17
Rayne
Awakening
I wasn’t about to make Salem walk back to the house in her damp clothes. Instead, I wrapped her in the blanket, bundled tight, and carried her through the garden and into the house.
By the time I reached the third floor, her head was slumped against my chest. Her eyes barely fluttered when I laid her in bed.
She curled up on her side as I tugged the blankets over her and brushed a few short locks of hair off her forehead.
There were hickies all over her throat, violet blooms I couldn’t resist touching.
Her lips were red, just a little swollen. Her breathing was deep and easy.
Her taste was in my mouth, on my fingers, seared into my soul.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
She was a cookie stolen from the jar, a slice of cake at midnight. She was temptation and deliverance. Everything I’d forbidden myself to have; everything I’d been told I couldn’t have.
And it was true: I couldn’t have her. She wasn’t here for me, as much as I wanted her to be.
These were stolen moments, selfish indulgences. She would leave, and I would stay. She would live the life she was meant to, fall in love, have a career, maybe kids. The pain of her fiancé leaving her would diminish, and she would go on. But me?
I’d be left thinking about her. Clinging to the dream I was allowed to live in for a brief few days. A dream of normalcy, of safety.
But nothing here was normal. There was no safety on Blackridge, and there was no safety with me.
This island was no place for the living.
Sheriff Keatin had no good news to report in the following days.
Martin and George had come to Blackridge before; they were no strangers to hunting here.
But when I checked their rooms and found their bags still there, with no sign of them despite it being past their checkout date, a feeling of dread took root in me.
Perhaps they’d lost track of time. Perhaps an injury had stranded them. Or perhaps they’d simply left, abandoning their belongings. I tried to cling to hope, but it was wearing thin.
Blackridge wasn’t a particularly large island, but it was densely covered with woodland. It made searching for the missing even more difficult, and the impending storms didn’t help. The forecast showed rain, rain, and more rain, with howling winds and a high chance of thunderstorms.
My unease made me irritable. My one reassurance—and heartbreak—was that Salem was leaving soon. Only a few more days, and she would be off this island for good.
She would be safe, and I could stop living in a fantasy.
“Helloooo, Earth to Rayne? It’s fucking creepy out here, sing us a song or something!”
The crackle of James’s voice coming through the walkie--talkie made me jump, jolting upright.
It was midday, but I’d been struggling to sleep at night and kept dozing off.
Stifling a yawn, I grabbed the walkie and seized a paper map of the island from a shelf above my desk.
Spreading it out before me, I located the red dots indicating where the trail cameras were in the woodlands around Marihope.
“Where are you?” I said, chewing the end of my pen. I was on call with James and his brother, Mark, while they turned the cameras on. The sheriff usually would have helped the volunteer rangers, but with three people now unaccounted for, he had his hands full.
“I’m on Corrain Trail, just past the fork. Freezing my balls off out here.”
“It’s barely under forty degrees,” I said, tracing the trail with my finger. “Don’t be a baby.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re probably sitting in front of your fireplace right now, cuddled up with that pretty little woman you’ve got living with you.”
Loudly, I cleared my throat. “Watch it, James. Or I’m turning the walkie off.”
“Okay, okay, jeez, sorry. It’s hard to miss the gossip, that’s all.”
“Well, start missing it. Or ignore it, like a goddamn adult.”
“Damn, okay. Someone’s sensitive.”
James and several other forest rangers had helped install the trail cameras around the same time we were finally blessed with a cell tower on the island. While cell reception wasn’t great, the cameras worked well enough to provide us with delayed live feeds of our most used roads and trails.
Every year, as the weather grew colder and winter crept closer, we’d turn on the cameras and keep them running until spring. It wasn’t much, but even a little information about what was out there was better than nothing.
“Alright, lighting it up in three... two... one...” A loud click came over the speaker and James grunted in concentration. “Are we live?”
“Hold on, let’s see.” Scooting my chair around the corner, I peered at the six small screens mounted to the wall. The first two blinked, then a black-and-white image of the forest appeared with James and Mark in frame, their faces frozen as the laggy feed gave me one mere image at a time.
“Got it. Corrain One and Two are live.” The frames updated, my cousins disappearing from view as they continued their hike. My chair creaked loudly as I leaned back, the old springs more than ready for retirement. “We have to kill the damn thing, James. This is the year. We have to do it.”
“That’s what you said last year.” He didn’t say it to be accusatory. His tone was mild, but lowered with worry as he went on. “Every year you push yourself harder, Rayne. You’re just putting yourself in danger.”
“ Living is putting myself in danger,” I snarled. “And I can barely even do that. None of us can.” Rubbing my forehead, I could already feel a headache coming on. “I’m going to lose my mind if I have to stay in this house much longer.”
Static crackled, his voice warped for a few seconds. “...gotten worse? I thought things had finally quieted down around the house.”
“Yeah, it was quiet.” Until she showed up. Salem’s arrival had stirred something up, and the dust from that refused to settle. “I’ve been seeing her again. Hearing her.”
The red woman. My whispering stalker, the curse from which I could never escape.
Music could block out the ghostly words, and pumping the furnace chased away the chill.
But no matter what I did, it clung to me.
That painful presence, the wailing, the fury.
Some days it was a quiet roar in the distance, and others, it was drowning me in its riptide.
“Hey, uh, Rayne...” Static took over and James cut out. Sighing in irritation, I fiddled with the antenna until his voice came back.
“Can you repeat, please?” I said. “Lost you for a minute there.”
Silence.
“James, can you repeat?”
I waited, my leg jiggling impatiently. Corrain Trail curved south along the coast, before forking into either the dockside road or an easterly turn back toward Marihope. They would be coming up on the next camera shortly, positioned only a mile beyond my own property line.
“James, Mark, do you copy?”
I waited. A minute passed, and it felt far too long.
“James, you’d better fucking copy or I’m coming out after you,” I said, my voice reduced to a harsh whisper. My shoulders slumped in relief when there was a crackle of static in response. But my relief was short-lived when I heard what he had to say.
“Something is out here.”
A shiver went down my back. My heart jumped into my throat, adrenaline making my head spin.
“What do you see?” My fingers ached as I gripped the walkie tightly. “Do you see it?”
“No, I—no, but there’s—ugh, God!” There came a harsh sound of coughing, followed by gagging. “There’s something dead. Shit, Rayne, it’s a mess—it’s—”
Static cut in again and my stomach was in knots, my ears were ringing. “James, listen to me: Just turn on the camera and get out. You and Mark need to go.”
“Okay. Okay, don’t panic, it’s—Christ, it stinks. It’s a bear, a big one. God, it’s just—everywhere. There’s parts of it everywhere .”
“James, I swear to God...” Gripping my hair in frustration, I waited, staring at the screens. The third feed blinked to life, and my entire body shuddered in revulsion.
The black-and-white image showed a large black bear slumped against a tree. It was blurry, but I could see the head was misshapen, the limbs were gone, and jagged pieces of broken ribs jutted from its chest as if they had been ripped outward.
James and Mark stood over it, shirts pulled up to cover their faces from the stench. A cloud of flies burst into the air as Mark nudged it with his boot.
When the radio crackled again, I nearly jumped out of my seat.
“It could’ve been another bear that killed it,” James said, his voice grim. “They’re aggressive this time of year.”
But we could all see the way that thing died. Ripped to pieces. Broken and torn, limbs and flesh flung around as if whatever killed it had enjoyed it.
“Just get home,” I said. “Please fucking get home.”
My head sunk into my hands. I wanted to believe his theory, that this was simply the result of a natural conflict between large predators.
But I could feel it in my bones: The long, bloody winter was here.
The wrath of the Angel of Blackridge was coming.
No matter how much I anticipated it, braced for it, I never truly felt ready.
With a sudden burst of alarm, I leapt to my feet, nearly knocking over my chair. I had no idea where Salem was, whether she had stayed in the house today or gone out riding...
I needed to know she was safe. I needed her indoors before dark. If she’d gone out riding, I didn’t have a clue where to look for her first, but I’d still try. Loki would track her down, even if I had to search all night.
By the time I reached the third floor, I was completely out of breath, panic set in so deep that my entire body tingled. Pins and needles burst through my hand as I pounded my fist against her door, about to bring out my master key and force it open—
Salem opened the door with her hair mussed, looking sleepy and concerned. “Oh! Rayne, are you okay? You look—”
“Firewood,” I said quickly, and she frowned. “I came to check if you needed more firewood.”
She was okay. She was safely inside, protected. The rush of emotion I felt just to see her standing there made me unable to speak for a moment.
I wanted to hold her, kiss her. I wanted to take her to bed and swear to her that I would keep her safe, that nothing and no one would harm her.
Instead, I brushed past her without an invitation and went straight to her fireplace. She had plenty of wood, and a few smoldering coals remained to warm the room. But I needed to move my hands, to do something .
She approached me, her bare feet padding softly across the floor to stand beside me. She pulled her headphones off and let them drop to her neck, and I could hear Amy Winehouse playing from the speakers.
“I still have plenty,” she said. “Thank you, you really don’t have to—”
“You’re going to freeze up here,” I grumbled, flicking my lighter to get the wood lit.
A little voice of madness inside me wanted to tell her everything, to warn her, to make her see why I so desperately needed her to leave. But she didn’t deserve to be dragged into the danger we faced; the less she knew the better.
Only a couple more days and she would be gone. It hurt—God, it fucking hurt so much more than I thought was possible, the idea of never seeing her again, never hearing her voice, never touching her.
I stood up, and she said softly, “Do you want to stay?”
She looked so uncertain, hands clasped together, biting her lip. Did I want to stay? More than anything.
I wanted to collapse on her bed and listen to her talk for hours. I wanted to hear about her inspirations, talk about her dreams. I wanted to know her, desperately, in a way that no one else could. I wanted to consume all that she was, treasure and study her.
With every passing year, this island rotted a little more of my soul. But Salem made me want to flourish; she made me think that maybe there could be something more for me.
But...
“I can’t,” I said.
Her face fell, but she tried to hide it with a forgiving smile. “O-oh, um, right, sorry—”
“But I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said quickly. “For the Halloween festival. I’m...” I smiled, and despite everything, it was genuine. I didn’t even have to force it. “I’m looking forward to going. With you.”
Her face brightened, like a candle lighting up the dark. I took her hand, warm and half buried in the long sleeves of her sweater, and kissed her fingers. Inhaled the soft scent of her skin.
I imagined holding her close until the nightmares in my head were gone, telling her all the secrets that were petrifying me. It would feel like such relief, like setting down the burden I’d carried for so damn long.
But I couldn’t.
“Sweet dreams, Salem.”
“You too.” She stood in her doorway and watched me leave. My dreams would be sweet as long as she was in them.