JUNE 30, 2018, TIME UNKNOWN
Abby drops down to one knee at the top of the stairs. From her pocket, she pulls out a pale crystal and brushes white dust from it. Salt, perhaps. She sets it on the top step, and then opens a small knife. She cuts the side of her hand, letting the blood drip onto the crystal.
ABBY: An anchor. It should hold a little while.
Abby starts down the stairs. Footsteps ring on the metal steps.
LIAM: Where are you taking us?
SOPHIA: To my mother. Right?
Abby stops. She half turns and looks at Sophia, and perhaps it is the light of the flashlights, but she looks weary and worn, as if she’s spent a month in this place, not a day.
ABBY: She isn’t what she was, Sophia. This place has changed her.
SOPHIA: But she’s alive.
Her voice breaks on the word. As if it’s a dangerous notion to voice. Abby looks grim.
ABBY: I don’t know if that’s the right word for it.
She continues down the stairs. At every landing she stops and sets out another crystal, and relinquishes another measure of blood.
Abby begins to pant, as if from exertion, though their pace is not strenuous.
SOPHIA: Are you okay?
ABBY: Something’s wrong. We should have reached the bottom by now.
LIAM: Do you hear that? Someone’s singing.
SOPHIE: It’s coming. It’s found us.
Metal creaks above them. Sophia trains the camera on the dark above, and the flashlights shine along the underside of the metal steps. Down the walls comes a rush of dark mold.
ABBY: Come on!
They clatter down the stairs, but only keep going down and down and down.
ABBY: The blood and the salt. It’s supposed to keep the way open. Keep it the same. It isn’t . . . it isn’t working. The Six-Wing isn’t supposed to be able to stop us like this, but—
SOPHIE: Living blood. It requires living blood.
ABBY: Sorry, do you know something I don’t? Because I don’t remember dying.
SOPHIE: No. But you carry the dead. You’re haunted.
LIAM: Aren’t we all?
ABBY: This is no time for poetry, Harry Potter.
LIAM: Harry Potter? Is that seriously the only British thing you can think of?
ABBY: Fish and chips. Bangers and mash.
SOPHIA: Can you two stop bickering for one minute?
ABBY: I don’t know what to do.
Something clatters and bangs against the walls up above. Sophie looks up.
SOPHIE: You go. I stay. I can make it let you go for a little while. Long enough.
SOPHIA: Wait a minute. You aren’t giving yourself to that thing!
LIAM: Guys?
SOPHIE: It won’t hurt me. Not yet.
LIAM: Guys!
They whip around. Their flashlights converge on the landing above. It should bathe the whole landing in light, but the figure there defies illumination. Its edges are like ink dropped into water, dissolving without ever losing its substance. Its body is human in outline, but it is like an absence in the world. Its wings are half-folded, all six of them, made of the same black void as the rest of the being. The image stutters, flickering back and forth like a digital glitch. Not quite there, not quite here.
Sophie steps toward it.
SOPHIA: Sophie, no—
She snatches for Sophie’s hand, but Sophie steps smoothly out of reach, walking calmly up the steps toward the creature. She stretches out her hands, murmuring something the microphone doesn’t quite catch. The creature retreats a step, the movement uncertain.
SOPHIE: It’s all right. It’s what must happen.
She looks over her shoulder. There is fear in her eyes, but determination too.
SOPHIE: Go. Find Mother. I’ll be ready.
The creature of shadow and void spreads its wings, and leaps upon her. Sophie screams, her calm torn away, but before Sophia or anyone else can move to help her, they are gone—the Six-Wing, the echo-girl, even the mold that covered the walls moments ago.
All that remains is the distant sound of wings.