Page 30 of The Intruder

NOW

CASEY

It’s a map.

Eleanor is carrying a handwritten map. The blue scribble has a childlike quality to it, which makes me think that she drew the map herself. She drew the directions and wrote in the names of the roads. She painstakingly created this all by herself.

And she has made a star at the top of the map, at what appears to be her final destination.

This house.

Eleanor is carrying a map leading right to me. She didn’t just randomly wander here from the road. She followed the directions on the map until she arrived in my yard, dripping with blood and clutching a knife in her right hand.

Except…why?

“Casey?”

It’s Eleanor’s voice, coming from the bathroom. I quickly stuff the map into my pocket, hoping she doesn’t notice that I have it. She emerges from the bathroom, her hands finally free of the knife.

“Do you have an extra toothbrush?” she asks.

I’ll give you an extra toothbrush if you don’t kill me in my sleep tonight, I want to tell her.

But before I can say anything, my thoughts are interrupted by a scraping noise outside the house. Eleanor notices it too, and she looks alarmed. “What is that?”

I flash a confident smile that belies the dread in the pit of my stomach. There have been a lot of ominous sounds coming from outside since the storm started, but none of them have seemed quite as immediate as that scraping sound. It sounds like the outside is clawing its way in.

I grab the flashlight off the coffee table.

Eleanor follows me to the front door, which I crack open.

It’s still extremely windy, and I’m scared that if I let go of the doorknob, the door will blow away.

I squint into the night, shining my flashlight around the yard.

I stop when I get to the tree by my house.

The tree is practically out of the ground. It’s tilted heavily to one side, and that side happens to be in the direction of the house. And with each gust of wind, it tilts a little bit more.

Eleanor is staring at the tree, her eyes huge. “Is that tree going to fall, Casey?”

“I’m sure it won’t,” I lie. “It will be fine.”

She shivers and hugs her skinny chest. “Do you infinity promise?”

I can’t infinity promise that the tree won’t fall. Because I’ve never broken one of those promises, and I think there’s a decent chance the tree might fall tonight.

“Look,” I say, “I won’t lie to you. The wind is really strong tonight, and the tree might blow over.”

Eleanor’s face falls, which almost makes me wish I just lied about it. She’s really just a little girl, and all she wants is my reassurance.

“But,” I add, “I’m going to keep a close eye on it through the window. If it really looks like it’s going to fall, I’ll wake you up. But I bet it won’t.”

“You’re going to watch it?” she asks in a tiny voice.

“I will.”

“And what if it does fall?”

I don’t want to answer her question. It depends entirely where the tree ends up falling, which depends entirely on the direction of the wind gust that knocks it over. If it falls in my yard, it will be a nuisance. If it falls on the house, it might kill us.

And earlier today, it was leaning toward the house.

“We can hide under the bed,” I say. “That should protect us.”

Or not. I honestly have no idea, and that terrifies me. I’m trying to act confident for Eleanor, but that tree is scaring the crap out of me.

Why oh why didn’t I go with Lee when he offered to let me come to his house?

As far as I can remember, he did not have any giant trees threatening to fall on his house—he would be smarter than to put himself in this kind of situation.

I could have been safe and sound in his living room right now. But no. I had to keep my boundaries.

Although if I had gone with Lee, Eleanor would have had to spend the night in that cold, wet toolshed, all alone.

“Let’s go back inside,” I say.

Okay, if that tree falls on us tonight, there’s nothing I can do about it. There’s nowhere else to go. It would be much more dangerous to attempt to get to Lee’s house at this point.

“I’ll get you some extra blankets,” I say to Eleanor. “The heat is out, so it’s going to get real cold in here.”

“Thank you,” she whispers.

I leave her to go to the hall closet to grab some blankets. Eleanor told me she was planning to take off first thing in the morning, but I don’t believe that anymore. She was carrying a map directing her to my house. She didn’t just coincidentally end up here. She came here for a reason.

I just don’t know what that reason is yet.