The Escape

by Jayne, Hannah

  Adam.

  The memory—grabbing Adam, landing the first blow—came crashing back and Fletcher doubled over, the weight of it like a swift punch in the gut.

  “Hey, Fletch, you’ve got to see this, man.”

  Fletch hiked up the slope to where Adam was standing. He was already winded from running, and now his calves were burning and cramping.

  “What is it?”

  Adam grinned and gave him a shove. Fletcher tripped over his feet and a hunk of dead wood and rolled down into the gully.

  “Dude, I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to—” There was a look on Adam’s face that Fletcher couldn’t identify.

  Fletch slid a few more inches and then landed on something hard at the bottom of the pit. It poked at the bare skin on his back. He frowned and tried to push himself up, away from what was jabbing him.

  It was a skull. An animal with a mouth full of teeth and sun-bleached incisors. Its eye sockets stared up at Fletcher. He screamed, his feet unable to gain traction to move him away. He rose a few inches and slid back down, the hideous skull grinning at him, staring at him.

  He could hear Adam laughing, the sound echoing through the forest and filling his ears. But something cut through the sound. A whisper, the faintest whisper. He felt himself start to tremble.

  “Who’s there?” he asked, his voice small and breathy.

  Adam looked down on Fletcher, hands on hips, grinning. “Dude, who are you talking to?”

  Fletcher looked around him. There were more bones. Each one was sun-bleached and bare.

  “Dude, you’re crazy. Come on.” Adam lay on the ground, swinging an arm toward Fletcher. Fletcher tried to reach for Adam’s hand, but his sneakers slipped and he went down again. Again, Adam laughed. Again, the skull was in front of him, mouth gaping, eyes scrutinizing. Then it whispered in his ear: “He’s making fun of you, Fletcher. He hates you. Make him quiet. Make him quiet like Susan. They’re both coming to get you.”

  “Stop screwing around. I don’t want to be here all day,” Adam said.

  Fletcher remembered reaching for Adam. He remembered their fingers touching. He remembered what the skull whispered to him. Adam pulled him up and they were face-to-face.

  The first blow made him shake. He remembered the fire in his arm, the way it shot out even though he couldn’t remember thinking he should strike. He thought his hand was broken. He remembered the sickening sound of bone hitting bone, the way Adam’s head shot back from his neck.

  He remembered the whispers cheering him on.

  • • •

  “Dammit!” Avery muttered, feeling the tears at the edges of her eyes. If Fletcher didn’t catch her, she would die in the woods. She was too far away from the Cascade trail they had come down. Everything looked the same—tall trees, dead bushes, mountains of pine needles. She had no idea which direction to turn.

  Why is Fletcher doing this?

  She dropped her head in her hands and pulled her knees up to her chest, Adam’s knife poking into her thigh.

  He was going to kill me.

  • • •

  There was a meadow in front of him. It was like a mirage from one of those old cartoons, a lush oasis in the middle of the desert. But he didn’t know where Avery was. The whispers told him he had to find her; they throbbed with the needling pain behind his eyes.

  Find her, find her, find her…

  “No.” He said it out loud, trying to shake the whisper from his head. “No.” He was halfway lucid now, somewhere on the edge between his waking self and the other self, the one that came back after Dr. Palmer tried to push it down.

  “Schizophrenia, Fletcher. It’s called schizophrenia.”

  He remembered being strapped down in the hospital, his mother brushing the hair from his forehead as her mouth rolled around the word. He remembered that someone had attacked Susan. That his mother whispered when she thought he was asleep: “He’s my son, and I’m not going to leave him here.”

  “You’re picking one child over the other. He’s dangerous. He can’t be in the same house as Susan,” his father whispered in response.

  “He’s just a little boy. He didn’t know what he was doing.”

  “You’re insane. He attacked Susan. We have to protect our daughter.”

  “I’m going to protect my son.” His mother—strong, defiant.

  • • •

  Avery held her breath. She could see Fletcher. She prayed he didn’t see her. He was murmuring things, flicking at his ear with those same awkward movements. She watched him brush the hair from his forehead, matted with sweat, and look around. She watched as he pivoted so that his body was facing her hiding spot. Avery didn’t dare look up at him.

  “Avery?” Fletcher’s voice was tremulous and soft. Haunting. “Avery, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  He took a step toward her, leaves crackling under his sneakers. Avery dug her teeth into her bottom lip, sure that her body was betraying her: blood pulsing, heart beating, breath whooshing through her barely parted lips. Fletcher must have heard her. She clenched her teeth as she started to tremble. Her thighs were aching as she hunched down.

  Fletcher took another step.

  Avery’s muscles cramped.

  She let the cry die in her chest, but her knee couldn’t hold, brushing against a branch.

  Fletcher’s eyes cut right to her. His lips began to move, a wide, slow smile spreading across his lips. “Hi, Avery.”

  “Please, Fletcher. Please don’t hurt me. I want to help you.”

  He cocked his head, the silence between them weighted and eerie. “I would never want to hurt you.”

  • • •

  The whispers broke in, the chorus going from a gentle murmur to a brain-bashing thunder. Fletcher pressed his palms against his ears and pinched his eyes closed.

  “Shut up, shut up, shut up!”

  • • •

  Avery’s body took over. She sprang up to run. Pain, like a live wire, shot up from her ankle and she crumbled. Avery heard herself squeal as she went down, while Fletcher’s hand closed around her other ankle. Avery clawed at the ground, her nails breaking in the dirt. Fletcher yanked her closer, stepping hard on the small of her back. Heat broke within her, the pain rolling from her low back around to her belly, stabbing and nauseating. Avery kicked and flopped like a fish out of water and Fletcher toppled, landing behind her with a loud oof.

  Avery was up and running again.

  She could hear Fletcher behind her, stomping through the waist-high grasses as she cut across the meadow. He was yelling for her in that same primitive, throaty voice that she barely recognized. She flung a look over her shoulder. This Fletcher, the one who tailed her with his teeth bared and his eyes narrowed, was someone she didn’t know. This Fletcher terrified her.

  Avery reached the lip of forest on the other side of the meadow, and recognition hit her: this was the part of the forest she and her mother had walked in. She knew there was a burned-out tree and she vaulted for it, sliding at the same time a clap of thunder shook the sky. She dipped into the tree just as the sky opened up. Silver-gray rain came down in torrents.

  Fletcher called out to her again, but his voice was sucked away by the sheeting rain. Avery could see him standing a few feet in front of her, head upturned as the water splashed onto his forehead and over his cheeks.

  “Get back here, Avery! Get back here!”

  Avery glanced up at the rain and back down at her orange search-and-rescue jacket. It was made to be seen. She slid out of it, trembling against the bone-soaking rain, and balled it up, rolling it as carefully as she could down the gentle slope she had come up. It stopped at the base of a giant redwood ten feet away, one of the sleeves trailing like a beacon. She prayed that Fletcher would see it.

  • • •

  She had to be here.

  Get her, get her, get her, the whispers chanted. Can’t you do anything right?

  Fletcher looked up, unsure when th
e rain had started.

  Where was he? What was he doing?

  He blinked, pushing his feet through the dirt as it turned to mud.

  “Avery?”

  His mind raced. They were hiking. They had come out here to find Adam. No, Adam was dead. He remembered that.

  Clues.

  They had come out looking for clues to jog his memory.

  And now Avery was lost.

  A sob lodged in his throat. How did Avery get lost? He called her name again, fear fluttering inside him. “Avery, are you out here?”

  What if she had fallen or slipped? The rain was already pooling at his feet, the mud making a sucking sound as he tried to walk. She could be stuck or hurt. Blood thundered in his ears, the only thing he could hear over the rush of rain. There was water in his eyes, rolling over his cheeks. He wasn’t sure if it was raindrops or tears.

  “Avery?”

  He turned again and saw a slice of bright orange behind a tree. Her search-and-rescue jacket.

  “Avery!” Fletcher rushed toward her, grinning like a madman, so glad that he had found her. Only it wasn’t her. It was just her coat. Fletcher’s chest constricted.

  “Oh God. Oh God, oh God, oh God.” What had happened to Avery?

  He whirled when he heard her grunt.

  • • •

  Avery didn’t have any other choice.

  She fished Adam’s knife from her pocket, folded out the blade, and gripped the handle in her palm. She knew where she was. She remembered the formation of the trees, the burned-out stump—she remembered that just a few feet from her, there was a road. They always stopped at the burned-out tree because her mother hated the road. “It’s like an ugly slice right through heaven,” she would say as they picnicked under the trees.

  The only thing between Avery and the safety of the road was Fletcher.

  • • •

  Avery grunted and Fletcher turned, relief crashing over him. He saw her emerge from the safety of a burned-out stump. He ran for her, thankful. He wanted to hold her. He wanted to kiss her. He hadn’t realized how worried he had been. He ran to her, and her eyes widened in terror. What had happened? Why was she scared?

  He closed the distance between them, but suddenly there was a severe pain in his thigh. It felt like his kneecap went slack, his hips sliding.

  In his mind’s eye, he saw his whole skeleton falling into a heap of Halloween bones. Instinctively, his hands went to the source of the pain. His fingers were warm and sticky. He was covered in blood.

  Fletcher stared at the handle of the knife. It was the same knife that Adam had given him to hold on to before they walked down the trail. The blade was plunged hilt-deep in his muscle.

  He didn’t understand. “Avery?”

  • • •

  Avery stabbed Fletcher. She had no other choice. She ran past him, leaving the knife sticking out of his thigh. Tears clouded her vision. Get to the road, get to the road, get to the road.

  The rain was steady now, creating rivulets of mud and water. But up ahead, Avery could see headlights on the road. She dug her fingers and the toes of her boots into the mud and pushed herself up, her ankle screaming in protest the entire time. The pain was thrumming all the way up her leg now, begging her not to walk. But she couldn’t stop. Fletcher would be behind her—maybe more slowly than before, but he would come after her.

  Fletcher is your friend! You stabbed your friend!

  No, she told herself, Fletcher is a murderer.

  Avery’s fingertips grazed asphalt just as she heard movement behind her. She could barely make out Fletcher’s voice calling her name, the sound half muffled by the rain.

  She launched herself the last few feet until her feet met pavement. She pushed her way to standing and darted a few feet, then froze, her entire body paralyzed.

  The tree was in front of her. The one with the gash, the scar of her mother’s car burned into the trunk. Her stomach turned over on itself, and the bile itched at the back of her throat.

  Headlights blinded her.

  A horn wailed through the sheets of rain.

  Tires squealed, the yellow streaks of light washing over her.

  She couldn’t move.

  Avery didn’t know what she felt first: the impact, the terror, or the asphalt cutting through her skin as she skittered across it. The last things she remembered were the ugly sound her head made when it hit the ground and someone calling her name.

  Then everything went dark.

  Thirty

  A haloed yellow glow throbbed behind Avery’s eyelids.

  “It looks like she’s waking up.”

  There was a swirl of sounds: beeps and a weird whoosh of air. Slowly, slowly, a face came into view.

  “Dad?”

  “Oh thank God, Avery. Thank God.”

  He collapsed on her, gathering her in a tender hug. “What happened?”

  There were tears in her father’s eyes. “You don’t remember?”

  She blinked. “Fletcher—Fletch and I went into the woods.” She felt herself blanch. “He—he came after me. He said I had to die.”

  Chief Templeton squeezed Avery’s hand. “Fletcher is very, very sick, honey.”

  Tears pooled on her lower lashes. “He killed Adam. How did I—?” She looked around the hospital room. “Why am I in the hospital? How did I get here?”

  “You ran into the street. Fletcher pushed you out of the way.”

  “How do you know that? There was no one else out there.”

  “I didn’t. It was Officer Blount. He was the one driving.”

  “Did Mrs. Carroll tell you about Fletcher?”

  “No. Fletcher told us about his mother.”

  Avery sat up. “What?”

  “Honey, she was the one who drove you off the road on your bike. She vandalized Fletcher’s locker and her own house.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Fletcher has schizophrenia. His father and sister live in a different house because Fletcher attacked his sister when he was eleven. Mrs. Carroll knew that it had to have been Fletcher who murdered Adam, but she couldn’t bear the thought. She didn’t want to lose her son. She thought if she could drive suspicion away from him, that—” He shrugged. “I don’t know what she thought. But I do know I should have listened to you. Your theory was pretty good.”

  “My theory? Dad, I was completely wrong about Fletcher.”

  “Sort of. He had a psychotic break. He didn’t really know what he was doing when he went after Adam or you. He’s going to jail, but he’s going to get help there.”

  Emotions crashed over Avery—she was sad, terrified, exhausted. Adam was dead. Fletcher was going to jail. She felt sorry for him, her friend, sitting alone behind bars. But he had killed Adam, she reminded herself. And he tried to kill me. Still, it didn’t make sense—no part of it seemed right or simple or easy. No part of life felt that way anymore.

  “I’m talking about his mother,” Chief Templeton went on. “That’s the part you got right. You told me she acted strangely and that I should look into it. I didn’t listen. I should have.” He stroked the back of Avery’s hand with his thumb. “You’re a pretty decent detective, Templeton.”

  Even with all the hospital equipment and the sterile walls of the room, Avery felt herself warm. “You’re not so bad yourself, Chief.”

  Acknowledgments

  It takes a village to write a book and this one is no exception. Special thanks to mega-agents Amberly Finarelli and Andrea Hurst for making me feel like family, and to editor Annette Pollert-Morgan for taking a chance on me. As always, thanks to the unstoppable Sourcebooks team for their unyielding awesome. Thanks to Andrew Hensley, MD, for pointing me in the right direction to research mental illness and to Lee Lofland for always providing me access to the best and brightest in law enforcement, namely Marco, Stan, Andy, Rick, and of course, Dr. Love. Thank you Graham Haworth for making me breathe and Lynn Cotner for making me laugh. Thanks to everyone over
at Wattpad for their enthusiasm and support of all my works, and an extra-special thanks to all those readers who wrote and cheered me along the way: I wouldn’t—couldn’t—do this without you.

  Thank you for reading!

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