Page 41

Alice

It’s late, and the road is slick with snow. My hands and feet have gone numb as I pedal. The snow blurs my vision.

I skid to a stop at the fork in the road: straight to go the longer way through town or right to cut through Killer’s Grove, the quicker way.

I stare at the tunnel of Killer’s Grove looming in front of me, staticky with falling snow. The trees and their gnarled boughs reach for me, clawing at me. I’ve been here dozens of times since That Night, but never at night. Never like this.

“It isn’t haunted,” I tell myself as I get back on my bike and turn right. I don’t believe in ghosts. All those stories about Killer’s Grove being haunted are just a bunch of bullshit. Roads aren’t haunted. Only people are.

Killer’s Grove is black, no streetlights around. I flick my bicycle headlight on. It lights a pale path, scattering shadows as I pedal. I finally reach the tree where we crashed, and I brake. In my bike’s light, I can see the scar cut into the tree’s flesh.

A thought flickers into my mind, then slips back out. I try to grasp it, to hold on to it, but the more I do, the more shadowy it becomes.

Suddenly, my ears fill with a strange rushing sound. Goose bumps chase up the back of my neck. I hear a noise, a twig crackling, and whirl. There’s a flash of blonde hair, and then my head is filled with a pressure unlike any I’ve felt before.

I’m standing on a wet road, rain pounding the ground at my feet. My hair drips wet tracks down my cheeks. Shadows move in front of me. Trees bow and sway in the howling wind. Water roars.

A bright crack of lightning illuminates the shadows, making them take shape. The water gets louder, filling every gap in my mind, a horrible, agonizing roar. And then someone is screaming.

“Run!”

My eyes snap open, and I’m back in Killer’s Grove, the frozen ground solid under my feet. Fear and frustration balloon in my belly, launching up my throat. What the fuck is happening to me?

My pain curdles into anger, and I bend over and scream, letting loose a wail that goes on and on, bouncing off the trees in the lonely forest. I hit my thighs with both fists over and over. I want to rake at my eyes and tear at my hair. And then a sound fills my head. A beep. Once, then a long pause. Again, then a long pause.

That nagging thought is back, too slippery to get hold of. I almost have it, but it shifts, again sinking beneath the black waters of my mind. Beep. Pause. Beep.

And then it clicks into place. A piece of the jumbled puzzle that’s been floating inside my head.

“Oh my God,” I whisper.

I get back on my bike and start pedaling.