by Jack Kilborn
“That’s smooth,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound stupid.
“Have you ever vaped before?”
Kendal shook her head.
“It’s just water and sugar, along with THC. Smooth as a virgin’s tit.”
They passed it back and forth two more times, and Kendal was surprised she’d forgotten to count her blinks.
Then things got really slow.
Linda was talking about the boy in Biology class, and she seemed to be talking forever, on and on, but when Kendal looked at the clock not even a minute had passed.
“You feel it?”
Kendal nodded, her head heavy. She might have been smiling, but couldn’t really feel her face.
Linda launched into another endless babblefest, and Kendal stared at her hand, wondering how millions of years of evolution culminated in cashmere matte nail polish. For some reason that seemed like an extremely profound thought. She started to share it with Linda, but forgot what she was going to say.
An hour passed, which in sober-time was really just two minutes, and then Linda was saying something about going back to her room and suddenly she was gone and Kendal was alone.
But it was okay being alone.
In fact, it was great.
Kendal was great.
She knew she was stoned, but she also felt like she hadn’t been able to see things so clearly. The cameras around her room were off, and Kendal vaguely remembered being afraid of them for some reason, but that seemed silly now. Everything that had happened to her in the past few days seemed silly. Silly, and somehow far away.
“Maybe I’m stalking myself,” someone said. Someone who sounded a lot like her.
Kendal locked the door to her room out of habit, and thought about turning the cameras back on. Then she thought about ice cream. Then she thought about a movie she saw when she was younger, about some people who went to the center of the earth and were in some kind of boat on a river of lava, which seemed like a really fun thing to try.
The lights in her room were bright. Too bright. Kendal shut them off, and then laughed because she didn’t touch the switch three times like she always did. In fact, the whole concept of counting seemed ridiculous. Even more ridiculous was the idea that marijuana was still against the law when it was without a doubt the greatest thing ever.
She laid back on her bed, in the dark, listening to herself breathe but not counting her own breaths, and fell asleep feeling like all was peaceful in the world and everything was going to turn out okay.
• • •
Kendal dreamt of spiders.
A big spider with eight red eyes and long hairy legs was perched on her foot, stroking her sole. Kendal was afraid to move, because it had two large, curved fangs, sharp and shiny like hooks, poised above her big toe and if she moved she knew it would bite her.
So Kendal stayed completely still. She didn’t move. She didn’t breathe. She didn’t want to do anything that would provoke the spider. It crawled up her leg to her knee, stopped there, and began to whisper to her.
“The eetsy… beetsy… spiiiiiiiiider… went… up… the… waaaaaaater spout.”
Kendal startled herself out of sleep, jerking up to a sitting position, slapping at her bare knee. It took her a moment to get her bearings.
I’m in bed. I was asleep. It was a dream.
She squinted, looking around the room. Moonlight slivered in through the crack in the window drapes, enough for her to see she was alone. The only thing in her bedroom was her, and the darkness.
Kendal plopped back down into bed. Her brain was still fuzzy from the weed. She looked at the clock. A little past four-thirty. She blinked, three times, then let sleep claim her again.
The spider came back.
This time it was on her neck. Stroking her cheek with its leg.
Singing to her in a soft, low voice.
“Down… came… the… raaaaaaaaaain… aaaaaaaaand… washed… the spiiiiiiiiiiider out.”
Kendal flinched, pushing away the tickling spider with her hand—
—and felt it.
Again Kendal bolted awake. The spider might have been a dream, but when she reached out she was sure she’d touched something. Something soft, with a stiffness to it.
She also sensed something else. Something far worse than any spider nightmare.
There’s someone in the room with me.
Kendal peered into the dark, not sure what she was looking for. There was nothing to see. The room was empty.
But it didn’t feel empty. It felt like there was someone nearby. Moving through the same space. Breathing the same air.
Standing next to her and staring.
“Hello?” she whispered.
The darkness didn’t answer.
Kendal held her breath, listening.
She didn’t hear a sound. The room, the whole house, was still.
It was a dream. Or the weed. I’m being paranoid. There’s nothing—
Then the floor creaked.
Right next to the bed.
Kendal reached for the bedside switch, flicking it on.
The light didn’t work.
She turned it a few more times, and in her panic knocked it off the nightstand. It hit the floor with a thump. Kendal reached over, seeking the lamp, finding it and again seeking the switch and twisting it.
No light.
Kendal slapped her palm on the nightstand, finding the drawer, taking out her cell and powering it on. It took a few seconds, but the phone flickered to life. Kendal pressed the flashlight app and jerked the tiny cone of light around the room.
As far as she could see, her room was empty.
She turned to the lamp, set it back on the nightstand, and noticed that the cord was unplugged.
Did I do that?
Maybe when I was high?
Kendal couldn’t remember. She plugged the lamp back into the wall and when it came on the intensity blinded her for a moment. She shielded her eyes with her hand and again searched her room.
Empty.
She no longer felt like someone was standing next to her. In fact, Kendal wasn’t sure if she’d imagined it. Maybe it had been no more real than touching the nightmare spider on her neck. She was dreaming. Or tired. Or still stoned.
Or having a psychotic break.
When Kendal was younger, rational thought helped her keep the hallucinations under control. If she thought she saw something that wasn’t plausible, she knew to dismiss it.
A spider on her neck, singing to her?
Implausible.
Someone in her room?
Also implausible. The sorority house had good security locks and deadbolts on all the doors. Kendal had also locked the door to her room. She turned to check it, to make sure it was still closed.
The door was open.
Just a crack.
Kendal had one of those lame privacy locks that could be opened with a fingernail. But she had locked it.
So she either misremembered locking it earlier—
Or someone had gotten in.
Another spike of adrenaline, and Kendal clutched her cell to her chest. She took another nervous look around the room, wondering if there were any places for a person to hide.
No room behind the computer. The desk was against the wall.
Laundry hamper? Not big enough.
The bed?
When Kendal was small, she had a friend named Julia who was afraid of monsters under the bed. Kendal knew that was silly. Monsters didn’t hide under your bed. They called themselves “Daddy” and came in through your door.
But, still, the thought that there was someone directly beneath her was freaky enough to cause a shiver. Someone lying there. Waiting for her to sleep.
Tickling her, and singing soft and low.
Kendal peered over the edge of the bed, lifting up her sheet—
—and seeing the box spring was directly on the floor.
She blew out a stiff breath, feeling sil
ly. For a moment there, she really was afraid that someone might be under her bed. Next she’d think—like in that ebook she was reading—that someone was hiding in the closet.
The closet.
Kendal stared at her bedroom closet.
The door was open a few inches.
She thought about what was in the closet. Clothes. Her suitcase. A plastic tub of shoes.
There was more than enough room in there for a person to hide.
Kendal pulled her eyes away from the closet long enough to glance at her bedroom door.
I could run for it.
Get the hell out of here.
Wake up the other girls.
They’ll think I’m crazy, but Linda is my only friend here anyway.
And what if someone actually is in my closet? It’s better to be wrong and look foolish than be brave and be dead.
But Kendal knew it wasn’t just about looking foolish. It was about looking crazy.
Kendal would rather die than go back to the institution. That had been hell. Almost as bad as what she’d gone through at home. One of those ignorant shrinks even had the audacity to say she’d made up all of those stories. That they were in her head. That there was no proof at all that her father had—
The closet door moved.
It had been just a tiny move. Less than an inch. But Kendal was sure it had opened just a little bit more.
She stared at it, refusing to blink, refusing to breathe, waiting for it to move again while hoping it didn’t.
After a full minute Kendal blew out the breath she’d been holding, her heart beating so fast and loud she could hear it.
The door hadn’t moved.
I’m going crazy.
Or going crazier.
So what now?
Kendal wasn’t going to get help. She’d become an expert at keeping people out of her neuroses, and wasn’t going to start because she’d vaped some grass and had a bad dream.
But there was no way she could go back to sleep until she checked the closet.
Kendal stood up. She took a small step, wincing as the wood floorboards creaked under her weight. As if it would alert the person in the closet that she was coming.
“This is crazy,” Kendal said, the sound of her own voice reassuring her. “I wasn’t being tickled by a spider. And there is no one in my closet.”
Kendal forced herself to walk normally. She reached out her hand for the closet doorknob.
There’s no one in there.
I’m being crazy.
Kendal wasn’t sure which concept was scarier, and found she’d broken out in a light sweat. But she touched the knob—
—began to pull the door open—
—and then her phone vibrated in her hand, causing her to yelp.
Kendal stared down at her cell. Saw a text message on the screen.
You’re right.
The text was from Unknown. Kendal had no idea who it was from, or what it was referring to. But staring at the words made her knees shake. She moved her thumb over the text to delete it, and her phone buzzed again and another text appeared.
It wasn’t a spider. It was a feather.
Check the bed.
Kendal turned, slowly. The last bit of weed fog cleared out of her head, and hyper-awareness took over. She felt like she was in some terrible horror movie, the zoom lens focusing in on her face as she struggled through excruciating slow motion, focusing on her widening eyes as the realization of her situation kicked in.
There, at the foot of the bed, half covered by her blanket—
A long, gray feather.
It wasn’t just a dream.
Someone had been in my room.
Someone had been tickling me with a feather while I slept.
Her phone vibrated again, and it scared Kendal so badly she dropped it. The cell bounced on the wood floor, landing face up, and Kendal read the next text.
You’re also wrong.
Kendal stared down at the phone. Her mouth had gone dry. Her bladder felt like it had shrunk four sizes. Then her phone buzzed once more.
I AM in the closet.
In front of her, the closet door creaked.
Kendal jerked away from it, planting her foot on the phone, slipping backward as the scream escaped her lips—a scream so loud it could shatter glass—and then she was falling and her head slammed against the floor and the whole world exploded into a giant starburst and her vision went wiggly.
Kendal tried to blink away the dizziness as black encroached on the edges of her vision, and then a shadow was pressing on her chest and grabbing her hair, pounding her head against the wood again and again and again…
As Kendal’s world blurred out, she swore she heard the shadow whisper,
“See you soon.”
Then consciousness faded and returned, like she’d just awoken from a dream, and the shadow seemed to transform into Linda, who was kneeling next to Kendal and holding her hand.
“You okay? You fell.”
Kendal sat up, so fast it made her dizzy. Her head hurt. Her ears rang. She reached up and felt a tender spot at the base of her skull. Two other sorority sisters stood in her doorway, staring.
“Someone was in my room,” Kendal said. Her voice sounded small.
“What?”
Kendal jerked her head around, looking at the bed.
The feather was gone.
She searched the floor for her cell phone, scrambling to it and scooping it up.
The texts were gone.
Linda leaned in, a smile curling her lips. “Are you still high?”
High?
Or insane?
She thought about that awful therapist when she was in the institution. The one who accused her of making it all up.
Could she have been right?
Could I have imagined all the abuse?
Is it happening again?
Kendal started to say something, but it stuck in her throat and became a strangled cry. As she sobbed, Linda stroked her hair.
“It’s okay, babe. You’re just scared.”
That was the understatement of the decade. Kendal’s reality seemed to be fracturing. It made her feel like she was eight years old again. Terrified. Helpless. A victim.
And there was no worse feeling in the world than that.
“Get into bed, honey,” Linda said, helping her up.
“I’m too scared to sleep.”
“I’ll stay with you. It’ll be like a slumber party? Remember those when you were a kid?”
“I never had one.”
“Never? You had some kind of deprived childhood, then.”
“Something like that.”
Kendal got into bed, and Linda climbed in next to her.
“Now what?” Kendal asked.
“Well, when I had slumber parties we’d do all sorts of stuff. Talk about boys we had crushes on. Play games. I’m a rockstar at Chinese Checkers and Mall Madness. Sneak some of our parents’ whiskey. Read magazines. That was how I saw my first peter, a friend brought a Playgirl. I thought it looked stupid.” Linda laughed. “I still think it looks stupid. I mean, how do guys walk around with that hanging between their legs?”
“I don’t know,” Kendal said, honestly.
“Sometimes we’d do each other’s make-up. Or talk gossip about the lacrosse team. Or dance to some boy band. I was soooo in love with Nick Jonas.”
“I don’t know who that is.”
“You don’t know the Jonas Brothers? They were on Hannah Montana, back before Mylie started doing the freaky thing with her tongue and taking her clothes off all the time. She’s cool, though. She owns it, y’know? Her body, her rules, everyone else can go to hell. I wish I had that much confidence.”
Me, too, Kendal thought.
“What else did you do?”
“Well, whenever the first girl fell asleep, we’d put her hand in a bowl of warm water.”
“Why?”
“To try to make her pee herself.
”
“Why?”
“It’s funny, I guess. No one ever peed. They always woke up because we were laughing too hard. And don’t worry—I won’t do that to you. I mean, we’re not ten years old. And I’m sleeping in the same bed. That would be self-defeating.”
“Linda?” Kendal was aware she’d used her real name, but it was okay because the cameras were off.
“Yeah, slut?”
“Thanks.”
“No problem. Sweet dreams, okay?”
But Kendal didn’t have sweet dreams. As soon as she fell asleep, she dreamt of monsters.
CHAPTER 24
Erinyes sits in the van outside the sorority house and watches.
Tonight was not the night. Kendal isn’t ready yet.
But she will be. Very soon.
The app Erinyes put on Kendal’s cell phone is hidden. It’s the same app Erinyes uploaded to the cop’s phone. The app is free in the Apple Store. A rudimentary tennis game, similar to Pong. But that’s just the shell. What the app really did was allow a remote user access to the phone’s root directory. So Erinyes can access the phone’s cameras, among other things.
This Kendal is weaker than the other Kendals that came before. Erinyes hasn’t seen this Kendal take off her clothes, yet, but it’s only a matter of time. She’s a slut, just like the others. A bad girl. Any woman who takes off her clothes for men on camera needs to be punished.
You shouldn’t tempt men. It’s a sin.
A wicked sin.
But Penance was coming.
Erinyes switches to Tom’s phone. The camera is dark, but there is snoring.
Penance is coming for him, too.
Erinyes starts the van, pulls onto the street, and begins to cruise the dark, Chicago streets.
He’s excited.
He’s been in several Kendals’ homes. But they hadn’t had roommates.
This Kendal has five roommates. All sluts.
It makes Erinyes think. And he gets so lost in thought that he almost doesn’t notice the woman on the curb.
Skinny. Old. The mini skirt on her hangs on her flat hips like a square lampshade. Her boot heels are so high she looks like a parody of a hooker. But she’s no parody. She’s the real deal.