Forests of the Night Read online

  As fast as she could, Macy got to her knees and pulled her butterfly knife out of her dress pocket. She flipped the knife open with the flick of her wrist, then slammed the blade into Andrea’s forehead. There wasn’t any blood—that was the freaky part about stabbing a ghost. (Okay, one of the freaky parts. Freaky part number one was that you’ve just stabbed a fucking ghost). You might think it would be like when people are stabbed in the movies and blood spurted out of the wound like a lawn sprinkler. But ghosts didn’t seem to bleed when she cut them. Andrea rolled her eyes up toward the blade, then let out a terrible scream. Macy covered her ears with her hands until the ghost disappeared.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Sam was driving, which meant that when she came to a stop sign on the way out of town the car lurched and stalled. “Fucking . . . fucker,” Sam muttered, grinding the stick into first gear. The car stuttered when she stepped on the gas, almost dying again. Jackson’s seatbelt tightened across his chest as he was jerked back and forth and Trev groaned from the seat behind Sam. The car filled with the smell of burning clutch. Dom didn’t say anything, for once, because he wasn’t there. Thank God. Dom had stayed home because his shoulder was still healing, and sitting in the car while Sam learned how to drive a stick shift would probably have made him pop a stitch or something. Jackson didn’t miss Dom’s lectures, or the way he squinted his eyes disapprovingly whenever Jackson spoke. Plus it was Dom’s car, and listening to Sam brutalize his clutch would probably have given the little guy an aneurysm.

  The car finally sped forward, skidding for a moment on the wet road. “You drive like a psycho,” Trev said, kicking the back of Sam’s seat.

  “Can you work a stick?” Jackson asked Trev.

  Trev laughed like Jackson had made a joke and Sam snorted.

  “Sure,” Trev answered. “I’m a pro.”

  Jackson turned back to Sam and asked, “Then why don’t you know how?” Sam was wearing her hair up, and he noticed a tiny mole on the side of her neck, just above her collarbone. Or maybe it was just a really big freckle. He often wondered where else Sam had freckles.

  “It’s not like we’re Siamese twins,” Sam replied. “His boyfriend taught him.”

  “Oh.” Jackson didn’t realize Trev was gay. Macy had probably known immediately with that “gaydar” girls claimed to have, but she sure didn’t tell him. Thanks Mace. Jackson tried to think of what he might have said in the past few weeks that would have made him sound like a homophobic jackass. He didn’t think he was a homophobic jackass, but he never knew what kind of crap might have spilled out of his mouth. They were always talking about ghosts, so maybe it was fine. Now that he thought about it, he couldn’t remember Trev ever hitting on Claire, which was the first thing guys usually did. Had Trev ever hit on Jackson?

  Jackson glanced in the backseat. Trev gave him a cool, even smile, like he was daring Jackson to have a problem with this new information. In middle school, Jackson used to say that things were “gay”—like, taking a headshot in Halo was gay. Having to clean the cat litter was so gay. His mom would yell at him when he talked like that, as though he had said something really bad, like fuck, in front of his grandmother.

  “You have a boyfriend?” Jackson asked.

  “Nah,” Trev said. “We broke up before we moved here. He’s still in Texas.”

  “He was hot,” Sam said, turning up the wipers. “I would’ve done him.” The wipers made an annoying squeaking sound every time they swung to the right. Squeak, kathump, squeak, kathump. The rain was getting heavier and the view out Jackson’s window was wet and gray. Everything outside of Grey Hills was crazy rural—like, cows and horses and little farmhouses. Little House on the Prairie shit. The road stretched up a long valley with wide pastures on either side. If it kept raining like this, the pastures would flood and it would look like you were driving up the middle of a huge flat lake.

  “He was alright,” Trev said. “Kind of clingy, actually.”

  “Amazing ass.”

  Jackson didn’t want to listen to Sam talk about Trev’s ex-boyfriend’s ass, amazing or otherwise. He wanted to know what they were going to find at the lake about twenty miles out of town. He started punching at Dom’s radio presets. Static. Had Dom really not set up his presets since moving to town? Weirdo.

  “Here.” Sam pressed the CD button. U2’s “With or Without You” filled the car.

  “No!” Trev yelled, covering his ears. “No more Joshua Tree!”

  “I like it,” Sam replied, turning the volume up even louder. She sang along, but Jackson couldn’t really make out her voice over the sound of the car wheels on the wet road, the wipers, and Bono’s soaring voice on the tinny speakers.

  When Jackson had knocked on Sam’s door that morning and told her about the old ghost story, he was about eighty percent sure that she would tell him not to waste her time. A man had murdered his wife with an axe, dumped her body in the lake, and hung himself from the rafters of a boathouse. Sometimes the man’s ghost came back and drowned people. When he told her the story, Sam’s eyes had lit up and she said, “When do we leave?”

  Jackson had responded with, “How about right now?” because he needed to do something after sitting through Nick’s funeral. He had been able to see the back of Macy’s head during the service, but not her face. She probably didn’t even know he was there. And Claire had been a mess, with tears running down her unusually makeup-free face. The whole thing had made Jackson restless and jumpy, like there were ants crawling in his blood.

  As Sam kept driving—smoothly now that she could hang out in fifth gear—pasture eventually gave way to trees. The road was so dark it seemed like late afternoon instead of morning. It was hard to believe that the whole day was still ahead of them. The service had seemed to go on forever and trying not to cry was exhausting. Jackson felt a little bad for leaving right after the funeral, but Macy probably had family stuff to do. And, to be honest, he hated that church. It was the same one his mom had chosen when she planned her own funeral. Jackson’s family didn’t really go to church at all, but his mom thought it was a lovely building. He wondered if his mom had gone to her own funeral, and if so, was she disappointed?

  “Turn here!” Jackson yelled over the music, pointing to a small road that peeled off to the left. He braced himself for Sam to take the turn too quickly, or kill the car, but she slowed and let the car gently roll onto the dirt road.

  Trev leaned forward. “Good job!” he yelled in his sister’s ear. “I didn’t even throw up.”

  The road was in bad shape, with huge rain-filled potholes making the car tip to one side or almost bottom out. Jackson felt like he was in a leaking boat. The windows had started to fog up so Jackson rolled down his window and stuck his hand out. He touched the dripping cedar branches as they passed.

  “Now it’s raining inside,” Trev grumbled. “Wonderful.” Ever since Sam had woken her brother up to come on their little adventure, Trev had been less than enthusiastic about the whole thing. With his hair sticking up and now a little frizzy from the rain, Jackson thought Trev resembled a cat who had just been given a bath.

  “Just stay on the road, it goes all the way to the lake,” Jackson yelled over the music.

  Sam nodded, tapping the steering wheel with her fingertips. Jackson had never met anyone like Samantha Moss before—at least outside of a movie. Macy always said she hated those characters: the ones who show up partway through the movie acting all crazy, but were so hot the male characters fall in love with them immediately. She’s the kind of girl who takes off her clothes and jumps in a fountain or hops on a train without knowing where it’s going. Macy used to go on rants that those girls weren’t real. They were some horny screenwriter’s wet dream. Jackson thought that Macy would probably have hated Sam if she was in a movie. Hell, Macy probably kind of hated Sam in real life. Macy always acted weird around her—nervous or something.

  After four more teeth-rattling miles, they arrived at Horseshoe Lake. Sam
pulled off to the side of the road—there wasn’t really much of a parking area—and turned off the car. The sudden silence made Jackson’s ears fuzzy, like they were full of cotton.

  The lake was named after its shape: wide and narrow with a horseshoe-like curve and a narrow piece of land that jutted out into the middle of the water. At the end of this little peninsula was an old, rotting boathouse. Fir trees and cedars surrounded the lake, making it feel like you were miles and miles from anything. They were miles from anything—Jackson was pretty sure that no one would be able to hear them scream. While he didn’t really think that they’d find anything here, just thinking of the possibility gave him a pleasant chill down his spine, like watching a scary movie. Those were always his favorite kind.

  The rain had eased up in the last few minutes. Rather than falling, it looked like the rain was just hovering in place as a thick mist.

  “Okay . . . what’s the plan?” Sam asked, looking back at her brother. Jackson was a little annoyed that she obviously didn’t direct the question toward him. Maybe Jackson had an amazing plan. She didn’t know. He didn’t have a plan beyond driving to the lake, but that wasn’t the point. He could have, and she didn’t ask.

  Trev started to draw something on the fogged glass. It was either a monster or a very improbable penis. “I think I’ve seen this one before. We split up, right? One of us checks out the creepy-ass shack. Someone else goes swimming—gotta be you, sis, since, you know, boobs. And maybe Jackson wanders around the woods for a while until a tree stabs him in the throat?”

  Sam ignored her brother and turned to Jackson. “I actually do think we should start with the building. Ghosts tend to stay in one place—somewhere they feel comfortable and safe. If there is a ghost here, I bet he’d want to be inside the shack.”

  “Boathouse,” Jackson corrected, then blushed. “I mean, yeah. Okay, sure.” Over the past few weeks Jackson had instituted a policy of agreeing with whatever Sam said. Do you want another beer? Sure. Do you want to ditch Trev and make out in the creepy-ass shack? Whatever you say!

  As he got out of the car, Jackson suddenly wondered how Macy was doing. She popped into his head all the time, even when he just wanted to check out Sam’s tight jeans as she walked toward the boathouse. It wasn’t just Macy in general that he thought about, but specifically “Macy in his basement”—that afternoon at the beginning of summer. That shitty day. The memory was always with him, like a sticky, shameful film that clung to his skin. He thought about it all the time. Not the kiss exactly—and was it really even a kiss if only one person is doing the kissing? He thought about that look on her face. It wasn’t just anger and it wasn’t just pity—though her face was also full of both of those emotions. What he had seen in her eyes when he held her wrist for a moment too long was worse than anger or pity. It was disappointment.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Macy knelt in the rain for a few minutes after the ghost vanished, waiting to see if she was going to cry. Her eyes burned, but she blinked back the tears and breathed deeply until she was under control. Then she stood up slowly, wincing as she straightened her skinned knee.

  The trickle of blood that ran down her leg looked worse than it really was because of the rain. It reminded her of when she was eleven or twelve years old and always cut her legs shaving in the shower. The blood had pooled at her feet in rusty pink puddles before washing down the drain.

  Macy pressed one of her wet gloves to her knee and limped towards Dom’s house. She hesitated when she got to the front door, then knocked.

  It took a few tries before Dom opened the door. Macy’s heart gave a little twist when she saw his sleep-rumpled hair and groggy eyes. “Hey,” he said, blinking at her. “You’re all wet.” He was wearing a soft-looking white shirt and sweatpants. She must have woken him up.

  “Yeah. It’s raining.”

  He seemed to look past where she stood on the covered porch to the dripping lilac bush in the front yard. “Oh. You’re right,” he said.

  Dom had been taking some serious pain meds as the hole in his shoulder slowly healed. Dom didn’t like to talk about it, but Trev told Macy that the bullet had caused some nerve damage. Even if the actual wound was getting better, there was some pain that might never go away completely.

  Macy was getting used to Dom’s spaced-out, glossy eyes, but she didn’t like it. She had come to rely on Dominick, out of all of them, to know what the hell was going on.

  Macy walked past Dom and went straight to the kitchen. First she grabbed a paper towel to clean up her bloody leg. Then she took the knife out of her pocket and dropped it on the table. Dominick startled at the sound, then crossed his bare arms.

  “Four,” Macy said. “I just took out four ghosts. One in the church and three on the way here.”

  “I’m sorry,” Dom said. He was always apologizing to her lately, like he was somehow to blame for everything. He had said he was sorry the other day when Macy spilled coffee on herself. Dom sometimes even apologized for the rain.

  “I just . . . ” Macy ran her hands through her wet hair. Her scalp was still tender from Andrea’s attack. “When’s it going to end? Is this just the way the world is now? Like, forever? Just ghosts and more ghosts?”

  Dom finally seemed to wake up enough to notice the state of Macy, with her ripped tights and skinned knee. “You okay?”

  Macy sighed. “No. I mean, yes. I’m fine. A bitch ghost pulled my hair and pushed me down. And I took care of her. But no. It’s not fine. This”—Macy held her hands up, gesturing to everything—“is not fine. Can we just live like this? Is this what it’s always like, in the places you were before? The other Doors?”

  Dom got Macy a glass of water and one for himself. He drank deeply and rubbed his eyes again.

  She knew he didn’t like being medicated, which meant the pain must have been really bad today, because he was trying to cut down on the pills.

  “No, none of the Doors were like this. We called them Doors, but they were more like cracks. This Door—it’s wide open. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Have you found anything?” she asked. Dom was supposed to be researching a way to close the Door. So far he had found a web series about a cat who could fit in all kinds of boxes, and a Russian cartoon about a girl and her pet bear, but nothing about how to keep ghosts from flooding Macy’s town.

  Macy wasn’t even sure how Dom was supposed to be researching—did he just type “how to close a Door to Hell” into Google? Maybe she should try that herself.

  “Not really. Maybe. I don’t know.” Dom yawned.

  His breath wasn’t great and Macy felt kind of bad for being annoyed that he wasn’t finding answers. She wasn’t the one who got shot.

  Macy still had dreams about it sometimes—dreams that felt real because they were practically memories. Dom was bleeding and she tried to help lift him but her burned hands hurt so bad she almost threw up.

  That part was real. The part that was only a dream was when the Door kept getting bigger and bigger until it swallowed them both like an exploding sun. That was when she always woke up—after it was too late, but before she actually saw what was on the other side of the Door.

  Dom held his hand out to Macy. “Come on, I want to show you something.”

  Macy didn’t take Dom’s hand. Her burns still hurt, even after all those weeks. That’s why she wore gloves—and because she didn’t want her parents to know her palms were still covered in tender blisters.

  Letting his empty hand drop, Dom led Macy up the stairs to his room. They usually sat around the kitchen table when they talked, and Trev and Sam always took up all the space in the room with their bickering.

  “Hey, where are the twins?” Macy asked.

  Dom glanced back at her. “They ran off somewhere with Jackson. They left about twenty minutes ago. He had a ghost he wanted to show them.”

  Macy could hear a slight twinge of bitterness in Dom’s voice. She had grown used to Dom being a kind o
f ringleader for the trio. He couldn’t enjoy being left behind.

  Jackson must have come here right after the funeral. She didn’t remember Jackson or Claire leaving, but she did recall seeing them near the back of the church with their families. She had spent most of the actual service watching the ghost of the girl, fascinated by the bows in her hair and how focused she was on her game of jacks.

  “Jackson has a ghost?” Macy sat on the edge of Dom’s bed, her stomach doing a silly little flip as the mattress sank beneath her.

  Was it stupid to be shy about sitting on a boy’s bed when she had just stabbed a ghost in the forehead? Yes. Definitely.

  Dom sat at the simple—probably Ikea—desk by the bed. He turned on his laptop. “You tell me. Something about a ghost by a lake? It drowns people?”

  Macy had a vague memory about some ghost story Jackson told her when they were both about ten years old. It was a man who drowned people or killed people with an ax. She had always thought Jackson made it up. “Well, I’m pretty sure that all they’ll find at Horseshoe Lake is water.”

  Dom nodded and just kept typing at his computer. He had an almost invisible shadow of stubble along his jaw. She wondered what his jaw would feel like against her lips.

  Sometimes Macy worried that other people could read her mind and knew everything she was thinking all the time. Which meant, of course, that they would be able to hear her wondering if they could read her mind. That was the part that always freaked her out the most: that someone might know that you knew that they could read your mind. How awkward.