Some Quiet Place

options. No phone, no truck, no clothes. Fear hasn’t appeared yet, which is odd in itself. I could wait a little longer—

Thunder rumbles the ground.

I start, glancing at the horizon. When did it turn gray? This strange fear flowing through my veins clouds my logic. It’s nearing sunset already—how did that happen? Staying definitely wouldn’t be safe … would it? Not with something out there that sent even immortal beings running for the hills. No, not safe. Especially not for a half- naked girl in a rusty truck, no matter what abilities she may have.

Clutching the steering wheel, as if the truck will spontaneously start and solve all my problems, I swallow. “You’ll take me right home?”

If possible, the man’s smile grows until it seems like it’ll stretch right out of the confines of his face. Of course everything inside of me is shrieking, Danger, stupid, stay where you are. But I just need to get home. If he tries anything, I’ll probably be able to overpower him.

“ … straight home,” the man at my window is promising. The thin piece of glass protecting me fogs with my breath, and I touch it with my finger, steeling myself.

The man has turned away. He’s walking across the parking lot. When I remain in the cab of my truck, he glances back, lifting a brow. “Coming?” It sounds like a challenge.

Don’t go! my instincts advise one last time. Fear will come. But I don’t feel him anywhere near. I can’t stay here. When once again I put the warning aside, the voice curls away like withering vines. Defeated.

Every sound is an explosion in my head. The lock clicking, the door opening, my feet slapping the pavement. I take my bag with me and drop my keys in the side pocket. Following this man is like letting a shadow lead me through the dark. No relevancy or light to guide me.

Since there isn’t a single car in the lot now, I assume his vehicle is along the road behind the school, where the teachers park. We’re both quiet.

Then he turns, walking backwards. This is strangely disconcerting, like an owl turning its head all the way around. “So, Elizabeth,” he says in that violin voice, “how long have you lived in Edson?”

Around the side of the school we go, to the back as I’d suspected. There’s one car and one truck along the curb of this road. Is there still a janitor here?

“All my life,” I answer, my voice tight and careful. There’s grass underfoot now, damp and freezing on my heated soles.

He nods as if this is so interesting. “I see.” He stops under a large weeping willow, and the light and leaves cast intricate shadows on his face. I watch the patterns move over his skin in the breeze. I don’t know which vehicle is his, so I’m forced to stop as well.

The man is doing that head-cocking thing again, and now there’s an anomalous glint in his black eyes. “Tell me, Elizabeth”—my name is a hiss—“because I’m simply dying to know. Have you finished the mural in your room yet?”

A beat of pregnant hush between us. I’m frozen for a mindless instant.

And then I run.

He’s after me before I’ve even turned around completely. I can hear his footsteps just behind me, a taunting drum surrounding, choking, laughing. There’s something about the sound of his run, I dimly realize in my whirling frenzy. I fly back around the corner of the school, heading for the parking lot and the front doors.

“Oh, Elizabeth!” the man sing-songs. He doesn’t even sound out of breath.

“Help!” I scream, willing someone, anyone, to hear me. Fear, just when I need him most, is far away. I rush through a line of bushes and some twigs scratch the vulnerable skin of my legs. There it is! The lot appears before me, open and empty. My truck in the corner, urging me onward.

The sound of the man somewhere behind vanishes, and then he’s suddenly landing in front of me in the end of a giant leap. He exaggerates the swing in his arms, panting wildly, mocking. The veins in his eyes are huge. “What are you going to do?” he gasps. Then, just as swiftly as he evolved into this wild creature, he straightens, smoothing his hair and pulling at his shirt cuffs. “Shall we proceed?” he asks. “Or will you insist on trying that again?”

It’s as I stand there, helpless—more desperate possibilities and disorienting panic whizzing through me— that I comprehend where I recognize his run from. The night of Sophia’s party, when I was rushing through the woods, trying to get to Joshua … there had been someone behind me. Following me. At the time I’d just assumed it was a kid trying to get to his car. But now I realize the truth. Is he what Rebecca was so worried about on the night of the party? Oh. Oh. She’d been protecting me all along.

And that isn’t all I remember. An image, like a blink or a flash, appears and vanishes. Burning eyes and a planted stance. That same tilted head. He was in the hallway at school. I remember now. He’d been staring at me with the same eyes he has now. Hungry eyes.

It’s as I’m putting these pieces together that the man asks me, so casually, “Are you her?”

The words slam into me over and over again. Are you her? Are you her? A scrawled sentence on a lined piece of paper. There’s a teasing lilt in the man’s voice; he’s mocking me. He wants me to know that the note was his.

“What do you want?” I ask, watching his every move warily.

“You know,” he says as if I haven’t spoken, “you’re really a fascinating creature. You never responded to all the games we played. No one has done that before.”

Creature. Not girl. He thinks I’m from the other plane. “You’ve made a mistake,” I say, backing away. “I’m just a human. I’m normal.”

He smiles again, advancing. “Oh, so wrong. You’re far from human. We have a history, young lady. I’ve been looking for you for a long, long time. You had me fooled. You and that Emotion.”

Even more comes together, suddenly, in my head. It’s so obvious that I wonder why I didn’t figure it out the instant I laid eyes on him.

There are some things humans shouldn’t know. Even a human like you.

He’s here, he’s here! Run before he gets you, gets you!

This man—no, not man, something else entirely—is what has all the Emotions and Elements running. He got me, I think faintly. But he shouldn’t be after me. I’m not one of them. “What do you want?” I ask again, backing away, down the hill.

As an answer, his bottomless eyes flare to red. “Where is she?” he purrs.

No. No, it isn’t possible. But the truth is staring me right in the face. Nausea grips my stomach. You killed me. Where is she? You did this. You ruined us. I trip on my own heel and fall to the ground. My fingers burrow into the grass, into the soil, as if I’m on a ride that won’t stop spinning. All the sleepless nights, the haunting dreams that felt so real … it was him. Never the boy, reaching out to me, begging me to know his story. No ghosts, as I’d secretly believed, no revelations of the past. Just the ugliness of this creature using and twisting my own mind against me.

“What are you?” I say, past the ragged air struggling in and out of my lungs. He approaches and leans over me, bringing that weird scent with him, and it’s in that instant that I realize what that underlying smell is.

Old blood.

“Don’t you know yet?” he breathes in my ear. When I don’t—can’t—answer, he whispers, his lips moving against my skin, “I’m Nightmare.”

I stare up at him, frozen. He’s silent now, waiting for me to speak. He’s a hole of quiet and malicious intent, and I have no idea what he’s capable of. This is most dangerous of all.

The questions don’t matter. I scramble to my feet and run again.

He lets me go. “I saw you save the boy when he was about to get hit by that truck!” Nightmare calls. He hasn’t moved. “There’s no way any normal human could have gotten to him so—”

The Element halts midsentence. Breathing violently, I glance over my shoulder and stumble. Fear stands between me and death. I can only see his back, his white hair curling on his neck. Nightmare doesn’t say a word. He’s looking at Fear with that pleased, ravenous expression.

“Go!” Fear shouts to me. Crouched, his body tensed, he doesn’t take his eyes off Nightmare. “Don’t look back, Elizabeth! Keep going!” he orders.

I obey without any more indecision, and the wind rushes past my ears. But at the sound of Fear crying out, I