He inserted an indigo claw into the gap and pointed at her.
“If you listen closely,” he continued, a glossy bead of black liquid racing down his curved nail, “you can hear them in the walls.”
Isobel zeroed in on the droplet as it reached the very tip of the Noc’s claw. Before the drop could fall, however, it wriggled to life, forming into another of the rust-colored beetles.
Tumbling onto the floor, the insect scrambled to right itself, then scurried off into the same hole as the others.
“The sound, it goes something like this . . . ,” the Noc hissed, and retracting his claw, he tapped lightly against the screen.
The same noise answered from beneath, below the patch of floor right under her.
Tensing, Isobel readied herself to run. But she already knew it was too late. There was nowhere to go.
Nowhere the Noc wouldn’t be able to reach first.
“Their ticking is said to herald the final moments of one who is close to death,” Scrimshaw went on, his jagged grin spreading wider. “So their name, you see, is very suiting.”
Growing louder, the clicking began to spread, multiplying into a cacophony that Isobel could feel through the soles of her shoes.
Dream, she thought, shifting from one foot to the other, edging away from the hole where, inside, something moved.
“There’s only one problem,” the Noc said, his tone dropping to a hush while the tapping noise continued to rise in volume.
Just . . . a dream.
“History has proven that I can’t die. And since you already have, one is left to wonder what all their fuss is about.”
Suddenly the ticking ceased. The floor groaned.
Silence.
Then, in a rushing surge, a torrent of tiny bodies came flooding up through the hole.
Isobel cried out. She shrank back.
Stumbling into the chair, she knocked the doll aside. The figure’s head cracked against the windowsill, causing the key affixed to her back to jog into motion again.
The sound of the doll’s humming, slow and stilted, arose to join the beetles’ renewed clicking as her eyelids rolled open, each socket unleashing a fresh cascade of insects.
The bugs converged on Isobel’s shoes, and the screech that had been building inside her at last broke free. She kicked at the gathering swarm, but quick as flames, they engulfed her legs. They scurried up her jeans and scuttled beneath the hems, onto the cuffs of her socks and then the bare skin of her ankles.
Isobel stomped to shake them free and tried to sweep the bugs clear from her in handfuls. But the insects clung to her arms and wrists, scaling her shoulders and then her neck.
She twisted and, tumbling into the screen, slammed with it to the floor.
The bang rattled the boards, rallying even more bugs from all the rotted-out knots that had not been there moments before.
A deep chuckle filled her ears as the tide of insects swept over her.
Her screams pitched higher, joining the doll’s dying song and the Noc’s laughter until all were eclipsed by the now-deafening sound of the ticking.
She needed to get away. Out of there. Home. She wanted to be home. To wake up and never, ever sleep again. She needed—
“Reynolds!” she managed to screech while the writhing mass enveloped her throat, scrambling up her jaw and over her chin.
Clamping her mouth shut, Isobel jerked to one side. She threw her head back, but that didn’t stop the hordes of tiny bodies from hurrying over her pinched lips.
Lashing left and right, tearing at her own face, she rolled and felt the moving sheet of shells beneath her crunch like a layer of dead leaves. Everywhere, her skin prickled with the sensation of thousands of minuscule legs.
She shut her eyes just before the frenzying ranks could scramble over her lids and into her ears, obliterating the last hints of light and sound—all but their own incessant ticking.
Her screams, no longer containable, burst forth in glass-shattering tones. Sanity left her the instant the insects flooded her mouth, cutting her off before she could cry Reynolds’s name again.
Tick tick tick tick tick tick.
Beneath the drone, a far-off voice repeated her name, urging her to take control, telling her again and again that she was dreaming.
Dreams . . .
They only feel real when you let them, she’d told Danny.
When you let them . . .
Curling into herself, Isobel imagined the living sheath that encased her shriveling up and crumbling away into cinders. As she focused hard on the visual, she felt the currents of scampering legs dissipate, the weight of the attacking insects lift from her body.
All at once, the clicking inside her head ceased, and with a rattling gasp, she sat up.
