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“There’s another tombstone,” Trina says. She’s stopped, holding her flashlight in both hands close to her chest.
This tombstone is shattered, like the other one. The same sort of broken-tooth shape. Or is itexactlythe same? But it can’t be the same stone, because I can make out the text carved on this one.
MAURA O’MALLEY
LOVING MOTHER
D. 1856
“Another cemetery. Great,” Anthony says.
“It’s gonna be zombies,” Jeremy says. “Guarantee it. Just you fucking wait.” He stomps out ahead, tension in every line of his body.
There are more tombstones than before, but they’re in nearlythe same arrangement. There is the same cluster of three, the angel perched atop the center one whole this time, wings outstretched, only the ends of the feathers snapped off.
The same double headstone. Exactly the same. And there, standing at the edge of the cemetery, is the sign. Upright.
BRIAR GLEN
The sky is a foreboding shade of gray, the first hints of reflected light filtering to us, and we can see the shape of the town beyond our flashlights. Walls stand; roofs remain. But it’s the same town. I’m sure of it.
“Everyone stay close,” I say, fighting to make my voice louder than a whisper. It’s not an instruction I need to give. We bunch up as we walk through the center of the town, our footsteps the only sound, tramp and scrape.
The buildings show no signs of fire, but they have a neglected look about them. Vines whispering up toward windowsills. Roofs beginning to sag. A broom discarded at the base of a wall, collecting spiders and dust. No sign of anyone, either a visitor like us or—
Or whoever mightbelongon the road.
“Look at that,” Trina says, shining her flashlight on the lintel of a house. There’s graffiti scrawled in what looks like chalk, there and elsewhere.
DAHUT, it reads. And then: THE GATE IS OPEN
WHERE TRAVEL WE
YS AWAITS
THE TOLL IS BLOOD
The words aren’t like spray-paint tags, stylized, jagged, or loopy. They’re written in a steady, blocky hand. Almost formal.
“It says that in the notebook, too. ‘Dahut,’” I say. “Sound familiar to anyone?” A round of shaking heads. Is it a name? A place? A magic word? We creep along, the sound of my voice seeming to linger, waiting for something to drown it out.
There’s more writing around the well. Lowercase letters, cursive, looping around the rim. The stones break up the words, and they continue in a circle, as if there is no beginning, no ending.
the sea rushes in her lover rushes in her lover is the sea she unlocks the gate he floods her salt her lips salt her thighs salt her tongue we are drowned the sea rushes in
My eye tracks it around and around and around, as if I’m caught in the loop of it, as if I’ll never break free. I realize I’m reading it aloud, the words on my lips like a puzzle, like a riddle, and the others are listening, transfixed as I am. I can’t stop.
“Dahut,” Miranda says suddenly, clearly, and I stutter to a stop. We flinch back from the well, looking at each other wildly. The light on the horizon has a bruised quality. How long have we been standing here? “Sunrise soon. We should move,” she says. As if sunrise means something to her that it doesn’t to me, but Miranda seems to have a handle on this place the way none of the rest of us do, so I nod like it makes sense.
Perhaps the words are the trap the road set for us. And if we walk away from the well, we’ll be free. The next gate will be waiting.
We find the grave again instead.
“Maura O’Malley,” Vanessa says. We barely break stride thistime. Some part of us has expected this. No echo comes only once. “I wonder how she died. By fire or by flood or—”
“Stop,” Trina whispers. “Just stop.”
The angel, the double headstone, the sign: BRIAR GLEN.
