An hour after leaving Val’s party, Zoey made the trek through the Kingshead Woods, pushing past tangled weeds and nearly tripping on the clusters of charcoal-colored rocks spilling down her path.
In the near-dark, for the moon that night was a mere sliver.
Hauling a net full of dead fish.
It wasn’t her idea of fun, but the aftermath would be.
“Screw Val Mortimer,” she grumbled, “and screw Collin Hawthorne. Screw these rocks, screw these trees.” For emphasis, Zoey whacked a low-hanging branch out of her path. “Screw this island, screw these fish.” The net of fish slapped against her back.
“Screw Charlotte Althouse,” she went on cheerily, “and screw Harry Windemeier.”
She stopped her little dark song.
Harry Windemeier. Jane Fitzgerald.
She heaved the net to her other shoulder. Spiders could fall from trees. That wasn’t a strange thing. Horrifying, obviously, and conveniently timed, but nothing to fret about. Nature being nature.
She made it out of the trees and onto the edge of the Kings-head estate. She set down her fish, wiped her brow, and stared up at the imposing edifice that was the Mortimer family palace.
Every time she saw it, Zoey felt a little like Maria in The Sound of Music, the first time she saw Captain von Trapp’s mansion. But instead of muttering, “Oh, help,” Zoey thrust both her middle fingers at Kingshead and danced around like she’d just scored a touchdown.
She was right in the middle of this when she realized someone was standing in the trees a few feet away, watching her.
Zoey shouted, “Shit,” and staggered back, almost tripping over the net of fish.
“Sorry,” said the someone, and Zoey realized it was Marion Althouse, who looked sketchy as hell standing there in the trees, her skin freaky pale, her hair dark and wild. Just standing there, arms at her sides. “Didn’t mean to scare you. What are you doing out here?”
Zoey aimed for wry nonchalance, to cover up how obviously chalant she was. Was that a thing?
“I’m about to go dump some fish into the back seat of Val’s Lexus,” she replied. “Want to come?”
Marion didn’t answer. She turned, staring into the trees. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“It’s like . . .” Marion shook her head, gripped it between her hands. Her eyes glinted, full of tears. “It doesn’t make any sense to me, but I’ve been hearing it on and off for days, and it’s the worst it’s ever been tonight. I think the accident might have shaken loose something inside of me. Something important.”
Zoey shifted awkwardly. “Hey, it’s okay.”
Marion shook her head. “I can’t make it stop! I’ve tried everything.” She laughed—a high, soft burst. “Almost everything.”
Zoey grabbed Marion’s hands and pried them away from her skull. “What is it? What are you hearing?”
But Marion didn’t answer. She went rigid, her neck elongating as she whipped her head around to search through the darkness. A deer that had heard the snap of a twig beneath a hunter’s boot.
The funny thing was, in that moment, Zoey felt it, too—a sudden heaviness, as if another person had entered a dark room and now stood waiting beside them.
Like the trees themselves were watching.
A shiver zipped gaily down her back.
“This way,” Marion whispered, taking Zoey’s hand gently in hers. “Quietly. We don’t want to scare it.”
Zoey swallowed. “It?”
But Marion didn’t answer.
Zoey abandoned her fish and allowed herself to be led along. She kept glancing at Marion, inspecting her face. Marion didn’t seem to mind. Her eyes were wide, ringed in darkness.
“I put my hair into a ponytail,” Marion explained, staring straight ahead. “I thought that would help, but it didn’t. I had to take it down. I had to take it all down. It was going to carve my skull open.”
With difficulty, Zoey asked, “What was going to carve your skull open?”
Marion glanced at her. “The sound. It wants me to follow it.”
A page from her father’s black book flashed before Zoey’s eyes: The figures sketched in pen. The top hats and the long coats. The tufts of fur. The eyes white and without pupils, the wide grins.
ILLE QUI COMEDIT.
Zoey had looked up the phrase in an online translator:
HE DOTH EAT.
Now she remembered, with the woods shivering on all sides, where she’d seen those illustrations before. Not those exact renderings, but similar enough to match. When she’d found the book under the couch, something inside her had pinged at the sight of those sketches, but she hadn’t been able to place them until this moment.
Her pocket-Thora opened a door in her brain and whispered, slippery and cold like the ghost she was, Took you long enough, Sherlock.
Those drawings were of the Collector.
Monster-obsessed Thora had tried her own hand at illustrating the Collector in various forms, had even submitted Collector stories to online horror magazines—fully illustrated, every time, and always accompanied by images very much like these.
Which meant . . . what? That her father was also a secret Collector fanatic?
“Marion, have you heard the stories about the Collector?” Zoey flushed a little, placed a hand on her abdomen as if that could quell her slight nausea. To be talking about this with someone who wasn’t Thora felt like violating an unspoken pact. But in the quiet moonlit woods, with Marion trembling beside her and the air ripe and taut, Zoey felt like if she didn’t say the words aloud, something terrible would reach up out of the ground and grab her. The words were a defense. The words held power and deflated nightmares. “There are these old island stories, about this boogeyman thing—”
“It’s like a cry,” Marion whispered, ignoring Zoey. “My bones are crying. Or, not only my bones. My bones, and someone else’s, too.”
“Crying like . . . weeping?”
“Crying like screaming.” Marion stopped and faced Zoey, her eyes clear, alert. “If you think this is bullshit, you can leave. It’s fine.”
“I don’t think that.” Zoey clenched her teeth, steeling her bones. “Earlier, at Val’s party, these spiders fell out of the trees, onto these kids, right in front of me. Not one or two spiders. Like . . . dozens.” Zoey blew out a breath. “It feels like a weird night, is what I’m saying.”
She didn’t mention her father’s book to Marion, part of her hoping that if she never spoke about the book, about her father’s reaction to her finding it, then it would never have happened. She would be able to once again look him in the eye without feeling like she was staring down an ominous closed door.
Zoey shook her head and wiped the back of her hand across her forehead. “Thora always said, if there’s a place in the world where crazy shit could and would happen, it’s in the Sawkill woods.”
“Thora,” said Marion quietly, still as a tree herself. “Your friend who’s missing?”
“She’s dead. I know it.” Zoey cast her eyes toward the ground. “She was such a good writer, you know. Her stuff was raw, and weird as all hell. The kind of writing that makes you ache because you feel like you’re getting a peek into a secret place.”
“I’m sorry, Zoey. I’ve seen death, too.” Then Marion held out one of her hands; a long tangle of black hair rested in her palm.
“This was inside of me.” Marion gazed imploringly at Zoey, tear tracks drying on her cheeks. “I pulled it out.”
“Christ.” Zoey was reminded, most unpleasantly, of the spiders trying to force their way into Jane Fitzgerald’s mouth. Looking at the hair gave her the same upside-down feeling. The feeling of am I awake, or am I dreaming?
She swallowed hard. “Why don’t we just go ahead and ditch that?”
She turned over Marion’s hand. The tangle of hair fell to the ground. They were on the other side of Kingshead now, past the gardens and the stables, down into the woods on the other side.
Ugh. More woods.
“Can you describe the sound to me, in more detail?” Zoey asked, when she could no longer stand the silence. Up and down her neck, her skin itched. “Maybe if I know what to listen for—”
“Stop.”
Zoey obeyed. She stayed put as Marion moved slowly into a cluster of thin, dark trees . . . and disappeared.
All sound vanished. There had been noise, just a moment ago—night birds, night bugs, the rustling of trees and leaves, the hoot of an owl.
Now, there was nothing.
It was dead still in these woods.
And animals, they go quiet when a predator is near.
“Marion?” Zoey’s mouth filled with the sharp, sour flavor of adrenaline. She followed Marion’s path into the trees. “Where’d you go?”
Past the trees was a well-trod dirt path, and at the end of the path stood a circle of small white stones.
Marion stood in the center of them. Head tilted to the side. Birdlike. Listening.
“Marion,” Zoey whispered again. “What is this place?” She took another step forward, tripped over a root, and caught herself on its tree.
Her hand landed in something hot and wet on the bark.
She brought her hand away.
Her fingers glistened black. The tang of blood slithered inside her mouth to curl across her tongue.
A sound came from the stones—a gathering army of winged bugs, a rattlesnake warning away intruders.
Marion whirled. Her wide eyes found Zoey.
She whispered, “Run.”
There came a cold shattered crack like a fist through glass, followed by the ear-popping feeling of a quick pressure change. Marion flew out of the stones, a rag doll flung away by a temperamental child.
Zoey lurched forward, grabbed Marion’s hand, yanked her to her feet.
This time, when Zoey ran, she wasn’t alone.