The Wicked We Have Done

5

Everything that’s come out of Jace’s mouth has been shrill with excitement.

She thought we were dead. She thought that, unless she ran into someone else, she’d have to spend the rest of her time here hungry and alone.

“I was sure I was going to starve to death,” she says through a mouthful of canned chicken. She didn’t even bother to heat it up, pinching the hunks straight from the tin. Her shirt is off because I cleaned her cut a few minutes ago, and Valerie studies the wound, her nose only inches from Jace’s shoulder.

“She got you good for using a dissolving blade.” Valerie traces along the edges of the cut.

Jace hisses and smacks her hand. “Knock it off.” She bites back a grin.

“Then the Compass Room got Erity good,” I add, having moved on to my second meal of the day, hard cheese and fresh tomatoes. “Not that it matters anymore, but did you see that crate floating in the water?”

Valerie shakes her head. “I was hoping it had floated to shore or something—I mean, if it really was food—but I couldn’t find it anywhere.”

“What the hell.” I rub my temples.

“A lure,” Casey says. “You needed to go into the water to get dragged into the cave.”

I allow a single shiver to ripple through me, and then push the thought far from my mind, returning to my cheese.

The sky holds the deep blue of twilight. After Valerie brought back my boots, bag, and pants from the beach, I searched the near hillside for wood to prepare for the impending cold night. Finding enough was difficult without an axe, but I managed a decent pile. Casey took inventory of our food and estimated it’d last us about ten days before we’d have to find a new source.

But I’m not worrying about that right now—none of us really are. There isn’t a point. At least three of us have died in the first handful of days. The horror I’ve experienced may be nothing compared to what I’ll see tomorrow.

The only thing we can do is eat while we can. Sleep while we can. And wait.

I take a tin cup supplied by the shed and head for the stream, filling it with water before returning to camp.

“You seriously going to drink that without boiling it? You know what Giardia does?” Valerie asks when I sit. “Have you ever heard of the phrase explosive diarrhea?”

Jace snorts.

“You would know personally?” I raise the cup to my mouth.

“I read. You know? Some people do it to learn things. People who read are eighty-five percent less likely to commit crimes.”

“You must be very unlucky,” Casey says.

I take a large gulp of the cool water. “Okay, well, if I end up dying of explosive diarrhea in this place, I give you permission to laugh at my corpse.”

“And perform lewd acts with it?”

“Whatever floats your boat.”

Like last night, when the sun dips beneath the mountains, the temperature drops instantly. “That can’t b-be natural,” I stutter. “Like the whirlp-pool, it’s so unl-likely that it’d drop thirty degrees in t-twenty minutes.”

“I’m from Connecticut,” Jace says coolly, just now putting her shirt back on. “The temp doesn’t faze me much. But you’re right—it’s strange.”

“What’s their reasoning? They trying to t-torture us?”

It’s not apparent, not even when the four of us lie next to one another in the tent and try to sleep. Both Valerie and Jace are curled up under a mountain of blankets while Casey rests behind me. Even with my hood up and surrounded by bodies, I shake so violently from the cold that my back grows sore.

Morning light trickles through the thin nylon separating us from the sky. Outside, an animal shuffles away on the grass. I stiffen. An audible splash sounds. Whatever it was fell into the stream.

It gasps, and groans.

I kick the blankets away, crawling over both Valerie and Jace to reach the tent exit. Valerie knees me unaccidentally in the pelvis. I unzip the flap and crawl out. A boy lies faceup in the shallow part of the creek.

I scramble to my feet and run into the water, dropping to my knees and soaking my only pair of pants. I shake him and call his name.

“Water,” he croaks.

“You’re in water, you stupid boy!” I help him sit up. When he comprehends what I’ve said, he leans forward and gulps down mouthfuls of the stream, choking and gasping.

By now, Jace has crawled out of the tent and gapes at us.

“Breakfast,” I tell her. “Make breakfast, and hurry!”

Tanner sits on the fireside stump, wolfing down his third helping of canned chicken and potatoes.

I fill him in on what’s happened so far as Valerie cleans Jace’s wound. Tanner puts down his dish and listens closely with his fingertips pressed together in front of him, occasionally pushing up his oversized glasses with his thumbs. When I’m finished, he tells us what’s happened to him.

He was already outside when Salem’s victim showed up. Took off into the woods long before the house caught on fire, but stayed close by for the next few days.

“There was nothing. Only the dew I could collect off the leaves and my own thoughts. Until I ran into Gordon.”

“What happened?” Casey asks.

“Tried to stab me with a knife. Chased me down into a muddy ravine. Sometimes I hid in the thick brush. Found a cave once. But I couldn’t get away. He was on my tail the whole time.”

“Why?” I ask. “Why would he do that? He knows this place judges our morality. Erity died because she tried to kill Jace.”

Tanner shakes his head. “I think he knows he’s doomed. He’s having a little fun before he goes.”

“So why isn’t the Compass Room taking care of him?” Valerie says. “They’ve already taken care of three of us sadistic fuckers. They’re clearly capable.”

“Three?” Tanner asks. I forgot to tell him about Blaise.

When I do, he pales. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I know,” Casey agrees.

“Oh, come on, guys. You’re acting like you haven’t spent the last x amount of months in prison,” Valerie says, pulling herself away from Jace’s wound. “Part of being a sociopath is that you lie. A lot. The guy can tote around the biggest Bible in the world but that doesn’t mean his mind isn’t all sorts of fucked.”

Tanner opens his mouth like he’s going to argue, but snaps it shut. He can’t. None of us can, because none of us know what was going through Blaise’s head.

Like how we don’t know what’s going through anyone’s head but our own.

Tanner huffs. “Well, these hauntings are obviously testing us, but what they are exactly, I’m not so sure. I mean, they can’t be real. Deities, victims that can’t logically be here, dead girls . . .”

I flinch. Casey’s staring at me.

“We know that four of us have been tested so far, right? Salem, Erity, Blaise, and Evalyn. The only survivor of those tests has been Evalyn. We know the way they test us is through brain waves, so the way that Evalyn reacted to images of her crime was different from the others.”

“Obviously,” Casey says. “I mean, none of us saw how Blaise was killed, but Salem was being a creepy fuck when he died, and Erity was trying to sacrifice Jace.”

“And Evalyn?”

Casey’s eyes flicker to mine and then away. He’s about to speak when I say, “I was shocked. Panicked. I thought I was going to die.”

“You were remorseful,” Casey says.

“You don’t know that. I could be remorseful like Blaise was being repentant in the lodge.”

“Oh, give me a break, Evalyn.”

“I’m just making a point.”

“Children,” Valerie warns lowly.

“I can’t figure out what triggers these . . . events,” Tanner says. “I don’t know if we’ll all be hit, if that is necessarily what we will all die from, or if Evalyn will be hit again.”

My throat tightens.

“So then what do we do?” Jace asks.

Tanner shrugs. “Until we know the trigger, we wait. Eat. Take nature walks. Enjoy what could be our last moments. That’s all I have so far.”

So uplifting.

“Wait.” Valerie chews on the corner of her lip. “I . . . I saw my sister. I don’t think it was a test. Sure as hell didn’t feel like one, compared to the others, but she’s who led me here, to this place. Compared to what all of you have been through, I’d say it’s been paradise so far.”

So my visions of Todd didn’t mean I’m going crazy.

“Maybe some of these experiences can reward us instead of kill us,” Tanner suggests.

“I saw my brother too, Val. Back when we were in the lodge. I chased him down the hall.”

“And into my room,” Casey interrupts.

I clear my throat. “And then at the lake. He was pointing to the crate in the middle of the water that I mistook for food.”

“And that led you to your test,” Tanner finishes. “As for the lodge.”

“He led me to a fight.” I shoot Casey a heavy-lidded glare.

Jace snorts. Casey doesn’t seem very amused.

“Not sure on that one.” Tanner sighs. “I guess we’ll have to wait for more to work with, won’t we? What’s important for us to realize right now is that it doesn’t matter if we stay here or go out into the woods alone. We can’t hide from the tests. If we could, this place wouldn’t be very accurate, now, would it?”

Camp atmosphere after the huddle-up isn’t all too good. I can’t help but mull over what Tanner has said. He has to be right. There would be no point of the Compass Room if we could hide from these tests.

Our temporary haven isn’t safe. Nowhere is.

The good news is that I found a bar of soap in our outdoor pantry. Jace chastises me for washing in the creek—something about killing the fishes—and I counter that it’s not my responsibility to show this place an ounce of respect. And I haven’t seen a single fish.

I wash downstream, far away from the whirlpool, scrubbing all of my clothes thoroughly with the soap before laying each garment on the rock to dry. The shirt I wore when Erity was killed is permanently stained pink. I’m rinsing out my hair when Valerie sits on the near bank, dipping her feet in the water.

I cross my arms over my bare chest. “You mind?”

“Not at all,” she says, and then, “We have a problem.”

She explains to me that the group is torn on what we should do about Gordon, the lone psycho ranger wandering out in the woods. Tanner thinks we shouldn’t worry, even though he was chased for days by the bastard. He’s convinced that he won’t be able to kill us if we aren’t supposed to die.

I shake my head, sinking into the pool. “I’m not quite comfortable with that idea.”

“Casey thinks we should booby-trap our food.”

“Too complicated. We can’t pair off in shifts to keep guard at night?”

“Thank you. There is some sanity left in this world.”

I return with Valerie to camp, wrapped in a blanket and wringing out my hair when she delivers the news. The fact that I’ve volunteered myself and Casey for the first night shift doesn’t make Casey very happy.

“Having two people on guard doesn’t mean that he isn’t going to try and hurt one of us,” he argues. His hair stands on end from grease, his T-shirt brown from soil and ash. I kind of want to push him in the stream because he’s so filthy. And also because he’s pissing me off.

I avoid making eye contact with him by helping Jace prep dinner, our makeshift cutting board a loose plank from the pantry. We plan on disassembling the entire shack for firewood as soon as we can figure out how to do so without a hammer or axe. I slice up red onions near the fire pit as Casey hovers over me, waiting for my response.

I toss the onions in the soup pot. “I don’t know what else you expect us to do. Build a fortress out of twigs? Make everyone practice their knife throwing?”

“Knives dissolve,” he says, missing the point.

“I’m sure this isn’t the first time someone has proven how psychotic they are in a Compass Room. I’m almost positive that he’s already dead. Look how quickly Erity was killed off.”

“Oh, so you expect the people who created this place, who stuck us in here, to protect us? Great thinking, Evalyn. Genius, even.”

“The knives disintegrate when they touch flesh. We know this.”

“There are ways to kill a person without stabbing him.”

I inhale, keeping my patience. “I’d say we’ve been working very well as a team of misfits, Casey. Please don’t ruin it so soon.”

I return to my vegetable cutting, and he stalks off. Fortunately for me, since I have to spend half a night with him, he cools his temper by taking a bath.

As I wait for nightfall, I sit with Tanner by the edge of the creek. “You okay?” I ask.

“Okay as I can be.”

I nod. A valid answer for the occasion.

“You like me, don’t you?”

I laugh in surprise. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know. Ever since the train, since you offered to scratch my nose with your teeth.”

“You’re endearing.”

“Why?”

“Because you care enough to want to know the answer for everything.”

“And I look like a little kid.”

“And you look like a little kid.”

“At least you’re honest.” His brow crinkles with worry. “The jury found me guilty. Only reason I’m here is because—well . . .”

“Because you were taunted.”

“I said I was defending myself.”

I remember the story. Tanner pushed his bully off a cliff that the kids fished at in his hometown.

“Were you defending yourself?”

“Essentially.”

I can decode that. For anyone bullied, ridding themselves of their bully is defending themselves. Essentially.

“Why did he pick on you?”

“Why does any boy pick on anyone? It happens—it’s a part of history. Some of us grow up and we’re unacceptable—smarter or smaller or gayer or darker than what we should be. So we get picked on or change who we are. My dad told me to stop being such a pussy, so for once in my life I listened to someone other than myself, and look where it landed me.” He picks up a stone and chucks it in the water. “He followed me to the river. I was taking a walk along the cliff by myself. . . .”

He drifts off for a moment.

“Dark thoughts come over me, Evalyn. Sometimes it’s hard to erase them.”

I’m about to respond when Casey returns from the stream, shirt off and dripping wet. “You all right, kid?”

“Yes, Dad. Mom already asked me.”

I snort and Casey’s eyes catch mine for a brief moment before he says, “Just making sure.”

After Tanner, Jace, and Valerie have retreated to the tent for the night, Casey and I remain abrasive toward each other. Bundled inside two blankets with my hood up, I face the dark bank on the other end of the stream.

He pokes at the coals with a stick. “What do you think about what Tanner said? About how no matter where we are, what we’re doing, we can’t hide from our tests?”

Great, not exactly something I want to talk about. I ponder carefully, rolling around the best response in my head before saying, “I think that the next test will hit us when we least expect it. And when it happens, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to handle it.”

“I find that hard to believe.” The noise of coals grating against each other fills the air. “Considering the amount of shit you’ve seen . . . I’d think you’d be numb to tragedy by now.”

Strange that he points out the shit I’ve dealt with as though it’s not in relation to the shit I’ve caused. “I don’t work like that. I don’t go numb when my shit meter is maxed out.”

“Good to know. I guess.”

“Why? So you can make sure nothing else tragic happens to me?”

The noise of the coals ceases. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Give it up, Casey. You act like you have to be in control of everything. It’s why you don’t want to sit here and wait for Gordon.”

“Then what do I want to do, if you’re so fucking smart?”

“Hell if I know. Since you can’t control him from here, you’d rather go find him and kill him yourself. That’s what you do, isn’t it?”

I don’t need any extra time to realize what I’ve said.

I turn toward him. “I didn’t mean it.”

“Yes, you did.” He stands, picking up a fresh log and throwing it into the fire. Sparks fly everywhere. I brush one from my shoulder. “You meant it. You think I’m going to die here because I’d rather kill someone then let them kill other people.”

“No—Casey, no, I don’t.” I have no idea, actually. How much do I know of this guy? Not a whole lot. The statistics say that only two of us will survive this place.

Should I hope for the best, or prepare for the worst?

“I guess you’ll find out, won’t you?” he says.

“Don’t.”

“What? You said it yourself. What I can’t control, I kill. Why would they let someone like me escape?”

“Shut up, okay?”

“Shh!”

At first, I think he’s mocking me. But his mouth is open. He’s listening for something. I hold my breath and wait, but hear nothing. “What was it?”

And then I hear it, an audible snap of a twig, a shift of a body.

Casey and I both jump to our feet at the same time. I squint in the direction the noise came from, but make out nothing in the darkness.

“An animal,” he says.

I shake my head. I haven’t seen any animals so far in the Compass Room. They might have been hiding from us. I wait for scurrying, hissing, growling. Anything that could signify the movement in the darkness is nothing but a natural part of the landscape.

But then the darkness starts to hum.

I grab Casey’s wrist and listen. I know this song.

Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry,

Go to sleep, little baby.

I finger the knife in my pocket, releasing Casey.

“Who’s there?” Casey asks lowly.

When you wake, you shall have,

All the pretty little horses.

“I’m gonna go check it out.”

“Are you crazy?” he says.

“What’s more insane? To wait here or figure out what the hell’s going on?”

He can’t argue with that.

“I’ll come too,” he says. But he’s unsure. I hear it in his voice.

I know I should be more afraid than I am. The fire from my bickering with Casey has kept me fueled. We have been working well as a team of misfits. It isn’t time to back down now. I’m on shift. I need to figure out what’s humming. Who’s humming.

I need to protect the misfit criminals I ended up with.

Blacks and bays, dapples and grays.

“All the pretty little horses,” Casey whispers.

The humming—it doesn’t sound childish. If it did, I would expect Todd to appear. Instead it’s a baritone voice, smooth, like he sings this song often. Twigs crunch under my feet as I tiptoe beneath the overhang of branches, Casey right by my side.

“Who’s there?” I ask the darkness.

With the campfire behind us, my vision slowly adjusts. The humming stops.

No one is here.

“Hello?” Shadows swallow Casey’s voice.

“Take a look around,” I say. “Maybe toward the creek.”

“Separate?”

“We want to make sure the area is clear, don’t we?”

“Yeah. Yeah, sure.”

I listen to his footsteps fade and return to the section of forest before me. What I’d give for a flashlight right now. There’s no reason why CR engineers couldn’t have slipped one into our bags, except to enjoy watching us suffer without one.

“Hello?” My confidence is lost, the word only a whisper.

Way down yonder in the meadow,

There’s a poor little lamb.

“WHO’S THERE?”

Bees and butterflies pecking out its eyes,

The poor little lamb cried—

The singing stops, and Gordon, somewhere in the darkness, says, “I never get this far. I want to, you see, but they always die before then.”

Melted ice slips down my spine. I need to run. I need to get the fuck out of here.

“What do you want?” I try to keep my voice steady—What. Do. You. Want.—but I exhale the words in a frenzied, slurred mess.

He says nothing in return.

I cling to the blade in my pocket and listen for any trace of him, but there’s nothing. I wait, hearing only Casey behind me, shouting my name. Waking the rest up, I’m sure.

I ask the darkness, “Who always dies before then?”

But the darkness doesn’t respond.

May 5, Last Year

Ten Miles from Campus

The evening was chilly. The setting sun bathed the hills in deep orange. Behind us, cars zoomed past Meghan’s, parked on the side of the road. I wondered what they thought we were doing, two girls in the middle of a clearing, staring at nothing.

We had just been in the city. So far I had a picture of a garbage can and a half-eaten carton of Chinese food to work with.

Meghan kept snapping shots, adjusting the lens, snapping more. Her platinum curls whipped back and forth in the wind. “Gorgeous.”

“Hurry up,” I whined playfully.

“Sorry, I can’t get away from this. These might be the best pictures I’ve ever taken.”

“Kidding. I’m more than entertained right now.”

“Hmmm . . .”

“It’s true.”

“You’re so weird. How you love coming on these expeditions.” The sky was melding into a darker blue.

“I like a heads-up on what I’ll be working with.”

She crinkled her nose. “Sure. I think you just want to bug me.”

“Also the truth.”

Actually, the real truth was that she was a source of pure inspiration. This sunset wasn’t an anomaly, even though she was trying to convince me so. She got excited about the beauty of the garbage in the street. Who did that? No one, only someone as immune to monotony as Meghan was. She saw something to be passionate about everywhere.

We grabbed burritos from the taco stand near campus before making our way back to the apartment. She uploaded everything onto the tablet and I chose my favorite, one where the pink was outlined in perfect canary yellow.

She streamed our favorite sitcom and studied as I set the tablet in front of me and began to paint.

Our first duo project took me a month to complete.

Meghan’s photo was only the base of the painting. I brushed her in as well, a series of strokes that made up her hoodie and jeans, a tangle of hair that matched the yellow in the sky above her. The clouds were different from the ones in the photo as well. I painted them into twisted hands that grasped at the air—bent wrists and long, curling fingers.

If you asked me then, I would have said that I didn’t know what it meant. The idea came to me and I decided to roll with it. But the psychologists on television had a lot to say about my implementation of twisted hands in the sky and Meghan in the foreground.

Even at that time, I was plotting against her.