by Val Crowe
Eventually, we would get tired, but Macon never would, because he was dead already. He would keep coming for eternity.
Furthermore, I had no idea where we even were in these woods. Maybe if it had been day time, I could have figured out something, but it was dark and the woods had swallowed us, and every shadowy tree trunk looked identical to the one next to it.
We just kept pushing on, moving as fast as we could. It seemed like several eons that we ran.
I was in pain. My lungs felt as if an iron band was contracting around them. It was agonizing to draw in breath. All of my muscles hurt. They were strained and spent and tired. I struggled to breathe and move, and I felt as if I wasn’t getting any oxygen. I thought I would pass out at any moment. I thought I would fall down from sheer exhaustion. But I kept moving. We both did.
And then, we suddenly burst out of the woods and nearly fell off the edge of the earth.
Because we were at the river. There was a sheer rock cliff down to the water churning below.
I nearly toppled off the side.
Dominique yanked me back.
We panted, the sound of our breathing deafening in the night.
Dominique looked down over the cliff at the rocks below.
I looked behind us, scanning the forest for Macon.
There he was, still coming through the woods, still at his steady pace.
I tried to get a sense of where the bridge was.
There.
I could see it. We needed to get there. I tried to move through the woods in that direction. I didn’t have breath to tell Dominique where I was going, so I hoped that she would understand an come after me.
But the undergrowth was far too dense for a person to move through. I would need a tool to hack through it, and I wasn’t likely to find anything like that. Nor would it even be any help against Macon, who apparently couldn’t be stabbed.
I looked back over my shoulder for him again.
He was gone.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Where had he gone?
We were wheezing, wary. Dominique and I went back to back and turned in a circle, examining the nearby area. It was dark. All I could see was the drop down to the river and all the trees in the forest. There were lots of places to hide if Macon didn’t want us to see him.
He could jump out at any moment.
So, we waited, moving closer to each other, the length of her back against the length of mine. We continued to move in a circle, but we slowed, so that we were inching around, noiseless.
I could hear the sounds of the forest, but they weren’t as loud as they had been earlier. It was late at night—or early morning, more accurately—and there weren’t as many insects chirping or animals moving around. It was much quieter. Mostly, what I heard was the sound of Dominique breathing, the sound of my own breath, and the sound of my heart pounding against the thin layer of my skin.
We slowed our movements even more.
Now, we weren’t moving at all.
I stood facing half into the woods, half down at the cliff and the river below. Dominique was staring deep into the forest.
Time passed.
We were both still on high alert, our muscles tense. Macon was still out here, and he was going to appear at any moment. He would melt out of the darkness from one side or the other and he would laugh a jeering laugh, and he would raise his knife.
And when he did, we would be ready.
More time passed.
Wordlessly, we began moving again.
We couldn’t get through the heavy undergrowth to make it back to the road, so we went back into the woods.
We tried to move as quickly and as quietly as we could, but we weren’t soundless. It was impossible to move stealthily in that forest. We didn’t know it well enough, and it was too dark, and there were too many stray branches and vines.
We did our best, and we stayed close.
But we were acutely aware that Macon must still be close as well. He was toying with us. He’d hidden himself away, and he was following us, staying in the shadows, waiting for us to let down our guard.
We weren’t going to do that.
Suddenly, a distant scream rent the air.
In a moment, both Dominique and I realized what we’d done. We’d thought we’d led Macon away from the others, but we’d only separated ourselves from them. Macon had chased us to the edge of his domain, and then gone back to the others.
Horrified, we both began thrashing through the woods, moving as quickly as we could, not worrying about noise anymore. We fought our way back to the campground.
When we emerged from the woods, Rylan and Mundy were coming out of the cabin where Cat had been sleeping. They were struggling with a sleeping bag, which had been wrapped around something long and heavy.
A body.
Dominique and I rushed over to them.
“Is it Cat?” I wheezed. I was very out of breath now.
“Yes,” said Rylan in a quiet voice.
“We didn’t see it happen,” said Mundy. “I don’t know when he got to her.”
“We heard a scream,” said Dominique. “Is Macon here?”
“He chased us off so that he could pick everyone off,” I said.
“I screamed,” said Mundy. “When we found Cat.”
“We haven’t seen Macon,” said Rylan. “But he got to Cat at some point. He killed her.”
Dominique was sweating freely. She puffed. “I don’t understand why he’s so intent on killing people. Why won’t he move on?”
Rylan and Mundy were pretty sweaty too, I noticed. Neither of them said anything. They kept walking with their bundle, and they went over to the place where we’d left Scout’s body.
I thought maybe they were just putting Cat with her boyfriend, but I realized there were more bodies there as well.
No wonder Rylan and Mundy were sweaty. They had moved Alice, Kennely, and Jonah over there as well. All of them were wrapped up in their sleeping bags, but some of the sleeping bags had big red stains on them.
We all stared down at the row of bodies and it was unreal. I had never seen anything like this in my life. I’d been around dead bodies before. I’d been to funerals, and I saw ghosts. Also, I’d found the body of Oscar at Point Oakes, and he’d been in awful shape. But this was a massacre. And it had been so fast. Everyone was gone and it was only four of us now. More than half of us were dead.
I looked away, because I suddenly felt a certainty grip me, and it was terrifying. We weren’t going to make it out of here.
Macon was going to kill us all.
* * *
We went back to the campground and went into Rylan’s and Mundy’s cabin. Using whatever we had, we barricaded the door.
We were all exhausted, and we fell asleep right away.
It wasn’t smart. We all knew it. Macon was still out there, and he had shown us already that he had no problem in destroying us all. He would come for us.
But we had been through too much. Not just emotionally but physically. The running and the moving the bodies, coupled with the terror and adrenaline, it had shredded any resolve we might have had.
We slept.
I woke with a start because someone was saying my name.
I sat up. I was on one of the air mattresses in the room, but it was losing air, and my hip bone had been resting on the ground. Sun was streaming in through the windows, bright and cheery, almost a mockery of everything that had happened. It was morning. And late morning, by the looks of things.
Everyone else was still asleep.
Dominique had been lying on the air mattress with me. She was still there, curled into a ball at one corner.
In the other bed, Rylan and Mundy were tangled together, holding onto each other as if they wanted to be fused into the other one.
So, who had spoken?
Macon? Was he out there?
“Deacon.”
I turned.
It was Mads. She was on th
e porch, looking in the window.
I rubbed my forehead. I felt pretty gross. My muscles were sore. I hadn’t slept long enough. I smelled like stale sweat, and my clothes had that feeling that clothes get when they’ve been sweat in and then dried… they weren’t really dry. “You scared the hell out of me,” I muttered to Mads.
“I’ve been waiting to talk to you when there was no one else around,” she said. “But you haven’t been alone.”
“Well, yeah,” I said. “It would be stupid to be alone.”
“Maybe,” she said. “I thought about just showing up when you were with the others. But I have to admit that I can’t always get through. The longer you and Dominique are here, the stronger Macon becomes, and the harder it is for me to fight through his influence.”
“Is it going to be like Point Oakes?” I said. “Am I going to lose you?”
“I hope not,” she said. “Listen, Deacon, why haven’t you tried the oil yet?”
“Uh…” I had no answer for that. “I don’t know. It’s obvious, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she said. “It is. You need to summon a powerful energy to absorb Macon. Get up, go to the Airstream now. There’s no time to waste. People are dying.”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed that, Mads,” I said, but my chest felt tight anyway.
“No one else should die,” she said. “Not if you can stop it.”
“You’re right,” I said. I got up and opened the door of the cabin. I peered outside and surveyed the campground. There was blood smeared on the outer wall of the cabin where Kennely had been stabbed. There was more blood on the ground where Alice had died. But what was more disturbing than the blood was how normal everything looked otherwise.
People had been killed yesterday, and the sun was up. The birds were singing. The trees were swaying in the breeze.
And Macon was out there somewhere.
“Go,” urged Mads.
I climbed down the steps of the cabin and walked across the grass to the Airstream. I opened the door and went inside. I rummaged through my storage shelves until I found a vial of the oil that my mother gave me to fight off spirits.
It was a blend of dandelion and wormwood oils. When spirits got too attached to me, I used it to summon a powerful energy that would absorb them.
Hopefully, it would work on Macon too.
* * *
“Jesus, Deacon!” called Rylan from the porch of the cabin when I came out of the Airstream. “I didn’t know where you were.”
I crossed the lawn again, and took the steps to the porch two at a time. I held up the vial of oil. “You remember this?”
She raised her eyebrows. “That’s the thing you tried back in Thornford when you were trying to get rid of the barnacles.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Well, it didn’t work then,” she said. “And it knocked you on your ass for a day. We can’t do that.”
“It might work against Macon,” I said.
“Yeah, but if it doesn’t, then you’re dead weight. If we have to run, we won’t be able to drag you along with us. Macon will kill you.”
I swallowed. “Yeah, okay. It’s a risk. But if it works, this is all over. So, I have to try.”
“No,” said Rylan. “No, you do not. In fact, I’m not going to let you do that.”
Mundy appeared in the doorway to the cabin. “What’s going on? Did I wake up to an argument?”
“Deacon’s trying to kill himself,” said Rylan.
“No,” I said. “I’m trying to save all of us.”
“But if it doesn’t work, you’re going to get yourself killed,” said Rylan.
“This could work,” I said. “It might absorb Macon and take him away, permanently.”
“No,” said Rylan. “Now give me that stupid oil, and let’s stop talking about this.”
“Um, Ry?” said Mundy.
“What?” said Rylan.
“It’s only that if we can end this,” said Mundy, “then we should, shouldn’t we?”
“Look, I don’t know if you know this, but Deacon generally has really stupid ideas,” said Rylan. “Half of them don’t work. He’s just making guesses in the dark.”
“Okay, that’s a little harsh,” I said. “This oil stuff does work.”
“It didn’t work in Thornford,” she said.
“Yeah, but that’s only because the barnacles were too powerful.”
“And you don’t think Macon is going to be too powerful?” said Rylan. “He can kill people. He’s corporeal. He’s ten times as powerful as those stupid barnacles.”
I sighed.
Dominique appeared behind Mundy. She leaned against the inside of the door frame, pulling her ponytail holder out of her sleep-mussed hair. She began to smooth her hair back into a fresh ponytail. “What’s going on out here?”
“They’re arguing,” said Mundy.
Dominique nodded at the vial in my hand. “Is that wormwood oil?”
“Uh, it’s a blend,” I said. “Wormwood and dandelion.”
“Good thinking,” she said. “I was actually wishing I’d brought some. I’ve never tried using the oil, but my research says that it’s pretty potent.”
“Research? Where did you research this?”
“The internet,” said Dominque, looking at me as if I was particularly stupid. “Didn’t you ever think to google this?”
I made a dismissive noise. “I google things.” I mean, I did.
“Okay,” said Dominique.
“There’s information about that oil on the internet?”
“There’s information about everything on the internet,” she said.
“Yeah, but good information?”
“Well, I guess I don’t know exactly,” she said. “More experimentation is needed.”
“This thing Deacon wants to do, he’s done it before,” said Mundy. “And it works.”
“No, it doesn’t,” said Rylan. “Not always, anyway.”
“We have to try something,” I said.
“So…” Dominique held out her hand for the vial. “What do you want to do exactly?”
I contemplated handing it over to her, but then I didn’t. I didn’t know if I could trust her. I shoved the vial in my pocket. “The basic idea is that I use that oil to summon powerful energy, and hopefully, it’s powerful enough to absorb Macon.”
Dominique raised her eyebrows. “You’re not going to let me look at it?”
I sighed. “Look, you got a better idea from googling?”
“Maybe,” said Dominique.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I was pacing on the porch of the cabin. “I don’t know. It seems weird to me. Like, he’s just going to tell you what you need to know in order to help him resolve his unfinished business?”
“He’ll come towards whatever is potent to him,” said Dominique. “The oil will bring him here, and then he’ll see what he wants to see. That is if I can get this right. I wish we could get on the internet so that I could see the exact wording of the summoning charm.”
“Well, if we could get on the internet, we could get help,” I said.
“Look, I think this is worth a try,” said Rylan. “If it doesn’t work, you can try making yourself go to sleep for fifteen hours. We should try this first.”
Truthfully, I didn’t want to be knocked on my ass for the entire day, I had to admit. I sighed. And then I nodded. “Okay, fine. We try it.”
Dominique nodded. “All right. Which cabin did the murders take place in, do we think?”
“From the description in the journal, it sounds like it was that one,” said Mundy, pointing to a cabin at the far end. “I think that was the prayer cabin.”
“We should do it there,” said Dominique. “I need help from one other person. It shouldn’t be you, Deacon. Your power might leak into everything.”
“I’ll help,” said Mundy.
“We’ll keep watch outside the cabin,” I said. “Rylan and me.”
“
Yeah,” said Rylan.
“It shouldn’t take long,” said Dominique.
* * *
Rylan had dark circles under her eyes, and she looked disheveled and hollowed out. We were at the bottom of the steps in front of the prayer cabin. “This is all my fault.”
“What are you talking about?” I said, turning away from the woods, which I’d been watching.
“I invited everyone here,” she said. “Now, they’re all dead.”
“That’s not your fault,” I said. “I’m the one who strengthens the ghosts.” And Dominique was the one who made them corporeal. There was enough blame to go around.
“You don’t do that on purpose,” Rylan murmured.
“And you didn’t want anyone to get hurt,” I said.
“This wasn’t supposed to be like this,” said Rylan. “It was supposed to be fun.” She hugged herself.
I didn’t know what to say.
She started to cry. She was quiet about it, head bent, arms wrapped around her own waist, her shoulders shaking.
I patted her on the shoulder. “Hey.”
Her shoulders shook harder.
“Hey,” I said. “You keep doing that, and you’re going to be crying when Macon takes you by surprise. You gotta stop.”
She looked up at me through tears.
I made my voice gentle. “We don’t have the luxury of that yet, Rylan.”
“They were my friends.” Her voice quavered.
“I know.”
A long pause.
And then I clapped her on the shoulder. “Come on, pull it together,” I said briskly. She wasn’t allowed to fall apart right now. Neither was I. Because I knew that I wanted to fall apart. I wasn’t sure if I would make it to lunch today.
Maybe Macon would keep me alive so that he could feed on me. But watching everyone else die didn’t sound particularly appealing either.
Rylan shook herself. She swallowed hard and stuck out her chin, and I saw her inner steel come out and take over. She wasn’t going to fall apart. I could see that now. “You think what Dominique is doing is going to work?”
“I…” I spread my hands. “Maybe.”
Her nostrils flared. “Well, that’s encouraging.”
I let out a bitter chuckle.
“Hey,” called Mundy from the doorway to the cabin. “We need you guys in here.”