MEL AND KYLE come to get me. I have run ahead of the reality of what happened, but now I walk back with them to face it.
We cannot do anything to honor Jeremy. We can’t bury him. We have no shroud to drape over his body, but Anthony has covered him as best he can with his coat. Becca sits cross-legged nearby, hands limp in her lap, staring at nothing. I force myself to walk to where Jeremy lies, where Anthony stands beside him.
He was never my friend. I didn’t even like him—I thought he was a jerk. And he was. But he went with us onto the road, when he didn’t have to. And Trina—maybe she was running from what she’d done, when she stepped onto the road. But I don’t think so. I think if everyone else had run away, she would have been the last one there, ready to face anything to be a good friend.
“We should—we should say something,” Anthony says. He stands with his hands tucked into his pockets, his head bowed.
“Why?” Kyle demands. “Is saying something going to change any of this?”
“Jeremy was a hero,” Anthony says, pressing on regardless. “He was—he was a good person. Trina, too. They were both good people.”
“Stop,” I say. Anthony’s head jerks up. His look is questioning, wounded. The air is brittle around us. “You can’t make it matter by saying a few nice words.”
“Sara—” Mel steps forward.
Kyle shakes his head. Tears well in his eyes and rake down his cheeks, but he doesn’t seem to notice them. “She’s right. Two people just died to save me. How does that math work?” he demands.
“It’s not an equation,” Mel snaps.
“Either one of them would have done it again. In a heartbeat.” Anthony swallows. “And that does mean something.”
“Only if we survive,” Kyle says. His voice is bitter and without hope. “Only if we get home.”
“You will.” The words surprise me, coming from my own mouth. “You all will. I won’t let anyone else die.”
“We all will, you mean,” Mel says. I don’t answer.
“The road won’t let us go easily,” Becca says.
“I didn’t say it would be easy, I said I would do it,” I say. I walk back to the preacher’s book, lying inert on the road. I pick it up. The cover is leather, softened with age. The words whisper to me, promise and pull.
I throw the book as far as I can into the field. It lands somewhere in the grass, far out of reach, and the whispers fade reluctantly. I shiver and turn away.
“Let’s go,” I say.
“Wait,” Anthony says. “We can’t just leave Jeremy. What if he—what if he ends up like Zoe?”
“We’ll take him through the gate,” I say. “That’s what ended things for Zoe. We’ll bring him through the next gate, and then we’ll keep moving. Make it matter.”
Becca stands. She brushes her hands off on her jeans and walks to me. Nods once. There could be a hundred layers of meaning in that nod, but I’m too tired to catch a single one of them.
I help wrap Jeremy’s bloodied body in Anthony’s coat, and between us and Mel, we carry him, slowly, toward the shore, leaving Trina—the memory of her—behind. There is nothing we can say to make what happened okay. There is nothing we can say to make it hurt less. We can only watch Jeremy’s body turn to smoke and ash as we approach the next gate, and add their names to the litany of the dead.
I open the gate this time. I wait to see if there is any strange sensation as I push the key into the lock. Some tingle the others missed or didn’t mention. But there is only the scrape of the key in the lock and faint resistance as it turns—and then, softly, a whisper, hardly more than a breath against my ear. Find her. I shiver.
Beyond the gate, the road turns to gravel, and then melds seamlessly with the rock and then sand of the shore. The whole beach is the road, I realize, and it curves like a hand clutching the water. The sea smells of salt and fish-rot. Ropy kelp clumps here and there at the edge of the water, shoved a few inches farther, then dragged back by the breaking of the swells. White specks and lines interrupt the gray sand: the skeletons of birds, delicate wings outstretched, ribs crushed down against the gray. Hundreds of them, as far as I can see in either direction, until the beach curls out of view behind black, toothy rocks.
A short walk to the left, a spit of land protrudes into the sea. The waves crash to either side of it, sending plumes of spray that meet over the highest point. If the tide rose, it might swallow the land and leave the nub at the end with its pale, narrow lighthouse an island—but I am not certain there is a tide here. There is no moon to replace the fading sun. We get our flashlights out again, though there’s still enough light to navigate by. None of us want to be caught unawares by the dark.
“The lighthouse?” I ask. “Or—do we go down the beach?” I look to Becca. She bites her lip.
“I think the lighthouse,” she says. She wrings her hands rhythmically, her gaze darting down and to the side. She’s nervous with so many people around—even just the four of us. She’s been alone so long. “The lighthouse. Yes. We should—we should go to the lighthouse.”
We make our way single file down the spit of land. Salt-spray batters us and the delicate bones of birds crunch beneath our feet. With the sun down, it’s getting cold. We might not need to sleep or eat, but the cold still bites its way in.
The door is painted red, or was—faded now to dull wood and a few scraps of paint.
I push it open. The whole structure gives a hollow groan. A desolate, empty sound. The room is round and largely featureless. A staircase winds up—narrow, no handrails, tightening with the shape of the tower until it reaches a hatch in the ceiling.
I am overcome suddenly with weariness. I shrug off my bag and set it inside the door. The others follow suit. Kyle sits with his back to the wall, and Mel walks to the stairs for a more comfortable perch.
“Look at that,” Becca says. She points above the door. I twist to see. Carved in the rock are two words: Final Refuge.
“Does that mean we’re safe here?” Mel asks. I laugh, louder than I mean to. She cracks a crooked smile. “Dumb question.”
“Safer, maybe,” I say. “I’m going to go check out the top.”
“I’ll go with you,” Mel says immediately. I hesitate. I don’t want to be alone with Mel, really. I don’t have room right now to deal with what I feel when I’m around her. To grapple with what I want and can’t have—Mel isn’t interested in me, and even if she was, just thinking about it makes me feel selfish and shallow with so much horror around us.
“Okay,” I force myself to say, and head for the stairs. Mel’s footsteps echo behind me.
The trapdoor is heavy, but I manage to shoulder it open without Mel’s assistance—which is good, since by the time we reach the top, the staircase is barely wide enough for one person, much less two. We clamber up through the hatch and into a round room with a single narrow window. A wooden ceiling stands above us, along with another trapdoor, this one accessible with a ladder.
The only furniture is a cot, a little table with an oil lamp resting on it, and a bookshelf. The books are swollen and discolored, their titles illegible.
“Did someone live here?” Mel wonders.
“Maybe. Or maybe it’s just a prop. Like the houses around the mansion,” I say. I crouch by the bookshelf and pull down a book. The text inside is readable on some of the pages—if I could read French. The illustrations need no translation, though. A young girl dangles a noose from one hand. A man’s face is drawn in intricate detail, his eyes covered in clusters of fat, fleshy moths. A precise drawing, like a scientific illustration, depicts another man, this one composed of branches and thorns, with vines growing out from his shoulders like twisted wings.
“So,” Mel says. Too casually. “Anthony and Becca.”
I turn the pages, past a drawing of a snake twining through flowers. “Yeah,” I say. “What about them?”
“Did you know?” she asks.
“That they’re . . .” I wave my hand. They never really did define what they were. They just wanted each other. But he didn’t believe her about the dreams, about Lucy. Just like me. And so she found someone who did. “I knew. I wasn’t supposed to, but I did.” She was my sister. He was my best friend. I spent too much time around them not to put it together—the secretive texts, the whispered conversations cut off when I entered the room, the way they took such precise care to never stand too close together.
Plus, I was always a nosy little sister. I snooped.
“And you’re not upset?”
“I know that I can’t be the only important person in my sister’s life. It’s just weird,” I say, glossing over the selfish heart of my hurt. I have tried so hard to find her, and Anthony is the one who brought her peace by simply appearing.
“But you and Anthony,” she says, and stops when I look up in surprise. “I mean, you’ve always . . .”
I give her a quizzical look. “What are you talking about?”
“You. Have a crush. On Anthony,” she blurts out, brown cheeks reddening subtly.
I let out a sharp, startled bark of laughter and shut the book with a dull slap of sound. “Crushes are for twelve-year-olds,” I say with a more genuine chuckle. “And that’s the last time I had a crush on Anthony Beck.”
Her blush deepens, and she stammers. “But you guys were always so close.”
“He’s my best friend,” I say. “Or he was. But that was over long before he and Becca—you thought I still liked Anthony?”
“It would explain why you never dated anyone,” she mutters, hands jammed in her pockets.
“Who’s going to date the weird, sarcastic failed goth who never talks to anyone?” I ask. “Even before Becca. No one’s asked me out since sixth grade. Besides . . .” I almost tell her. Can’t. Crushes are for twelve-year-olds, and I should have shaken this one ages ago.
I put the book back on its shelf and walk to the ladder.
She looks like she wants to ask me more about it, but instead asks, “Where are you going?”
“Up,” I say, and climb. I tell myself it’s the responsible thing—exploring. Gathering information, definitely not running. I throw open the trapdoor at the top of the ladder and haul myself up. There’s no room for awkward revelations and rejections on the road.
The top level is the same size as the one below, but instead of a round and empty room with stone walls, the walls are glass, and the center of the room is taken up with the lighthouse lamp and the lens surrounding it—thick glass, shaped to bend the light of the gas lamp that sits at the center. Carved in the glass is a familiar symbol—seven concentric rings. It’s the same symbol from the preacher’s book.
Mel emerges behind me. We look out over the water. “We need to get across,” I say.
“How?” she asks. “The beach is part of the road. The water isn’t. We need to follow the shore.”
I shake my head. She’s wrong. I can’t explain how I know it; I just do. “We need to cross the water, like we did when we found Zoe. And look.” I point downward, leaning out so I can see the base of the lighthouse, barely visible in the light of the stars. A boat is moored at the edge of the water, bobbing up and down, oars tucked inside.
“There’s no way across without leaving the road,” Mel insists.
I sigh because she’s not wrong. I know there must be a solution, but I can’t see it.
“You’re really not mad at them? Becca and Anthony?” she asks.
I look her straight in the eye for the first time. “Sometimes I’m angry that Anthony wouldn’t believe Becca. If he’d believed her, maybe she would have told me about all of this. If she’d told me, maybe I could have convinced her not to go. Or gone with her,” I say. “I could have kept her safe. But no, I’m not mad that they’re together.”
She stands beside me in silence for a while. Up here, I feel almost safe. Nothing but the sea lurks outside, and thick glass stands between us and the waves. And it’s the first time I’ve been alone, quietly, with Mel in who knows how long. Even when we were spending most of our time together, our friendship was never quiet. But this—this feels nice. A peace steals over me that I didn’t think was possible here on the road. I’m not sure it would be possible if anyone but Mel was standing here. “Do you want to go back down?” Mel asks.
“Not really,” I say. “I’d rather stay here with you. For a little while. If that’s all right.”
“Yeah,” she says. Silence again—silence that I wish I could live in forever. And then, “Do you think we’re going to die?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I hope not. Obviously.”
“If we do die . . .” She pauses. “If we do, or if we don’t, it feels stupid not to say anything. So. I kind of like you, Sara. I came for you. Not for Becca. I came because I have . . . feelings. For you.”
Surprise comes first, and almost in the same moment the smile, a spy sneaking through the city of dread within me. “Feelings. For me,” I echo, in the same stilted tone, and she groans.
“How is there not a non-stupid way to say that?” she asks. “Look, I know that just because you’re bi it doesn’t mean ta-da, rainbows and unicorn farts, you must like me, too, and I don’t want to make things awkward, and this is the worst fucking time to bring it up, but—”
“I like you, too,” I say. She blinks. “I’ve liked you for a long time.”
“Then why didn’t you . . . ?”
“I didn’t know if you . . .”
“I always thought you and Anthony . . .”
We break off, weary laughter chasing our words. “We’re kind of slow on the uptake, I guess,” I say.
“You’re telling me—I just found out my information is off by about five years,” she says. “And here I thought I was a keen observer of the human condition. But seriously, why didn’t you say anything?”
“I guess I was scared,” I admit.
She laughs. “Come on. You? Miss Nerves of Steel? You’re the only one of us that’s managed to keep it together in the face of doom, gloom, and six-story stag-men, and you’re saying you were scared of me?”
“I was scared of losing you as a friend. I thought it would make things too awkward,” I said. “Also, I’m completely terrified and I have been the entire time.”
“You don’t show it.”
“It’s not that hard to hide your emotions, once you get a little practice,” I say.
“For you, maybe. I can’t even fake being excited about my grandma’s weird Christmas presents,” Mel says with a shake of her head. A smile sneaks its way into the corner of her mouth. She tries to smooth it out and just ends up with a grin, as if to prove the point. Finally she clears her throat, shakes her head, and manufactures a neutral expression. “So what does this mean?”
“I don’t know,” I say. Part of me wants to ignore everything around us—hold her, kiss her, laugh with her up here and let the road wait. But the dark water lurks outside, and I can’t bring myself to forget it. “I don’t think I can sort through anything I’m feeling right now. I mean, Trina, and . . . It’s all too much. But as impossible as it is to feel happy, I did. I do. So I think . . . I think in a while, when we’re home, and we’ve had like a hundred years of therapy . . .”
“Dinner?” she suggests. “Movie?”
“That’s a start,” I say. I let my hand brush hers, and her fingers hook around mine as we look out over the dark ocean. However much we might wish otherwise, there isn’t room, in the grief and the fear, for more than that.
But it’s something.
“No therapist is going to believe this,” Mel says.
“No one’s going to believe this,” I say.
“Someone will. If this is real, other things must be real,” Mel says. “And other people must have encountered them. People who can help us. If we can even get home.”
I frown, a memory faint at the back of my mind. My fingers tap out a rhythm on my thigh. “Count the crows,” I whisper, almost to myself.
“What?” Mel asks.
“Nothing. I don’t know.” I rest my fingertips against the glass for a moment, frowning out at the water. “We’re going to get home,” I promise. She nods, and the look in her eyes is bright with faith. With hope. With, for maybe the first time, anticipation of what might be waiting for us, when we get back. Some scrap of joy at the end of the road. I try to mirror her expression, but it feels false.
I didn’t slip up this time. We, I said, instead of you. But I haven’t failed to notice—there are five of us.
Which means at least one of us won’t be getting home.