Chapter V. 2007
CHAPTER V
Away. Get away. Camilla’s thighs, her calves, burned with the need for escape as she ran blindly through the trees.
Greenbrier lashed her arms and ankles, the forest taking her blood into itself as sustenance as if it could hold and keep her still, but she kept running until she burst through the trees and onto the main road.
Sobbing, she turned opposite of what would lead her back to the house.
She couldn’t go home. Couldn’t let her parents see her tear-streaked face or the blood on her arms and legs and then rationally try to explain she saw the Dark Sisters.
There was nothing rational in a haunting. Nothing logical in the monstrous.
Her bare feet slapped against the asphalt, and she ignored the sting and pushed on.
Vera’s house was close. Going there would delay the inevitable questions her parents would ask.
It would give her time to keep herself from spilling what she saw and ensuring herself a place on Retreat.
If Brianna hadn’t already done exactly that.
Camilla was thankful for the late hour despite the terrible dark, thankful that no one would see her—a bloodied, wide-eyed girl running as if something would devour her if she stopped.
Vera’s house was dark except for a dim glow coming from an upper window, and Camilla almost collapsed in gratitude.
Vera would listen; she would clean the cuts on her arms and feet and then bandage them with gentle hands.
She would give Camilla the time to think and figure out how she was going to explain.
She stumbled onto the small porch with its wicker rockers and sage-green cushions and wind chimes where she’d spent countless hours drinking sweet tea and eating Lorna Doone cookies because there was no one there to tell her there were too many calories.
Vera’s house was smaller than the others in Hawthorne Springs.
There was no need for some ostentatious Tudor obscenity.
She was widowed, and there were no children to care for.
She didn’t need all that house only for her.
Her little bungalow with its stained glass windows and rose garden was more than enough, so she lived without the extravagances the rest of the town insisted upon.
Had she not been a dear friend of Pastor Burson’s wife, Camilla imagined she would have been dismissed by Hawthorne Springs’ elite.
It stung as she realized this was exactly the same thing Brianna felt every day.
The same thing she’d tried to explain that night at the tree.
“Vera.” She felt the urge to scream again, but her voice was little more than a croak, and she slammed her palm against the door.
Already, Camilla could hear the sound of hurrying footsteps, and her throat went thick as her eyes flooded with fresh tears. When Vera threw open the door, her face a mask of panic, Camilla’s knees buckled, and she collapsed into Vera’s waiting arms.
“Camilla? It’s the middle of the night. What in the world are you doing here?” she asked.
The words flowed out of her unchecked—a stream she could not control once it began. “I was sleepwalking, and I woke up in the woods in front of this tree. It had heads. On the bark. Like they’d been cut off, and they were screaming, and there were mouths, and they were open so wide. Too wide.”
“Slow down. You’re talking crazy. Here—” She stepped back and guided Camilla inside the foyer. “Let’s get you off your feet. Why aren’t you wearing shoes? Oh, honey. You’re bleeding.”
Vera settled Camilla on the overstuffed faded-blue couch and tugged a throw blanket over her. “Let me get something for those cuts. Don’t move.”
Camilla let her eyes drift closed, fatigue washing over her even though she’d slept for all those lost hours before the tree. From the kitchen came the sound of running water, and she sank into it as relief overcame her.
Safe. You’re safe.
She kept her eyes closed as Vera shuffled back into the room. “Let me see,” she said, and lifted the blanket before sucking in a hissed breath. “Lord have mercy, girl. What did you get into?” She drew Camilla’s feet onto her lap, her fingers gently probing as she inspected the injuries.
“I was asleep, and then I woke up in the woods,” Camilla said, and winced as Vera drew a damp cloth over her feet.
“I was at this tree. We had a party there. And then Sam started talking about the Dark Sisters and pretended to have a fit or something. I thought he’d bitten off his tongue.
It was so awful, and there was blood, only it wasn’t his.
It was a cow tongue. Brianna was so mad, and she said—” Her breath caught in her throat, her voice hitching as she heaved out another sob.
“Just breathe. In and out. There you go. Slow it down.”
Camilla nodded and let the air fill her lungs, focused on the rise and fall of her chest so she would not remember the moon-pale reflection of the Dark Sisters’ eyes. Vera continued her work, moving from Camilla’s feet to her arms.
“It was a joke. He was trying to scare us,” Camilla said. “And it’s just a story, right?” Her voice pitched upward.
Vera paused, her hands hovering, the cloth still tight in her grip. “What’s just a story, Camilla?”
“The Dark Sisters,” she whispered. “And then tonight. I saw them—saw something—in the tree.”
Vera dropped the cloth, and it fell to the floor with a wet slap. “You saw them?”
Camilla nodded, and Vera leaned forward, her gaze sharp.
“Have you ever seen them before?” she asked.
“No. It’s just a story. I was dreaming. Right? I had a bad dream?” She desperately wanted it to be true, and if Vera would only tell her that yes, she’d had a nightmare, she could forget the entire night.
“Have you ever dreamed about them before? The Sisters?”
“No.”
“Think back. Not even once? Not even when you were little?”
“Never.” She would have remembered if she had.
They would have burned themselves into her memory.
Even the sleepover at Tricia Allman’s, as imprinted in her mind as it was, held no memory of a dream.
And if the Sisters were just a story, she didn’t understand why Vera needed any sort of confirmation that Camilla had seen them.
“You’re certain?”
Camilla’s skin crawled into gooseflesh. “Absolutely sure. Why?”
Vera bent to gather the cloth, but not before Camilla saw the frown spreading across her face. “I should get you home. Ada’s probably sick with worry,” she said, and then stood and offered her hand to Camilla. Camilla couldn’t bring herself to mention her feet were still bleeding.
Vera asked no further questions as she drove, and the silence filled up with all the things Camilla wanted to say but didn’t dare speak aloud. She worried if she did, it would only make what she saw real.
If the Sisters were only a story, why had Vera asked such pointed questions? Questions that made it seem Camilla had actually seen them? And then why had she dismissed it so quickly?
She rested her head against the window, the glass cool against her cheek.
She was still confused, her brain scrambling to process everything around her.
It was likely Vera hadn’t meant anything at all, and that she’d only been checking to see if Camilla was lucid.
Or, if Camilla had dreamed of the Sisters before, it was likely she had again.
Maybe she’d been locked inside some kind of sleep paralysis at the tree, and none of it had been real.
But then why the dismissal and the frown when Camilla had tried to question her further? Her head swam.
The security lights came on as Vera guided the car down Camilla’s driveway. The front door opened, and her mother came running out, her father framed in the doorway behind her.
Camilla opened the car door and slowly stood. Her back and legs were stiff, and she wanted a shower and to go back to bed. Preferably with someone guarding her bedroom to make sure she didn’t sleepwalk again.
Already her mother was at the car, and she opened her arms and crushed Camilla to her.
“Where have you been? We got home, and you weren’t here.
No one had seen you or knew where you were.
There was nothing on the cameras. We were terrified something happened, and you didn’t have your phone.
You can’t just take off without telling us. ”
“I’m so sorry, Ada. I should have called and told you she came over, but we got to talking and completely lost track of time,” Vera said. Camilla darted a glance at Vera over her mother’s shoulder, but Vera looked calmly up at Henry and lifted her hand in a wave. “We didn’t mean to worry y’all.”
Camilla fought to keep the bewilderment from her face. Why was Vera covering for her? Why not tell her parents about the sleepwalking? About the Dark Sisters? Unless Vera had her own secrets to hide. Unless Vera knew something more about the Dark Sisters than she was letting on.
So her parents wouldn’t see her confusion, Camilla leaned into her mother and breathed in the mimosa and rose and lily scent of her perfume—one of the many Hermès bottles she kept in her bathroom.
She didn’t have to feign the exhaustion she felt.
In the morning, she’d have to be dressed and polished, her scratches covered with concealer, and ready to face another Sunday. She just wanted to go to sleep.
Ada finally released Camilla and reached for Vera’s hand and squeezed it. “Thank you for bringing her home. We’re just so relieved,” she said, and turned to smile at Henry.