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“What are you doing?” Anthony calls. But Jeremy is already sprinting back, throwing the bag’s strap over his shoulder. He skids to a halt across from the girl, lunges, and grabs her wrist. It almost unbalances him, but then he’s found his footing, pulling her toward him. He stoops to lift her as the giant thing grows closer still.
“Jeremy,run!” I scream, and he finally listens. Anthony grabs my arm, pulling me along. We can’t help. We can only hope he’s fast enough.
“Up ahead,” Mel calls.
A shore trembles indistinctly at the edge of the mist. A shore and a gate, the iron bars solid and black even with the mist curling over them. Three crows perch atop the gate, immune to whatever has flung the others skyward, watching our approach.
We move at a lurching run. Almost to the shore. I don’t look back. I won’t look back.
Kyle skids to a halt in the front, pivots. “There’s a seam at the edge of the road,” he says. “Just a tiny gap, and then there’s another road, but the real one turns. You have to feel your way—” He catches sight of the thing behind us, and his eyes go wide. “What the f—”
“Justgo!” I yell, before anyone else can waste time gawking. Jeremy puts his head down and bulls forward, dragged down by the girl’s weight, lagging farther and farther behind. The road slews to the left, then the right, and then we’re barreling straight for the shore. And then we’reonthe shore, muddy ground squelching, grasping at our heels. The crows on the gate finally take flight, an eruption of movement. Anthony already has his key out. It scrapes against the lock as he fumbles with it.
I turn. The mist is closer, folding in toward us. And with it comes thatthing.
The beast.
I can see the shape of it more clearly now, its long arms, the three hooked claws on each hand. Claws that could carve through a person as easy as tissue paper. The mist blurs its details, but it must be forty feet tall. Fifty. And its head isn’t the head of a person, but triangular, and above it antlers branch and twist and tangle.
It’s the creature from Becca’s notebook.
“Sara,” Anthony says. The gate is open. I’m the only one on this side. Me and Jeremy. His eyes meet mine.Go, he mouths, not sparing the breath to voice it, and I do.
I dash through. Jeremy is still far behind us. Too far.
Anthony hesitates—and then slams the gate shut behind us.
The mist collapses, like the barrier holding it back has given way. In an instant everything behind the gate is shrouded, bleached to gray-white.
“He could still make it,” I whisper. I find myself reaching into my bag, pulling out the camera. Training it on the mist. On the gate. As if by looking through the camera, I can make the scene less terrible, less terrifying.
We wait, breath ragged, to see what comes through.
EXHIBIT H
Photos retrieved from the camera of Becca Donoghue
Anthony Beck, his hands white-knuckled, pale against the gritty black of the gate as he waits to open it again, if his friend should appear.
Trina Jeffries, standing with her arms crossed over the preacher’s book, her head tipped back, eyes shut as if to feel the rain that falls in a light haze. Pinpricks of light, like the sun reflecting off dust motes, hover in the air around her. At the upper corner, a gnarled black tree slashes like a wound across the frame. The tree is out of focus; it is impossible to discern whether the figure at its base is a person, or simply a shadow.
The gate. The mist. A blur to the iron bars, betraying the unsteady hand of the photographer.
Anthony Beck, crouched, fingers laced behind his bowed head. The gate, the mist, the featureless gray.
