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In four minutes, it will no longer be Halloween. Two hundred and forty seconds before the month slips harmlessly by, another October gone.
Not that Ellie is counting or anything.
She shifts, adjusting the laptop settled on her thighs, trying not to jostle Chrys in the process. The beds in the sophomore dorms aren’t much bigger than the ones they’d been subjected to the previous year but being sandwiched between the wall and Chrys is one of Ellie’s favorite places to be. Chrys is stretched out on her side, the book she’d been reading for her British literature class still half open between her fingers. Beowulf, which certainly makes sense as to why Chrys has drifted off to sleep hours before despite her insistence she was more than capable of keeping Ellie company as she transcribed her notes from the day’s lectures.
Ellie presses the heel of her hands to her eyes, trying to rub away the sting, the dryness. Three minutes until midnight and then maybe she’ll close the laptop, try to angle herself across Chrys to reach the lamp, to plunge the room into darkness and wedge herself against Chrys’ chest, finally closing her eyes.
She’d never considered herself to be a superstitious person. Logic is where she prefers to dwell, a stubborn choice given the things that she’s seen. But logic is a hard thing to grasp in the middle of the night, when everything is quiet, when it’s hard to determine if the hairs on the back of her neck are prickling to life because of her own winding thoughts or because there’s something, somewhere, out there in the shadows watching her.
Huffing out a breath, Ellie slams her laptop shut. She’d finished with her notes an hour before, subjecting herself to an endless re-read of what she’d just typed because she didn’t want to disturb Chrys by getting out of bed. Didn’t want to close her eyes, not yet anyway. Now, Chrys sleeps on and Ellie tosses the laptop down toward the foot of the bed where it lands among the tangle of blankets.
“Come on, Ellie,” she mutters, mostly so there’s something she can hear in the room other than the pulse of silence. “You’re being ridiculous.”
Still, she glances at her watch. Midnight only seconds away and still her jaw aches from how tightly she’s pressing her teeth together. Carefully, Ellie inches her way toward the foot of the bed, angling her foot toward the floor. She imagines a breath held in giddy anticipation, crooked and knobby fingers eagerly unfurling to grab at her ankle the second her toes touch the ground. Squeezing her eyes shut, Ellie pushes the thought aside firmly, determinedly, swallowing around the tightness in her throat and putting her foot down.
Nothing, of course. Nothing lurking in the shadows. No ghosts with her face lurking around to drag her beneath, in the darkness.
Ellie scrubs a hand across her face, standing. She rolls her shoulders, trying to loosen the tension holding her muscles hostage, though it does little to diminish the goosebumps, that persistent prickling on the back of her neck.
On the bed, Chrys sleeps on, still holding her place in her book, lips slightly parted as she breathes. In the past two years, her hair has grown out, falling to her shoulders now and it would be easy, Ellie knows, to run her fingers through it, to brush it away from the corner of Chrys’ jaw and press her lips to the skin there, to wake Chrys so that she wasn’t alone, here, at midnight.
She could probably distract Chrys easily enough so that she wouldn’t ask why Ellie is restless and prickled with energy. So that she wouldn’t look at Ellie with that soft worry in her eyes, the way she’d done when Ellie was in the hospital and afterward, limping her way from living room couch to kitchen and back again, trying not to be as obviously breathless and uncomfortable as she’d felt, just so Chrys would stop looking at her like that.
But Ellie resists, because it’s late, and because Chrys needs to sleep and so does she for that matter and it’s November now, the world has carried itself forward, forever forward, and she should be able to stop worrying now. To stop thinking so much. Shaking out her arms, Ellie swallows, her mouth dry, unease still turning circles in her chest. Water, that’s what she needs. Water and then she’ll finally be able to relax, to get back into bed beside Chrys, to sleep in because tomorrow is Saturday and they don’t have anywhere to be or anything to do beside be together and everything will be fine, absolutely fine, just like it always is. Fine.
Of course, water means having to leave the room. To go past the half dozen other doors toward the common kitchen, with its fridge and microwave and sink, the space most often cluttered and splattered with remnants of Easy Mac and food stolen from the dining hall and reheated in the middle of the night. This is what she gets for not bothering to refill her water bottle before climbing into bed beside Chrys hours earlier.
Quietly, Ellie opens the dorm room door, closing it softly behind her. The hallway is dark on either side, though one of the doors closer to the common area has a sliver of light peeking out from beneath it, falling across the carpet like a beacon. Ellie wraps her arms around herself, bare feet silent against the carpet as she walks toward the kitchen. Everything is quiet, still. It’s a Friday night, Halloween, and she doesn’t imagine the place is still because everyone has called it an early night, struck by sudden responsibility. No, there’s probably no one else around, the dorms empty as her floormates proceed to party the night away. There’s probably no one awake on this floor but her.
Ellie refuses to allow herself to turn around, to look behind her as she walks ahead, to the kitchen. She will not entertain that whisper in the back of her mind anymore, the insistence that someone is there, watching her. She’ll just get the water and be done with all this.
She has dreams like this, sometimes. Where she’s alone, in the dark, surrounded by shadows and a warren of hallways with seemingly no end. No way to get out, no idea of where Chrys is or how to get to her. Someone whispering to her in the darkness, the hiss of her name in a voice that she recognizes, that she hears so often in her dreams that Ellie knows she’ll never forget it. Ellie…come help me, Ellie.
You belong here, Ellie.
Unable to resist, Ellie whirls, but there’s nothing behind her. No one. Of course not. There’s no one there. There never is.
The person who belongs to that voice is dead, after all.
In the kitchen, Ellie wrenches the faucet on, cupping her hands beneath the water, letting the shock of coolness run down her wrists and root her firmly in the present. Away from the memory of those dreams that only seem to grow worse this time of year.
Halloween has always reminded her of Grace. Even when they were little, Grace thrived under the pretense of dressing up, of getting to inhabit someone else’s skin, if only just for the night. They’d spend hours trick-or-treating, Grace never begrudging Ellie’s habit of going as a doctor year-after-year, piling up their candy on Grace’s bedroom floor afterward, dividing and swapping and eating until their stomachs rounded and their heads buzzed with sugar and they fell asleep on the bedroom floor with some cheesy 80s movie on the TV. And then, when trick-or-treating had given way to parties, Grace had never tired of picking out the perfect costumes for the both of them, doing Ellie’s makeup and her own before they’d gone hopping from one party to the next, ending the night the same way as they had when they were kids: sprawled out in Grace’s bedroom with some bad horror movie playing them to sleep.
Now Grace is dead and it’s no longer Halloween but Ellie can’t pull herself from the memories, from the certainty that the ghost that waits for her in the darkness wears her friend’s face.
“Stop it, Ellie,” she hisses, watching as the water spills from the faucet into the rusting bowl of the sink. “You’re being ridiculous.”
She cups her hands once more but before she can lift her palms to her lips, Ellie hears it again. That persistent whisper. Ellie…
The water thumps against the basin of the sink but Ellie feels frozen, rooted in place. She’s been on edge all month, that niggling flight instinct trying to constantly urge her into continuous movement, to grab Chrys’ hand and run, run, run. Ellie closes her eyes, trying to will her heartbeat to slow, to mind to tether itself back to reality. With shaking hands, she reaches out to switch off the faucet, the quiet settling around her once more.
Behind her lids, all Ellie can see is Grace. Dean. Rel. As she’d last seen them. Her friend, withered and grasping tightly to a life she no longer had. Dean, eyes white and wild with anger and fear as he’d stormed away from them. Rel, his blood warm against her cheeks, slick and hot on her fingers as she struggled to hold onto Chrys. She feels the press of bile in the back of her throat, the hooks of their memories sinking into her skin, pulling her back to those moments, when she’d failed them.
“Enough.” Ellie opens her eyes, shaking her head. “Don’t do this to yourself Ellie.”
In the reflection in the window beside the refrigerator, there’s a figure, ghostly and silent, watching. Ellie screams, stumbling backward and tripping herself over the plastic trashcan, knocking against the counter in a tangle of elbow and hip. And then there’s arms around her, holding tightly onto her, pulling her close, and Ellie chokes out a sob, crumpling forward. Because she knows these arms, this touch, this embrace. Has felt it pull her back from the darkness before.
“Ellie.” And this voice she knows too, hears it in dreams far happier than the ones where she finds Grace. “Hey, Ellie, you’re okay. It’s me. Okay? It’s me.”
Chrys takes her face, forcing Ellie’s eyes to focus, to settle on her features, and the darkness recedes and she’s just there, in the tiny, shared dorm kitchen, with Chrys.
Ellie wraps her fingers around Chrys’ wrists, tethering them together, and Chrys’ skin is warm beneath her palms. “I’m sorry,” Chrys says softly, the furrow between her brow deepening. “I’m sorry, Ellie. I called your name and I thought you heard me but I…I’m sorry.”
Swallowing, Ellie shakes her head. She exhales, taking Chrys’ hands from her face. She leans against the counter, trying to slow her heart, to feel in control of herself once more. Since she was little, she feels like that’s all she’s ever done: try to gain ownership over her own body. It feels no easier now.
“No…I…” Ellie shakes her head again. “I was…in my own head.”
Chrys nods but the look of concern on her face doesn’t ease.
“Sorry,” Ellie breathes, pressing her teeth together. “I was just getting water, I didn’t mean…I didn’t want to wake you up.”
Chrys shrugs. “You didn’t. I was dreaming about Grendel.”
Ellie forces a smile, a dry chuckle. “Sounds horrible.”
“Come on.” Chrys reaches for her hand. “Let’s go back.”
Ellie nods, following Chrys back into the hallway without objection. The hall no longer feels quite as dark, the shadows no longer whispering to her as she passes. It’s impossible to remember what had sent her heart racing moments ago, what had quickened her pace and had her casting fleeting glances over her shoulder.
Back inside Ellie’s dorm, Chrys switches on another lamp, brightening the space with its golden light. Ellie eases herself back onto the bed, leaning against the wall and drawing her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. Chrys glances around, her eyes settling on Ellie’s stickered Hydroflask. “I’ll go get some-”
“No, it’s okay,” Ellie says quickly, trying to push aside the sting of embarrassment at the sound of her own voice. Desperate and childish, like a little girl begging her parents to leave the light on and the door cracked. “It’s fine.”
Chrys looks at her, lifting an eyebrow, and Ellie huffs a breath. “I’m fine.”
“Are you?” Chrys’ tone isn’t unkind but it does little to help with that ever present press of guilt that seems to demand her attention even more right around this time of year. Chrys settles herself opposite of Ellie, resting her hand against Ellie’s ankle, watching her closely.
Ellie nods and it doesn’t entirely feel like a lie, not right now anyway. Not in this quiet glow of the lamplight, with Chrys’ body so close to hers. “Just too much studying.”
The smirk Chrys gives her in response is all it takes for Ellie to know her excuse was far from a believable one. “I think about them too,” Chrys says softly. “Especially now.”
Ellie presses her lips together, letting her gaze slide away from Chrys, toward the far corner of the room where it is all too easy to imagine someone watching her, waiting, in the middle of the night. Just as quickly, she dismisses the idea, that thought of Grace reaching for her, clawing her back into the shadows. “I just wish we could’ve helped them,” she says softly. “I wish…” She looks back at Chrys. “I miss them.”
Chrys swallows, nodding. “Yeah.” The word is barely more than a whisper but Ellie can feel it anyway. “Me too.”
Ellie leans forward, reaching for Chrys, kissing her softly. Chrys gives her a weak smile, resting her forehead against Ellie’s. Ellie closes her eyes, listening to the sound of Chrys’ breathing, slowing her own until their chests fall in tandem, her racing heart finally calm.
They leave the lamps on, laying down facing one another with the blankets pulled tightly around their shoulders, hands linked beneath the covers. Ellie can feel the whisper of Chrys’ breaths against her cheeks, the gentle beating of her heart. “Sometimes I feel guilty,” Ellie whispers, wishing she could reel the words back even as she feels them pass her lips. “I can’t figure out why it wasn’t me.”
“I know.” Chrys nods, her gaze unflinching. “Trust me, I know. But I need you here, with me. You saved me.”
Ellie scoffs, rolling her eyes. “Pretty sure it was the other way around.”
Chrys just smiles softly. “No it wasn’t.”
Chrys reaches out to brush the hair from Ellie’s face, tucking it gently behind her shoulder, and Ellie closes her eyes against the touch, the way it anchors her here, to this moment. To this place. This person. It’s likely only a matter of time before those voices in the back of her head return, whispering to her, calling her from the darkness. But for now, the only voice she can hear is Chrys’.