Chapter 29 Chloe
CHLOE
Ishudder awake with a sharp gasp of air and blink at the shadows flickering from the ceiling fan. Moonlight creeps in from around the bedroom curtain, making my room feel brighter than it should.
I don’t know what woke me.
“Theo?” I sit up and fumble around at my bedside lamp. Warm yellow light floods the room, but there’s no sign of him.
I slump back against my headboard. Something woke me up. I was in a dead sleep and dreaming, although the dream is already fragmenting into nothingness. Something about a beach crowded with palm trees, a warm, salty sea, the fear of a monster lurking in the water.
A scream rings out through the night.
I freeze, my skin prickling with goosebumps. My first thought is that I didn’t actually hear anything, that it was the last remnants of the dream. My next is that it was an owl or a mountain lion, some night animal.
My third, the sharpest of the three, is that Theo crossed the lake.
But he’s not at my house.
I leap out of bed with a renewed sense of terror, and I’m not even to the hallway when I hear another scream, this one undeniably real. It’s not coming from the direction of Oliver’s house, though, but from the other side. The neighbors I never speak to. Janet and Robert.
I think of every one of Penelope’s warnings: that Theo isn’t human, that I can’t trust him. That he’s a killer.
I think of the news reports I read, the YouTube videos I watched. The killing sprees that happened along Hanging Lake every fifteen years or so.
Survivors would report seeing a large figure stalking through the street.
Terror floods through me, choking up in my throat. Acting on a sudden surge of adrenaline, I race into the living room and, without really thinking, burst onto the back patio.
The night air is thick and humid and buzzing with insects. Everything, for a moment, feels still. Dark. All the lights are off at Oliver’s house, save for the back porch. And the same is true for my other neighbors. God, I don’t even remember their last name.
I slip on my outdoor shoes and stumble through the marshy grass to the lakeshore and duck to look under my pier. Theo’s boat isn't there, just the black water lapping against the posts.
And then, from the direction of Robert and Janet’s house, is the shattering sound of a shotgun blast.
For a second, my entire world tunnels toward that house. All the wind, all the hot night air, all the stars—they’re dragged into a black hole at its back door.
I bend over and vomit my dinner into the lake.
More screams. The sound of something shattering. And then silence.
I drag myself up to standing even though my legs feel weak and boneless.
The world spins around in streaks of light and shadow, and all I can think of is Theo’s promise that he wouldn’t hurt me or Oliver.
In my head, I see his big rough hands forming the shape of the words, and I hear the translated echo in my internal voice, and my stomach knots around, and I don’t know if he’s lying.
I should have listened to Penelope. I should have run far, far away from here.
But I don’t run away. Instead, I run toward—toward Robert and Janet’s house, my heart hammering in my chest. Because maybe it wasn’t Theo. Why would he go there and not to Oliver’s house?
Why would he go there and not to me?
The back door is hanging open, the glass shattered and sparkling across their lovely stained patio, reflecting the starlight. The lights are off in the living room, but I still step inside, feet crunching on the glass. “Hello?” I call out, voice shaky. “Um, Janet? Is everything okay?”
A stupid question, and I know it.
I stop in the middle of the living room, which has the same layout as mine but looks completely different, with its out-of-date furniture and the thick throw rug in front of the fireplace. The house is quiet. “Hello?” I call out again.
This time, I’m answered with a soft, pained groan coming from the hallway. I follow it, creeping toward the square of yellow light spilling out of one of the downstairs bedrooms, wishing I had thought to grab a weapon. But what good is a weapon against a Hunter?
Especially a Hunter you’re fucking.
The thought snags in my chest, makes my stomach lurch around again. And then I smell a coppery, salty stink, and my stomach churns for another reason.
I step into the doorway and retch, but there’s nothing in my stomach for me to throw up.
Blood. Everything is covered in blood. There’s a mess on the bed that I can’t parse: so much thick blood it looks black, but with flashes of white and green.
“Help,” says a weak, feminine voice, and for a second I think it’s the nightmare on the bed until I realize Janet is sitting on the floor with her back against the wall, head lolling, grey hair dripping blood. She has a shotgun across her knees.
“Oh my god.” I dart over to her, and she looks at me with a kind of blank confusion.
“I missed,” she says weakly. “I tried to shoot him, but I missed.”
Him. My thoughts buzz. “Where are you cut?” I ask, flailing my hands, not sure what to do next.
“Everywhere,” she says weakly. Then she shoves the gun at me, the movement clumsy. “Take it,” she says. “He’s going to come for you next.”
I stare down at the shotgun, the barrel streaked with blood.
“Is he here?” I ask, my voice tight with panic.
Janet shakes her head, the movement small and strained. “He goes door to door,” she rasps, slumping back against the wall. “He doesn’t want us here.”
I can’t breathe. “Who doesn’t?”
Even though I know the answer.
Janet laughs weakly. Her face is so pale, and the carpet is wet and dark, and I know she’s bleeding too much from some place I can’t see.
And I know Theo did it.
“The boy,” she rasps. “The boy they killed. Everyone here… knows the story.” She coughs, blood flecking her lips, and then tries to shove the gun at me. “Kill him,” she slurs. “Someone always kills him. He’ll come back. But not for a long… a long time.”
I let out a wet, choking sob, and somehow, my hands wrap around the barrel of the shotgun, moving like they’re directed by someone else. I keep seeing Theo in my head. Theo glazed in firelight. Theo brushing his lips against mine. Theo smiling down at Oliver.
How could he do this? How could he be the same fucking person?
“Kill him,” Janet says. “You’ve got four shots. Don’t forget to pump it. Aim for the chest. Bigger target.”
I pull the gun against my chest, dizzy with horror and the scent of blood. Janet drops her head back and looks up at the ceiling and smiles. “I’ll be there soon,” she whispers, and I stumble back, knowing she’s not talking to me.
“I’m going to call the police,” I say, backing out of the room.
“Okay,” she breathes.
I turn and run—out of that terrible dark house, away from the scent of blood. I don’t stop running until I’m nearly to the lake, and I only stop when I feel the cold water splash around my ankles.
I didn’t call the police. Why didn’t I call the police?
I would never hurt you. Or Oliver.
Screams erupt into the night, shrill and panicked. I whip around, clutching the gun up against my chest. The Jenkins house is lit up, the windows glowing. It wasn’t like that earlier. Was it?
“Oliver,” I whisper, and then I run again, tearing across the grass with my heart thudding up in my throat, Janet’s voice echoing in the back of my head: Kill him. Kill him. Kill him.
A masculine scream rings out from Oliver’s house, and I surge forward until I land on the front porch. The door is hanging open, letting out a sharp angle of white light. I choke down the tight knots of my fear and lift the gun, holding it clumsily in front of me.
Inside, someone screams again. An adult man.
I step inside, my legs shaking. All the lights are on, flooding the foyer with too much brightness. Something crashes from deeper in the house. Then something thumps heavily against the floor. Another scream.
I don’t run. I’ll give myself that. I keep stalking forward, holding up the gun, and the hallways gets shorter and shorter until I’m in the entranceway, and I see them.
Oliver’s parents.
They’re dead, bodies slack against the couch and drenched in blood. Blaire’s head hangs off the edge of the couch, her eyes staring blankly at me through the too-bright lights of the house. Her husband is face-down, the back of his head a ruin.
Horror slams through me, and for a second, the world spins around and then blinks, like the power is going out.
But then there’s another scream, and I drop back into myself. It sounds like it’s coming from upstairs.
And so I ran again, blindly and furiously and hating myself. Because I let this happen. Despite all of Penelope’s warnings, I let myself trust the monster who left a trail of blood between the houses of my two neighbors. I let myself soften for him and open to him, and this—this is what he did.
I swing around onto the landing. More thumping, coming from one of the bedrooms. I lift the gun again, taking my slow, cautious steps, my breath fast and panting. More thumping, another scream, a terrible wet squelching sound.
I don’t want to, but I step into the doorway.
Owen is sprawled across the floor, clawing his way across the carpet, his face a mask of blood. He lifts his eyes to me, but I don’t think he sees me, not really.
Behind him is Theo.
My Theo, I think numbly as he lifts a massive, blood-soaked axe about his head. His blond hair is loose and streaked with pink and red. His face is splattered with gore, his eyes fixed on Oliver’s brother.
Until they’re not. Until he lifts them to take me in, standing there, shaking like a rabbit with a shotgun pointed at his chest.
His shoulders slump down, a fraction of an inch. I think something passes through his face. Sadness? Resignation?
No. That has to be my imagination.
“What are you doing?” I scream, a stupid, pointless question. Theo answers it by swinging the ax down and implanting it in Owen’s head.