Chapter Thirteen

CHAPTER 13

Thump. Thump. Thump.

The footsteps make their way up from the area over the eaves. We listen in horrified silence as I try to track the steps across the roof. My gaze traces along the wooden beams and stops . . . on the skylight.

The night sky outside the window is black, and the tops of the pine trees that surround the Western Lodge are visible only as even darker splotches against the inky sky. But as I stare up at it, something moves into the frame—a hazy white shape dotted with mottled brown splotches and two glinting black eyes.

Bezi sucks in a breath, and I quickly clamp my hand over her mouth.

"Don't move. He can't see inside," I whisper, recalling how difficult it was to make out anything inside after I'd climbed up there to retrieve the dead bird.

The owl figure presses its very human hands against the glass. His torso expands and contracts like he's taking long, slow breaths. In and out, in and out. And then, after a moment, he disappears from the skylight, and his steps retreat down the opposite side of the roof.

"Did he see us?" Bezi asks, panic invading her voice.

"I—I don't think so," I stammer.

But we can't chance staying here. I yank Bezi toward the hatch in the kitchen floor, and we lower ourselves down just as the sound of glass shattering breaks the silence.

I pull the hatch closed above us and sprint down the tunnel. I fumble with my flashlight but can't get it to turn on while I'm running and dragging Bezi along behind me. I stumble over my own feet as we reach the end. From behind us, the hatch creaks open.

I climb up the ladder under the boathouse, and Bezi scrambles up after me as footsteps echo down the tunnel, rumbling toward us. Bezi moves to the door, but I stop.

"Wait," I say, panting.

"For what?" Bezi shrieks.

I grab an oar from the rack beside the stacked-up canoes and hold it high above my head. There's a scuffling at the bottom of the ladder, and then the blond woman I saw in the woods sticks her head out of the hatch. I bring the oar down as hard as I can, and it lands right on the top of her head with a sickening crack. She slumps forward, her torso on the ground in the boathouse, her legs hanging down the hatch. She groans and then lapses into unconsciousness as blood pools on the dusty floor under her head.

"Oh my god!" Bezi screams.

I lift the oar again, preparing to bring it down on the next person who pops up, but there's no one. It's quiet. I toss the oar aside and loop my arms under the woman's armpits.

"Help me, Bezi!"

Bezi grabs the woman's collar, and we wrench her up and out of the hatch. Bezi slams the trapdoor closed and slides a canoe over it as I tie the woman's hands and feet with a length of 550 cord we keep in the boathouse. She's breathing, but the blood is still flowing from her head in crimson rivulets.

I move to the door and peer out. The front doors of the Western Lodge are sitting open and the window overlooking the front porch is shattered. I cup my hand over my earpiece. "Kyle?"

The static crackles and pops, and then Kyle's voice comes out. "I'm here."

"Is the generator working? Can you see anything on the cameras?"

"Yeah," he says. "And somebody was in here when I showed up."

"What? Are you okay?"

"No," Kyle says, his voice trembling. "I—I had to hurt him. He jumped on me and—and . . ."

"Kyle, listen to me," I say. "It's not your fault. You did what you had to do."

He sighs into the mic. "I don't think he's dead, but I used my knife. Charity, am I gonna go to jail?"

My heart breaks open, and I'm so angry that he even has to think about that when all he did was defend himself against somebody who was probably trying to kill him. I worry that maybe Sheriff Lillard will say this is all our fault, that defending ourselves against these people is somehow worse than them trying to kill us.

"Don't worry about that right now," I say to him and to myself. "I need to know if you can see anything on the cameras."

There's a pause. "Some of the screens are out," he says, his voice choked with fear and worry. "Two people are turning over the staff cabins."

"There were four people in the room where Porter died." I swallow a knot in my throat and try in vain to push the image of Porter's mutilated body out of my head. "And then the guy in the owl mask. We took out the blonde."

"Took her out?" Kyle asks. "What does that mean?"

I glance back at the woman, who is still lying unconscious on the floor. "Doesn't matter."

"What now?" Kyle asks.

"We still don't know where Paige is," Bezi says.

I peer through the crack in the door and still see nothing. "I'm going to the staff cabins."

"We're going," Bezi says. "No splitting up, remember?"

I nod, and we gather ourselves. Stepping out onto the path in front of the boathouse, I tread lightly, trying to listen for footsteps, voices, anything to signal where the rest of these people are. All I hear is the steady ripple of wind across the surface of the lake and every few moments, some kind of disturbance of the water's surface. Maybe the grass carp jumping up to catch nighttime insects, maybe a bird swooping in to grab the fish, I don't really know, but every time I hear it, it fills me with a sense of terror.

I gesture for Bezi to follow me as we take the trail toward the staff cabins. We keep our lights off and try to move as quickly and quietly as possible. As we approach, beams from flashlights dart around inside my cabin and an echo of voices carries through the dark. I cut across the grass and duck down below the window, and Bezi sinks down with me.

"There's nothing here," a man grumbles from inside. "They already cleared out."

"So what do we do now?" another man says angrily.

I slowly stand and peer through the shade. A short man with gray hair is pulling out the drawers of my dresser and tossing them into a pile. A taller man with a shock of red hair and long, gangly arms and legs stands with his back to the window.

The gray-haired man massages his temple. "Alex, we cannot let this go. We need all of them if we're to be successful."

"You think I don't know what's at stake?" the redhead, Alex, says. "We are all that is left, and if we cannot salvage our Order, it will cease to exist."

"The Grand Owl would never allow that to happen," the gray-haired man says in a whisper. "To even suggest it is ridiculous."

Alex shakes his head. "He's powerful. I know that. I've seen what he can do, but can he bring us back from the brink? Maybe we're too far gone. What he's trying to do now feels impossible."

The gray-haired man sighs. "You've lost your faith in him?"

Alex shakes his head. "No. I trust him. But we need more blood, more sacrifices. We have held back too much. He wants to be conservative in his actions, and I just don't understand. We need drastic action."

"You know what happened last time we drew too much attention to this place," the short man says. "Some kid tried to re-create the ritual and failed miserably. The backlash almost ended our Order. It is the reason we find ourselves in the predicament we are in today. The Grand Owl will not allow something like that to happen again. He will keep this quiet, and he will not take any unnecessary chances."

"He'll have to find a way to get this land back under his control."

"A mistake we also have that kid to thank for," grumbles the gray-haired man. "Jesus. Our Order on the brink, the land and the power it holds that has always been ours, all lost because an outsider wanted what we had." He huffs. "I'd kill him if I could."

"It's been more than fifty years," says Alex. "He's an old man now."

"Still," the gray-haired man says. "I'd still like to do it."

They both nod, and I stare down at Bezi, who is listening with her hand pressed against her mouth. I crouch and press my mouth to her ear.

"They know who killed all those people back in '71."

Bezi nods her head, and I turn to peer back inside. My elbow knocks against the wood siding under the window.

"What was that?" the man called Alex asks.

I curse under my breath. A few seconds go by, and when I peer back through the window, Alex is staring me dead in the face.

My heart nearly stops, and I barely have time to grab Bezi and yank her up before both men are barreling out of the cabin.

"Run!" I scream as we cut through the towering pine trees and stumble onto the path that leads toward the showers.

Footfalls pound the ground behind me. Halfway down the path, a chorus of screams echoes through the camp. Despite the terror coursing through me, I stop. Bezi runs into me, nearly knocking me over. The men behind us also stop, raising their gaze to the surrounding woods.

"What the hell is that?" the gray-haired man asks.

Agonized screams ring through the camp. They echo in the dark, and it takes me a moment to realize Kyle must have cued up the sound effects. The hidden speakers cycle through screams and menacing footsteps. The sounds seem to be coming from every direction.

Bezi takes my hand and pulls me toward the showers, and we're mounting the front steps before the men give chase again. We slam the door shut and wedge a trash can under the handle. With a loud bang, the men collide with the door. The can scrapes across the ground, and the gray-haired man slips his arm through the crack in the door and attempts to move it. I reach in my pocket and pull out the half-empty can of bear spray. I angle it toward the opening in the door and empty the canister directly into the faces of the two men. They immediately start to cough and gag, and I scramble back as a residual cloud of the noxious gas wafts into the shower building.

My throat burns and my eyes water uncontrollably. Bezi coughs so hard, she almost vomits. I run to the sink and turn on the water, flushing my eyes and mouth. There's a loud bang, and I spin around to see the angry faces of both men as they shove the door open a little more.

My mind runs in circles. The windows in the shower room are for venting only. They're high and narrow and impossible to climb through. There's no back door.

"What—what do we do?" Bezi stammers, a trail of spittle hanging from her chin, the whites of her eyes bloodshot.

I flush my eyes again, but my vision is blurry, my throat raw.

"Push harder!" screams the gray-haired man. "I'll kill her!"

My face feels like it's been exposed to an open flame, but in the wash of pain and fear, my nights of playing the final girl at Camp Mirror Lake give me a way out.

"The trapdoor," I say.

Bezi wipes her face with her shirt. "Huh?"

"Come on." I grab her and duck into the last stall.

There's no toilet there, just a rusted metal wall locker with a sign that says Storage hanging on the front.

"We're gonna hide?" Bezi asks. "They already know we're in here!"

I pull open the door and stare down into the darkened hole below. I push Bezi toward it, and she quickly shimmies down the ladder that leads to the second hidden tunnel. This one goes from the showers to the arts-and-crafts lodge on the south side of the camp. The tunnel is twice as long and unlit, but it's the only option we have.

The sound of wood splintering splits the air, and the two men fall into the shower building, tripping over themselves and shouting. The gray-haired man rushes me before I can get down the ladder and into the tunnel. He grabs me by the front of my shirt and slams me back against the wall. Pain rockets through my shoulder as the man's rancid breath blows into my nose and mouth. He smiles when he realizes he's got me pinned. He presses his forearm against my neck, and my vision starts to blur around the edges.

The man suddenly howls in absolute agony and lets up the pressure on my neck just long enough for me to bring my knee up in one quick motion, catching him right between the legs. He stumbles back and knocks into the man called Alex.

I duck into the wall locker and scramble down the ladder. As I make my descent, I catch a glimpse of the gray-haired man's ankle and understand why he was suddenly writhing in pain—a short carving knife is stuck in the tender flesh of his Achilles.

I jump the rest of the way down, and Bezi has her flashlight out, shining it into the tunnel.

"You stabbed him?" I ask.

She nods, her eyes wide, like she can't believe what she just did.

"I love you," I say.

Bezi grabs my hand. "Come on!"

We take off down the darkened tunnel. Behind me, someone comes crashing down, and then there's a loud bang and an anguished scream. I look back, and Bezi shines her light on the two men. Alex is crumpled at the bottom of the ladder, screaming like a wounded animal. Blood spurts from his shin, and the light from Bezi's flashlight glints off the shining white bone protruding from the torn skin. It's like he decided to skip the ladder, jumped, and landed wrong, snapping his bone clean in half. I can't look any more or I'll be sick, so I turn and run, pushing Bezi ahead of me until we get to the other end of the tunnel. Bezi climbs the ladder and pushes on the trapdoor above our heads.

"It won't open!" she screams.

I scramble up the ladder next to her and push on the hatch. It groans as we force it open.

A rush of footsteps sounds in the tunnel beneath me. I glance down to see the gray-haired man stumble to the bottom of the ladder. Bezi makes it up, and I climb up after her, my sweaty hands slipping on the rungs. I claw my way up, and just as I drag myself out of the opening, a hand clamps down on my ankle.

I'm pulled back into the mouth of the trapdoor. I kick and scream and try to dig my fingertips into the wood planks of the arts-and-crafts-lodge floor. The nails on my thumbs and forefingers break off, exposing the bloody pink beds beneath. I scream. I kick at the man behind me, driving my foot back as hard as I can. I connect with something soft. There's a groan, but the grip on my ankle doesn't relent. I'm pulled back again. My gaze darts wildly around the room.

"Bezi!" I scream. "Help me!"

Bezi is scrambling around in the dark, and the man is pulling me deeper into the hatch with each passing second. I search wildly for something, anything that I can use to defend myself with, when my gaze flits to a stack of archery quivers, each filled with arrows.

"Give me that!" I scream as I flail wildly in the direction of the arrows.

Bezi snatches one up and flings it to me. I grab a single arrow and allow the man to pull me a little closer so that I can roll over. When I'm close enough, I rear back and shove the arrow into the man's face as hard as I can.

He immediately lets go of me, and I clamber back as he howls in agony. I struggle to see in the dark, but as my eyes adjust, I make out the man's bloodied face and the arrow, its colorful fin drenched in blood, protruding from his right eye socket.

I jump up and kick the man squarely in the face. He tumbles into the darkness below, and when Bezi shines her light down on him, his uninjured eye is closed and his breaths come in ragged tears.

"Shut it!" Bezi yells.

I slam the hatch closed, and we push a heavy coffee table over it. I glance at Bezi, and her chest is heaving, her eyes wide. I quickly go to her and put my arms around her. She collapses against me and starts to cry. I want to cry, too, but I can't. My mind is numb with fear.

"Charity, what are we gonna do? We gotta get out of here. We need help."

I nod, but I don't know what to tell her. I rub her arms and press my forehead against hers.

"Charity?" a voice rings out.

I almost jump out of my skin. My earpiece is hanging against my chest, and I quickly stick it back in my ear.

"Kyle? Kyle!"

"Are you okay?" he asks. "I saw them follow you into the tunnel! Please tell me you're okay."

I'm not okay. Not even a little. "We gotta get out of here. Meet us at the office. We're gonna have to walk out or something. We can't stay here."

"Okay," Kyle says. "Meet you there."

Bezi and I leave the arts-and-crafts lodge and sprint back to the path that runs directly in front of Mirror Lake. The prerecorded screams are still echoing through the camp. It actually sounds louder than it was before. I touch my earpiece.

"Kyle? Can you cut the sound effects?"

Static echoes across the channel.

"Kyle?"

The sound effects cycling through screams and footsteps echo through the trees in every direction. Suddenly, Bezi grabs my arm and squeezes it.

I follow her gaze. At the head of the path, between us and the office, is a figure. Even draped in darkness, its outline is familiar, and it makes my blood run like ice in my veins. The beady black eyes of the owl mask glint in the illumination of the flashlight before I can switch it off. The owl man squares his shoulders. I can't see his face, but I know he's staring at me from under his shroud of mottled white and brown feathers.