I carry Marissa into the house, where our mother is just coming downstairs dressed for the gym. And what possible lies, what evasions, are left in me, as I watch her register her two daughters, both of us in pajamas made filthy by clambering around in the oak, and Marissa with her clawed cheek, tear-streaked as she clings to me? My face must give away a whole novel’s worth of grief and dread.
“Lexi,” Mom says, with terrible emphasis, and runs down the stairs to hug Marissa and me. For a flash I almost wonder if it would be easier to live like Ksenia, without the weight of so much love and expectation; then in the next breath I know it’s a cruel thought, and that Ksenia was ready to die, if she had to, so that I could keep a life she envied bitterly. This much I know: when she told me to run, she didn’t give a damn about the consequences for herself. Only for me. And probably those inhuman creatures, her captors, understood that perfectly.
“We saw Josh,” Marissa tells our mom, through a fresh wave of tears. “But he might be bad now.”
And there it is. Once my parents grasp the truth—if such a perverse and distorted truth is something they can grasp—I’m fairly certain they’ll go to any extreme to keep me from tumbling deeper into that nightmare. Did I just sacrifice Ksenia forever, only because I was too proud to ask Marissa to keep quiet?
“Josh? You mean, Lexi’s friend who vanished? Joshua Korensky?” Mom asks. Her mouth tightens; almost everyone in our town adored Josh, but my mother regarded him with a certain skepticism. Anyone who tries so hard to be charming is worth watching closely; that was her answer when I asked why she didn’t like him. “Lexi, is that really what happened?”
I try to respond, but for a moment it’s like it was when I answered her phone call in the woods, when I had just returned from nowhere; my voice evaporates before it can shape words. And what can I say?
And anyway, you’re the one who offended Prince! That’s what Josh told me. Whatever those creatures are up to, it’s personal. Until this instant, I’ve been holding on to a last trace of denial, but it’s gone now.
Anyone I love is a target. They’ll hurt my family to destroy me, and they’ll destroy me to shatter Ksenia’s resistance, once and for all: a waterfall of wounds. By warning me, she showed them the best way to crush her. They won’t hesitate to take advantage of everything she revealed.
“Mom, you’re all in serious danger.” This is what I have to say; it’s the only thing that matters. I hesitate. “The whole town is. Please just get Dad and Marissa out of here!”
“Sweetheart, slow down! If it’s really Joshua you’re worried about, I’m sure your father and I can handle anything he gets up to.” She gives me a little shake, but her expression is full of anxious tenderness. “This isn’t like you.”
“It isn’t like how I used to be,” I agree. “But I’ve changed recently. You’ve seen it, and you’ve been worrying.”
She catches her breath. “Yes.”
“Then please just believe me when I tell you that I’ve changed because I had to. I—” On a leafy street, in a drowsy yellow house, I stumbled onto something monstrous. My spirit had to swell, and it had to change its contours, to meet the enormity on its own terms. All right, saying that to her would go poorly. But that’s the truth spelled out inside me. “There’s a lot I haven’t told you. But right now we’re facing an emergency.”
She looks sharply at me and I can see all the objections in her eyes: the classes she’s supposed to teach, the graduate students she has to advise, Marissa’s school. Spring break is still three days away, and how can she possibly go anywhere before then? “Do you think Joshua might—what, start shooting somewhere? Do you know something? If you do, we have to call the police.”
I almost laugh, or sob, but in a way she’s not so far off. Calling the police won’t help anything, but maybe it won’t hurt much either.
“It’s not just Josh,” I tell her—and then I give in. I’d rather not think of it as lying, so hopefully it’s fair to say that I translate the truth into something she’ll understand. “Those people Ksenia saw him with are real. They’re a really crazy, sinister cult, and I think he’s been brainwashed.”
He’s not right, Ksenia said, but all at once I understand that brainwashed isn’t the correct word for it. Something in him warped when he disappeared; it’s as if a hand reached in and twisted just where he was weakest, most vulnerable. I’m so startled that I almost drop Marissa, and she slips down and lands lightly on the floor.
Joshua Korensky is enchanted. Enchanted! Even Marissa is getting too old to believe that such a thing could be possible, but I find that I do. I’ve seen too much recently not to believe it. It’s contrary to my upbringing to think in such irrational terms, and until now I’ve avoided the obvious conclusion—but what is Kay, and what was that flying horse made of condensed fog, if not magic? God, what are those creatures keeping my friends imprisoned?
My mom is talking to the police, and I can’t even hear her over the whirlwind of my own thoughts. And that’s when my mother’s voice and my own astonishment are interrupted by a series of piercing screams; they’re coming from just outside.
My mom and I stare at each other. “Marissa,” she says, “go up to your father. Right now!” Mar nods and runs up the stairs, and I move for the door. “Lexi, you are not going out there!”
“I am,” I say. “I’m the only one who has enough information to deal with this mess.” If anyone should stay inside, it’s her, but I know she’ll never accept that. Before she can do anything to stop me, I slip out and race across the lawn, my mother following just behind me. The scream has subsided into a terrible, childish keening, coming from just around the side of the house, where Marissa and I climbed down from that oak tree fifteen minutes ago.
The sun is higher now, enough to streak the lawn with deep blue bands of shadow, enough to spark the dew with minute prisms. The oak’s bark looks like countless tiny, golden islands adrift on midnight rivers. And there on the bark is a child’s soft, mauve-brown mouth, and that mouth is crying out.
Nowhere has followed me home in more ways than I ever could have imagined. Nowhere has seized control of every molecule, of the living substance of my world.
I can hear my mother panting to a stop just behind me, and the shocked intake of her breath.
“Lexi!” the mouth in the tree wails. “Lexi, I know you saw me! But you just ran away!”
I recognize that voice now. It’s little Olivia Fisher’s voice: the daughter of my parents’ friends, who died at just five years old, devastating her family. Except that of course her death was a charade, and she’s still alive in that not-place.
Where I saw her, just after I encountered that not-Ksenia with the spidery, pleating limbs; that’s when Olivia showed up, holding hands with the creatures who had followed me, and I heard her call my name.
Where, as she’s just reminded me, I panicked at the sight of her, understanding that her fate could so easily be mine. Where I bolted, and left her trapped. Heat rages through my cheeks, my eyes weigh me down, because the mouth in the tree knows the most shameful moment of my life so intimately.
And even worse, my mother just heard what it said.
“That’s why I’m coming back for you,” I say at last. I have to fight to lift my chin, but I do. “I admit I behaved like a coward, Olivia, but I’m going to make it right.”
My mom grabs my arm. “Lexi, get inside and pack. As soon as you’ve spoken to the police, we’ll drive out to the cabin.” The cabin is my grandparents’ vacation home in Cape Cod; really, it’s more of a small, elegant, modern beach house, all glass and silvery wood, but that’s what we call it. When I glance at my mom, she’s staring straight at Olivia’s mouth on the oak, its tiny teeth biting a wet, pink tongue. But that’s the thing, it’s all so mad, so impossible, that my mom can’t even acknowledge what she’s seeing.
Just like how no one could quite acknowledge it when Josh returned and then disappeared again. Minds slap shut like books to protect themselves from the havoc confronting us.
“It’s too late,” Olivia’s voice whimpers from the oak. “Lexi, maybe you could have saved me then, but now it’s too late, and it’s all because of what you did! You should just give up. I’m lost forever.”
All at once it hits me that, even if this voice is truly Olivia’s, even if this isn’t just a welt of dream opening in the world’s skin, she might be under the same uncanny influence that’s consuming Josh. She could be reciting the lies they’ve imposed on her. I’m lost forever strikes me with a whiplash of certainty, and I know that nothing the mouth says can be trusted.
“Like hell you are,” I tell the tree. “You can let Prince and Unselle know I said so.”
At that, the mouth stops pretending to be sad. It wrings into a fierce, unsettling grin, and when it speaks again all the childish sweetness is gone from its voice, replaced by a harsh rasp. “Oh, Alexandra, they can hear you just fine. And they can hear Ksenia mumbling to the air, pleading that you won’t try to save her. See, she knows she isn’t worth it! You have to admit that Ksenia understands more than you do.”
My mom yanks on my arm. “Lexi, in the house! This instant!”
Unselle can find her anywhere. Just like she can find you.
That’s what Marissa’s mimic said, and for all I know it was a bluff, just another mirror in their maze of falsehoods—but something tells me that maybe, just maybe, that particular statement was true.
Even if it weren’t for the mission I’ve taken on, there’s no way I could go with my family to Cape Cod, and risk bringing all this evil after them. And it’s awful, I know it is; I’ve worked all my life to be the daughter my parents deserve, but now I have to hurt them terribly.
I pull my arm from my mother’s grasp and leap away from her, spinning to face her once I’m out of her reach. “Mom, I can’t. You have to go without me.”
It was a mistake to look at her; her dark eyes are huge and overflowing, and her mouth has fallen from shock. “Sweetheart, please.”
That’s even worse. My mother doesn’t beg.
“Making you and Dad proud has been the single most important thing in my life,” I tell her. “But right now—there’s something that matters even more.”
“Lexi!”
“I’ll meet you at the cabin if I can,” I say. “But if I don’t come back, please try to forgive me.” And with that I turn away from her, and run as fast as my bare feet will fly. I can hear her chasing after me, but I’m carried by fury, by a kind of wild, bitter exaltation that I never knew could be mine. I’m borne up by the coronas of tear light in my eyes, until I barely feel the ground.
Before too long, I know she’s fallen behind; that she’ll turn back to get her car, and that, by the time she drives through the dawn-lacquered streets, I’ll be nowhere to be seen. I was counting on having Kay’s help, but as far as I know she’s still asleep in my sock drawer; there’s nothing for it but to do what I have to on my own. I swing right at the end of the block, heading up the grade that leads to the cemetery.
In every tree I pass, children’s mouths babble and yowl at me. “Alexandra,” one shrieks, “they missed Marissa, so who will they try now? If you go after Ksenia, who will you leave behind, here, in this town? Who will you leave to die?”
I’m still running, but my steps falter just a bit at that. Realization knocks the breath from my lungs.
Xand.