I push my bed to the side to make room for a sacred circle, place eight thick, white candles on the floor, marking all the directions north to west, and light them with a long, wooden match. My grandmother always stressed the importance of a solid circle, one that can't be penetrated by unrested spirits looking for an opening.
I sprinkle Kosher salt and sugar around the perimeter of the circle and place stones and crystals around the edges. Into the middle, I set a freshly washed ceramic bowl. And to it, I add a few bits of chocolate from the bar Drea was eating last night (the bits with the tooth-mark impressions), a wad of hair from her brush, and the couple of bitten fingernail shards (still attached to the acrylic) that I'm able to find in the trash.
I spread the Scrabble tiles out in front of me, placing the Y tile to the left for yes, the N tile to the right for no, and the Q tile above to stand for the question mark. Everything's ready. I sit in silence for many moments, trying to
gain equilibrium with the energies that flow through my body and the room. "Evil is not allowed to enter this sacred circle," I whisper. "This sacred circle is safe. This sacred circle is powerful.
And this sacred circle is all-telling. I imagine a circle of light above this sacred circle. It surrounds me and keeps me safe as I invoke the powers that be to allow me to speak to those who have passed on."
The temperature in the room drops and a shiver runs over my shoulders. "Sacred Mother, I invoke thee to let me speak to Anne Blake, my grandmother." I position my hands over the letters and wait for many moments, for the windows to rattle or the floor to shake--all the invented stories you hear about late-night Ouiji-board adventures and slumber party seances. But nothing like that happens. In fact, the room seems quieter than ever.
I close my eyes again and concentrate even harder. "Grandma?" I whisper. 'Are you here?" I rotate my hands, palms down, counterclockwise over the letters. That's when I feel the energy in the room guide my fingers toward the Y tile.
"Can you help me make sense of my nightmares?" I feel my hands draw toward the Q tile. I take a deep breath in to try and quiet the questions that fly through my brain, and end up asking the most obvious question of all: "Do you know who Drea's stalker is?" My hands move to the Y
tile.
I take another deep breath, preparing myself for the answer. I almost don't want to know. 'What is his name?" I ask.
I wait for several seconds, for the energy to swim through my fingers and guide me toward the answer. I to
tate my hands over the letters and bend my wrists up and down, like that will make a difference.
But it's almost as if my grandmother can help, but only if I figure things out for myself.
"Is the stalker someone I know?" My hands stop mid- rotation and move to the Y.
I close my eyes, concentrating on what I should ask next, and the question seems obvious. "Why am I having these nightmares?" I feel drawn into the letters, my fingers moving into the pool, extracting the tiles that feel right. I shift them all around until the energy in my hands rests, until the letters spell out TEL FUTR. I don't have time to dwell on the missing Scrabble pieces. I have to keep going.
I push the tiles back into the pool and return my hands to hovering-position. "The stalker said that he'd come for her. Now that he has, where has he taken her?" I feel the energy guide my fingers back into the letters, choosing a series of tiles and sliding them into place. This time they spell out YR DREMS.
I think about it a few moments. If my dreams are supposed to help me tell the future, then the answer to where I will find Drea is somewhere inside them. It makes perfect sense, like I've known all along.
I watch the candle flames waver back and forth like tiny glowing snakes, wondering if I should ask my other ques- tion, if it will help me, if there's time. "Grandma," I whis- per, "why have I been wetting the bed? What does it mean?" The room grows colder in the few seconds that I wait. I keep my eyes closed, concentrating on the question, confi- dent in my thoughts. After a few moments, it feels as
though the energy has taken hold of my hands. My fingers grab at the letters, plucking out a handful and arranging them into place. They spell out S HDN.
S Hdn? What's that supposed to mean?
I don't have time to stop and figure it out. I have to trust what I already know. -Thank you, Grandma," I whisper. -I miss you." I extinguish the candles with the snuffer to end the séance, and step out of the sacred circle. I head to where I know I'll find Drea.
The forest.
thirty-two
I enter the forest through the tree-lined opening behind our dorm. Before I leave, I end up calling Officer Tate to tell her where I'm going. Whether or not she takes me seriously is a completely different story.
Still, she says she'll come. I pray she will.
It's dark; the webbing of branches above me blocks out any remaining light from the falling sun.
It will probably be less than an hour before I won't be able to see anything at all. Why didn't I think to bring a flashlight?
The smell of earth surrounds me and seems to intensify with each careful step. I walk for several minutes, doing my best to stay on some sort of path, to keep moving in a forward direction. I concentrate on the sounds around me
crickets chirping, leaves rustling, and twigs snapping beneath my feet. But then I hear something else--footsteps maybe, the sound of someone's body moving through the brush, scraping against the branches.
I try to decipher what direction it's coming from, but the ringing in my pocket stops me, sends a trickle of panic down the bones of my spine. Amber's cell phone. I forgot I even had it. I squat down behind a tree to answer it. "Hello?"
"Stacey, thank god you have my phone."
'Amber?" I whisper. "I can't talk right now"
"Meet me in my room. I've decided I want to talk to the police."
"You've already talked to them, I know you have."
"I talked with some cop lady for, like, five minutes. But then I completely freaked and pulled a chew-and-screw, only it was a talk-and-screw, and booged it out of there. So, I didn't really say much. What can I say? I've gone from denial to separation to totally wigging in less than twenty-four hours. Murder has that effect on me, I guess. It's so Heathers and The Craft, you know?
Real."
"I'm a little busy" I say.
"Well, unbusy yourself because I'M ready to talk to the police now, Stacey, and I want you to be here when I do." "I can't!"
"You can and you will. It's for Drea. I'll see you in a few minutes." She hangs up.
I hang up too, with no intentions of going to meet her. I just don't have any more time to waste.
I continue on my path, concentrating on the essence of the forest, hoping it will bring me to Drea. It's quiet again, as if whoever was following me stopped or went in another direction.
A couple more minutes along, I reach a partial clearing. I look up at the sky for some sort of direction, as though the dark clouds can part the way, open up to some sort of foldout map. But they've gathered up into a smoky-blue cluster of lilies, reminding me that I need to hurry.
I take giant steps with my arms outstretched, swiping brush from in front of my face. I stop a moment and turn, sure that someone is moving behind me again. I take a few quick steps to create a distance. The person following does the same.
I speed up even more--running now--doing my best to weave through the brush and find a place to hide. The ground is turning to sludge beneath my feet. With each step it gets deeper, slowing me down, pulling at my sneakers.
I take a big step and my foot sinks, beyond ankle-deep, into the mud. I pull up on my leg. The weight of the mud literally swallows up my sneaker. Barefoot now, I struggle to trudge my way through the sopping muck, to reach steadier ground. But then I have to stop. There's a gnawing ache in the arch of my one bare foot. The feeling explodes toward my ankle and up my leg. I reach down to feel the spot. There's a stick poking out through my skin.
I feel myself begin to pant; feel the lights behind my eyes go dim. I want to be sick. I reach out into the darkness for a branch to help steady me, but end up slipping, smacking down against the cold, wet earth.
"Stacey?" whispers a male voice.
It's different than the one I expect to hear smoother, gentler. Sincere. Still, I scrounge a rock from the ground, feel for its roughest edge, and ready myself for attack.
"Stacey?" the voice repeats. "Is that you?"
A beam of light finds its way from my bare foot to my face, making me squint. And then it moves to highlight his.
It's Donovan. And he's hiding. He's squatted himself down between two wiry shrubs, his face partially covered by a web of branches.
'Are they gone?" he asks. "Did you see anyone?" His face is pale, masked in a mix of fear and sweat.
But what is he doing here?
I shake my head and grab at my bare foot, trying to assess how deep the stick went in a half-inch, maybe. "What happened?" he asks.
But I'm panting too hard, perspiration dripping from my temples, that I don't answer.
Donovan pulls a cell phone from his pocket. He dials and places the phone up to his ear. "Shit,"
he says.
"What?" I mutter.
"Nine-one-one. I've been trying to call but can't get reception on my cell." He looks over bOth shoulders, parts a web of branches, and moves toward me. He zooms the flashlight on my foot.
"Here, let me help you." He places the flashlight on the ground so that the beam remains angled at my foot. The stick punctured right through the fab
ric of my sock, right through the bandage I used to tape up the cut I got from the broken window glass in our room. Donovan surveys the wound and then takes the end of the stick.
"Slowly" I say, giving him permission.
He nods and twists the stick ever so carefully, working it out from my arch. I flinch a couple times as it's pulled out completely, imagining how it must have punctured the muscle.
Donovan pulls my sock off. Surprisingly, the stick itself isn't very bloody and neither is the wound. I direct him to pull a couple damp leaves from a tree. I wipe their moisture against the wound in an effort to clean it some.
"How does it feel?" Donovan asks.
"How do you think?" I say. "But I'll be fine." I ravel my sock around the cut and tie it up as tightly as possible to clot the blood.
"Are you sure?"
I nod.
"What are you even doing out here?" He looks over his shoulder. "Forget it, we don't have time.
We can't stay here. Keep close to me. Can you walk? Do you need me to carry you?"
"No. I'm fine."
"Come on," he says. "I don't know who's screwing with me, but they'll find us here for sure."
"Who?"
Donovan takes my hands and helps me up, ignoring my question. He places his arm around my shoulders and aims the flashlight out between us, so I can see as well. We scurry through bushes, over rocks, and between trees
him, constantly looking over our shoulders to see if we're being followed; me, hobbling as best I can, trying to keep up despite the throb in my foot. We reach a partial clearing and stop to catch our breaths.
"Wait, Donovan," I whisper, finally. I wrap my hand around the protection bottle, still in my coat pocket. With faith, it will protect me. "Go ahead without me if you want." I can't just keep on running. If I want to save Drea, I have to stop and face the future we've created.
He looks at me, a bit confused. "I'm not leaving you in the middle of the woods by yourself. You shouldn't even be out here. Why are you?"
"Why are you out here?" I ask.
"I had to check something out."
"What?"
"Just something I heard about, all right? So, I headed in this direction, saw something I shouldn't have, and have been running ever since. End of story. I just want to get the hell out of here in one piece."
"Wait, what did you see?"
"Nothing you want to know about now," he says. "Trust me on that."
"Well, I have to check something out too," I say. "And I don't want to run anymore."
"I'll tell you what." He shines his flashlight around until it hits a boulder. "Crouch down behind that rock and I'll make sure they're gone. If everything looks safe, we can both head back to campus." He reaches into his pocket and detaches a penlike flashlight from his key ring. "Hold on to this. I'll be right back. Just try not to make any noise."
I take the flashlight, but I don't sit down. I look up into the cat-black sky, where the tops of trees have parted slightly, allowing me to locate the North Star. I breathe it in, allowing the lights from the star formation and the moon to soak into my face and grant me energy.
And that's when I remember. Donovan's sketchbook in the inner pocket of my jacket. I pull it out, remembering how he said he was sketching last night. I flip to the page, the only night scene in the book. A picture of the last quarter moon.
But the moon tonight is waxing, still days from first quarter. And the first and last quarters are separated by half a month. Impossible for it to change overnight.
I aim the tiny flashlight in the direction of where he headed. Its slender beam allows only a few feet of light. I take careful steps, over brush and fallen leaves, trying my best to be quiet. There seems to be a sort of trail paved through a cluster of trees. I take it, using my most basic instincts as a guide.
I think about doing some last-minute spell, conjuring up some spirit who can answer all my questions. But somehow, deep within me, I already know what I need to. It's like what Gram always said about spells suddenly making sense--how we're the ones who give them meaning, how somewhere deep inside us lies the most powerful truth and will of all.
I lift a delicate, fork-shaped branch from in front of my eyes. And that's when I see it: the construction site from my nightmare. A shell of a house, lit up in the distance by spotlights. It reminds me suddenly of that e-mail Drea got--the one Chad sent her--"The House that Jack Built."
This is where I'll find Drea. I'm sure of it.
The structure of the house is just as I dreamed. Tall, creamy boards have been erected to form walls. A rectangular archway stands at the front as an entrance.
Walking on the ball of my foot now, I move to the front of the house, fearing and knowing exactly what I will find. And there it is. Freshly dug. Drea's name spelled out in the soil I want to be sick. I cup my hand up over my mouth and heave in and out. This can't be real. It can't be happening. But it is.
I feel myself back up, away from the letters, trying to quell my fear as best I can. Seeing these details from my dreams play out in real time is horrible and strange and terrifying all at once. But if I use them the right way, I can possibly save Drea's life.
I run into the house headfirst, my forehead smacking against the spotlight hanging down from the partial roof. A splattering of color-spots shoots in front of my eyes, nearly blinding me. But when the colors fade, I'm able to see. It's just like in my dream, like I've already been here. I stand in a large open area, framed in by tall planks of wood. Ahead of me is a long hallway with adjoining rooms to the left and right.
I take tiny steps across the boards, looking for some sign of Drea. Through a grid of wall planks, I can see a blanket laid out on the floor in the other room, with another spotlight hanging over it.
I walk closer. There's a picnic set up. A wicker basket sits in the middle of a red and white checked blanket, with a loaf of French bread and a wine bottle stick ing out. An assortment of fresh lilies sprouts from a crystal- cut vase.
Wind combs through the skeleton of the house and distracts me, blows my hair back. My gaze floats over to the corner of the room. A navy blue backpack is slouched against the wall. I approach the bag slowly, as though something alive is lying dormant inside. I pick it up, unzip the main section, and look inside. But it's too dark to see anything clearly.
I sit down with the bag and aim the flashlight into the op
ening. There's an empty can of Diet Coke. I pull it out, noticing a kiss of salmon-pink lipstick against the rim. Drea's favorite shade.
The next item, a half-eaten bar of dark chocolate--the kind Drea always buys from the machine in the dorm lobby--with plastic wrap around the teeth marks for protection. And her physics lab notebook, the one Chad sometimes borrows.
I can see one more item, sitting at the bottom. Its shadow makes a sort of looplike shape against the nylon fabric. I reach my hand in and pull it out. Drea's pink bra, the one that got stolen from the washroom.
My body shakes. I bite down on my tongue to keep from screaming out.
Amber's cell phone rings in my pocket. I answer as quickly as I can get my fingers to work.
"Hello?" I whisper, still shaking, barely able to keep the phone in my hands.
"Where the hell are you?"
'Amber--" I gasp, tripping over my breath.
"You were supposed to meet me in my room. The police are here too. I called Officer Tate.
We've been here, waiting for you--"
-No, they're coming here. She's coming here. I told her."
"Yeah, well, I told her you were coming to meet me instead. Wait, what's the matter with you? Is something wrong?"
The floorboards creak. I peer in the direction of the main room, noticing that the spotlight has been shut off. Footsteps make their way across the boards in one of the rooms. I click the phone off, stuff everything back into the bag, and jam the flashlight into my pocket. I stand, cemented in the center of the room, hoping the darkness will hide me.
I'm all alone. No one is coming.
thirty-thr-ce
The sound of footsteps moving toward me fills my ears. I stretch my arms out and spread my fingers to try and find the doorway that will lead me into the main room, the one I entered.
Despite the growing ache, I place all my weight on my bare foot with each step to avoid making noise, but then my ankle makes a loud popping sound.