MRS. POPOVA AND Mikhail weren’t quite looking at each other, as if it was shameful to have spoken all of this aloud. I wondered if they ever really talked about it on the island—or if they pretended their lives were some kind of normal, only sometimes giving a knowing look toward the rocky bluffs across the water.
Outside, a voice howled in rage or pain. Inhuman and unearthly, and horribly familiar. I jumped up, startled, but Mrs. Popova put her hand on my arm. “It’s the Warden,” she said. Mikhail’s double. That was who Dr. Kapoor had been afraid of running into—not Mikhail after all. “The mist is here, but it’s all right. He never comes inside.”
Footsteps crunched in the gravel along the drive. A new sound came, a kind of guttural huhhh-uh-huh, like someone trying to clear a crushed throat.
“Never comes inside because he can’t, or he doesn’t?” I asked.
A body struck the door with force. The door shuddered with the impact. Liam leapt to his feet, toppling his chair with a crash. Mrs. Popova gripped the crucifix that hung around her neck and muttered a prayer.
The Warden slammed into the door again. Wood cracked. Mikhail stayed in his seat, eyes fixed on the wall opposite. It took me a moment to recognize the look on his face. It was the grim acceptance of a man who has been waiting a very long time for the inevitable to arrive.
“Do you have your rifle?” Mikhail asked Mrs. Popova.
“Sure, I just tucked it down the back of my pants,” she said sourly. “It’s in the truck.”
Bang. Another impact, and then the slow scraping drag of a footstep. A voice, low and garbled, came through the door. “Soooophiiiaaaa,” the Warden said, and coughed wetly, a meaty hacking that cut off with a wheeze. “Ty k nam vernulas.”
“‘You came back to us,’” Mikhail translated. The tortured voice went on, and Mikhail murmured the translation. “‘We saw you in the boy’s memories. She tried to hide you from us, but we know you have returned. Come outside. Come with us.’”
The voice stopped. There was a long pause, an unbalanced kind of silence, made to break. And then the Warden slammed into the door once again.
Mikhail stood, pressing his palms flat against the table. “You must run,” he said.
Bang. The frame of the door splintered. One more good hit and it would give. There was no back door, no other way out. The windows were too small to fit through. The Warden roared.
“My truck’s out front,” Mrs. Popova said. Her voice was shaking, but she dug for her keys. “We just need a clear path out.”
“Where do we go?” I asked. “If they can get in here, is anywhere safe?”
“The LARC is built like a fortress,” Liam said.
“The LARC is a fortress. That’s why it’s built that way,” Mrs. Popova said.
“He will be inside in a moment,” Mikhail said. “I will fight. You run.”
“He’ll kill you,” I said.
Mikhail rumbled a laugh. “I am long past due to die, Sophia Novak. I thought for a long time the reason I lived so long was to save you, that day on the water, and I wondered why I persisted still. But now I know. I was not done saving you.” I could only stare helplessly, words a tangle in my throat. “But after this, you will have to save yourself.”
Then the door burst open, and the monster came in.
Sometimes when terrible things happen, time blurs. Sometimes it slows, every moment crystallized and indelible. This time it stuttered, chaotic smears of movement and panic interspersed with shards of clear memory:
The Warden in the doorway, eyes fixed on me. I had time to think that he looked nothing like Mikhail, and wonder how that could be, and then he charged me.
Mikhail, pushing me out of the way.
Liam’s hand in mine, both of us sprinting up the gravel path toward Mrs. Popova’s old truck, my laptop, still hot, in my hand.
The cabin framed in the rearview mirror as Mrs. Popova floored the gas pedal. A man stood in the doorway, backlit and obscured by mist. I could not tell which man it was.
The truck jolting over a pothole halfway up the hill, throwing me against the window, and a woman in a gray dress standing at the edge of the road, her eyes blackened sockets.
Time untangled itself at the top of the hill, as we threw ourselves free of the truck and pelted toward the LARC. We were hardly three steps from the truck when a large woman staggered out of the mist toward us. Her blonde hair stuck to her cheeks under a crust of salt, tears, or sea spray dried to scales. She reached for Mrs. Popova.
The rifle crack came before my alarmed shout could even leave my throat, and the echo toppled to the ground. Mrs. Popova’s face was a mask, but her hands shook.
“There’s more,” Liam said.
Shapes in the mist, moving with clear purpose. Mrs. Popova moved backward as we crossed to the entrance, sweeping the rifle left and right. Spectral shapes drew toward us through the mist. Liam fumbled with his keys, dropped them. He swore and bent down, his nails raking across the concrete as he scrabbled for them.
“Hurry up,” I said, grabbing his shoulder. “They’re coming.” The echoes moved in short bursts, violent grace interspersed with stumbling confusion. “Liam!”
“Got it,” Liam said. His eyes were wild and his breath thin between his teeth. My heart galloped in my chest. Liam flung the door open, and we piled inside, Mrs. Popova taking up the rear as the nearest of the echoes cleared the mist. A man this time, his face overgrown with fleshy mushrooms. He took a dragging step and then leapt forward, graceful as a dancer. Mrs. Popova slammed the door behind us, and Liam turned to me. My eyes were wide, my breath quick. “Sophia? Freakish calm would be useful right about now.”
Trying to keep control was like trying to keep my grip on an eel, but I didn’t want the calm. I didn’t want to be that person. “Promise me you’ll—”
He pressed a kiss against my lips, a rough, half-wild thing, and he leaned his brow against mine. “You’re you,” he said. “You’re real. And I’ll remind you every time you forget.”
It was like carving away a piece of myself—the fear was so deep, I had to cut to the core to get it out. And what remained was a cold knife between my ribs. Cold, and still, and calm. “I’m good,” I said. I blinked away the last haze of emotion and pulled away from Liam.
Mrs. Popova was staring at the door. She gave a sudden, jerky nod. “Right,” she said. “That will hold most of them off, but some of them can still think and reason. Especially the newer ones. They might find a way in.” She winced. “I hope Mikhail found his way to safety.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I didn’t feel it beyond the surface level, but I knew it was true.
“None of this is your fault, dear,” Mrs. Popova replied with a sigh.
“I’m still sorry it’s happened,” I said. “I’m sorry this came to your island at all.”
Fists thumped against the door. It didn’t give, but we all drew away from it.
“They’ll hold. I’ll go check the rest,” Mrs. Popova said. “You two stay put.”
I almost protested, but then I saw Liam. He was pale. Exhausted and running out of adrenaline to keep him moving. He needed to sit down, and in my frigid clarity, I recognized the importance of rest. I didn’t have panic and desperation to convince me we needed to keep moving whatever the cost. I sank down onto one of the benches in the foyer as Mrs. Popova headed off, letting my own exhaustion be Liam’s excuse to rest. He sat beside me, shoulders slumped.
The thudding against the door stopped. They must have gone to find another entrance.
“We should . . .” Liam started, but I covered his hand with mine. I tried to think of the right thing to say, but that was the trouble with being empty. I knew what was practical to do, but without feeling anything myself, I couldn’t tell how to soothe his emotions.
Then my hand tightened over his. We weren’t alone.
My echo was standing down the hallway. Her hair was soaked, the golden strands darkened to brown. More water dripped from the hem of her skirt—one of Mikhail’s wife’s—and the cuffs of the LARC sweatshirt half-zipped over her thin frame. She smiled. It was a fragile smile, half-broken, tangled up in hope and in sadness. “Hello,” she said softly.
“Hi,” I replied, managing a small smile of my own. I tried to remember her, but every time I got close, my thoughts filled with dark water and my lungs began to burn.
“It knows you’re here now,” she said.
“Yeah, I’d say my cover’s been blown on all fronts,” I said.
“Sophia?” Liam asked, hesitant.
“It’s okay,” I assured him, standing up. And then I saw what she was holding. Abby’s camera. “Where did you get that?” I asked.
“She wanted me to bring it,” the other girl said. She held it out. “You have to see.”
I took it from her, shivering as my fingertips brushed against her skin. I opened it to check the data slot. There was an SD card inserted. Which meant . . .
“That’s it,” I said. “This is the data card we found at the LARC. Abby must have put it in her camera.” I turned on the camera. The screen might be cracked, but the innards were clearly still working, because I was able to pull up a list of video files.
Videos from 2003.
The files went on and on. Someone had started filming and stopped so many times, and the videos weren’t short. They’d filmed so much. What had happened? I needed to find the beginning of the thread.
I sat back down on the bench. Emotion boiled at the edge of my awareness, but I clung to the calm. Breathe steady. Don’t think, don’t feel. Because if I started to feel anything, I would feel it all, and I would truly drown.
Yet even with the hungry void, my hands were shaking. Liam reached over, resting his hand over my forearm to steady me. I tried to speak but my mouth was hopelessly dry. I swallowed down a sob, my control fracturing.
“This is it,” I said. “Whatever happened, it’s on this camera.”
“Play it,” Liam said.
“I can’t,” I said softly. As long as I didn’t know, anything could be true. She could be alive. Out there, waiting for me. As soon as I played those files, the possibilities would collapse into cruel truth.
“It’s okay,” Liam said. “I understand.” He took the camera from me gently and selected the first file.
We watched in silence as the tale unfolded in fragments, and my hope shattered piece by piece.