Page 96 of Buried in the Woods Below

If I’m wrong… If I let my guard down…

I shake off the thought. I don’t want to be alone with it.

A candle flickers on my nightstand, its glow casting unknown monsters across the walls. The storm is losing steam, but the unnatural stillness it leaves behind is worse. It’s the kind of silence you hear before the strike.

I unpack my bag again to calm my mind, placing my clothing and toiletries back in their proper places. The crack in the mirror reaches my waist now, splitting me in two. As the candle flickers, I catch one side of me bursting with light, the other shrouded in darkness. I rewind the past few days, searching for a pattern, something that makes sense. But the pieces won’t fit.

My mother? She couldn’t have. Could she?

Eric? Why lead me straight to Laelynn’s body if he was the one who put her there?

Russ Neuman? He’s strange, sure, but he had the perfect chance to hurt me on the trail. He didn’t take it.

Carlos? Where is he now? Where was he when the Adwanis died?

The twins? Too little. Right? Not too little to torture me.

None of this seems random. It’s too tangled. Too intentional.

And then I remember the girl who fell off the Ferris wheel. The ghost.

I massage my temples. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe this island is haunted. I can’t help but wonder, who’s next?

A wave of dizziness rushes over me.

Distant lightning shocks the silence. I open my bedside drawer. Eric’s hunting knife is still there, its steel glinting in the candlelight. I wrap my fingers around the handle, testing its weight. I seriously consider sleeping with it under my pillow. But with my luck, I’d roll over and stab myself in the heart.

Hell of a way to go.

A faint sound at the door snaps me to attention.

“CharBar?” Olivia’s voice, barely above a whisper.

I slide the knife back into the drawer and ease it shut. “Yeah?”

“Can I crash with you? My mattress is in the basement, and there’s no way I’m sleeping down there alone.”

I let out a breath. I’d forgotten I’d hijacked her bed. “Yeah, of course. One sec.”

I swing my legs over the side and crack the door open. Olivia slips inside fast, like she half expects Jigsaw might reach out and grab her if she lingers.

I shut the door and lock it.

“Thanks,” she says. “I was ready to call it a night, then realized, ‘Hey, where’s my bed?’”

“Sorry. I moved it in case we had to camp out in the basement.”

“No worries.” She leaps onto the bed, tosses the comforter over her legs, and pats the down. Her coconut-shampoo scent wafts through the room. “Now we get to have an old-school slumber party, like when we were kids. Should I grab popcorn so we can talk about boys? We can make one of those paper fortune tellers.”

I laugh and climb in beside her. “Your dad’s fortune teller is more than enough for me.”

She groans, smiling, eyes swollen from crying, her round cheeks glistening in the candlelight. “Don’t get me started on that thing. And the dolls! Those effing things are terrifying. I was like, Dad, could you please get a new hobby?”

“Seriously.” I clear my throat. “I’m glad you’re here though. Sleeping alone wasn’t high on my list of things I wanted to do tonight.”

“Same.”

We both clutch the duvet out of reflex. Silence overtakes our laughter. Not comforting silence, but the kind that reminds us we’re trapped. My instincts scream at me to run, but where? Into the tornado? Through the dark wood? Into the lake? To our dead neighbor’s house? To Russ Neuman’s?