Chapter 19
I limped across the parking lot, my boots clomping through snow that had already begun to refreeze into a crust. My clothes were stiff with dried blood and ice, fabric no longer flexible enough to feel like it belonged to a living body.
My face burned where the cut had split my cheek.
My jaw throbbed every time I moved it. Each breath reminded me that the air was still cold enough to punish me simply for continuing to exist.
The pen was clenched in my fist so tightly my fingers cramped around it. A wet shine clung to the shaft, a trace of what had been inside Jake’s eye still streaking the plastic.
The bell above the door chimed when I pushed inside—bright and cheerful in a way that felt deeply inappropriate, like a laugh at a funeral.
Warmth hit me first, then light, then sound.
Humming refrigerators lined the left wall, their glass doors fogged at the edges.
A radio played an easy song meant for road trips and normal mornings.
The fluorescent lights made everything too clear.
Dusty antiques sat in mismatched clusters near the back—snow globes, tarnished knickknacks, broken dolls.
It all looked exactly the way it should.
The way it had before everything went wrong.
The second I crossed the threshold, something in my body loosened. The panic that had been locked in my ribs for days finally eased, retreating just enough to make room for exhaustion. It felt like stepping into a bubble, sealed off from whatever had been hunting us outside.
The cashier looked up from behind the counter.
She was the same one from before—at least I thought she was.
Her graying hair was pulled back, glasses on the bridge of her nose, her expression unreadable.
Her eyes skimmed over me—the blood, the snow, the way I was holding myself together only because there was nothing else left to hold.
The corner of her mouth lifted in a tiny, knowing smirk.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
My throat felt shredded. I forced my voice to cooperate. “Yeah,” I said, hoarse. “I’d like to buy this.”
I staggered to the counter, my knee screaming with each step, and slapped the pen down between us. It made a ridiculous little clack, plastic against laminate, in a room that should have been echoing with terror.
The cashier didn’t flinch. She didn’t ask why I looked like I’d crawled out of a war zone. She didn’t react to the blood. She didn’t even seem surprised to see the pen again, as though her inventory had a habit of returning itself.
She picked it up, turned it once between her fingers, then set it down. The register beeped as she manually typed in the price.
“That’ll be three fifty-seven,” she said.
I dug my credit card from my coat pocket with stiff fingers.
My hand trembled so hard I almost dropped it.
My nails were cracked, blood caked beneath my cuticles—none of it mine.
The cashier watched without expression as I held the card out, daring my body to stop shaking long enough to make this work.
She paused. “There’s a 3 percent fee on cards,” she said. “You wanna pay cash instead?”
It was such a normal question I almost laughed.
“No,” I said.
Her smirk twitched, maybe out of amusement or maybe something else entirely.
“All right,” she said, tapping the register. “Three sixty-eight.”
I swiped, and the machine processed with a slow, patient spin of the icon. Seconds stretched thin. My heartbeat thudded in my ears, loud in the quiet between the refrigerators and the radio.
As the payment went through, something shifted, so subtle I almost missed it. The air pressed in on itself, dense and weighted, like a held breath. Then it released, and the pressure drained all at once, leaving the room lighter in a way I felt behind my eyes.
The receipt printed with a soft whir. The cashier tore it free and slid it across the counter. She picked up the pen and asked, “Do you want a bag for this?”
I stared at her and shook my head.
She set the pen down beside the receipt. When my fingers closed around it, it felt different—lighter, just cheap plastic. A stupid little souvenir from a place I should have never gone to in the first place.
Her eyes held mine. “Have a lovely day,” she said, the corner of her mouth curling into something that wasn’t quite a smile.
“Yeah,” I managed, exhausted and hollow. “You too.”
I turned and left before my knee remembered it was injured. The bell chimed again behind me.
Outside, the cold hit hard, but the world felt real again. Somewhere, a crow called out. My breathing sounded like it belonged to me again.
Jake’s body lay where I’d left it, half shadowed by the building. Blood pooled dark against the white snow like spilled ink. One eye was a ruined, blackened hole. The other stared blankly at the sky.
This time, there was no movement, no sense of something lingering. He was just dead. I stood there for a long moment as everything I’d held back finally broke through—grief, horror, rage, and a sick, unwanted relief I didn’t know how to forgive myself for.
I thought of Maddie. Of Noah. Of Ricky. Of how we’d come here for a fun weekend and the world had answered with a lesson instead. I drew in a long, shaking breath, and I let it out slowly. The pen sat in my pocket, inert and meaningless.
I turned away from Jake, the store, the road that led back to the cabin with its frost-stiff sheets, and I didn’t look back.
Each step sent pain through my knee, but it was a pain I understood.
It was honest. It belonged to my body—not to a curse, or a debt, or a choice someone else had made for me.
Bloody footprints followed me for only a short distance, until the wind erased them, smoothing the ground like I’d never been there at all.