Frowning, I pad toward the cabin door and slide the dead bolt open. The metal scrapes and I clench my teeth. Shh.
When I get the lock off, I pull the door open.
Be brave.
Stepping onto the porch, I glance around. It’s early; the sun is still a while off from rising.
I look to my left. Olly is outside his cabin. Are we the only light sleepers?
“You heard that too?” he asks.
“Yeah, it woke me up. What was it?”
“I don’t know. I think it came from your direction.”
I glance the other way. Nothing looks off.
“Do you think something fell?” I ask.
Olly walks toward me. “Maybe. The thud sounded like something against wood, right?”
“Look,” I say, as my eyes land on the food hall. Its door is wide open. “The door wasn’t open when we went to bed.”
Olly’s eyes narrow. “Great.”
What has Lillian done this time?
Olly stops when he reaches the steps of my cabin. “Okay. You wait here, and I’ll go check it out.”
“Wait, what?” I jog down the steps and grab his wrist. “You can’t go in there alone. We don’t know what’s happening!”
“Esme, you can’t go in there at all. Just wait until I’ve seen if it’s safe.”
My back stiffens. “Yes, I can go in there.”
“I love that you have this super-chick thing going on and you don’t need saving, but right now can you please stay here?”
I cross my arms. He’s right about one thing. I don’t need saving.
I watch him walk toward the food hall. Then I follow because there’s no way I’m going to stay put. This is my mess.
Creeping closer, I try to look around the door as Olly opens it.
He looks over his shoulder and lifts his eyebrows like he knew I wouldn’t do as I was told. “I mean it, Esme, wait until I’ve gone in.”
“What if that’s what they want to happen, huh?” I whisper, wrapping my arms around my stomach as I look back toward the lake.
“Don’t be an ass,” he hisses.
A smile touches my lips as I follow closely behind him.
Groaning my name this time, like he’s beyond frustrated, he tilts his head back. “Can you not just do as you’re told?”
“No. It’s a curse.”
He turns around and I follow close behind him.
Lifting his hand, he flicks on the light and we both gasp.
39
Is that what I think it is?
I blink hard, but when I open my eyes the image is the same.
This is very, very real.
The carcass of a deer lies in the middle of the floor between two tables. Blood pools in a circle around it like a grim rug.
I grab Olly’s hand as my pulse thumps in my ears.
“What the hell is that?” he says.
I stare unblinking until my eyes sting. “It’s a deer.”
Doing a double take, he stares at me like I’m insane. “I know it’s a deer, but why is it in the middle of the cabin, dead?”
Because Lillian is sick.
I should’ve known she would do something like this. The night of the fire, she terrified me and Kayla by showing us a poor animal that she’d killed and mutilated. It was the reason Kayla lashed out at her in the first place.
I should call an Uber right now.
“We eat in here. Children eat in here,” I mutter. “I can’t believe anyone would do this.”
Olly covers his mouth. “I think I’m going to hurl.”
Okay, get it together. You’re not supposed to know who is behind this.
“L-let’s look around. There might be a note like the one we got on the door.”
He exhales. “Our resident psycho is getting bolder.”
I walk around the tables, making sure to put as much distance between me and freaking Bambi as possible.
The deer isn’t huge, but it’s probably heavy. It’s also covered in blood, so getting it here couldn’t have been easy. It had to be a two-person job, surely.
“Esme, here,” Olly says.
I turn to see him pick up a piece of paper from a table. He scrunches his nose. “Damn, that’s gross. It’s written in blood.”
“What does it say?” I ask, jogging over.
“It says, ‘Someone here wants to talk.’ ” He looks up. “Who wants to talk?”
Someone. “Maybe it’s about Mary? She’s been very vocal about going to the cops.”
“She’s been vocal when we’re around the campfire. How close is this person?” Olly asks, holding the note up.
I wave my hand at the dead deer. “Pretty damn close, Olly!”
In my room too.
“We need to get Andy,” he says.
“I—I’ll go.”
Olly looks down at the deer with wide eyes.
Whatever his secret is, I don’t think he was involved in putting the deer in the food hall.
I turn on my heel and race outside, down the steps and to the staff cabin, where Andy is sleeping peacefully. I almost feel bad for waking him up with this news.
Almost. I need someone else to deal with this, because I’ll clean up the blood, but I’m not touching that deer.
I rap lightly on his bedroom window.
A minute later, the curtain is pulled to the side. Andy’s eyes land on me, and he startles.
“Esme?” he says, opening the window and rubbing his pale forehead. “What are you doing?”
“I need you to come to the food hall,” I say breathlessly.
His face falls. Shutting the window, he drops the curtain and I hear him bumping about, getting his clothes and shoes on.
I walk around to the front of the cabin and wait.
“What happened?” he asks, dashing through the door and down the steps.
“A deer,” I say. “Dead.”
“A dead deer?”
“Dead. Murdered. I don’t know. It’s in the food hall!”