Amy stopped the Corolla under the glow of one of the streetlights in front of their house. With an inward sigh, she realized she had been fighting a losing battle. She surrendered her wavering thoughts to the curious case of the troubled stranger she knew. After French, she had battled with herself, trying not to focus on him. But each of her theories and the inexplicable things that happened around him kept swirling inside her head. With each of nightfall's passing hours, the restiveness she now allied with Caleb resurfaced. Although, it was tainted with her selfish need to see him again. Where is he?

"Sleighbells, I need to go meet Robin for a bit. Need to sort out some homework drama. Tell Mom I will be back in an hour," she said and turned to look at her sister. Amy would have to call Robin and ask him to cover for her. Her mother fancied watching far too many parenting guides and crime shows and that was not a good combination.

"I doubt she will like that. But okay," Leigh said slowly. "You've made a new friend, haven't you?"

Amy was a little taken aback. She blinked and shook her head, an involuntary smile curving on her lips. "What makes you think that?"

"I heard you talking in your room. Don't worry, I won't tell Mom." She kissed Amy on her cheek and then she was gone. Leigh waited till Amy had driven out of sight and then rang the doorbell. They were a good team.

The winding streets soon morphed into linear, broader roads and the lights from the streetlamps bled into one another. Without knowing which turn to take until the last possible moment, Amy continued her search. Every stop sign was an opportunity to investigate and every black-jacketed person a suspect. She was cautious enough to evade trouble on the roads. Any overbearing deputy she would run into tonight would immediately call Christopher Irvine and personally escort her home. The news had predicted a storm.

Thus far, it was not shaping up to be the most favorable of nights. The wind was raging through every hanging sign in town. It seemed likely that the rundown nineteenth-century buildings would be left without a roof if the wind continued to whip and strangle through every corner it could find.

The lingering smell of ozone was making her feel lightheaded.

She racked her brains for some insight into Caleb Dawson. He was the star quarterback of Sirencester High's revered football team, known to be aggressive on the field and assertive outside of it. The only people whose existence he acknowledged were the loyal gorillas on his team. Jason Darko was their knuckleheaded wide receiver and Bobby Higgins was a dark, shapeless boulder who was the offensive guard. High school football wasn't always as pretty as they proclaimed it to be in the movies.

Ashton was now a part of the Sirencester Panthers. She was unsure of her feelings on the matter. Amy halted to let an interstate bus pass, deciding that she would concentrate her efforts on one mislaid boy at a time.

Caleb's fierce looks and defined physique vacuumed lustful eyes off the floor as he walked. She knew that he had a reputation, the archetypal moody 'bad boy' who girls just loved to get a taste of. They usually got even less than that. Or more, depending on the perverseness of the observer.

Even the thought that people found that appealing made Amy shake her head with thinly veiled disgust. Adding to his charm was the 'supposed' fact that Caleb was a drug dealer, and consequently, he led the kind of double life that would turn a normal person's brain inside out. However, these allegations never hit home and she was sure that none of the adults suspected a thing. He was crafty when it came to covering his tracks.

As far as outward appearances went, Caleb looked nothing like a waste of space, small town acid freak. But then again, he wouldn't be the chief supplier if he did.

She knew very little of his family apart from the fact that Sheriff Dawson had never loved his wife nor his children. A few years ago, he had forsaken them for a piece of white trash on Virginia Beach and that had been the last they ever heard from him. Grief-stricken, Mrs. Dawson had subsequently flitted from odd jobs and into shot glasses.

Amy wanted to check Caleb's house, knowing that she had this little visit coming. Why delay the inevitable? She banked on the fact that the ex-sheriff's house wouldn't be completely unknown and asked the first person she saw for directions.

Pulling over just outside, she apprehensively stared at the building, wringing her hands. It looked as though it had seen healthier days. The front landing was teeming with junk from the eighties. A rather unfortunate-looking potted creeper was holding on for dear life as the gale wildly thrust it around. Amy knocked on the door and waited.

A short, pale-faced brunette opened the door. "Yes?" she asked quizzically.

Shit.

"Hi, I am looking for Caleb Dawson?" Amy floundered. It hit her that it was pretty late to be calling on someone's house. The thunderstorm had sent all the humans scurrying into their holes. Well not this fearless rat, her inner voice remarked sarcastically. A faint name stirred her memory and she guessed that the young girl was Caleb's sister, Emma.

Emma bit her lip, as though she was trying to reserve information about her brother. "He's not in yet. I'm sorry but who are you?"

"Oh, okay. My name is Amy. I am in his biology class." She sounded lame even to herself. "I wanted to borrow some notes."

Emma looked at her incredulously.

Yes, I would totally die without those notes.

"Who is it? Is it my son?" Mrs. Dawson said deliriously, yanking the door as wide as it would go. The scene inside the house was grungier. A pile of dishes lay unwashed in the sink and the house reeked of cheap whiskey. Her flushed, worn-out face fell when she saw Amy.

Amy didn't know how to look polite without smiling. She cursed her rash impulses, wishing she had never stopped at Caleb's home. Emma put her hand on her mother's shoulder and held her close. They were almost of the same height.

"He hasn't been to school at all?" Emma asked in a small, fragile voice. The hope shuddering in her dark eyes tugged at Amy's soul. It was the kind that Emma knew she shouldn't keep but was daring to. The kind that gets nipped in the bud.

Amy shook her head.

"Is he in some kind of trouble? Can you tell us where he is?" Mrs. Dawson's voice reached a fervent pitch. She clutched Amy's wrist with both her hands and Amy panicked.

"Mom!"

Lindsey Dawson fell back. The light that had captured the consciousness in her eyes ebbed. With startled trepidation, Amy noticed her eyes were the same shade of cobalt as Caleb's.

"When he comes back, I will let him know that you dropped by..." Emma had forgotten her name. Amy could hardly blame her. She thanked the pair shakily, wishing to put as many miles as conceivable between them.

At least now she had proof. Proof that Caleb Dawson was missing. Amy felt sick.

Caleb, where the fuck are you?

She was driving a little faster than before. Amy felt little beads of sweat pool at the back of her neck, despite the cold. Mrs. Dawson's eyes haunted her. They bore a striking resemblance to thin ice over a frozen lake, with spidery lines crisscrossing over the surface. One misjudged move and the surface would shatter.

Amy was hell-bent on locating him. The forest on either side was swaying violently.

Amy trembled. She was terrified. Terrified of the menacing darkness and her volatile surroundings. This is what it feels like to drive down the throat of the devil. Her instincts were nagging her. He was near.

The taillights were blinking periodically as she pulled to a stop on the side of the road. Another car passed her. Amy pulled the zip of her hoodie as farther up as it would go, the tender skin over her throat getting caught up in it. Son of a bitch, she put a cold finger over the painful spot trying to soothe it.

Amy checked herself in the rearview mirror. Her hair looked like she had wrestled kangaroos and her left eye was bloodshot. It was a ghastly orchestra, the wailing windstorm and the bleeping rhythm of the blinkers. Out of nowhere, a figure ran past the back of the car, arms held above its head, covering it. She recognized the dark jacket.

It couldn't be.

She unlocked the car door, her fingers clammy and fumbling. The figure had retreated into the thicket. "Caleb?" she tried to call out but his name got stuck somewhere near her pharynx.

Amy had no time for second-guessing. She began her pursuit.

The topmost branches were cracking and groaning. Dark clouds were ominous serpents, slithering past the sky. A flash of lightning illuminated her rutted path and she saw his back, forty feet away from her. Amy stumbled on a few treacherous roots. Her jacket got hooked onto something and she heard a rip.

What is he doing here?

"Caleb!" Amy managed to choke out the first syllable properly this time. He had reached a very small glade, in front of another dark figure squatting on the forest floor.

Hiding behind a pillar-like tree trunk, she spied on the two figures. They were hunched over dried twigs and branches, trying to set them on fire. Fucking idiots, Amy thought irately. The malevolent howling of the wind had numbed her senses. Something was not right. With her heart hammering in her throat, she hugged the tree. I can't see their faces...

The bigger of the two managed to start the fire and guffawed. The orange light illuminated the side of his accomplice's face.

With a jolt, Amy realized that the guy she had followed was not Caleb.

Bile rose in waves from within her, and Amy's nails scraped against the rough bark of the tree. She vaguely registered that the other boy was familiar still. His name was Wesley Broad, and by the looks of it, he was a regular customer of whatever shit Caleb supplied. Amy did not recognize the older man. A particularly violent gust had blown away their pathetic, fledgling fire and it crashed high against an opposing obstruction. The embers scattered and slowly died down in a hypnotizing display of orange and gold particles.

She backed away from the scene slowly, careful not to be dumb enough to make any noise.

Such a waste.

Amy felt deceived by her intuition. She grudgingly climbed over a fallen tree. Rhythmically, a faint afterglow was breaking through the dark, bluish-blackness of the forest night. Gritting her teeth, she swore under her breath, realizing that she had left her phone in the car. The fatigue in her calves made her grimace. Robbed of sight, Amy was uninterested in reenacting her runs and tumbles on the journey back. Nearly there, she said to herself.

With an astonished yelp that shattered the silence of the night like a funky trumpet, Amy fell six feet to the ground.

Unbeknownst to her, the dead tree was straddling a depression and she had tipped over its edge. Fuck this, Amy spat out the taste of mud and decaying alga. She had fallen on all fours like a cat so she felt fine. Except for the muscle spasms that generally accompanied any humiliating fall, resonating in her knees and elbows. Amy groped for roots and footholds to get back up, disregarding the irrepressible twitching of her limbs.

Footfalls alerted Amy to the approach of her former quarry. In an instant, she was painfully blinded by a white beam from the offender's flashlight.

The predator had become the prey.

"Bitch, what d'you think you're doing?" A nasal, oily voice rang out.

Amy hissed at him. "Get that light away from me."

He was standing a few feet away from her when he started laughing. Maniacal, mirthless laughter. "You are one of those. I ain't got no time for fake-ass bitches."

"Call me a bitch one more time, maggot," Amy snarled. She couldn't see his face but she could picture his pinched, sallow skin. Amy sized him up.

"Unless you want my gun shoved up your ass, shut up bitch!" he bellowed, brandishing the flashlight aggressively. He staggered towards her, his stance rigid, ready for a fight. If only Wesley had been as intimidating as he sounded.

"I told you not to call me that."

Amy moved towards the source of the light, adrenaline charging her and short-circuiting all rational thought in the process. She wanted to hurt the little shit. Amy timed her punch accurately, wasting very little energy; and when it connected with his chin, the satisfying crack was music to her ears. Wesley crumpled to the ground.

She put her foot on his crotch and kicked him, deriving more pleasure from this than she had gathered all week. Amy wanted to keep going till his balls went back up his abdomen. Scumbag deserves more and –

"Caleb, stop! Please!" he cried out. 

Amy froze.

"Stop! Please, I am trynna get the money, alright?! It hurts, fuckin' hurts, you dog!"

What in the name of –

"Don't hit me man, I'll do anything. I will pay you. Just give it to me," he said, sniffling and demented. Wesley was grunting, his face pressed against the mud, and frothing a little on the side of his mouth. "I want it. You promised the next batch, I gotta have it man. I wanna hit. I want it. I want it. I WANT IT!"

He was screaming. His nasal voice was ripping through his vocal cords as he writhed in the soft mud. Wesley was slapping the muck and the sickening sounds were unbearable.

"What are you on?" she whispered, horrified. Lightening streaked across the sky, tumbling between the clouds, long enough to light another jagged piece of the impossible puzzle.

Wesley's entire left arm was rotting away. The veins were angry, strained, a deep murky crimson, silhouetted against his insipid flesh; disappearing just at the junction of the long sleeves that he had rolled up. Amy automatically retched at the sight of it.

A distinct, severely bruised rubicund mark was pulsating disgustingly at the base of his palm. It was shaped like a four-point star.

Wesley was pathetically sobbing now, trying to lick the filth off his fingers. Amy staggered back. She thought she heard a voice calling out for him and ran with animalistic abandon.

She wrenched open the door to the Corolla and threw her weight onto the accelerator. The car screeched against the wet earth and responded in kind. Her excruciating thoughts were trying to outspeed the roaring gale. Amy was physically trying to outspeed them both. Taking deep, heaving breaths, she ran her free hand through her knotted, soiled hair. Amy wanted to close her eyes and end the nightmare she was in. There was no way.

Distance. She needed distance. A sanctuary perhaps – a place where the monsters wouldn't discover her.

Her paranoia escalated to a zealous degree and reveling in its frenzy, Amy did not see the blazing lights of the oncoming truck.

✧

A/N: Well, I did tell you guys she doesn't have the most sterling driving record 🧿. On a more positive note, thank you for 2k reads!