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I also wanted to go to Kyrie’s, to calm her down, to comfort her. The warm blanket of her parent’s worry had likely faded, and she was probably scared. And I wondered if her parents would even let me see her.
It was my fault. My fault for not listening, for not staying away from Casador Lake. Maybe the person, or that thing, would have let Amber go.
I walked to my bedroom in a daze, laid down on the bed, then closed my eyes. Was my nightmare real? Did I imagine that thing by the water? I thought my past was catching up to me, haunting me in waking hours, taking from the ones I cared for. But Hart Hollow had been hiding from these demons long before I came around. I just didn’t know it yet.
Eventually, I left my trailer and walked to Sorina’s house through the woods. I didn’t care what she did in the morning, why she wasn’t seen. I was going to see her. I was going to make her tell me the truth.
I approached her house slowly, looking for anyone around, looking for her. But there was nothing. When I knocked on the door, the echo rang back to me. I was met with nothing but silence as I peered in the ornate windows on either side of the beautiful door before I tried the handle. Locked.
Determined, I walked around back to the door that led to the kitchen. Locked as well.
There was a low window along the back of the house. I walked to it, saying a silent prayer to anyone but God, and pulled myself up. It unlatched, and I opened it wide, sneaking in.
The house was cool, shrouded in darkness.
I hadn’t noticed the curtains when I was there before. Every window was covered in dark fabric, drowning out the light.
I closed my eyes, then opened them again, adjusting to the darkness. Everything became clear, and I sniffed the air, catching her scent. Quietly I crept down the hall to the staircase, placing my palm on the railing and taking the first step.
The floorboard creaked, cursing me, and I closed my eyes, saying my own curse in my head.
Slowly, I ascended toward the second floor, where I knew her bedroom was.
I made it to the second floor and strolled down the hall to Sorina’s room. The door was shut, and I opened it, peering in the dark.
The covers were drawn up on the bed, and a tiny figure was beneath the fabric.
I walked to her, and it struck me how tiny she seemed when I sat at her side.
She didn’t open her eye when she spoke. “You’re not as quiet as you think, Nicholas,” she said, turning over.
The first thing I noticed, beyond her nakedness, was the wound on her neck. I hadn’t seen it the night before. There had been so much blood on her. They had lied when they said it wasn’t her own. Some of it had to have been from this wound. It was red and raw, not bleeding, but inflamed.
No large wound could have healed that much in such a short time, but she was obviously hurt.
She winced when she sat up, not reaching for the covers, not covering herself.
“What happened to you?” I asked, voice rough.
“I tried to save her, Nicholas. I did,” she said.
I made my voice steel, though I wanted to pull her to me, close to my chest, and protect her. “From who? Or what? Tell me what the fuck is happening so I can help.”
“There’s nothing you can do. She’d dead.”
“And what about the next girl?” I asked. “What about Kyrie?”
“Enjoy what time you have with her. She’ll graduate next year. He doesn’t want her. She can go; she can escape it.”
“Escape what?”
“He’s full,” she said, almost dreamlike. It was as if I wasn’t there, as if she were far away, somewhere else, telling a story.
I touched her then. My large hands gripping her small shoulders. “Sorina, what the fuck is going on?”
She reached up, gripping my wrists. “There is a beast in this town, Nicholas. It feeds on the town, on the daughters of men of God. Stay away from God, and you’ll be safe. Stay away from the girls whose fathers spread theWord, and you won’t get hurt. Stay away from me—”
“And what?” I asked, pulling her closer.
