By now, you’re probably wondering what the hell happened after Vikki ran off. Well, I’d like to know what the hell happened too. But I guess you deserve some sort of expnation, and I might be able to help with that—at least a little bit.

  There wasn't much excitement after she left. I waited. I waited and I waited and I waited for that call. Forever and ever and ever.

  The dark swallowed the world whole. No more fading light through the leaves, no more blue-gray sky, just an endless bck pressing in on me. I was a child hiding from the monsters, curled up in the crook of the tree, arms wrapped tight around my legs. Restlessness churned beneath my skin, but fear kept me in pce. The adrenaline had drained out of me, leaving exhaustion in its pce. My muscles cramped, my limbs stiff, but still, I didn’t move. My stomach punished me plenty, reminding me every so often that it needed nourishment. There was nagging in the back of my skull, a voice whispering that I should get up, that I should go look for her, but I ignored it. I wanted to stay safe. I wanted to pretend that if I stayed there long enough, she’d come back. She was supposed to come back.

  But she didn't. And because I took too long, she never would.

  But then, eventually, the silence became too much. Noises were born from it, ones that I couldn't decipher from my imagination or reality. The waiting became unbearable. The guilt dug its cws in deep, and before I realized what I was doing, I was moving. Sliding down from my hiding pce, the leaves crinkling and the dirt gathering beneath my fingernails. My legs wobbled under me, weak from staying still so long, but I forced myself forward. One foot in front of the other, wandering in aimless circles. I tried tentatively calling her name, but I was met with nothingness, and I had that childish fear that the creature would come for me.

  The woods felt empty. Too empty. It imagined war survivors, stepping out from their hiding pces to see what was left, to survey the damage. People crawling from bomb shelters, staring at fttened houses and burning rubble. The mocking calm, the oppressive realization that you survived but your world didn't. Only there was no rubble here. Just the dark, my memories, and the trees'.

  I can't tell you how long that went on. I can't describe it well enough, the endless ticking of a melting clock. But then, ahead of me, was a lump of a girl.

  I stopped walking. The world stopped with me.

  She was there, lying so still. The moonlight cast an eerie glow over her face, over her wide, gssy eyes. Her lips were parted, frozen mid-word, mid-breath—except there was no breath. There would never be breath again.

  I don’t remember screaming, but my throat burned. I don’t remember running, but my legs ached. All I remember is smming into my front door, fumbling with the handle, tripping inside and colpsing at my parents’ feet. I didn't cry when I saw her body, I only felt the plummeting of my heart and my pulse beating in the tips of my fingers. But at that moment, I sobbed, shaking so hard my teeth ccked together, and they didn’t understand a word I was saying. I wailed so loud I couldn't hear anything else but the noises I made. On some sense, I understood that they were telling me to calm down.

  Once I settled down, after a millennium of sobbing, they told me they were terrified of where I went. I was confused at first, because my mind had been so preoccupied with thoughts of Vikki that I forgot I hadn't been home all night. I ignored their looks and rambled ineligibly about Vikki, the creature, her body.

  The police were called. A search party was formed. The whole town came together to scour the woods, fshlights bobbing between the trees, boots crunching on dead leaves. It was a blur to me. They searched for days, for weeks, and when they didn’t find her, they decided she had drowned in the gorge. There was a bracelet, they said. The one she wore every day for two year.

  A bracelet.

  As if a bracelet meant anything. As if a bracelet erased what I saw, what I knew. The police were awfully zy if they thought a bracelet decided she'd drowned.

  I told them. I told them again and again that a thing killed her. A creature. But no one listened.

  No one ever listened.

  I had nightmares after that. Every night, they consumed me, swallowed me whole, just like the dark in those woods. It wasn't a problem at first, but then I could never drink water before bed. I was eleven, too old to be scared of monsters and too old to be wetting the bed. But I was. Gosh, I was. And when I woke up, sweating and shaking and ashamed, I would press my face into my pillow and pretend that if I just stayed still, if I just hid long enough, maybe it would all go away.

  Can I tell you a secret?

  Sometimes, I still have nightmares.

  When I close my eyes, I outline the eerie moonlit glow on her pale cheeks, the sheen of her wide eyes, eyes that would never blink again. I can imagine the dried ring of blood that dripped from her parted lips. Lips that would never speak again.

  Now you understand why I wish I hadn't seen her again.