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Becca gives her a curious look.
BECCA: Where did you find her?
OFFICER BAUER: Find her? It’s just past dawn, Becca. She was home in bed.
BECCA: But...
OFFICER BAUER: Becca, before you can see your family, there are things we need to know. There are a lot of missing pieces, here. Like where Trina Jeffries is. Or why you were out in the woods last night. Or why you were covered in blood.
BECCA: Ask Sara.
OFFICER BAUER: Becca...
BECCA: I’m not telling you anything until I see my sister.
24
THE WATER HITSme with a slap of sound and cold. Immediately, all sense of the boat is cut off. The creak of wood, the voices, the scrape and splash of the oars.
A curious sense of peace washes over me. It’s all right, I realize. This is how I do it—how I make sure they make it. Someone was always going to die. This way, the rest of them survive.
Thirteen steps—maybe it will be thirteen strokes—and they’ll have to manage with one hand apiece. But they’ll manage. Becca will take charge. The way it’s supposed to be.
I tread water, waiting. Waiting for what, I’m not sure. I should be afraid, but I think this is the first moment since we saw the road that I am completely, utterly calm. I have done all I can. It’s not enough, of course. Nothing would ever be enough. But it’s all I have to give.
And then something brushes past my leg. Then another, more constant pressure, like fingers probing the shape of my ankle. I kick out and connect with something that gives easily. I feel the passage of a dozen flurrying bodies around me, and I force myself to breathe evenly. Whatever is going to happen is goingto happen. But my instincts kick in and I can’t stay still and wait for it.
I kick off my shoes, try to gauge the direction of the road, and strike out. Swimming in clothing isn’t exactly easy, but the water has a strange buoyancy that makes up for some of the drag, and years of swim lessons come back to me readily enough. A few strokes take me away from the questing touches, and then I pause, catching my breath.
I hear voices up ahead, and for an instant I think it’s the others. But these voices are wrong. Thelanguageis wrong, something that chatters like a stream over rocks, and there are too many of them. I don’t want to swim toward the sound, but I’m sure that’s the way the road went. I take another few cautious strokes. How many is that? Seven, I think. Six more and—and there’s no way I’ll make it, not alone. The rules are the rules.
The voices draw closer. They’re all around me now, but still I can’t see or feel anything, anyone. They whisper in my ear, babble behind me. A hand grabs my arm. I yank away. Another seizes my leg and gives a sharp tug, pulling me under, and this time when I kick, I can’t break free.
More hands, and still the voices, bubbling and laughing and whispering. Hands grip my wrists, my legs, my hair. Fingers crawl over my chin, force their way in past my lips, scrape against my teeth as I try not to scream, knowing it will only let the water rush in.
I flail against the gripping hands. They tighten painfully, craggy nails scraping across my skin. I thrash one hand awayand reach for the surface, but it’s too far away; I grasp at only cold water. I can’t hold my breath much longer. I can’t get loose. My lungs burn, and in a moment I’ll have no choice but to surrender.
The last thing I’ll see is nothing at all. Only darkness.
And then—light. A soft, golden light, filtering weakly through the water. Briefly, it illuminates the shapes around me. They’re almost human, with withered torsos and gaping, broken-toothed mouths, huge clouded eyes and hollowed cheeks, ash-gray hair billowing in the water around them. Beneath their breastbones, their bodies turn to tatters.
The light hits them and they scatter. Their movement is jerky, nauseating, but it tears them away from the light and in a moment they have vanished. I struggle for the surface, but my vision goes to spots. I reach for the light.
A hand plunges through the water and closes around my wrist, hauling me upward. Seconds later I’m being pulled over the edge of a boat, which rocks alarmingly. I spill into the belly of it, coughing and gasping as water puddles beneath me.
“Ho, there. Air’s for breathing, now, not water,” a low rumble of a voice says. I peer up. The light shines behind the man sitting in the center of the boat, but I can see the broad outline of his shoulders and the silhouette of his hat, wide-brimmed and crumpled as if jammed down on his head. “Let’s get you out of the dark, then, miss.”
He gets a grip on the oars of the little boat and turns it with a few practiced movements. Around us, the darkness is a solid shell, but it can’t press in past the limits of the light. I’m stillstruggling to breathe normally; the first word I attempt comes out as a sputtering cough.
“None of that, now,” he says. “You just hold tight. We’ll have you out in a moment.”
“Who are you?” I manage.
“Oh, now, there’s an interesting question,” he says. “Interesting on account of it not having much meaning anymore. Who I am is a man on the road, and that’s all that’s mattered for some time now. You can call me John, as some fair few have, though I can’t rightly recall whether any did so before I stepped through the Liar’s Gate.”
“You’re a traveler?”
“I was,” he says. “But those days are behind me. There’s no leaving this place for old John, but don’t worry yourself about that. I’ve learned to abide well enough. And here we are.”
