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The road is surprisingly intact here—few stones that manage to touch one another, but the edges clear enough, speckling the ground at semiregular intervals. The mist leaves us mostly blind, but that’s a kind of blessing. I don’t want to see what’s around us.
Because of the mist, we don’t see the dark until we’re almost in it. We hardly acknowledge it, except to rearrange our grip slightly, more securely.
“Almost done,” Lucy tells me—or maybe she’s talking to herself. We step past the border of the darkness, and into that strange, echoing space.
I count steps. One, two, three, four. That urge is there—letgoletgoletgo—but I grit my teeth against it, and Lucy’s grip never wavers.
And then she stumbles. Her breath is labored, and her grip tightens against mine with an alarming sort of desperation.
“Lucy? Are you okay?” I whisper.
“Hold on,” she says. “Here, hold—hold my arm.”
She slides her hand through mine, guiding my palm up to her upper arm so I can grip and leave her hands free. I hear her rummaging in her bag, and then—light. I blink rapidly in the sudden luminescence. She holds the severed hand with its candle in the palm. There isn’t much left of it, but she sets it at our feet. We’re still among the scattered stones, soft grass growing up around them.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, and then I see that she’s bleeding. Her hair hid it at first, but the blood trickles down her neck and pools in the dip of her collarbone, soaking into her dress. Her eyes are glassy, and she sways. “What happened? Oh my God. What should I—what should I do?” I ask.
She peels her lips back from her teeth. “What happened is Lucy’s brother is a bastard,” she says. “And there’s nothing you can do. Not unless you can travel back sixty-five years or so and stop him from slamming a rock into her skull.”Lucy. Herskull. I blink in confusion, but I don’t have time to think about it.
The blood comes thicker, faster. She staggers. Her knees buckle. I lunge to catch her on instinct, but all I can do is lower her to the ground as she wheezes.
“What do I do?” I ask again.
“It’s all right,” she tells me, her voice faint. “I knew it would happen. It’s why I had to turn back last time. Lucy was dying when she stepped onto the road. This close to the end, it catches up with her, that’s all.”
“What do you mean, Lucy was dying?” I ask. “You’re Lucy. What—”
“It’s why I couldn’t use her to get away,” she says. “But you and your sister—you’re both so receptive. I never had to try very hard to get you to hear me. Lucy was like that. Pity about the dying.” Something moves behind her eyes, and I realize I was wrong. Lucy isn’t decades older than she looks.
Those eyes have the weight of centuries.
“You’re Dahut,” I whisper.
She grins. “And you are my way out of this prison,” she says. She reaches out, and before I can pull away, she seizes my hand. Something rushes out of her, cold as the sea, and into me.
And
I
cease.
VIDEO EVIDENCE
Retrieved from the camera of Becca Donoghue
Recorded April 19, 2017, 12:49 a.m.
BECCA: Something’s wrong.
ANTHONY: Just keep recording.
At first the phone records only darkness. Then, light ahead, the surface of it strangely opaque, though a figure can be seen dimly, kneeling.
BECCA: Why do you want me to record this? We should just go up there.
ANTHONY: I want a record of this. I don’t trust Lucy. And that camera’s way better than the one on my phone.
BECCA: Then you take it.
