They will all wake up in their own beds.
Tomorrow, late in the morning, a few blocks apart, Jezz and Patrick will roll over and stretch and rub their eyes with the heels of their hands, wondering why their heads feel so heavy and their bodies so sore, with their memories full of black fog and not much else.
Anders’s parents will doze until nearly noon, not even able to hear the ringing phone when the hospital calls again and again. They’ll shake their heads at themselves, thinking they had too much to drink at that retirement party. Later, when they hear the nurses’ messages and rush out into the driveway, his father will spend one quickly fading thought to wonder where the scratches on the truck’s paint came from, as if it had driven off the road into the trees.
Sasha and Carson, bruised and sick, will wake up in their beds. Their clothes will smell like whiskey—a slosh from Aunt Mae’s bottle—and they’ll both be grateful that they made it home safely. They’ll think their headaches are hangovers. Nothing new.
Frankie will open her eyes in her own pale gray bedroom. She’ll wake to the sound of screams. Joyful ones. Her parents and little brother will hug her and sob and pile onto her bed and ask her ten thousand questions that she won’t be able to answer. She’ll remember fragments. Darkness. The woods. Something wrapped tight around her neck. Police and doctors will question her next, examine and evaluate her. Teams will keep on searching the woods for her kidnapper, for clues, for an explanation.
They won’t find anything. I’ve taken care of it all.
There are lots of benefits to moving fast.
For Flynn: the river.
For Yvonne, in her silver case: a hole in the ground. A circle of white stones.
Memories are sacred. I don’t like to tamper with them, as a rule. But this time I had no choice. There were too many loose ends, too many snapped and sparking wires. Besides, I didn’t have to take much. The ones who had been held in the darkness, between this world and the one below—Jezz and Patrick, Anders’s parents, Frankie—had minds that were already clouded. A quick touch. Erasing light. Nothing left but shadows that will fade away as another sunny spring morning pours through their bedroom windows.
Only Anders will wake up in a strange bed.
The darkness didn’t drag him to sleep, like the others. He’ll wake up with his memories intact, but impossible. He will have seen things he can’t even bring himself to name.
Because I let him see.
I let him see the darkness. I let him see me.
Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed. That’s one of Aunt Mae’s favorite verses.
Anders will float into consciousness. He’ll try to move and find that he’s in a bed with railings, with tubes and needles in his arm. He’ll discover that his hand is fat with bandages and his blood is syrupy with painkillers and people in pastel scrubs are hurrying back and forth beyond the hanging curtains all around him.
Then his parents will arrive, looking stunned and rumpled and terrified, and the doctor will talk about second- and third-degree burns and grafts and permanent nerve damage and physical therapy, and everyone will absorb about a third of what she says.
They’ll all ask what happened.
And Anders will remember what he saw. Darkness and light. Demons and something else. Something he’s still not sure what to call. Something that looked like a girl made of light. The hanging bodies. Flynn. Fire in his fist.
And he’ll say that he’s not sure.
He can’t remember.
Probably shock, the doctor will say. Not uncommon, perhaps another result of the injuries.
She’ll tell his parents that Anders will stay in the hospital for another few days, under careful observation, making sure there’s no infection, that the pain is never more than he can stand. They’ll discuss a plan for the future. And Anders will drift off again in that crinkly electronic bed.
For a moment last night, I held him.
I reached an arm under his head and eased him up into my lap. I elevated his burned hand.
I touched his skin.
His eyelids fluttered. I wasn’t sure if he could hear me, or even feel me. There was nothing to say anyway. But I wished that I could stay there even for a minute, holding on, while the empty woods creaked and breathed around us.
But I couldn’t.
And neither could he.
I brought him to the hospital. Left him at the ER doors, making sure no one caught sight of me.
I watched from behind a row of bushes as someone in white scrubs hurried to the doors, summoned others, pushed a gurney out onto the pavement. I watched as they wheeled him inside.
It took everything I had not to follow him through the doors. To be there when he woke. Just to sit there while he slept, holding his other hand.
But the glass doors slid shut and stayed shut. And I went home to wash the blood out of my clothes.