Chapter 7
“Who did you see?” Danny repeats.
“A figure. A…” I teeter in my heels. I feel like I’m melting. The anxiety is so fierce, it’s turning my bones to rubber. “It was this figure in the woods standing far enough away I couldn’t really see them, but I know they were wearing all black and they had on a mask. A balaclava and—”
“A balaclava?” Danny gets his phone out of his suit pocket. “Whoa. Okay. Okay. Let’s go. We should go.”
“Go where?”
“To find Jason. To find Steph.” He starts down the path, dragging me behind him. “To the reception hall. There’s probably a landline there.”
“I’m not trying to freak you out,” I say, attempting to resurrect my denial just to feel some semblance of safety again. “I’m not even sure I really saw it. But…”
“But what?” he says, stopping.
“The mask had a zipper glued over the mouth and these fake eyeballs near where its real eyes should be.”
“Real eyes?”
“I couldn’t see. It was too far. And…and too fucking weird! I didn’t…I thought I imagined it.”
He stares at the plastic eyeball between his fingers. “Guess not.”
“It could have been a caterer. Or a hiker. Or…”
He hands me the eyeball and checks his phone again. “Which direction did it come from?”
“The figure?”
“No. That scream.”
“Um, I’m not sure. Over there, maybe? Toward the lake? The cabins? I…I don’t know.”
“Hey.” He reaches out, wipes the tears from my cheeks with his thumbs. I didn’t even realize I was crying. The intimacy of the gesture slows my heart rate, pauses the whirring of blood in my ears. “It’s okay.”
“Is it?”
He exhales, rubs his jaw—a nervous tick.
A few minutes ago, we were flirting and kissing, and I was worrying about the wrong things.
Now we stand on this path looking around, at a loss, the stress of the moment debilitating.
I turn the eyeball over in my hand. Whatever’s happening is too real to reject but not quite real enough for me to fully accept, to wrap my head around. I’m in limbo.
There’s another scream. This one muffled. Closer.
A door slams behind us. I turn and my heel snaps and I fall. I land hard on my hip and my hand, my palm scraping the dirt.
There’s no one around. Not that we can see. But the door slams again. Again.
Again.
It must be coming from one of the cabins.
“Are you okay?” Danny says, hoisting me up.
There are small rocks and granules of dirt embedded into my bleeding palm, and my hip hurts so badly it’s got me nauseous. “I’m fine.”
The faint creak of hinges. A low moan.
“Hello?” Danny calls. We hold our breath as we wait for a response. We don’t get one.
I watch his eyes dart back and forth, contemplating where to go next. Back to the cabins where there’s clearly someone in distress or ahead to the reception hall where everyone else is currently gathered. Where there’s possibly a phone that we could use to call for help.
I slip off my shoes and throw them onto the lawn. I fucking hate heels.
“I’m going to see what’s going on back there,” he says, pointing to the cabins. “You run over to the reception hall and let them know what’s happening.”
“We don’t know what’s happening. And splitting up is a textbook bad idea.”
“Okay, okay.” He grabs my hand again and leads me to the cabins. We get to the first one—the one with the blood smear at the back. Danny puts his arm out, blocking me from stepping onto the porch. He angles himself in front of me, but I lean around him so I can see.
The cabin door is shut, but there’s dark hair caught in the frame, a shallow pool of blood forming at the foot—the opposite of a welcome mat.
I slap a hand over my mouth as I hyperventilate—taste the blood and dirt from my fall, the salt from my tears, the sour tang of utter terror.
There’s movement behind the door. Rustling. The knob rattles, slowly starts to twist.
“Danny,” I whisper.
He shifts so I’m completely behind him, attempting to shield me from whatever it is we’re about to face. But I catch a glimpse of something. White netting. Stark against the dark hair. A birdcage veil.
I push Danny aside, tripping over the top step on my way to her. To Steph.
I can’t get the door open because her body is there.
“Steph!”
She’s there on the floor of the cabin, on her side, her hair covering her face. She changed out of her lavender dress into a butter yellow jumpsuit that is now covered in blood. She lies completely still in the dark.
I lose a moment suspended in disbelief at what I’m seeing. A splinter of time too jagged to linger inside, no matter how badly I want to.
She’s bleeding. She’s right there in front of me, bleeding. Hurt.
“Steph, it’s me. It’s Willa. Stephanie? Say something.”
She groans.
Danny is over my shoulder. “Is she okay? Tell me she’s okay. Willa?”
“Steph, can you move back? I need to get in. I need to get inside to help you.”
She stirs, rolling forward, hands reaching as she slams the door closed again.
I look back at Danny. I barely recognize him—his face has completely drained of color. “Hold on. Willa. What if he’s in there? Whoever did this.”
“I don’t care,” I say, reaching for the knob.
I’m careful with the door, opening it gradually to make sure I don’t hit her with it. She’s still close to the threshold, but there’s enough space that I can slip through, step over her. The floor is slick with blood, and I almost fall again.
I steady myself, slowly drop down to my knees and push Steph’s hair out of her face.
I can’t scream loud enough.
Her eyes are gone.
They’re gone.
All that’s left is…is gore. Sockets. Red. Leaking. Pulsing. Writhing. Raw. Wrong.
“What’s happening?” Danny asks, trying to get into the cabin. He can’t fit through the doorway; there’s not enough space for him. “Willa?”
Steph opens her mouth to speak but no sound escapes.
“We need an ambulance,” I shout. “We need…Call an ambulance. Help! We need help!”
“I’m trying!”
Steph’s cold hands find mine. I see now that she’s bleeding from the stomach. The wound is messy, and I don’t know what to do. I’m afraid to put pressure on it because I think there’s more than blood coming out of it.
“I don’t…ah…Help…Help! This can’t…this can’t be happening. Please. Help!”
“Willa? Willa, can you open the door?”
“I can’t move her! She’s bleeding.”
“What? Oh…Oh shit. Oh shit…” I look up, and Danny’s head is through the doorway. I watch him take it in. What’s happened to Steph. To our sweet, beautiful, perfect Steph. To the bride.
He pulls back, disappears. I hear him get sick.
“This isn’t real,” I whisper. “This can’t…it can’t be real.”
Steph’s hands slip away. I lean closer to her. I’m not sure if she’s breathing. I should check her pulse. I should do something other than just sit here, fucking useless. I can barely even look at her. At what’s been done to her.
I’m losing her. She’s right in front of me and I’m losing her.
“Steph, you can’t leave me. You just…you can’t.
” We’re back at the ceremony, just over an hour ago, and I’m watching her smile, the warmth of it like sunshine only better, purely good, free of ultraviolet radiation.
We’re back in our dorm freshman year, and she’s teaching me how to French braid, so patient even when I fuck up my hundredth try.
We’re getting drunk at a matinee, we’re stumbling out onto the street, and I see it for the first time—the mischievous glimmer in her eyes that she gets whenever she has too much to drink, what Cassie would later coin as the “Steph sparkle.”
There’s no more sparkle. Her eyes are gone. Gone, gone, gone.
She is gone. She’s not moving. I hover a trembling hand over her nose, her mouth, and feel nothing. No breath.
I’m screaming again—this guttural cry I didn’t know I was capable of.
“Willa?” Danny tries to get inside the cabin again. He bangs on the doorframe. “Willa! Get out!”
“What?”
“Willa, run!”
All the lights are out, but somehow it gets even darker. Colder. There’s a shadow moving in this darkness. Behind me. Above me.
I am being observed.
Black mud-caked boots step beside me. My gaze travels up against my will.
Black coveralls stained in blood. Black utility gloves.
Black tactical utility belt. Black balaclava.
Duct tape over the mouth with a red smile drawn on, zipper teeth.
There’s black mesh over their real eyes, but they have the fake ones duct-taped to the mask just above.
There are three of the eyes now. Before there were only two. They’re multiplying.
They tower over me holding a giant, bloody bowie knife. It’s not their only weapon. There are others in the belt. More knives. A hammer. Pliers.
Blood from the knife drips onto my forehead. Drip…Drip…
The figure makes this deep, throaty wheezing sound. I think they’re laughing.
“Willa!” Danny shouts.
The sound of his voice snaps me out of my horrified gaping. I bolt for the door, toppling over Steph’s lifeless body.
I anticipate a knife in my back at any second, a gloved hand grabbing my ankle and dragging me into the darkness. It’s coming. Violence. Pain. Death. The end of everything.
Instead, I find Danny’s hand, and he pulls me through the doorway, over the threshold, onto the porch. He gets me to my feet, and the two of us sprint down the steps and onto the path.
I do the thing you’re not supposed to do and look back.
The figure now stands on the porch. They pause for a moment before pursuing us.
They walk. They don’t run. We run.
“We have to get to the reception hall,” Danny says. “We have to warn everyone.”
My bare feet throb as they smack against the hard ground. My dress is damp with sweat and my best friend’s blood. My lungs seize. I can’t run any faster. Danny gets ahead of me. “Don’t leave me.”
“I’m not going to leave you,” he says. “I’m not going to leave you.”
I turn back again, peering over my shoulder to see how close they are. But they’re not there. The path is vacant, the night appearing deceptively innocent.
“Danny,” I say, slowing down. “Danny, they’re gone.”
“What?”
“They’re not behind us anymore. They’re not following.”
“We shouldn’t stop moving,” he says.
I spin around and around, searching, making myself dizzy. “Where did they go? Where are they?”
“He let you leave,” Danny says. “I saw him through the porch window. He was in the back of the room. He was watching. He was watching the whole time. Willa. Come on. Let’s go.”
We pick up our pace again. There’s faint music coming from the reception hall. Voices.
Life.