He chuckled, shaking his head. He still hadn’t let go of my hands. “I have an extra charger. You can borrow it when we go back inside.”
“Well, I have to get to my next class in just a few minutes, so –“
“Do you? Your next class? Already?” He glanced at his watch. “You still have thirty minutes, don’t you?”
I pulled my hands back. There was no one else back here. No one came to this courtyard, especially not in the pouring rain. “I’m trying to get there earlier to talk to the professor.”
He nodded slowly. “Right, right. Okay. You’re funny, Rae.” I didn’t think this was funny. Frankly, he didn’t sound very amused either. “Have you been talking to Everly?”
“Everly? No, I…I thought she was missing. I haven’t seen her.”
He smiled widely. “Oh, she’s not missing. There’s no need to use a word like that. Might get people alarmed. She just left home. She’d get these crazy ideas in her head, and end up scaring herself.”
I began to collect my things. “I really do need to go –” He grabbed my arm, hard. I stared at his hand, then back up at his face, and said, “If you don’t fucking let go, I’m going to start screaming.”
He waited a beat before he released me. “Sorry. Sorry, Rae. It’s just…I was worried that maybe Everly had started a rumor, and you’d heard it.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What kind of rumor?”
“She’d come up with really sick stuff, Rae,” he said, leaning close. His breathe smelled weird, like fish. “She had this wild idea that me and Victoria were trying to kill her.” He laughed. “Crazy, see? Who would come up with an idea like that about their own family?”
I nodded. Anything to get him to let me leave. “Yeah, crazy.”
“I just wanted to make sure you didn’t believe something like that,” he said softly. “We’re not like that. We just want you to feel welcome.” His hand, leaning against the bench, had moved closer. His knuckles were touching my thigh. “I just want you to feel at home.”
I got up abruptly, hugging my bag to my chest, my sandwich still sitting on the bench. “Well, I haven’t talked to her, and I’ll let you know if I see her.”
He leaned back on the bench. He wasn’t smiling. He was just staring at me, his eyes moving over me slowly. “Alright. I’ll see you at the Halloween party, right?”
I did my best to smile. “Yeah, of course. Wouldn’t miss it.”
“Good girl.” I shuddered from head to toe. That wasn’t something I ever wanted to hear out of his mouth. “I’ll be seeing you then. Wouldn’t want you to be late to that little meeting with your professor.”
The cabin was so quiet, especially with the rain pouring for days on end. Quiet and lonely. I enjoyed some alone time, and Cheesecake was an affectionate companion, but there was a void he couldn’t fill. I tried to stay occupied with homework. I tried to ignore my growing anxiety about the Halloween party.
I tried not to think of Leon. I tried not to remember how good his arms felt around me.
But when I wasn’t having nightmares of my name being called from long, dark tunnels, I was dreaming of him. Dreaming of his voice, of his lips on mine, of his strong hands holding me. I dreamed of his words, again and again.
Make me stay. It’s enough to drive me to madness, Rae, wanting you so fucking badly.
It may have just been a result of the rain, but the woods around my house were getting quieter. No crickets. No birdsong. No deer in the yard in the early mornings. Just the endless patter of rain, and the trees groaning in the wind.
I was probably just being paranoid, but when I’d go out to my car to leave for class, my neck would prickle as if eyes were on me. But no matter how many times I scanned the trees, there was nothing there.
Nothing I could see.
The severed heads Leon had brought were beginning to fall apart, crumbling and rotting as they fell from their stakes and became one with the soil. With them gone, how long would I be safe? How long would the Eld stay away? I bought more cinnamon and rosemary, and found a shop in town that sold bundles of sage. I called my grandma, and of course she was ecstatic to have me over for Fall break. But that was nearly a month away.
I spent hours after sundown staring out the window into the yard, watching. Waiting, my camera in my hands. I’d play back the footage of Leon sleeping, comforted by the sight of his face. I’d recorded it in hopes of sending it to somebody who could help me, but now I felt strangely protective of it. The closest I got to reaching out to anyone was an email to a local pastor, but all I managed was to write Dear Father Patterson in the body of an email before I deleted it. A priest couldn’t fight monsters.