Chapter Fifteen #2
Back at the front, the cheerleaders hold large posters with Fiona’s face plastered on them.
It’s eerie, seeing her blown up like that in black and white.
Like me and Daisy and Sam, Fiona doesn’t look like the sea of students around us.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, alarm bells ring.
In the middle Missy raises her hands, palms out.
They’re painted red like they’ve been dipped in blood.
“WHERE IS FIONA?” she shouts, her voice shaking. “brING HER HOME! brING HER HOME! brING HER HOME!” My heart slams against my ribs, my chest pumping up and down as Missy’s words fight against the growing thunder of the choir.
I can still hear their song beneath the screams, the familiarity prickling at my skin. When it dawns on me where I’ve heard it before, black dots my vision, and my head swims as I blink it all away.
The school choir is humming the same song that terrorized my dream, the same song those hooded men sang as they approached the chanting witches.
How do they know that song? How is it possible that the melody is real and not something my mind conjured?
Until now I’ve secretly hoped that it was just a dream.
Some lame attempt at processing my grief.
But it seems clearer than ever that it was so much more than that.
It was a message. Not only from Gigi, but from the witches themselves.
Guiding me to the answers I desperately need.
The choir is getting louder and louder, their music reverberating off the surrounding trees and nearly drowning out Missy and her friends entirely.
The once sweet and melodic tune has taken on a life of its own.
Some of the students in the crowd join in, the music sharpening as the notes elongate and bend into something that feels more like a warning, the tones skating up the mountain and back down again, and again and again, layering until the dissonance is slithering between my ears and settling into my core.
And in opposition, students join Missy. They chant for Fiona, an anger bleeding against the night.
Suddenly Missy and the two girls on either side of her swing something barrel shaped from around their backs and point them at the crowd.
Icy terror paralyzes me for a moment before the T-shirt cannons erupt. The students around me scream at the sound, the papers releasing with a loud pop before raining down on us, thousands and thousands of pages all plastered with her face.
MISSING.
FIONA BEAUMONT, 17.
WHERE WERE YOU THE NIGHT OF NOVEMBER 3, 2025?
SOMEONE KNOWS SOMETHING.
CALL 555-567-9213 TO REPORT ANY TIPS.
NO QUESTIONS ASKED.
I grab hold of the paper and fold it, willing the panic away as I focus on blocking out the song that has continued through all this.
It’s reaching its crescendo. Wind whips my hair, groaning and weaving through the nightmarish tune as the papers drift past my head. My shirt ripples against my chest.
At the fountain, teachers have confiscated the cannons and are escorting a still-screaming Missy and crew into Biltmore.
Thunder booms in the distance, and seemingly out of nowhere, rain begins to fall in dense sheets.
“My hair!” Daisy shouts beside me, angling her body like she’s getting ready to run.
Sam tugs on my hand. “Welcome to the shit show,” they call over their shoulder above the scattered yelps and pounding feet against the brick pathway. I can’t catch my breath or quiet the buzzing in my head.
Slowly the members of the choir stop singing as they flee the quad in search of cover.
Whatever it is, it’s happening again. The flood of stinging static, a burning pain, a desperate, crazed need to release something, but not knowing what or why.
A piercing spark erupts where Sam’s palm meets mine.
“Ah!!!” they yelp, yanking their hand away, a mix of fear and pain in their eyes as they look at the space between us.
I want to throw up. “I—”
“It’s okay,” Sam quickly cuts me off. “It’s just static.”
They go to grab my hand again, but I snatch mine back on instinct.
Shrugging, they turn, and I follow closely behind, careful not to touch anyone. I slip on a pile of wet flyers and fall to my knees.
Sam doesn’t notice, and no one stops to help me up, too preoccupied with getting out of the rain. Absently I wonder where Lucas went, if he’s wherever Malachi is.
As I lift to my feet, something catches my eye.
Past the crowd and the arts building and tucked into the trees hemming either side of the eastern trailhead, a flash of white.
It slithers between the towering trunks like a specter, conjuring visions of Gigi’s funeral.
What are the odds? A phantom-like blur along the bank of the creek at Willow Estate and in the forest that borders the school?
Plus Dawson’s Mini-Mart, the cafeteria, and now this?
The melody popping up in my dream—an impossible connection between a horrific scene and this school?
The message from Gigi. The storms, the lights, the otherworldly power that flows through me, the confusion on Sam’s face at the shock of my touch…
Something impossible is happening to me. Something to do with that dream. Those witches. This school.
There it is again, moving through the trees.
Despite my better judgment and the panic clawing at my chest, despite the rumors and the legends, the dangers that lurk in the Appalachian Mountains, and everything I’ve ever been taught about these woods at night, I break away from the fleeing crowd.
The farther I get, the surer my steps become as I slink into the yawning mouth of a haunted wood.