Inside the tree, Mary began to quietly weep.
“Simon … Simon, please …”
His smile didn’t falter. He didn’t speak, didn’t move. A disgusting, wet clicking noise ground out from the pit of his throat, a sound that Chloe only recognized too late as laughter. From where she floated, Chloe could see fresh tears falling down Mary’s cheeks as she braced herself against the dry wood. The reverend twirled the hatchet like a little girl with a dolly.
“Simon, don’t,” Mary gasped.
“Goodbye, Miss Kane,” Phipps said.
Then he swung the hatchet.
A streak of white sparks exploded from the blade as it slashed across the rocky soil, a brilliant fan that sprayed the dry bark of the great old oak and immediately burst into flames. Inside the tree, Mary screamed, and Chloe gritted her teeth and screamed with her, feeling the heat race across her own skin too. Beside her, Phipps stood back and fanned his arms upward, urging the flames higher as they consumed the tree and the girl trapped inside it. That dry grinding shook free from his mouth again, that horrible laughter, but it was only seconds before it was drowned out by the roar of the fire. Chloe could see Mary inside the tree thrashing and flailing madly, trying and failing again and again to claw her way out of that awful, blazing coffin as her skin blackened and curled, her burning hair dancing like a living halo around her head.
Chloe didn’t know how long she stood there with Phipps, horrible scarecrow that he was, watching the tree burn, feeling the hateful flames dance across her own arms and neck and back as they consumed the girl trapped in the hollow trunk.
Eventually, Mary stopped making noise. Her movements slowed, then stopped. As Mary died, Chloe could feel her own consciousness crumbling away and sinking into the earth, pulled ever downward by some unseen force. In her rapidly tunneling vision, just before the soil dragged the fragmented pieces of the thing that used to be Mary Kane completely under, Chloe could just barely make out the shape of Simon Phipps standing there, arms raised to praise the growing fire as it lashed at the sky from the outermost tips of the tree’s heavy, bent branches.
At last, everything was still. The silence of the forest floor was cold and absolute. It reached on and on into infinity, and Chloe could feel herself settling into the mercy of oblivion. She’d been so foolish to fear something like this. Death wasn’t painful, nor was it scary. Death was a release from pain and fear, a final, gracious rest, and she let it take her over.
But she wasn’t alone. They weren’t alone. True, she could still feel the burned girl’s lingering presence in the earth beside her, but that wasn’t all now. There was something else here, buried in the clay beside them. If she could hear anymore, she would say that she was hearing small whispers from the depths of the earth, but it was more than that. It was physical somehow, these little wisps of sound, distant but intense, carrying themselves through the dirt to shake what was left of Chloe and Mary to their shared core. Chloe tried to reach out to them, to trace them to their source. Thinking of the flames, and how she’d felt them skip across her own skin, Chloe thought that Mary must have felt it too. How could she not? Even in this soft, silent grave, it was impossible to not notice something like that.
She reached out for Mary beside her, trying to feel where the older girl had gone to. She couldn’t have been far, they’d sunk together …
The second she made contact, it was like an explosion had gone off in Chloe’s head—the raw power of her, the sheer scale, was almost too much to bear. She could feel that distant whisper drumming against her own head, yes, but it was boring into Mary, feeding into her, amplifying her beyond the scared girl she’d been moments
hours
days
months
years
before. The explosion carried out in an incredible shock wave, and it was all that Chloe could do to hang on to the rolling wave of energy that used to be Mary Kane, praying she wouldn’t be noticed. Chloe felt herself growing and spreading out under the soil with Mary, her consciousness fracturing and dividing into a dozen tendrils, a hundred, a thousand, more. Blades of Mary’s consciousness, and Chloe’s with it, branched off through the forest, driving up through the topsoil in hard, bone-white spears while the rest of her/them spread underneath the ground. She could see the trees, and the vines, and the wind stirring the dirt in loose, lazy cyclones. She saw time out of order: a village being built, a rickety man in a long black coat dying alone, delirious and desperate in the woods. All through the forest, the seasons passed and the earth grew larger and yet smaller, somehow—and together, they watched it happen. They listened to it. They saw people, funny little monkeys, changing and growing to fit their new environments as the two of them spread farther and did the same. Together, fueled by the whispers from the deep, they became the forest, snaking along through the stone and veins of clay, the soft earth and roots and rivers, and as the earth surrounding them grew colder, damper, Chloe had the feeling that they were heading toward deeper water.
Together, they hammered through the soil into the freezing cold and found themselves floating in the center of a great, round lake filled with crystal-blue water, nearly black at its darkest corners. The water was still as it held them, but even in that stillness, it was so loud in here. What Chloe had once taken for whispering was like drowned thunder in this lake, the sound huge and churning and impossible to escape.
Looking around, she could see that there was something at the bottom of the lake, something that shone bright and cruel at the center of the basin, like a distant star twinkling through the blue-black darkness. It had been here forever, and would be here long after the planet was a smoldering cinder hurtling through the vast emptiness of space. They were already connected to it, the two of them—they had been ever since they’d left their bodies behind—and yet, its true nature evaded them.
Formless, Chloe swam for it, desperate to see what it was that shone so brightly in the dark, that whispered to them so loudly. Down and down she paddled, sinking farther into the water, but the spot of light never seemed to get any closer. Ignoring the pressure from the water and the warped shiver of reality around her, Chloe dove deeper and deeper, determined to see the source of all that light and noise and power. She was going to see what it was. Even if it killed her, she would see it.
She dove and swam and fought her way down until she came to the bottom, and that blazing light that shimmered all the way through to the surface.
Here, at the frayed edges of everything, she could finally see: the light wasn’t light at all, at least not as she knew it. It was a hole on the lake floor that seeped energy, heat, noise. It only seemed like light because that’s all her mind could interpret it as, but it was so much more than that. Unmoored and so far afield from her flimsy human form, she could now see it for what it truly was. It was a tear in the fabric of reality, a puncture, a wound left over from some great, grand violence committed here before humanity was even a glimmer of a glimmer in God’s eye. Whatever had left a mark like this was incomprehensible in its power and its enormity; whatever it had been, the wound had never stopped bleeding.
As she watched, oily, bladed ghostlight poured from the messy split. She felt herself falling into the refracting glow, tumbling formless through the hole she’d found hiding at the bottom of the world. It unfolded around her, endlessly shimmering and refracting at the seams, pulling itself apart until she could see beyond.
Underneath the light, the energy, whatever it was, she could see shapes, lines, hard angles, all assembled into a brutal architecture that stretched from horizon to horizon. A city. Gray and cold and long, long dead, it stretched wide across the entirety of whatever strange earth it had been built upon. Its towers stabbed into the pallid sky, disappearing among the distant clouds. She’d never seen anything like it, as if the city had grown here of its own accord or else been carved from a single, continuous block of ashen stone. Floating down farther, the details carved into the towers and streets
and rock walls made themselves apparent to her. Intricate and coiling, they made her head throb, made her feel like her eyes were going to bleed and burst.
The emptiness of the city—that was what she kept coming back to. It was overwhelming, crushing in its indifferent totality. There had been life here once. Something had etched these nauseating arabesques into the stone. Something had walked the streets and climbed to the obscured tops of those corkscrew towers.
Far off, near where the sprawling city met the blanched, dead horizon, she could see a mountain sprouting from the ground, its soil black and diseased and piled up just so. Her brain wrinkled a bit, seeing it there. Strange place for a mountain.
No, her brain whispered to her. Not a mountain. You’ve seen mountains before. You know hills like that—you’ve built hills like that. You know what lies beneath them.
Her mind reeled at the notion, at the sheer size and scale, but no matter how she tried to deny it, she understood the truth now. She had since she first laid eyes on it.
No, it wasn’t a mountain.
It was a burial mound.
This city was a grave.
Far below, the landscape began to shake and rumble, and she could see the great cairn shedding curtains of soil as the ground below it shuddered. Thunder broke across the sky, enormous and brutal, and she recognized it too late as the voice she’d heard before, that whispering that had lilted through the trees and seemed so soft in the forest far above. So fragile. This was anything but. This was the voice of something ancient and infinite and cruel. She understood then that just because this was a memory didn’t mean she was safe. Just because something was buried didn’t mean it was dead.
Somewhere deep inside her skull, Chloe felt a pair of jaundiced eyes peel open, yellow with age and neglect, shot through with crimson threads, the pupils black as crude oil. The voice that blasted through her then wasn’t the buried, wet thunder that shook the city below; it was sharper, smaller. Infinitely more human.
INVADER
TRESPASSER
THIEF
INVADER
TRESPASSER
THIEF
A moment or a lifetime later, an icy claw plunged through the blue water, through the light, through this dead heaven to close tightly around Chloe’s brain. It was like nothing she’d ever felt, like panic given form. As the pain and fear mauled at her, she felt herself dragged upward, out of the memory of this cold city beneath the lake.
And then, once more, she was screaming soundlessly, falling forever.
It was like an electric shock. She felt it all the way down to her bones, like someone had stitched a copper wire through her and then hooked it up to a raw power line. She screamed, or at least thought that she did, and tumbled back onto the ground, curling up in the dirt, sucking air through clenched teeth, waiting for the pain to recede. Instantly, Parker was kneeling over her, cupping her face in one of his big hands, the night an explosion of stars far behind him. He was saying something, but the words didn’t make sense to her brain. His voice lilted and swung low at the wrong times, like it was being played backward at her. Shaking off the
vision
memory
nightmare, she gagged on a hot mouthful of bile and tried again to focus on what he was saying, on the way his lips moved. After a few seconds, the sounds coming from his mouth seemed to right themselves, and she was back to reality once again.
“Chloe, hey! Chloe! Hey, say something, okay? Just say anything so I know you’re alright. Please. Please, Chloe.”
She coughed and spluttered and retched, pitching forward and feeling the wound in her side erupt in red agony. Her back and neck curled at the memory of those horrible yellow eyes opening inside her head, and she felt her spine curling in opposite directions as she dry heaved against her own body. Both of her hands went out to grasp at the fabric of his shirt, pulling him closer, or trying to drag herself off the ground. The pain was everywhere. The pain was everything.
“Parker, I … I …”
Her cousin’s eyes went plate-wide with relief, and he worked his jaw without saying anything. A few seconds later, he seemed to find the words.
“Chloe, what the fuck was that?”
“I … oh, Jesus. I saw …” she gasped. “Parker, I saw everything.” The wind died down, and Nicky slowed to a trot, crossing her arms over her chest, trying to keep warm. The light from the moon was chilly and hard, and standing still in it for too long felt like it might freeze her in place, like that guy at the end of that hotel movie. She had to keep going—but where? Spinning around and around, she strained her ears to listen for the voice floating through the trees. His voice. It felt like it had been hours since she’d last heard it. But there was nothing out here. Just the soft undercurrent buzzing of the Pine Barrens.
“Where are you?” she whispered to herself. “Where did you go?”
There was a rustling behind her, and she whirled around to meet it. Was it possible? Could he be so close and she’d not even known it?
“Josh?” she called out into the windblown trees. “Josh, is that you? Josh, it’s okay, it’s me, it’s Nicky. You can come out now. You’re safe. I’m not going to hurt you …”
She peered deeper into the darkness, feeling her heart thud against her ribs. This time, when the voice came, it came from just over her shoulder, like he was whispering right into her ear.
“Nicky?”
Spinning around again, her heart swelled, a beautiful lightness spreading across her back and shoulders as the whisper slithered through the trees. She imagined she could fly away if she liked, no longer subject to the rules of this stupid, hateful world, because he had come back for her. There, in the distance, in the trees, she could see him now. Just a shadow, little more than an outline, but him, him, wonderful him! She could imagine the relief that would be on his face, the joy at having been returned, the relief she would feel being in his arms again. He was running for her, she could see that now, sprinting through the trees, ducking low, as agile and quick as he’d ever been.
“I’m here!” she called out to him.
She held her arms out to catch his flickering silhouette, only recognizing the bent, stretched shape scrambling madly toward her with its torn-up hands and broken teeth too late.
Then she screamed.
MONDAY
16
After a few restless hours, Chloe rose from the shallow sleep she’d managed to scrape together in the uneven quiet before the dawn. She’d have liked to keep sleeping, but the sun had grown too high, too bright. Impossible to hide from now. In the winnowing, reddish darkness behind her eyelids, she could still hear the whispers from under the lake, Mary Kane’s furious screeching, the sound of the claw augering through her skull to clamp around her brain.
Chloe had seen Mary—the real Mary, and the endless thing that had claimed her for itself—last night, and she’d paid the price for skulking around in places she wasn’t supposed to be.
The wound in her ribs was worse this morning. That was the first thing she noticed when she opened her eyes and tried to roll over. Laying there, the constant buzz-saw ache was the same, but the pain became unbearable when she touched it or tried to move. Parker would have to help her change the bandage in a little while. Unzipping her sleeping bag from the inside, Chloe sat up, sucking cold forest air against the agony drilling through her ribs.
The morning around them was quiet and bright, almost peaceful. The wind rustled through tree branches, while puffy white clouds drifted overhead. Almost by reflex, she reached in her backpack for her phone, holding down the power button until the cracked screen skipped to life, displaying a time that didn’t mean anything to her anymore. The battery was in pitiful shape too—a paltry 13 percent even after keeping it off for three days. She quickly dialed the screen brightness down to try and conserve the power she had left. Up at the top, the banner read No Service. Big surprise. Turning it over, she seriously considered just throwing it into the trees, s
ending it all the way to hell. It wasn’t doing her any good in the Barrens anyway, and even if they ever actually got out—
The phone buzzed.
Chloe froze, staring down at the little brick of plastic and glass in her hands, not wanting to look at the screen and see that she’d imagined it. Losing her mind, inventing things like that and living comfortably in her delusion—that was one thing. But being aware enough to know just how far gone she really was …
That would be so much worse.
Then it vibrated again, and again, and again: Bzzt-bzzt. Bzzt-bzzt. Bzzt-bzzt. Over and over her phone shook with alerts. She wasn’t imagining this. This was real. It had to be. Turning the phone around to look, she watched as a single service bar flickered and guttered while the screen filled up with notifications. Text from Mom. Text from Mom. Text from Dad. Text from Mom. Voice mail from Mom. Voice mail from Dad. Voice mail from a number she didn’t recognize, then another from a second number. Voice mail from Aunt Lori. Text from Mom. Text from Dad. Text from Aunt Lori. Voice mail from Dad. Text from Mom. Text from Mom. Text from
Mom. Oh, fuck.
Nimbly, her fingers leaped into motion, dismissing all the notifications in a single sweep and bringing up the keypad function. At the top of the screen, the little service bar fluttered back and forth. Chloe tried to hold her hands as still as possible, not wanting to lose the little reception she still had. Three numbers, that was all she needed. Three little numbers. Her thumb traced the pattern: 9-1-1. Heart racing, Chloe hit Call and held the phone still, waiting for the soft digital click of connection. And she waited. And she waited.
The Night Will Find Us Page 22
