The Dead and the Dark(44)

“I can’t see them. It’s just, like, a feeling.” Ashley’s hands shook. “Parts of it are Tristan. Other parts … I don’t know.”

Logan swallowed. “Try.”

“I think it’s … Nick?” Ashley’s expression was complicated. It was tangled between hurt and fear, caught in the brambles of panic.

Logan imagined her own expression was similar. It was the crushing, spiraling dread that she was responsible for this. She’d invited Nick to go along with them. She hadn’t made sure he was okay the next day. She hadn’t even given him a second thought until they found the hoodie.

“It’s my fault,” Ashley whispered. “Both of them.”

Logan hesitated. She was several things, but “comforting” was not one of them. Ashley’s breath was shaky, eyes red and swollen with tears. It was fear and anger and grief all at once. Logan reached for Ashley’s shoulder, but hesitated an inch away. She thought of what Brandon asked people on the show—she could at least do that.

“Tell me about Tristan. Not what he’s like now. Before, when he was—”

“—alive?”

“When he was here,” Logan clarified.

“Why?”

“Because it helps. I think.”

Ashley’s lips quivered. She wiped her eyes and nodded. “Okay. Um, he was really great. He was always super nice. We spent a lot of time together.” She cleared her throat and whispered, “I’m sorry. I don’t really know what to say.”

“Tell me something specific.”

“There was this one time he wanted to see a horror movie together. It was about a nun or something.” Ashley stopped for a moment, then laughed. “I’d just failed this math test so my mom said I couldn’t go out. I was here by myself, and I heard this banging on the roof. When I opened the window, he was there. He’d downloaded the movie off some site and set it up on his computer so we could watch it on the roof. He said I wasn’t breaking the rules if I never left the house.”

Logan smiled.

“It was so stupid.” Ashley wiped her eyes. “We should’ve just watched it inside. But he was just like that. He thought watching it on the roof made it a romantic thing. Once he got an idea, he had to make it happen.”

Ashley looked into the distance—into where Logan assumed Tristan was—and another tear rolled down her cheek. This wasn’t the kind of face a person made when they just missed someone, Logan thought. There was something else here, deeper and more painful than grief. There was guilt. Logan saw it in her eyes.

She braced herself.

“Why did you say it’s your fault?”

Ashley closed her eyes. “I told you I was the last one who saw him the night he disappeared.”

“Right.”

“He was here because I told him I wanted to talk. Tristan was supposed to apply for college and move away. I thought he was going to.” Ashley sucked in a deep breath. “But then he decided not to apply. He wanted to stay here. In Snakebite. With me.”

Ashley’s voice cracked.

Logan reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. She knew where this was going. The house was quiet except for Ashley’s small, choked breaths.

“I didn’t want him to stay. We broke up.” Ashley spat the words out like they burned her tongue. “I thought we could still be friends like we were before. Everything was gonna be okay. But then his mom didn’t see him. John didn’t see him. No one saw him after that, and I just … if something happened to him. If he did something to himself, I—”

“Did you tell anyone?”

Ashley shook her head.

Logan gently took her wrist. “Hey, this is not on you.”

Ashley rested her fingers softly against Logan’s hand, breathing slow and quiet like she needed the silence to soak up the words. The breeze through her open window was sickly warm, too hot for nighttime. It hushed through the curtains like a whisper.

“What if they’re both haunting me because they’re…”

Logan squeezed her wrist. “You saw my dad at the cabin. He’s alive.”

“Tristan and Nick could be alive, too.”

“Right,” Logan said. She wished she believed it.

Suddenly, a crack sounded from the roof. Not a crack, a slow groan. It was weight against the wood, slow and deliberate. It was footsteps, each one measured as though the creature above them struggled to balance. The sound started at the center of Ashley’s bedroom ceiling, getting closer to the window above her bed with each step.

Ashley closed her eyes. Logan felt her racing pulse through the inside of her wrist.

The footsteps arrived above the window, and then stopped. The night outside was thick and dark as molasses. Logan felt a pull toward it, briefly, when her tote bag buzzed. This time it wasn’t the light of the ThermoGeist flashing. It was her phone. Logan didn’t recognize the ringtone. A message alert titled SCRIPTO8G popped up on her lock screen.

Ashley leaned over Logan’s shoulder to read.

unknown: FOLLOW

A chill crept up Logan’s spine. She looked at Ashley, but she couldn’t find the words to explain what it meant. According to the part of her brain that believed in rational answers—in provable science—it made no sense.