Girl of Nightmares (22 page)

The knife slides out, coated with a faint tinge of purplish blood. As soon as the tip of the blade is clear, the wound expands, curling the skin back in layers, tearing through the faux-fabric of the nightgown. It takes the skin down to the bone and turns the bone to black and then to dust; the entire scattering of muscle, sinew, cloth, and hair takes less than five seconds.

“Don’t ever put my friends in danger again,” I say. Jestine locks eyes with me, defiant as usual. After a few seconds, she nods and apologizes to Carmel. But in those few seconds I saw what she was thinking. She was thinking I was a hypocrite to tell her that.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-ONE

We move the girls’ things into our room, but after that, nobody goes back to sleep. Thomas and Carmel just sit together on his bed, snuggled up and not saying much. Jestine tucks herself into my bed, and I spend the last hours until dawn by the window, sitting in a chair and watching the black spot of the lake.

“That throw was brilliant,” Jestine says to me at one point, maybe trying to make peace, and I make some kind of affirmative noise in my throat, not ready to really talk to her yet. I think she could have fallen back asleep, but feels too guilty to let herself, seeing how shaken up Carmel is. As soon as there is enough light, we start getting ourselves together.

“We’ve already paid,” Jestine says, shoving her pajamas into her pack. “I suppose we could just leave the keys at the bar and head out.”

“You’re sure we’ll make it to the Order by tonight?” Carmel asks, peering out at the expanse of mist and trees. There’s a whole lot of darkness and nothing else out there, and it looks like it might go on forever.

“That’s the plan,” Jestine replies, and we shoulder our backpacks.

We go down the stairs, making as little noise as possible. But I suppose that’s not necessary, considering the ruckus we made at three in the morning. I expected all the lights to come on and for the innkeeper to bang down the door and rush in holding a baseball bat. Except they don’t play baseball in this country. So maybe they would have been holding a cricket bat, or just a big stick, I don’t know.

At the bottom of the steps, I turn and hold my hand out for both sets of keys. I’ll just leave them near the cash register.

“I hope nothing got broken last night.”

The voice is so unexpected that Thomas slips down the last few stairs and Carmel and Jestine have to catch him. It’s the owner of the inn, a stout, dark-gray-haired woman in a chambray shirt. She’s behind the bar, staring at us while she dries glasses with a white towel.

I go to the bar and hold the keys out. “No,” I say. “Nothing got broken. I’m sorry if we woke you. Our friend had a nightmare and everyone sort of overreacted.”

“Overreacted,” she says, and cocks her brow. When she takes the keys, she grabs them, practically snatches them out of my hand. Her voice is a low, rough grumble; she’s got a thick brogue, and the toothpick sticking out of one corner of her mouth doesn’t make it any easier to understand. “I ought to charge you another night’s stay,” she says. “For the extra efforts we’ll be taking from now on.”

“Extra efforts?” I ask.

“Every Scottish inn needs a haunting,” she says, putting down one glass and starting on another. “A story for the tourists. A few roaming footsteps in empty hallways at night.” She levels her eyes at me. “I expect I’ll have to be finding a way to do it myself, from now on.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, and I mean it. My teeth grit at the urge to turn and glare at Jestine, but it wouldn’t do any good. She’d just blink back innocently, not seeing anything wrong. I don’t like the idea of following her through unfamiliar country. Not when she’s clever enough to trick me into breaking my own rules.

*   *   *

“What the hell was that about?” Thomas asks once we’re outside. “How did the innkeeper know?”

Nobody answers. I have no idea. This place is strange. People look at you in one slow wink, and they have a link to magic, like they’re all Merlin’s second cousins once removed. The owner of the inn was an ordinary woman, but talking to her felt like talking to a hobbit. Now, outside, even the chill in the air feels off, and the dark lines of the trees seem too dark. But there isn’t anything to do but follow Jestine, and she takes us down the roughly paved road, where we fill our water bottles in a fountain and then turn off, onto a pebble and gravel path through the woods.

Once we’re moving and the sun comes up higher, finally visible through the peaks of the trees, things seem better. The hiking isn’t hard, just a well-groomed trail and a few rolling hills. People pass us in small groups, on their way back to the Loch and beyond. They all look cheerful, weathered, and normal, outfitted in REI and khaki caps. Birds and small mammals skitter through the underbrush and branches, and Jestine points out a few of the more colorful ones. By the time we stop for a lunch of prepacked fruit and cereal bars, even Carmel’s color has gone back to normal.

“Another few hours on this trail, and then we should leave the path and head through the forest.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“We should be on the trail for half a day, and then we should see the mark,” Jestine replies.

“What’s the mark?”

She shrugs, and the rest of us exchange a look. Carmel asks whether she means the Order, but I know she doesn’t. She doesn’t know what the mark is.

“You said you’d been here before,” I say, and her eyes widen innocently. “You said you knew the way.”

“I said no such thing. I’ve been to the Order before, but I don’t know exactly how to get there, and certainly not on foot.” She tears into a granola bar. The crunching sounds like breaking bones.

I think back. She didn’t actually say it. Gideon said she knew the way. But he probably meant because she was told, not because she’d ever done it.

“How can you have been there and not know where it is? Weren’t you practically raised there?” I ask.

“I was raised by my parents,” she says, giving me the arched eyebrow. “I’ve been to the compound from time to time. But when I went, it was blindfolded.”

Thomas and I look at each other, just to confirm the craziness.

“It’s tradition,” says Jestine, seeing the look. “Not all of us break with it, you know.” I don’t have to ask what that’s supposed to mean.

“You messed up back at the inn, Jestine.”

“Did I? She was dead, and the athame sent her.” She shrugs. “It’s very simple, really.”

“It’s not simple,” I say. “That ghost probably never harmed a living person in its entire afterlife.”

“So? It doesn’t belong here. It’s dead. And don’t look at me like that, like I’m brainwashed. Your morality isn’t the only morality in the world. Just because it’s yours doesn’t mean it’s right.”

“But don’t you wonder about where they might be being sent to?” Thomas asks, in an attempt to keep the conversation reasonable. Because I’m about ready to give her the finger. Or stick my tongue out.

“The athame sends them where they need to be,” she replies.

“Who told you that? The Order?”

Jestine and I lock eyes. She’s going to look away first. Even if my eyeballs have to completely dry out.

“Wait a minute,” Carmel says. “Back on point, are you saying that nobody knows where we’re going?” She looks around; our blank faces serve as confirmation. “And we’re supposed to leave the groomed and maintained trail to go through unmarked forest?”

“There is a mark,” Jestine says calmly.

“What, like a flag or something? Unless there’s a string of them leading through the trees, I’m not comforted.” She looks at me. “You saw out your window this morning. These trees go on for miles. And we don’t even have a compass. People die this way.”

She’s right. People die this way. More frequently than we like to think about. But Gideon knows we’re coming. If we don’t show up on schedule, he’ll send someone looking for us. And besides, in my gut I don’t believe that we
can
get lost. Looking at Jestine, I don’t think she believes we can either. But how do I explain that to Carmel?

“Thomas, you ever in the Boy Scouts?” I ask, and he squints at me. Of course he wasn’t. “Listen, if you want, you can just follow the path back to the inn.”

Thomas tenses at the suggestion, but Carmel crosses her arms over her chest. “I’m not going anywhere,” she says stubbornly. “I just thought it was worth mentioning that this is stupid and we’re probably going to die.”

“Noted,” I say, and Jestine smiles. The smile puts me at ease. She doesn’t hold grudges; you can disagree with her and not become an enemy. I’ve wanted to strangle her for half the time I’ve known her, but I like that.

“We should go soon,” she says. “So we don’t lose the light.”

*   *   *

After another hour and who knows how many more miles, Jestine starts to slow. Every once in a while she stops and looks around the woods in all directions. She thinks we’ve gone far enough. Now she’s getting nervous that the marker won’t be there. When she pulls up at the crest of a small hill, we all take our backpacks off and sit down while she stares. Despite good shoes and being in relatively good shape, we’re all tired. Carmel is rubbing the backs of her knees while Thomas rubs his shoulder. They’re both slightly pale, and clammy.

“There it is,” Jestine says, in a tone that implies she always knew it would be. She turns back to us, triumphant, a wicked gleam in her eyes. Down the path in the trees lining the trail I see it: a black ribbon, tied around a trunk, fifteen feet off the ground.

“We leave the trail there,” she tells us. “And on the other side is the Order. Gideon said it would only be two hours through the woods. Just a few more miles.”

“We can do that,” I say to Thomas and Carmel, and they stand up, looking at the ribbon and trying to overcome their trepidation.

“Maybe the forest floor will be softer at least,” Thomas says.

Jestine smiles. “That’s right. Come on.”

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-TWO

“It’s old-growth forest,” Jestine says, after the scenery changes gradually from meadow and pine to deciduous trees and fallen trunks overrun with moss.

“It’s beautiful,” says Carmel, and she’s right. Trees stretch tall over our heads, and our feet whisper through a blanket of low ferns and moss. Everything in sight is green or gray. Where the soil peeks through, it’s black as pitch. Light filters down through the leaves, bouncing and refracting off their smooth surfaces, painting everything crisp and completely clear. The only sounds come from us, obscene interlopers crunching through with scratchy canvas backpacks and blundering feet.

“Look,” says Thomas. “There’s a sign.”

I glance up. A black, wooden sign has been tacked to one of the trunks. Written in white paint is the phrase:

The world has many beautiful places.

“Sort of weird,” he says, and we shrug.

“It seems humble. Like they know this forest is beautiful, but not the
most
beautiful,” comments Carmel. Jestine smiles at this, but as we pass the sign, something starts to itch in the back of my brain. Images start flipping through my memory, disconnected, made-up images of things I’ve never actually seen, like pictures in a book.

“I know this place,” I say softly, at the exact moment that Thomas points and says, “There’s another one.”

This time the sign reads:

Consider the love of your family.

“That’s a little random,” says Carmel.

“It’s not random at all, if you know where we are,” I say, and all three of them eye me tensely. I don’t know what Gideon was thinking, sending us here. When I see him at the Order, I might just wring his neck. I breathe in deep, and listen; a stark lot of nothing hits my ears. No birdsongs, no scurrying of chipmunk or squirrel legs. Not even the sound of wind. The breeze is choked off by the density of the trees. Beneath the layer of clear air, my nose barely detects it, mixed in with the loam and decay of vegetation. The place is laced with death. It’s someplace that I’ve only heard about from charlatans like Daisy Bristol, a place that’s been relegated to a campfire story.

It’s the Suicide Forest. I’m walking through the fucking Suicide Forest with two witches, and a knife that flashes to the dead like a damn lighthouse.

“Suicide Forest?” Thomas squeaks. “What do you mean ‘suicide forest’?” Which of course triggers an outburst of similarly alarmed questions from Carmel, and even a few from Jestine.

“I mean just what it sounds like,” I reply, staring dismally at the useless painted sign that does virtually nothing to change people’s minds. “This is where people come to die. Or, more accurately, this is where people come to kill themselves. They come from all over the place. To OD, or slit their wrists, or hang.”

“That’s terrible,” Carmel says. She hugs herself and moves closer to Thomas, who sidles closer to her too, looking green enough to match the moss. “Are you sure?”

“Pretty much.”

“Well, it’s horrible. And all they have here is these lame signs? There should be … patrols or … help, or something.”

“I imagine there are patrols,” Jestine says. “Only they’re mainly for collecting bodies, not for preventing the suicides.”

“What do you mean, you imagine?” I ask. “Don’t tell me you didn’t know what we were walking into. If I knew about this halfway around the world, you had to know about it in your own backyard.”

“Well, of course I’ve heard of it,” she says. “From girls at school and the like. I never thought it existed really. It was like the story of the babysitter who answers the phone and the calls have been coming from inside the house. It’s like the boogeyman.”

Thomas shakes his head, but there’s no reason to not believe her. The Suicide Forest isn’t something the police would want publicized. More people would just come to kill themselves.

“I don’t want to cross it,” Carmel declares. “It just … doesn’t feel right. We have to go around.”

“There is no way around,” Jestine says. But of course there has to be. The Suicide Forest can’t be bordered by nothingness. “We have to cross. If we don’t, we might get lost, and you were right when you said there were miles and miles of forest to die in. I don’t fancy winding up one more body in the woods.”