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She lay on the futon wide awake until sleep took over, traveling through her bloodstream, opening to the starlit woods. As though welcoming her into its darkness, an alluring melody stirred to life, filled with stringed instruments and flutes, roaring with the wind, followed by the sound of bugs buzzing inside her ears.
Black forms, hidden in shadows, peeked out from behind the trunks. They beckoned her forward, and her heart sang, aching to join them. But then the ground disappeared beneath her feet, and she fell and fell into a pit of darkness.
Chapter Seven
“During the day we stay quiet, then at night we take.”
A warm hand cradled Sadie’s face, and lips brushed softly against hers. His hand. His lips.
Sadie opened her eyes to morning pushing out the night as bright light illuminated the curtains. She was alone, no one there but her. She inhaled a sharp breath, drinking in as much oxygen as she could while her heart beat wildly in her chest, so much so that she thought it would burst. Her fingers touched her lips, where she’d imagined River’s whisper of a kiss had been. Even though she’d pretended he’d been there, she could’ve sworn she smelled him in the room. It was unhealthy for her to be conjuring up these things, she knew.
She exhaled and looked at the time on her phone. Since Skyler would be there soon, Sadie rinsed off in the shower, then prepared her mugs of hot chocolate while nibbling at a bagel.
Taking a sip from the white hot chocolate, she opened her notebook and scrawled a single sentence: And the quiet of the woods came to life.
Sadie thought about the dream that was coming back to her, where music trickled into the woods, and dark silhouettes watched her from behind the trees, beckoning her toward them. She’d wanted to go to them, follow wherever they led, but the ground had disappeared beneath her feet. All she could remember after that was falling, but no matter how long she fell, not once did she scream, not once had she been afraid. If anything happened after that, it was all a blur. To others, it might’ve been a nightmare, unsettling, but to her, it was something more… Yet she couldn’t pinpoint what. She briefly sketched the images and wrote a few lines about how the silhouettes had enticed her until someone knocked on her door and she shut her notebook.
Skyler stood on the porch, his hand pressed to the doorframe, his head tilted to the side, and his golden-brown eyes meeting hers. He was dressed in his police uniform, his dark hair slicked back instead of the loose waves he wore when off duty.
Sadie arched a brow. “You didn’t tell me you were going to come while on shift.”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m not on duty yet, and you told me you were moving but not to the secluded cabin in the woods where at least two murder-suicides took place.”
“Could you expect anything less of me?” She batted her lashes. “Besides, that was years ago.”
Skyler smiled, his crooked incisor showing. “How’s your sister?”
“Living the mundane life.” And secretly pining over you. But it wasn’t her business to tell. If Charlie wanted to talk to Skyler, she needed to own it and call him instead of fleeing like she had from the store.
“So”—his grin widened—“she’s still single then?”
“Why don’t you ask her yourself?” He was just as irritating when it came to her sister as he’d been in school. Back then, she had to practically force him to ask Charlie out so she wouldn’t have to keep hearing about it. But Skyler was her closest friend, one of the few she would protect with her life. She’d missed seeing his face, hated that she hadn’t talked to him as much over the past three months. That was her fault, though.
“Maybe I will. If she doesn’t run away again.” Skyler chuckled softly. “We’re getting off-topic. I can’t believe you moved here. Or maybe I should because I know how infatuated you’ve always been with these woods.”
Before she met River, she’d brought Skyler here a few times to see if they could find anything haunted. He wasn’t into it like she was, but he’d come with her nonetheless. As her heart lodged in her throat, she stepped forward, throwing her arms around him. “You’re the only other person who understands me besides Charlie.” Only the two of them … because River was dead.
Skyler held her, his comforting woodsy scent pulling her back from the madness. When she’d called the police after discovering River’s lifeless body, Skyler was one of the first responders. He’d seen it all, seen River on the floor after she’d taken him down from the ceiling beam, seen her sobbing uncontrollably as she tried to get him to breathe.
“River bought you this cabin, didn’t he?” Skyler asked gently as he held her.
Sadie nodded into his chest. “He was the buyer. When I complained to you about the cabin being sold, all along, it was him.”
“I should’ve guessed that. No one else would’ve wanted to buy this place,” he said, a hint of humor in his voice to lighten the moment.
She smiled, wiping away tears as she pulled back from him. “Untrue, plenty of people would.”
He blinked and cocked his head. “Name one.”
“Me,” she said.
“That doesn’t count. You two were a…” he trailed off.
“I know you don’t believe in ghosts, and you always say that people see what they want to. But I saw something last night in the woods. Dark silhouettes of some sort. One ran deeper into the woods, then another dropped from a tree.”
“Sadie.” Skyler sobered, his expression slipping from playful to serious, the way it was when he was on police duty. “You saw someone, possibly multiple someones, in the woods where you live alone, and you had me wait until the morning to come out?”
“I have a gun … and knives.” Sadie straightened. “Besides, it’s supernatural. I said silhouettes, not people.”
