“No,” I say back. “You have to let me out.”
I think I can hear her breathing. The soft inhale of her throat, the wobbly exhale against the grain of the wood. “I can’t,” she says after a moment.
“Why not?” I feel the pinch in my heart growing tighter.
“They’ll lock me up too, if I help you.…” Her voice trails away, like she’s looking down the hallway, listening for anyone approaching. “They’re really paranoid. Rhett thinks they’re all going to jail.”
They’re so paranoid they’re willing to lock me inside a room. They’re so paranoid they’re hearing voices in their cabin—they think they’re being haunted by something.By Max.They’re not thinking clearly, about anything, and I feel my heart clawing at my rib cage. Beginning to panic. “Just let me out, Suzy,” I plead. “If they catch me, I won’t tell them you helped me. But I can’t stay in here.” The dark feels like it’s swallowing me up. A gulf of black.
Another long pause. I think maybe she’s gone, left me here.
“Please, Suzy.”
But then I hear her breathing again. She’s still there. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I have to go back downstairs before they realize I’m gone.”
I slap my palm against the door. “No!”
“They’re just drunk,” she adds quickly. “I’m sure they’ll let you out in the morning.” Another pause. “I’ll talk to Rhett. I’ll tell him you don’t know anything. I’ll try.”
“Suzy,” I beg. “Just open the door. Don’t leave.”
But I can hear the quick pace of her footsteps down the hall, moving away. She’s already gone.
“Shit,” I mutter again, dropping my hand from the doorframe. I press my palms to my eyes, hard, like I could press myself right out of this room. When I open my eyes again, the room is too dark, and it’s hard to tell one wall from the other, the ceiling from the floor. My head spins and the same feeling I’ve felt before sinks over me, the shiver and tremble of air, the buzz and crack of it. Seconds becoming minutes, then wavering back again.
Tick, tick…
“No,” I breathe. I don’t want to feel this now.
I push away from the door and move across the room until my shin hits the corner of the bed. I wince at the sharp pain, buckling over, before continuing forward, hands out in front of me to feel for other obstacles. I reach a wall and a window, and I push aside the curtain. Muted light spills into the room from the half-moon. I touch the glass and peer out into the snow. But the drop to the ground is too far down, far enough to break bones. There has to be another way out. The thrumming noise of music pumps louder through the floors, and the walls vibrate, but I hear something else. Something distinct.Something I’ve heard before.
The whisper of an insect on glass. Of wings.
A sound so faint I’m surprised I can hear it at all. It grows louder, thudding against the window. Black eyes and swollen belly.
I drop my hand from the window and take a step back, fear clawing up the rungs of my ribs.No, no, no.
The moth found me, even here, even locked in this room. And the certainty burrows deep beneath my skin.
“Go away,” I whisper, my words desperate and thin.
It spins and thumps against the window—thump, thump, thump—searching for a way inside. To reach me. So it can brush its wings against my skin, mark me, so death can find me more easily.
Death is coming.
My body pulses and I slide against the wall, dropping to the floor, tucking my knees to my chin. Anything to block out the sound.Thump-thump-thump.“Stop it!” I scream, I plead.
My heartbeat is a percussion in my chest, the same rhythm as its wings.
“Go away. Go away. Go away,” I whisper into my hands. Until it’s all I hear.
All that fills my ears.
OLIVER
Ihave to find her.
The lake is impossibly dark; it swallows up the stars as I circle around the shore. Certain this place, these mountains, are watching every move I make.
