Then I step back, my mind whirring. I watched Anders step through the door of the Underground Music Studio a few hours ago. He won’t be there now. He won’t be at Jezz’s house. But he’s out here somewhere, with his white car and Yvonne.
And suddenly I know exactly where he’ll be.
Anders wants to believe that I don’t really know him. He can believe it all he wants.
I climb onto the bike. The dark things roar as they chase after me. They can’t move faster than I can. They’ll have to use surprise instead. I keep my eyes sharp, looking up, down, ahead, everywhere. I ride so fast that the trees melt into a smear.
At first, when the thud comes, I think I’ve hit a tree. This is something that hasn’t happened since I was little, first figuring out how fast I could move, unable to dependably control it. But then I realize that something has hit me.
It has plummeted from above, dropping on me like a panther. Its black body strikes the bicycle, its hands scrabbling at the handlebars for an instant before leaping away. The front wheel of the bike jags left. I pull it back, steadying, planting my right foot in the mud.
The thing is hunched a few paces behind me. I hone my eyes. I can see its long, long fingers. Its claws. Its eyes are chalky and wide, the shells of two rotting eggs. It makes its sound. A wet, thrumming growl.
I drop the bike and lunge after it.
The thing races away. Back up into the trees. I just have time to make out its bent, bony shape. A few rustling leaves trace its path, and then everything is still.
It wasn’t up for a fight. It was only here to distract me. To slow me down.
I jump back on the bike.
I’m still not afraid.
The dark things aren’t quite real, anyway. Not on this side of the cracks.
But when you’re empty inside, dark things will find a place inside of you. Like water. Like air.
Dig a hole. There will always be enough darkness to fill it up.
That woman at the Crow’s Nest was so filled with them, she practically breathed darkness. Usually the darkness is harder to see; it only shows in flashes, or it’s gray instead of black, like an almost-dead coal.
And of course, most people can’t see it at all.
That’s why the dark things want Anders. Darkness loves to hide in plain sight. It loves being watched and worshipped and heard, without even being seen.
I need to find him. Fast.
I fly past the Crow’s Nest, into the woods.
I can feel him close by.
I stop the bike, climb down from the pedals. Through the trees, I catch the flash of a silver guitar case, one shard of light in the enclosing dark.
They’re hungry. White eyes. Dark teeth. Dark claws.
But I will catch him first.
Anders
She’s standing just a couple of steps behind me, holding her bike by the handlebars. Just enough starlight falls through the woods that I can recognize her outline. Even in the dimness, her hair looks white.
“Jesus,” I gasp. “It’s you. Goddamn. Maybe you could learn how to approach someone without giving them a heart attack.”
She looks down at me. I’m still crouched on the ground, a couple of feet from where Yvonne’s case leans against a tree. Her eyes move between us.
“This probably looks weird,” I say, because I feel like I need to say something.
She shakes her head. “No. I understand.”
I barely understand. I get to my feet. “You do?”
“You’re trying to give it back to them.”
Oh my God.
The things I’ve half imagined, half guessed, and felt like an idiot for thinking about at all become real.
She knows.
My knees buckle. I have to take a wobbly step to stay upright.
“That won’t work,” Thea goes on. “They won’t take it back. It’s not what they want.”
My phone is still in my hand, but now—maybe just because I’m not alone—I feel like I don’t need it anymore. I shove it into my pocket. My fingers are shaking.
“What do they want?” I ask.
Her face stays as calm and smooth as always. I realize what she reminds me of: one of those old porcelain dolls with little painted mouths and round cheeks and too-big, droopy eyes. Then she says, “They want you.” She moves a few steps closer to me, rolling her bike. “They want you to join them, so they can act through you. That’s what they do.”
My head’s tilting, or the ground is tilting. “Why me?”
“Because you’re special.” She looks into my eyes. She almost smiles. “You want big things. They can use that.” The wind shifts, lifting a tendril of her hair. “They gave you gifts. You took them. You used them. Now they think you owe them in return.”
“They think I owe them what?”
“I told you,” she says, calm as ever. “You.”
“Like . . .” I can’t believe I’m having this conversation. I can’t believe that I believe it. “Like, they want my soul?”
Her eyes run over me, quickly, from my head to my feet. “They want all of you.”
I rake a hand through my hair. My fingers are freezing, but I can feel the sweat on my scalp. “If they want to act through me, or control me, or whatever . . . are they, like, demons?”
This sounds so ridiculous, I want to smack myself.
But she doesn’t laugh. “They’re creatures of darkness,” she says. “They exist to bring evil into being. You can call them demons, if you want.”
“And—you’re saying these things are real. They’re not just, like, metaphorical demons? They’re not normal, human people doing bad things?”
She shakes her head. “Not normal. No. They’re thick here, around this town. They’ve gotten a foothold.” She casts a quick glance over my head. “They’re all around us.”
“Right now?” A pulse of fear rocks me. “Can you see them?”
“Yes.” She points. “There’s one hanging in the tree just above you.”
Instinctively, I duck.
But nothing happens. I’m just waiting, with my shoulders up to my ears and Thea watching me, and the trees shushing softly.
Finally, carefully, I look up.
There’s nothing. Of course there isn’t. Above me a bunch of branches make their messy black lace against the sky. “I don’t see anything,” I tell her.
She nods. “Most people don’t. Unless they see like I see.”
I take another, longer look. The woods are dark, sure. But there’s nothing moving in that darkness, except the branches swaying softly back and forth.
And all at once, like I’ve pulled off a pair of sunglasses that were distorting my vision, I can see just how absurd this is. I mean, I have to be crazy, leaving my expensive, gorgeous guitar lying in the mud behind me. And this girl, with her giant clothes and her stalking and her stories about demons, is definitely, utterly, totally insane.
“So . . . I’m just supposed to believe you?” I say. “Because you tell me you can see something that’s not really there?”
Thea just gazes back at me. She keeps so still now, if it wasn’t for her drifting hair, she’d look like some weird statue.
I push on. “I mean, if these invisible things are demons, then what do you think you are? An angel or something?”
She hesitates for a second. “Angels don’t exist,” she says.
“Right. Exactly.” My words accelerate. “Demons don’t exist, either. And all of this, everything that’s happened, is my fault, because I’ve screwed up my own life without any help from Satan. And you are just some fan who’s come to enough shows and listened to enough gossip and spied on me enough to weave this story. And that’s it.”
I stride past her, toward the Crow’s Nest.
She’s in front of me again so fast that it doesn’t seem possible.
It isn’t possible.
I stop, blinking. Nobody can move like that. But there she is, with that old blue bike beside he
r, standing right in front of me.
I stagger backward. My heel hits a root, and I fall, landing on my ass in a heap of wet leaves.
Thea looms over me.
“Listen,” she says, leaning down over her handlebars so that her face is close to mine. Her voice is low and fast and hard. “You started studying the guitar with Flynn Martin nine years ago. You practiced. You got better. When you were fourteen, you and Jezz and Patrick formed a band. You tried writing music of your own, but nothing came out the way you wanted it to. Still, you practiced, and you kept getting better, and soon you had a little following.”
“Everybody who’s ever read an interview knows—” I start, but she goes on as if I haven’t spoken.
“Then, in the fall of your junior year, you met a journalist who walked with you here, in these woods, not far from where we’re standing now.”
My throat squeezes shut.
“He asked you what you wanted more than anything. And you told him.” She pauses to let each of the words hit me. “He told you you’d get it. Everything you wanted. And then it started to happen. An expensive guitar. Inspiration for songs. People raving about you online. Pretty girls throwing themselves at you.”
My whole body is ice. Nobody knows this. Not all of it.
There’s no way. There’s no way.
“They knew you would love it,” she says. “They knew that once you had it all, you’d do almost anything to keep it. That’s what they do. They make sure that you’re hooked. That you’re already half theirs. And then they make you pay.” She pauses. A tendril of her long hair, pale and fine as a cobweb, wavers on the air between us.
“That woman who came to the Crow’s Nest last week,” Thea goes on. “She was one of theirs. You could tell, couldn’t you? You could feel the woods on her.” She waits for a beat, staring down at me. She can read the answer in my eyes. “She tried to make you sign. She would have made you theirs. And you said no.” She leans even closer. I can feel her breath, just barely, on my face. “So they’re not just going to take back what they gave you. They’re going to take the things you love, one by one.”
I’m not even sure my heart is beating anymore.
“I’ve been watching,” she says, which is such an understatement that I bray out a weird, nervous laugh. “That’s what I do. I’m here to protect you.” Her hands shift on the handlebars, opening and closing. “You may not believe any of this. That’s why I usually hide it. But I’m not going to lose another one.”
For a second we’re both quiet. I’m still sitting on the cold mud, staring up at her. She’s still clenching the handlebars of her bike.
The weird thing is, I should be afraid of her. The things she’s said turn my skin to ice, but right now, this girl is one of the only things I don’t fear. She’s so steady. So certain. Her forcefulness, her insistence that I believe in her, has taken the choice right out of my hands.
I can let go. I can just believe.
“Okay,” I say, and a huge weight that’s been balled up in my chest floats out, exhaled on that word. “Okay. So—what now?”
Thea straightens up at last. She scans the trees. “Go home,” she says. “Right away. Lock yourself inside. And take the guitar with you. Leaving it here won’t do any good anyway.”
I rock awkwardly to my feet and scramble toward Yvonne’s tree. “And then what?”
“I’ll be with you. Watching,” she says. “You’ll be safe. At least for tonight.”
Yvonne’s metal case is cold. Clods of mud are stuck to the corners. I scrub them away with my thumb. Her handle fits back into my fist like somebody else’s hand holding mine.
We head back to the parking lot. Thea stays right beside me, walking her powder-blue bike. I feel safer with her there, and then I feel pathetic for feeling this way. This soft, weird, long-haired girl thinks that she’s protecting me. I’m letting myself think so, too.
She walks me to my car.
“Drive carefully,” she says as I get behind the wheel. “I’ll be right behind you.”
I drive home about ten miles under the speed limit.
I keep checking the rearview mirror. There’s nothing behind me, as far as I can see. Including a girl on a blue bike. Of course, even with me going only forty miles per hour, there’s no way she’d be able to keep up with me. Right?
As soon as I bump into our driveway, the phone in my pocket starts to buzz. It buzzes and buzzes. Ping ping ping. I pull it out as I head up the walk and unlock the front door.
There are five messages from Jezz, plus one missed call.
- Where are u? Patrick and I are at my place
- Call us
- NOW
- OK just check yr email
- Check it and then call us. We can’t waste any more time.
Jesus. What now?
I glance back at the road, damp and pearly with mist. There’s no one there. Of course not. On her bike, it should take Thea several minutes to catch up with me.
I step into the entry and lock the front door behind me. The stillness in the air reminds me that Mom and Dad aren’t home; that I’ll be alone here for hours. I bolt down the hall to my room.
It takes forever for the crappy old computer to fire up. Long enough that my head is swirling with a million confusing possibilities by the time I finally get to my email.
Jezz has sent one message with an attachment. The subject line reads: “Psycho Stalker.”
I open it.
We know what happened to Frankie, says the note. It was that girl. Thea. Check it out.
There’s a list of links pasted below.
I glance over my shoulder. For a second I’m sure I’m going to find her face at the window, staring straight back in at me, even though I know that’s not possible yet. There’s nothing through the pane but the usual view of brown-black trees, stretching away into darkness.
Still, just in case, I lunge out of the chair and pull the curtains closed. Then I switch out the lights, so only the glow of the computer tints the room. I dive back into my desk chair and click the first link.
It’s the police blotter from some small town in Wisconsin, three years ago. Someone named Josiah Malcolm was held in Beltram County Jail for disturbing the peace. The next link is another newspaper, another town, another police blotter. Josiah Malcolm, cited for public intoxication and disturbing the peace. I skim as fast as I can. The third is a slightly longer article, mentioning Josiah Malcolm, 48, who was arrested while standing knee deep in the Arapahana River, screaming about the wrath of God and the works of Satan, after making a series of threats against some local church group. I’m starting to wonder what the hell any of this has to do with Thea, but then the article mentions that Josiah Malcolm’s fifteen-year-old daughter was with him at the time of the arrest.
Thea Malcolm.
Then there are a bunch of articles about arson. Barns, sheds, one dive bar. Unsolved. I check the locations. Beltram County. Arapahana Township. Everywhere Josiah Malcolm—and his daughter—has lived.
Okay. So Thea’s father is a drunk and a wacko. Sounds like it runs in the family.
I open the attachment.
It’s a screen shot—page after page after page—from someone’s Facebook account.
It’s some girl I don’t recognize. She’s pretty. Dark-haired, small-featured. She looks a little like Frankie.
And she’s dead.
I only have to skim a few messages to figure it out. Rest in peace notes, crying emojis, photos of the same girl with group after group of friends.
Then a conversation starts.
- Corrine, you were the nicest person in the entire world there’s no way you did this to yourself I just wish you knew how much we all love you
- She DIDN’T do this to herself
- That’s what I’ve been saying for like a week!!!
- It wasn’t suicide. It was that girl. Thea Malcolm.
I lean closer to the screen.
- We all knew ther
e was something screwed up about her
- But they moved away before it even happened
- Yeah I know. They had to move because of what she did to Corinne.
- Thea was totally obsessed with her. Following Corinne everywhere. Marking her window with that X in blood. Fricking MESSED UP.
A sour taste fills my mouth. I shoot another look at the curtained window.
- We don’t know that was her
- It WAS. Corinne even knew.
- So why didn’t she go to jail or a mental ward or something?
- Because Corinne is CORINNE. She thought Thea was just trying to “protect” her or something. That’s what she told me.
- She’s too nice
- She WAS too nice.
There’s more. Lots more.
But I can’t go on. My hands are shaking.
Jesus.
I fumble at the buttons of my phone.
Jezz picks up on the first ring.
“Hey.” His voice is hushed. A little breathless. “Did you read the stuff?”
“Yeah. I read it.” I swallow hard. “Where did you get it?”
“Google, dude. Plus, my cousin Noah lives up by Beltram. I texted him when Patrick and I found that thing about Thea and her dad living up there, and he told me—” Jezz pauses. There’s a little crackle in the background. “Dude,” says Jezz, softer now. “He told me she’s done this before.”
“Done what?” I say. Even though I already know.
“She kidnapped that girl. Corinne.” Jezz speaks rapidly. “She kept her in some old barn for days. Then Corinne escaped, and Thea and her dad left town, and like a week later, Corinne was dead. Noah said the police called it suicide, but . . . it was something else. And everybody knew it.”
“So . . .” I scrape out the next words. “You think she has Frankie somewhere?”
“Yeah,” says Jezz. No hesitation. “And she’s dangerous.”
I get up and check the window curtains again, making sure there’s not even a sliver of a gap between. I can’t force myself to peek out. “Maybe we should go to the police.”
“We already called them. They said they’d look into it.” I hear a muffled crackling, like Jezz might be standing beside a snapping bonfire. “But that’s all. They might be too late.”
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