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Behind her, something moves at the edge of the darkness, sliding out, pale and sharp. My mind offers upthornandclawuntil the length of it brushes both words away, and another long, sharp thing—leg—emerges, the color of bone. It pierces the wall halfway up, spanning the hallway. And then, pushing through the dark, a face. Eyeless, gaping, purpled tongue lolling between split and bleeding lips.
I hiss a warning. Becca turns, and her whole body goes still, the kind of stillness only the dead achieve.
The head withdraws. Then the legs, leaving only one needle-thin point protruding from the dark. Becca falls back a step on the balls of her feet. She draws me away. One step. Two. She doesn’t even breathe. She eases open a door, glances inside, and pulls us in. Shuts the door. Opens it.
A new hallway stretches in front of us. On the wall opposite is an arrow, scratched deep but fading. She frowns and crosses to it, pulling a knife from her jeans pocket to gouge new lines as she mutters to herself.
“Becca, what was that?” I ask.
“Spider,” she says. Doesn’t look at me. “I thought that one got out somehow. Died. There’s two. One white, one black. There used to be other things in here, but the spiders killed them. Except the woman. They don’t bother her. Can’t get past the light.” She stops. Lets out a shuddering sigh. “If it’s hiding in the dark, we can’t hurt it with light. Can’t get past it.”
“We will,” I say. “Let’s find the others. We’ll figure something out. Together.”
She looks down at her knife blade. Her tongue wets her lips. She rolls her sleeve up, slowly, and I suck in a startled breath.
There are words inked on her arm. Some dark black, others smeared and faded into illegibility. The letters overlap and spill over one another until the skin beneath looks less real than the ink.
Don’t speak
Don’t move
Listen
She fumbles in her pockets, muttering, and pulls out a pen.She squints at it, assessing the ink in the clear barrel, throws it aside. Searches again. The actions are manic, so focused she seems to have forgotten I’m there at all. She swears suddenly, dives for the discarded pen, and, kneeling on the floor, sets the tip to her skin, raking it back and forth to coax out a pale gray, broken line of ink.
“Running out. Last one. Can’t be the last one,” she’s whispering. The pen scratches at her skin. It starts to redden.
I catch her wrist, catch her eye. It takes a long time before I’m sure it’s my sister looking back at me.
“We’ll get out of here,” I tell her. I take the pen from her and slide it into my pocket, out of sight.
Slowly, she nods.
“How do we find the others?” I ask.
She touches two fingers to the last word written on her arm.Listen.
“We need to get my things,” she says. “Then we’ll find them.”
VIDEO EVIDENCE
Retrieved from the cell phone of Melanie Whittaker
Recorded April 19, 2017, 12:52 a.m.
The group hunkers in an empty room. The wallpaper is covered in flowers, the same sort that filled the old Briar Glen. Trinasits cross-legged on the floor, idly paging through thepreacher’s book, her lips shaping indecipherable words. Kyle leans against the wall; the rest stand uneasily as Grace keeps watch at the door.
MEL: You said that you could get us out of here. We’ve been wandering around for hours.
GRACE: The thing you have to know about the road is that it’s not the thing that’s going to kill you. Three rules. Simple. Follow those and you can just work your way along the road, no problem.
MEL: No problem? I told you, we’ve already lost two people.
GRACE: You’ve done better than us. By the time I got here, I was the only one left. But the thing is, most of the time it’snotthe road that kills you. It’s the things on it.
MEL: What’s the difference?
Grace grunts, as if this should be obvious.
