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I stared at the sky as I slipped onto Kyrie’s street before cutting across the town’s main cemetery, under the protection of the trees. They felt watchful as usual, as if they had eyes.
When I emerged from the cemetery, I ran across the Raven’s Nest parking lot and past Casey’s gas station, hiding behind the car wash as I listened for tires. The Sheriff rarely patrolled at night, and I wondered if the holiday break had him restless. Or if those in charge of the town knew more about the missing girls than they let on. When I thought it was safe, I ran out of town along the bridge where I could finally see Moonies. It was quiet, past closing time, but the light was on in Diana’s place.
I turned left at the road, heading to the small island Sorina told me to stay away from.
I remembered the man, the blood, the slope of his back, the ridges of his face.
It was inhuman, something from nightmares. But not from the nightmares of a young boy watching too many scary movies or reading horrifying books. It was from my nightmares.Nightmares that began before my life in Hart Hollow—where the most worrying things I had to endure were fiction and the lingering memories of my past in my mind like a virus.
My heart beat in my chest as I walked across the dead grass. I expected Sorina to grab my arm at any minute. To reprimand me. But I didn’t care.
No one was on the island, and the moon was gone, but I could still see well in the chilly night.
My Converse clapped on the wooden boards as I walked across the bridge, over the water. When I made it to the island, I was struck by the ordinariness of it.
It was simply dirt. When I looked down, I saw bird droppings, maybe goose or duck. I walked to the center, taking a seat in the middle. The surrounding water was placid. I waited for a car to drive by the bridge or the dirt road, but the town was asleep, dead to the nocturnal world save for the wandering Sheriff.
The sudden thought that the beast in front of the Deacon’s house might come out struck me, and I shivered.
I almost wanted it to. Because it didn’t scare me the way it should have.
I’d wanted to help the animal that night.
And the way the Deacon had spoken, the tenor of his voice, told me he wanted to do the opposite.
Leaning back, I rested on the ground, hoping I wasn’t laying on some bird shit as I cradled my head and closed my eyes. As my ears adjusted to the quiet, without my sight competing to control my senses, I heard more. No frogs chirping as they had in late summer nights after I arrived, but still small beasts moving. Most animals were asleep, but some were wakeful like me. My nocturnal friends.
It soothed me, and I cursed Sorina in my head. I’d almost convinced myself that I’d made it all up, that I never saw the man with the blood. It was another nightmare. But Sorina had seen him too, warned me away.
And then I heard something in the woods. The world around me hadn’t been silent, but something about the sound made me shoot up, and I clicked the flashlight on, shining it across the water. A flash of white disappeared into the trees, long flesh, the shape hard to recognize. It would become some nightmarish thing if I let my imagination paint it, so I closed my eyes and tried to compartmentalize my memories, my dreams, and the things I made up in my head.
In the dark, with you, I am unafraid.
I was alone with a mixture of fear and some instinct to run into the woods, give chase to something just to see if it would run.
And then I heard a girl scream.
I scrambled to my feet, running to the edge of the island, my flashlight waving wildly in the dark.
The scream came again, piercing the night, then abruptly stopped.
I imagined a hand clamped over a mouth as I tried to see across the water. Instead, I saw only trees, a pair of small green eyes—likely a raccoon or something.
Not Sorina, not anything to fear. No leader with a rope to bind me.
And then a hand clamped over my mouth, and my mind reeled at the blurring of memory and imagined things.
I whipped around, but the grip was tight. And though she let me turn, she didn’t let go.
I peered into Diana’s eyes, and she placed her finger to her lips, urging me to be quiet.
I nodded my head, and she let go.
“I heard—”
“Shut the fuck up, Nicholas,” she whispered, grabbing my hand with one hand and my flashlight with the other. She clicked it off and drug me across the island, impossibly strong.
“Wait, we’re going the wrong way—” I protested.
