Our Last Echoes

by Kate Alice Marshall

  “Have you tried?” Abby asked.

  “No,” he said. “Not being a huge fan of tetanus, I have somehow resisted the allure of a ruined hole in the ground.”

  Abby raised her eyebrows. “I’ve got all my shots.” But she didn’t press the issue. We headed down the hill, taking short, careful steps over the dew-slicked grass. A signpost stood at the entrance to the town, but the sign itself was long gone. Abby strode out ahead, snapping pictures as she went, and Liam and I naturally fell back at a more sedate pace.

  “You know a lot about the island,” I said. “How often do you come here?”

  “Not very,” Liam answered. “Twice since I was a kid, that’s all. Usually quality time with Dr. Kapoor is arranged at some neutral third location, where my mum doesn’t have to see her, and Dr. Kapoor can rely on guided tours to supply quality content instead of filling the silence herself.”

  “I’m picking up that you’re not very close,” I said.

  We’d stopped, and Liam put his hands in his pockets, looking out over the ruined buildings. “My parents split when I was young. Right after Dr. Kapoor came to work here, actually. After that, quality time required several months of notice. My grandparents—her parents—fly out to see me for months at a time and help out, but she can’t be bothered. So, yes, we have issues.”

  “Is that why . . .” I cleared my throat and gestured generally at his wrist, suddenly embarrassed. “You didn’t seem to care about hiding it, so . . .”

  “This?” He laughed, pulling his sleeve up to bare the bandage. “I didn’t do this to myself. Well, I did, but it was stupidity, not intent.”

  “I see.” My cheeks flamed. “I thought—”

  “Oh, I’m horrifically depressed,” he assured me cheerfully. “And intensely medicated. I’m all right just now,” he added, seeing my look of alarm. “I have good days and bad ones and a lot of mediocre ones. And I overcompensate with a cheerful demeanor, or so my therapist says. It’s under control, promise. I just . . . had a bad patch, recently, and got into a bit of trouble.”

  “Trouble that left your arm cut up?” I asked.

  He winced. “Wounds inflicted by a prisoner I was retrieving from confinement.”

  “You staged a jailbreak?”

  “I stole a falcon,” he answered. “She was being used as the mascot for an amateur football team and wasn’t being cared for properly, so I arranged a rescue. She did not appreciate my chivalry, however, and this was the result.”

  Abby chuckled. I jumped a little—I’d almost forgotten that she was there. Judging by the look Liam gave her, so had he. “You gotta ask the damsels if they want to be rescued,” she called over her shoulder.

  “Right, so when you’re kidnapped I’ll go ahead and wait for a signed consent form before I rescue you, then?” he called back. He sounded jokey, but there was a definite barb under the words.

  “I can rescue myself, thanks,” she shot back.

  “Glad that’s settled,” I declared before just joking turned into actually arguing. Abby shook her head ruefully and ducked inside one of the buildings—the biggest one still standing.

  “Sorry to pry,” I added, somewhat belatedly.

  “I don’t mind talking about it with you. Oddly,” Liam said, a little quirk in the corner of his mouth. Like I was a puzzle, but he was patient enough to hold off on solving me. It should have irritated me, but the truth was I didn’t entirely hate the idea of being solved by Liam Kapoor.

  “Hey, guys?” Abby called. She leaned out the door. Her eyes were wide. “You should come see this.”

  The building Abby beckoned us toward was larger than the others, and when I stepped past the rotting front stoop and inside, I realized why. It was a church. Small and cramped, but with vaulted ceilings, the bare rafters gave it the acoustics of a larger building. Once, eight pews had stood in two orderly rows. Now two remained in place, the others overturned and rotted apart, cast up near the door like someone had dragged them there. At the front of the room was a small wooden altar. On it was a triple-paneled wood painting, hints of paint still flecked here and there, but whatever figures had graced it were obscured completely by age.

  “I didn’t think Landontown would have a church,” I said, looking around.

  “It’s older than Landontown,” Liam told me. “There’s never been any known Native settlement, probably because it’s so inhospitable. But a group of Russian fur trappers and fishermen, plus a few Native Alaskans who’d intermarried, tried to make a go of it in the nineteenth century. Unsuccessfully, I might add. Turns out ‘any source of food at all’ is kind of important. Mrs. Popova’s actually descended from one of those intermarried families. Landon’s people restored the church for the history, but they didn’t use it.”

  “Not for worship, at least,” Abby said. I gave her a quizzical look, and she pointed past me. I turned.

  It took me a moment to realize what I was looking at. Broken boards were nailed to either side of the door. Almost as if . . .

  “Someone boarded up the doors,” I said.

  “The last transmission from Landontown said some of them had taken shelter in the church,” Abby said.

  Liam touched one of the pieces of splintered wood, his face troubled. “They meant shelter from a storm,” he said.

  “You don’t board up doors just to keep out the rain.” She gave him a level look.

  He gave a little shake—and then snorted. I watched him push his unease away, but he didn’t have a void to cast it into. It lingered, a sour note in his expression even as he dismissed her. “So which is your favorite conspiracy theory? I’m partial to ‘little green men ate all the hippies,’ myself,” he said. She glared at him. “What do you think, Sophia? I mean, I’m not saying it was aliens . . .”

  I didn’t respond. There was something else by the door. Something scratched into the sill beneath the window. I trailed my fingers over the faded letters. WE ARE NOT ALONE. A declaration of faith? Or a warning? I’d listened to the supposed recording of the last transmission out of Landontown. We thought we were alone, the man had said.

  I could hear Abby and Liam arguing behind me—Abby pointing out all the inconsistencies with the idea that a storm had obliterated Landontown to the last man, Liam responding by coming up with increasingly absurd explanations. Outside, a few wisps of mist had begun to gather low to the ground, between the buildings. A single pane of the window was still intact, speckled with dust and grit. I found myself checking my reflection instinctively.

  At first, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it. No wild hair, wearing the same clothes I was, facing the proper way. And then I realized—the girl in the reflection was standing in an empty room. Liam and Abby, arguing away behind me, were nowhere to be seen.

  The girl’s lips moved, forming a single word: Run.

  In the darkness behind her, a shadowed figure emerged, spreading its wings.

  VIDEO EVIDENCE

  Recorded by Joy Novak

  AUGUST 14, 2003, 12:43 AM

  Twilight consists of three stages: civil, navigational, and astronomical. At the northern latitude of Bitter Rock, the summer solstice sees only a narrow band of civil twilight and a few scant hours of navigational twilight. The deeper darkness of astronomical twilight, much less true night, does not return until later in the summer—true night does not return until, in fact, this very night. Now that deepest stage of twilight has fallen. Night has not yet quite arrived, but already this is a truer darkness than is ever experienced in the city, with only flashlights and a flickering campfire below, and the wheel of stars above.

  The camera rests on a small tripod, all of the LARC researchers and their young tagalong in frame. Sophia curls against her mother’s side, watching the other adults with wide eyes.

  NOVAK: —for us to be out here, but not her? Sophie’s been camping all he
r life. It’ll be fine.

  KAPOOR: Maybe we should take this as a sign that we should all go back.

  HARDCASTLE: We don’t all need to go back.

  BAKER: I’m not going back, no way.

  HARDCASTLE: Joy, you take her, and—

  CARREAU: And what? Then we are here and we have no boat. The girl is quiet as a mouse. The number of times she’s been in the room and I didn’t notice until she nearly gave me a heart attack . . .

  He laughs.

  BAKER: We can’t keep a kid around while we all get drunk.

  CARREAU: So some of us will not drink. I don’t drink anyway, after all.

  BAKER: I thought all Frenchmen drank.

  CARREAU: And yet, here I am.

  NOVAK: I won’t drink either. And I’ll make sure she doesn’t bother you.

  It doesn’t seem to bother Sophia that she’s being discussed. She scooches closer to the camera and wets her lips, then whispers.

  SOPHIA: The singing’s going to start soon. Shhh. Listen.

  The adults do not seem to hear.

  CARREAU: And now, we wait.

  HARDCASTLE: We might be able to spot a few meteors even before true dark.

  CARREAU: I’m in no rush. Honestly, I am out here more for the human company than for a few fleeting lights in the sky.

  BAKER: I was having fun before this turned G-rated.

  She cuts a look at Sophia, who doesn’t seem to notice the scrutiny.

  HARDCASTLE: I’m sure we can manage at least PG.

  He winks at Carolyn, but she’s sunk solidly into her sullen mood and only grunts.

  KAPOOR: I don’t think we should be here.

  HARDCASTLE: Come on, Dr. Kapoor. Live a little. Break some rules.

  KAPOOR: That’s not it.

  She’s looking up. A dim flicker, the first pale hint of the Perseid meteor shower, glimmers behind her, but that isn’t what she’s looking at.

  HARDCASTLE: What is it, then?

  KAPOOR: For a bunch of scientists who came out here to stare at the sky, you’re not very observant. It’s August 13th—well, 14th now.

  BAKER: So?

  NOVAK: Oh. Oh, my God. What—

  KAPOOR: Exactly.

  CARREAU: I don’t understand.

  KAPOOR: This is the second night of the full moon.

  HARDCASTLE: And?

  Sophia tugs her mother’s sleeve.

  SOPHIA: But Momma. There isn’t any moon.

  One by one, the researchers look upward.

  The stars begin to fall.

  9

  THERE WAS A buzzing deep in my bones. I spun around. Expecting, hoping, to find an empty room, and Abby and Liam looking at me with that what’s wrong with her look I knew so well.

  And there they were, startled into silence by my abrupt turn. But they seemed faded, their figures stuttering, as if under a dying bulb. And each time they dimmed, the beast in the shadows flickered more solidly into being.

  A hole in the shape of a man. Six wings, outstretched so that they filled the church—so that they were larger than the church, the very space around it warping.

  I screamed. The shadow lunged for me, past the flickering images of Abby and Liam, becoming more real as they grew less so. I threw myself backward, away from it, and hit the wall hard. I scrambled sideways, diving out the door, but my foot caught, and I spilled onto the ground, scraping my knees.

  A hand grabbed my arm, yanked me around. I stared, barely comprehending, into Abby’s face. Her features were blurred, streaky like looking through dirty glass. Her words distorted.

  “What’s wrong? Sophia, you have to tell me what’s happening.” Behind her, in the doorway of the church, the winged creature advanced, step by step, almost curious in its approach.

  I tried to speak, gasped, tried again. “There’s something there,” I managed.

  “There’s nothing there,” Liam said, bewildered. He had the radio in his hand.

  “It’s coming closer,” I hissed, gripping Abby’s arm. Her expression was focused, fierce. Help me, I wanted to tell her, but the words withered in my throat as my mouth turned dry with fear.

  “What’s happening to her?” Liam demanded.

  The creature had stopped at the threshold. It watched me—I couldn’t see its eyes, only that empty black, but I could feel them on me. The humming in my bones was painful now. Abby’s and Liam’s forms were becoming more and more indistinct.

  Enough, I thought fiercely, and shoved the feelings out. This time, the void was waiting. It devoured my fear, devoured everything, scraping me empty to the bone. The world grew sharp edges, the clarity of a still mind. I could feel the grit of sand and stone beneath my palms, see the weathered grain of the wood planks of the church, hear the raucous calling of the terns. There was something in their calls that matched the thrum in my bones, and matched, too, the strange vibration the creature was making, almost too low to hear, a sound I could feel in my chest, rising and falling and twisting in strange notes.

  “I can hear it,” I said softly.

  A sharp pain lanced through my arm, and I yelped, yanking it against my body.

  The world shuddered, and righted itself. Liam and Abby were solid again, clear. The door of the church stood empty.

  My arm was bleeding just above my wrist. My sleeve had ridden up, and there was a slice across the skin, deep enough that it throbbed. Abby had a knife in one hand, the edge stained red. “Why did you do that?” I asked—my tone slightly puzzled, detached. Abby’s brow furrowed at me, and I realized that wasn’t how I should sound.

  “What the hell was that?” Liam asked. He quivered with unspent tension, like he wasn’t sure whether to rush toward me or stay the hell away.

  I was glad of the void, because I knew this part too well. The first time I lost control, it was to fear. I was five years old, and it was the first week of school. Clarissa McKenzie asked me to play with her at recess. We were dashing around the playground when I collapsed and started screaming in sheer terror.

  Clarissa didn’t play with me after that. That was the first time I learned that I wasn’t the sort of person who got to have friends. And now Liam had seen it too. This incident wasn’t the same—there wasn’t a rush of emotion this time. But from his perspective, I’d freaked out over nothing.

  And that would be that.

  He looked at me with wide eyes, and I braced myself. “What was happening? What was in the church?” he asked.

  I blinked. He hadn’t said, What’s wrong with you? “I don’t know,” I said, more confused than relieved. He wasn’t backing away—why wasn’t he backing away? Calling me nuts? Telling me to stay the hell away from him? I looked at Abby. I needed to focus. I couldn’t worry about Liam.

  Not yet.

  “It was huge. It was—like it was made of shadows. It had wings. Six of them. But it was a person. You and Liam were getting blurry, and it was getting clearer, and there was this sound . . .” I faltered, unable to describe it further.

  “I thought there was something wrong with my eyes,” Liam said.

  “You got blurry, too,” Abby explained. “And kind of . . . pale? It was like you were translucent, but not to look at. It was more like it got harder to know you were there.”

  “Why don’t you sound freaked out by that?” Liam asked with a note of panic.

  She ignored him. “Did it seem like that thing was coming after you?” she asked me.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “It didn’t leave the church. But it was looking at me. I almost felt like it was trying to figure out who I was.”

  “Time out,” Liam said, making a big T with his hands. “You are both acting like this is mildly upsetting but largely expected, but may I remind you that there aren’t six-winged shadow monsters. That
is not a thing that exists in this world!”

  “No, not this one,” Abby agreed. She stood, helping me to my feet. I had a hand around my wrist, but the bleeding had mostly stopped.

  “Why did you cut me?” I asked.

  “You were completely fixated. Sometimes things need you focused on them to affect you, so I distracted you. I guess it worked.” She sounded breathless, and in my hollowed-out state it took me a moment to recognize it as fear. I’d had this idea of her as implacable, untroubled by strangeness, but she held on to my hand well after I’d gotten my balance back.

  “What were you going to do if it hadn’t?”

  “Improvise,” she said with a shaky laugh.

  “This is not happening,” Liam declared, lacing his hands on top of his head, but it was a weak protest. I bit my lip. New emotions were creeping in, my temporary emptiness fading.

  “Liam—”

  His radio crackled with static, and we all jumped. Dr. Kapoor’s voice was loud and urgent: “—going on? Where are you?”

  Liam fumbled the radio from his belt. “Don’t tell her anything,” Abby said urgently.

  He gave her a poisonous look, but he said, “Everything’s fine.”

  “We heard a scream. And then you weren’t responding.” Her voice was tight, but the relief at getting an answer was palpable.

  “We didn’t hear anything,” Liam said. “From the radio, I mean. We were just . . .” He considered. “. . . horsing around,” he finished. I raised an eyebrow and mouthed Horsing around? at him. He spread his hands helplessly.

  “Where are you?”

  “The old town,” Liam said.

  “I want you to get back here right away. We need to get back across the channel before the mist gets any worse,” Kapoor said.

  The mist? I looked around. The air was hazy. The few wisps I’d seen earlier had thickened, eddying along the ground. “Crap. Yeah. We’re on our way back,” Liam said.