My Best Friend's Exorcism(15)

“What if she hit her head?” Abby said.

“Are there really alligators?” Glee asked.

Something moved in the marsh grass and Abby jerked. Was it an alligator? What did an alligator sound like? Were alligators nocturnal? She didn’t know. Why didn’t school teach them anything useful?

Abby scanned the creek one more time, hoping to spot Gretchen because she really didn’t want to jump in the water. Across the creek, something moved again in the marsh grass. Abby strained her eyes and saw a shadow separate itself from the darkness and drag itself toward the water. She stared hard. A shape that wasn’t human slithered through the pluff mud, making a dead plop as it slipped into the black flowing river that led out to the sea. A sharp wind blew off the water. Summer was over. It was getting cold.

“Gretchen!” Glee shouted.

“Where?” Abby asked.

“Down there,” she said. “Where I’m pointing.”

“I can’t see you pointing in the dark.”

“To the left,” Glee said. “Where it curves.”

Abby looked downstream, using her hand to block out the bright orange moon. Far down, where the creek bent toward the ocean and disappeared around a curving bank of marsh grass, was a pale shape, long like Gretchen, picking its way through the pluff mud toward the treeline. Abby cupped her hands around her mouth.

“Gretchen!” she shouted.

The figure kept moving.

“How do we get down there?” Abby called up to Margaret.

She heard a lighter snap above her and smelled menthol.

“See,” Margaret said. “She’s fine.”

But Abby knew she wasn’t fine. Gretchen probably didn’t know how to get back to the house. She had zero sense of direction, and she was naked. She might have kept her sneakers on, but Abby had her clothes.

“Do you have a flashlight?” Abby asked.

“Spaz down,” Margaret said. “She’ll be back in five minutes.”

“I’m going to get her,” Abby said, heading up the ramp. “Give me one of those.”

Margaret slid a cigarette out of the pack and handed it over. Orange light flared in Abby’s face and then she was seeing spots and sucking menthol. She didn’t want to tell them, but her heart was hammering.

“I’ll be right back,” Abby said.

“Watch out for snakes,” Margaret called after her helpfully.

Abby picked her way through the long grass and plunged into the trees. Instantly, the woods cut her off from the house, from the stars, from the sky, and she was buried beneath dark branches. All she could hear were the cicadas shrieking, the sound of her own footsteps crunching leaves, and the occasional close-up whine of a mosquito in her ear. She had the feeling that something was listening to her walk. She moved as quietly as possible and stayed close to the river. To her left, the woods were pitch black.

By the time Abby emerged into the little clearing where the river bent, her Merit had burned down to the filter. She tossed the butt in the water, hoping it would bring Gretchen running out to tell her she was hurting Mother Nature.

Nothing.

“Gretchen?” Abby whisper-called into the darkness.

No answer.

“Gretchen?” she tried again, slightly louder.

A path of crushed marsh grass and churned-up pluff mud showed where Gretchen must have crawled out of the water. Abby lined herself up at the top of the bank, where Gretchen would have emerged, and looked into the black woods. Leaves sighed as a high wind blew through the treetops. The cicadas kept screaming. Far off there was a single hollow knock that made Abby’s heart squeeze tight.

“Gretchen!” she said in her normal voice.

The woods didn’t answer.

Before she could wimp out, Abby walked into the trees, following a straight line, pretending she was Gretchen. Where would she have gone? Which way would she have turned? Within seconds she was deep in darkness. Her eyes had nothing to hold on to and they were spazzing out, her vision sliding helplessly over the shadows, trying to force them into shapes. Keeping one hand in front of her face so she didn’t walk into a tree and break her nose, Abby made her way deeper into the woods.

Up ahead, the trees thinned and moonlight shone dull gray on something square and black planted in the ground. Abby slowed as she walked into the clearing. It was a ruined blockhouse, just a simple one-room rectangle, its thick tabby walls burned black, the roof collapsed. A single blind window stared out, and it was impossible to shake the sense that something was looking out at her. That’s when she saw the darkness inside the blockhouse start to move. That’s when Abby realized the cicadas had stopped screaming.

Her heart shifted into fourth gear. She didn’t know where she was. She had never heard about any buildings back here. There couldn’t be anything inside it, but something in there was moving and Abby couldn’t look away. The darkness inside was deeper. She could see it through the window, twisting around itself, squirming, rolling, undulating. And something was buzzing, a sinister sizzle she could feel through her feet, humming deep underground. Abby tightened her grip on Gretchen’s shorts and shirt. She heard the sound of a far-off hunting horn.

This had to be the acid. It was finally kicking in, after all. She just needed to turn around and walk away. Nothing was going to hurt her. It was a powerful drug, but it had never caused any harm to anyone except maybe Syd Barrett. All she had to do was turn around and go. There was nothing to worry about because none of this was real.