The days rapidly grew colder as Halloween approached. One day it started raining, and simply didn’t stop. The downpour went on for hours, and even when it lessened, heavy droplets still tapped against the windows and created a tiny river system across campus. Inaya and I would eat lunch together indoors, huddled close on the wooden benches in the big dining hall, laughing and sipping hot coffee to warm our hands.
Victoria and Jeremiah frequently joined us.
I’d been able to make friends in my classes, and Inaya had introduced me to more of her own group, so I tried to make a point of inviting other people, but the Hadleighs turned up even when I least wanted them there. It was almost like they knew I was trying to get some distance from them, so they were drawing closer than ever.
Their presence made me anxious, Leon’s warnings about them echoing in my head. Sometimes, knowing they’d be there in the dining hall was just too much, so I’d find a place to eat outside so I could avoid them. I wanted to warn Inaya about them, but I didn’t know what I could tell her. The things I was worried about would sound ridiculous to anyone who hadn’t seen the things I’d seen.
It would sound ridiculous to anyone who hadn’t learned to trust the words of a demon.
There was a courtyard behind the library where I’d sometimes eat, seated at a bench tucked into a little alcove against the building. It was cold, and my fingers felt numb as I ate my sandwich, but I was determined to tough it out. Victoria had been texting me all day. The number of events she’d invited me to over the past week was absurd. Every time I turned one down, she’d come up with another one.
It would have seemed so innocently friendly, but I believed Leon’s warning. I wasn’t safe with the Hadleighs.
“There you are.”
I nearly dropped my sandwich. Jeremiah stood there, his hood pulled up, smiling. The rain was dripping from his coat, and I scooted over quickly as he took a seat on the bench beside me. I knew his last class was all the way on the other side of campus. There was no reason for him to be back here – unless he’d been looking for me.
“Aren’t you cold?” He looked at my shivering hands, and before I could say a word, he enfolded my hands in his. I tensed up, instinctually wanting to pull away. His fingertips were cold, and he blew on my hands to warm them.
I tried not to shudder. “It gets too stuffy inside,” I said. “Sometimes it’s nice to just be alone, with my thoughts.”
He paused, his eyes locked onto mine. “Alone with your thoughts…yeah. I get that.” He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Victoria was worried you didn’t text her back. So I figured I’d look for you.”
I’d felt my phone buzz. I hadn’t even bothered to look. “Oh. Well. Here I am. Totally fine. My phone died earlier, so…” I shrugged. Please go away. Go away, go away.
He chuckled, shaking his head. He still hadn’t let go of my hands. “I have an extra charger. You can borrow it when we go back inside.”
“Well, I have to get to my next class in just a few minutes, so –“
“Do you? Your next class? Already?” He glanced at his watch. “You still have thirty minutes, don’t you?”
I pulled my hands back. There was no one else back here. No one came to this courtyard, especially not in the pouring rain. “I’m trying to get there earlier to talk to the professor.”
He nodded slowly. “Right, right. Okay. You’re funny, Rae.” I didn’t think this was funny. Frankly, he didn’t sound very amused either. “Have you been talking to Everly?”
“Everly? No, I…I thought she was missing. I haven’t seen her.”
He smiled widely. “Oh, she’s not missing. There’s no need to use a word like that. Might get people alarmed. She just left home. She’d get these crazy ideas in her head, and end up scaring herself.”
I began to collect my things. “I really do need to go –” He grabbed my arm, hard. I stared at his hand, then back up at his face, and said, “If you don’t fucking let go, I’m going to start screaming.”
He waited a beat before he released me. “Sorry. Sorry, Rae. It’s just…I was worried that maybe Everly had started a rumor, and you’d heard it.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What kind of rumor?”
“She’d come up with really sick stuff, Rae,” he said, leaning close. His breathe smelled weird, like fish. “She had this wild idea that me and Victoria were trying to kill her.” He laughed. “Crazy, see? Who would come up with an idea like that about their own family?”
I nodded. Anything to get him to let me leave. “Yeah, crazy.”
“I just wanted to make sure you didn’t believe something like that,” he said softly. “We’re not like that. We just want you to feel welcome.” His hand, leaning against the bench, had moved closer. His knuckles were touching my thigh. “I just want you to feel at home.”
I got up abruptly, hugging my bag to my chest, my sandwich still sitting on the bench. “Well, I haven’t talked to her, and I’ll let you know if I see her.”
He leaned back on the bench. He wasn’t smiling. He was just staring at me, his eyes moving over me slowly. “Alright. I’ll see you at the Halloween party, right?”
I did my best to smile. “Yeah, of course. Wouldn’t miss it.”
“Good girl.” I shuddered from head to toe. That wasn’t something I ever wanted to hear out of his mouth. “I’ll be seeing you then. Wouldn’t want you to be late to that little meeting with your professor.”
The cabin was so quiet, especially with the rain pouring for days on end. Quiet and lonely. I enjoyed some alone time, and Cheesecake was an affectionate companion, but there was a void he couldn’t fill. I tried to stay occupied with homework. I tried to ignore my growing anxiety about the Halloween party.
I tried not to think of Leon. I tried not to remember how good his arms felt around me.
But when I wasn’t having nightmares of my name being called from long, dark tunnels, I was dreaming of him. Dreaming of his voice, of his lips on mine, of his strong hands holding me. I dreamed of his words, again and again.
Make me stay. It’s enough to drive me to madness, Rae, wanting you so fucking badly.
It may have just been a result of the rain, but the woods around my house were getting quieter. No crickets. No birdsong. No deer in the yard in the early mornings. Just the endless patter of rain, and the trees groaning in the wind.
I was probably just being paranoid, but when I’d go out to my car to leave for class, my neck would prickle as if eyes were on me. But no matter how many times I scanned the trees, there was nothing there.
Nothing I could see.
The severed heads Leon had brought were beginning to fall apart, crumbling and rotting as they fell from their stakes and became one with the soil. With them gone, how long would I be safe? How long would the Eld stay away? I bought more cinnamon and rosemary, and found a shop in town that sold bundles of sage. I called my grandma, and of course she was ecstatic to have me over for Fall break. But that was nearly a month away.
I spent hours after sundown staring out the window into the yard, watching. Waiting, my camera in my hands. I’d play back the footage of Leon sleeping, comforted by the sight of his face. I’d recorded it in hopes of sending it to somebody who could help me, but now I felt strangely protective of it. The closest I got to reaching out to anyone was an email to a local pastor, but all I managed was to write Dear Father Patterson in the body of an email before I deleted it. A priest couldn’t fight monsters.
I wasn’t getting nearly enough sleep. My nightmares were getting worse. The rain just kept pouring, but I was still waiting on the storm.
Something was coming. Something was watching.
The weekend before Halloween, I jumped at the chance to spend a Saturday at Inaya’s apartment, just the two of us. I tucked a bottle of wine in my bag, bundled up in my coziest sweats and hoodie, and was hurriedly trying to lock my door as the rain poured around me when something on the porch railing caught my eye.
Dangling from a length of twine tied around the rail, was an X, formed of twigs and thin white bones tied together. Something round and lumpy was pinned with a needle in the center of the X.
I gave the lumpy thing a poke with my finger, and my stomach curled in revulsion.
It was an eye. A fish’s eyeball, pinned in the center of the twigs and bones.
It dropped from my hands, swinging back and forth on its length of twine as cold dread flooded me. I looked frantically around the yard. Who the hell had left this here? It hadn’t been there the day before, which meant someone had to have come through the night, come into my yard, and tied this hideous thing outside my door. Nauseous, I ran back in the house, grabbed a pair of scissors, and cut the thing loose from the porch. I went to the edge of the trees, and with as much strength as I could muster, I hurled it into the forest.
As I stood there, shaking, I heard a twig snap.
I froze, staring at the kaleidoscope of shrubs and branches. The sound of the rain was like static in my ears, dripping off my hood and pooling in the mud around my feet. Something had moved. Somewhere out there, in the shadows, something was watching.
Too scared to leave him alone, I put Cheesecake in his harness and packed him into the car with me. He’d gone on enough car rides to be calm, and he stared curiously out the window as I drove to Inaya’s apartment. I wanted to keep driving and driving until I was out of this town, this state. I’d keep going until I was back in California, or hell, I’d pack up and join my parents in Spain.
I didn’t understand what it meant, but finding a trinket with a fish eyeball tied to my porch couldn’t possibly be anything good.
“Hey, girl — oh, oh my God, are you okay?” Inaya’s face fell the moment she saw me.
“I’m fine, I’m good, just a little…uh…” I gulped, shaking as I stomped the rain from my boots. “I brought Cheesecake, sorry, I just, uh…”
I was scared. I was so goddamn scared.
“Woah, woah, yeah, you should sit down.” I let Cheesecake hop to the floor and Inaya led me to the couch and got me to sit. For a few minutes, all I could do was take deep breaths to fend off the panic as she rubbed my back. Cheesecake, eager for attention, hopped up next to her and began head-butting her side in hopes of chin scratches.
When I raised my head to see Inaya with one hand rubbing my back and the other petting my cat, I nearly sobbed. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry to come over such a mess.”
“Rae, please, stop apologizing,” Inaya said gently. “You know you could come over here with a body in your trunk and I’d go grab a shovel.” She gave me a little smirk and side-eye. “But I do hope that’s not what’s wrong.”
I giggled, snorting grossly as I wiped tears from my face. “No bodies in the trunk this time, babe. Just some creeps leaving Blair Witch shit in my yard.”
I told her about the trinket, the feeling of being watched, even my trip out to St. Thaddeus and my fears that it may have attracted some attention to me — although I didn’t specify attention from what. She listened quietly, Cheesecake happily curled up on her pink sweatpants as she stroked him. When I finally took a breath after describing the horror of the fish eyeball, she said, “Well, that’s weird as hell. Rae, seriously, you need to stop going to those creepy places alone. What if someone had snatched you? What if you’d gotten hurt? What —”
“Yes, yes, Mom, okay, next time I’ll drag you with me!” We both giggled as she rubbed her face in exasperation.
“Look, we both know how weird people can be around here,” she said. “Honestly, someone probably saw you go to the church and wanted to freak you out. Or maybe Mrs. Kathy thought she was being neighborly.” She rolled her eyes. “Or, if you really think about it, it’s October. It was probably someone pulling a Halloween prank.”
“Yeah, you’re…you’re probably right…”
“Stay here a few nights,” she said. “Trent is in San Francisco for the week; we’ll go pack a bag for you tomorrow, and we’ll just hang out. It’ll be good for you to get out of the woods for a while.”
My shoulders sagged with relief. Getting some time away from the cabin was desperately needed. The longer I stayed there, the more trapped I felt: netted in by trees, wrapped up in darkness, the rain and fog making it seem as if I was alone in a gray, wet world.
I got better sleep that night at Inaya’s than I had in weeks. Cuddled on the couch with Cheesecake, I didn’t even stir until I began to hear the soft sounds of her moving around in the kitchen in the morning, putting on the kettle for tea.
No weird dreams. No fears of what lurked in the night. Just sleep.
Of course, Cheesecake simply didn’t understand why I didn’t have his breakfast immediately ready for him. I decided to head back to the cabin and get what I’d need for the week before he started screaming in protest of his imminent starvation.
I was feeling lighter. Happier. Despite the gloomy skies and the clouds rumbling with thunder, I felt like I had some hope.
I could survive this. I’d find a way.
Inaya’s apartment was near the bay, a five-minute drive from my house. Abelaum’s downtown streets glowed warmly, even in the rain. By evening, the bars would be full of students eager to start celebrating their Halloween weekend. I couldn’t help wondering if Leon would be among them, mingling among the unsuspecting, hunting for another soul.
My hands tightened on the steering wheel. He’d spoke of feeling something for me, something that made him want my soul for eternity. Yet he left. He left.
I sighed heavily. He didn’t owe me protection. After all he’d been through, why would I expect him to stay? He’d been a captive here so long, why would he choose to spend his freedom chasing after one disastrous human girl?
He was probably long gone. He’d probably found the grimoire and gone straight back to Hell where he belonged. Good riddance. I didn’t need —
I slammed on the brakes as something darted in front of my car. My head was thrown forward and my entire upper body tensed with the effort not to bang my head against the steering wheel. Panting, I raised my head and pushed my glasses up my nose. My headlights lit the wet road before me, pools of yellow light that glistened with the soft, drizzling rain.
What the hell had I just seen?
The road was empty, but I could have sworn I’d seen something. Something pale as moonlight, humanoid but naked. Long, too long in all the wrong places. Horned — horned like a stag.
But there was nothing there.
I eased off the brake, driving slower now. It must have just been a deer. The illusion that it had a human form was just that: an illusion, my paranoid brain making up frightening things in the woods. Maybe I needed to see a doctor and start taking something for this anxiety. I’d already seen it start to affect my grades —
I stopped again. Something was on the road. Not just one something, but three.
Three tall, pale white figures.
Their necks were too long. Their shoulders drooped and their arms — too long, too thin — hung slack. I couldn’t be sure if they were draped in rags, or if their skin was drooping and wrinkled. Their long legs ended in bizarre, two-pronged hooves, as if they were wearing massive heeled shoes backward on their feet. They stood in the middle of the road, scattered, as if they’d been wandering and my approach had made them pause.
They were all staring at me with milky white eyes, their massive sets of pale antlers strewn with strange, dark, leafy plants — seaweed?
With trembling fingers, I managed to find the button to lock my doors and click it. The sound made them twitch, but otherwise they were completely still. They didn’t sway. Their chests didn’t move with their breath. They could have been stone, if it weren’t for those eyes, staring into my soul.
I couldn’t drive forward without hitting them. They were spread out across the road so I couldn’t pass. I kept hoping to see headlights behind me, or ahead, but the road was empty except for us. My logical brain demanded that I consider them to be just early Halloween revelers, dressed up in really good costumes. Not real. They couldn’t possibly be real.
Then, the one closest to the car moved.
It came slowly, every movement accompanied by a crackling of its joints that I could hear even with my windows rolled up. My knuckles turned white on the wheel. If I didn’t move, maybe I wouldn’t incite it. If I didn’t move, maybe those milky white eyes wouldn’t see me.
It stood right outside my driver door. I stared straight ahead, eyes stinging, whimpers coming with every breath.
What the hell was I supposed to do?
The creature leaned forward, and placed its boney, pale hand against my window. Wetness seeped around its thin fingers, as if it was waterlogged, weeping down the window pane.
Then, from behind the stag skull, it spoke in a harsh whisper that hissed right through the glass, “It waits for you, Raelynn. It waits in the deep dark place.”
I slammed on the gas. I didn’t care if I crunched their boney bodies under my tires, but as my car sped toward them, they leapt out of the way, their speed nothing like the slow, hobbling gait I’d witnessed from the first one. I was swerving, the steering wheel wobbling as my tires struggled with my speed and the wet road. The car bottomed out as I hit the dirt driveway toward the cabin, jostling me as I sped over the bumps and potholes.
I didn’t say a word to Inaya about it when I got back. I explained away my trembling hands with continual complaints of how cold it was. I claimed I was just celebrating the weekend when I poured myself another glass of wine before noon. I wanted to cry. I wanted to hide.
But I had to figure out how to fight.
I wasn’t going to die a sacrifice. I wasn’t going to disappear, forgotten into these godforsaken woods.
