13. Kristin
KRISTIN
When the world came back, it came back wrong.
The cold hit me first, harsh and biting, like I’d been packed full of snow.
Wind knifed across my face, and I blinked hard, trying to make sense of my surroundings.
Fine, powdery snowfall swept sideways across the driveway, blurring everything into a gray-white smear.
I tried to push myself up, but pain tore through the side of my skull, intense enough to steal my breath.
Where am I?
Memory returned in jagged fragments: the gate, the deer, the man, the truck pulling away . . . the baby monitor clipped to my jacket.
“Henry,” I croaked.
A baby’s cry cut through the wind.
I froze, listening.
“Henry?”
I forced myself onto my elbows, heart hammering so hard it made me lightheaded. My fingers fumbled for the monitor. The screen was dark, and the light was off.
The crying came again, and this time I knew it wasn’t coming through the speaker. It was coming from the pond.
I twisted, squinting through the veils of snow. The yard assembled itself in pieces. A dark smudge of trees surrounded the pond, and there, out on the ice, was a bassinet.
It was Henry’s. This can’t be real.
I tried to stand, but my legs buckled. The first step blurred my vision. The second sent lightning through my skull. I pushed forward anyway, boots slipping on the snow-covered asphalt as I staggered toward the pond. Henry cried again, louder and more desperate.
“I’m coming, baby,” I gasped. “I’m coming. Hang on.”
The ice looked solid, dusted with powdery snow, no cracks spidering outward. The bassinet sat near the center, small and horribly out of place. This wasn’t possible, some part of me whispered. This wasn’t how any of this worked.
My foot hit the ice. It was slick and harder than stone. The wind shoved at my back like invisible hands. I slid, arms flailing, barely catching my balance.
“Henry!” My voice broke. “Keep crying, okay? Just keep crying.”
He did—but the sound was agony, and the bassinet seemed to drift farther away as I moved toward it. Always just out of reach. His cries climbed higher, so shrill they almost didn’t sound human.
I tried to go faster and nearly fell. “Please,” I whispered. “Please, please—”
My knees hit the ice. I didn’t remember deciding to drop, but suddenly I was there, jeans soaking through, fingers numb as I grabbed the edge of the bassinet and yanked the blanket back.
It was empty. No baby. No Henry. Just an imprint in the mattress, where something small and warm had been lying mere seconds before.
“No,” I said, ripping the blanket aside, running my hands along the corners as if he might have been wedged somewhere impossible. “No, no, no—Henry!”
The answer came from below: a series of small, hollow knocks.
I looked down. Pale and distorted shapes pressed against the underside of the ice. They were faces, a dozen plus of them. Men, women, and children, all hovering beneath the surface. Their hair floated around them like seaweed. Skin bloated, mouths stretched open in soundless screams.
They pounded, desperate and uneven, their cries muffled into a bubbling chorus that vibrated through my bones.
One face rose closer than the others, a teenage boy with long shaggy hair and an angled jaw. His cloudy eyes locked onto mine and his lips moved slowly.
“Wake . . . up.”
The words slammed into my skull, and the world jerked sideways. I inhaled hard, choking on air. The pond and the faces tore away like a ripped sheet. My eyes flew open, and I was back on the driveway, snow at my cheek, a shadow looming overhead.
“About time,” a voice said. “You were really out.”
I squinted against the light. Judi Vee’s face swam into focus. Her lipstick was too dark for her sallow skin, feathering into the tiny cracks around her mouth. Her eyes were pinched and assessing, and in her arms—
“Henry!” I gasped.
I surged upright, panic shredding through me. “What are you doing with my baby?”
I wrenched him from her, clutching him so tight he startled, then quieted. My hand flew over him—counting fingers, checking his chest, his warmth—needing proof he was real.
“That’s no way to say thank you,” Judi said. Her voice was syrupy, honey poured over something rotting.
“Thank you?” The edges of my vision were still fuzzy, like my brain couldn’t quite catch up. “You went into my house and took my baby.”
“I did no such thing.” Her mouth tightened. “You were lying here half dead. I tried to wake you. Then I heard him crying on that speaker thing. You shouldn’t leave a baby alone, you know that?” She tilted her head. “I oughta call CPS on you.”
The words hit harder than the fall. A familiar, nauseating fear surfaced—the one that told me if I sounded wrong, if I reacted wrong, everything would turn on me. Rage burned through it anyway. “Don’t you dare twist this. I heard you on the monitor. You said his name.”
Her eyes flickered, just for a second, then went flat. “You must’ve hit your head harder than I thought.”
“Stay away from me!” I said, shaking. “Stay away from my baby. From my house. And stop bringing us fucking casseroles!”
The wind carried a beat of silence between us.
“Now that,” she said wagging a finger, “is a very rude way to speak to your neighbors.”
“You know what’s rude? Serving us rotten food.”
“Rotten?” she echoed.
“Maggots,” I spat. “Your casseroles were full of maggots.”
Her lips twitched, not into a smile, into something smaller and darker. “Food spoils. Especially when it’s not appreciated.”
“You did it on purpose, Judi!”
She lifted her shoulders in a delicate, almost amused shrug. “You can call me Ms. Buckner. Judi is for my friends.”
“Fine,” I said. “I’m calling the police, Ms. Buckner.”
“Go ’head.” She raised her chin. “We’ll see who they believe.”
The confidence in her voice made my stomach twist. Without another word, she turned and walked up the driveway.
I shifted Henry against my shoulder, fighting to steady my breathing, but the wind carried a sound that made my blood turn to ice. A slow, rhythmic tapping came from the direction of the pond.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
It was neither loud nor frantic. It was almost patient, biding its time.
I backed toward the house, every instinct screaming at me to run.
For a split second, just one, I thought I saw a figure standing at the tree line, but it was gone in the blink of an eye.
The tapping followed me all the way back to the house.