Paisley didn’t remember how long it took to reach Opal, couldn’t recall if she’d ever been this physically close to her. Paisley felt her knees over Opal’s torso as her ribs shifted and kept her lungs from expanding. She felt the thud of Opal’s heartbeat reverberate off her skin like an instrument.
She raised the bloody wood again.
She thought about the witch. She thought about bloodlust. It suddenly seemed so possible.
Maybe the witch was real after all.
Maybe she was here right now.
If she were, she felt so good.
Then Opal was still.
And once Opal went still, Paisley took a strand of Opal’s hair anda strand of Harlow’s hair and dropped them into the fire. She said the phrases she needed to. She completed the ritual.
Then, sitting alone with the spitting fire, two bodies, and a backpack full of camping tools, Paisley realized just how fucked she was.
Thirty-Eight
Suddenly faced with an answer to the question I’d been asking for weeks, I feel more confused than ever.Paisley killed Harlow and Opal.I turn the information around in my head as I shoddily park the car and run from the parking lot to the room, less than a minute walk that now stretches on to eternity.
Paisley killed Harlow and Opal. Evan definitely killed Vanessa, but he was telling the truth about not being involved with the others. Natalie’s innocent, too. Every time I think it, it feels like something I’d make up for a twisted make-believe game during Halloween. Paisley would play a zombie or vampire or some other kind of monster that naturally fits in with words likekill. Everyone would come back to life at the end. But no, I never knew Paisley, Harlow, and Opal as kids. (I’ll never know Harlow and Opal as adults.) There’s no game. We’ve been talking about a witch for the past weekend, but that doesn’t make it real.
The only other thing that feels real is that I may have to start processing the sentencePaisley killed Beck too.
What if I can’t run fast enough? What if Beck’s already dead?
I click on the walkie-talkie again, stomach sinking deeper and deeper as the static sounds.
“Goddammit, Beck!” I screech. “Answer me!”
But of course, when I call again, I’m back to receiving only silence.
Tears burn my vision. God, I left Evan’s gun with them. I have no idea how many bullets it had left.
How many have already blasted through Beck.
I dart up the stairs, heart slamming in my ears. Eyes on Beck’s and my motel room.
But my foot catches on a welcome mat.
I slam down onto the concrete, seeing stars and tasting blood.
Next to the askew mat, though, is a room key.
Room 4.
I don’t even have to check room 3 where I left them.
I can hear the commotion from out here.
I jiggle the key in and slam the door open.
It’s been so long since I was in Paisley’s room, but some details are still seared in my brain. I know the hues of pink on her bedspread, which makeup products she displays on her vanity, what art has now replaced the posters she used to have. I know the vanilla smell and how when you’re lying on the floor, you can pick up little white hairs from the dog that hangs out with her all night.
This motel room feels like Paisley’s nightmare.
Both beds are unmade, the sheets rumpled up into balls set over polka dots of browning blood stains. The red marks extend to the walls, into the bathroom. Like Paisley’s been slowly trickling blood for months, unable to staunch it. And the smell—it’s everything I expect a horror movie to smell like. Sweat, the rusty scent of blood, and something more acrid. A scent that feels embarrassing to even identify.
