So many came that we didn’t need to take them all. We grew even stronger and smarter, and we wondered. What if, instead calling out to them, we could send ourselves out to them—the rest of them?
Their minds are so simple, not unlike other crawling creatures, but their forms are so complex. Dark suggestions will not work in daylight. They have eyes and mouths and fingers and toes, and all of them have to look right when they leave here. We struggled at first, but now we’ve perfected our forms. The faces, the voices, and the memories, old and new.
They have so much time bleeding out from them, and they don’t even know it. It’s our time now.
Jamesawoketopoundingfists on the door to his room.
“Open the door you murderer!” an angry Australian shouted from the hallway.
He swung the door open and was completely unsurprised to find Edie and Cassidy standing together. “Keep it down, are you trying to get security called?”
“Like they’d even come,” Edie said as James ushered the women inside and flipped on the overhead light.
After Cherish’s outburst at the concert, he’d anticipated something from these two. When he hadn’t heard from them by the time he started to fall asleep, he figured they, too, forgot about Brad King. Checking his phone, he caught that the time was now four in the morning, and a bit late for a confrontation in his opinion.
“This couldn’t have waited until sunrise?” he asked, taking a seat on the bed.
Cassidy crossed her arms and rooted herself in front of him. He wasn’t sure if she was trying to intimidate him or keep him from leaving, neither of which were options he considered.
“What did you do to Brad King?”
“I didn’t do anything to him.”
“Bullshit,” Edie said, taking a similar stance shoulder to shoulder with Cassidy. “You were talking about making videos asking someone with deep pockets to do you favors, and now Brad King is missing. I saw your video from earlier. What did you do, put a hit out in a TikTok?”
“Keep it down, will you?” James stood and walked back to the door to check through the peephole for eavesdroppers and security guards. The cold hallway lights showed him that it was clearly empty. He turned back to the women but stayed by the door. “If you saw the video, then you know exactly what I said. I never said I wanted him dead.”
“Well, it’s a little convenient that now two people you openly disliked are dead or missing,” Cassidy said.
“Are you trying to say I had something to do with Ryan’s death, too?”
Edie took a step toward James, halving the distance between them. “What if we are?”
“I would say that we all saw him fall from the same place and that it looked like an accident.”
“But how do we know that it was an accident?” Edie asked. “I only met you that night. For all I know, you had your hitman waiting up there.”
James expected the women to be angry with him but hadn’t expected to be accused of hiring a hitman. Perhaps he’d given the women more credit for figuring out what was going on. They clearly knew nothing still, and he had the upper hand. He stepped forward until he was eye to eye with Edie.
“Okay, let’s say for a moment that we live in a reality where I could even afford a hitman. How does that explain that we seem to be the only people on the island who remember Ryan LeHane? How does that explain Daisy going missing? How does that explain the medics not remembering us? Or our phones not making calls off the island?”
Edie swallowed hard enough that James heard her throat click. Tears welled up on the brims of her already reddened eyes, and only then did it occur to James that Edie was lashing out in fear, not anger.
“Where’s Rose, Edie?” James asked, softly enough that only she could hear the question.
Edie’s countenance chilled as her expressions flattened, then her brows stitched together and her eyes filled with rage. She pushed against James’ chest with all her might and screamed.
“I knew you had something to do with it! What was that bloody thing in the crowd tonight, and where is Rose?”
James put his arms up to defend himself from her blows. When Edie’s fist came for his face, he grabbed her wrist and squeezed.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Why would I know where Rose is?”
“Because you seem like you have a pretty good idea for what’s going on here,” Edie said as she struggled to wrench her arm back. James maintained his grip on Edie until Cassidy stepped forward to pry his fingers open.
“Let her go!” she sobbed.
James released Edie, and both women took a step away from him.
