Mallory settled into bed that night with a smile. It was only the second night in her new room, but already she felt cozy and at home.
True, she still missed being close to all her friends, but for now she set that concern aside and focused on the more cheerful thoughts of her day with Tim.
She shook her head as she recalled the insanity of their introduction, grinning at the memory of meeting him while wearing only a bath towel—then snickered at the fact he’d been the one embarrassed by the moment. She smiled into the dark, recalling how he’d tensed when she’d laid her hands on him to get the splinters out of his skin. Maybe that’s what made him stand out in her mind, his strong yet humble nature. She felt like she could actually be herself around him, and not have to posture for his attention or fear embarrassment if she did something silly.
She was about to close her eyes when a dim light and the sound of muffled voices drew her attention to the hallway. Listening, she made out her father’s voice speaking to BJ.
Getting out of bed, she walked down the hall to her brother’s room and stopped at the doorway, squinting from the light.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
Her dad knelt beside the bed, talking softly to BJ. The boy had scrunched himself under the covers the way kids do when they turn their beds into havens from monsters. He’d been acting mousy ever since his experience in the pool, but she figured that was understandable enough.
“BJ just had a bad dream, that’s all.”
“Voodooman was here,” BJ whispered.
Mallory raised an eyebrow. “Voodoodude?”
“It was just a dream,” her dad repeated.
“No,” BJ insisted. “It was Voodooman. But he didn’t look like before. He looked… more scary. L-like a regular guy, b-but gray… gray and empty.” His voice wavered with fright. In one hand he clutched the small penlight their dad often used to dispel the shadowy disguises of BJ’s nighttime monsters, revealing ordinary objects misconstrued in the dark by his overly imaginative mind.
“It’s okay,” her dad assured him. “I’ll stay right here until you fall back to sleep. There’s nothing to worry about.”
Mallory yawned. “Well, I’m going back to bed. G’night, Dad. Night, Munchkinboy.”
She shuffled down the hall to her room.
She paused at the door, her eyesight still adjusting from BJ’s lamp. Lost in darkness, the far wall of her bedroom had become a solid black mass, interrupted only by the rectangular shape of the bedside window. Then she spotted something else, something that made her drowsiness vanish in an instant and caused a tingle of fright to prickle along her spine: the unmistakable silhouette of someone crouching in front of the window, kneeling before her bed, head down, sniffing her sheets.
Outside, a car drove past. Its headlights swept across the window, and in the split-second moment when the light passed over her bed Mallory saw what hid within the darkness.
A girl.
A girl with short purple hair. Splattered with blood.
Mallory gasped and the girl’s head snapped up. She gazed back with black shark eyes, baring bloodstained teeth in a hideous snarl.
Shock stole Mallory’s voice, and no sound came when she opened her mouth to scream. She wanted to run, but her gaze remained fixed on the girl by her bed, on the dried blood splashed across her bone-white skin and crusted around two overlapping letter Ks that had been cut into her forehead.
Kale Kane a voice whispered in Mallory’s ear.
The girl lunged.
Before Mallory could find her voice, the girl shot over the bed on all fours with the speed of a springing spider.
DAD! Mallory tried to yell, but the girl crashed into her, knocking her across the hall, through the bathroom door. She landed on her back, head bouncing off the tile floor. Her teeth clattered. Her vision blurred. At the same time, the girl’s full weight crashed down on her chest, knocking the wind out of her lungs and setting off a tremor of paralyzing agony inside her body.
Pain pinched her throat, seized her limbs.
Pinned under her attacker, Mallory could only gaze upward as the girl’s dead-white face loomed into her vision, black eyes gleaming. Her lips parted, revealing those bloody teeth.
“Dad—,” Mallory managed to get out when she heard her father call her name, but then the black-eyed girl clutched her jaw with one hand, forcing her mouth open and—
Aghk!
—shoved her other hand into Mallory’s throat.
A new pain exploded inside her chest.
Pain beyond pain.
Hell.
And with it came a terrible revelation: the girl gazing down at her was dead. Mallory knew it without doubt. Through the horror and torture her mind still detected the cold touch of the girl’s skin, the stiff feel of her flesh.
She dead! She’s dead, and I’m next!
Mallory gagged, convulsing in terror. Her legs kicked wildly, her hands closed over the appendage groping farther and farther into her throat. It was cutting off her air, choking her, trying to grab something inside her!
She pulled at the girl’s arm, dug fingernails into her skin. But the girl wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t relent. And just when panic had no more meaning, Mallory felt her fingers sink into the rotten meat of the girl’s forearm, piercing dead muscle and severing spongy bone until—
The girl’s hand broke off.
Mallory watched in perfect clarity as the girl drew her arm backward, trailing only a putrid black stump. And yet the fingers of the hand inside her still scampered and twitched and clawed to get deeper.
Mallory grabbed the thing’s wrist, seizing it with both hands, but when she tried to pull it free, the soft meat simply stripped off in her grasp, like oily skin sliding off an overcooked chicken.
Free from her grip, the hand plunged down her throat. She could feel her neck bulge as the slime-greased thing slipped past her esophagus, digging toward her stomach.
All she could do now was thrash about, clenching the muscles of her abdomen, trying again and again to lurch the hand up. She jerked from side to side, kicking and flailing, and—
“Mallory,” her dad cried. “Wake up!”
She jerked awake, still trying to lash out, stopped only by her dad restraining her arms.
“Mallory!”
Now the room came into focus. She saw her dad at the bedside, BJ huddling behind him, looking scared.
She stopped thrashing, relaxed. Lingering fear kept her heart pumping at a runner’s pace, but she managed to calm her breathing and sit up. Her dad released her and she wiped sweat-soaked bangs off her forehead.
“Are you okay?”
Too embarrassed to say anything, she merely nodded. But with the nod came a sob, and with the sob came tears.
Crying, she clutched her dad in a hug. He held her tight, stroking her hair like when she was young. He told her she was safe and that he loved her and that it was only a dream.
“Everything’s okay,” he said after she’d gained control again. “You’re safe.”
She wiped her cheeks dry. “I know. I’m fine now.”
“You sure?”
She nodded.
“Want to talk about it?”
“No way.”
He smiled, and she smiled back, even if it was forced.
“All right, then.” He ushered BJ out of the room and turned off the light. “Goodnight, Mallory. I love you.”
“Love you, too.”
After they’d gone and she found herself alone in the darkness, Mallory scrunched down in her bed and pulled the covers up to her chin, just like BJ.