, ranting, raving as Caleb was in this very spot only minutes ago. Caleb left blood on the rocks; I’ll leave behind everything that kept me immune from what happened to Jeanie. Shadowy faces of men with twisted appetites who snatched her from the woods. Vaguely imagined monsters who stalked her from tunnels in the understory. They shielded me from a truth I couldn’t handle. As I twist my hands in Sam’s shirt, as the shrieking propellers of a helicopter descend on us, I come unhinged. Finally, here it is, the wound that Jeanie left ripping me open.

I kick and spit when I’m loaded on the chopper without Sam. I howl to him that I’m sorry. That he has to forgive me because I need him more than he needs me. The giant bird goes airborne. The only reason I stop rioting is that Zoey is beside me. Sleeping peacefully. Sleeping beauty. She doesn’t need to be awake for this.

Dad’s waiting when we get to the hospital, pacing in striped pajama bottoms and a sweatshirt. He forgot his glasses, and he’s blinking into the fluorescent lights. His eyes water when he sees me; I look bad even in his bleary-eyed state. I must appear haunted, the fury drained out of me, a ghost betrayed by someone she loved. I don’t say anything about what happened, and he doesn’t ask before I’m rushed to intensive care.