Chapter Twenty-Four Evie
Chapter Twenty-Four
Evie
Oh. My. God. I can’t see.
“Looks like it’s your turn to get fucked with,” Noah whispers. “We’re here, Eves. Don’t worry. We got your back.”
My pulse is racing. I can feel it in my temples as Noah and Goldie each touch my shoulder.
The lights are out, leaving us bathed in darkness. They went out so fast that my eyes blink rapidly, white stars behind them. We’re frozen in our places, waiting for our respective visions to acclimate.
Only the sound of our combined breath. But my hands grip my weapons.
“Can you see anyone?” Goldie barely whispers, but neither of us answers.
Because honestly, I’m not just waiting for my vision to acclimate, I’m waiting on my newfound courage to do the same. But that’s the thing about the dark. It brings out all the hidden monsters and makes you see things that aren’t there . . . like terrified faces behind windows that aren’t real.
Except, I can still see them. Those memories are burned into me. Etched into my bones, and it’s making this camp look way too much like two years ago, when I was scared and running for my life.
Sawdust looks like the dirt on the ground, and the prefab walls look like real wood ones. So much so, my damn hand twitches, because I swear I can still feel the way the wood splintered into my skin when my palm smacked against it.
I let out a shaky breath. “This is unhinged . . .”
“I don’t know what scares me more . . . knowing what to expect, or not knowing when it’s coming,” Goldie whispers back.
I nod in agreement. She’s right. I don’t know which is scarier either. But the one thing I do know is someone’s dying tonight, and the three of us are hoping it’s Remus.
“Campers,” that fucking voice says enthusiastically, making my shoulders jump. “You have fifteen minutes to find what you came for . . . and then we come find you.”
Jesus Christ.
My stomach caves as my chest starts to rise faster. That clock I felt ticking earlier comes crashing down.
There’s only fifteen minutes to find him.
The heavy weight of how fucked up this is hits me hard, square in the chest.
We need to cover as much ground as possible. Noah’s and Goldie’s hands are off my shoulders as I spin around, thinking, trying to come up with a plan.
“Fuck,” Noah breathes out as I immediately shift my face to his.
“Agreed.”
“What do we do?” Goldie whispers.
I feel like I’m having a heart attack. My chest is heaving, my pulse hammering. I can already feel the sweat trickling down the back of my neck. But I’m not hot.
There’s scared, and then there’s this, but the only answer is to find Chase.
That’s it.
“We split up,” I blurt out, hating the idea but knowing it’s all we’ve got.
“We are not splitting up, Evie,” Goldie snaps back.
“Agreed,” Noah throws in as quickly as she’s done. “That’s what he wants . . . for us to be apart.”
I ignore them and keep talking.
“The only buildings that are real, are the cafeteria.” I point to it. “Remus’s office.” I point to that too. “Our cabin.” Goldie shivers. “And the boathouse.”
They look over their shoulders in that direction.
We’re all having déjà fucking vu right now, I’m sure of it.
I blink too rapidly, trying to stop hearing Goldie crying in the back of my mind. But it only stops when she grabs my wrist. I shake my head, tugging it away carefully so as not to slice my leg with Chase’s knife.
“We only have minutes, Golds. I’ll go to Remus’s office. Noah, you go to the cafeteria, and Goldie, take the cabin. We’ll meet back in the middle for the boathouse if we don’t find him.”
I don’t want to do this, but time is of the essence.
My sister whispers her dissent, but before I can run away, Noah grabs my arm.
“He would never forgive me if something happened to you.”
Our eyes lock, and the sincerity in his makes my heart sink. Chase would hate him forever. But sometimes we have to make tough choices.
It’s like he can read my mind, because he adds, “We stay together, or we follow you. Your choice.”
I scowl. “That’s not a choice. That’s the same thing, worded differently.”
Only seconds tick by as we stand off, but it’s enough that I can feel my anxiety spike. He’s leaving me no choice. But Noah knows that. Goddammit. He’s officially my least favorite.
I push past him and my sister, giving in, and head toward our fake cabin first.
“Come on,” I hiss before crouching down as I take the stairs quietly. Fuck, they even creak in the same spot as the real ones.
My mind begins to war between the past and present, drifting back there again until Noah’s hushed voice pulls me back.
“Let me check to see if it’s clear.”
I stand off to the side of the door, my crossbow ready as Noah runs to the window, peeking inside quickly before nodding at me. With a deep breath, I grab the handle and turn it, pushing the door open.
A whizzing shoots past my ear, making me blanch and stifle a scream. The silver glint of a butcher knife bounces off the floor as my shoulders lift to my ears, and my head whips to Goldie.
Holy shit.
“What are you doing?” I rush out. She winces, looking horrified as I stare at her, my entire body locked in position. “Chase could’ve been tied up in there.”
Noah’s eyes are like saucers as he looks back and forth between us. But she’s panicked. Shaking her head before she covers her mouth, speaking through her hands.
“Sorry . . . sorry. I got attacky. I was thinking that someone was waiting for us.”
My weapons rest on my knees as I bend over, breathing heavy. Finally exhaling, my muscles unknot themselves.
This is not the kind of calamity we need right now.
Noah goes to her as I try to ignore the misfire of my goddamn heart. I look around the room, confirming it’s empty . . . again, then close the door.
My eyes land on my sister. “Let’s not kill the fucking guy we’re here to save, yeah?”
She nods, hugging her husband before she whispers, “What about the bathroom?”
“Not real,” I say back, heading down the stairs.
“Remus’s office?” Noah says quietly, and we follow.
We’re hurrying as quietly as we can, our heads turning toward any noise as we rush. The dark makes it colder, or maybe that’s the adrenaline coursing through me, because I’m covered in goose bumps. My hands still trembling. Truthfully, they haven’t stopped since we arrived.
I hate this. Straight up capital-H hate, but it doesn’t matter what I feel because I can’t even imagine what Chase is feeling.
The picture I’ll never forget—him bloodied and semi-unconscious, being dragged—owns my thoughts again. Tears shine in my eyes, I can’t help it . . . He called for me, said my name.
Fuck.
I’ll find you or die trying.
“Do you see anyone?” Noah says over his shoulder, so I refocus and glance back over mine. There’s nothing.
Just that quiet, eerie silence that happens right before hell unleashes. Like the calm before a storm.
“No,” I whisper, feeling like even that’s too loud.
I duck under a tattered camp flag hung from its post on the porch of a cabin as I wave Goldie closer to me.
We’re near the office, and she knows it, too, because she reaches for my arm.
Fuck, these memories are like machine gun fire, barraging me and wearing me down. I can’t escape them. No matter if this shit . . . this campsite, is real or fake. The people who died were real. And my fear is fucking real.
“Eves,” Goldie breathes out.
But she doesn’t need to finish that sentence because I’m already hyperaware of the fact that we’re in the spot.
The one where we were forced to choose the right path between freedom and death.
A crack of a twig makes our feet stop. Halt on instant command. Noah stands in front of me and Goldie protectively, but we turn our backs to him. Each watching to see what or who is coming.
I swallow hard because, this time, I can’t stop the memory playing out in real time as I stare into the darkness.
“Can you tell which ones are fake?” Goldie whispers.
I shake my head as I run my palms over my cheeks. I can’t tell. And the panic is building so fast it feels like I can’t stop it.
“Do you have a designer tell? Look for that?”
My sister’s saying it over and over, and the others are talking at me too. But I can’t tell. I can’t fucking tell.
“No.” I don’t yell it, but it feels like it. “I can’t tell.”
There’s no pulling from the memory. I’m back in it. The present is the past, the past is the present. It’s existing together.
The gravel underfoot gives our movement away as we take small steps, trying to make sure nobody’s coming for us.
Because if there’s one thing I’m sure of, Remus isn’t waiting until the time runs out. He wants us all dead.
We did kill his father, after all.
“We can’t keep fucking standing here. We’re sitting ducks,” Noah hisses. “The voice said they would look for us. We gotta move.”
He starts to take off again, but what he just said hits me like a brick.
My hand springs forward, grabbing his wrist and tugging him back. “Wait.”
“We’re running out of time . . .” he counters, but I don’t let him go.
I shake my head. “Repeat what you just said . . .”
He huffs in frustration as I drop his arm. “What? That that crazy motherfucker will be coming to get us?”
My mouth opens, then closes as the realization I’ve had sinking into my gut leaves me scared to fucking death.
“No,” I whisper shakily. “The voice said, ‘We . . . come find you.’ Who the fuck is we?”
We stand in silence as blood drains from their faces. Goldie starts shaking her head in tiny beats. “I don’t understand . . . does that mean he’s back? That Billy . . .”
But I don’t get a word out, because in answer to our questions, three spotlights turn on.
One at a damn time . . . whipping our heads first to the north, directly in front of us. Then to our left. And the last to our right.
My blood runs ice cold. This isn’t happening. No. Not again . . .
“Goldie,” I breathe out, needing someone to confirm I’m not hallucinating.