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ZOE: Oh shit. Oh shit. Okay. Camera’s on, here’s—
The camera swings up, the view clarifying from an indistinct mass of shadows to an expanse of brackish water, so murky it’s nearly black. Gnarled trees hunch here and there, damp and rotting leaves clinging to their branches. The view is limited, shrouded in mist.
ZOE: Okay. So. The others—the others are gone. I only stopped for a minute and when I looked up, they—and so I kept going, and now I’m here all by myself, and thatthingis—
She takes a deep breath and gives a desperate kind of laugh. The shape in the fog lets out a sound, a mix between a deep lowing and the crash of rocks. It strides to the right of the camera’s field of view. It’s close enough that the water at Zoe’s feet ripples with the wake of it.
ZOE: None of this was supposed to be real.
Just through the mist, voices sound.
GRACE: Zoe! Zoe!*
ISAAC: I only turned around for a moment.
Zoe pauses, but she doesn’t call to them.
ZOE: I thought... I thought I heard something, but the sound’s all weird here. Everything’s weird here. Even my thoughts seem like they’re echoing. Like the inside of me is hollow. I think...
Zoe hums softly, and then she begins to speak in an odd, distant tone.
ZOE: Where does the road lead? Down to the shore, but there’s nothing there anymore. She let her lover in, and then the ocean drowned her. She opened the gate, and now all of us are salt and bone, are coral deep. Still the road leads. Still the road needs. Travelers and wanderers. Salt and bone.
The camera slowly dips, as if her arm is growing weary but she doesn’t quite notice it. She begins to walk, the water shushing at her ankles. The light shines down between the trees, through the mist, and for a moment flings back the dark reflection of Zoe Alcott.
Little detail can be discerned in the shadowed image. It’s mostly silhouette, but that silhouette is wrong. Torn. Flesh is simply missing in great gashes from the side of her ribs, her back. The shape of her skull is deformed where it meets her neck.
ZOE: I’m so tired. I think I’ll keep... I...
A shadow falls across the water, obliterating her reflection. The water rises in a wave, then settles, leaving her soaked to the knees. Something massive is breathing, a hollow sound like wind between rocks. She hums again.
ZOE: The road is—the gate is—I see it now. Grace was wrong. I have to tell her. It isn’t about the city, it’s what’s beyond. I... I’m so tired... I should... I should put the camera away...
15
I TAKE THEcamera from Jeremy and watch the recording twice more. What Isaac said makes more sense now. The water was a marsh—at least when Zoe and the others were in it. Which means that the road isn’t the same for us as it was for them. Not exactly the same.
“She’s dead,” Mel says. “But she sounds—she’s practically lucid. Does that mean...” Mel swallows. “What about Miranda? Is she still out there?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know.” No one mentions Vanessa. But I know we’re all wondering. Did she die? Can you die, out here, or is everyone trapped, like Zoe? Like Isaac?
Jeremy’s jaw is set. He rubs the skin behind his hearing aid.
“You did everything you could,” I say.
“I know,” he says angrily.
I tuck Zoe’s camera into my bag. I itch to watch the rest of the videos, but I want to know what’s up ahead first. “It was brave, Jeremy. It’s good she’s not lost out there. If it was Becca—”
“Yeah. Whatever,” Jeremy says. His voice holds a vicious edge that sends me a step back on instinct, alarm in the deep recesses of my mind. I try to tame it. I’ve always thought Jeremy was a jerk.And okay, he is—no getting around that. But he just put himself into danger to put a lost girl to rest, and you can grow out of dumb jokes but it’s a lot harder to grow into that kind of courage. “What’s next?” he asks me, quieter now, as if he’s realized how angry he sounded.
“The mansion,” I say. I pull Becca’s notebook from my bag. “That’s what Isaac said, right? They got to the mansion and Zoe was missing, so he went back for her. So that must be what’s next.” I flip through. So many fragments, notes that don’t make any sense, others that seem to have snapped into focus, nestling in among the strands of warped logic in this place.
In the house in the town in the woods on the road are the halls that breathe. The singing will lure you the smoke will infest you the words will unmake you the woman will hate you.
