Chapter Ten
TEN
Andrew hadn’t explained what had happened in the bathroom the day before—not that his supposed best friend had been around to tell.
Two seconds before lights out, he had slid into their room and dived into bed, and by then Andrew felt too small to speak.
It was all over the school anyway: the boy who’d had a total mental breakdown over an alleged senior prank and landed in the nurse’s office for the rest of the day.
He decided that Thomas hadn’t heard, instead of accepting the possibility he didn’t care.
Everything felt wrong. The way the darkness bled like ink before his eyes, the ghosted memory of things touching him as if they wanted him, owned him.
He squeezed his eyes shut. “Thomas?”
The only response was the sound of bedsprings shifting as he rolled over and pulled the comforter over his head.
And suddenly Andrew couldn’t stand it any longer. A frostbitten anger surged up his throat and he flung off his blankets and punched the desk lamp on. “Thomas. Wake up and listen—”
Thomas wasn’t in bed.
Andrew squinted in the lamp’s golden blaze and scrubbed his eyes, because he’d seen him a second before. Heard him moving. Breathing.
But the bed across from him lay empty, comforter and sheets scrunched up, and when Andrew crossed the room to feel the mattress, no heat remained.
Something had been there—
He had the crawling urge to look under the bed.
No, no. Andrew dug fingers through his hair and pulled, hissing through clenched teeth. He wasn’t making this up.
A cool breeze slipped under the window. Papers rustled on the floor, and crumpled balls of Thomas’s half-done drawings rolled around like tumbleweeds.
Andrew would have to wait till tomorrow to confront him—except, why was he always the one who had to be patient and quiet until someone felt like listening to him? Maybe he should force Thomas to listen.
Andrew’s jaw clenched. Surely he deserved that much.
He snatched up a sweatshirt and tennis shoes and shoved the window all the way open.
He bit his lip until it felt raw and swollen as he climbed down and landed in the rosebushes.
He still wore pajama shorts, the cool evening biting at his bare legs, but this wouldn’t take long.
None of them would want to linger after Andrew busted them in the woods.
Thomas and Dove. Dove and Thomas.
Mouths against skin and shirts slipping from shoulders and the leafy green knobs of the forest’s fingers tangled in their hair.
They could do him the barest courtesy of being honest about it.
He wiped at his eyes with the sleeve of his lumpy sweatshirt. It was time to change the story.
At least, he thought, as he ran across the sports field with the moonlight turning his hair silver, he still wasn’t afraid of the dark.
He climbed the fence and dropped down the other side without a sound.
The night folded over him as he walked into the woods.
As soon as the trees stretched up tall and black on every side, he turned on his phone’s flashlight and stomped around until he found the dirt track to their ancient white oak.
He decided to be noisy. No way did he want to surprise anyone.
Everything inside him had turned brittle. He couldn’t fit into a love story the way he was meant to, the way the stories were always told. No one would see a point in kissing him and leaving it at that, but he didn’t think he wanted anything more.
Sticks cracked underfoot and he plowed through leaves until he sounded like a petulant storm. But the tiniest worm of doubt wriggled through his stomach. Was this even a good idea? If there was something in the school, it could be out here, too.
Cloven hooves. Breath like wormwood rot.
“I’m not afraid,” he said to the trees. “Nothing bad has ever happened in the forest.”
Leaves whipped up around his ankles, and a single word slipped into the darkest places between the roots and thickets.
Liar.
Then the wind died suddenly, a switch shut off. Silence pushed down on his shoulders as if it wanted to drive him deep into the earth.
He stood still, flashing his phone light around. “Thomas? Dove? THOMAS.”
The silence breathed out.
Goose bumps rippled up his arms.
He turned in a slow circle, his light following in a smooth arc.
The beam lit up a dark lump leaning against a pine, but he moved it past before registering something had been there.
A person hiding behind the tree? He slashed his light back toward the shape.
Nothing. Just a single pine shot up to the sky.
“If you jump out at me,” Andrew said, his voice surprisingly steady, “I will hit you so hard you’ll bleed, Thomas Rye. I am sick of this.” Of you, he wanted to add.
No one stepped out.
He clenched his teeth and spun back to continue down the rugged little path.
Something huge stood before him.
Andrew cried out, nearly dropping his phone. The light beam skittered everywhere before settling again on the thing before him.
Not Thomas.
Not Thomas.
It reached out a hand—a claw. Its arm was bone, flesh hanging off in rotting ribbons, skin pulled so tight over a naked chest that ribs punctured through.
But its face—Vines poured out of its mouth, eyes, ears, growing and writhing.
Blood slipped between its lips as another vine broke out of its flesh and spooled toward the ground.
Its feet were hooves.
Andrew ran.
He flung himself forward with a cry so terrified it didn’t sound like him.
This wasn’t real. This wasn’t happening.
The thing followed. He could feel it coming up behind him, a weight so heavy and intense as it came fast fast faster—FASTER FASTER—
His flashlight jittered so hard he couldn’t see anything. The path was too small, too rough. He tripped, kept going. Tripped again. Shoved to his feet as roots and rocks cut his hands. Panic blossomed in his gut and rose up his throat in choking waves.
A claw ripped forward.
He felt it, his sweatshirt tearing as bright pain slashed across the back of his shoulder. He plummeted to his knees, scrabbling forward even before he hit the ground. His phone flew out of his hand.
The monster kept coming. The weight of it bore down, growing larger as it blocked out the whole forest above Andrew. It took hold of his leg and slowly, languorously, dragged him backward. Claws cut into his skin.
Andrew screamed and kicked out. The thing was almost all the way on top of him now. He would not get through this. He knew it.
The vines falling from the monster’s mouth pulsed forward, tips flickering toward Andrew’s face. Searching for somewhere to spear into and grow.
His eyes.
His ears.
His mouth.
He shook so hard with fear that he forgot to struggle. Don’t scream. He had to keep his mouth closed. Don’t let it in.
Then something slammed into the monster.
Andrew felt it more than saw it. The weight suddenly shoved to the side as the monster toppled to its knees, vines retracting from Andrew. It let out a roar that shook the trees to their roots.
Andrew scurried backward on all fours. His phone light must have shut off because all he had was the blackness. Pebbles bit his hands, his knees, underbrush clawing at his shirt. He couldn’t stand up. He couldn’t get his legs underneath him, he couldn’t, he—
Hands grabbed his shoulders and hauled him up. Soft hands, warm and freckled and human.
A face shoved into Andrew’s, so close he felt someone else’s eyelashes on his cheek for one breath of a second.
Then he understood the yelling.
“Get up, GET UP. Andrew! Goddammit. STAND UP.”
Behind them, the monster roared.
Andrew allowed himself to be dragged to his feet, but he didn’t let go of the hands holding him. He clutched Thomas like he was the only thing real in a world of nightmares.
Thomas grabbed his hand and jerked him forward until they were running together down the narrow track, stumbling but gaining speed. His fingers were sweaty and kept slipping.
Thomas didn’t let go.
In his free hand, he held a spike, metal like the ones staking rosebushes near the dorms. But that meant he’d brought it into the forest on purpose.
The monster lunged after them, its vines shooting outward to snatch at their shirts, their elbows, their ankles. Thomas yanked Andrew to take a hard right and they plunged into underbrush of thorny brambles.
Andrew had no air to speak, and his mouth tasted of the forest.
Thomas said, “Jump!” just in time, and Andrew had enough sense to make the leap. Then they were falling.
Terror filled him as they toppled. It was only a few feet, but they slammed hard to the ground and Andrew crashed to his knees, pulling Thomas on top of him.
They must’ve tumbled into a small gully, tree roots making a natural overhang.
They barely fit under the ledge. But with legs pulled up to their chins and their backs to the wall of dirt, they had a second to catch their breath.
Thomas wrapped one arm around Andrew’s neck and closed a hand over his mouth. His fingers dug into Andrew’s jaw so hard there would be thumbprint bruises there tomorrow.
The forest had gone silent.
They were pressed so tight together, hearts pounding and chests heaving in rhythm. Everything smelled of mud and sweat and blood. Dirt crumbled above them and pattered into their hair.
They could hear the monster standing above the overhang, sniffing the air.
Thomas did not loosen his hand over Andrew’s mouth, but inexplicably he turned and pressed his lips against Andrew’s filth-streaked forehead. It lasted half a second. A kiss, but not. Comfort, but useless. The promise, I’m here, without words.
Andrew breathed out, shuddering.
Then the monster jumped.
It landed in front of them in a shower of dirt and snapped roots. Its vines shot forward as it roared, reaching for the boys locked together. They slammed into Andrew first, clawing up his body, and he couldn’t scream because of Thomas’s hand.
But then Thomas let go.
He lunged forward to run.
He didn’t grab for Andrew. Didn’t reach back. Didn’t try to save—
Andrew flung his arms over his face and folded to the forest floor. The horrible weight of this realization bloomed through his heart—that Thomas would escape alone and Andrew would crumble, and didn’t that just fit them perfectly?
Except then Thomas howled.
He came up behind the monster and swung his garden spike, slamming it against the monster’s skull. The crack echoed through the forest. Thomas swung again and again, as if it were a baseball bat and he wanted nothing left but splinters.
The monster reeled backward, vines jerking away from Andrew, slashing out toward Thomas instead.
Andrew stayed where he was, curled among the leaves.
Only the thinnest rays of moonlight piercing through the canopy lit the battle. Thomas smashed the spike again and again into the monster’s head. Bones cracked. Vines lunged toward his face, tried to catch his arms and pin them, but Thomas moved in a violent kaleidoscope, impossible to catch.
Then the monster slipped and went to its knees. Thomas gave a gravelly cry of feral triumph as he shoved the spike into the monster’s eye.
He put all his weight into it, driving it deeper and deeper as the monster went down screaming. Blood splattered across Thomas, murky and black. He didn’t stop until the thing lay on its back, the garden spike through its skull and driven into the earth below.
The screaming stopped. Its hooves twitched a few times. Then silence fell in a dense, velvet curtain across the world.
There was nothing but this:
Andrew curled with his knees to his chest, watching in numb horror.
Thomas forcing his fingers to release the spike as he slowly straightened.
He flexed his hands and looked at the blood smeared up to his elbows. He toed the motionless monster and then took a step away from it. Then another.
He wiped his mouth, smearing blood across his cheek.
Finally, he looked at Andrew.
“Please don’t hate me,” Thomas whispered.