Page 42 of Hide And Seek

My mind switched track, and I thought about Rhys’s total lack of surprise when the camp was shut down.

Next, I thought about Piper, who’d conveniently left before any of this started, as if she’d somehow known something dark was coming.

Then I thought about the note on the tree on the first night.I know what really happened last year.

Somewhere outside, a branch suddenly snapped. I sat up.

Nothing followed. No footsteps, no voices. Nothing but the ordinary sounds of a forest at night doing what forests always did. After a moment, I lay back down, heart still racing.

Jasmine suddenly spoke up again. “I feel like I'm in one of those old slasher movies,” she said. “You know what I mean?”

“Yeah. It feels like that for me too,” I murmured.

I’d always loved slasher movies. I was probably way too young when I started watching them, back when it was just about the adrenaline, the cheap scares, and the feeling of getting away with something I wasn’t supposed to be doing.

But somewhere along the way, it stopped being that simple. I’d noticed it gradually; the way certain scenes made my stomach twist in a way that wasn’t just fear anymore. The way I’d find myself fixating on the wrong parts.

Eventually, I’d gone looking for an explanation, the same way I always did when something didn’t sit right with me. That was how I’d come across the term ‘hybristophilia’. Attraction to people who’d committed terrible crimes.

I’d read that definition and just… known.

It was me.

The shame had hit immediately. Hard enough that I’d spent months trying to twist and reframe it in my head, telling myself it was just curiosity. Just an extension of my interest in true crime. That there was a line, and I was still on the right side of it.

That wasn’t true, though. Not really. At some point, I’d known that I had to face up to the fact that violent criminals turned me on like nothing else, and that was already stepping a toe over the line.

But the fantasy had always been distant. Safe. Something that existed on a screen or in my imagination.

What happened tonight wasn’t that. It was real.

Delia wasn’t a character in a Hollywood movie. She’d been alive a few hours ago. Eating. Walking. Talking. And now…

I swallowed hard, my stomach turning. Whichever part of me had stepped over that line, even a little, felt like it belonged to someone else entirely. Someone I didn’t recognize. Someone I didn’t evenwantto recognize.

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to push the dark thoughts away.

“I still can’t believe this is happening,” Jasmine said. “Like… I actually can’t wrap my head around it. My mind just feels totally fucked.”

“Yeah,” I said quietly, staring up at the ceiling. “Mine too.”

In more ways than one.

11

Nobody slept much.

I could see it in the faces around the dining hall the next morning. Hollowed eyes. Slower movements. Conversations that started and then fizzled out before they went anywhere. The hall felt cavernous without the kids in it, every small sound carrying farther than it should. At one point, someone accidentally set a mug down too hard, and several people flinched.

No one had said Delia’s name yet, but that didn’t surprise me. There was a kind of unspoken rule in situations like this, where something was too fresh and awful to look at directly, so everyone just… didn’t.

Brad and Olivia were already geared up by the time the rest of us finished eating and drifted outside. Both had hiking packs strapped on, stuffed with water, food, and sleeping bags. Brad also had a compact two-person tent clipped to the side of his pack.

He glanced around at us before speaking. “If we get signal a few miles out, or if someone picks us up, we could be backhere with the police in a few hours,” he said. “If not, we’ll camp overnight and finish the rest of the walk tomorrow morning.”

“Either way, worst case, we're hitting Millhaven around midday tomorrow,” Olivia added.

I turned that over quietly in my mind and tried not to think about what else could happen in a day and a half.