Little Creeping Things Read online

  Leaves rustle above us, and the snap of a twig echoes through the woods. “Shh,” I whisper, swatting my hand to silence his munching. “I heard something.”

  A female voice floats into our haven, followed by giggling. I roll my eyes at Gideon, and through the scattered rays, he rolls his back. Some kids at the log. Years back, my dad set up an idyllic sitting spot beneath the pines. Occasionally, kids discover it, sneaking over during the summer or on weekends to have a smoke or a beer, even though this part of the creek is on my family’s property. When we were little, Gideon and I used to play spies, camouflaging ourselves within the coniferous trees and trying not to get caught.

  We aren’t kids now, though, and it’s just annoying. I figured we’d have this area to ourselves, at least until school lets out. I want to talk to Gideon, the person who’s known me since second grade and never once whispered about my homicidal tendencies in the school halls. The person who’s always known just what to say to cheer me up. But now we have to keep our voices down, so no one discovers this place. Even after Asher became the third member of our trio, back when he and Gideon became football buddies freshman year, I refused to let him in on our secret. Asher has lots of things—the adoration of the town and our parents, for starters. The hideout is mine. The one thing I’ve kept between my best friend and me.

  Gideon exhales, his breath warm on my bare arm, and my pulse quickens. A rogue strand of dark hair has fallen over his eyes, and I resist the urge to push it back. When we were kids and built this place, he had the wiry body and static-stricken hair of a primate. Now he’s tall, with the muscular body of an athlete. It doesn’t leave much space between us in the tiny, underground hovel.

  “Come on, you really brought me here?” asks the girl. I cringe, recognizing the chirpy voice and distinctive kookaburra cackle. Melody Davenport. She was in my brother’s class at school, and we used to play volleyball together. She’s Laura Gellman’s best friend and basically an older, blond version of her. After high school, Melody started working at Gina’s Diner in town.

  “Ooh,” I whisper, grinning slyly. “Who’s she talking to?”

  Gideon listens, chin resting on his palm. “Herself. She has to invent friends while Laura’s at school.”

  “Is that so?” Melody asks coyly, her perky voice transforming into something softer. The rest of her words are partially drowned by the gentle whooshing of the stream. Silence follows, broken only by the occasional giggle and moan. I dig around quietly in my backpack, searching for a distraction as I mentally will Melody and whoever she’s with out of the vicinity.

  Gideon leans in. “What if she’s up there with Seth?” he whispers, laughing into the sleeve of his sweatshirt.

  “No way!” I sputter, scrunching my nose. “Melody would never.” Seth Greer graduated with Melody and Asher, but before that he was our school’s token creep, who loitered behind the bleachers, spying on girls.

  Gideon’s eyes twinkle with amusement. “They looked pretty heated this morning.”

  Gideon had tutoring at Gina’s Diner in town this morning. When I stopped by to bike with him to school, we saw Seth and Melody arguing outside. We did a double take since Seth never speaks to anyone, much less a girl like Melody Davenport.

  “Not that kind of heated,” I say. There’s no way it’s Seth up there with her. Still, I plant my hands firmly over my ears, just in case. I make a gagging face at Gideon. He bends closer, using my shoulder to stifle his laughter, and the vibrations rumble against me. Then he scoots closer to the backpack, yanking out his phone.

  He nudges me with an elbow and I lower my hands. “I’ve got to text Dave before Coach calls my mom looking for me.”

  This part of the forest is a notorious dead zone. The closest place to get a signal is back toward my house, but Gideon would pass right by the log. Thanks to Melody, he’ll have to trek in the opposite direction until he reaches the next cluster of homes.

  “Are you sure you want to go up there now?” I whisper, my eyes widening dramatically. “What if she’s only one of a thousand homecoming-queen-demon-temptresses hiding in the woods? What if she lures you over there with her blond hair and that seductive witchy laugh and then it’s a feeding frenzy?”

  He shakes his head. “And Asher thinks you need to watch more horror movies.” Gideon climbs stealthily onto the crate. “But jot Melody down for the part of blond female vampire in Dracula.”

  “Never,” I spit out. Gideon and I like to recast our favorite horror movies with people from our real lives. Whenever we come up with a genius new casting, we jot it down in my mini spiral-bound notebook, which gets passed back and forth during classes and between classes. Or anytime, really. “The day Melody gets a part bigger than background zombie with insides on the outside is the day the game dies.”

  Gideon nods. “So true. That was wildly irresponsible of me.” He drags himself up and out of the hole. “I’ll be right back.”

  His footsteps soon fade as he wanders deeper into the woods. I shut my eyes and lean against the boards. I should be doing chemistry homework; instead, I daydream about filming Melody and her invisible stranger. And showing everyone in school. Documented footage of her up there with Seth would be gold—Maribel’s queen kissing the town freak. Maybe I can channel the spy days of my childhood and sneak a couple photos. Just to even the score. I reach for my phone, but stop short when a second voice surfaces, deeper than hers and muffled by the conversation of the forest.

  My hand freezes. I decipher the words we’re alone, but a raven’s raucous call erupts overhead. An unsettling thought prickles in the back of my mind.

  Then, nothing. Only the wind whistling through the pines and the water slapping the rocks. Even the raven sounds like it dropped dead. Good. Maybe they’re gone. I heft the backpack onto my lap and scrounge up my chemistry book. I flip it open and attempt to focus.

  From above, Melody’s voice rises. The other person must’ve already managed to piss her off. She’s shouting, words too jumbled to decode, and my irritation climbs. I fumble for the backpack, wondering if I left my earbuds inside.

  But then a new noise—a shrill squeal—tears through the trees, stopping my heart. “Hel—” Melody cuts off abruptly, the shriek ending in silence.

  A thread of panic spirals through my head, making its way down my spine and out to each limb. Was that a scream for help? Over by the log, the other voice speaks quietly. I can barely make it out over the trickling water, but it sounds like “Shh, it’s okay now.”

  My heart spasms. I swing my head around, searching frantically for Gideon. But he’s still off trying to send that text.

  Maybe he heard the call for help and he’s rushing back. I listen for footsteps, for the voices, but the raven’s caw—ominous and piercing—starts up again.

  Gideon’s too far away. I should scream at the top of my lungs. But my jaw is bolted shut, throat obstructed. My heart is working again, pulsing faster than ever before and sounding like gunfire in this tiny space. But the rest of me is paralyzed.

  My thoughts and vision blur. Everything darkens. Breathe. Lifting my chin, I suck in a deafening breath. Then I grab my phone, remembering with a sickening sense of dread that I won’t have a signal.

  I have to find Gideon. I have to get help. But one thought punches through the others, drowning all reason:

  I have to get out of here.

  Because I know the other person up there, the one whose hushed voice drifted over from the log and into our sanctuary.

  He and I planned this murder together.

  2

  My heart jolts. Someone’s up there, branches cracking underfoot.

  “Cass?” Gideon. I exhale. It’s been hours since he left. Or maybe minutes? I have no idea. When I look down, the heavy textbook still rests on my lap, its pages now mangled between my fingers. Gideon drops into the hideout, looking the same as when he
left. Like he has no clue the world just flipped itself over on us. But his eyes widen as he takes in my crouched, frozen figure. “What’s going on?”

  I release the book and grab his bare wrist, fingernails digging into his flesh. “I don’t know.” But it’s a lie. “Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?” Gideon stares at me like I’ve lost my mind, which would be better than the alternative—that I drank a couple beers, spouted off an angry fantasy to a guy I barely knew, and then it all came true.

  It’s not possible.

  But those sounds Melody made—that scream for help—were as real as my trembling hands and chattering teeth. My mind flashes to the little silver notebook with the gold trim. To the conversation scribbled in its pages, half in my handwriting, half in Brandon Alvarez’s. Like an instinct, I slide my hand inside the unzipped pouch of my backpack, feeling around for it. But my fingers don’t find its smooth cover.

  A new wave of panic surges through me. I rifle around in the backpack as silently as possible, dumping half its contents into the dirt.

  My notebook isn’t nestled beneath the textbooks like usual.

  Gideon places his hand over mine. “Cass,” he whispers, voice hoarse with worry, “talk to me.” His phone drops to the splintery ground and he pulls me to my feet.

  “Melody.” My voice barely rises above my heartbeat. I point in the direction of the creek, beyond this wall of trees. Gideon came from the opposite direction; he wouldn’t have seen anything. “She might be in trouble up there.” We have to get to her. Now. “She needs help.” And we can’t call 911 from this useless place. I shove my phone into my back pocket. “Come on.”

  He rubs at the marks I just made on his wrist. “Cass, I don’t hear anything.” He’s right. There’s only lapping water. Maybe Gideon’s voice scared the guy off.

  Or maybe it was nothing. I heard Melody in some sort of lover’s spat. That’s all.

  But my mind spirals back to the notebook. Get her to the abandoned sawmill. What if they’re quiet because he’s taking her somewhere else to finish the job? I climb onto the crate with shaky feet, motioning for Gideon to follow. “Hurry.”

  He sighs, his breath riffling my T-shirt. I heft myself out of the hole and he clambers up next. “Wait,” he says, his voice resigned as he skirts past me. “I’ll go first.”

  I practically push him through the trees. When I see the log, with its scabrous bark that sloughs off in patches, my mind floods with the sound of voices, talking and laughing one moment and silent the next. Snap out of it. The ground is heaped with broken twigs, brown crumbling leaves, and dirt, like the rest of the forest.

  And Melody’s gone.

  “What exactly are we looking for?” Gideon asks, brows skewed.

  “I don’t know.” Proof she’s in trouble. Proof I imagined everything. “Maybe there’s…” Not blood. There wouldn’t be blood.

  Gideon points at some indentations in the dirt. “These marks could be fresh, but I don’t get it, Cass. What did you hear?”

  The sound of my darkest desire materializing.

  I tug anxiously on the hem of my T-shirt. “She screamed for help. And then it got really quiet.” My eyes well up. I keep reliving those sounds Melody made, and my mind flashes to that party with Brandon. To the words I wrote in the notebook.

  The notebook that isn’t tucked inside my backpack anymore.

  Gideon lays a gentle hand over my arm. “We could barely hear anything from the hideout. Are you sure she wasn’t laughing?”

  “I don’t think so.” But there’s no proof. I look over the dead leaves and endless rows of trees, powerless.

  Then something snags my eye. Behind the log, strewn amid the pine needles. A glass bottle. Normally, this wouldn’t seem out of place. Except this one is raspberry flavored. More words flash in my head. Load her up on raspberry wine coolers flavored with a little something extra. My stomach turns. He couldn’t have actually gone through with it.

  But there’s the bottle. At the exact location I scribbled down. It’s all line for line so far, minus the scream. Something must’ve gone wrong. Maybe Melody caught him slipping something into the bottle. I clutch my abdomen and take a staggering step back. “We have to call the sheriff,” I say, and Gideon frowns.

  I ignore him and rush in the direction of my house, pulling my phone out, checking my screen every few yards for a signal. Gideon follows, crunching leaves in my wake. When the sun cascades through the last lines of trees, a tiny bar lights up at the top of the screen. I locate the number to the sheriff’s station and dial. It rings over and over again, and a panicked thought hits me like a bullet. What am I going to say? The only way to save Melody would be to mention the sawmill. And I can’t.

  The ringing never stops, and I slam the phone against my thigh, muttering, “Stupid small-town joke of a station.” But a twisted sense of relief swoops through me.

  Nearby, there’s a snap and I jump, gripping Gideon’s arm. “What was that?” I hiss.

  He scans the forest and then turns back, staring at me like I need medical attention. Carefully, he places a hand on my shoulder. “A squirrel, I guess. Cass, maybe there’s another explanation. Maybe this guy was hurt, and Melody screamed for help. It could’ve been an accident.”

  Maybe. After all, we didn’t see anything. Still, my voice quavers when I say, “You’re probably right. I just have to make sure.”

  Gideon’s eyes dart toward the edge of the woods. “Melody’s house isn’t far. We could grab our bikes and swing by. Maybe we’ll see her and Seth on the way, and it’ll set your mind at ease.”

  “It wasn’t Seth,” I say before I can stop myself.

  Gideon’s forehead creases. “Who do you think it was?”

  Brandon. “I don’t know. But we’re wasting time standing here.” He could already be taking her into the hills. And if someone finds that notebook, he could try to pin it on me; his word against mine. No one wanted Melody gone more than I did.

  And he knows it.

  Maybe that was his plan all along. An image flickers in my head. My face silhouetted by flames. Melody’s laughter resounding in the background.

  I wipe the sweat from my forehead and start in the direction of my backyard. “Let’s get the bikes.”

  As we speed-walk to my house, I rack my brain for where that notebook could be. I meant to tear out the pages Brandon and I used before Gideon saw them. But by the time morning came around and the hangover had kicked me in the face, I’d forgotten all about it.

  I inhale, trying to talk some sense into myself. It probably fell out of my backpack when we were getting snacks. Or maybe even in my room while I was doing homework last night.

  Suddenly, I remember with a gush of relief: the notebook is still in my purse. I never took it out after the party. At least, I don’t think I did. But this cloudy vision and jet-speed heart rate are making it impossible to remember clearly.

  We brush through the last line of trees, finding our bikes propped against my back fence. The wooden slats covering the back of the house, the shrubs framing the yard—everything looks distorted, like I’m stuck in a nightmare. I’m scrounging for an excuse to duck inside when a car door slams around the front of the house.

  “I think Asher’s home,” I call to Gideon, hurrying through the back gate. “If Melody walked or drove back from the woods, he might’ve passed her.”

  “Good idea,” Gideon says, the lines around his mouth softening.

  “But…” I pause on the back porch. “Don’t tell him what happened.” If I give my brother one more reason to worry about me, he’ll probably lock me up or call our parents. “Make something up.”

  Gideon shoves his hands inside his pockets and follows me without answering.

  I slide open the glass door to the house and continue into the kitchen. Scanning the floor with each step, I f
ind no trace of the notebook. I leave Gideon in the kitchen, calling out to Asher down the hall. But he must still be unloading the car out front.

  I yank open my bedroom door and rush to the desk, scrambling for the small faux-leather saddlebag I took to the party on Saturday. I dump it out, frantically combing through the lipstick and tissues.

  But the notebook isn’t there.

  Slumping to the floor, I search under the bed, but there’s no sign of its shiny silver cover. Could I have dropped it in the diner that night? My heartbeat quickens as I imagine the people who could have picked it up. Especially if something bad really did happen to Melody. I scrounge through my drawers, mentally flipping through the events of the last couple of days.

  A thought makes my heart skid.

  I went to the restroom that night before leaving the diner. And I left my purse on the seat of the booth. It was only for a minute, but I never should have trusted someone sketchy enough to be seduced by Laura Gellman.

  Still, is Brandon really capable of killing a person and stealing my notebook to…to what? Frame me for it? Blackmail me into keeping my mouth shut?

  I speed back into the kitchen, where Gideon pushes a glass of water into my hand. “Still no Asher?” I take a quick sip and set the glass down on the counter.

  Gideon shakes his head. “Cass, what aren’t you telling me?” His eyes narrow as I clamber for words.

  I gave someone the perfect plan for murder, and he might be carrying it out. If I say it, I’m involved. The thought shrivels and rots as guilt moves in; I’m already involved.

  But if I say anything about the plan—if anyone finds out—it’s over for me. This town will assume Fire Girl found another victim.