Forests of the Night

by Jennifer Skogen

  “Quiet!” Jackson called out, “One of your neighbors is going to think I’m murdering you.”

  “Like you could catch me!” she taunted. As if Macy could possibly outrun him. She was, like, two feet tall. But Jackson let her run ahead of him, just out of reach, until they were almost to her house. Then he swung his arms around her waist and held her against his chest so she couldn’t twist away again.

  She was breathing hard and her face was hot and sweaty when he pressed his mouth to her cheek. “Just don’t be an idiot, okay? Promise me?” he said, leaving his cheek against hers while they both caught their breath.

  Macy pulled back for a moment, but then rested her head against his chest. Jackson put his chin on the top of her head. Her hood had fallen back while she was running and her hair smelled like the fruity shampoo she always used, but also like the forest. She always smelled nice. “I’m okay,” she whispered.

  “Just . . . ” He tried to think about how to say what he meant. Just stop hiding things from him. Stop taking stupid chances. Stop wandering around in the creepy woods at night. “Just tell me, okay? Next time you want to do something stupid? We can be stupid together.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Macy didn’t hear about the third death until she got to school on Halloween. It was a gorgeous morning—blue sky, the leaves bright and crunchy under her feet as she walked to school. Macy loved the spicy smell of fallen leaves and how she could just barely see her own breath. It made getting up for school on a Monday a little less painful.

  Some people were already dressed up for Halloween. Macy saw a baby in a stroller who was dressed like a fly. The man pushing the stroller was a spider and the stroller itself was covered in fake cobwebs—sort of disturbing when she thought about it. She passed Western Winds and smiled at all the pumpkins out front. Macy had tried to keep volunteering at the retirement home, but it was too hard.

  First, it was really weird to hear them talk about Lorna—not to mention all the HAVE YOU SEEN ME? posters that were plastered everywhere with her face on them. No one knew what to make of Lorna’s disappearance. Did she wander off into the woods somewhere? Did she just get into someone’s car? People were always talking about it.

  Second, one day Macy had to dispatch a ghost at Western Winds and she thought that Esther saw her do it. The older women had stared past Macy to where the ghost—an old man with a hole from a Tracheotomy in his neck—evaporated into nothing. Macy left that day and didn’t return. She kept thinking that she’d go back and say hi to Esther, but she hadn’t, and now it had been over a month.

  Macy was wearing her Little Red Riding Hood cape over regular clothes. She didn’t really like dressing up at school, but the cape was at least something. The bright red of the cape flashed out of the corner of her eye with each step. She figured she’d let Claire help her put together a more complete costume after school.

  Dom was waiting for her outside the front of the school. He wasn’t dressed like anything, except for a kind of sloppy version of himself. He looked like he hadn’t shaved in a while, and his eyes had huge bags under them. “Come on,” he said, taking her hand and pulling her around the back of the school. For an instant Macy thought Dom grabbed her hand because, well, he just wanted to hold her hand—like that Beatles’ song. The blisters on her hand stung, but she didn’t let go. Then she saw Trev and Sam waiting for them on the other side of the building. Their faces looked grim.

  She released Dom’s hand and crossed her arms. “What?” Macy noticed Jackson was missing and once again her stomach clenched—just like when she was on the phone with her mom when she was at the mall. Ever since Jackson’s stupid game with the ghost at the lake, Macy kept thinking about what could have happened—how close it had been.

  “Where’s Jackson?” she finally asked, just as Dom said, “They found another body.”

  She felt like cold water was running down her face. Then Jackson came around the corner and she took a deep breath. He walked past Macy and stood next to Sam, who gave him a quick pat on the arm.

  “It was another guy,” Dom continued, “and his throat was cut, too. This can’t be a coincidence.”

  “Who found him?” Jackson asked.

  Dom rubbed his shoulder. He looked at Macy, holding her eyes for a moment, and then looked back to Jackson. “I did.”

  “Really?” Jackson said in a tone that sounded like he was accusing Dom of something. “Where?”

  Dom sighed. “On the beach. I can’t sleep sometimes and I go for walks.” Macy didn’t know that. She wondered how often he couldn’t sleep and if it was the pain that kept him awake. “I found a man down on the beach, a few miles from our house. Really near the school actually.”

  “You mean near the Door,” Macy said. “Is that important?”

  “Could be—the Arizona murders were all near the Door. I don’t really know if that’s part of the ritual or not.”

  “Wait,” Jackson said. “What’d you do? You found this dead body and then what?”

  “Shhh,” Sam said, kind of smacking Jackson in the arm. “A little louder? Dom came home and told us.”

  “So you just left him there?” Jackson’s lip curled slightly. “You didn’t call the police?”

  “Of course not,” Dom said. “Someone else’ll find him. It’s not like he’s going to be any more dead in a few hours.”

  “Did you see him?” Macy asked. “His ghost, I mean.”

  “No. I think he was already gone. But his body—” Dom looked a little like he might be sick. “It was just his neck. I didn’t see anything else. His neck was . . . ”

  When he didn’t continue, Macy asked, “So, there’s only one more, right? For the ritual?” Macy thought about Henry and what he’d said about something waiting behind the Door. Something bad. And he was right there—right by the Door. But Henry couldn’t have done it. He couldn’t touch anything. It was impossible. She wondered if Henry went anywhere when she wasn’t with him. Or did he just wait, watching the light of the Door?

  “Yeah. If this is the same ritual, then there’s only one left,” Dom answered.

  Just then a woman from the front office came around the corner. She had a pack of cigarettes in her hand, though there were clear rules against smoking on campus. The woman told them to get to class and then stood there waiting for them to leave, holding the cigarettes behind her back.

  As they walked into school, already five minutes late for class, Macy asked “What do we do?”

  Macy hadn’t directed her question at any one person, but everyone looked to Dom. Before he answered, he took Macy’s hand again. This time he just held it, curling his hand around the back of her hand and squeezing her fingers so lightly that it didn’t even hurt. “We wait.”

  After school Macy wanted to go see Henry before it got dark, but she had already made plans with Claire to go over to her house and get ready for the party. Even though Macy had put on a brave face in front of Jackson the night he followed her, it was pretty freaky wandering around with just a flashlight. She needed to ask Henry about the ritual—maybe he knew something about it when he was alive. Maybe he could help them. And part of her—the part that she tried to ignore—wondered if today was finally the day that she should just take care of him. Because what if . . . and that’s where she wanted to stop. She didn’t want to think about it. What if he was killing people? What if he was never supposed to come back? She thought of Henry and remembered his sad eyes when his hand passed through her arm. He was barely even there. Did it really hurt anything to let him stay?

  By the time school got out everyone had heard about the third body. It turned out the dead man was a teacher—a substitute who never showed up for work. His throat had been slashed and he was discovered on the beach in the early morning. But that was all people seemed to know. Macy just hoped that no one had seen Dom leaving the area. What if the police started to ask questions about Dom? Why, for example, did Dom have a gunshot wound? And where were hi
s parents? What else might the police learn that Macy didn’t even know about?

  Macy wasn’t sure how Dom would answer any of that and it would start to look pretty suspicious. It really annoyed her when Jackson kept insinuating that Dom had something to do with the killings. But Macy thought about how little she actually knew about Dom and the others. Yet she did know him. She felt like she could see everything that made up Dom when he looked in her eyes, although he was the one who said they should just let the ritual play out and not try to stop the killer.

  Macy couldn’t just pretend to know for sure what the future might hold. She just had to hope that it wouldn’t turn out to be the shittiest option.

  Claire’s mom picked them up from school, along with Claire’s little sister Sabrina, and drove them straight home. After the third body was found, Macy’s mom agreed to still let Macy go over to Claire’s house as long a parent was driving. Macy couldn’t really blame her mom. She thought about Dom’s sister and how his parents didn’t know where their daughter was the night she was taken.

  Macy felt a little guilty that she’d been lying to her parents so much recently and that she was just going to keep lying. But what choice did she have? Tell them about the ghosts? And Henry? And the Door? And the ritual? Tell them what really happened the night of the Lock-in? Her mom and dad couldn’t just fix anything—not the way she used to believe when she was little. They hadn’t been able to save Nick and they certainly couldn’t do jack shit about Henry or the Door.

  Macy told her mom that she and Claire were going over to Jackson’s house to pass out candy after getting ready at Claire’s house. She knew her mom wouldn’t call to check up on them, because she didn’t like to bother Jackson’s dad.

  When they were getting ready in Claire’s room, Claire surprised Macy by pulling a long black dress out of her closet. “This will definitely fit you.”

  Macy held it to her chest and looked in Claire’s full-length mirror. The dress looked like a vampire’s lingerie. “First, I’m not wearing this. Second, where did you even get this?”

  “I went to a thrift store and bought a few more things since you wouldn’t bother to pick out a full costume. What’s wrong with it?”

  “I don’t know . . . how about that this is basically used underwear? And that my boobs would fall out. Wait, you bought a few things?”

  Claire pulled out something long and white that looked like a wedding dress. “You can freak Dom out!” She hummed the wedding march.

  “Uhm . . . no. Next.”

  Claire went back to the closet. “Okay, final option.” She held out another long dress, this time a soft gray color. It had long, flowing sleeves, and a neckline that didn’t show most of her chest. It was . . . tasteful. Elegant.

  “What’s that supposed to be?”

  “I dunno. It just looked so pretty.” Claire held it up in front of Macy. “Maybe a ghost?”

  Macy shook her head and smiled. “So inappropriate,” she whispered.

  “What?” Claire asked, looking confused.

  “Nothing. It’s perfect.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Not many people came to the party, which wasn’t that surprising given that most of the school had been permanently grounded after the Lock-in. But the ones who did come brought lots of beer and vodka or rum stolen from their parents. The ratio of booze to student was quite high.

  When Macy, Jackson, and Claire arrived, Trev greeted them at the door. He was wearing a Frankenstein costume, complete with those bolts on the sides of his neck. His face was painted a greenish brown, and he had huge fake stitches drawn on his neck in black.

  Claire squealed. “You look perfect!” She tugged on his sleeve, making him spin around.

  “Claire good,” he moaned before laughing. “I can’t do that all night. And wasn’t Frankenstein’s monster supposed to be really smart? In the actual book?”

  Macy didn’t know that, but she nodded. “Yeah. I think he was really sarcastic, too.” Trev grinned with his weirdly blue lips and pulled Claire into the kitchen to get her approval on the food setup. After dodging a few drunk people, Macy saw Sam’s red hair from across the room. Jackson immediately left Macy to go talk to her. Sam appeared to be a mermaid, with tight, sparkly blue pants instead of a fin and some kind of really fake-looking sea-shell bra. Was she Ariel? With red hair? Kind of cliché. Macy never did find out what Jackson was—some kind of sailor maybe? He definitely had a nautical thing going on.

  Macy had the sudden realization that Jackson’s costume was probably supposed to match Sam’s (a sailor and a mermaid). She took a long drink from a bottle of champagne someone had left on the coffee table. Macy sneezed and then took another long drink.

  After looking everywhere downstairs, Macy finally found Dom in his room. She knocked softly at first, then louder so he could hear her over the thump of the downstairs music. She heard a faint, “Come in,” so she pushed open the door.

  Dom was sitting at his desk, staring at his computer screen. Two empty beer bottles were lined up neatly on the edge of his desk and he seemed to be working on a third. Macy was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to be drinking with his meds, but she didn’t say anything. Dom still wasn’t wearing a costume, unless you counted “slightly drunk boy” as a costume.

  He smiled as she shut the door behind her. “Macy, you look . . . ” He didn’t finish that sentence, but took another drink of his beer. She took it out of his hand, drained the last few sips, then set the empty bottle next to the others.

  “What’re you doing?” she asked, looking at his screen. It was an article that had posted a few hours earlier. Apparently the police had picked up a stranger down by the harbor. He had blood on his clothes.

  “Do you think he did it?” Macy asked, peering closer to the picture of the man. He had long hair and a beard, and he wasn’t looking straight at the camera, but a little off to the side—like he wasn’t looking at her, but at something behind her.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” Dom stood up. He wasn’t that much taller than Macy, but tall enough that she had to tilt her head up to look in his eyes. “You look,” he said again, then reached out and touched her cheek. Claire had made Macy’s eyes smoky and brushed a light glitter over her face and along her neck. Macy thought she looked pretty damn hot.

  “You didn’t dress up?” Macy asked him, stepping even closer. The dress was a little long for her and it brushed along the hardwood floor. Her face was only a few inches from his.

  “Sure I did,” he laughed, taking a step back. “I’m a Victorian house. The costume’s a bit big . . . ”

  Macy didn’t wait another second. She stepped into him—standing on her tiptoes and letting her hands graze his waist. His lips were soft, and when he wrapped his arms around her, she didn’t feel nervous or awkward. She felt safe.

  “Macy . . . ” he murmured, kissing her mouth, then her jaw, and then her lips again.

  She smiled against his lips. Claire was right. She should have done this a long time ago.

  Macy was still wearing her costume when she went looking for Henry—her red cape wrapped tightly around her. She had told Dom she was just going downstairs to get some food and would be right back. Then she walked out of the house and kept on walking.

  It was stupid. She knew it was stupid. She should not be leaving the party to wander around Grey Hills after dark. And why was she leaving Dom? Macy could still feel him on her body. His lips pressed to her collarbone. His hands pulling her dress down over her shoulder so he could kiss her there too. Her hands taking off his shirt, her fingers grazing his wound, pressing her lips just beneath it. His skin was so soft. Perfect.

  Why was she leaving? Even now Dom was waiting for her to come back to him. But she had to see Henry.

  While she was kissing Dom, Macy couldn’t stop the nagging thought in the back of her mind. Henry. She needed to go see Henry. It couldn’t be him. He couldn’t even touch her—how could he have killed anyone? It probably was
that man, anyway. The guy the police had picked up. He looked crazy. Maybe there wasn’t even a ritual at all. Macy knew she should just tell the others about Henry and let them decide what to do. But she knew exactly what they would do. They would kill him. And if he hadn’t hurt anyone, then how was that fair? How was any of it fair?

  The hem of Macy’s dress caught on the blackberry vines as she made her way through the path to the Door. She had walked this way so many times that she knew all of the steps to take—the fallen logs to walk over and the crumbling brick of the old school to step around. She didn’t even turn on a flashlight—the glow of the Door was almost enough to see by.

  “Henry?” she whispered. He always seemed to come when she called. “Henry?”

  “Yes?” He was suddenly right behind her.

  She turned, fingering the knife in her pocket.

  “You look different,” Henry said. His voice was so soft she could barely hear him.

  “Oh,” Macy put her hand to her face, where Claire’s makeup job was starting to smudge. “It’s Halloween. Did you know that?”

  “Sure. Like my costume? I came as a ghost.” Henry smiled, but it was a grim smile. Macy didn’t laugh.

  “You look beautiful like that—with your hair down,” Henry continued. “I wonder if I would have said that if I was still alive. It’s hard to remember sometimes. What I was like then, I mean.”

  “Do you miss it?”

  “Do you miss your dreams?” Henry seemed different, though she couldn’t quite place it right away. Then she realized that he didn’t look as flickery or see-through. He looked more . . . solid. More real.