“Oh, that’s right, ladies! Your dear Tristan…is dead!”
The women gasped.
“But he’s come all the way from the afterlife to talk to us anyway. That’s how much of a gentleman he is, ladies!”
The ground flexed, sending Sabrina’s feet rocking as waves tremored across it. She pulled her legs to her chest, her belly tensing with nausea as she tried to look away from the moving floor. The shape of a face pressed through, like it had that prior night in the wall, but this time, it was followed by two hands, two feet, then a body pressing up, trying to come through also. Finally, a blade poked through and tore until the shape was sliced from head to toe, and Tristan crawled out. As he emerged, the floor sealed itself. He trembled to his feet, his body slick and gray, his hair that knotted mess he had worn on his deathbed. Sabrina slowly stood, her hand moving to her mouth.
“Tristan?” she said.
“Quiet, now!” Brandon called out. “You’ll have your turn, the same as anyone.”
Tristan turned to her and issued a quick wink before taking Brandon’s hand and letting himself be escorted onto the stage’s platform. He sat upon his own pink toadstool as Brandon sat across from him, leaning forward conspiratorially.
“So, Tristan, any regrets?”
“Well, dying wasn’t too fun.”
Mouthless laughs echoed around them as the contestants beamed at him. Amy laughed behind her hand. Tristan tried to grin, but his hardened mouth would no longer budge.
“And what about the ladies remaining when you passed?” Brandon asked. “Any main contenders?”
Tristan turned his whole body to look at Sabrina. Her body warmed at the attention. “A gentleman never gives away his secrets,” he said.
Brandon winked, seemingly at himself. “No, he doesn’t, does he?” He leaned in deeper. “But between you and me?”
“Everyone here could see it, right? Marion was everything I’ve ever wanted in a wife, but I’ll be the first to admit Sabrina here also rocked my world.”
“Sabrina?” Brandon’s smile faded. “Then why send her home?”
Tristan shook his head. “I didn’t.”
“Then what’s she doing here?”
Tristan tried to shrug, but his whole figure was as rigid as his mouth.
“She’s here because I have a message for her.” When he stood, his limbs lifted out like a martyr’s, forming a cross of himself, but then they grew longer and thinner until one of his spindly fingers swayed right in front of her. She tried to move away from him, no longer sure of her affection or her destiny, no longer certain of her status as a living person, but she was paralyzed, her ass and legs melded to the membranes. When his finger traced her chin, she shivered to be touched by him again.
“Don’t give up on us.”
As he drew her to her stand, she balanced on top of what should have been his feet. She tipped, unbalanced, and when she looked down, she saw his legs had fused. Now they ended in a dirty mess of rhizome and root.
• • •
As the chamber fell away, Sabrina woke. She lay on the floor of the empty room, vomit pooled around her head. She sat up, letting her senses return to her. She remembered everything. She understood how to meet her destiny face-to-face.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Linda
The choice between remaining inside the stifling manor or capturing their own breaths of fresh air was easy. Even eerie woods were more comforting than floors that seemed to live and breathe.
They weaved through the groaning trees. The forest was noisier than the day they arrived.
“Hey.” Charity was squeezing her hand and trailing behind. Linda tripped forward as Charity yanked her back. “You okay?”
Linda frowned. “Yeah—” But why was she lying? “No. I’m not.”
“Do you want to turn back?”
They were deep enough in the forest that back was an abstract concept.
“Let’s keep walking,” she said.
Dark green light filtered through the leaves and cast the forest in camouflage as limbs shifted in the breeze like grabby men. Linda intended to survive this place. She intended to take Charity to some hotel somewhere and have an excellent night’s sleep, then fuck all morning, then eat continental breakfast. She planned to figure out how to make this new thing work, how to absorb the kindness Charity exuded. She intended to change. She intended, finally, as she had hoped to do at the start of this journey, this TV show, whatever you wanted to call it, to open up, to experience, to love for maybe the first time since she was an adolescent.
Charity halted ahead, frozen in place, one hand cupped against her mouth. Linda followed her gaze to the treetops, where Becca hung like a holiday ornament, speared by a limb.
Gore dangled from her belly, a mess of red spilling out of a hole the size of a volleyball. Blood dripped along a long string of intestine to the forest floor, where it pooled on the fallen leaves. Before death, she had squeezed her eyes tight as though expecting the mutilation. As though someone had chased her there, then pushed her out onto the sharpened bough.
“Who did this to her?” Charity muttered. “Who the hell would do this to someone?”
Linda let out a strangled cry. She felt sick to her stomach. She had thought death so far behind her, and here it was again and again and again. Had she brought it with her to the manor? Was it her payback? She stared at her hands. Was it her?
“No,” Charity said. “There’s more.”
“More?” Linda squinted into the branches.
Charity threw her arm across Linda’s chest. She pointed ahead. “There,” Charity said. “No, lower. The ground. It’s Leo.”
