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“You.” The voice is the sound of insects crawling over each other. Of beetles spreading their wings, snapping them shut again. It comes from the woman, impossibly.
“You are a disruption. All of you. There must be silence, in this place. Or things will wake.”Or things will wake.The echo comes from the air around us.
“Then let us go,” I say, stepping forward. Becca claws at mebut misses. I square myself in front of the woman, just shy of the light. “We’ll leave. No more noise.”
Her chest rises and falls as if with breath, though I don’t see how she can breathe. The bells chime at her back.
“You’re the one,” she says. “You’re the one she’s calling. Little insect. Little rat. Vermin. Looking where you shouldn’t. Talking when you shouldn’t.”
“Get out of the way,” Trina says, advancing so we’re shoulder to shoulder.
“You are not in charge here, girl,” the woman says.
“Move,” Trina demands.
The woman laughs. “The light will burn you hollow,” she says, and lunges for Trina. I shove myself between them, trying to block the woman’s progress. She bats me aside. She reaches greedily for Trina, but Trina stands her ground, feet planted, the book clutched in both hands.
The woman’s grasping hand is half an inch from Trina’s neck when she begins to read.
The words slide out of her, sinuous as a snake. I won’t write them down. I won’t write them down, even though they want me to. The book wasn’t there to preserve them. It was there to contain them. Once your voice gives them form, they aren’t so easy to leash.
The woman screams. Just as suddenly, the scream cuts off. Her head snaps back, the tendons of her neck standing out like cords. Her hands rake the air, fingers distending into needles, and the candle falls to the ground. The light pulses and heaves at her feet.
A writhing, twisting smoke spills from her skin, and rises from the pages of the book as well, and then the woman is becoming the smoke, evaporating into it, but the words won’t stop spilling from Trina’s mouth, an endless riptide of sound. The smoke flows into her mouth, her nose, and she gasps.
The candle gutters out.
The woman is gone.
Trina’s eyes roil with smoke.
EXHIBIT I
Text messages between Sara Donoghue and Becca Donoghue
Sara | Becca
7/6/16
I know you aren’t there, but I’m going to pretend you’re going to read these someday.
I miss you. We all miss you.
7/28/16
Where did you go? Did you mean to leave? Why didn’t you take me?
Are you alive? Are you hurt?
I love you.
8/9/16
I’ve been having these dreams.
You’re in them sometimes.
We’re walking somewhere. On a road. An old footpath. We’re in the woods.
