The Unleashed
Page 1
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First published in the United States of America by Razorbill,
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Vega, Danielle, author.
Title: The unleashed / Danielle Vega.
Description: New York : Razorbill, [2020] | Series: The haunted ; book 2 | Audience: Ages 14+.
Summary: “Hendricks discovers that even though Steele House is gone, the hauntings in Drearfield are far from over—and it's up to her to stop them”—Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020002315 | ISBN 9780451481498 (hardcover)
ISBN 9780451481504 (ebook)
Subjects: CYAC: Ghosts—Fiction. | Demonology—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction.
Dating (Social customs)—Fiction. | Family life—New York (State)—Fiction.
New York (State)—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.V43 Unl 2020 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020002315
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
pid_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
PROLOGUE
The clock beside Samantha Davidson’s bed read 3:17 a.m.
Then 3:18 a.m.
3:19 a.m. 3:20.
9:22.
Samantha blinked. The clock didn’t read 9:22, of course. It read 3:21. She groaned. Her eyelids felt gluey. Heavy. Forty-nine was too old for insomnia, she thought. Her body wouldn’t be able to take much more of this. But whenever she closed her eyes and tried to tell her spinning brain to just shut up and go to sleep, the still, dark world around her seemed to . . .
Change.
It was only small things. The little dorm room where she slept was already small and stuffy, but when her eyes were closed, she could swear that the walls inched a little closer, that the ceiling sunk lower, that the floor beneath her narrow twin bed shifted in place. The air felt heavy. It felt like someone was holding their breath, watching her.
Her heart beat hard against her chest. She opened her eyes again, fumbling beneath the sheets until her fingers touched the handle of the knife she kept tucked between her mattress and box spring.
It was only a butter knife. Longwood Farm didn’t allow its residents anything sharper than that. But still. It made her feel better, safer. A butter knife could do a lot of damage, if you put enough muscle behind it.
Samantha curled her fingers around the cool metal handle and, without realizing what she was doing, began to hum under her breath. The words to an old Prince song floated through her head.
The woman in the bunk next to her groaned and turned over in her sleep. She was new to the community, in for depression. Samantha was in for schizoaffective disorder. Technically. What she really had wasn’t so easily diagnosed.
She pressed her lips together, heat rising in her cheeks. She’d had that song stuck in her head for more than thirty years. She hardly even noticed when she started humming it, anymore.
Stop it, she told herself. Go to sleep.
She closed her eyes.
Maybe I’m just too . . .
She opened her eyes. She’d definitely heard that. Had she started humming again? A glance at the next bunk told her no, she hadn’t. Her roommate was now fast asleep, mouth slightly open, snoring softly, even as the music filled the room and grew louder, practically pulsing off the walls, and drifting down the hall.
Samantha sat up, looked toward the door. She squinted. Just there, in the inch of space between the bottom of the closed door and the scarred, wooden floorboards, she saw a kind of dizzy, shifting light. It danced across the floor outside her dorm, casting off rainbow shards of color.
Samantha felt a bead of sweat drip down her back to the base of her spine.
That light . . . It was like the light of a disco ball.
She put one foot on the floor, and then the other.
It’s not real, she told herself. It’s the disease, it’s all in your head. Her doctors had spent thirty-two years drilling those lies into her, and she’d never once believed them, so it was hard to convince herself that they were true now.
She crept toward the door and pressed her ear to the wood.
The music was still out there. Maybe I’m just like my father . . .
All in your head, she told herself again. She tightened her grip on the little butter knife. Or maybe you’re dreaming. Maybe you finally fell asleep, and now you’re dreaming of your senior prom . . .
That would’ve been a logical thing to think, except that Samantha had barely slept in over three decades, and when she had, she’d never dreamed.
Something moved over her shoulder. It was light as a feather’s brush, barely there at all. Samantha flinched and went to swat it away, thinking a bug must’ve gotten in through the window.
But it wasn’t a bug. It was a single piece of confetti. Samantha held it on the tip of her finger and thought of him. His terrible face, his rasp of a voice.
I’ll be back for you.
Acid rose in her throat. She pushed the door open and stepped into the hall.
Samantha Davidson had lived at Longwood Farm her entire adult life, and she knew every inch of its halls by heart. Tonight, th
ey were different. Blue and purple streamers hung from the ceiling, and confetti blanketed the floor. It was the same shiny, silvery confetti that had landed on Samantha’s shoulder back in her dorm. Empty plastic cups rolled along beside the walls, giving Samantha the feeling that other people had been here, that she’d just missed them, and now they were waiting for her somewhere deeper in the building. A disco ball spun above, sending light dancing around her.
Maybe I’m . . . Samantha’s pulse thudded in her ears. She sensed movement and whirled around to look down the dark corridor behind her. There was nothing, and yet there was a strange twitch in the corner of her eye, like whatever was there had leapt back into the shadows the moment she’d turned.
Her right hand was sweating around the handle of her knife. She switched it to her left and went to wipe her palm against her cotton robe—then froze.
She was no longer wearing her robe. Instead, a white gown with tiered skirts floated around her feet, the hem dragging along the floor. Her arms and shoulders were bare, and when she went to touch her hair, she found that it’d been twisted into a complicated bun.
Her legs swayed with fear. She could hardly keep hold of her knife. Suddenly, she realized what was happening. After thirty-two years of waiting, it was finally time. The taste of dread filled her mouth, but there was nothing she could do. It was much too late.
She turned and he was there. It was as though he had appeared from the darkness, shadows still curling around his arms and legs, caressing him. His eyes were lit with a black, murderous glow, and his mouth was twisted in a familiar, garish grin.
He had his head bowed, and Samantha knew he was preparing to run full tilt toward her. She had a split second to decide what to do: either she could let him take her, or she could run, too.
Just as he took his first step, she turned and raced for the opposite end of the hall.
His voice echoed behind her, barely audible over the music. “I told you I’d be back.”
She was running as fast as she could, but it still felt much too slow. It had been so long since she’d run. Her legs were like lead, her joints creaky from not being used.
The floor rumbled beneath her. He was getting closer.
Samantha pushed herself forward, chest bursting, and veered into another hallway. She saw a window: dead end.
No.
She didn’t stop running but pumped her legs faster. She was only on the second floor. She could survive that jump. There was no time to struggle with the latch. She threw her arms over her face and barreled into the window.
A shriek escaped her as the sound of breaking glass filled the air. She was falling now, tumbling head over feet. The ground rushed toward her—
She still might’ve survived. The ceilings in the dorms weren’t very high, and so the second floor wasn’t that far above the ground. If she’d landed right, she might’ve gotten away with a broken wrist or a sprained ankle.
But Samantha was still holding the butter knife. As she spun toward the ground, she struggled to get her hands beneath her, to cushion the fall and, in doing so, she managed to arrange the knife so that it pointed directly beneath her ribs. When she landed, the ground pushed the blade right through skin and muscle, between two of her ribs and through her chest.
She released a single, dull ah as the knife cut into her. She opened and closed her mouth, blood oozing up between her teeth. She was surprised by the feeling that flooded through her: not horror but relief.
It had happened finally, and now she didn’t have to dread it anymore. Now she didn’t have to worry about anything. It was time to sleep.
Seconds later, she was gone.
Above, moonlight glinted off the broken glass still clinging to the window frame. But the hall inside was dark.
Three months later . . .
CHAPTER
1
Hendricks Becker-O’Malley and Portia Russell huddled inside Raven’s bedroom, the entire Drearford High track team crowded around them, all of them singing in off-key, faltering voices.
“Happy birthday, dear Raven . . .”
Portia held out a giant cookie cake from Mae’s Treats & Things, the words HAPPY SEVENTEENTH, RAVEN written across the chocolate chips in strawberry-pink frosting. This was the moment that the birthday girl herself should’ve leaned over the cake, one hand holding back her glossy black hair, the flickering candlelight making her skin all glowy and Instagram-perfect. They should’ve clapped and cheered as she blew out the candles, her eyes closed for a second longer than necessary as she made a wish for her seventeenth year.
But none of that was going to happen, because the birthday girl was in a coma.
Raven was lying in the middle of the room, in a hospital bed her mother had managed to rent from the Drearford Medical Center, where she worked as a nurse practitioner. Raven’s skin was pale and gray, and her long black hair—hair that she had always taken so much pride in—was tied up in a messy knot on top of her head, out of the way of the tubes trailing into her mouth and nose. Raven wasn’t wearing her octagon-shaped glasses, and her blue, paper-thin pajamas looked somber compared to the brightly colored vintage clothes and beaded jewelry Hendricks was used to seeing her in.
Hendricks shifted her stance as she stared down at her friend. It was hard to keep her fake smile fixed in place. Three months ago, Raven had been badly hurt at a party at Hendricks’s old house, and she’d been in a coma ever since. It was impossible for Hendricks not to feel responsible.
“Happy birthday to you,” they finished together.
Machines beeped around them, sounding ominous in the sudden silence that filled the room.
After a long, awkward beat, Portia cleared her throat. “O-kay,” she said, her voice a touch too cheery. “Let’s blow out the candles and make a wish for Raven! Hendricks? A little help?”
Hendricks felt a jolt move through her as every set of eyes in the room fixed on her face. Did her smile look okay? She didn’t want to look too happy, but she didn’t want to look as miserable as she felt, either. Her cheeks felt suddenly stiff, her smile comically wide.
She leaned forward with Portia, and the two of them blew out the candles together, plunging the room in darkness. People cheered and clapped, but it was that kind of fake cheering that was worse than if they’d just stayed silent.
Hendricks gritted her teeth to keep from shivering as Portia fumbled with the lamp by Raven’s bed. She was freezing. It shouldn’t even be this cold—they were inside, after all—but Raven’s mom kept the window cracked open so Raven could get some fresh air, and Hendricks hadn’t dressed appropriately for the forty-degree day.
It had been the kind of clear, sunny May morning that tricked you into thinking spring was finally here. Hendricks had taken one look outside, at the bright, beaming sun and Technicolor-blue sky, and pulled her favorite vintage jean jacket out of storage without bothering to check the weather. She’d even felt a brief lift of optimism as she’d tugged on a pair of red Converse sneakers without any socks. Her first horrible gray winter in Drearford was behind her.
Maybe today, finally, things would start to feel a little better.
Her good mood had lasted exactly as long as it had taken to walk the half block from her mom’s car to Raven’s house, shivering like crazy the whole time, because it might be sunny, but it was still cold.
Once inside, she found that the only people who’d shown up to Raven’s big birthday party were Portia; Portia’s girlfriend, Vi; Connor; and Connor’s entire track team.
Looking around, her eyes ticking off the tight smiles and distant expressions of the rest of the track team, Hendricks had a horrible feeling that Connor had bribed them to come.
Which made sense. Raven had a lot of friends at Drearford High, but three months was a long time to stay positive, and Hendricks had noticed that most of those friends had stopped coming by Raven’s
house to check on her or bringing her up in conversation. Owen, the boy Raven had almost had a thing with, had started seeing someone else, a sophomore girl who wasn’t nearly as cool as Raven, in Hendricks’s opinion, and everyone else had taken to saying Raven’s name in a whispered tone, like she was already dead. If they bothered mentioning her at all.
It was the reason Portia had wanted to throw a party in the first place.
“It’ll be festive!” she’d said, her eyes getting that kind of manic gleam they sometimes did when she had an idea Hendricks knew she wasn’t going to drop. “It’s her seventeenth birthday, we have to do something. We can have streamers and cake and music. We need the party for—for morale!”
Whatever the party was doing, it definitely wasn’t improving morale. Streamers drooped from the ceiling and spilled in piles onto the floor, along with half a dozen balloons. Hendricks figured Portia had meant for it to look arty, but it just looked sad, like they’d gotten bored of decorating the bedroom halfway through and hadn’t bothered finishing. Portia had bought the brightest colors she could find at the Party Town in Hudson—lipstick pinks and neon greens and sunshiny yellows—but the light in here somehow turned it all drab.
Connor and his friends were all shuffling around awkwardly, and there was a ton of hospital equipment crowding Raven’s beds, beeping machines and IVs with trailing tubes, and something drooping out from beneath Raven’s sheets—something that looked a lot like a catheter—that was Hendricks was trying very hard to pretend she hadn’t noticed.
Raven looked so much smaller lying there on that cot than she ever had in real life. Hendricks couldn’t imagine that she would want any of them standing here, gawking at her, when she was like this.
“Who wants to play Truth or Dare?” Portia asked. Her voice was the same as it had been earlier: a touch too high and fake cheery, the same voice you’d use with a toddler. She alone had dressed up for the occasion, in a sparkly, sequined dress layered over a pair of black leggings and combat boots. She had a cone-shaped hat with the words PARTY PRINCESS written across it in glitter, and she was holding a kazoo.