“No!” Claire shouted.
“You cannot escape me,” he said. “I will send storms. I will cloud your minds.”
They hobbled faster, until they were almost dragging Jack between them. His feet stumbled under him, trying to keep pace. Claire gritted her teeth and did not let go. If he fell, she was certain he wouldn’t get up again.
The dead man called after them, “You will not suffer, for you will not remember. And I will live. None will be harmed!”
Except the one left behind, Claire thought.
It can’t be true. This can’t be happening.She was stuck in some nightmare, and soon she’d wake up, wet and cold in the woods.
“Why not... why not leave me?” Jack asked.
“Not leaving anyone,” Claire said to Jack.
“Unless you’re volunteering?” Reyva asked.
“Reyva!” Mariana said.
“What? Just asking.”
Jack’s words came out slurred, as if he were untangling his tongue while he spoke. “But I... attacked... you. Why are you t-trying to save me?”
“No idea,” Reyva said.
“Maybe because we’re not monsters,” Mariana spat.
“I’m not a monster,” Jack said.
“Debatable,” Mariana said. “You tried to give us to whatever he is.”
“To save my father,” Jack said. “You... you... you would have done the same.”
“We are literallynotdoing the same right this very second,” Mariana snapped. “So focus, summon your inner strength, andmove!”
Behind them, the dead man said, “Only one.” He wasn’t shouting, yet his voice rolled over the airstrip. Claire noticed that all else was still. No birds. Not even any wind. “You will never leave this island. You will never be free of me.”
She shivered through her sweat. He couldn’t keep them here, could he?
“This can’t be real,” Mariana said. “We’re asleep in the woods, and I’m having a nightmare. This has to be a nightmare.”
“If it is, we’re all in it,” Reyva said.
“That’s exactly what you’d say if you were part of my nightmare,” Mariana said. Her voice had a shrill edge, as if any second she was about to start screaming. Claire felt the same way.
“Not a nightmare,” Jack said. “Real.”
“Then whatisthat?” Claire asked.
“Ancient spirit,” Jack said, struggling over the words, as if his tongue was in the way and he didn’t know how to move it properly. “Always been here, but buried in a cave, until some fools let it out a couple decades ago. Got one of them. Atleast that’s what my father told me. He discovered it when he was hunting on the island. Not supposed to hunt here. But Dad didn’t like rules. He found Arthur Benedict. And then he brought a cage to hold him. Maybe force the evil out.”
Claire thought of the cage in the bunker, with the shackles. She’d suspected from the smell that it had been used recently, but she’d thought dog or wolf. Not possessed man. He must have escaped.
Jack’s words mashed together, but she could still understand him. “But then it took my father. Made him kill his girlfriend, Mackenzie Williams. She’d come here to help him.”
Claire’s mind flashed to the body in the woods—they’d assumed it was the camp’s program director, but they hadn’t known for certain, she realized. None of them had ever met her. In fact, now that she thought about it, Jack himself had been the one to tell them about her, on the boat ride here. If he’d been lying...
“I didn’t know,” Jack said. “I didn’t know he killed her. I didn’t know he wasn’t free when he told me the plan. I thought Dad wanted... He tried. Tried to fight it. To resist. But he couldn’t.... I thought I could bargain to free him. When you came—”
