Chapter 9
My goal of sleeping until I can skip down the stairs and hop on the bus back to town is promptly shattered when my eyes open and it’s still pitch black outside.
I sit up before I really know what I’m doing—and before I’m properly awake—though it’s with a heavy sigh and the drag of sleep.
“What…” I sigh and press my palm to my face, trying to figure out why I’m awake.
Admittedly, I haven’t slept very well here, which I’m shocked by, but given the fact my clock that’s bolted to the nightstand shows it’s barely after midnight, I can’t help but feel dull surprise.
I’ve only been asleep for a couple of hours, and this isn’t my normal time of night to be restless.
Rubbing my face again, I sit on my bed with my legs crossed under me. I’m more awake than I have any right to be, and I wish I knew why I bolted up so fast, without a good reason?—
“Fern?” I swear I hear my name from somewhere out in the hallway, though it’s so soft and indistinct it could’ve been half a dozen other words.
Still, I get to my feet, toes curling against the cold hardwood beside my bed.
Automatically, I slip on my laceless-shoes to fight the chill, though when I stand upright, my eyes catch movement outside of my window.
Rather than heading to the door, I go there, pressing my nose against the glass as my eyes search the trees beyond.
I expect to find nothing. For three breaths, I stare at the ground and the darkness of the trees, lit only by the outside lights of Bluebone Ridge.
But just when I’m about to turn away, I finally see movement as something stands up, right in front of me, at the edge of the trees where everything gets dark.
As it straightens, I can’t look away.
It’s not an elk.
My breathing stops, held in my chest, and my fingers clench against the windowsill under my hands.
It’s definitely not a wolf.
The…thing is human-like, standing on two legs instead of four. It tilts its head one way in a jerky, strange motion and stares up at me with round eyes reflecting the dim lights.
“What…” My word seems to break the strange moment, and the thing lurches backward into the trees, disappearing from sight. My breath huffs out against the window, fogging it up, and when I step back just a little, something there catches my attention as well.
Hello.
The word is just under where I wrote my hi, and I go cold at the sight. But even as I look at it, the word fades as the foggy surface turns clear again, leaving me standing there confused, with my heart racing, and more than a little confused.
“What is going on?” I whisper to no one at all, reaching out with two fingers to the window. I breathe against it, making the word visible again, and streak my fingers across the hello, just to be sure.
And as I expect, there’s a fresh line through the foggy glass, showing that this was written on the inside of the window, not outside.
It doesn’t make me feel any better. If anything, it makes my stomach twist and sets my mind racing.
I have no idea who could’ve written this, though the longer I think about it, the clearer the answer is.
Hattie. She was the one to bring it up, after all.
But she also said something else along with it that made it seem like she hadn’t been the one in my room at all.
They’ve never had someone say hi to them before. They liked the message on your window.
Her words play in my head, and I twist my fingers together, pressing against my injured, still-stitched palm. This is ridiculous. It has to have been her, right?
And yet…
I walk back to the window once more, looking outside in the darkness. It’s so quiet right now, with most everyone else asleep and no one causing a disturbance on this side of the sanitarium, at least.
I don’t see anything, even though I stand there until the word with my mark through it fades again.
The woods are just as silent as they had been before, and just as still.
It’s hard not to wonder if I imagined it, or blame whatever I saw on the fact I’m still half asleep. That’s probably a better explanation.
A more rational one.
Taking a breath, then another, I force myself to settle down. A shiver goes through me, from the chilly air and the memory of what I saw, but again I tell myself that there was nothing there.
Everything is fine.
Right ?
Before I can convince myself to go back to bed, I hear a shattering noise, like glass, from so far away that it would’ve been easy to miss if I were still asleep. I doubt it would’ve woken me, but since I’m already up, it’s impossible to ignore.
I only hesitate for a moment, then I turn and head for the unlocked door that will take me out into the hallway. It’s probably none of my business, sure, but?—
Someone screams.
Then someone else follows suit, setting the hair on the back of my neck on end just as I reach the door. My movements become more urgent, and I reach out for the handle just as the door slams open, causing me to stagger backward into my room with a gasp.
And admitting Hattie.
“Hattie?!” I gasp, eyes wide as I catch myself on the end of the bed.
“Hattie, what are you doing? Did you hear that? What—” As I step forward, she closes the door hard.
She moves so quickly that she does that and has time to turn around and grab me by my sleeves, forcing me back until my back hits the window hard before I can even try to finish my question.
“You can’t leave!” she hisses, eyes wide and panicked. “We can’t leave, Fern.”
“Why can’t we?—”
“Because they’re here.” She leans forward, her forehead pressed to mine. “And they’re starving.”
Another scream cuts through the air, making me jump, but Hattie seems unbothered and unsurprised. She just holds me here, forehead against mine, with her hands digging into my shoulders. Another scream, then another, and I can’t help gasping as my hands come up to grip her wrists.
“What is going on?!” I demand, my words a cross between a shriek and a snarl.
“And let go of me!” In my panic, I push her away gently, trying not to hurt her, and Hattie steps back without much of a struggle.
There’s confusion on her face as she watches me go to the door, but when I grab the handle and turn it… nothing happens.
“How—What—?” When I try the door again, I realize it really is jammed shut somehow.
I whirl around to face Hattie, seeing her standing by the window with her face pressed almost against it.
“Hattie!” I snap, managing to get her to look at me over her shoulder.
“What happened to the door? And what the hell is going on here?”
She doesn’t answer right away. I stare at her as she goes back to surveying the grounds outside, looking interested and curious rather than panicking like I am. “Hattie!” I finally shriek. My whole body is vibrating with tension, and I feel like a trapped rat.
“I told you.” She turns to look at me, and for the first time I notice blood spattered across the front of her powder blue shirt. Unlike most of us, she’s not wearing a long-sleeved shirt under it, and doesn’t seem the least bit cold. “They’re?—”
“Here, starving, yeah. I heard you.” I don’t mean to be rude and cut her off, but I don’t know what else to do.
My heart races and I glance back to the door at the sounds of footsteps running in a nearby hallway and a door slamming.
There are also raised, panicked voices that echo in the hallway, but I keep my attention on Hattie.
I can’t open the door, so I’d rather focus on figuring out what Hattie knows. “Who’s starving? What is here?” I walk toward her once more, trying not to seem threatening but also hoping I can get her to actually say something that will be helpful to me.
But really, I shouldn’t be surprised by how she just watches me with mild interest before sitting down on my damn bed. She stares at me as I pace, like I’m an exhibit in a zoo and this is just some normal Tuesday.
“HATTIE!” I shriek again after I hear another set of screams, this time closer to my room. “Hattie please! Tell me what’s?—”
Something slams against my door and I whirl around, unsure of what to expect. But when Sam’s eyes meet mine and I catch sight of the blood spattered across her face, I freeze.
“Help me!” she gasps, grabbing at the handle of my door.
“Fern, please, you have to help me!” She’s shaking, wide-eyed with absolute terror, and I bolt to the door so I can see her more clearly through the small glass panel.
The lights outside my room flicker on and off, like they’ve been partially knocked out, and with the tiny window, all I can really see is her face.
“Open the door!” I yell back, looking down to see the handle jiggling slightly, though it isn’t turning all the way.
“It’s stuck!” Her desperation is contagious, and she turns to look down the hallway, freezing as a soft whimper leaves her throat. “Fern…please…” she breathes out, and it looks to me as if she’s paralyzed.
“Come on! You have to work on the door!” My distress is rising, and I jerk hard on the handle, trying to get it to do more than jiggle.
But Sam looks back at me, tears running down her face, and she just looks hopeless. It sends a visceral, painful reaction through me, and my stomach clenches just as she’s jerked sideways without warning, hard enough for me to know it wasn’t by her own will.
Then the screaming starts. I lean forward, trying so hard to see what’s going on. But just as I catch sight of something that might be her hand, Hattie wraps her arms around me, dragging me away from the door with her head to my shoulder.
“He said not to look,” she murmurs, hiding her face in my shoulder. She’s surprisingly strong enough to easily keep me against her near the window, rather than letting me go back near the door.
“We have to help her!” I manage to choke out, fighting her half-heartedly. “Please! Hattie, we have to?—”
Sam’s screams come to a halt as Hattie shakes her head against my shoulder.
“We can’t help them.” The words are a whisper in the sudden, deafening silence.
It’s dark in my room, and the lights out in the hall are still flickering wildly.
I count my heartbeats in the quiet, until someone else screams further away, sending another shudder through me.
A sound I don’t recognize finds my ears and I flinch, watching as the handle falls off the door then rolls across the hardwood. I can’t move, I can’t breathe. I can only watch the door swing open slowly, creaking on its hinges as I stand there frozen in place with Hattie wrapped around me.
Standing in my doorway is a monster.
The same monster I’ve seen in the woods since I got here.