Horror Game? Looks Cute novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Cot Twelve

The Bear carries Juno to a cellar of eleven sleepers and lays her on the twelfth cot without pulling the quilt; at dawn he takes off the head.

The Bear threw me over his shoulder.

I hit his back with both fists.

"Put me down!"

He did not answer.

He walked, and the village went by upside down.

Every cottage window had a face in it.

The rabbits, the foxes, the baker's wife, all pressed against the glass with their smiles cracked open.

None of them came out.

"Let me go, you giant stuffed freak."

I kicked, and my sock slid off.

A paw closed over both my ankles, firm and careful, and I understood he was holding me so I wouldn't fall.

That scared me more than a fist would have.

I bit the nearest thing, which was his arm.

Fake fur filled my mouth, and under it was something warm that flinched.

"Ow," said the Bear.

It was a human voice.

Low and hoarse, a man's voice.

He stopped walking for half a second.

Then he started again, faster.

We turned down a lane I knew from the map.

Maple Lane was the dead end behind the bakery.

In the build it held one gingerbread house with a locked door and a sign that said NOT FINISHED.

The door was open.

The Bear ducked inside, carried me through a kitchen, past a pantry, and down a flight of wooden stairs.

The air changed.

It smelled of beeswax and clean linen.

A row of small lanterns glowed along the stone walls, and under them lay beds.

Cots, narrow and neat, each one with a pink quilt tucked up to the chin.

Each one with a person in it.

I counted them while the Bear carried me down the aisle.

Eleven.

There was a woman my mother's age, a boy in a football jersey, and a man in a chef's apron with his mouth slightly open.

They were all breathing.

I could see their chests move.

A music box on a shelf played the same slow lullaby I'd heard outside, very softly.

"What did you do to them?" My voice cracked. "What did you do?"

The Bear stopped at the twelfth cot, which was empty.

He lowered me onto it.

Then he stepped back.

He stood there with the folded quilt still on his arm, enormous and silent, with a stitched grin and one cracked button eye.

I braced for it.

For the quilt to come down and for the lullaby to take me under.

He did not lift it.

He put it on the end of the cot, at my feet, and turned his big head away.

"Hey," I said. "Hey. What are you doing?"

The music box kept playing.

The Bear walked up the stairs, and I heard a heavy bolt slide across the cellar door.

I sat there with my heart going.

There were sleepers on either side of me.

I leaned over and touched the nearest man's wrist.

Warm.

There was a pulse under my fingers, slow and strong.

"Okay," I whispered. "Okay. Not dead. Not dead."

I tried the stairs.

The door was bolted from the other side.

I tried the walls, every corner, every seam.

I knew where this build leaked.

I knew every gap in every wall in Honey Hollow, and I had thought nothing in this cellar was in the game.

I was right.

It was solid.

Somewhere above me, I heard footsteps, slow and heavy, going back and forth.

And behind them, once, I heard a groan, like someone in pain who didn't want to be heard.

I lay down on cot twelve with the quilt off and my eyes open.

I did not sleep.

I watched the lantern light on the ceiling and listened to eleven strangers breathing.

I thought about a yellow sticky note.

Don't tap the honey.

At some point the music box slowed down and stopped.

The cellar went quiet.

Gold light came down the stairs from a crack under the door.

The bolt slid back.

I grabbed a lantern off the wall and held it over my head.

The cellar door opened, and boots came down the stairs.

Human boots.

A man stopped at the bottom step with one hand up, palm out.

He was tall, with dark hair that needed cutting, brown eyes ringed with tired shadow, and a flannel shirt with the sleeves pushed up.

Under his arm he carried a giant brown bear head with a pink bow and a cracked button eye.

I'd bitten that arm.

There were teeth marks on it.

"I'm Garvan," he said. "I've been the bear for three years."

He looked at the lantern.

"Please don't hit me with that."

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