Night Terrors

by Sean Rodman

  And Allen never fought back. Didn’t seem to think he could. Thought that this was the way it had to be. Even thought that he deserved it. That Edward was right about him, even as he seemed to get worse. The stuff Allen described was starting to sound more like abuse. Like torture.

  I’m near the end of the diary when the writing stops abruptly. I turn the page, expecting to see more. But there’s nothing. I flip to the end. Nothing. Just a couple of blank white pages.

  I’m sitting there staring at the little book when I hear a noise behind me. I turn, automatically lifting my arm against the bright beams of two flashlights. When my eyes adjust, I see Josh standing near the door of the cabin. Then Edward steps inside and rests a hand on his shoulder.

  “You were right to come to me, Josh,” says Edward. “Dylan is clearly not himself.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Edward crosses through the dark cabin until only a bed is between us. He shines his flashlight on the iron poker on the mattress. On the plank torn from the wall.

  “More vandalism?” he says. “Disappointing. Harvey told me you had learned your lesson.” He picks up the poker and moves to place it back next to the woodstove. “Clearly, you haven’t learned a thing. We’ll have to remedy that.” My pulse is pounding. I look toward the door, but Edward turns suddenly, the poker still in his hand.

  “Josh told me what you think you saw in the woods,” he says, stepping closer to me. “You know, Josh says you’ve been seeing a lot of things recently. And that little wound on your head can’t help. Must’ve been quite a fall.” He reaches up with his free hand and brushes his fingers across the gash on my forehead. I flinch and catch sight of Josh. He blinks a few times and looks away.

  “I had to tell him, Dylan,” he says. “You were acting kind of crazy. I was worried about you.”

  My head throbs. Suddenly, I’m furious. Furious at Edward for what he did to Allen. To Josh. For what Edward’s gotten away with all these years.

  “It’s not all in my head,” I say, holding up the notebook. “This proves it. You remember Allen? He wrote all about you in here. All the crap you made him do. All the stuff you filled his head with.” For once, Edward looks flustered. His mouth works, but nothing comes out. I keep going.

  “What happened to Allen? He tried to run away, like me, didn’t he? You kept on pushing him and pushing him until he couldn’t take it anymore. Right?” Now I’m yelling. “Right?”

  For a moment, standing there in the cold light of our flashlights, Edward is completely still. And pale. Like a corpse. Then his face wrinkles into a snarl.

  “Not at all,” he says. “Allen knew better than to try and leave. He was a smart boy. Not like you.” Edward points the poker at me. “You just think you’re smart. No, Allen was clever enough to always do what I asked.” He steps even closer to me. His eyes have that look again—hungry, cold. Not quite human.

  “But Allen, in the end, was too lazy.” Edward snorts. “Like all of you, isn’t it true? Why is that? All of you—slackers.” He punctuates the word by tapping the poker on the mattress beside me. My back is against the wall. I look over at Josh. He’s frozen, still near the door.

  “So one morning, Allen just…gave up. And he had swum out to the raft so many times before. He was a strong boy. The cold shouldn’t have been a problem. And yet…” Edward presses his face close to mine, close enough for me to gag on the metallic scent of his aftershave. “And I couldn’t have questions, could I? Not everyone understands my training methods. It wasn’t my fault that he was weak and couldn’t make it back to shore. So I tucked him away in the woods. You understand, don’t you, Josh?”

  Edward suddenly turns toward Josh. I realize I’ve been holding my breath, and now I let it go. I slip the notebook into my pocket. We need to get out of here. I look around. There’s only the one door. Where Josh is standing.

  “Come here, Josh.” Edward walks toward him, poker swinging at his side. “We’ll start with you. We’ll clean up this mess together, shall we?”

  “What do you mean?” says Josh. He pushes his glasses back up on his nose.

  “No!” I shout. Just before Edward swings the long iron poker at Josh’s head.

  Chapter Seventeen

  As I stumble over the bunk, I hear the hollow thunk of the poker as it smashes into the doorframe. I lunge at Edward, hitting him in the lower back with my shoulder just as if this were a football game. He grunts and falls on his side.

  “Come on!” I pull Josh outside. It’s dawn, and the sky is lightening. But the wind and snow are swirling around us, making it hard to see. At first, I’m just running blind. Just trying to get away. I see the main hall in the distance. Maybe there’s a door we can lock. A phone to call for help with. “This way!”

  I look back and see Edward coming at us through the snow. Gaining ground. I grab Josh’s arm again. He’s panicking, stumbling. We hit the doors of the main hall, but they don’t budge. Locked. I rattle them. They’re too heavy to bust open.

  “Around the corner,” gasps Josh. “Loading dock.” We run again, sliding on the snow-covered lawn. Up the steps leading to the rolling metal door. Josh shoves a hand into his jacket pocket and pulls out a ring of keys. I look over my shoulder as he rattles through them, trying to find the right one. No sign of Edward. Yet.

  Josh finally finds the right key, and a moment later the rolling door clatters upward. We slip through and lock it down again. Then we both slump to the floor. The kitchen is still dark. Just a little gray dawn light seeps through the windows.

  “We’ve got to find somewhere to hide,” I say. I shine my headlamp around the kitchen, the light reflecting crazily off the stainless-steel counters. I stop at the big walk-in cooler. “What about that?”

  Josh uses one of the keys to unlock the padlock on the handle. We push open the big door. There’s a slight smell of something rotting—with the power outage, the temperature inside the cooler is the same as it is outside. Not great. But maybe we can hide in here for a minute. Figure out what to do. Josh goes in. I’m about to follow when I hear a noise. A door being unlocked. I click off my headlamp and crouch to the floor.

  “Josh—stay quiet,” I whisper. I hear muffled footsteps somewhere in the darkness. A flashlight beam wanders around the kitchen.

  And finds me.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I stand and turn on my headlamp. It’s Edward. Flashlight in one hand. A big chef’s knife gleams in the other.

  “As I said, Dylan,” he says, “you’re not as smart as you think you are. Not hard to figure out where you ran to. So, where did the other one go?”

  I realize I need to distract Edward from the cooler. Give Josh a chance to escape. “I don’t know. He took off on me outside.” I pull the notebook out of my pocket and put it on the silver countertop. “This is what you want though. Right? You can have it. And I’ll never say a word. It’ll stay a secret.”

  Edward looks amused. “That’s very obliging of you. I have a better idea.” He starts to walk toward me, down the aisle between the two counters. “Why don’t we go visit Allen again? I’m sure you will be good at keeping secrets. Just like he is.”

  Before he can reach me, I leap and slide over the countertop, barely landing on my feet. I run for the loading-dock door and start to heave it up. I feel a sharp pain on my shoulder and realize as I tumble through the opening that Edward’s knife must have made contact. Adrenaline keeps the pain down though. I jump down the steps and run. Anywhere. Away.

  Through the snow swirling around me, I hear the sound of waves. I veer toward the dock—maybe I can get to the boat. Get away from shore before Edward catches up with me. I hit the dock and skid on the icy wood. I scramble back onto my feet. The inflatable is still in the water. Still no gas tank, but I don’t care. I lower myself into the rocking boat. Fumbling with the icy ropes, I try to untie the bowline. I’m almost finished when a boot stamps down on my hand. I cry out.

  “Dylan. Shame on you,” Edw
ard says, panting. “Adding theft to your list of crimes?” He reaches down and tries to grab my wrist, but I pull my throbbing hand away and fall backward in the boat.

  “You have so much room for improvement. Let’s get you back up here.” We stare at each other for a moment—Edward, wild-eyed and sweaty, looking down on me from the dock, me flat on my back on the floor of the inflatable. I can feel the cold water through the thin hull of the boat.

  “Come up here now,” he commands. “Don’t make me come after you.”

  I shake my head. He yells in frustration. Paces up and down the dock like an animal at the zoo. The big knife in his hand looks dull and gray in the pale morning light.

  “All right, then. I will come to you,” he says. Still pointing the knife at me, he clumsily starts to lower himself off the icy dock and into the boat. I shrink back toward the end of the inflatable. Trying to get away from him. Knowing that there’s nowhere left to go.

  Just as Edward extends one leg into the boat, I see a shadow rise up behind him.

  Josh.

  He lets out a wild yell as he shoves Edward from behind. Pushes him hard toward the water. Edward’s arms flail as he goes down. He lands hard on the edge of the boat, pushing it down into the water. I try desperately to hold on to the boat as it rises up.

  But then the boat flips completely over, and the icy black water rushes around me.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I’m not sure if this is a dream or not. I can’t tell anymore.

  I’m in the lake. Surrounded by icy water. I can see the murky shape of Edward in front of me. The knife falls from his hand, shining weakly as it spins away. Edward is trying to swim back up toward the surface. Then I see another shadow, reaching up out of the darkness. An arm covered in the tatters of a red jacket.

  Allen.

  One shadowy hand grips onto Edward’s ankle. For a moment, Edward keeps trying to swim upward. Then he looks down. He silently screams as those dead hands slowly pull him deeper and deeper. Until he fades from sight into the blackness beneath my feet.

  I look up at the shiny surface of the water above me. The pounding in my head fades, all pain drifting away.

  I can’t make it back up.

  And you know what? I’m okay with that. I’m tired. Of the nightmares. Of being afraid of what I might see. Of feeling guilty. I just want to let it go. Let it all go. I’ll be like Sammy now. Forever looking up at the light.

  Then I feel something wrap around my chest. Two small arms. Another shadow.

  Not Allen. Sammy. I can’t see his face in the gloomy dark, but I know that it’s him. Telling me that it wasn’t my fault. That it’s not my time. Not yet.

  Then the brightness is just above me, and the small dark shadow lets go. Sammy drops back into the darkness. I want to hold on to him, for just a little longer.

  I puncture the surface. Air rushes into my lungs. Then Josh is hauling me onto the snowy dock.

  I lie there for a while, sobbing. Not just because of the pain and fear, but because I can let go. Let Sammy go.

  I’m alive.

  Chapter Twenty

  I remember one thing from what happened next.

  It took Harvey one more night to reach us. Part of it was the freak storm, which kept sending out wave after wave of wind and snow. But even when the storm subsided, he and some volunteers had to chainsaw their way through all the fallen trees on the road.

  I don’t remember the waiting. I don’t remember how we survived.

  Harvey finally found Josh and I huddled around the fireplace of a guest cabin. He told me later that we were lucky. I was in shock from exposure and the loss of blood from the wound in my shoulder. Josh wasn’t in much better shape after diving in to get me out of the water.

  I don’t remember trying to explain about Edward to Harvey. About the skull in the woods. The ghosts. The body. Harvey says it took awhile to calm me down. That he nearly had to carry me to the pickup to get me to the hospital.

  So here’s the one thing I remember.

  Driving down the road in the backseat of Harvey’s pickup. Away from Ravenslake Lodge. Wrapped in blankets. Feeling safe for the first time in a long time. Watching the forest of white birches blur past the window. Thousands of pale trees fading away into the distance.

  And then, from the corner of my eye, something red. Someone. Or something. Watching me leave.

  I keep telling myself that ghosts don’t exist. That I’m only scaring myself. That it’s all in my mind.

  But I don’t really believe it anymore.

  Sean Rodman lives and works in Victoria, British Columbia. His interest in writing for teenagers came out of working at some interesting schools around the world. In the Snowy Mountains of Australia, he taught ancient history to future Olympic athletes. Closer to home, he worked with students from more than a hundred countries at a nonprofit international school. For more information, visit www.srodman.com.