CRYPTID

Chapter 14

Not something that happened to her.

She had just watched herself disappear, in real-time, on-screen. Where had she gone? She still wasn't sure, and that... scared her. Something had separated Liam and her...

But what was it?

"What happened?" Liam breathed.

She turned slowly to look at him. "I-I don't know."

"Did you see something?"

Penelope nodded.

"What? What did you see?"

The events from mere hours before replayed in her mind, coming fast and scattered. It all seemed so unreal. "A r-raven," she said, still trying to make sense of it.

"The Raven?" Liam echoed, sitting up straighter.

Penelope shook her head. "No. A raven—just a bird. Like the one at the park. And it... it spoke to me again."

Liam frowned—that had tempered his excitement. She knew he believed that it was just more of Gunnar's doing. "What did it say?" he said, his voice flat.

"Follow me," Penelope quoted the bird. "And then..." She thought of the one standout line, the one that unsettled her the most.

'HELP ME,' the raven had said.

Something about it unsettled her.

'Follow me' was something Penelope could see Gunnar teaching the ravens around town. But not 'help me'—she couldn't think of why would he teach them to say that.

She wondered if maybe she had misheard it...

"And then what?" Liam said, prodding from her daze.

"There were these trees," Penelope mumbled, replaying her memories in her head. She decided to leave out the other thing the bird said—she wasn't even sure she had heard it right, anyway. "They were braided together."

Liam cocked an eyebrow. "Braided? Like hair?"

"Not quite," Penelope said. "It was more... complex." It hadn't been the simple three strands woven together, but many more, like rope or... It reminded her of something, but she couldn't quite place it. Her brain was still pretty frazzled from the whole ordeal. "But when you showed up again, they were gone. The bird, too."

"Yeah, I didn't see any birds," Liam confirmed. "Or braided trees." He made a face.

Penelope took a deep breath. That didn't make her feel any better. She knew it sounded insane. Now, back in the comfort of the cabin, Penelope was doubting everything she had seen and heard. After all, she had been panicking, thinking she was lost. Not exactly the soundest of mind...

But the footage on the phone sitting in her lap was proof that something had happened.

"What do I do now?" Penelope asked aloud.

"Well, first, I think you need to tell your fans you're alive," Liam said, pointing at the screen of the phone again.

The livestream had posted automatically to her YouTube channel once Liam had stopped it. In the time it took them to come out of their shock and make their way home, the video had somehow racked up more than a million views and the comments that accompanied it were a mix of panic and anger.

IS PARANELOPE OKAY? demanded one viewer.

Did that new guy kill her or something? asked another.