Pine Cottage, midnight
The first scream arrived when Quincy reached the cabin’s back deck. It blasted from the woods, swooping toward her as she climbed the stubby wooden steps. Quincy turned toward the sound, too surprised to feel afraid.
The fear would come later.
She scanned the dark forest behind the cabin, whipping her gaze from tree to tree, as if the scream had come from one of them. But she already knew its source.
Janelle.
Quincy was certain.
A second scream erupted from the woods. Longer than the first, it became a crackle of noise stretching across the sky. It was also louder. Loud enough to spook an owl from the upper branches of a nearby tree. The bird skated past the deck, wings thumping, vanishing over the cabin roof.
The sound of its retreat blended with the approach of something else.
Footsteps. Reckless ones.
A moment later, Craig burst out of the woods. His eyes were blank, but there was a crazed jerkiness to his movements. His shirt was back on. So were his pants, although Quincy noticed how the fly was undone and that his unbuckled belt jangled and flapped.
“Run, Quincy.” He stumbled forward, frantic. “We gotta run.”
He was on the deck by then, making an attempt to drag her along as he streaked past her. Quincy’s arm went limp in his hands. She wasn’t going anywhere. Not until Janelle was with them.
“Janelle?” she shouted.
Her voice echoed, bouncing through the woods, creating new calls, each one more faint than the last.
They were answered with another scream. Craig yelped when he heard it. He did a little shimmy, as if trying to shake something from his back.
“Come on!” he shouted at Quincy.
But a fourth scream lured her forward, to the deck’s top step, the toes of her shoes peeking over the edge. Behind her, Craig tried to get inside, blocked by the others pushing their way out.
“What was that?” asked Amy, fear slashing her voice.
“Where’s Janelle?” asked Betz.
“Dead!” Craig yelled. “She’s dead!”
But she wasn’t. Quincy still heard her choked breaths hissing in the night. Footfalls as quiet as cat’s paws stumbled through the woods.
Janelle appeared suddenly, materializing like one of her Indian ghosts along the tree line behind the cabin. She didn’t stand so much as hover, only the instinct of standing keeping her upright. Dark blooms of red dotted her dress at her shoulder, chest, stomach.
Both hands were at her neck, one clamped tightly over the other. Blood streamed from beneath her palms—a crimson waterfall running down her chest.
That’s when the fear struck.
A gut-tightening, body-stilling fear that left the others motionless at the back door.
Only Quincy managed to move, the fear pushing her forward, off the deck, into grass just starting to gather frost. It crunched under her feet as she moved to Janelle. Cold wetness seeped into her shoes.
Then she was at Janelle, reaching out, catching her as she drooped forward. Janelle’s hands fell away from her neck, exposing the wide slash across it. Blood poured from the wound, hot and sticky, all over Quincy’s white dress.
Quincy covered the gash with her hands. The pumping blood tickled her palms. Then Janelle’s body went slack, the weight shifting onto Quincy, making her twist onto her knees. Soon she was seated on the ground, Janelle a rag doll in her lap, staring at her with wide, terror-struck eyes as her breath rattled.
“Help!” Quincy screamed, even though she already knew Janelle was beyond help. “Help! Please!”
The others remained on the deck. Amy curled against Rodney, the hem of her nightgown flapping. Betz began to sob uncontrollably, the sound rising and falling. Only Craig looked at them. Quincy felt like he could see into her very heart. Like he knew every one of her awful, awful secrets.
She stared at him, seeing a new rush of fear in his eyes.
“Quincy! Run!”
But Quincy couldn’t. Not with Janelle still dying in her arms. Not even when she felt a new presence in their midst. Something vile, seething hate.
He was upon them before she could turn around to look. Fingers dug into her hair, collecting a handful, yanking hard. Pain shimmered through her as she was whipped around, seeing what the others saw.
A figure looming.
A knife charging.
A silvery flash.
The stabs arrived almost simultaneously, one right after the other. Two sharp strikes of pain in her shoulder. Hot ones. Searing through skin and muscle. Nicking bone.
Quincy didn’t scream. It hurt too much. The pain screamed through her instead.
She slumped over, Janelle rolling from her lap. They lay together on the ground, face to face, Quincy staring into Janelle’s dead eyes. Blood pooled in the grass between them, melting the frost, steaming slightly.
He was still there. Quincy heard the even rhythm of his breathing.
A hand touched her hair again. Not pulling. Caressing.
“There, there,” he said.
Quincy saw him on the far edge of her vision, still a shadow. And as she waited for that final bite of the knife, he began to move.
Past her.
Past what had once been Janelle.
On his way back to Pine Cottage.
It was the last thing Quincy saw before pain and grief and fear overwhelmed her. Black clouds rolled across her vision, blurring the world. She closed her eyes, welcoming oblivion, letting the darkness take over.