Paisley is alive.
I saw countless headlines about Paisley’s death. We held a vigil and a burial for her. We found her fingernails. We—
She’s alive.
Paisley rushes into the room, slamming the door behind her. There’s something wild about her, like she’s spent the past eight months on a deserted island and not holed up in the motel. I’ve seen Paisley with her hair unbrushed moments after waking up at sleepovers, but I’ve never seen her with a slick layer of grease all over her, sunk into her scalp and the sides of her nose. Even from a few feet away, her smell permeates the room, sweat with the sharp scent of acute stress. Something only animals are supposed to sense on each other.
But Beck doesn’t care. Beck picks herself up off the floor and throws her arms around her sister, holding her so tightly her knuckles go white. Paisley stiffens.
“Oh my god,” Beck mutters. “You’re here. You’re supposed to be—” She shudders a breath. “Pais…”
Slowly, Paisley releases her muscles, moving her arms as slowly as snakes until she’s embracing her sister back. As Beck moves in hysterics, Paisley goes still, resting her forehead against Beck’s collarbone, her breath slowing so much I almost think she’s stopped altogether.
She lifts her head, making eye contact with me. “Hi, Emma.”
I’ve never heard her voice so soft; it’s enough to push the tears out of my eyes. Part of me wonders if I should join in Paisley and Beck’s hug, but I can’t move.
Paisley’s really alive.
It feels as impossible as the night I found out she was dead. More impossible, somehow. Paisley being dead became such an important part of the reality I wake up and see every morning that this moment feels more like a dream than anything. How did I miss this possibility when we learned they didn’t bury Paisley’s body? Doesn’t this happen all the time in slashers, that a victim is presumed dead but then shows up alive and well at the end? I don’t know. Maybe I should’ve guessed. But she’s alive regardless. She’s here. I shut my eyes tight enough to see stars and open them. I fully take in Paisley’s face as she blinks back at me. It’s really her. I’m real and she’s real and this is all really happening.
I suddenly can’t stop shivering.
How the hell is Paisley alive?
But before I can get a word in, knocks sound against the front door again.
Paisley blasts as far away from the front of the room as she can, sinking into the space between the bathroom and one of the beds. “Don’t open it!”
“Hey guys, it’s Lars from the front desk,” the guy’s voice rings through the thin walls. “Where’d that girl go?”
Beck pulls away from Paisley, gripping her sister’s shoulders as she hiss-whispers, “Did that motel creep do something to you?”
Paisley shakes her head, her features screwing up like a toddler’s. “No. He’s no one.” She knocks her way out of Beck’s grip, falling to her knees. “But we can’t leave. We can’t.”
Beck shoots a glance back at me. “Can you get him to go?”
I nod as Beck moves back to Paisley, getting on her knees to be eye level with her. It’s the part of Beck who wrote that eulogy, the one who couldn’t imagine life without her sister. It feels wrong in some fundamental way knowing what I know, but shock can do a lot to people.
I approach the door, put on the chain lock, and open it up. The blast of fresh air clears more than just my nose. “Hey, we’re good,” I say. “She went away.”
“Okay.” Lars rubs his nose. “I’ll be in my office. Let me know if she comes back.”
Once Lars’s lumbering gait fades to silence, I turn back to Beck and Paisley.
“I guess we should get going,” I say. “Paisley, you probably need medical attention for your fingers. You don’t want to get an infection. We took care of Evan.” My insides still squirm saying that. “You’re safe now.” I know Harlow and Opal still died, but it’s like we’re in a suspended reality where one out of three is enough, where it’s not worth it for Beck and me to be risking our lives anymore. We have more than a case-changing amount of information to take back to federal agents.
Hell, we have a daughter to take back to Mr. and Mrs. Horne.
But all Paisley does is widen her eyes. “We can’t.”
All this time, Evan did think Paisley was special. Special enough to keep alive. But god, what did hedoto her these past eight months? I can’t let my imagination run without the horror enveloping me.We’re in rescue mode now. It’s more important than ever that I keep it together.
Beck pulls her hands off Paisley. “What’re you talking about? Emma’s telling the truth about the guy who hurt you. Let’s get out of here. You can tell us about what happened when we’re on the road.”
And Paisley starts to cry. “You two don’t get it,” she moans. “It was—god, it’s my fault. The woman in town told us about a witch and it sounded so creepy. When the college guys told us the same story and that the best place to find the witch was the mining town, I had to check it out. Harlow and Opal didn’t want to, but I made them. Townspeople had told us about rituals we could do to summon the witch, so we wanted to try them out for fun. No one thought it’d actually be real, you know?” I nod along, knowing the feeling deep in my guts. “But we tried the ceremony, and this woman came into the ghost town to check on us. But it was too late. We’d summoned the witch, and she took over.”
Paisley starts rocking on her feet, eyes staring at nothing. My heart sinks at every word. Paisley keeps sayingshe. She’s mistaking Evan’s long hair and slight build for him having been a woman, right? Because it was Evan. He admitted to killing Vanessa.
