WE WALK THROUGH a thick mass of trees. They crowd each other and the road, and the morning light barely filters down to dapple the ground. Something feels off about the forest. False and thin. It takes me a few minutes of walking to realize that the morning has brought no burst of birdsong, no movement among the trees. As if every breathing thing has been snuffed out, or fled.
Water glints between the trees up ahead, silvery and sharp. An iron gate blocks our way.
“Whose turn?” Anthony asks.
“Does it matter?” Mel replies. She steps forward, rummaging in her pocket, and shoves her key into the lock. “Gate number three,” she says in a game-show-host voice. “Step right in, ladies and gentlefolk.”
We step through the gate and past a thick stand of the evergreens. They thin so suddenly it makes me lurch. Only a few feet in front of us the road stops. Or rather, it vanishes—disappearing beneath the impossibly smooth surface of the water, which stretches as far as I can see in every direction. A few scattered trees stand here and there; the water must not be very deep, then, but it’s impossible to be sure. The light hits it and reflects everything—sky and trees and the six of us standing at its edge—a perfect mirror.
“That can’t be right,” Anthony says. He gives me a bewildered look. “It can’t just end. How can we keep going?”
A flutter of panic passes from Anthony to the others, like a ripple in the air. If we tip over into it now, I don’t know if we can recover. I don’t have time to think or consider or debate; someone needs to act, now, while we still can. So I step forward, into the water.
My feet sink ankle deep, and the surface of the road is waiting for me. When I slide my foot back I can feel the short slope, dipping below the surface of the reflective water, but after that initial drop it feels level. I take another sloshing step. The water laps against my ankles, cool but not cold, its mirrored surface opaque. I can’t even see my own feet, or anything below the surface, even where my shadow blocks the sun.
“The road’s still here,” I say, trying not to sound too relieved.
Jeremy sits down at the edge of the water and starts pulling his shoes off. I raise an eyebrow. “What? I don’t want to walk the rest of the way in wet shoes,” he says. “Besides, it’ll be easier to feel where the road is with bare feet. Unless you want to accidentally step off the edge, and find out what happens when you break the rules.”
I shudder, a feeling like guilt and grief snaking through me. “Good idea,” I say, regretting my soggy hiking boots already. I splash back to dry land and join the others in stripping to my bare feet, rolling my wet jeans up to mid-calf.
We set out in pairs—instinct by now, to stay within arm’s reach of each other. I find myself glancing behind us, checking for the tide of shadow that took Miranda. But there is only the forest behind us, and the trees scattered here and there in the water, spikes of dark green against the silver blue. In the distance—it’s hard to be certain exactly how far—the air fills with a pale mist, obscuring the horizon and any sense of how far we have to go. Instead of making the water seem smaller, it makes it feel as if it stretches for an eternity.
We inch along, taking tentative steps, feeling for solid ground before we move forward. Once my foot lands on nothing, just deep water, and only Anthony’s grip on my elbow, hauling me back, saves me from pitching forward into the unnaturally still water.
After that, we take shifts at the front. It’s safer to follow along behind, in the footsteps of the two in front. For a long time, we are silent—yet every noise we make seems amplified, echoing off the lake. The slosh of the water, every inhale and exhale. The road isn’t wide here, and Anthony’s shoulder bumps against mine from time to time.
“I know why you did it,” he says quietly. In the silence, it’s like a shout, but while Trina’s shoulders stiffen, and Kyle stumbles a step, no one turns around. Jeremy, up at the front with Mel, probably doesn’t hear—and he’s the one most likely to argue. I keep my eyes fixed on the back of Mel’s wild curls, the curve of her neck.
“Why do you think I did it?” I ask.
“I mean that I get why you thought that Vanessa might be . . . I don’t know. Bad,” he says. “I noticed it, too. I should have said something. I was trying to keep track to make sure everyone had a partner, and that’s when I realized that she didn’t, at the first gate. But I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t want us turning on each other. Not when . . .” He looks uncomfortable.
“When I’m the one we know was alone in the dark,” I say. Or rather, not alone—which was worse.
“I was alone, too,” Anthony points out. “Hasn’t it occurred to you that if Vanessa was—compromised, somehow—that I could be, too?”
“Or me. Or all of us,” I say, refusing to consider it. Becca might have been the brightest star in our constellation, but Anthony was the most constant.
“I don’t know if you did the right thing. But I think you did,” Anthony says. “And I’ve got your back.” He smiles crookedly at me as we wade through the water.
“Thanks,” I say, my heart giving a double beat. “That means a lot to me.”
“Hey, guys?” Mel calls back. She and Jeremy have halted. “Look.” She points. In the distance, near where the mist swallows up the water, is a woman. Long red-brown hair hangs tangled around her shoulders, a red-and-black plaid shirt is tied around her hips. She shuffles and lurches as she walks, dragging a waterlogged messenger bag behind her. She’s coming toward us. Not directly, but if we keep walking, her path will intersect with ours. She gives no sign that she’s seen us.
“What do we do?” Mel asks.
There it is again. Panic. So many ways we haven’t even discovered yet that this road could destroy us, but that one worries me the most. “It’s okay,” I say first, trying to come up with a reason why that’s true. “She doesn’t look . . .” I pause. “She looks more like Isaac. Like us.”
She’s still moving toward us. Lurch and drag. What happens if she reaches us? Is she even on the road? Is she going to come straight toward us, and if she does, do we run? Do we move aside? Or is she just another traveler like us?
“Let’s get closer,” I say. “Get a better look. If we have to run, we run, but if we can go forward instead of back—”
“Yeah. Not sure we want to try backtracking,” Anthony agrees. Even Jeremy nods.
“I’ll take lead,” Jeremy says.
“Me, too,” Anthony chimes in.
“Our brave protectors,” Trina says, but with only a hint of sarcasm.
We reshuffle. Mel and I are in the middle, but I press forward ahead of her—still in reach if we have to grab hold of each other, but closer to Jeremy and Anthony. For a while there’s only sloshing. The young woman’s features grow clearer as she approaches. She has a long nose and prominent cheekbones dusted liberally with freckles. She wears glasses with black rims and a T-shirt that hangs oddly on her. Her mouth gapes open slightly, like she’s breathing hard.
“Hey,” I say. She’s twenty feet away now, and the angle of the road has shifted so that we’re facing each other. She’ll reach us soon. Anthony and Jeremy have stopped. At my back I can feel the tension of the others deciding whether to run.
It’ll be hard to get past her, if it comes to that. The road’s too narrow. But I don’t want to find out what happens if we try to go back.
She’s closer, and closer still. She’s going to walk right into us, and still she stares straight through us, her drag-shuffle steps never breaking their stilted rhythm.
“Hey!” I say again, loudly this time. “Who are you? Do you need help? Are you—”
Suddenly she veers to the side, her body canting as she follows the curve of the road.
Not the road. Her road. She walks parallel to us, feet slushing and sloshing through the water, and as she draws level with us, Mel lets out a scream.
Most of her back is gone. Huge furrows rip through her flesh, gouging through skin and bone and tissue from the side of her ribs to the gleaming, exposed column of her spine. There’s no blood. No blood—but her organs glisten inside the cavity of her torso, obscenely exposed. Another gash rakes along the base of her skull.
She cannot be alive. And yet she’s breathing. I can hear it, a labored but steady sound. And still she’s walking, one foot in front of the other, the bag dragging along behind her.
“She must be one of the others,” Kyle says, voice too loud and too fast. “One of the ones who was with Isaac, right? She must—”
“One way to find out,” Jeremy says, and before I can stop him, before anyone can stop him, he pushes past me, drawing up beside the shuffling woman, and steps out to her.
One foot. The other still planted firmly on the road, and Mel and Trina and I all grab for him, wrapping our hands around his arm as if we expect him to be wrenched away. But his other foot hits solid ground, and he leans out, snags the strap of her bag, and yanks.
The strap catches. She swings around at the tug and stands swaying, arm extended. Jeremy swears and unwinds the strap from her wrist. It comes free and we jerk him back. He holds the messenger bag to his chest, panting, wide-eyed, like he can’t believe what he just did.
Neither can the rest of us.
The woman hasn’t moved. Her hand is still outstretched, not quite pointing. Her eyes focus. It’s a slow process, her pupils contracting, her gaze lifting centimeter by centimeter until she’s staring at Jeremy. She gives a tiny gasp, a hiccup of sound. Her index finger rises, pointing straight at him. And then she whispers, sharp and urgent, “It’s coming.”
Crows burst from the trees. Dozens, hundreds hidden within the shadowed limbs of each one, and now they stream screaming into the sky. And thundering through that cacophony is a sound, a horrendous, bone-shaking sound like boulders being sheared apart.
“Go,” I say, but I didn’t have to. We’re already moving, a stuttering, stumbling run as we push forward as fast as we can, our feet greedy for the unseen road beneath our feet. The crows wheel and clamor in the sky, and that sound comes again. Did I say it is like stone? It’s more like metal, steel girders twisting out of shape.
I look back. She stands where we left her, hand outstretched, eyes tracking nothing.
Behind her, in the mist, something moves.
At first I don’t understand what I’m seeing. A tree, I think, but it looms above the trees. A man, a giant shrouded in mist—but there is something about the shape of it that is wrong, arms too long, fingers too sharp, a tangle of shadows above where its head must be. It’s still lost in the mist, still indistinct, but it’s coming toward us.
In the rear, Jeremy halts. He looks at the thing. And then at the girl.
“What are you doing?” Anthony calls. But Jeremy is already sprinting back, throwing the bag’s strap over his shoulder. He skids to a halt across from the girl, lunges, and grabs her wrist. It almost unbalances him, but then he’s found his footing, pulling her toward him. He stoops to lift her as the giant thing grows closer still.
“Jeremy, run!” I scream, and he finally listens. Anthony grabs my arm, pulling me along. We can’t help. We can only hope he’s fast enough.
“Up ahead,” Mel calls.
A shore trembles indistinctly at the edge of the mist. A shore and a gate, the iron bars solid and black even with the mist curling over them. Three crows perch atop the gate, immune to whatever has flung the others skyward, watching our approach.
We move at a lurching run. Almost to the shore. I don’t look back. I won’t look back.
Kyle skids to a halt in the front, pivots. “There’s a seam at the edge of the road,” he says. “Just a tiny gap, and then there’s another road, but the real one turns. You have to feel your way—” He catches sight of the thing behind us, and his eyes go wide. “What the f—”
“Just go!” I yell, before anyone else can waste time gawking. Jeremy puts his head down and bulls forward, dragged down by the girl’s weight, lagging farther and farther behind. The road slews to the left, then the right, and then we’re barreling straight for the shore. And then we’re on the shore, muddy ground squelching, grasping at our heels. The crows on the gate finally take flight, an eruption of movement. Anthony already has his key out. It scrapes against the lock as he fumbles with it.
I turn. The mist is closer, folding in toward us. And with it comes that thing.
The beast.
I can see the shape of it more clearly now, its long arms, the three hooked claws on each hand. Claws that could carve through a person as easy as tissue paper. The mist blurs its details, but it must be forty feet tall. Fifty. And its head isn’t the head of a person, but triangular, and above it antlers branch and twist and tangle.
It’s the creature from Becca’s notebook.
“Sara,” Anthony says. The gate is open. I’m the only one on this side. Me and Jeremy. His eyes meet mine. Go, he mouths, not sparing the breath to voice it, and I do.
I dash through. Jeremy is still far behind us. Too far.
Anthony hesitates—and then slams the gate shut behind us.
The mist collapses, like the barrier holding it back has given way. In an instant everything behind the gate is shrouded, bleached to gray-white.
“He could still make it,” I whisper. I find myself reaching into my bag, pulling out the camera. Training it on the mist. On the gate. As if by looking through the camera, I can make the scene less terrible, less terrifying.
We wait, breath ragged, to see what comes through.