nine

The door quivers as Lennon jumps with a loud “Shit!” and then slaps a hand over his mouth. His back shudders as he inhales. When he turns to me, his face is set.

“It’s okay,” he whispers. “I’ll take care of this.”

The hairs on my neck prickle again as his words echo the ones he said last night, in his delirium.

He reaches for the latch, and I realize he’s about to open the door. I jump up and hold the latch shut.

“Are you nuts?” I hiss.

I swear I can smell the fear wafting off him. His gaze goes to my sleeping bag.

“Right,” he says. “You need your knife. Stay in here until it’s quiet and then go through the hatch. Get to town. I’ll be fine. I’ll fix everything.”

“What is going on, Lennon?” I whisper.

“I have no idea, but it must be whoever attacked me. If I go out there, he’ll see me and leave you alone.”

“And I repeat, are you nuts? I swear if you open that door, I’ll run out ahead of you.”

When he stops, I back up to the floorboard compartment, gaze fixed on him as I retrieve my hunting knife and bow.

Another thwack against the door makes us both jump.

“What the hell is he doing?” I whisper. “Throwing rocks?”

No, it sounds like…

The noise is familiar. But as calm as I’m acting, I’m too freaked to analyze it.

Lennon looks at the ceiling hatch. I say, “We’ll take that. Let me get a look—”

“No, I will.” When I start to protest, he says, “I brought this danger. You know I did, Winter. I’ll take the risks.”

It’s not an absolute certainty he did bring this here. It could be local kids goofing around. But Lennon’s already pulling over the chair to climb up, and as much as I want to argue, it’ll only slow us down. Someone is outside that door. We need to find out who and get the hell out before—

That creak outside the door comes again, and all I can think of is bonfires with Cadence and her friends, the older kids telling ghost stories. The urban legend of the girl in the car after her boyfriend has gone to see what’s outside and she hears something scraping the top of the car.

I hurry over to Lennon and put my hand on his leg. He jumps.

“Sorry, just…be careful. Please.”

He smiles. It’s strained and anxious, but he manages it. “I will.”

He lifts the hatch an inch, and I snuff the lantern so no light will betray our escape route. He looks left to right. Then he pushes the hatch another inch. He peeks out again and then flips the hatch completely up and grips the edge to hoist himself through. Then he bends and whispers, “Stay in here. Whatever happens. Whatever you hear. Lock this and stay inside.”

That urban legend creeps back into my head, and I want to grab him and say this is silly; it’s nothing but the wind in the trees and bugs hitting the door. But I know it isn’t, and that’s all the more reason to grab him and drag him back down before—

He’s gone. Heaved himself out and closed the hatch behind him.

I scramble up onto that chair and reach for the hatch. I hold it as I strain to listen, ready to throw it open at the first sound of trouble.

“You trying to get my attention?” Lennon’s voice booms through the still night. “Come where I can see you, and I’m all yours.”

I shove at the hatch. His foot stomps it down.

“You want me, just show yourself. I know you’re there.”

I keep shoving on the hatch, but the angle is awkward, over my head, and Lennon’s standing on it.

“I’m not playing games,” Lennon calls. “You found me. You win.”

I jump down and run for the front door. I’m not thinking—I only know that Lennon is summoning the demon who beat him half to death. Summoning him to finish the job, and I’m sure as hell not letting him do that.

My recklessness has limits, though, and I ease open the door. Lennon realizes what I’m doing and breathes a curse as his footsteps pound across the roof. I have the door half open and—

I recoil, letting out a gasp and a cry and a whimper all rolled into one. There’s a shape hanging in the tree, swiveling in the wind, and that’s the noise, that creaking noise, and all I can see is that shape and I flash back to—

Lennon jumps off the roof and accidentally strikes my shoulder, and I stagger, and the image flies from my head, and when I look back, I realize it’s One-Eye, the alpha male, strung up outside my shack. He’s hanging by his neck, dead, his stomach slit open and…

I turn away quickly. Lennon doesn’t. He’s staring at the dog. Just staring. When I touch his arm, he jumps and his face reddens.

Just because he can field dress a rabbit doesn’t mean he’s seen anything like this. He’s in shock, and embarrassed by it, and I take his arm and turn him away. That’s when I see what hit the door. Three arrows are embedded in the wood.

My arrows.

They’re the ones I used with the dogs. I see those and somehow it’s even worse than the eviscerated dog. It’s so much more personal.

I peer into the forest. It’s silent and still, but I know whoever did this is here, and if he had those arrows, does that mean he was there, too? Watching me rescue Lennon? Following us here and then biding his time?

“We need to go,” I whisper. “Now.”

Lennon prods me into the shack, but I shake him off.

“We’re sitting ducks there.”

Sitting ducks anywhere, really, given how far we are from town. But it’s worse in the shack because it’s not as if anyone will come looking for me in the morning.

We go back inside. I get my penlight and give Lennon my hunting knife, keeping my switchblade. Then we set off into the woods.