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In my car, I took a long sip of my coffee and hoped I could buy Byron’s love with a cake slice. Life was completely off kilter with him mad at me, and I didn’t like it.
I flicked on the radio to fill the silence as I drove up the winding hillside road to Ford, unsurprised when the clouds burst. It was strangely comforting, the drumming of rain on the car’s roof, the swish of windscreen wipers clearing my view, though the landscape around the road was far prettier when it wasn’t drenched in grey and misery.
I groaned when the radio station skipped, I Should Be So Lucky—my mum’s favourite—jumping until Kylie sounded like a robot speaking in morse code. I didn’t dare take both hands off the wheel to fix the radio with how winding and narrow the road was. I doubted Ford’s End picked up more than one radio station anyway, being in the middle of the Irish Sea.
The morse code music cut out entirely, fading in a swirl of unsettling gibberish until silence filled the car. Great. So much for that. I eyed the dark clouds, knowing they were to blame for the loss of signal, and kept both hands on the wheel as I guided the car smoothly around a bend in the road, scaling the mountain Ford was built atop.
Why did people build castles and manor houses on the top of hills anyway? I knew they were defensible from a height but god, the distance from the bottom was killer. Or was that the idea? Their enemies would get halfway up the hill, wheezing, crawling on hands and knees, and decide to slide back to their ships?
In the silence, my mind wandered. I wondered who had lived at Ford before it became a med school, wondered if this island had been something else before it belonged to the Ford family. Mostly I wondered about what Mason Lindgren said at orientation.
Isn’t the school built on an old burial ground? I heard there was a pagan cult here before Ford was built.
I’d dismissed that as paranoia and hearsay, but after last night it was harder to roll my eyes at. I watched Mason splay in the middle of a ring of fire, scream like he was being tortured, and then die. Mason was dead. Who would tell his parents, his siblings? Would they ever know, or would they wait for a call, a letter, a visit from their son, only to find out he never made it to classes on his first day?
Music blasted abruptly from my car speakers, far louder than it had been before, and I jumped hard enough that my hands jerked the wheel before I regained control and straightened the car’s path. Shit. Shit!
“I love you, Taylor, but now is bad timing,” I panted, my heart beating in my throat, as fast as a bird’s. Blank Space played at full volume.
I exhaled a rough breath when the road’s tight curve expanded through a long stretch of moorland that would, eventually, become the woods around Ford. Fog crept across the moor’s rolling grasses, purple heather poking through the spectral mist every now and then. Almost home. If Ford could be called home.
The engine coughed a sudden plume of exhaust fumes, and a chill went down my spine. There was no way. No fucking way I was having car troubles right now, in the middle of a desolated road, surrounded by fields and nothing else. Taylor’s voice morphed like something out of a twisted fairy tale. But you'll come back each time you leave 'cause, darling, I'm a nightmare dressed like a daydream.
I flinched at the word nightmare, and then my car stuttered, inexplicably, to a halt.
I froze, my breathing coming fast. Was this Nightmare? Was she here?
I twisted, staring out the windows, searching the fog for her long red hair, her black lace dress, but I didn’t see anything except mist and grass and, in the far distance, the beginnings of the Rosalind Woods.
My heart quickened. I turned the keys in the ignition, over and over, but my beloved car didn’t even choke out an attempt to start. Well, I wasn’t getting out of the fucking car. If Nightmare was out there, I was staying in here.
I slid my phone from my pocket and hissed a curse when it slipped out of my shaky hands. Fine hairs rose on the back of my neck when I bent to retrieve it, convinced when I sat back up Nightmare would be in front of the car. My heart skipped, but when I shot back into my seat there was no psychopath in front of me, nothing but the fog and the moors. Or… was the fog darker? Thicker?
I shook my head hard. “You’re seeing things, Cat. You’re going mad, and that’s completely reasonable given you saw four people murdered last night and no one would ever—”
Believe you.
I was being watched. The back of my neck burned with the knowledge. My hands shook harder. I was being watched, and I couldn’t see anyone in the moorland, but I knew it was her, knew she was out there. The wind picked up, a whispering howl that shook the grasses, swirled the fog and—oh god.
It wasn’t Nightmare racing towards my car, vulnerable and small in the middle of the moor road. It was three riders on horseback, their steeds pitch black with dark smoke flowing from their hooves. The riders’ bodies were cloaked in flowing dark fabric, faces hidden behind onyx helmets so sharp and terrifying that a squeak left me. The tall rider in the middle raced faster than the others, their helmet topped with a wicked metal spike. I forgot how to breathe. Forgot to remind my heart to beat. Forgot—
My hand reached for the car door.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I screamed at myself.
I felt my fingers curve, heard the soft click of the door opening, and couldn’t stop it.
“Do you want to die?” I demanded, like I wasn’t screaming at my own hand.
Cold rushed into the car, wind catching strands of white and pink hair, tugging on them like the wind had turned against me, encouraging the madness that gripped my body.
I was going to die. Like Mason and Milani and Orwell and Rone died—I was going to die, right now, because my legs swung over the edge of the buttery leather seat and I stood. My head turned of its own will, eyes fixing on the rider with the spiked helm, my heart sprinting faster.
I needed to run, run away—
I didn’t even slam the door shut before I took off, feet pounding the tarmacked road, carrying me towards the riders.
“No!” I snarled at myself, barely able to breathe. I wrenched so hard at my arms that they jolted, and then I did it again and again. The thunderous sound of hooves filled my ears, filled my heartbeat until it skipped in sync with them. Fear gave me enough control to twist around and propel myself into a sprint away from Nightmare’s terrifying riders.
