Blood, screams, tears, begging, and death all came back to him in brutal slow motion. “I deserve this,” he realized.
The rain stopped. Aaron blinked at the sudden silence, deafening in its wrongness, then his mouth dropped open. Light fractured and glittered off the frozen droplets hanging in the sky.
The pitter-patter of raindrops began anew, but the droplets didn’t move. They hung, suspended in the air. Then the dripping sound morphed into the rush of rainfall, and the droplets vibrated before they started moving again. But they moved in the wrong direction. The rain fell up.
“Holy hell,” Aaron craned is neck to look up, forgetting all about the voice in the empty car.
You’re driving! The sensible part of his mind reminded him. He jerked his eyes back to the road. A slim figure stood in front of him. Before he could stop himself, he swerved. Tires squealed, the car spun. Then, with a splintering crash, the car slammed into a grove of trees, flattening around him instantly.
I’m not dead. His harsh breathing filled his ears as the chaos of the crash melted into silence. Humming. He could hear someone humming a haunting melody. “No,” he gasped. “Please, no.”
The headlights illuminated the slim figure moving between the bits of wrecked metal with a familiar gait.
“It’s you,” he whispered. “But why?”
When it knelt, looking him in the eye, everything inside of Aaron went cold. The eyes looked familiar, but the soul looking out of them didn’t. “What are you?”
The creature flashed its teeth in a savage smile, both familiar and strange. “Everything you asked for and more.”
Aaron shuddered at the sound of its voice. It replicated the inflection and speech pattern perfectly, but something about the cadence sounded off.
“You know what to do.” The creature handed him a jagged piece of metal.
He did, didn’t he? “Stop.” Aaron’s fingers closed around the cold metallic shard. “Don’t do this!” His hand shook as it drew back of its own accord. “Please, stop!” His hand tensed, then plunged the shrapnel into his upper arm.
Aaron howled in pain as he ripped the metal out of his flesh. Blood sprayed across the windshield. The creature grabbed his shoulders and yanked him through the too-small window. His body broke and shattered to fit through the frame.
It growled, its eyes sparkling with a feral delight as it put its lips to the stream of blood.
Aaron kept waiting for shock to knock him out. With all that blood, he figured he’d bleed to death in a matter of seconds. A quick death, albeit a painful one. But Aaron felt each grunt and sigh from the creature as it buried its face in his flesh and drained him of blood with gleeful gluttony. His body went cold; his nerves died in a screaming blaze of agony; his heart spasmed and stopped; and still, he felt the pain. It drank and drank while Aaron twitched and died. But death was only the beginning.
The creature released him and stood, brushing itself off as Aaron’s body fell limply against the twisted frame of the car. Aaron tried to cry out, but his voice no longer responded to the impulses of his mind. The creature vanished into shadows, leaving Aaron broken, mangled, drained, and yet somehow still aware.
Time passed in a haze as his body grew cold and stiff around him. Headlights passed over the wreck, slowed, stopped. Footsteps, a hushed phone call. Flashing lights glittered against the wet pavement. Gloved hands, then bits of chilled metal probed at his flesh. Someone closed Aaron’s eyes, and darkness overtook him. A voice pronounced him dead, and the full horror of the situation hit him. What would happen when he started to rot? Would they do an autopsy? Embalm him? Cremate him? At what point would the pain stop? What happened if it never did?
“Aw man, I hate when it’s a kid,” one EMT said to another, tucking plastic fabric around Aaron.
“Yeah, you never get used to it,” the other said. “But it looks like he went quick. See.” A gloved finger traced over Aaron’s upper arm. “Something went clean through the brachial artery. He probably didn’t feel a thing.”
The EMT zipped the body bag, oblivious to the corpse’s silent screams.
Chapter 35: Tess
Sunday, October 2nd
ROUGH HANDS DUG at the flesh under my arms as someone half-carried, half-dragged me across the carpet of leaves, twigs, and rocks.
No, I thought, panic welling up within me as I willed myself to wake up. Not these memories. I didn’t want to remember the terror of being unable to move. Something pricked through the skin of my thigh and sliced down my leg as the hands impatiently yanked me through the brambles.
Our scars remind us the past is real . . . Aaron sang.
Another set of footsteps approached. The woods thinned. The scent of smoke filled the air as we drew closer to the bonfire.
“Dude, what the fuck?” Aaron moved Josh aside and grabbed at me, lifting me up and slinging me over broad shoulders. My shirt slid up, turning inside out and flopping over my head. Aaron’s shoulder blade dug into my stomach, making it impossible for me to take more than the shallowest of breaths.
“She weighs what? A hundred pounds soaking wet? Look at this, you can count her ribs.” His hand ran down my back, tugging Josh’s t-shirt back into place. I tried to squirm away from his touch, but my body didn’t even twitch.
“Yeah, two miles uphill,” Josh groused, falling into step beside him.
“Well, whose idea was that? Did you guys go swimming? Here? There are water moccasins and, like, bears and shit. Plus, it’s fucking cold. Where are her clothes?”
“I couldn’t find them. Don’t give me that look, it was dark! Besides, it’s not that cold.”
“Says the guy in a jacket.” Aaron stopped and lowered me to the ground to wrap his jacket around me before scooping me back up. “Christ, man, you’re such an asshole. I’m surprised you even thought to give her your shirt. Grab a flashlight and go find her clothes. She might not remember much, but she’ll notice if she wakes up practically naked.”
Panic clawed at my chest as I tried to make my body cooperate. But I couldn’t make myself move. Whatever they did next, I wouldn’t be able to stop them.
“We’ll find them after. It’s almost time for the eclipse.”
Aaron set me on the ground, not ungently, near the fire, and eventually my violent shivering eased. I faded in and out of awareness. The next time I came to, I found myself looking into David Hendrix’s eyes.
The stars do not matter now, put out every one.
“You sure you want to do this again?” He looked me up and down, hand running over my skin. “I can think of way better uses of our time.” His unspoken suggestion sent shivers up my spine.
“Nice.” Matt moved the jacket aside and snapped a few photos. He yanked up my shirt and took a few more.
“Knock that off.” Liam moved between us, fixing my shirt then tilting my face back and forth. His fingers probed at my throat, feeling for a pulse. “I don’t like this. She’s a lot lighter than I thought, and this stuff is really not meant to be mixed with alcohol. How much did she drink?”
“I don’t know,” Josh grunted from somewhere to my left. He sounded like he was moving something heavy. “A couple cups? Hey, someone give me a hand with this.”
“That too much for you, too?” Aaron mocked. “Hey guys, don’t let me forget to tell Coach to replace Worthington’s weights with inflatables. We can’t let our star player overexert himself.”
“Shut up,” Josh snapped. “I’m too drunk to deal with your shit.”
“Can’t hold your alcohol either?”
Liam peeled off his jacket to cover my legs, then snapped his fingers to get Josh’s attention. “Give me that.”
Josh grumbled and tossed Liam his jacket.
“How long will she be out?” Adam knelt over me, his head tilted as he peered into my
face. “She doesn’t look like she’s asleep. She’s staring at me.”
“She’s not out.” Liam put a bunched-up jacket under my head. “It’s supposed to keep you, like, aware of everything. She just can’t respond.”
“Really? That’s fucked up.”
“She won’t remember.”
“Are you sure?” Chris demanded. “She lives next door to the sheriff.”
Liam motioned for Chris’s jacket and draped it over me. “It depends on how her body metabolizes the pills, if she’s on anything else, or—”
“It would be her word against all of ours,” Josh reminded them. His words sounded practiced, like they’d talked through this all before, and he was tired of explaining something so simple. “She got drunk and passed out. Nothing more to it, right?”
Oh, God. What were they going to do to me? Tears burned at my throat, making it that much harder to breathe. I wanted to go home. This isn’t real, Tess. You’re dreaming, I reminded myself. You survived this. Whatever they do next, you’ll make it through. Just wake up and it’ll all go away. Wake. Up.
But I couldn’t wake up. I couldn’t even remember falling asleep. What if I never had? What if this whole time I’d been lying in a drug-induced haze on the forest floor, imagining I was home safe? Magical healing powers. The sheriff taking me in. We’d never figured out how I got home from the bonfire. Maybe I never did. God, wouldn’t that just make too much sense?
Stop. You’re freaking yourself out. You’re safe. You’re in Derrick’s house. You’re completely safe.
But what if I wasn’t?
I’m not insane, I’m not insane. Laughter filled the air, and suddenly I stood before the wreckage of Aaron’s Mitsubishi. Glass glittered on the dark pavement.
The football players moved something in a great rustle of leaves. Twigs cracked. Conversation and laughter filled the air. They were laughing. I was lying here, terrified out of my mind, and they were laughing.
“I dunno man, it says virgin blood,” Matt said. “So like, does it need to come from there, or—”
From where? My heart raced in panic, and I tried again desperately to move. To get away.
“What are you gonna do, man?” Harrison snickered. “Stab her in the—”
“Yeah, I’ll take a stab at her,” Matt said and almost everyone laughed.
My heart slammed so hard in my chest, my vision blurred.
Michael’s face screwed up like he was trying really hard to think, but thoughts were hard. “Isn’t the whole point of this that she’s a virgin?”
Whole point of what?
“She can’t be a virgin,” Ryan objected. “Come on, man, we’ve all heard the rumors. Besides, I overheard Mrs. Atkins talking about how Derrick Hernandez knocked her up.”
Derrick. Tears rolled down my cheeks, burning at my skin, but I couldn’t do anything about them.
“What?” A chorus of disbelieving voices broke into snickers and exclamations of disbelief.
Ryan took a swig of his beer. “It’s all over school. Felicity heard Mrs. Atkins telling one of the teachers Tess was late this morning because she was getting an abortion.”
“This morning?” Josh’s voice couldn’t sound more condescending if he tried. “Bullshit. Derrick Hernandez is stuck so far in the friend zone, he couldn’t find his way out with a map and a flashlight.”
“But what if she’s not—”
“Virgin blood just means blood that’s never been used in a ritual before, dumb ass,” David snapped. “It doesn’t actually have to be from an actual virgin or from . . .” He shifted, looking uncomfortable. “Virgin parts.”
“How the hell would you know?” Harrison demanded.
He rubbed the back of his neck and gave a shrug. “I saw it on Tumblr.”
“Oh,” Harrison laughed. “Well, in the unlikely event everything you’ve read online isn’t true, maybe . . . stabbing her would be counterproductive.”
“I think the word you’re looking for is rape.” Liam moved in front of me, glaring the team down until they all shifted uncomfortably.
“Aw, come on, man, I—”
“Call it what it is,” Liam insisted. “You touch her like that, if any of us do, we’re going to end up on a list. Assuming Josh hasn’t already put us on one.”
“Hey, I stopped when she asked me to.”
“You never should have started, not with what we gave her.”
“She seemed like she was into it before she started crying and shit.”
“None of us signed on for what you did to her. I only gave you the pills because you said no one would get hurt.”
A vision of Liam’s head rolling across the forest floor made my stomach clench. Did they do that to him because he spoke out? If he really meant this, he would have stepped up an hour ago.
“Would you relax?” Josh asked. “She’s not going to remember anyway.”
I tried to crane my neck to see them, but I still couldn’t make myself move. Above me, a shadow overtook the moon.
“We can’t use her actual blood, that’s how you spread stuff. We don’t know where she’s been.”
“Dude, we just established she’s a virgin.”
“I’m sorry, did I miss your graduation from medical school? Or is the word of a drugged, unconscious chick law now?”
“Why are we talking about blood?” someone else asked. I couldn’t tell who was speaking anymore. Their voices blurred together, indistinct, the words more impressions than sound waves. “We’ve never actually used blood before.”
“But we want this to work, don’t we? It’s a big game tomorrow.”
“It doesn’t actually work. It’s like a . . . what is it? Placebo effect. We believe; therefore, it does stuff.”
“Even if that’s true, what happens if we believe we cheaped out on the ritual? Does that make us lose?”
“No game is worth getting AIDS.”
My head filled with static and high-pitched tones as panic, pure and primal rushed through me. Take a breath. They’re not going to kill you. Otherwise, they wouldn’t worry about what you’ll remember.
“Yeah, yeah, that’s a good point. Everyone use your own if you want to get the most out of it, otherwise, Chris, you remembered the ketchup, right?”
I blacked out.
When I came to again, I was on my feet instead of on my back and my hands hurt. Pinpricks of pain stabbed at the meat of my palms as everything below my wrist fell asleep. The sensation surprised me because it made me realize I hadn’t felt anything since Aaron set me down by the fire. Like I hadn’t been in my body, just watching the scene unfold. Only somehow, I hadn’t noticed until right this second.
Dream or drugs? I wondered, trying to turn to look at my hands. But I couldn’t twist around, and for some reason, I couldn’t move my hands in front of me. When I tried, rope bit at my skin.
But I could move. I hadn’t been able to before. My head cleared enough for me to notice weird symbols drawn all over me with something red and sticky.
“Ta nah shay . . .”
I glanced up, taking a surprised breath. The football players stood around me in a circle, chanting, matching symbols drawn on their faces. The drawing. I was dreaming my drawing. No, my drawing was my dream.
Pay attention, there’s something different.
Pay attention? Pay attention? That was the best advice I could give myself right now?
You’re dreaming or remembering. Either way, you can’t change the outcome no matter how hard you try. But you can use what you remember to make them pay.
With great effort, I lifted my head trying to look past my fear and terror and see the details. The symbols looked different. Josh carried an ancient-looking book. Numbers, symbols. Look. Right, jersey numbers. I committed
them to memory, along with their corresponding symbols? Moons?
Dream Tess was not nearly so collected. Her panic overwhelmed me, throwing me right back into the moment.
“What?” I managed to croak out, bewildered and blurry.
Harrison nudged Josh’s shoulder. “Dude, she’s up.”
Josh turned to him, eyes blazing with irritation and chanted louder. They kept chanting as the moon overhead turned red.
“What is this?” My voice rose in panic as Josh drew closer, a match held in his right hand.
“Wait, Josh. What are you doing? Josh!”
He kept coming closer.
“Please!” I shrieked. “Don’t do this! Please! What are you doing! Stop!”
I’m not the one who lit the match.
The match lit. Josh jolted in shock, his face paling as he stared at the flickering flame.
“Okay, Josh, very funny.” Chris gave a nervous laugh. “You said the words, we scared the hell out of her. Just blow that out, and we’ll cut her down.”
“I didn’t—”
The kindling below me burst into flame. I shrieked in panic as heat filled the air.
“Holy shit!” someone cried. “Get her down!”
Josh tried to blow out the match, like that would help, as the rest of the team rushed forward. Whoosh. A wall of flame soared up between us, the garish light obscuring the football players’ horrified faces.
I was going to burn to death! I could actually feel pain. This wasn’t a dream, this was happening. I was going to die.
“Tess!”
“Shit! We have to put this out!”
“What did you do? Josh! What did you do?”
“I didn’t light it, it just happened!” he protested.
They shouted my name, and here and there hands reached through the wall of flame before darting back with pained cries.
“Derrick!” I sobbed. Oh God, I just wanted to wake up. Please let me wake up.
The fire hadn’t touched me yet, but the heat felt blisteringly intense. I howled in pain as my skin dried, cracking, burning. “Make it stop!”
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