“Don’t look…” Kait repeated uselessly.
She felt her gorge rise half-heartedly, her body too fatigued even to vomit. Cormac’s neck had not been severed cleanly; the teeth of the saw had left a ragged edge like wet tissue paper dangling below the nibbled-over ears. The wax-colored skin on the face was mostly untouched, save for an almost perfectly triangular gash of cheek-flesh that had been stripped away by one sharp black beak or another, but the lips had been picked down to nothing. Teeth grinned through a haze of blood and masticated dermis, looming huge in the jaws without the curtain of lips to conceal them. The left eye had been gobbled out completely, leaving a shallow, red, oozing hole that dribbled blood and pulped eye-mush down the ruined cheek like tears. The other had rolled back so far into the skull that the veins flushed purple.
Kait felt like it was staring straight at her.
Behind her, Alice and Ben eased the carpet—the rest of Cormac still packed up inside—down onto the snow. Alice’s hand landed on Kait’s shoulder, even that soft touch making her hands tighten on the stock and barrel of the rifle. “It’s him,” she said. Her voice was air blown through thin grass. “It has to be him.”
Kait could only nod. The world was slipping sideways on her. Her head felt like it was full of helium, and she caught herself listing to the side like a dead tree.
“Why bring it here?” Ben growled, his voice pulpy with disgust. “We walked half an hour to get here. Why would—”
“Mister Face,” Kait murmured before she could stop herself.
Her friends blinked at her. “The volleyball?” Ben finally ventured.
“The meaning’s the same,” she replied, staring back into Cormac’s single violet-veined eye. “It’s a tag. A flare. Lutz was here. Left here for us to find, just like the rest of him.”
“He knew we’d see it,” Alice breathed. “He knew we were coming here.”
“But how?” Ben demanded. “How could he know? These woods are huge! Even if he knew we’d go to the lake, how could he be sure we’d come here and see it?”
“Maybe he got lucky,” Alice put in, but Ben only shook his head, his jaw set and his eyes staring past both her and Kait, out into the darkening trees. A peculiar shudder ran through his whole body, like a tree cut through at the bottom right before it starts to fall.
“Lucky,” he spat. “Lucky. He’s been lucky this whole damn weekend.”
Then he whirled away from them without warning, striding away towards where the trees were thickest, the shadows darkest.
“Ben!” Alice cried out. She stepped over the rolled carpet to follow him, but Kait shot out her hand, seizing her by the wrist. The bigger girl nearly jerked her to the ground, but she clung on with the little strength left in her slender body as Alice tried to shake her loose.
“Where are you going, you idiot?” Kait screamed after Ben.
He paid her no mind. He stopped behind a thorny shrub, leafless but veiled in snow, almost out of their view. “This is what it was all about—wasn’t it?” he called back over his shoulder. “Drawing him out? Then let’s draw the bastard.”
Then out into the woods he hollered, at the top of his voice: “Come on! What are you waiting for? What do you want from us?” He stooped down, picked up a rock, hurled it out into the darkness. It made no sound when it landed. “We’re here, you damned coward!” he screamed, his voice cracking like sheet ice. “If you want to finish this, you’re going to have to come and fucking work for it!”
“Ben, what are you doing?” Kait screamed. Another wave of dizziness crashed over her, and she squeezed her eyes shut so she wouldn’t see the horizon bob and bend like rubber. The mob of crows took off cawing, their wings beating the air with startling percussive thunder.
“He knew we’d be here.”
Ben turned towards them, and even at that distance, Kait could see the gleaming whites of his wide eyes. “He knew we’d be here,” he repeated, his face pale against the dark wall of the forest. “He always knows. No matter what we do, he always knows. He’s always there.”
“He got lucky,” she repeated, the lie stinging her lips as it left. “Or, or he figured it out, somehow. I don’t know. This is no time to—”
“Nobody’s that lucky,” Ben moaned, unhearing. “And nobody’s that smart.” His hands tore at his hair, swiped at his face as though he were tearing off a mask. “Don’t you get it?” he howled. “It’s one of us. It has to be one of us. How else could he see us coming? How else could he know?”
Kait stared at him. Her mind raced—she could hear Alice’s breath start to quicken beside her, feel the darkness closing in, falling from the sky like descending fog. Ben took a step back from them, into the snow-covered undergrowth. Another step, or maybe another, and he’d disappear. Oh, God, it was starting, it was happening already… Kait flicked her gaze left and right, expecting to see Riley among the shadows of the trees, a hundred Rileys waiting in the darkness, watching through bloodshot, hollow eyes. She waited for bare arms to wiggle out from the shadows, to pull Ben away from them into a tight and unbreakable embrace….
“We’re gonna die out here,” he was saying, making fists in his hair. “God Almighty, we’re gonna die out here…”
“Truth or Dare,” she blurted suddenly.
Ben’s head whipped toward her. He was too far away now; she could not see his face, but she could imagine his expression, incomprehension written in the tilt of his head, the slack droop of his broad shoulders. His lips moved, but the snow seemed to swallow his voice. Only the barest whisper reached her ears, one single clear word:
“…What?”
“You think he’s still got control of one of us,” she said, holding her voice level, even though it took all the strength of her will to accomplish it. “Well, fine. Let’s find out, then. Let’s find out who it is.”
Without looking at him again, she stepped over the rolled-up rug and eased her weight down onto it, trying to clear her head, trying not to think about what was wrapped up inside, trying hard not to picture Cormac’s hole of a neck flopping like a fish’s lips as his cold, hollow voice floated upward. Trying with all her strength not to look toward the crow-tree, where she knew that horrible, bloody head was watching her from the fork, slack-jawed and grinning its open-mouthed, lipless grin. She crossed her ankles demurely, patting the surface of the carpet beside her, an invitation.
“But I’m not going to play with you all the way over there, Ben,” she told him. “We all need to be together. We all need to be close. It’s what Riley would want. House Rules.”
Ben’s head tilted almost imperceptibly. “We’re gonna die out here,” he repeated, but his voice was thin, unsure. Wavering on the edge.
“We are not going to die,” Kait said firmly. “That’s not how this ends. Everybody lives. Everybody goes home. No substitutions, exchanges, or refunds.”
Ben said nothing. For a long moment, he didn’t even move. Kait kept her eyes down, but in the corner of her vision she could see him, a blank form wavering. Then, with uneven steps, he crossed the clearing. Alice sat down hesitantly on the carpet beside Kait, but Ben leaned a shoulder against a sturdy-looking tree trunk and crossed his arms.
“Fine,” he huffed. “I’m here. Truth.”
“All right,” Kait said—then she froze. The words were there, but they had formed without her bidding them. Another voice, another mind, feeding her lines from just off-stage, from the next screen, the next breath. And they were the right words, yes… But she was afraid of the question. Afraid of the answer.
“I want…” she began again, haltingly. “I want to know…”
There’s your face, Kaitlyn.
“I want to know why you hated me,” she managed to get out. “Not on the trip. I know I’ve been a bitch to you. But before, in January… I know I never tried to be your friend, but you didn’t even know me. We didn’t talk. I don’t think I looked you in the eye the first week I knew you. So what made you…?”
> She trailed off, suddenly deathly aware of the silence. She kept her eyes on the snow under her sneakers, and if it wasn’t for the sound of Alice’s breathing beside her, there would be no reason not to believe that the nightmare was real, that she really was alone in the woods. She waited out the silence, one moment, two, wondering if he’d answer at all.
“I should have known you’d ask that,” Ben said at last.
He straightened a little against the tree, his winter coat scraping off shavings of bark. Kait found herself straightening as well; she wrenched her eyes upward, but his eyes were elsewhere, staring over her head at something only he could see.
“I guess I have to be honest, then,” he began with a nervous chuckle. “I… You’re right. I didn’t know you. I hadn’t even heard of you when Alice and I got together. But then, there you were one day. Like you’d always been there. A part of our life. I didn’t even realize it until then, but that’s how I thought of it. Our life. Maybe it was too soon for it, but that’s how I felt. But as soon as I met you, I knew Alice didn’t feel that way about it. Even that first night, I could see the way she looked at you and I, I started… imagining things. Rotten things. Hateful things. I thought you were going to take her away from me. That you wanted to. That she would let you.”
He rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. “I’m sorry for all of it. You’re right. I didn’t know you. It wasn’t fair.”
Alice let out a small sigh but didn’t speak. She put out one mittened hand, and Ben took hold of it, squeezing it briefly before letting her go. That was enough.
“What about now?” Kait asked. “Do you? Know me, I mean.”
Ben shrugged, then shook his head, seeming to make up his mind. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I wish I did. But I haven’t really been trying very hard yet, have I?”
Something like a smile tickled Kait’s lips. “All right, then,” she said. “I don’t think Lutz coulda come up with something like that. You’re clear—for now.”
She faked a playful jab at Ben’s leg, and the hint of a smile that rippled across his features hit like the sun busting through clouds.
“Me next, then,” Alice ventured, twisting towards Kait. “All right. Truth.”
Again Kait hesitated. The next question was harder—but again the words seemed to thrust forward without her bidding them. And she could feel a strange sensation tickling along the skin of her right hand. It was like the pressure of another hand, knotting finger through finger, a hand with long fingernails and a warm, firm grip.
Ask, whispered a voice—not Jill Cicero’s voice, and not so close. No, that wasn’t true. It was closer. This was the wind. The breath in her lungs. The pulse of her blood.
Ask her. The truth won’t hurt you. The truth can never hurt you.
See for yourself, Kaitlyn.
Kait closed her hand on nothing. “I wanted to ask this before,” she said, shaking the cold out of her shoulders. “Last night, I was working up to it. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to know the answer, I just wanted to ask it for the asking. Alice, are you… angry with me?”
Alice’s face furrowed. “For what?” Kait only shrugged. “Oh, Kaity… Of course not. I don’t… I mean, I wouldn’t be…”
A shadow crossed her eyes, and she didn’t speak for several seconds.
“You were my best friend,” she began again in a softer voice. “But there was always more to it than that, wasn’t there? Even when we were little girls. We were never really equals. And I was okay with it. I thought, of course it would be like that. You were… you. And I was a mess. I depended on you, but you never needed anybody for anything. You were your own person in a way I could never be. But you always wanted me around you, and that made me feel like, like the luckiest person on the whole planet. And I loved that about you, that you could make me feel like that, without even trying to, without even realizing you were doing it. I… I think I might have even been in love with you, for a little while. I didn’t know what it meant then. I still don’t. It didn’t have a name in my head.”
Then her eyes hardened up, and she stared at the snow under her boots as though she would melt right through it.
“But then Lutz showed up,” she continued, “and it felt like you’d cracked the world on top of my head. Suddenly I couldn’t find you. You wouldn’t call, wouldn’t text… I never saw you in class or anywhere on campus. You left me behind—and everything I’d ever felt about you got all twisted up inside of me. I spent the first two months missing you, but I spent the next two really hating your guts. But I didn’t hate you because you were sleeping with a monster. None of this had happened yet. I hated you because he wasn’t me.”
There were two wet tracks running down Alice’s face now, but they stopped only halfway down, like the points of blunted teeth. “So—am I angry with you?” she asked. “What kind of question is that? When you came back, I thought I would feel… better. Better than this. But I just felt, feel, greedy. Like I want to keep you all to myself. Like I never want to let you out of my sight again. How messed up is that? I’m not angry, Kaity… But things aren’t all right between us, either. Maybe they never really were.”
Kait stared at her friend. The whole of her chest cavity felt heavy, swelling with ineffable feeling for this girl as time slowed to a silent crawl around them. She could not think of anything to say. There were a hundred things she wanted to say. Her toes curled in her sneakers, and she thought that if only one of them would look away that the spell would be broken, that she could speak and tell Alice Gorchuck everything, give voice to the cry of the strange and trembling thing clawing its way free inside of her. But Alice didn’t even blink. She gazed back steadily into Kait’s eyes, her cheeks glistening faintly—and it was only then that Kait realized her own eyes were streaming too. Her weeping made no sound; it only ran down her face like rain on a window, stinging and cold.
“I’m sorry,” she said. She sniffed, wiped mucus, sniffed again. “I’m sorry I made you feel that way. I never knew you…” She shut her mouth on another lie, opened with the truth. “I wanted to make it up to you,” she said. “I’ve been trying so damned hard to make it up to you. But I guess I never really understood what I’d done, until now.”
“Well?” Alice said, a note of worry creeping into her voice. “Do I pass?”
Kait managed a nod. “You pass,” she murmured. “It’s you. It’s really you.”
It’s always been you.
She caught Ben’s eye almost by accident. His face was flushed red up to the roots of his hair, but when he caught her staring, he shrugged and offered a brave smile before averting his eyes. “Not that I’m not having the time of my life right now,” he said, “but we should probably think about getting that thing in the lake, huh? Remember that we might have to break through some ice before we’re done.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Alice said, the spell broken at last.
She slapped her knees and stood, offering a mittened hand to Kait. But Kait didn’t take it. Her head was still on spin-cycle, shaking her thoughts to pieces.
I think I might have been in love with you.
“Let’s go, then,” she managed to say, shifting her weight to stand.
“Wait a minute,” Ben said quickly. “The game’s not over. You never answered.”
Alice blinked twice. “Oh… Right!” she said. “I guess that’s fair. Truth or Dare, Kaity.”
“Don’t call me that,” Kait replied automatically. Her face felt tight, like a blush but without any of the heat. “Sorry. Er… Truth, I guess.”
She could hardly catch breath. The air felt too heavy to breathe. The cold had retreated from her, leaving her numb and slow and distant. She could hear Ben asking something, but the words had to trickle down through layers to reach her.
“It’s the obvious question, really,” he was saying. “One I’ve been trying to figure all damn weekend. How’d you end up with a creepo like Lutz Visgara, anyhow?”
For a moment her lips moved without her voice attached to them; the words came on a delay, echoing. “He…” she tried. For a moment, she forgot the question. “He…”
But the world was tilting. The treetops slanted towards her, the darkening sky whirling overhead like a planetarium’s bowled ceiling. Her eyes did not close, but her vision sealed off just the same, and then she was floating away into that dark gray sky, tumbling slowly, her senses fading into television static.
“Oh, my God…” somebody screamed. “Catch her! Catch her!”
She didn’t know whose voice it was. She didn’t know anything at all.
Chapter 19
Flesh
He was the Alice-body. He was curled in the front seat of the station wagon.
He was the Ben-body. He was sleeping beside her in the cabin’s double bed.
He was the Riley-body. He inhaled sweet nicotine smoke under cold, unfamiliar stars.
He was the Lutz-body. He was waiting in the flesh among the trees, peering through frosted windows. He watched the empty world turn against him through another pair of unblinking eyes, and another and another and another.
The change was easy. A touch, a mental twitch, a chemical flashpoint—then the surging, pleasurable warmth of a new skin, eyes flickering open, the flesh smooth and welcoming. There was no effort, no expenditure of power. He had taken a dozen bodies this week alone, perhaps more. Now he would take one more, and one more besides, and then he and Heart-Brecker would come together and rest. Then the flesh would welcome them both. They would walk out together into the bright and empty world, and they would never come back.
He was the Riley-body, loping barefoot through the snow, sure-footed as a deer, not feeling the cold. The bleeding had stopped from the hole in the back of the skull, and the pain—the ecstatic, mind-scrambling blast when the bullet had passed through the brain case—was gone, but he could only see through the one eye. There was a hole in his vision like a cigarette burn. His Ben-body and his Alice-body were back at the cabin, empty and idling, like a car left running in a parking lot. They would keep. Or perhaps they had already started down into the valley to dispose of his Cormac-body, his fallen timber, the flesh ruined but not unusable. He remembered being the Jill-body, and he shivered in anticipation, deep in the flesh, in the hollow bones. Despite the cold, the Riley-body did not shiver with him.
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