Lost in the Never Woods(50)

She couldn’t have her parents seeing what she’d done. Wendy was the only one who did laundry around the house. This was the perfect place to hide it until she could sneak it out into the trash.

As she shoved the bundle of sheets and torn pages under her dirty clothes, Wendy caught a glimpse of her hands. They were smeared with red. Some had even gotten under her fingernails.

At the sink, Wendy turned the hot water faucet on full blast. With shaky hands, she scrubbed furiously at her hands with soap and a facecloth.

That tree. It had been so familiar to her when she had seen it in her drawings. There was something there, some sort of connection she couldn’t place, but after seeing it with her own eyes, she couldn’t deny it anymore. She knew that tree. She had seen that tree in person. Been next to it.

To call what she’d experienced a dream just wasn’t true. It was more than a dream. She could smell the earth and feel the cold of the snow. The forest looked just as it had that winter when Wendy and her brothers had gone missing in the woods. It wasn’t a dream; it was a memory.

A shudder ripped through her from head to toe, her hands jolting so hard that she dropped the bar of soap. She scrambled to grab it out of the sink and began working on the red slashes of marker up and down her legs.

A memory. She’d spent years with a gaping hole in her mind where those six months had been ripped out. Wendy had been dropped into a flashback, however brief.

And the boy in her dream—there was no doubt in Wendy’s mind it was the same person who had approached her in her driveway right before Alex went missing.

It was Peter, but it also wasn’t Peter.

It had his face, but a horrible, nightmarish version.

Was that Peter’s shadow? Wendy had assumed that his shadow was just that—a black, amorphous thing. Could it take a solid human form? Did Peter know?

She needed to find him and tell him. If Peter’s shadow could walk and talk, and knew where she lived—

Wendy shut off the water and gripped the edge of the sink. Her hands were bright red, the knuckles blanched. Pin drops of blood spread through the dry cracks. The hot water had burned, and her skin stung, but she’d gotten rid of the ink. Even her legs only had bright streaks left from being scrubbed raw.

A shaky breath filled Wendy’s lungs, an attempt to steady herself. She looked at her reflection in the mirror. The hair at her temples and the back of her neck was damp with sweat. Her gray eyes stared back at her, puffy and bloodshot.

She needed to find Peter and tell him what had happened. He was the only one who could make sense of it.

The clock on Wendy’s counter read 11:32 a.m.

“Shit!” she cursed. She had told Peter to meet her at noon.

Wendy jumped into the shower to wash the sticky, stale sweat off her skin. Drying her hair would take too long, so cold drips hit the back of her neck as she rushed around her room. She pulled on a pair of green shorts and a navy tank top before sliding on her tennis shoes. Grabbing her bag, she bounded down the stairs and nearly tripped on her laces.

Wendy was halfway across the living room when her father’s voice rang out. “Where are you off to in such a rush?”

She whirled around to find her father standing in the doorway of his study. He wore a dark blue suit that was a little too tight across his barrel chest. He had somehow managed to wrangle his hair with gel into an uneven comb-over. Even his bushy mustache was trimmed.

Wendy frowned. He never dressed this nice for work. And why was he home in the middle of a weekday?

“Why aren’t you at work?” Wendy asked, momentarily distracted from her mission by his odd appearance.

“I’m not at work because I need to take you down to the police station, remember?” Mr. Darling grumbled as he hooked a sausage-like finger over the knot of his tie, trying to wiggle it loose. “I’m taking a half day to deal with this.”

“What?” Wendy said, starting. Her mind went into a panic with visions of handcuffs and mugshots and dark interrogation rooms.

Mr. Darling furrowed his thick eyebrows. “Those detectives still want to talk to you.”

“Oh, right.” A wave of relief washed over her. Wendy rocked onto the balls of her feet so she could read the clock next to the TV: 11:54 a.m. She was supposed to meet Peter any minute now, and she had so much to tell him. “Can we go a bit later?” Wendy tried, wincing in anticipation of his answer.

Mr. Darling scowled. “No, we can’t go later,” he barked, waving his hand in the air. “Where do you have to get to that’s so important?”

“Nowhere,” Wendy answered quickly, smoothing her hands through her wet hair. “I just made plans to meet up with Jordan at the hospital, you know, after her shift.” Another lie. The more she told, the easier it got.

“This is more important,” he told her. He waved his hand dismissively. “Text her and tell her you’re going to be late. I can drop you off at the hospital after.” Mr. Darling snatched his keys from the kitchen table and started for the door. “Let’s go.”

Wendy gave a nod and pulled out her phone, pretending to text Jordan as she followed him out the door. She’d lied herself into a corner. She wanted to see Peter, and she especially didn’t want to leave him waiting for her, but what choice did she have? This wasn’t really something she could talk her way out of.