by E. M. Fitch
She couldn’t see who was leering at her this time, but she sensed it.
“There’s no one here,” Cassie said, forcing her voice above a whisper, forcing normality. “We should go.”
“No,” Laney argued, shaking her head as she grinned at her friend. “It’s exactly as they said it would be.”
“They told you to come here and meet no one?” Cassie asked.
“You can’t feel it?” Laney said. Her tone was incredulous, tinged only slightly with anger. “I don’t believe you.”
“Feel what?” Cassie shot back, her voice louder now. She was angry, scared too, and she couldn’t believe her friend would take blind directions like this. She was supposed to be explaining, supposed to tell Cassie what had happened to Jessica.
Something moved. Someone. In the shadows behind the trees, the whispers started low.
Laney’s eyes narrowed. She moved from the center of the opening, where the sunlight shone directly down on her, elongating her features in shadow. As she moved toward Cassie, she pointed one finger in her friend’s face. “You’re lying,” Laney said, low and menacing. The voices echoed behind her. She’s not. She’s not. “You can feel it; it freaks you out. That’s why you want to go. Because I’m right. I have been right all along, and you don’t want to admit it.”
Cassie stepped back, her lips parting as she watched her friend’s advance. She cast her gaze around the trees, but nothing looked out at her. “I don’t know what you’re—”
She broke off at Laney’s hysterical laughter.
“Liar!” Laney screamed. “I’m right, I always was. They’re real, and it terrifies you. He was right about you. From the start, he pin-pointed what you were and I defended you! I thought you heard them, thought you saw them. I thought that it was freaking you out. I was sure that if I brought you back here, you would feel it and know and finally be able to admit that you were wrong. I swore that you’d move on from there, though. That you would finally see!”
“See what?” Cassie said, every muscle frozen as she watched her friend with growing fear. She could hear, she could see—but she didn’t want to.
She won’t. She can’t.
Laney’s hair was coming loose from her tie, tendrils falling past her face. Her gaze roved from Cassie to the trees and Cassie found herself following her line of sight, looking for faces among the trunks, waiting for something evil to appear, knowing they were there, waiting.
“That I was right.”
“About what?”
“About everything,” Laney quipped, a wicked grin stretching over her features, even as her eyes wielded back toward the trees. Her smile faltered as she stared at Cassie once more. “Everything, except you.”
“Laney, don’t—”
She was backing away, slowly shaking her head. Her eyes stayed on Cassie’s, caught and locked, even as her feet shuffled backward over the uneven ground. They were infinite in their depth, and for the first time, Cassie noted the perpetual excitement tinged with a glimpse of sadness.
“I’m sorry you still can’t see it,” she whispered, a heavyhearted smile pulling at her lips. “You should go now.”
“I’m not leaving you out here!”
“I’m sorry Cass, but really, you should go.”
Her back was almost to the tree at the opposite end of the circle. It was large, the largest Cassie could see, old and gnarled with branches that twisted up and around the surrounding oaks. Laney’s eyes closed as she leaned back into the tree. Her mouth opened, and she whispered something. But it wasn’t meant for Cassie, or if it was, Cassie never heard it.
Cassie moved closer just as the forest floor beneath her feet trembled. She looked from the leaf strewed ground to her friend, registering first the obscene smile that had returned to part her lips, then watching as the ground ripped open at her feet.
It sounded like thunder, like air crashing together, but what it was, was earth ripping apart. It churned underneath her, sucking Laney down. Cassie sprang toward the old tree. Roots erupted from the ground and snaked over Laney’s legs. She fell to her knees. Cassie lost sight of her lower limbs under the shifting soil.
Cassie lunged, grabbing her friend by her arms. Laney didn’t grab her back. Her eyes stayed closed and her features relaxed. The ground seemed to tilt, and Laney’s arms were jerked from Cassie’s grasp; the moving, shifting soil pulling her deeper, rougher than quicksand and faster, too. The ground pulled at her with an insistent longing. There could have been a rotor under that tree, twisting and turning. Fresh, heavy dirt sprouted up all around them. Dark and moist, it stank of rot. The old topsoil, mixed with dried leaves and broken pine needles, disappeared in the pull of breaking ground.
Cassie screamed, hardening her grip on her friend and pulling uselessly. She may as well have been trying to rip her friend from set concrete. Laney was yanked back, pulled further into the muck, and Cassie fell forward, refusing to let her go, landing on her stomach, fully stretched on the shifting ground.
Roots surged again and this time wrapped Laney’s torso, pulling her to her chest into the soil. Fear seized Cassie’s throat, and she screamed, pulling at her friend’s arms until she saw blood bead where her fingernails pressed into bare skin. “Laney! Please!”
The smell of freshly dug dirt, of decay, stung in Cassie’s nostrils as the soil churned and roiled from below. She could feel the small roots springing up underneath her, finding purchase on her skin. She kicked and screamed and wriggled away, her hands never leaving Laney.
Laney looked up for the last time.
“I told you. You should have gone,” she whispered. And with a smile and a final sound of thunder, she was yanked under and swallowed by the earth.
Wrong.
Cassie came to her knees, raking her hands into the dirt. Her fingertips bled from where she was digging into the loose soil. Rocks bit into her skin, and she spasmed with fear when her hand wrapped around a root, causing her to skitter back on her heels.
Laney was gone.
Thoughts mingled with blind digging and panic. Cassie could see nothing but the dirt, the empty dirt. She rose to her feet, her hands shaking, staring at the spot her friend once stood.
It was their fault. It had to be. Somehow, they took her. They …
They what?
Cassie stumbled once as she turned. Then she ran.
“You have to tell them the truth,” her mother whispered. “Cassie, please, Laney could be in serious trouble.”
She was. But, Cassie couldn’t tell them again.
Cassie had gotten lost when she was running from the woods. Every root and rock seemed to spring up from the ground to catch her foot. Her shins were bruised and cut, her palms bloody. She came out on the road several miles from her house, not even realizing where she was. She was a mess. The tears had started, she didn’t know when, sometime when she was running, or maybe even when Laney had been sucked under, she couldn’t be sure. But when the trucker saw her and stopped, asked if she was okay, she had been sobbing. She told him about the tree, about her friend being taken, about how she needed the police. He had called for her, even waited until the flashing lights and the sirens lit up the quiet road with light and sound. He had given a statement, repeated what Cassie told him, even as Cassie was stammering through it again. It was hard to get it all out, hard to make sense of it.
It sounded crazy, she knew that. But it had happened! Just like she said. And seeing the officers’ faces as she retold it, hearing one steal away to the side to call for an ambulance, it sent her over the edge.
“I’m not lying!” she had screamed. “She’s in there, she’s in there!”
From the forest, she could hear the echo of a whispered laugh.
“Did she fall? Is she hurt?”
“I don’t know! The tree, it—”
“You should wait for the paramedics,” the officer had said, cutting her off. Cassie’s dirty fingers had raked t
hrough her hair, dirt and twigs cascading from her. She paced the road, the cops watching her silently. She had tried to calm herself when the ambulance arrived, wanting someone to hear her, but the police told her story first, eyebrows raised and whispering behind their hands.
Cassie tried again, shouting to be heard, but before she knew it, she was strapped to a stretcher, her wrists secured to the handles with cuffs lined in fleece. It made everything worse, the panic, the blinding panic. She pleaded for them to take them off, pulled at the cuffs until her wrists were red and her muscles burned. Her yelling was loud at first but then felt muted, her mouth opening but only a terrible crying coming out. She clenched her eyes shut because she could. She could control those muscles, not like the noise coming out of her mouth, that she couldn’t stop. She couldn’t slow her breathing down or catch her breath. The ambulance bounced over the road, going fast, faster than she thought necessary. Maybe the driver couldn’t take that awful crying. She could barely stand it herself. She opened her eyes in time to watch the roof of the ambulance tremble as the vehicle slammed to a stop, saw in jerky snapshots the ceiling slide from view and the sky, purple with bright spots of light, replace it before the blinding overhead lights of the emergency room forced her eyes closed again. A needle pierced her arm and the next time she opened her eyes, she was staring at a dim ceiling and the anxious faces of her parents.
Her stomach roiled, and bile flew up her throat. She went to sit up, knowing she was about to vomit but found her hands still locked down. She was able to just sit up enough to get sick over the side rail of her bed, her mother jumping out of the way just in time.
It was degrading and horrifying, puking on the floor with her hands tied down. Cassie couldn’t wipe the vomit from her lips, and it made it all the more disgusting. She threw up more than perhaps she would have if she had the use of her hands.
“It’s okay, honey,” her mother had soothed, pulling Cassie’s hair back. “Someone get in here now!”
Her nurse voice, that’s what her father always called it, got people moving. She demanded Cassie’s hands be released, and it took a moment, but she felt the straps loosen. She yanked her wrists free and jumped from the bed. She looked around the room, her head swiveling in a manic fashion, spotting the door to what she hoped was a bathroom behind her father. She pushed past him and fell to her knees, not even bothering to switch on the light.
She got sick once more in the toilet.
The light flicked on overhead, a whine of electricity filling the room. After the eerie silence of the forest, it felt almost intrusive. Her hands were splayed on the cold, white side of the toilet. The bowl was pristine compared to her fingers. Brown and black with dirt creased in every delicate fold of her skin. Her nails were chipped; one broken so far down that blood had stained the tip of her finger. She felt sick staring at it.
It was real. It had to be because why else would her fingers be torn up and bloody.
“Oh, God,” she whispered. It wasn’t a curse; it was a prayer.
“Cassie?” her mother’s voice, gentle and calm, as though she was approaching an injured animal, floated around her in the pristine space of the hospital bathroom. She let her mother help her up. Cathy coaxed her daughter toward the sink where she gently washed out her mouth, urging her to take a sip of water after, and then ran her fingers under warm water. Swirls of black and brown and rust swam in Cassie’s vision, fixing her to the spot. A burst of manic energy flew through her, and suddenly she was scrubbing, lathering the bar of soap into her skin and ripping another nail as she tried to rid herself of the dirt.
Cassie could smell it. Smell the rot and stink of the churning soil, like she had brought it with her, like it followed her still. She brought her fingers to her mouth and bit at the nails, spitting into the sink in the process and ignoring the growing audience behind her. Her mother blocked most of them anyway, standing straight next to her, her hand rubbing soft circles on her back.
She was led back to bed once her nails were completely bitten down and every trace of dirt and blood was washed down the drain. Cassie tried, over and over for the next few hours to repeat her story, to stop them from whispering, to not sound like a raving lunatic, but it didn’t come out right. When she heard the nurses talking about sending her to Barnes Eight, which she knew from her mother was the psych ward, she stopped trying to tell them.
She changed the story. She said it was a man, that she had been scared, that she ran, that she left her best friend to some lunatic in the woods, which wasn’t true, but would save her from the psych ward, at least.
“I want to go home,” Cassie whispered to her mother. She was spent. The scratches and cuts she earned from running top speed through the woods ached, so did her shoulders, from the exertion she spent trying to fruitlessly yank Laney from the churning soil. Her head throbbed and despite all the tears, her eyes felt dry. She wanted her own room, space to think; she wanted people not to stare at her and most of all she wanted a shower.
“I’ll get them to rush the paperwork,” her mother said softly, glancing over at her father with a silent look that screamed “watch her.”
Officer Gibbons was waiting for her on the porch. He stood as their car pulled into the driveway. Cassie looked up at the twitching window curtain in Laney’s living room. The Blake’s front door flew open a moment later.
“Cassie!” Mrs. Blake called out, “Cassie, where is my daughter?”
Patrick stepped forward, his arm held out across the lawn and, to Cassie’s surprise, so did Officer Gibbons.
“Why don’t we let the girl get inside, okay, Mrs. Blake?” Officer Gibbons said. “I have some questions for her, and I’ll come over your place after.”
Cassie felt her mother stiffen at his words, but she didn’t care. She was expecting it. The officer at the hospital had been nervous, almost timid, as though he thought Cassie was going to leap off the bed and attack him, which, considering the state of her hair and nails and the way dirt still clung to her skin, Cassie could understand. Mrs. Blake stared at Cassie, her eyes pleading. Mr. Blake stepped down to the lawn now too, and the Sheridan’s little boy, Randall, stared across his lawn with his jaw gaping. Old Mrs. Casey peered from her window, and the Cooper family ushered their niece inside, the door slamming with an audible crash that Cassie could hear from her lawn. She winced.
“Mrs. Blake, I—”
“Inside, please, Cassie,” Officer Gibbons interrupted, nodding toward her front door. Patrick hurried up the porch steps, unlocking the door and letting it swing inside. Her mother’s hand was a firm pressure on her lower back and without a backward glance, Cassie was swept through the doorway.
The house was dark. Her father went around, flipping on the lights and pulling the shades. Cassie’s heart gave a little lurch when she noticed the earbuds left on the coffee table. They were Laney’s.
“Please, sit.” Her mother gestured to the living room, and Officer Gibbons nodded his thanks, sitting on the stiff, wooden Hitchcock chair her mother kept mostly for decoration in the corner. He cleared his throat and looked to Patrick.
“May I speak with your daughter in private?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Patrick answered firmly, his hand clamping down on Cassie’s shoulder. She looked from her father to the police officer. Gibbons was calm, sure of himself. He nodded in acquiescence, but Cassie cleared her throat.
“I don’t mind, Dad,” she murmured. Her father blustered, but Cathy stepped further into the room, watching Cassie. She laid a hand on her husband’s arm.
“Would it be easier?” she asked, her voice low. Cassie caught her mother’s eye and was immensely grateful for the flash of understanding there. She nodded. “We’ll be upstairs if you need us. Just yell.”
She pushed her husband toward the hall, shushing him.
“You’re seventeen, Miss Harris?” Officer Gibbons asked once her parent’s bedroom door shut. Cassie nodded.
“And do you hear voices? See things?”
“What?” Cassie asked, startled. He continued as though she hadn’t interrupted.
“Think about hurting yourself or others? Ever try to kill yourself?”
“No!”
He took it as an all-encompassing no. Though it wasn’t, not really. She was indignant. Cassie’s heart was pounding, and she was sure her pulse was jumping visibly enough for him to see if he happened to glance at her bounding neck. She felt warm and uncomfortable and almost wanted to call out for her mother, but she didn’t. She knew why the officer wanted to talk with her, knew he could mention the picture, or Aidan, and she didn’t want her parents to hear any of that.
“Okay, good,” he continued, not acknowledging her discomfort. “So you’re not insane?”
She shook her head, staring at him.
“So, clear it up for me,” he said bluntly. “What happened tonight?”
Cassie paused, taking a quick breath. She had already decided, at the hospital and on the short drive home: the truth wouldn’t work. If she told them what she saw, why she was covered in dirt and her fingernails broken, they would not believe her. They would think she was insane. She couldn’t explain about the voices, about the way Laney was sucked into the earth, about the terrifying freakishness of the men from the carnival. But she could describe them, she could point them in the logical direction toward Jude and Aidan and Corey. Because however it happened, whatever had happened, that was where Laney was now. Dead or alive or something in between, she was with them.
Cassie told Officer Gibbons a more elaborate version of the final story she told the nervous cop at the hospital. She told him there was a man; she could remember his features. She didn’t say he was from the carnival, knowing what that had earned her the last time she tried. She offered to describe him. She plucked out every last detail of Jude’s face and body that she could remember, and she repeated it to Gibbons. She told him the man grabbed Laney. She told him she could hear others and that she was afraid. She said she saw two other men waiting in the forest, described Aidan and Corey, said the three of them took Laney and that she was afraid they would take her, too.