by Alison Ames
Nina put her hand out as if to stop her, gentling her like a horse. “Piper, no, it’s not—it doesn’t know things, it’s not—”
“It knows,” she said again, eyes filling with tears.
Nina looked at me, raising her eyebrows, asking for my help, and my heart gave a vicious lurch.
“She’s right,” I said, the words scraping out of me.
All of them froze. They turned to me slowly.
“What?” Nina’s voice was so, so quiet.
I closed my eyes and heard a crow shriek somewhere high above us. “Please don’t be mad,” I said.
Nina shot out a hand and grabbed my wrist. “Clem—”
“I lied,” I yelped, the words splattering out as I pulled away from her. “I lied, I’m sorry—”
“What?” Piper’s voice was thin with terror. I turned away from them and felt a tear slip down my face. I was shaking. I could feel hurt and confusion coming off all of them in waves and it made me queasy. They were looking at me, waiting. I breathed in as deeply as I could.
“I lied,” I said again, lifting my eyes from the cracked stone of the bench to face them. “About the deer. It did say something to me.”
Piper’s face did something shivery.
“It was dying. It should have been dead. Maybe it was.” The thought made me ill. “It came up to me and it didn’t really speak, exactly—not like your coyote, Pipes—it sort of … thought at me. I don’t know if that’s right. It just felt like nothing was there and then suddenly these words were in my mind and they hurt, like something was physically shoving them into my head.”
“What words?” Nina was modulating her tone very carefully.
“Where would you go?” I recited. “That was all.”
“Taunting us,” Lisey murmured. “You can’t leave, where would you go? It’s trying to make us afraid.”
“That’s why I didn’t say anything,” I said. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Well, I do, I just—I thought it would be better if I was the only one who knew. Like, I could carry it so you all wouldn’t have to. I didn’t want you guys to be scared. I didn’t want you to change your minds.” I looked at Piper as I continued. “I know that’s not fair. You can all make decisions. I just … in the moment it made sense. I’m sorry.”
Lisey smiled wanly. “I guess I get it. If I was more collected, I might have done the same. I mean, I wouldn’t have, but I do get it.”
“It was using you a different way,” Nina said. “Not trying to keep us from leaving by threatening us, but by making us fight. Making us not trust each other.”
My lungs hitched as I realized she was right. I had forgotten all about what Mellie said. The impulse not to tell had been so strong and clear, I’d assumed it had come from some reptilian part of my brain, the survival part. But it hadn’t come from me at all. I leaned forward, clutching my head with both hands.
“Fuck,” I whispered. “How am I supposed to trust myself? How am I supposed to know what’s real?”
“Here’s how you know,” Nina answered. “If you have any impulses that are telling you to stay, or to lie to us, or to do some weird third thing that results in us staying or fighting or both, that’s not you. That’s not real. Anything else, you can trust. Anything that helps us leave, that gets us away from the mine and from the Basin, is you.”
“We just have to get through today,” Piper said, putting her arm around me. I rested my head on her shoulder. “One more night and then we’re out of here. Then we’re safe.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
My mother wouldn’t be there for me to say goodbye to, I realized as I stepped into the quiet trailer that night. We’d missed each other like always. By the time she got home tomorrow I’d be somewhere on a highway. That thought, more than anything else, brought the reality of what we were doing home, and all at once I was overcome with grief. I went into my mother’s room and sat on her bed. I was feeling too much to cry, somehow; all I could summon was a kind of gulping, hiccupping sound. My heart thudded against my ribs and my head swam as I tried to breathe normally. I tipped sideways, laying my head on her pillow. As soon as the familiar scent of her shampoo hit my nose, my lungs heaved, drawing her in. As I breathed out I heard myself whisper, “Mom,” and then the floodgates burst. I curled into a ball, hugging her pillow against me, and cried myself to sleep.
The next thing I knew Nina was sitting beside me, shaking my shoulder gently. I rolled over to look at her.
“What time is it?” I asked, rubbing my eyes.
“Almost one,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep.”
I sat up and looked at her. She had the remnants of cried-off eye makeup smudged into her lower lashes.
“Did you see your dad?” I asked.
She nodded. “I made us dinner. It was just a normal night, but it was—” She ran her thumbnail under her right eye. “It was so hard to just sit there and lie. I could tell he was a little nervous—because of my mom, you know—but he was still so excited for us, he kept telling me all these places we should stop—” She looked at me and her mouth twisted. “Oh, Clem, I’m so sorry. You didn’t even get to see your mom, did you? I’m being such an asshole.”
I took her hand and squeezed it. “You’re not. It’s awful either way.”
She laced her fingers into mine and shook her head, looking down at her lap.
“Still,” she said, blotting her nose on her shoulder. “Tactless.”
“It’s okay, Nina,” I said softly.
She nodded, a quick bob of the head that swung her hair forward around her face. I looked down at our clasped hands, the still-healing cuts on our palms pressed together. When I raised my face again I almost smacked my head into hers. She’d leaned in, and she was close enough that I could see the dark spot in the amber iris of her left eye.
“I’m scared,” she said, barely above a whisper. “Everything is going to be different.”
I could feel her breath on my skin. She raised her free hand, touching my shoulder so briefly I could have blinked and missed it. Her fingers hovered just above my collarbone, wavering between my neck and my face, never making contact.
“I don’t know what’s gonna happen,” she said. “So I just—”
She touched my cheek, her fingertips grazing lightly over the side of my face before drawing away again. I realized I was holding my breath.
“I wanted to do this,” she said, looking at me steadily. “Before it’s too late. And I wanted you to know that I wanted to.”
I sat frozen, watching as she leaned toward me. She closed the distance between us slowly, carefully, her eyes on mine, gauging my response, waiting for me to react. She curled her hand loosely around the back of my neck, her skin warm and soft, and then she stopped moving. I could feel her eyelashes brush my skin as she blinked. She was too close for me to even see her clearly. My heart was beating in my throat, in my ears; electricity crackled at my fingertips where my hand met hers. Fear and joy and something I couldn’t name coursed through me as I made a decision.
I tilted my head just slightly, just enough to press my lips to hers for a second, and pulled away. Her hand tightened on the back of my neck and slid up into my hair and this time she kissed me, just as quick, just as nervous. I put my hand on her side, above her hip, and then on the wing of her shoulder, and then on her face. I felt her smile as I kissed her again, and when her lips opened under mine a shock ran through my entire body. She pulled me against her, I held her tighter, and for a little while we set our fear aside.
“I didn’t want things to change,” she said later. We had moved to my room, to the bed we’d shared for the first time when we were seven years old. I sat with my back against the wall, her head on my lap as she looked out into the room. I was stroking her hair, running my fingers through it from root to tip and watching the red glint in the lamplight.
“I know,” I said. I’d felt the same fear when I first realized my feelings.
“But everythi
ng’s changing anyway,” she said.
“I know,” I said again.
“Are you mad?”
I laughed, tucking a strand behind her ear with one fingertip. “I think you know I’m not.”
“One likes to be sure, though,” she said mock haughtily, turning so she was on her back looking up at me. Then, sincerely, almost shyly: “Are you sure?”
I looked down at her. “Ehh. Like, ninety percent.”
She smiled so wide it seemed like her face would crack and then put her arms around me as best she could from that position.
“I suppose that’ll do.” She rolled off my lap and arranged herself on her side of the bed. I slid down the wall until I was lying next to her. I moved closer, tucked myself against her, felt her sigh with contentment. When I opened my eyes again it was morning.
TWENTY-NINE
We hadn’t packed much. We had money, we had Lisey’s parents’ car, and we had each other. We were as ready as we were ever going to be.
I don’t know whose idea it was. It seemed to come from all of us at once. We pulled out of Lisey’s driveway and she turned the wheel sharply the wrong way and something flickered uneasily in the back of my mind, but none of us said anything.
We had to go back to Old Town one last time.
We left the car at the edge of the woods, walking to try and rid ourselves of some of the weird, nervous energy that hounded us.
“It’s really happening,” Lisey said. Her voice was filled with wonder.
“Yeah.” Piper stopped walking. She yelled into the gray forest. “You hear that? We’re leaving.” She spat on the ground. “Fuck you, Moon Basin.”
Nina laughed a high, wild laugh. “Yeah, fuck you!”
Lisey and I looked at each other.
“Fuck you!”
Our voices bounced off the trees, coming back to us muffled and hollow. Lisey spun in a circle, middle fingers extended, her hair a white cloud in the gloom. Piper smiled, really smiled, for the first time in weeks. Lisey giggled and darted away, leaping like a gazelle.
“I love you guys,” she called, turning to face us. “Come on!”
She started running and we followed, streaking through the woods like wild creatures. Our blood thrummed in my veins, urging me on. Shadowy tree trunks stretched endlessly into the eternal graying twilight of the ashfall, flashing by us and fading away. Once I thought I saw the doe, pacing us, but she was gone as soon as I blinked. We ran in silence through the trees, tall and straight and black, and little by little a small black pinpoint appeared and began to open in front of my eyes in the gray. I slowed to a trot, then to a walk. It was the entrance to the mine.
“How—” I started to ask. I hadn’t realized we were moving toward it. My thoughts scattered like frightened rabbits, my mind fuzzing and fraying. The hole in the ground drew all my focus. It looked hungry. With a jolt of panic, I realized the mine was sucking at me, pulling, the edges of me raveling outward and forward as the black mouth yawned wider and wider. Wake up, I thought, wake up, wake up, but in my bones I knew I wasn’t dreaming. I was close now, too close, my heart thumping, blood roaring in my ears, and I suddenly became aware that Lisey had slipped ahead of us. She was almost to the mine. Wake up, I thought again, even as I screamed.
“Lisey!”
My feet stopped moving and I was rooted, frozen, my terror a small panicked animal climbing the walls of my mind and clawing me bloody. Nina’s hands were clenched into fists, blood dripping from her palms where her nails had cut her. Piper’s eyes were wide, her face anguished. All three of us were breathing like we were sprinting; none of us moved.
“Lisey!” I screamed again. I mustered all my strength, pushed through the paralysis, and took a tiny step forward. Something inside me twisted and suddenly I was on hands and knees gasping, fingers plunged knuckle-deep in dirt and ash scratching clutching scraping get it out of me get it out out out. There was something inside me that burned like fire, I was on fire—out of the corner of my eye I saw Nina sprawled next to me, I heard Piper gasping in tiny bubbling breaths, and then everything stopped. Everything was quiet. A flake of ash hung in the air in front of me. I lifted my head and Lisey was standing, just barely on tiptoes, on the edge of the entrance to the mine.
“Lisey,” I said, and she glanced at me over her shoulder. She looked like an angel, or a stained-glass depiction of a martyr, the flat gray light filtering through her hair and giving her a strange, somber glow. Like a ghost, my brain whispered, and the thought sucked all the air from my lungs. She rocked forward, backward, and then she turned to face me full-on, but it was too sudden, too quick, and the soles of her shoes made no sound as her feet slid off the edge. I had one disoriented flash of her small white hand against the earth, and then the hole was empty, black, impassive once more.
I screamed and scrambled to my feet, half a second behind Piper as she lunged over the edge of the entrance. She was panting, clutching her side.
“Lisey!” she yelled. “Lisey, can you hear me?”
Her voice bounced back out of the mouth of the mine distorted, flattened, but there was no other answer. She leaned farther in, craning her neck. Her body went rigid, the tendons in her hands standing out as she gripped the wooden frame. I could hear Nina behind me murmuring the Hail Mary as I took another step toward the mine.
“No,” Piper said, her voice hollow. Something in my heart crumpled. She turned around. “She’s not there.”
“What?” My lungs spasmed as I tried to breathe, sending a fresh spike of pain through my chest. I jostled her aside to peer down into the mine shaft. I couldn’t see anything at the bottom.
“We need a light,” I said, my voice rising. “We need a light!”
“The only one is down there.” Nina stepped around me. “That little one that Carlisle always left at the bottom of the ladder. We have to go down and get it.”
“How could she have gotten up?” Piper asked. “She couldn’t have just walked away!”
“It’s too dark,” I said, panic taking hold. “She’s down there and we just can’t see her. We need the light, Nina, we need to get it so we can see her—”
She took me by the shoulders. “Clem. Take a breath. We’re going to get the light. I need you to focus.”
I took an uneven breath. I heard Piper next to me doing the same thing.
“We’re gonna climb down now, okay? Nice and slow. Nice and easy.” Nina released me carefully, watching my face. “I’ll go first. Just stay calm.”
Every step down the carved-out ladder was a horror like nothing I’d ever known. Her corpse is down here, my brain whispered. You’re climbing down toward her. The flashlight is gone, and she’s lying somewhere below you and any moment now those long thin fingers will wrap around your ankle—
My foot hit the bottom of the mine shaft with a thud, and I barely kept my knee from buckling. I could see absolutely nothing. There was a faint jingle and scrape and then Nina said, “Oh no.”
“What?” My voice was weak.
“The keys,” she said. The despair in those two words sank like knives into my heart. “The car keys are here with the flashlight.”
I heard the centipede-leg sound of the flashlight crank tick-tick-ticking slow and steady, and gradually a faint glow began to emanate from a few feet away. Nina started moving, pacing in smaller and smaller circles as the light grew brighter and brighter, until she was in the center of the mine shaft and it was clear we were alone.
“Fuck!” she said, the sound sharp and agonized as it bounced around us.
“What do we do?” Piper asked. “We have to find her. What if she has a concussion and she’s walking around down here—”
She made a rattling, choking sound in her throat and retched, putting a hand on the wall to support herself.
“Oh God,” she whispered. “Oh God.”
“We have to go farther in,” I said, the words heavy in my mouth.
Piper sobbed once and covered her face with
her hands. Then she straightened up and screamed.
“Lisey!”
It echoed back to us, doubled and trebled itself, and when it faded there was silence.
Nina looked at us and held out her free hand. “Come on.”
I took her hand and held mine out to Piper, and we made our way into the dark.
THIRTY
Even as the heat increased, I felt a chill creeping up my spine, up the back of my neck, pulsing in the base of my skull. It throbbed and needled as we moved deeper into the mine, holding on to each other as if our lives depended on it. Piper cried a slow, steady river of tears that made almost no sound at all; Nina muttered prayer after prayer. Every twenty steps we screamed Lisey’s name and waited for even the slightest sound to come back to us.
I don’t know how long we’d been walking when we saw it, but we all stopped at the same time. There was a light up ahead of us, a distant pinprick that shone toward us as if out of a very long, very narrow tunnel. As soon as I saw it, I knew it could see me, too. It was the single eye of something gigantic and shapeless crouching in the darkness, forced into the depths of the mine, waiting for us. It peered at us from the bottom of its hole, its den. I felt a sudden and unshakable certainty that in the black void underneath that bright watchful eye there was a ragged, smiling mouth.
As we watched, it began to move toward us. The pinprick grew, became a dime, became a single headlight, until the light was no more than ten feet from us. I squinted at it, willing my eyes to adjust, and as I did, a strange numbness washed over me. My muscles relaxed; my hands dropped to my sides. Our own light slipped from Nina’s hand and fell into the dirt without a sound. The light was still moving toward us, somehow, but it never grew bigger. I was going into the light, and that thought made me laugh. Going into the light. I tried to say it out loud, to include Nina and Piper in the joke, but my mouth was filled with gluey saliva and I couldn’t. There was a strange weightlessness to all of my limbs, as if I were floating in water. I wondered if I could swim toward the light. Maybe Lisey was in there, inside the light. It was cold; it would be warm inside the light. It would be—
