Page 50 of The Whispering Night
“Huh?” Winnie says again—because these words arealmostlike the entry in the Nightmare Compendium on aquatic nightmares. But not quite. They’re changed enough to scrape at her brain. To push and rub like a jigsaw piece being shoved into the wrong slot.
Winnie’s face scrunches up. For the first time since leaving the Sunday estate, her heart finds a rhythm—and it matches the theme music toJeopardy!. Doo-doo-doo-doo, doo-doo-doo!
“To determine which way to swim,” Mom continues, her face cinching up just like Winnie’s—“exhale into your hand and feel which way the bubbles move. Air will always rise. Follow the bubbles, and you can find the surface again.”
Mom leans back. She is finished. She has reached the end of what she wanted to say, and she sets the card on the table like it’s the ace in a winning hand. Except she stares at Winnie with an apologetic smile that says,Don’t worry: I know you won’t understand what I’m saying.
Winnie does understand, though. Sure, it takes her a moment of gawping blankly. Of running Mom’s words through her brain like some internal search engine.Not the Compendium, so what else is there?Then a result appears. Match = 100 percent.
Mom isn’t quoting the Nightmare Compendium. She’s quoting the abridged version that all hunters carry into the forest. Because if there is any tome crammed into Mom’s brain the way the Compendium is crammed into Winnie’s…
Well, the Abridged Hunters’ Compendium would be it.
Little Franny has even more secrets than you do,the Crow said at the carnival,ones Jeremiah could never pry loose.
Yeah, Winnie can see why. Mom is clearly stuck under the same spell Winnie is. It’s incomprehensible. Unexpected. A plot twist even Jessica Fletcher onMurder, She Wrotecould never have seen coming. But what other explanation is there?
However, there’s one problem: the Crow didn’t seem to know about this.Sure, the Crow could have lied. Pretended she didn’t know Mom was bewitched. But Martedì wants what Winnie wants, and it doesn’t help her to block Winnie from getting there.
Yet if the Crow didn’t put this spell on Mom, then who did? And how theheckis Winnie going to discover anything if she and Mom can’t have a real conversation?
“I understand,” Winnie says. “You… can’t talk about this with me.”
Mom blinks. And Winnie can practically see fresh words trying to escape the event horizon. “How?” Mom manages to croak out. Then: “How do you know?”
Winnie sucks in a shallow breath. She can’t shake her head—although she definitely tries. But it just makes her ears buzz, buzz, hum.
“Who… did this to you?” Winnie grinds out instead.
Now Mom is as stiff and silent as Winnie was, implying she also wants to speak, but the rules of the spell won’t let her.
Until suddenly Momismoving. Until suddenly she is outright laughing, a high-pitched, almost painful cackle while she waves the card before her. “Four years,” she says between strained giggles. “Fouryears.” She pushes off her seat and yanks Winnie close for a hug. A weird, uncharacteristic, slightly suffocating bear hug.
“Winnebago,” she says into Winnie’s hair, still laughing—though more quietly now. “I don’t know what to do. I havenoidea what to do. It’s been four years, and I am just as lost now as I was then. But hunters injured in the forest must first be checked for signs of blood.” She withdraws, gripping Winnie hard by the biceps. Boring into her with a stare. “And if blood is found, then it must be stanched. Immediately. Otherwise, nightmares will scent it and hunt you down.
“And that’s why we have to be careful, Winnebago: hunters are never, ever safe in Hemlock Falls.”
That night, as Winnie watches fireworks sparkle above the Little Lake, as she smiles and pretends she justloveswearing the heavy Midnight Crown, a crow watches the same fireworks from atop a black-shingled roof. He is cold. He is hungry. He isn’t sure why he has made his home here when there are plenty more comfortable places around town.
But then the woman with sad eyes comes outside and offers him a grilled cheese, and he feels briefly happy. Briefly warm. He really likes melted cheddar on toasted bread.
Meanwhile, miles north in the forest that never sleeps, a spell stirs. It is hungry too, and this is not the sort of hunger that cheddar will ever satisfy.Pure Heart. Trust the Pure Heart.
The Whisperer goes hunting.
WINNIE’S SCHEDULE FOR THE NIGHTMARE MASQUERADE
MONDAY
8A.M.: Monday Science Fair Kickoff
• Winnie is expected outside the Monday Science Library— dress is casual, but Darian recommends jewel tones.
• Winnie will open the gates to the Science Fair along with Theresa Monday.
8:30A.M.–11:30P.M.: Science Fair Judging
• Winnie will be guided along with six other judges to compare the greatest feats of the Monday clan from this year.
