The Creeping

In the morning Sam’s muddy-brown eyes, fringed with hazel lashes, are watching me from their place on the pillow we’re sharing. Blinking carefully, purposefully, so they don’t miss a thing.

I hide my intake of breath with a yawn. “Hey. How’s the leg?”

He mimes rapping on his knee protruding from under the covers. “Still there.” He smiles lopsidedly. “Stiff, but not so bad. You okay?”

“Fine,” I say in a tense voice. “Have you been awake for long?”

“Twenty minutes or so. I’ve been thinking about the cat in the cemetery.” He frowns. “Griever admitted to sacrificing all those animals, but she also made a point to say she buried them so people didn’t come across their corpses. She’s managed to fly under the radar for decades.”

I shrug against the pillow.

Sam’s brow knits as he focuses on me. “The cat in the cemetery was just left there. We found it.” He waits for me to comment. I should. Sam is observant and smart, but I can’t stop watching his hands like they’re going to thrust out and strangle me. “That seems pretty sloppy for someone who’s been at it for decades.”

I blink once and focus on his face. “She must leave the animals out as an offering to . . . it. She collects their bodies later.”

“But the cat was beheaded.”

“She’s deranged.”

“The pelts on the walls had their heads . . . or at least the fur that would have been on their heads and ears.”

“I don’t know, Sam.” I sigh, shaking my head. “Maybe she’s going crazier?”

Sam pushes up on his elbow, eyes crinkling, studying me. “What’s wrong?” His hair is plastered to his head, and his cheeks are lip-gloss pink. The covers, twisted around us, seem to tighten around my legs, binding them up.

He reaches to touch my shoulder and stops. I’m staring wide-eyed at the approaching hand like I’m looking for traces of blood. “Stella, talk to me,” he whispers.

Heat creeps into my face. What am I doing? What am I thinking? This is Sam. I laid all this suspicion to rest. It was only a symptom of the horror of the night. But from the instant I opened my eyes and saw him watching, all I could think was, You don’t miss anything. How did you miss Jeanie being taken?

“Look, I want to forget about all of this. Jeanie. Jane Doe. All of it,” I say, fast and messy. If I spew enough words, tell Sam whatever lies I must to make him leave, the horrible things I want to accuse him of won’t come out. “Even if I do remember, I don’t know that a recovered memory eleven years too late is going to make a difference. I destroyed my believability once I lied in front of the whole world yesterday.”

Sam rubs the parenthesis between his brows. “What about what Griever told us?”

“What about it? I didn’t need her to tell me there’s something unnatural in the woods. Decades of missing girls. Centuries more of everyone who ever settled here dying and fighting and struggling. It’s always been here. The bone in Jane Doe’s hand proves that it’s been killing for a thousand years. Maybe more. Maybe it causes the darkness in Savage, or maybe all the darkness clotting here made it. Like a scab on the earth in this one place.” My tone has the hush of sharing an awful secret.

“I don’t need to know. Jeanie’s gone. There’s no bringing her back. Or any of them. And this is nothing but crazy, us hiking through the woods, talking about monsters and things that totally can’t exist.” I’m going on blindly, groping for words. “I mean, if whoever or whatever offed Jeanie has it out for me, they’ve had eleven years to get me. And guess what? They haven’t.” A shudder of awareness runs up my spine. If Sam is hiding something, he’s had years to hurt me, and all he’s done is proven that he won’t.

“I have to ask, though.” I rub my palm back and forth across my face. No, no, no, what am I thinking? This is Sam. I can’t stop it, though. Here it comes. “Where were you, Sam?”

He half smiles, like he’s not certain if I’m telling a joke and he doesn’t want me to feel like I’m not funny. “Where was I when?”

“When Jeanie was taken.” I exhale the words with a breath I’ve been holding. “Why weren’t you there, at Jeanie’s, with us in the woods? Why haven’t you ever mentioned where you were before?”

Sam bolts upright, kicking the blankets away, swinging his feet to the floor. “That sounds like more of an accusation than a question,” he says softly. His back to me, he bends to slip the sweats off and his pants and shoes on. I hear a soft grunt like he’s in pain, but he doesn’t stop until he’s on his feet.