Ellie listens for her mother’s footsteps leaving the room, waits for the sound of the bedroom door shutting behind her, the soft creak of her moving away down the corridor before she rolls onto her side and opens her eyes. It’s not always easy to fool her mum, but she’s good at faking sleep. It’s all about the breath. The slow rise and fall of the chest. Keeping a soft face.
She slides a hand beneath her pillow and retrieves her phone, unlocking the screen to her last exchange with Jasmine. ‘Up?’ she types and waits.
Jasmine’s Snap status remains stubbornly offline, and rather than face the silence of her room, she distracts herself with TikTok videos of skateboarders tearing up parks, street artists tagging benches and stencilling their work onto walls, a mundane tutorial about how to perfect a grungy eyeliner.
None of it takes away the sickening fear building in the pit of her stomach. Her parents have told her to tell the truth tomorrow, but what if the truth is what she’s most terrified to share? The thing no one will understand?
She’s done her best to cover her tracks. Now she must hold her nerve. Stay one step ahead. No one will ever know what she did, because the only other person who did is now dead.
Sleep, she tells herself, laying down her phone. She needs a clear head for tomorrow. A calm demeanour. She readjusts her pillow and is sliding down beneath her duvet when her room lights up with the flash of her phone. A new notification.
She’s expecting Jasmine, but it’s not her. It takes a split second for Ellie to register the sender’s name.
sally@inthewood
What the fuck?
A shot of adrenalin jolts through her body. She reads with a growing sense of dread.
If you go down to the woods tonight…
There’s no photo to identify the sender. Just a screenshot of the ghost emoji, which somehow feels all the more sinister.
Almost immediately, another message appears on the screen.
Someone’s been a naughty girl.
She can see the three typing dots still pulsing on the screen.
Think you’re safe, tucked up in bed?
I’d stay there if I were you.
You never know what might be waiting for you outside.
Ellie throws down her phone.
She shivers as she glances about her room. It’s as if a stranger lurks in the darkest corners, an evil presence looming at the foot of her bed. As if she’s back in that cave, the puff of air against her neck, someone lingering in the shadows, watching, waiting.
She could change her privacy settings. She could block the sender. But if she does that, she won’t have a clue what they know… what they’re planning. Better to keep the line open, surely, than let them plot and scheme in the dark?
Fear and a dark, sickening guilt surges through her. Pulling the pillow over her head, trying to burrow away from the threat that seems to creep towards her, Ellie presses her face into the mattress, the suffocating cotton of the sheet filling her nose and mouth, choking the air from her lungs until there’s nothing but the sound of her heartbeat roaring in her ears. I’m sorry, she screams, the word a silent roar lost in the mattress. Sorry, sorry, sorry.