Fear

The road was presumably straight back to the west. But that could be miles, and she might find herself hitting the road no more than a mile or two from Lake Tramonto. That would be humiliating if Sam had sent Brianna out to find her. It would make Astrid’s mission to warn Perdido Beach look a lot less like Paul Revere and a lot more like the harebrained scheme of an incompetent girl.

Already she’d been delayed. The dawn—such as it was—had come. People in Perdido Beach could see it without any help from her.

Which meant that all she could do now was hope to send a message of solidarity and to offer Sam’s services as a light bringer.

Even that relied on speed. She was sure some kids at least would already be on their way out of Perdido Beach.

If she wanted speed, she’d have to go through the hills. If this pass went all the way through in a more or less straight line, then no problem. If it dead-ended against some hill she’d have to climb, that would be a problem.

Astrid set off at a trot. She was very fit after her months living in the woods and could move at this half-run, half-walk pace for hours so long as she had water.

The hills rose on either side. The one on the right began to seem oppressive, steep and glowering. The peak was exposed rock where some long-ago storm or earthquake had stripped the thin topsoil away. And that exposed rock looked like a grim-faced head.

The trail continued to be pretty easy. Once upon a time there’d been running water, but now the narrow streambed was choked with dried-out weeds.

Astrid saw something move up to her right, up the sheer slope of what she was thinking of as Mount Grimface. She didn’t stop, but kept moving, looked and now saw nothing.

“Don’t get spooked,” she told herself. That kind of thing had happened a lot in the forest: a noise, a sudden movement, a flash of something or other. And inevitably she’d been afraid it was Drake. Just as inevitably it had been a bird or a squirrel or a skunk.

Now, though, the sense that she was being watched was hard to shake. As if Mount Grimface really was a face and it was watching her and not liking what it saw.

Ahead the path curved away to the left, and Astrid welcomed the chance to move away from the sinister mountain, but at the same time, as she took that curve, she had an almost overpowering sense that whatever had been watching her was now behind her.

And coming closer.

The urge to break into a full-on run was hard to resist. But she couldn’t look as if she was fleeing, panicking.

She came around a blind corner and almost plowed into him.

Astrid stopped. Stared. Screamed.

Screamed so that she forgot to draw her gun until she was already screaming and backing away, and finally out came the shotgun and her fingers fumbled for the trigger. She raised the gun to her shoulder, sighted down the barrel.

She aimed for the eyes. Those awful marble-size eyes in bloody-black sockets.

It was a boy. That fact took a few long beats to penetrate her consciousness. Not some giant monster, a boy. He had strong shoulders and a deep tan. There were cuts on his face, like the claw marks of a wild animal. They seemed fresh. And she saw blood on his fingernails.

His expression was impossible to read—the eyes, those awful chickpea-size eyes—made any emotion impossible to guess.

“Don’t move or I’ll blow your head off,” Astrid said.

The boy stopped walking. The eyes seemed unable to locate her, looking up and left and everywhere but straight at her.

“Are you real?” the boy asked.

“I’m real. So is this shotgun.” Astrid heard the quaver in her voice, but her grip on the gun was steady and she was keeping it on target. One squeeze of her right index finger and there’d be a loud noise and that horrifying head would explode like a water balloon.

“Are you… Are you Astrid?”

She swallowed hard. How did it know her name? “Who are you?”

“Bradley. But everyone calls me Cigar.”

The gun lowered several inches of its own accord. “What? Cigar?”

The boy’s mouth made a sort of grin. The grin revealed broken and missing teeth.

“I see you,” Cigar said. He stretched out a bloody hand to her, but like a blind person feeling for something he couldn’t quite locate.

“Stay back,” she snapped, and the gun went to her shoulder again. “What happened to you?”

“I…” He tried another smile, but it twisted into a grimace and then a terrible groan, a cry of agony that stretched on and on before ending in a wild burst of laughter.

“Listen, Cigar, you need to tell me what happened,” Astrid insisted.

“Penny,” he whispered. “She showed me things. My hands were…” He raised his palms to look at them, but his eyes were elsewhere, and a moan came from deep in his throat.

“Penny did this?” Astrid lowered the gun. Halfway. Then, hesitantly, all the way down. But she did not sling it back over her shoulder. She kept her grip tight and her finger resting on the trigger guard.

“I like candy, see, and I did a bad thing and then the candy was in my arm and then I was eating it and oh, it tasted so good, you know, and Penny gave me more, so I ate it up and it hurt and there was blood, maybe, lots of blood, maybe, maybe.”

The tiny eyes swiveled suddenly to look past Astrid.

“It’s the little boy,” Cigar said.

Astrid glanced over her shoulder, just quick, just a glance, almost involuntary because she wasn’t ready to lower her guard yet, not ready to turn around. Her head was already turning back toward Cigar when she realized what she had seen.