HERE IS WHAT Lucy tells us.
She came this far with John, all those years ago. She had an easier time of it than most, and John already had a great deal of experience by then. They got this far, and could go no farther because John couldn’t leave the road, but he assured her that once he shepherded another lone traveler here, they could hazard the journey to the end. He had sent others that way, but did not know if any of them had made it.
She waited for a very long time. It was years before anyone else came, and when they did there were two of them, and she could do nothing but wave them onward. Years after that, John discovered another lone traveler, and together the two of them attempted an escape. It was a failure. The things beyond the road killed Lucy’s companion, and she barely made it back to the road herself.
She begged John to leave with her, but he could not give up his task, his purpose. Nor was he certain that he could leave the road anymore. And so she waited. And waited. And became, perhaps, a little bit less of our world, and a little bit more of the road’s. She learned to watch among its curves and turns, in what she called the gaps between moments—sneaking looks at who was coming. Who might need John’s help. She learned to whisper to a few travelers, though she could rarely manage to whisper anything that would provide real guidance.
She watched travelers die—most of them. She watched them reach the end of the road—a few of them. But in sixty-four years, she hadn’t yet found someone who would take her with them.
“That’s why we came to get you,” she says. “That is, we would have helped in any case and we would have helped sooner, but going back—it makes you more part of the road. I’ve only done it once. I could tell that if I did it again, I’d be like John, and never get away at all. But the point remains: there are five of you. We can leave together. Two and two and two. I can finally escape this place. And I can show you all the way home.”
She smiles, eyes sparkling. She still looks ready to prance down the aisle at a wedding. She looks pristine, especially next to the rest of us, with our bumps and bruises and torn clothes and bedraggled hair. Perhaps her smile is a little too wide. Perhaps her skin is a little too perfectly pale.
“What is it like? Past the end of the road?” Mel asks. I’m at the edge of the group. Becca stands with me, both of us silent, as if we’re listening to some sound, some hum in the air, that only we can hear.
Find me. More memory than sound.
“Less and less anchored in reality,” Lucy says. “It’s difficult to explain, and it’s different for everyone. There is a certain cohesion to the road. You may trust, to some extent, that what you see is the same as what the person standing next to you sees. It becomes less true, out there. More like a dream. It’s disorienting.”
“All the more reason to be glad we have a guide,” I say. Lucy’s cheeks dimple.
“Do you mind if we talk among ourselves for a minute?” Anthony asks. Lucy shakes her head cheerfully.
“Of course not. Take your time. I have waited this long,” she says, and heads down the road a ways to give us room.
Anthony drops his voice. “Do we trust her?” he asks.
“Why wouldn’t we?” I say. He frowns at me, as if he isn’t sure how to answer that. I frown back at him.
“She’s helped us get this far,” Becca says. “Sometimes her whispers were all that kept me going.”
“Becca’s right,” I say. “She and John saved me on the water. The least we can do is help her get free of this place.”
“You don’t think it’s a bit weird?” Mel asks.
My brow furrows. “Which part?”
“She used exactly the same phrase as Grace. ‘Two and two and two.’ And I think Grace heard her, too. That’s what she was yelling about at the end, wasn’t it?”
“It’s not Lucy’s fault that Grace was psychotic,” I argue.
“Why are you pushing so hard on this?” Mel asks, sounding bewildered, and I’m suddenly not sure I know. Except that I trust Lucy. I like her. It feels like coming home to an old friend, finding her here, and I want more than anything to help her.
Becca saves me from needing an answer. “Because it’s the only way we all escape.”
“Five of us,” Kyle says. I’ve almost forgotten he’s there, he’s so withdrawn. “And I’m guessing that even if it would last long enough, they’re not going to just give us that candle. But we shouldn’t trust her.”
I want to tell him that he’s wrong. I look at Becca, and I’m surprised to see anger flickering in her expression—anger at the others, the same as what is brewing in me. Why is she angry? Why am I so certain?
I still don’t remember.
We talk awhile longer. Argue, maybe. In the end, the only thing that matters is what we’ve already said: this is our only option. And then . . .
The more I try to remember, the more it frays. I remember we decide to leave at daybreak. The sky is already turning gray. I search it horizon to horizon. There are no crows, and this means something.
You want the rest of the story? Here it is. We walk off the road, each of us with one hand in our partner’s, the other clutching a key. We walk to the gates of Ys. We walk through the dark. We walk out again, into woods whose name we know.
Not all of us. But you knew that already.
What is it you don’t know? What is it you’re looking for, in all of this? We walked out of the dark. Isn’t that what matters? Some of us made it out.
You want to know who.
Is that it? You want to know who made it out, and who didn’t.
And I don’t know why I’d think that. And I don’t know why I don’t know the answer.
There’s something wrong with me, isn’t there?
What happened in the dark?
<End of written statement.>