Page 83 of Grave Matter

Where thefuckam I?

Is this another crazy dream?

I sit up.

It’s pitch black and I’m outside.

Not in my bed, not in my room, butoutside.

Oh my god, oh my god.

I start feeling around with my hands, brushing over moss and ferns and twigs.

I can hardly breathe. Blood pounds in my head.

I know I’m not asleep. Everything is too real. Too cold. I can feel moisture seeping in through my pajama bottoms, the ground damp, the air thick and clammy. I breathe in sharply, my lungs weak and shallow, my nose catching the scent of the sea and pines and petrichor.

It’s so dark, too dark.

How did I end up here?

Did I sleepwalk?

Was I…taken?

There’s a helplessness embedded in my bones and I fear that most of all. Because this shouldn’t be possible and my mind is no longer my friend.

My mind is turning on me.

And I am terrified.

So I sit, frozen in fear, unable to move. My eyes are starting to adjust, picking out the outlines of the trees above me, theirbranches moving in the breeze. Far in the distance I see the glow of a light, which hopefully means I’m not far from the lodge.

I need to get up, I need to work my way through the woods, toward the light.

And yet I wonder if I can just stay where I am. Stay still. Stay hidden. If I lie back down and fall asleep, will I wake up in my bed again? The last thing I remember was after dinner packing for the camping trip in one of the backpacks they loaned us, then getting into bed when the sky wasn’t even dark yet, a bruised twilight.

You’re losing it, I tell myself.You’re truly losing your mind. You’ve been losing it all this time.

I have to find Kincaid. I have to talk to him.

I dig my fingers into the moss, cool, soft and damp, trying to feel what’s real, trying to hold on to reality.

But the more I dig my fingers in, the deeper they go, until my fist is buried and I have a terrible feeling that something is going to reach out from underneath, grab my hand and pull me down.

I suddenly yank my hand out, the thought enough to get me up on my feet. I stumble, off-balance on the uneven ground, and I’m about to fall sideways when my hands catch the rough bark of a Sitka spruce.

It’s a wide, rough trunk, an old tree, and I lean against it, trying to catch my breath, trying to push away all the scary images I have about what lurks beneath the moss, what hides between the trees. It feels like something is watching me, perhaps many somethings.

Stop that!I chide myself.Stop thinking like that. Find your way to the light!

But the tree feels comforting. The more I lean my head against it, the more I swear it whispers:rest, rest, rest.

It’s just the wind, though, moving the branches above me.

It’s just the wind that says,stay, stay, stay.

That whispers,Sydney.

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