Even If We Break

by Marieke Nijkamp

  The start of a song. A nursery tune, maybe.

  It’s uncomfortably reminiscent of the ghost stories that haunt this mountain, and it’s terrifying until I realize it must be the wind chimes that hang on the porch, swaying in the wind. Only that. Nothing more.

  “I see blood outside!” Carter rushes past me, down the stairs, and out the cabin.

  “Carter, wait!” Maddy follows him, awkwardly, painfully, but determined.

  “Finn?” I turn back around. Ever stands in the doorway to Liva’s room. I didn’t think it would be possible, but they’ve grown paler still. “Can you come in here, please?”

  I follow them in, and they point at the windowsill. The breeze has blown the curtain back again, and now I can see a small wooden figurine sitting on the ledge.

  A carving, like the wooden figurines from the ghost stories.

  A coyote—very similar in style to the ones Ever themself used in their story, but not quite the same. It’s cruder, the wood a different color.

  Something pink and bloody lies next to it. At first glance, I think it’s a piece of meat. But then I remember what Ever said when they introduced the story.

  “It can’t be…”

  “What?”

  All they found was an abandoned cabin, a handprint, a music box, and a bloody, torn-off finger.

  Nausea rises into my throat, but I push it down.

  Ever steps closer to me, and I flinch away. “I don’t know what’s going on here, Finn…”

  “I don’t know either. I don’t want to know.”

  “Do you think someone took her for a ransom?”

  I gingerly pick up the carving of the coyote and try my best to ignore the meaty shape lying next to it. The all-too-obvious fingernail caked in blood. Nail art with the Gonfalon symbol. “That’s not how the story goes…”

  If this is part of a game, I don’t want anything to do with it.

  But underneath the figurine lies a small note, splattered with gore. One word, written in blood.

  Liar.

  Twelve

  Maddy

  The worst plan in any situation is to split the party, every gamer knows that. But if there is blood outside, like Carter says, he shouldn’t go alone. If the ghost stories are real, no one should be alone.

  And I don’t want to be alone either.

  “Carter, wait!” My voice is barely audible, and Carter keeps rushing out. His shoulders are tense and he’s shaking his head.

  “Carter, wait, please!” I can’t tell what he’s feeling. I still feel his hand in mine and his comforting presence when we walked up the stairs. His whispered “sorry.” But now he’s running, and with every step he takes, it feels like the friend I’ve had since I was a kid is slipping further away.

  Liva felt that familiar to me too, once upon a time. She was my unlikely best friend: the popular girl who didn’t mind hanging out with the autistic kid. Popular and autistic shouldn’t be diametrically opposed, but at Stardust High, they are. Being on the lacrosse team gave me some status, but Liva was my friend even before that. It took me months to accept it and stop questioning it.

  I’m still trying to accept that it’s gone. Our friendship.

  She isn’t.

  She can’t be.

  She needs to be annoyed by my hair all through this weekend. She needs to be smug about her cabin. She needs to be unreadable, impossible, here.

  But all I can think about is the blood Carter saw.

  I nearly stumble over the last steps from the patio down to the yard as my knee locks and my body lurches forward. Carter’s already disappeared into the dark.

  Before I have a chance to panic, Carter is back, holding out a trembling hand. “C’mon, stay close.”

  I practically run to him. “Just don’t move so fast, please?” I breathe the words into his chest, and he holds me too tight. Pain is radiating through me, and I’m worried—for Liva, for all of us. I have no way to focus the overwhelming chaos in my mind. I wish I could sit on these steps and stim and forget.

  “Are you okay?”

  There are layers to that question, but the answer to all of them is the same. “It hurts, C.”

  He pulls back, but at the same time, he reaches out to me and his fingers curl around my hand. He’s steady and present, and though I can feel him shaking, he’s what I need to keep moving.

  Liva was like that too. And then the accident happened, and while I was recovering, Liva spent more and more time at her father’s company. She had less time for the two of us. And when we hung out, I always needed an hour or so to get my friend back—because the girl who showed up was always the rich snob her parents wanted her to be.

  And that hour kept getting longer. Eventually, she simply didn’t come by anymore unless it was for a costume or something game-related. I tried to tell Liva about the pills once. I tried to tell her what the doctor prescribed wasn’t enough. I hoped she might be able to help me, at least before Carter stepped in. She didn’t seem to understand.

  That night, my sister Sav said Liva and I both wanted the other to be someone different. I didn’t know what she meant, but maybe I should’ve tried harder.

  I know Liva has been going through stuff too, with the pressure she’s had from her dad. If we find her—when we find her—I’m going to do my part to be a better friend. I hope she will too.

  Carter and I stumble into the all-too-quiet yard, and Carter drags me toward a spot on the side of the cabin where Liva’s room is. There is no path on this side of the cabin, only an overgrown clearing.

  The only way I can think to stim is by balling my free hand into a fist and methodically pounding my hip. Something rhythmic. Something to keep me focused. I feel like I’m falling.

  It feels like we’ve fallen into an upside-down world where none of the normal rules apply. Like I spent years studying a rule book to understand how the world works, and how people work, and how we can do magic between those two—and then we start the game with a completely different system.

  I don’t know how to deal with this.

  I can’t keep up. I’m scared, I think. I’m overwhelmed.

  The world is so much and this pain stabs so deep.

  Carter breathes hard, next to me. He squeezes my hand. He isn’t necessarily calm, but he is calming me, at least. “I’m going to call for Liva again. Don’t be scared.”

  “How can I not be?”

  He winces, his expression falling somewhere between a grimace and a frown. He nods in acknowledgment.

  Then he shouts, “Liva!”

  We both listen for a reply.

  His voice echoes against the cabin walls, bounces through the trees. And it’s only met with silence. No birdsong, no coyotes, no rustling of the wind through the leaves.

  Silence.

  “Liva!”

  Carter’s voice sounds hollow.

  I disentangle myself from him and kneel on the grass, raking my fingers through it. They come back wet.

  In the faint glow of the cabin lights, I can see there’s blood on the ground, and quite a lot of it. Dark, wet crimson stains on darker grass. Stickiness on my fingers.

  My stomach twists.

  “Here!” Carter kneels next to a blood spot and picks at something in the grass.

  I squint. “What is it?”

  “Looks to be some piece of cloth.” Carter hesitates. “A swath of torn costume.”

  Oh.

  I want to take a step back, but another piece of cloth catches my eye. Gold threading. Not a lot, but enough to make out Liva’s handiwork—because I would recognize it anywhere.

  I bite my lip and reach out, not quite touching it. “What is happening, C?”

  Carter rocks to his feet. “I wish I knew. I really wish I did. But all I know is that we need to find Liva. She ha
s to be here somewhere.”

  I’m still staring at the torn bit of costume. I saw her wear this only an hour or so ago, when she…when she… “She died in the game,” I whisper.

  “We don’t know that she’s dead,” Carter responds harshly. “Maybe she’s wounded. Maybe someone took her. Maybe she fell, and she tried to crawl away from the window.”

  But that seems like a ridiculous conclusion given the amount of blood and the torn clothes. The bedroom window isn’t high up enough to kill, and if she were wounded, surely she would’ve called for help. She would’ve called out to us.

  “Liva!” My voice shatters. I can feel it in my throat.

  There’s only a deep, desperate silence here.

  Maybe it’s because of that silence, but I’m convinced someone’s watching us. I feel the eyes all around me.

  I want to be invisible. I want to be anywhere but here, because I know, I know—this game, these friends may not have broken yet, but they will. Everything always breaks.

  It’s getting harder to breathe.

  There are too many shadows between us and the city. Someone is watching us. Someone is waiting, prowling like an animal waiting to pounce on its prey. And we only have one another to stand between us and whatever is out there.

  The night closes in on me, slowly, while Carter continues to look for clues. Presumably Ever and Finn are doing the same. They don’t notice it. They don’t see what’s about to happen.

  But I do. I felt the same way right before my injury and in the empty nights after. In the loneliness when my team stopped coming to visit and my friends didn’t know how to talk to me. I was lost.

  And we are lost now.

  We’re here, alone, and we have nowhere else to go. We don’t have an escape route. We don’t know what’s waiting for us. We can’t protect ourselves from whatever’s out there with wooden rifles and foam daggers and make-believe skills.

  “Are there any tracks down there?” Ever’s voice, angled from the window, echoes through the yard.

  I finally snatch the piece of cloth from the grass and push myself up, angling my body to keep the weight from my knee—and freeze.

  Hanging out of the window, Ever is as pale as a ghost. But when I look up to them, that isn’t what catches my eye.

  Perhaps I should’ve seen it before. Perhaps Carter should’ve. We were so focused on the bloody grass, we didn’t look up. Neither of us did.

  Tunnel vision, perhaps—or fear.

  There’s a harsh intake of breath from Carter, a few feet behind me. Apparently when Ever called out, he looked up too.

  The edge of the abyss roars around us.

  The blood on the ground does leave a track. But it doesn’t move away from the cabin. And it’s not simple drops of blood either.

  There are bloody handprints, some smudged, but most of them all too clear.

  And they’re crawling back up the wall—toward the window.

  Thirteen

  Ever

  The handprints are leading up.

  I stare at Maddy and Carter, pale and pointing, and then slowly look down the wall.

  The handprints are leading up. Bloody handprints. Leading up.

  I crumple the piece of paper Finn has given me. Liar.

  Finn tugs at my sleeve. “Ev, we have to get out of here.” I hardly recognize his voice. It’s filled with hurt and fear and something else, rawer than anything I’ve ever heard.

  “I…” I don’t know what to say. Blood roars in my ears, and if our group is unraveling, then I’m unraveling too. This was a mistake. The words I texted Damien flash before my eyes: My friends are hurting. It’s my job to protect them. It’s my job to keep them safe.

  Finn tugs harder. “We have to get the four of us together and leave.”

  Deep down, I understand that rationale. With the tracks leading into the cabin, the only sensible place to go is out. There really isn’t a question about it. We should all convene on the porch on the other side of the building and go from there.

  But.

  “I’m responsible for her.” I want to try to find her. My voice sounds weird to me too. Slower, and every word I speak feels new and strange. “Something has happened to Liva, and what if she doesn’t get help in time because we ran down the mountain without so much as a second look back?”

  “Ever,” Finn says firmly. “If this had been an accident, Liva would still be here. What wouldn’t be are bloody handprints. Or a note. Or a finger. Someone clearly has it out for her. I don’t know if I believe in haunted cabins, but if it isn’t that, then it’s murder or kidnapping or something along those lines. She’s richer than all of us put together. Her family could meet any ransom. But I’m not staying here to find out exactly what happened, and neither are you.”

  I nod. And I realize the something else in his voice is anger, as deep and as fresh as the first days after he got beaten up. He’s so angry, he’s trembling.

  Just then, the power cuts.

  All the lights in the cabin blink out of existence, and we’re covered in a blanket of intense darkness. While my eyes struggle to adjust, panicked shouts filter in from outside. “What’s going on there?”

  “Finn? Ever?”

  Finn moves his grasp from my sleeve to my elbow and pulls hard. “We’re getting out. Now.”

  I let him tug me into the hallway and down the stairs. But once we get to the bottom—and I’m not sure how we manage that without both of us breaking our legs—I pull back, because something tugs at the back of my mind. “Finn, wait.”

  “No.”

  One word, but it carries such finality. I want to punch him, and I want to reach for all the cracks and hold him together. He was my first best friend. Not just because he and I were the only two out trans kids at school for a while, not just because we flocked together for safety and community, but because he believed in me. And it kills me that he doesn’t believe in us. “Wait.”

  “No, we have to get out of here.”

  “We have to get our phones.” I swallow hard and try to make my voice more audible. “We’re going to grab our phones. That way, we’ll have flashlights at hand. And maybe that way, we can still do something. And we should call the cops. And Liva’s parents. Though I have no idea what to tell them.”

  I start pulling him, now. Toward the kitchen and the pantry where we kept our phones in their chest. Yet another one of the WyvernCon treasures. Maybe we’ll find other helpful stuff in the pantry too.

  Quest items.

  When I put the phones in there, I noticed the shelves were lined with tin cans and containers of food. But I also saw oil, matches, an AM-FM radio, a collection of batteries, and roughly two dozen rolls of paper towels. Enough to survive the zombie apocalypse.

  We make our way to the kitchen, my arm outstretched to make sure I don’t walk into anything—and trying my hardest not to imagine what it would feel like to walk into anyone. But as we get inside and near the pantry, the pantry door creaks on its hinges.

  I know, I know I didn’t leave the door open.

  “Finn…”

  He shakes his head, hard. “We go in. We grab the phones. And then we run out. No dallying, no second guessing. We need our party together, and I’m done with this place.”

  I refuse to give in to hesitation. I nudge the door farther open and step in. The floorboards groan, echoing all around me, almost as if I stepped in and someone else stepped back. Or perhaps the floorboards on the landing creaked. I’m not entirely sure.

  I don’t want to scare Finn.

  He leans in. “You don’t happen to remember where you put the chest, do you?”

  I stand on tiptoe, reaching for the shelves right next to the door. “Top shelf,” I whisper. “Right here.”

  My hand smacks the empty shelf.

  “Or not,” he say
s.

  I tilt my head. “It was, though. It was the only empty space left in the pantry.”

  All the shelves are packed with boxes and cans. I pat the shelves, trace the cans, but there is nothing out of the ordinary. The only notably empty space is the one I’m reaching for.

  There is no chest with phones anywhere.

  Dread settles into my stomach. For the first time, I think Finn may be right.

  I reach deeper and curse. Something bites at my hand, and when I pull it back, I see thin shards of glass embedded in my palms and fingers. I brush at them, but they dig into my skin. “They’re gone.”

  “They can’t be.”

  “There’s a lot happening that can’t be. They’re gone. They’re not here, and someone replaced them with glass instead.” My voice is loud and sharp, but I don’t know how to rein it in. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”

  Everything is slipping through my fingers, and the void that remains is slowly filled with panic. The tentacles of anxiety—the strongest of the eldritch gods—crawl up around my feet and legs.

  “Do you have your phone on you still?” Finn asks, but I know he knows better. “Can you call one of us to see if we hear anything?”

  “I put it in there for safekeeping too. I knew I was going to be distracted checking in with Elle, otherwise. And she told me to focus on the game.”

  I shake my head. The shock was easier because it didn’t hurt so much. Now the ice-cold sense of dread and paranoia is taking over. Liva is gone. Gravely injured…or worse. The power is out. Our phones are gone. Someone had to have taken them. Someone’s messing with the cabin, with us. And the four of us are stuck on a mountain, with nothing to protect us.

  If this were a game, I couldn’t have designed it better myself. But if this were a game, it would be twisted and disgusting.

  “We’re getting out,” I say, louder than I intended. “I’m assuming the phones are gone because someone took them, and we already decided we’re not going to wait to see who or why.”

  Finn and I, we’re pushing and pulling each other out, and there is strength in being together. Holding on to each other is the only thing that keeps us upright.