The Grace Year(47)

A light brushing sound grabs my attention. It’s too soft to be leaves. There’s something about it that reminds me of home.

Climbing to the top of the ridge, above the spring, I find a wide plateau, covered in the shriveled remains of weeds, a tiny pop of color on the right side.

As I walk toward it, I’m trying not to get too carried away, but what if it’s the flower from my dream?

Getting on my hands and knees, I see it’s not the flower but the frayed end of a red ribbon. A surge of excitement rushes through me. If other grace year girls were here … if they survived the wood … then so can I.

I tug on the strand, but it seems to be stuck on something. As I adjust my body so I can pull it up with a little more force, I feel something crunch beneath my knee. It’s an unnatural sound, like a broken piece of china. Pushing away the dead weeds and clumps of dirt, I find something solid. I’m trying to figure out what it is when my thumb jams through a hole in the rock.

Only it’s not a hole … and this isn’t a rock.

It’s a human skull with molars still attached.

The red ribbon garroted around the neck bones.

My stomach tightens into a hard knot. Dropping the skull to the ground, I frantically try to cover it back up with dirt, but all I can think about is the girls who went into the woods and never came back.

Maybe the ghost stories are true.





Wanting to put as much distance as I can between myself and whatever dark truth lies at the top of the ridge, I careen down the hill and immediately lose my footing, rolling the rest of the way down, bashing into a rotting tree stump. I’m lying on my back, staring up at the vast sky. There’s a part of me that wonders if I’m already dead. If those are my bones. Maybe a hundred years have passed in the blink of an eye and I’m nothing but a shadow now. But as my vision slowly comes back into focus, so does the pain. Being dead shouldn’t hurt this much. Using a tangle of exposed roots, I pull myself up. It takes a few minutes for my brain to catch up with my body, but I don’t have time to give in to whatever this is. The sun is beginning to wane.

The smell of oats burning in a cast-iron skillet draws me back toward the camp. I try to mark my path the best I can so I can find my way back to the spring, if need be. Settling in an evergreen near the perimeter, I watch them in the clearing, laughing, carrying on—as if they don’t have a care in the world. They’re happy I’m gone. I don’t know if it’s jealousy talking or my imagination gone askew, but there’s something about them that reminds me of the trappers coming back from the outskirts, hopped up on hemlock silt, reeking of mischief. It’s hard to believe that just a few days ago, I was one of them. It feels like a world away.

Gertrude walks across the clearing, the back of her head glistening in the dying light. I’m leaning forward to see if I can somehow get her attention, tell her I’m all right, when one of the branches snaps beneath me. It gets Gertie’s attention, but unfortunately, it gets Kiersten’s, as well.

I’m balancing my weight, trying not to make another sound, as the girls gravitate to the edge of the clearing.

“It’s a ghost,” Jenna whispers.

“Maybe it’s Tierney,” Helen says, nuzzling Dovey under her chin. “Looking for revenge.”

“She wouldn’t dare come back here, dead or alive,” Kiersten says, narrowing her eyes. “There’s a lot more I can cut off of Gertie if she decides to test me.”

And I swear she’s staring right at me, like she’s whispering directly in my ear.

Jumping down, I back away from the tree … from Kiersten’s eyes, and retreat into the woods.

Like a ghost, I walk through the night.

I don’t know where I am … where I’m going, but I’m not lost, because there’s no one looking for me. Nowhere to go. I thought being with the girls at the camp, watching them slowly slip into madness, was the loneliest I could ever feel.

I was wrong.





I spend my days memorizing the woods, cutting new paths, looking for food, and in the evenings, I batten down wherever I can, under a fallen log, a rain-whipped hollow in a rock, but I never stay in the same place twice. The abundance of animal tracks lets me know I’m not alone in here, and by the size of the prints, I can tell there are much more frightening things in here than ghosts.

The only upside is that being away from the camp seems to have given me some clarity. I still get dizzy from time to time, but I don’t feel as unhinged, as if the earth might open up and swallow me whole. Maybe just being around each other is what’s making the sickness spread. A poison of the mind.

Other than a lucked-upon scavenged root, or the occasional acorn a squirrel gave up on, I haven’t eaten in weeks. My stomach doesn’t growl anymore. It doesn’t even hurt. When I take in a deep breath, I imagine the air filling me up, sustaining me. I don’t know if it’s good or bad, but it seems to be enough.

Occasionally, I get a whiff of chicory water or fatty meat roasting over an open flame, but I know the girls don’t have anything like that in the camp. Even if they did, they’re not in the right frame of mind to pull off a meal like that.

I follow the scent all the way to the fence. There’s a part of me that wants to claw my way over the barrier to get to it, but maybe that’s how they’ll lure me out. Or maybe it’s my mind playing tricks on me.