Winterwood

I push away from the door and move across the room until my shin hits the corner of the bed. I wince at the sharp pain, buckling over, before continuing forward, hands out in front of me to feel for other obstacles. I reach a wall and a window, and I push aside the curtain. Muted light spills into the room from the half-moon. I touch the glass and peer out into the snow. But the drop to the ground is too far down, far enough to break bones. There has to be another way out. The thrumming noise of music pumps louder through the floors, and the walls vibrate, but I hear something else. Something distinct. Something I’ve heard before.

The whisper of an insect on glass. Of wings.

A sound so faint I’m surprised I can hear it at all. It grows louder, thudding against the window. Black eyes and swollen belly.

I drop my hand from the window and take a step back, fear clawing up the rungs of my ribs. No, no, no.

The moth found me, even here, even locked in this room. And the certainty burrows deep beneath my skin.

“Go away,” I whisper, my words desperate and thin.

It spins and thumps against the window—thump, thump, thump—searching for a way inside. To reach me. So it can brush its wings against my skin, mark me, so death can find me more easily.

Death is coming.

My body pulses and I slide against the wall, dropping to the floor, tucking my knees to my chin. Anything to block out the sound. Thump-thump-thump. “Stop it!” I scream, I plead.

My heartbeat is a percussion in my chest, the same rhythm as its wings.

“Go away. Go away. Go away,” I whisper into my hands. Until it’s all I hear.

All that fills my ears.

OLIVER

I have to find her.

The lake is impossibly dark; it swallows up the stars as I circle around the shore. Certain this place, these mountains, are watching every move I make.

I remember enough now—enough to know I can’t trust the others. The past is a blurred wreck in my mind: the cemetery, the taste of booze in my throat, the laughter. The feeling of my fists clenched at my sides, ready for a fight. Still, I recall enough to know that they are capable of awful things.

And I think only of her, of Nora.

They don’t trust her. The witch in the woods.

I need to find her, make sure she’s okay, and keep her safe.

Turning away from the lake, I hike up through the pines toward her house. I know she won’t want to see me. I know that whatever I say, she won’t want to hear it, she won’t let me in—and this hurts worse than anything. But I have to try. I don’t need her to trust me, I just need her to stay away from Rhett and Jasper and Lin.

I knock on the door and hold my breath until my lungs start to burn and ache.

Memories flit through me. I remember the way Max tipped his head back in the cemetery, taking a long gulp of whiskey. How he eyed me like he was daring me to make the first move, to say something that would piss him off. But I wasn’t afraid. I felt something else: anger.

I bring my fist to the door again and knock harder, waiting for Nora to come, to peek through the curtains. But she never does. Something’s wrong. The house is too dark, no candlelight through the windows. And I can hear Fin—the wolf—whining from the other side, a sad whimper. I try the knob and the door swings open.

Night swallows the place whole. No candles. No fire in the woodstove.

The wolf darts out past my legs, down into the snow, and cuts through the trees. “Fin!” I call, but he doesn’t listen. He doesn’t even slow his pace.

I run before I lose him, before he slips into the trees and is gone. Maybe he knows where she is, maybe he’s found her scent. I chase his narrow path through the snow, along the row of summer homes, until he finally stops several houses down, his tail dipped low, ears forward.

Music wheezes out from inside the house, and through the lower windows I can see several boys from camp. They’ve broken in—they’re having a party.

Fin whimpers again, nose sniffing the air, and I touch his head—unsure why he’s come here, to a house that isn’t his. I follow his gaze up to the second floor of the home.

Someone is at the window.

A girl, face barely visible from the other side of the glass.

Her.

Something’s wrong, some hint of panic in her eyes. I don’t go to the front door—I don’t want the others to see me. So I leave the wolf in the snow and use the lowest window to hoist myself up to the edge of the overhanging roof. My fingers grip the gutter, and I swing a leg onto the upper ledge, just like when I used to climb onto the roof of my neighbor Nate Lynch’s house, when we’d drink beers he’d swipe from his dad’s garage. It feels like a hundred years ago now—a whole different life, far away from these mountains. But scaling up the corner of this house is no different. Aside from the wet, slick snow.