Page 47 of The Whispering Night
CHAPTER
21
The hot room sounds so much nicer than it actually is. You might imagine a sauna or steam room—and that’s a start. But now ratchet up the heat and steam to Level Relentless, and instead of a spa with cucumbers for your eyes, imagine an underground maze where everyone wants to destroy you.
Filled with columns, walls, ditches, mounds, and a long pool of varying depths, the hot room is meant to mimic the forest when the nightly mist rises. It is, in other words, meant to mimic hell.
Winnie hasn’t entered the maze in over four years, and back then, she and her fellow sixth graders only ever did the most basic of maneuvers to acclimate themselves to the steam.
There’s almost no light beyond five white bulbs spaced throughout, and the obstacles are changed weekly so no one can memorize the layout. Sometimes the classes split into teams, sometimes it’s every hunter for themself.Last Hunter Standing,it’s called, and the goal is to eliminate all other students by ripping off their flags.
That’s the game today, and Winnie is going to win. She couldn’t pound in the signora’s teeth, but she can probably get in a few swings at L.A.Come at me,she thinks as she navigates the outdoor obstacle course into the woods behind the Sunday estate.Back me into a corner, L.A. I dare you.The same goes for the rest of the class too. They don’t get to watch Winnie get bullied like it’s Shakespeare in the Locker Room.
Steam drifts out of the mausoleum-like entrance to the hot room. Trees cast shadows. Winnie forces herself to drop low and take each step intothe darkness slowly. Because she’s last to arrive, there will inevitably be an ambush at the bottom of these stairs—and those seniors will inevitably be expecting Winnie’s head high. So if she’sreallyquiet andreallylow, she should be able to slip right under.
If she’s unlucky… well, some grappling might be in her near future. But that still won’t compare to getting stuck in the middle of a vampira horde during therealforest mist, and Winnie doesn’t care how many Saturdays go full alpha-hole on her. Divas are easier to take down than a sadhuzag.
The intensity of the steam rolls over Winnie, thick and hot. It steals her sight and forces her to rely on senses she didn’t know she had until that night on her first trial a month ago. Shedoeshave those senses, though, and if the run from the carnival was a cardiac warm-up, then the obstacle course toggled all her reflexes to On.
A kiss of cold hits her skin. She hears a scrape like shifting fabric. The steam thickens against her lips.
Winnie scoots off the final step and drops to the concrete floor—right as two arms sling out where her torso was. A red flag is hanging at eye level; Winnie rips off the flag and sidles left, searching for a wall she can use both as cover and guidance. She never even sees a face.
The sounds of remaining ambushers pinball from behind. Grunts. AHey, no fingernails!And aWhat the hell, bro?It’s distracting—both for Winnie and the girl she almost runs into: Clarissa Thursday, a second cousin to Erica, who is now materializing in the steam.
“Sorry,” Clarissa says, and she charges Winnie with the grace of a ballerina and speed of a banshee.
But Winnie really,reallyhas something to prove, and for all Clarissa’s undeniable skills, she’s not anactualbanshee. Winnie’s muscles move without command. She punches upward with both hands, knocking Clarissa’s outstretched arms. Then she whirls in close, snatches off Clarissa’s orange flag, and keeps on moving.
Clarissa squeals, a sound both frustrated and delighted. It makes Winnie smile.Number of flags grabbed a month ago? Zero. Number of flags grabbed now? Two and counting.
Winnie passes three more Luminaries, but they never realize she’s there before she has their flags. And with each new ribbon to shove into her pocket, the more Winnie is convinced she’s going to win this. She’s goingto be the last hunter standing, and L.A. Saturday can savor the taste of defeat.
Boohoo, I got your Midnight Crown and your flag, Louisa Anne.
Winnie moves around a column, under a low archway, and over two “streams” made of rustling plastic—the second of which Winnie doesn’t quite avoid. Two Luminaries leap at her. One wears a yellow flag, the other a green, and Winnie ducks behind the yellow right as the green lunges.
They take each other down, which Winnie derives great pleasure from, even if it isn’t sportsmanlike. And she especially enjoys plucking off both their flags while they’re tussling. She slinks back into the steam before they can stop her. Obscenities chase behind.
Winnie’s grin expands, steam pushing into her mouth and between her teeth. Eventually she’ll have to meet L.A., and she can’t wait for that moment to come. Don’t fuck with Wolf Girl, indeed.
Winnie reaches the central pool. It is the one element of the hot room that never changes, its waters supposedly kept the same temperature as the shallows of the Big Lake. The air breathes differently here, slightly cooler, slightly thinner, and she senses no movement in the steam that beads on her skin. She circles the pool, moving cautiously. No one is here, leaving her to wonder if maybe she’s already the last hunter standing—if maybe she got L.A.’s flag without realizing it.
She hopes not. She really wants to see L.A.’s face when she clobbers her.
At the pool’s end, a column blocks Winnie’s way. She can continue left, skirting dangerously close to the pool’s edge, or she can go right—the safer option, so long as no one else is around.
She decides to risk left. Cold air tickles her scarred arm. She forgot to roll down the sleeve. Her toes inch along a narrow lip beside the water. Scoot. Slide. Scoot. Slide.
She realizes half a second too late that someone else has had the same idea. Their feet touch. Then their hands. Then they’re both grappling for each other’s flags. Winnie can’t even see what color it is; she doesn’t care. She’s not going down.
Except that right as she does manage to find the flag—gray, it’s gray—her feet slip. She loses her balance. She falls backward into the pool. Her body crashes under the cold, lungs expelling every drop of air.
And Winnie knows right away that she’s in trouble.
It’s an atavistic terror that electrifies her muscles, her brain.Not again,it seems to say.Not these ghosts again.She is back beneath the falls, sinking and numb. She trusted the forest, and it only froze her in return. Her life is plucking away from her.
She thrashes, trying to swim, but the green dress is tangled around her like kelp that will never release.
