Chapter 11
“Wait for what?” I snapped. “This is enough. We have to call the police.”
Reilly looked tortured. “If we call now, she’s done. No question. Let’s give her a chance to turn herself in first.”
I stared at her.
That surprised me more than anything.
Reilly and Madison were not especially close, and Reilly was the last person I expected to go soft on someone who might have done something like this.
But she held on to my wrist and said, “She didn’t choose this. If she really did it in her sleep, then she’s sick, not evil. Let her confess herself. We owe her that much.”
Against my better judgment, she convinced me.
For the next two days, Madison vanished. We did not see her in class, at meals, or in the dorm hallway. Girls from the foreign language department said she had taken medical leave and was staying in her room.
By the second night, I could not take it anymore.
“We can’t keep waiting,” I said. “What if she falls asleep again and someone else gets hurt?”
Reilly immediately shot back, “Now that she knows, she’ll protect herself somehow. She’s not just going to let it happen again.”
“How do you know that?”
We were still arguing when a sudden thudding sound cut through the room.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
The entire dorm seemed to go silent around us.
I checked my phone.
12:03 a.m.
Jessica’s voice floated down from the top bunk, shaky and thin. “That’s someone knocking, right? That’s the door, right?”
Before anyone could answer, the sound came again.
And this time, something about it felt wrong.
Jessica whispered, “Is it just me, or does that sound like it’s coming from the window?”
A freezing shock shot through me.
If our theory was right, Madison never used doors.
She climbed.
Slowly, I turned toward the curtains.
Moonlight bled around their edges.
And on the fabric, clear as day, was the shadow of a person crouched outside the glass.
Jessica screamed.