Riya sat on the edge of her bed. She cradled her phone in her hands. It had stayed on the pillow next to her all night, its ringer turned up to maximum so that she’d have no chance to sleep through it.
It hadn’t rung.
It was now eight in the morning. Fourteen hours had passed since Abby and Rhys had vanished down the hole in Charles Vickers’s house.
She scuffed her shoes together. She’d done the right thing by staying behind. The mines were close to being a death sentence, and she owed it to the people who loved her—her parents, her friends, herself—to stay alive if she possibly could.
And yet…
And yet…
It turned out a person could make the correct choice, and still feel strangled by regret.
She turned the phone over. It felt dangerously heavy in her hands, as though it carried the ability to destroy her or save her. Realistically, she knew her answers probably wouldn’t come from her phone. Realistically, she’d have to let go of her hope a piece at a time, relinquishing slightly more with each day that passed, until it was impossible to keep it alive any longer.
And that was what hurt the most. If she thought Abby and Rhys had died overnight, she could begin to mourn. But the Stitcher didn’t always kill quickly. There were odds that her friends were both still alive at that moment. And that they might continue to be, for days.
Riya ground her teeth as she fought to stop the pain and frustration from coming out as sounds. Her parents were downstairs. And she didn’t want them to know anything was wrong.
Then her phone chimed, and Riya felt as though her heart had stopped. She nearly dropped the phone in her eagerness to read the message.
It wasn’t from her missing friends. It was from Cool Girl. And Riya had to read the words three times to fully believe them.
I think I’ve found a way into the mines.
* * *
Abby shuddered as she pulled air into her lungs.
She lay on her side on a cold stone floor. When she tried to move her arms, she couldn’t. Thin threads cut into her skin. She pulled against them, harder and harder, until they pinched her skin so tightly that pins and needles ricocheted down her limbs.
“Don’t fight them,” a voice whispered. “They’ll only hurt you.”
Abby strained toward the speaker. “Rhys!”
Pale light fluttered. A figure lay just feet away from her, barely out of reach. Abby blinked and blinked again, struggling to see.
Rhys’s headlight, despite the ordeal it had been through, was still fighting for life. It winked on and then faded again, before flickering erratically.
It wasn’t strong enough to see far. Just herself, and Rhys, and the patch of bare rock between them.
And the threads.
They wove across and around them like a spider’s webs. They were what had made it impossible to move. Even then, with the help of the light, Abby couldn’t lift her arm more than an inch before the loops cinched tight.
“Are you hurt?” she asked Rhys, but he was no longer watching her. He’d tilted his head as far as he could, and as loose stones rattled across the floor, Abby realized why.
Something enormous moved at the edge of their light.
Massive hands, the size of Abby’s torso, touched down on the ground, the fingers spreading for purchase. The arms were a patchwork of skin in all shades. The pieces were held together with red thread. In some places, they stretched tightly against bone as the limbs strained; in other places, folds of flesh hung loose.
Above those arms, she could see the faintest outline of its shoulders, enormous but bone-thin, and a hairless head.
The Stitcher moved slowly and languidly as it paced past them on all fours. Even crouched like that, it towered, its back close to brushing the ceiling.
Its elongated limbs trailed past Abby. She couldn’t hold still any longer; she strained against the threads again, fighting to slip even just one hand out of the loops.
The Stitcher turned toward her.
“Don’t look into its eyes,” Rhys whispered.
The warning came too late. Abby was already staring up toward it.
Its head was barely human any longer. Lines of red thread bisected it at every angle, piecing a loose mask of a face into place. The nose was flattened with no cartilage underneath. The lips were wide and made from pieces from many different mouths.
Sewn threads looped around the eyes in perfect circles. They held the folds of skin clear of the dark pits behind.
Dark pits, filled with light.
Two glowing disks shone from inside its head. They fixed on Abby, and she felt every muscle in her body seize before going limp.
Conscious thought drained out of her. So did her emotions. The fear, and the anger, and the desperation all faded into an easy numbness.
She felt as though she was asleep and lost in foggy dreams. Faintly, she was aware of Rhys calling to her, but she couldn’t understand the words. They barely seemed to matter as the Stitcher turned away and resumed moving through the room, his lamp-like eyes shimmering across the stone walls.
“Abby,” Rhys called. “Abby, come back.”
She didn’t want to. For the first time in days, she was comfortable, and happy, and safe. The threads cradled her. The cold clothes and painful floor were forgotten under simple contentment.
“Abby,” he begged again, and a sizzle of awareness flashed through her mind.
People were near the abduction sites. The Stitcher moved behind her. One long, cold hand grazed over her head, as though to caress her hair. No one ever heard the victims being taken.
No screams. No cries for help. No sounds at all.
This is why.
The Stitcher moved past. She drew in a ragged breath. The numbness was lifting.
“That’s right,” Rhys said. “Fight it. You can break out of it if you just fight it.”
Pain sizzled through her as forgotten cuts made themselves felt. She embraced them, letting them pull her back into the present.
The Stitcher circled close to Rhys. Long hands wrapped around his shoulder and his chest. Rhys squeezed his eyes closed and turned his head aside.
Another sound came from somewhere behind them. Loose stones rattling. Flesh scraping across the cold walls. Abby’s heart froze. No… Is there another one? Did it somehow build a another creation like itself?
The Stitcher’s monstrous mouth opened. The threads pulled taut, and a sound came out unlike anything Abby had ever heard before. Like gale-force winds rushing through a tunnel as every rock trembled under its force. Abby grit her teeth, her head aching and her lungs burning.
As the echoes faded, the Stitcher swung its lamp-like gaze toward her. Abby closed her eyes as tightly as she could, scrunching her whole face as she tried to avoid the glow.
Don’t look don’t look don’t look—
A heavy moaning noise came from the monster. She cracked one eyelid up just enough to see it had turned away again. In the weakly fluttering headlamp, she saw its hands reach for Rhys’s leg.
The fingers were long, and not entirely flesh and bone, she saw. They tapered at their ends, and the tips seemed unusually sharp. Almost like massive claws.
“Abby,” Rhys whispered. He still had his eyes closed and his head turned away. The threads around him strained as he tried to pull free, but there were too many of them to break through.
Her knife was in her pocket, but impossible to reach from the way she was tied. She squirmed. When she threw her shoulder forward, she was able to stretch one hand out. The threads snapped taut, painfully tight, as she tried to reach toward Rhys and the pack he still wore over his shoulders. There were weapons in there. Better lights. Matches. All things that could save them.
But he was fixed to the ground in a way where he could never reach his own bag, and Abby was still separated from him by at least eight inches.
Something rattled in the hallways behind them, growing nearer. The Stitcher’s sharpened fingertips dipped into the jeans Rhys wore. The sound of ripping fabric crackled through the air. It drew its finger down the length, from the knee to the ankle, tearing the material open as neatly and easily as a pair of fabric scissors.
“Abby,” Rhys said, and he’d stopped struggling against the threads.
“Hold on,” she whispered, hoping Silas was too far gone to understand words. She strained to gain even another inch, and felt skin shear off her wrist. “We can find a way out. Just give me a minute—I just need to get closer—”
“Abby,” he said again, and his voice was rough and frightened and raw. “Abby, turn away.”
The sharpened fingertip dipped into Rhys’s skin just above the ankle, and fresh blood flowed.
* * *
Jen stood at the entrance to a cave.
Cave might have been generous, but hole didn’t feel right, either. She was facing a stony slope pockmarked with prickly weeds and dead leaves from the trees that grew around. And in the slope was an opening. A deep, dark, uninviting one.
She’d stretched her phone as far into it as her arm could reach, and still couldn’t see if it ended.
But she didn’t think it was natural. The walls weren’t old and worn. They were raw and fresh and jagged, as though they’d been torn open by iron hands.
And inside were loops of the same red thread she’d found in the forest before.
She’d been staring into the hole for nearly a full hour. In that time, the sun had risen. And three deer had vanished into the depths.
Footsteps alerted her to her arriving company. She half turned her body to see them without fully losing sight of the gaping pit. Riya was dressed in her lacrosse uniform, a gym bag and stick slung across her back. Connor, looking bone weary, trailed behind her.
“I called Connor,” Riya said. “I hope that’s okay.”
“Yeah, of course.” Jen raised a hand to greet the gangly boy who followed in Riya’s wake. “Didn’t have your number or I would have texted you, too.”
“Was it a rough night for everyone else?” Connor asked, his shoulders sloped and his curling hair a messy mop. “I couldn’t fall asleep.”
“Sucks to be you. I slept like a rock.” Jen threw them a lopsided smile. They didn’t need to know about the string of increasingly horrific nightmares. “You can thank my bladder for this find.”
“Thanks, bladder,” Connor said.
“And the deer, I guess. I saw one from the window and followed it here. Look.”
She extended her light into the narrow cavern. At first, the floor was just scratched earth and matted, dirty thread. But as she reached her light further down, bones became visible. Animal bones. Mostly deer, she guessed, but plenty of smaller animals had been drawn into the space as well.
Riya swore under her breath as she crouched at the opening. “I wasn’t sure if I could believe you when I got your text, but…”
“Yeah,” Connor said. He sounded shaken.
“This is real. This… This is a way into the mines.”
For a moment, none of them spoke. Then Riya drew a hiccupping breath. “What should we do?”
Connor took half a step back. “We made our choices yesterday. I can’t go into there. You know I can’t.”
“I know.” Riya bit her lip. “But it’s just…to find it here, now, right when we need it, can we really walk away without at least…”
Her voice faded. A sound rose from the cave.
It was distant and distorted by echoes, but terrifyingly recognizable.
Screaming.
Horrible, horrible screams.
They stretched out longer, and longer, until every nerve in Jen’s body was keyed tight with a primal, urgent need to flee.
And then they faded.
All three of them were breathing hard. Riya was still crouched on the ground, closest to the opening, and her fingers had dug grooves in the soft dirt. Connor stood back, half behind a tree, clutching at the bark to keep himself steady.
Jen swallowed. She felt sick and clammy. “Was that the deer?” she tried.
“No.” Riya’s voice trembled. “That was human.”
Connor muttered something she couldn’t understand. Jen ran her hand over her face and felt prickly, cold perspiration coat her palm.
“We can help,” Riya said.
Connor choked on his own words. “Ri—”
“No, we can help. Without going into the mines.” There was a sudden surge of energy in Riya’s voice. Her eyes were enormous and bright with both terror and hope as she turned toward them. “If we can hear them, then they can hear us. And we can call to them. We can guide them out.”
“What do you need from me?” Jen asked before she could even consider whether that was a question she should put into the world.
Yes, she decided. Yes. I want to do this. I need to do this.
“Tell me what to do,” she repeated.
“Weapons.” Riya was already casting around the ground around them, but the trees were spindly and sick and the largest branch wouldn’t even be enough to leave a welt. “We need weapons in case…something else hears us. Your home is close, isn’t it?”
“If I run, ten minutes,” Jen said. She was already turning to the trees. “And you better believe I’m going to run.”
* * *
Rhys didn’t even make a noise as the Stitcher cut into him. He turned his face toward the floor, his teeth grit, perspiration beading across his skin.
Abby screamed instead. She screamed loud enough for the both of them.
The Stitcher didn’t seem to hear. It was wholly focused on its work, the knifelike claw gently carving through skin.
Behind it, something moved. Loose stones rattled. A dark shadow rose across the rear wall, barely illuminated by the flickering headlamp. There was a crackle, then light bloomed across the cavern.
Everything happened too fast to see.
The Stitcher’s head snapped backward and sparking cinders flew from it. A heavy, cracking thud echoed through the room.
Abby’s voice broke. She could only lurch forward, strangling herself in the threads as she fought to make out shapes through the darkness.
A figure stood behind the Stitcher. It was soaked in dripping crimson. A wooden stick swung from its right hand as it advanced into the room. A cloth had been tied around the stick’s end and flames licked across the fabric.
“Don’t look it in the eyes,” Hope yelled.
She raised her weapon and swung again.
* * *
“Thompson!” Jen yelled as she barreled into their home.
There was no answer. He’d probably been called into the station, even though it was a Sunday and that was supposed to be his day off.
Barely breaking step, she passed through the kitchen. The knife block was full of large, sharp blades. She’d take some of them on her way out, but they weren’t what she was really aiming for. Playing devil’s advocate and assuming the stories were true, knives weren’t going to do much against a monster.
She turned into their barely used garage.
Her father had added a handful of items when they moved in, in an effort to make the space feel less empty, but the shelves were still almost entirely bare.
The largest addition, by far, was the generator. It sat next to the back wall, the instruction manual unfolded on top of it and only partially read. Three jugs of fuel stood beside it.
Jen hefted two of them and turned around. Her heart hitched. Ahead, Thompson blocked the doorway, his arms folded as he stared down at her incredulously. “What’s this?”
“It’s not important,” she said, and hoped he’d believe her.
“I don’t know, you stealing our fuel seems important to me.”
She worked her jaw. He was blocking the door, and no matter how desperate she was to get back to Riya and Connor in the forest, she didn’t want to force her way past him.
Thompson’s eyes moved from the fuel and back to Jen. They stared at one another for a long beat before he asked, “This is about the bodies being found, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Jen, no. Whatever’s going on, it’s not our fight.” He took a step toward her. “I’m getting that transfer out of here. But we’re not even going to wait for it to go through. Let’s leave. Right now. We’ll fill our bags with whatever we can and drive until this town’s a distant memory and put our savings to good use for a few weeks at a motel.”
“My friends are out there.” A horrible ache had set up in her chest, burning like coals against her lungs. “I can’t leave them.”
“Jen—”
“You’re right, this isn’t our fight,” Jen said. Her mouth was dry. “But you always, always taught me to do what was right, and to help the people who needed helping. And that’s what I’m going to do right now.”
A choked laugh broke out of Thompson. “No, I thought I was very clear on this. If you’re in a bad situation, I expect you to cut and run and live another day. It was your mother who instilled this horrible noble streak.” He pulled his glasses off and stared at the reflections in them. Jen wasn’t sure what he saw in those depths, but after a second, he took a deep breath. “Okay. What do we need to do?”
“We?”
“I’m not going to step aside.” He adjusted his glasses. His eyes suddenly seemed a lot harder, and a lot clearer. “But I’ll walk with you. Tell me what you need.”
She considered that for a second. “You know Charles Vickers.”
“This town has made it impossible not to.”
“I need you to keep him occupied for a while. Tell him you need to ask some questions, or find some reason to bring him down to the station, or…something. Bring another officer, if you can convince one to go. We can’t afford to have him loose right now.”
Thompson’s eyebrows rose. “Are you going to explain what’s happening?”
“Later.” Jen stepped up to the door, and Thompson moved out of the way for her. “But I’m already out of time.”
“You’ll stay in contact with me through your phone, won’t you?”
“I’ll do my best, but something about this town is messing with it.”
Thompson muttered something under his breath, then crossed to his office. When he came back, he held out one of his police radios.
“I’ve already set the frequency,” he said. “It won’t be picked up by anyone else on the force, but it will let us talk in case your mobile goes bad.”
Jen felt her throat tighten as she took it. She clipped it onto a loop in her jeans. “Thanks. Keep Vickers busy until I give you the all clear. I’ll see you soon.”