Come out come out, p.10
Come Out, Come Out, page 10
“Something was taken from us,” Jaq finished.
“And I don’t want to give it back, but I also want to know why. And I think maybe the only place we’ll find any answers is in the woods. Maybe if we went back—”
“No.” Jaq’s voice was a hammer.
She didn’t elaborate, and a soft silence settled between them, buoyed on the whooshing of the falls and the occasional call of an owl from somewhere deep inside the woods.
“What I saw scared me,” Jaq said after a long while. “I think you’re right. It must have been Mal. I may not remember what happened that night in the woods, but I know whatever it was, it was my—our—fault. We made a mistake when we went into the woods last week. Mal’s been waiting for us. And the night of Karima’s party, she got to us, and I don’t think she’s done.”
“What are you saying?” Fern asked, afraid she already knew the answer.
“I’m saying that Mal died that night, Fern. We may not remember, but we both know it’s true. It’s probably our fault, and she’s pissed and wants us to suffer.” Jaq turned to her, eyes filled with dreadful certainty. “If we go into the woods, she’ll kill us.”
Chapter
Twelve
Mallory
Then
“I’m going to kill him,” Mal said, leading the others into the woods at a brisk pace.
“Who?” Jaq asked, hurrying close behind.
“That fucker Tommy Webber,” Mal spat, taking pleasure in the way it felt to say a cuss word like fuck out loud. “Do you know what he did? After I turned him down for the dance the third time?”
It was the Monday before seventh-grade prom, and the mood at school was irritatingly frothy. People were so excited, it almost felt like the days before winter break. There had been several dramatic promposals, including one from Kaitlyn Birch to Karima Jones in the middle of lunch, and people weren’t shy about asking anyone who they were going with. It seemed like everyone in the entire school was looking forward to the dance. Except for the three of them.
It was hard to be excited when they couldn’t ask who they wanted to ask or wear what they wanted to wear.
“He asked my parents!” Mal slapped at a low-hanging branch as she charged ahead of the other two.
“To the dance?” Fern asked, calling from her position at the rear.
“For permission to take me! He told them that he’d asked me but that he wanted their permission, too. And they gave it!” Mal had been seething all day. Quiet and tight-lipped, even when Jaq had asked her what was wrong. She was too mad to explain anything at school, so she’d waited until after, when she could explode more safely in the woods.
“I can’t believe he lied like that,” Jaq said. “In church!”
“Oh, I can. Boys get away with stuff like that all the time. My parents don’t even consider it lying. I tell my mom that he’s bullying me. She says he’s just being persistent. I tell her that I think he’s gross. She says I’m being bullheaded. I tell her I don’t want to go to the dance at all. She asks me what color dress I want!” Mal gave a vicious growl of a scream. “Sometimes, I want to tell them that I like girls and only girls. Just to see what would happen.”
“Me too,” Fern echoed. “Except, I’m pretty sure my mom would put me in the bad kind of therapy. I mean, she put Ivy in therapy because she was failing math.”
“My parents would disown me,” Jaq added sadly.
“Mine would kill me. One way or another,” Mallory said with finality. “I wish we had somewhere safe to go.”
“One day we will,” Fern said. “We just have to survive until then.”
“I hate surviving,” Mal muttered as they came around a bend in the trail and abruptly stopped.
On one side of the path stood a large black stone. Its surface was shiny and scalloped all over, with edges sharp enough to cut.
“What is this?” Mallory asked, momentarily distracted.
“Basalt,” Jaq answered. “It’s volcanic rock. You find it around here sometimes. But that is huge.”
“I don’t remember passing it before,” Mallory said, turning to look back down the trail. “Did we take a wrong turn?”
“No.” Jaq pointed ahead to where a splash of blue paint marked a tree trunk several yards ahead. “We’re still on the Whisper Falls trail.”
“Then where—”
“Is this a new path?” Fern asked as she stepped past the stone to where a narrow trail slipped between the trees.
The thing was, they knew it wasn’t. They knew that to carve a trail like that took time, and cutting down trees, even small ones, took equipment. There would be sawdust and fresh stumps poking out of the foliage like little mushrooms. The air would smell like resin.
But this path was worn smooth, as though it had been created years ago and walked by hundreds of feet. This path was the opposite of new. It was very, very old.
And it should not have been there.
Even knowing all of that, the girls paused for only a moment to consider. Then, without a word spoken between them, they stepped onto the trail and followed it past the black rock.
They walked in silence, each aware that they were doing something they shouldn’t, yet somehow convinced that the trail had appeared for them.
They walked and walked, eventually climbing a steep incline that made them sweaty and breathless from the effort. At what appeared to be the top, the land leveled out in a wide clearing. On one side, the mountains continued their steep climb; on the other, the land fell away sharply, the cliffs sheer and treacherous, and in the center, facing the open air above the cliffs, stood the bones of an old house.
The wooden walls stretched tall despite being scarred by holes and blackened by some long-ago fire. It looked almost castle-like, with its collection of turrets tucked beneath pointed roofs. The windows were long and narrow, the glass panes mostly broken or missing altogether. And at the top of a set of stone steps, marbled with lichen and moss, stood a heavy wooden door. It was the only part of the house that wasn’t marred by decay or rot.
“Isn’t this a national park or something? I didn’t know people were allowed to build out here,” Fern said softly, as though afraid of being overheard.
“I don’t think they are,” Jaq said. “At least, not anymore.”
“It’s an endowment,” Mallory added. “Which means that these woods used to be privately owned, so this could have been built by whoever owned it back then, but at some point it was gifted to the town. That’s why the trails are maintained and why they lead to the school and the park and the falls.”
A soft wind sifted through the trees, and even though it wasn’t cold, all three of the girls shivered. They stared up at the house, unnerved by its presence and even more by how they’d found it.
“Do you think…” Mallory started, then paused, her eyes settling on a point high on the house before turning to her friends. “Do you think we should go inside?”
The question hung between them, unanswered, for a long minute as each of them wrestled with a sudden discomfort.
Then, before any of them could say another word, they heard a long, slow creak. Mallory could have sworn she heard a whisper on the wind: Come in, come in.
And when they turned to look at the house once more, the door was open.
Chapter
Thirteen
Jaq
Three days later, Jaq was at the baseball field alone because Susan had to go into Seattle with her family for what she’d described as “obligatory religious networking.” Usually, she was glad to have Sooz with her for the games, but right now, it was best that she was alone. She was having a hard enough time keeping herself together in school when there were dozens of distractions. She didn’t think she could manage prolonged one-on-one time.
Everywhere she turned there was a new memory to uncover, each one blossoming like a bruise on her skin. Fern might be glad that their missing past had returned, but Jaq was drowning in it. In the knowledge that Mallory was gone.
She’d endured three nights of nightmares. They were all the same. Shattered scenes that played in her mind out of order. Half memories that she couldn’t make any sense of. Slashes of dark trees, of broken walls, of blood that arced across her vision and a scream that speared her heart.
And Mallory’s face. Pale and angry. Her hard eyes shimmering with tears. All her fury directed at Jaq.
“Kiss for luck?” John leaned over the chain-link fence separating the baseball field from the bleachers. He always looked so sharp in his uniform, the dark blue and gold of their school colors setting off his golden curls and moss-green eyes. With the sun setting behind him, he was gilded in copper and bronze.
“When have you ever needed luck?” Jaq asked, forcing her full attention onto John. She leaned in for a kiss, pressing her lips briefly to his, trying to ignore the part of her that felt like she was kissing her cousin.
“True, I don’t need luck,” John said, grinning as he locked his arms around her ribs and pulled her as close as she could get with the fence between them. “But I do need kisses. Do you have any more to spare? I feel like my kiss tank is running low.”
“Your ‘kiss tank’?” Jaq couldn’t help but smile at this.
“It’s like a gas tank, but way more important.”
“What does it do, exactly?” Jaq asked.
“What doesn’t it do, that’s the question you should be asking.” John’s arms tightened around her. “It heightens cognitive function, increases reflexes, improves physical stamina. I think one study even linked it to something about being a potential cure for cancer.”
“I’m skeptical,” Jaq said, raising an eyebrow. This part—talking and teasing with John—felt easy. Their patterns were well-worn and friendly, the way things should be. “What sort of controls were present in this study? And who were the participants?”
“Men, of course,” John answered. “Don’t they always start the important stuff with men?”
Jaq snorted.
“Nichols! Line up!” the coach shouted.
“See you after?” John asked. “Pizza?”
Jaq shrugged. “Maybe. If you don’t perish from a low kiss tank.”
“You’d never let that happen,” he said, voice gentle and sincere.
Before last week, hearing him say something like that would have sent a small thrill down her spine, an easy warmth coiling in her belly. Nothing overwhelming, but familiar. The promise of so many good days to come.
Today, it felt off. Like he was offering his trust to a different Jaq. This Jaq wasn’t worthy of it. And this Jaq didn’t want to kiss him back.
She wanted to be the old Jaq again, the one John deserved and who deserved John.
Forcing a smile, Jaq turned to the bleachers and spotted two kids hiding beneath them. They peered out between the rows of benches, their eyes alight with mischief.
And just like that, there was another memory of Mallory. Of the time they’d stolen away beneath these same bleachers during a Little League game neither of them cared about.
“I hate baseball,” Mallory had said, offering Jaq Starbursts in rapid succession.
“Is there anything you like?” Jaq asked. “Don’t say candy.”
Mallory had glared at that. “Fine. While I think candy should have been an acceptable answer, I guess…gray whales.”
“Whales? Why?”
“Not ‘whales’ generally. Although lots of them are very cool. But gray whales are special for three reasons.” Mallory held up a finger. “They are friendly across species, so they are genuine.” She paused and lifted a second finger. “They suck sludge off the bottom of the ocean to feed, so they are shameless. And”—she raised a third finger—“they’re gay.”
Jaq had jumped at the word, turning around to see if anyone was near enough to hear them. “I don’t think that’s possible,” she’d said.
“It’s more than possible. It’s true,” Mal answered. “Gray whales are known to travel in same-sex groups of two or three. They even swim fin in fin like they’re holding hands. It’s romantic and awesome, and one day, I want to see one for myself.”
Mal reached out to offer another Starburst, and this time Jaq grabbed too quickly, her fingers tangling with Mallory’s. She stopped, startled by the touch, by the way it sent a bolt of something delicious into her stomach. And when she raised her eyes, she found all the humor had vanished from Mal’s expression.
She watched Jaq like she knew what Jaq was feeling.
Like she was feeling it, too.
The memory surfaced with all the same anxiety and wonder Jaq had felt when it happened, fresh as if she were still a thirteen-year-old kid hiding beneath the bleachers.
Now the crowd cheered as the team took the field, and Jaq found a spot just in time to see John taking the mound, his golden curls shining beneath the stadium lights. She watched until the game was underway, then she pulled out her phone.
She had a series of tabs open in her web browser. The first three were archived articles from the Port Promise Ledger about Mallory Hammond’s disappearance. They covered a span of about six months and after that, the news had dropped it. Mallory’s family had told the police that she’d run away, and it turned out that when even the parents didn’t seem to care about the whereabouts of their daughter, no one else did either. Not that looking for her any longer would have helped. Jaq wasn’t sure of much, but she was sure Mal was dead.
Next, she’d done a useless search into the paranormal. She’d known it was going to be a waste of time, but she tried it anyway. She got as far as “are ghosts” when Google offered a series of popular searches:
…undead
…real
…evil
Jaq closed the tab. She knew they were real. What she didn’t know was why Mallory would want to hurt them. All her memories were tangled up and sticky. Bound together with the ever-present desire to touch Mallory and be touched by her. To kiss her again. With the bottomless sorrow of knowing she never would.
With the agonizing confusion of wanting to forget all over again.
She had thought that John was her first, true love. But thinking of him, being with him had never lit her up like these memories of Mal. And that wasn’t fair. Not to him. Not to her. She wished she could shove these new memories back in a drawer. Beneath her bed with all the pastels she kept hidden there. The brightest, truest parts of herself were too much to be let out.
But thinking of Mal made her heart beat faster, made her ache for having lost her, and made her wonder how things could have gone so terribly wrong in the space of those few hours she couldn’t remember. So wrong that Mallory’s ghost was still here. Still angry and hateful and ready to hurt Jaq.
The crowd surged again, celebrating something Jaq had missed, and she looked up to see one team jog off the field while the others climbed out of the dugout. Her vision blurred over the colors. Blue smearing into green into an endless black that shifted like trees in the wind. The shrill sound of a whistle fracturing into jagged screams.
The sharp smell of blood.
The sound of Mal’s voice crying out for help.
The murmurings of the crowd softening into a voice that whispered, Hushhh.
“Hey, Jaq.”
Jaq’s phone clattered to the bleachers. She looked up as Devyn took a seat on the bench at her feet. In one fluid movement, she dipped down to retrieve Jaq’s phone and handed it back to her. Then she stretched her long body across the space between them and planted one elbow on the bench, inches from Jaq’s thigh.
“Good game?” she asked, peering up at Jaq through gently curled lashes.
The way Jaq’s entire body paused at the sight of her. A moment of perfect stillness, followed by a buzzing that started in her head and dripped slowly, languidly down to her stomach. She didn’t know what to do with that feeling. But she liked it.
Devyn was waiting for her to answer a question Jaq couldn’t remember hearing.
“I—sorry, what?”
Devyn’s lips tipped into a smile. “I said, ‘Good game?’ ”
“Oh, um, yeah, I think so,” Jaq answered, searching for the score-board. “We’re winning.”
“Mm-hmm,” Devyn said, tilting her head so that the light sank into her pale brown eyes, revealing those endless subtle rings. “You looked like you were reading something upsetting.”
“A little,” Jaq admitted, surprising herself with the truth. Or, at least as much of the truth as she was willing to admit.
“Wanna talk about it?” Devyn was watching her intently. “Alternately, do you want to get out of here?”
Jaq looked at the faces surrounding them, searching for anyone who might notice her leaving with someone who wasn’t John. Not sure she cared what anyone except John thought.
The crowd was on its feet again. This time Jaq stood with them. “Yes,” she said, almost urgently. “But I don’t have a car.”
Devyn held up a key. Then, without another word, she caught Jaq’s hand in hers and guided her down the bleachers, past the concession stands, and through the side gates into the parking lot.
“Wait. This is yours?” Jaq didn’t know what kind of car she’d been expecting, but she’d been expecting a car. Not a motorcycle, its sleek body a shimmering ruby red with black leather seats and accents. This was a death trap. A safety hazard. To herself and others.
And yet, it was so enticing.
She felt an indecipherable swirl of wants inside her, belonging to two separate Jaqs, just as Fern had described. One that wanted to return to the game and cheer for her boyfriend, and one that wanted this and so much more. And she didn’t know which was most real. Which was the one that deserved to be real.
“Is that a problem?” Devyn asked, as she released one helmet and then another from the back of the bike.
