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“What the hell is that?” Eddie asked.
It wasn’t headlights; there were no beams. It was just a glow, the edges fading into the darkness. My skin got icy; there was nothing natural about that light. I put my hand over Eddie’s on the steering wheel. “Drive through it,” I told him. “Fast.”
He swore, and I saw his throat work as he swallowed. He didn’t take his foot off the gas, but he said, “April, what if it’s a person?”
“It isn’t,” I said.
“It could be. Last time, it was Rhonda Jean.”
“It isn’t Rhonda Jean. It isn’t anyone. Keep going.”
Eddie’s knuckles were white, the tendons in his arms tight as violin strings. I kept my hand over his, as if I could steer the car for him. If I could have pressed his foot harder, I would have.
Ahead, the glow got closer, brighter. It reminded me of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a movie I had thought a little ridiculous when I saw it. If there were aliens, they wouldn’t bother sending signals to Richard Dreyfuss. They would annihilate us, and it would be over in a flash. Simple.
But this wasn’t an alien spaceship. This light was cold. It was a void in the darkness, even though it was technically light. Somehow, it wasn’t light at all.
Eddie didn’t brake, and the car flew into the cold light. We were blinded for a second, and all sound stopped except the rain pounding the roof. Then the glow was behind us, the darkness closing in again. Lightning streaked the sky, and in its flash we saw a woman in the middle of the road ahead of us, her back to us as she ran down Atticus Line in the rain.
“Jesus!” Eddie swerved and braked to avoid hitting her. The car skidded on the wet road, the tires skating. Eddie spun the wheel, trying to right us. I was thrown against the passenger door, and I twisted to put my back to it, my hands reaching fruitlessly to grasp at nothing.
The Pontiac kept skidding over the road. Through the rain I could see the girl in the light from the headlights. She was soaked, her brown hair wet down her back. Her T-shirt stuck to her skin. She was barefoot below the frayed hem of her jeans, and her legs pumped as she ran down the middle of the road, right along the faded yellow line.
There was a screech of tires on gravel, and the car spun to a stop on the shoulder of the road. The rain pounded on the roof. Lightning flashed again, but we were out of sight of the running girl.
Eddie lifted his hands from the wheel and pressed them over his eyes. “My God,” he said softly, as if to himself. “What’s happening?”
I was leaning against the passenger door, where I’d landed when the car stopped. The motor was still running. My hand was gripping the edge of the open window so hard my nails were about to break. I took a breath and forced my hand to unclench.
Eddie still had his hands over his eyes. I’d seen him like this before, when he woke up from the worst nightmares in the middle of the night. I swallowed in my dry throat, unbuckled my seat belt, and sat up.
“Eddie,” I said. He didn’t answer.
I leaned over and unbuckled his seat belt, too. A gust of wind blew and rain washed into the window, waking me up, reminding me where I was. I was on a deserted road, I had just seen something that couldn’t be real, and I had to help my husband.
“Eddie,” I said again. I used the only tactic I knew, the one I used when he woke up from nightmares about whatever had happened in Iraq. I crawled across the console between us and wrapped my arms around him, curling against his body.
He wasn’t weeping. He wasn’t even shaking. He was just still, his hands over his eyes. As if he’d left his own body for a minute, made it shut down until he wasn’t dangerous anymore. I felt him take a shallow breath.
I ran a hand up the back of his neck, into his hair. “Eddie,” I said again, repeating his name, over and over. I touched him wherever I could, letting my chilled hands run over his forehead, his neck, his tense arms. I rubbed him gently, repeating his name, until he finally lowered his hands.
The words he said then broke my heart. “April. Did that really happen?”
“Yes,” I said, stroking my hand over his cheek. He was looking straight ahead; he hadn’t turned toward me yet. He couldn’t. I knew he needed me to say it. “That happened. There was a bright light, then a girl running down the middle of the road in the rain. I saw it. If you’re crazy, then I am, too.”
“It was her, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“What does she want, April?”
I let my palm run over the tight tendons of his neck. “I don’t know. Take a breath, honey.”
Eddie took a shaky breath deep into his lungs. Some of his muscles loosened a little. “April,” he said. “Do we—”
The Lost Girl came running toward us from the dark road, through the veil of rain. Her face was pale and terrifying in the headlights, her eyes black. Her mouth was open. She was screaming.
I could hear her. She was screaming.
