“Eddie?” she whispered.
Laughter drifted from behind her. It was a flat, humorless sound. It didn’t sound like Eddie at all. Hendricks whirled around, her heart thudding in her chest. Light bounced off the wall of Portia’s bedroom, the side table, Portia’s sleeping body. There was no one there.
Something slithered up the back of Hendricks’s head, snaking through her hair. Hendricks only had a moment to picture that decayed, rotting finger before it tightened around her skull, sharp fingernails digging deep into her scalp.
Pain exploded through her head. Her mouth hung open in a soundless scream. She could feel fingernails tunneling through her, breaking skin, drawing blood . . .
Those fingers . . . they were so cold. Like raw meat, like death. She wanted to swat it away, but fear and pain were holding her still. Tears filled her eyes. The phone slipping from her fingers and hit the ground with a soft thud. And suddenly, and there was only darkness again.
Breath against her neck. The pain in her scalp intensified as another hand snaked around her throat, tightening.
“Please—” Hendricks choked out. The air left her body in a single whoosh.
And then she was skidding, slamming into the far wall. He had thrown her. There was a throbbing in her back, and the strength in her arms gave out, sending her crashing to the floor. She cringed, trying to push herself back up to all fours. Her arms were shaking like crazy and there was something wet and sticky on her scalp—blood.
A scream tore through the darkness.
“Portia,” Hendricks gasped, crawling toward the bed. She thought she could see make out a figure, some dark shape looming over Portia. It seemed to be hauling her out of the bed as she desperately grabbed at sheets and blankets, kicking.
“Don’t touch me,” Portia shouted, her voice hoarse and terrified. “Let me go! Hendricks . . . help!”
Hendricks saw a flash in the darkness.
A knife.
She ran her hands over the floor, trying to find her phone so that she could see what was going on. Her fingers groped along the floorboards, finding nothing, and more nothing . . .
Footsteps thudded down the hall outside of Portia’s room, and Hendricks heard Portia’s parents calling, “Portia? What’s going on?”
They tried the bedroom door, but it was locked. “Portia! Open up!” her mother said, more forcefully this time.
Hendricks crawled around the floor, the pain from those fingernails still throbbing through her skull, leaving her light-headed. Her hands brushed against her phone and she grasped it, fumbling for the flashlight app, her palms sweaty and slick against the screen—
“Help!” Portia screamed, again. “Let me go—”
The phone’s light flashed on, illuminating black hair and a leather jacket. He had Portia on the ground. He knelt over her, a knife clutched in one hand, the other wrapped around Portia’s chin, holding her cheek against the floor. Portia’s breath was coming in harsh rasps, but otherwise she’d stopped struggling. Her eyes were black with fear.
He lowered his knife to Portia’s skin, the blade hovering over her bruised cheek and the still-healing cut. Hendricks watched as her friend’s face crumpled in pain, a howl shaping her lips. She heard a wet sound, like a blade slicing through raw steak, and then a sort of low spurt that made her stomach turn over.
Blood began to pour down the sides of Portia’s face.
The ghost started to laugh, the sound mingling with Portia’s weak, whimpered cries. It was too horrible to watch. Without thinking about what she was doing, Hendricks charged.
She hit the boy square in the chest, and the two went tumbling across the floor. Hendricks tried to scramble back to her feet, but the ghost grabbed her from behind, pinning both her arms to her sides. Her phone slipped from her fingers, and the light flicked off again.
“Let go,” Hendricks groaned. The ghost chuckled in her ear and only held tighter. A moment later, she felt the cold touch of a blade against her own cheek.
“You want to play, girl?” he whispered. His voice didn’t sound like a voice, but like a harsh, whispered rasp. He pressed the knife deeper against her flesh, leaving her acutely aware of how sharp the edge of the blade was, how he could slice her open with just a twist of his wrist, just like he’d done to Portia—
Hendricks flashed back to Grayson. It was almost as though he was the one behind her, holding her against the wall, whispering into her ear:
Don’t you dare embarrass me here.
Cold fear coursed through her. Hendricks could practically smell the stink of Grayson’s cologne, the lingering, sour scent of beer on his breath. The hands around her wrist, rough and strong, could’ve been his hands—
“Open this door!” Portia’s dad roared from the hall. “Portia, do you hear me?”
Hendricks had made a promised to herself that she’d never be a victim again. She wasn’t going to break it, not for anyone.
The ghost had her arms pressed down her sides, so Hendricks used the only weapon she still had at her disposal—she whipped her head back, crying out when it connected with something solid.
He dropped her, swearing, and she heard a few shuffled thumps as he stumbled back.
Adrenaline pumping through her, Hendricks spun around and kicked wildly into the darkness. Her foot met something solid. She heard a grunt.
The darkness stirred and then went still. Hendricks blinked into the darkness and saw nothing. The room was suddenly quiet, except for the sounds of Portia’s parents still banging at the door.
“Portia? Open up—”
Hendricks felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Her heartbeat thudded in her ears. The silence felt loaded. It was as though something were standing very close to her, holding his breath. This wasn’t over yet.
Hendricks found herself muttering into the darkness, “Come on, I know you’re still there.” Her fingers curled around her damp palms, tightening into fists. I know you’re still here, I know it.
The blood pounding in her ears began to quiet, and now she could hear only her own ragged breath. She looked around the room, frantic, twitching when she saw something glint in the dark. A scream climbed in her throat—
But it was only Portia, kneeling in her bed with a sheet clutched to her chest. Blood still trailed down her cheek, reflecting off the dim light from the moon.
“Is he gone?” Portia whispered.
Hendricks swallowed. She didn’t know. She couldn’t see anything. Maybe he had disappeared. She took a single step toward the bed—
And felt cold fingers close around her throat.
CHAPTER
12
The hand tightened around Hendricks’s throat. She could feel the rough edges of calluses, the pads of fingers pressing into her skin. She lifted her hands, grasping, but the hands held like a vise.
Her breath was coming in shallower and shallower bursts. Her heartbeat had gotten louder, a steady thrum, thrum beating directly into her skull. Her body was screaming.
She opened her mouth, gasping, but she couldn’t get any air into her lungs. The hands gripped tighter. Her head felt thick, cloudy.
She thought she heard a sound like someone pounding on glass. Something in the darkness shifted, and then the hands let go.
Hendricks’s legs gave out beneath her, and she dropped to the ground like a rock. For a moment, she just lay on the floor, desperately trying to catch her breath.
She heard voices, but she found that she couldn’t lift her body. She was too weak. She maneuvered her hands beneath her shoulders and pushed herself up to a crawl, still gasping.
“Who’s there?” she called. She lifted a hand to her throat, cringing. She tried to stand . . .
The lamp beside Portia’s bed suddenly flicked on, casting a dim glow over the room. The sudden brightness made Hendricks cringe. She b
linked a few times, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the light.
Portia was crouched on her bed, sobbing, her eyes wide with terror. Another deep gash cut across her cheek, coming together with the first to form what looked like the pointed end of a triangle. Blood had been smeared all across her face and crusted in her hair.
Hendricks thought of the girl in the library, her mutilated face, the inverted pentagram etched onto her cheek . . . bile flooded her mouth.
Something moved in the corner. Hendricks started, but it wasn’t the ghost. It was . . .
Connor?
He was currently standing outside Portia’s window, pounding against the glass. Hendricks hurried over to the window and threw it open.
“Are you okay?” Connor asked, climbing into Portia’s room. “I was coming over to see Portia, and it looked like you were being attacked but I couldn’t see what it was . . .”
Hendricks blinked at him, trying to form a question, when the door behind her began to shudder again.
“Portia? Open up!” The door knob rattled, and then there was the sound of more pounding.
Portia crawled out of bed, both hands swiping at her face, trying to stop the flow of blood. “Closet!” she mouthed, nodding to a door on the other side of the room.
Connor bounded across the room and slipped into the closet without a word. Hendricks had a fraction of a second to think about how comfortable he seemed to be hiding in girls’ closets before Portia was pushing her inside, too.
“Wait, why do I have to be in the closet?” Hendricks asked.
“Do you honestly think I’m allowed to have girls sleep over?” Portia hissed.
“Your parents don’t know I’m here?”
Portia didn’t answer. She pushed Hendricks into the closet with Connor and quickly closed the door.
Hendricks heard the sound of her footsteps padding across the room, then the creak of a bedroom door opening, followed by Portia’s frantic voice. “I’m sorry! I had a nightmare and I got so freaked out. I didn’t mean to wake you guys up.”
A deep, male voice said, “Portia, your face!”
“I—” The rest of Portia’s words sounded muffled, like she’d stepped into the hallway with her parents and pulled the door shut behind her.
Hendricks closed her eyes, exhaling heavily now that she no longer had to worry about staying quiet. She supposed she could go back into Portia’s room now, but she couldn’t bring herself to move. Her head was still pounding, pain beating at her temples and the back of her skull. She lifted a hand to her scalp and felt something wet and sticky. Blood, but not as much as she’d been expecting. The ghost had barely broken skin.
Sighing, she slid to the closet floor. Hendricks looked around trying to calm herself down. Mindfulness. That was another thing she learned at CTE. “When things get overwhelming, take stock of your surroundings,” one her counselors had said. Hendricks’s breath slowed she took in the details of Portia’s closet. Unsurprisingly, it was monstrous. And color-coded. The wall to Hendricks’s left was covered in a rainbow assortment of hanging dresses and silk shirts and neatly folded sweaters. The wall to her right held shelf after shelf of purses, bags, and . . . Hendricks was pretty sure those colorful round things were hat boxes. What teenage girl needed hat boxes? Directly ahead of her was a small stool, a wall of shoes.
Connor sat on the stool. The closet was big enough that they weren’t exactly nose-to-nose. But still. It was the closest they’d been since the fight.
Her cheeks felt very warm, and she was suddenly aware that she was wearing an oversized T-shirt with no bra beneath. She hunched forward a little and crossed her arms over her chest.
“So,” she whispered, on an exhale.
Connor nodded. “So.”
His cheeks were flushed, and he was studying a lemon-printed sundress with the intensity of a religious scholar looking for meaning behind the pieces of yellow fruit.
“What are you doing here?” Hendricks asked, when she couldn’t stand the silence any longer. Connor shifted on his stool uncomfortably.
“My house is just down the road. Portia and I used to climb into each other’s rooms all the time, when we were kids.” he said. “I was coming over her to . . . uh . . .” He scratched the back of his head, shifting his eyes down to the floor. “I guess I just needed to talk to her.”
“About me?” Hendricks’s cheeks flared as soon as the words were out of her mouth.
“Well, yeah.” Connor glanced up at her, and then back down to the floor again. He sighed deeply. “Look, I feel like an ass about how I talked to you before.”
“It’s fine,” Hendricks said quickly.
“It’s not.” Connor lifted his eyebrows. “I owe you an apology. You’re going through a lot and . . . well, I just wanted to let you know that I can be whatever kind of friend you need right now. Okay?”
Hendricks didn’t know what to say. She felt a little overwhelmed. She knew Connor still had feelings for her, and yet he was willing to put them aside to be there for her as a friend.
She wanted to tell him how much his friendship meant to her, but all she could manage to say was “Okay.”
Connor seemed to hear what she hadn’t said. He nodded, smiling slightly, and looked down at his hands. After a moment, he cleared his throat and whispered, “So. Uh, what the hell was in Portia’s room?”
Hendricks swallowed, trying to think about how to explain. “The séance worked after all. We brought something back.”
Hendricks stumbled on the word something. Connor raised his eyebrows. “What do you mean something?”
“I don’t know.” Hendricks could feel tears clog her throat. She hadn’t realized how upset she was, but now that she thought about it, Portia had a point.
That shape in the darkness . . . it hadn’t seemed like Eddie at all. But it had looked like Eddie. And Ileana had told them he might come back changed. Had she just been fooling herself, to think it wasn’t him?
“The ghost or—or, whatever it was,” Hendricks said, faltering. “I couldn’t see his face, it was way too dark, but he had black hair and he wore all black . . . and . . . .”
Hendricks closed her eyes. She couldn’t keep going. It hurt too much.
“That ghost didn’t seem like Eddie to me,” Connor added. His voice was kind. Hendricks felt a wave of gratitude. “I didn’t know Eddie too well, but from what I remember, he wasn’t mean or hateful, even when he had a reason to be.” Connor pushed a breath out through his teeth. “But the thing that was in here, well, it was different.”
“That’s what I thought, too,” Hendricks said.
“But if it isn’t Eddie, who—”
Before Connor could finish asking the question, the closet door flew open and Portia was standing over them.
“They went to find first aid stuff for my cheek,” she said in a low voice, glancing over her shoulder. “But they’ll be back soon.” Then, her eyes zeroing in on Connor, she added, “What do you mean, you don’t think it was Eddie?
Connor and Hendricks shared a look.
“Come on, Portia,” Connor tried.
“Don’t come-on-Portia me.” Portia frowned. “We just did a séance to call Eddie’s spirit or whatever back from the beyond, and now this shit is happening. What’s your theory?”
“Eddie wasn’t vengeful when he was alive,” Connor pointed out.
“Yeah, Portia, he never mentioned anything to me about wanting to get back at you or anybody else.”
“Like he’s going to talk about me while you guys are sucking face,” Portia snapped back. Both Hendricks and Connor flinched.
“Sorry,” Portia added, softening. “That was a crappy thing to say. But come on, you have to admit that this all makes sense. I’m not proud of it, but I was one of his biggest bullies when he was alive, and now he’s going after me. He
barely touched you, Hendricks.”
Hendricks swallowed, one hand moving to her neck. The skin was tender to the touch. It was going to be black and blue tomorrow. God, what was she going to tell her parents? That a ghost attacked her? They hadn’t believed that the last time she’d tried that explanation.
And Portia was right, sort of. The ghost had seemed interested in her, not Hendricks. He’d brushed Hendricks aside, at first. It was only when Hendricks fought back that he’d seemed to remember she was there.
Hendricks flinched, her fingers brushing a raw spot of skin. That was the thing that was bothering her more than anything else.
When the ghost had remembered she was there, he’d gone in for the kill.
CHAPTER
13
Hendricks wasn’t feeling very hungry as she made her way to Tony’s, the pizza place on Main after school the next day. Dread sloshed around in her stomach. The only reason she was going was because Portia had sent out a group text that afternoon calling “a meeting of the seven.” She’d actually written the seven, like that was a thing.
It was barely three in the afternoon, but the sky above was already dark gray and sludgy. It reminded Hendricks of the dirty snow you found stuck to the bottom of a car. Main Street had mostly emptied out, except for a handful of other students who’d made their way over from Drearford High after the final bell. A few waved at Hendricks and called, “Hey!” as she pushed through the pizza place’s front doors.
Tony’s was a traditional, old-school Italian restaurant, with plastic red-and-white-checked tablecloths, candles wedged into Chianti bottles, and massive framed posters of different shapes of pasta hanging on the brick walls. There was karaoke in the basement on Friday nights, and a few old arcade games slouched against the back wall.
Finn was playing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game while Connor and Blake huddled around him, cheering and groaning.
“Dude, I own you!” Finn shouted, pumping the air with a fist.
Hendricks made her way to the booth next to the games, where Portia and Vi had already gotten settled. To Hendricks’s surprise, there was a large pepperoni pizza sitting on the table before them, untouched.
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