In the darkness he saw her splay her hands out, looking at them as if they belonged to someone else. Her clothes still dripped, and she had begun to shiver, though the night was warm.
“Evie, what’s going on? Why are you all wet?” Ré was almost shouting, frantic. He shook her shoulder again.
“I think I should go to the hospital,” she said, soft as kittens. “I—I think Alex might have cut me.”
Ré’s lungs failed. The floor of the Buick disappeared. And in the instant it took him to register that Evie was bleeding all over the seats, Ré missed the sharp left where the dirt road met the county highway. And then there was no road beneath them at all.
33
E
The car tore through the bushes, shattering saplings and green sumac, bucking sideways and sliding wildly down the hill beyond the road. A ballpoint pen skittered across the dash, lifting, drifting into the air just as the windshield cut into a thousand white spiderwebs. Airbags exploded, crushing Evie and Réal against blue vinyl.
A strange staccato sound rose as they careened down the hill—hundreds of tiny whips and stones hitting blue paint and underbelly. They turned, juddering backward, crashing through bulrushes toward a patch of black water. The rushes snapped and fell, grabbing the Buick like baleen, finally hauling it to a stop with a wet, heavy sigh.
Evie’s ears rang. She choked on dust and smoke and plastic powder from the ancient airbags. Outside, water quickly rose in the wheel wells. It began to seep through the cracks at the bottom of the doors. She heard it hissing in the back seat.
“Ré?” she whispered, but he didn’t answer. She leaned back and looked at the moonlight spidering through the broken windows, at the dark edge of the road above.
Will anyone find us down here? she wondered, feeling for the knife wound in her side. Probably not, she decided, and closed her eyes.
Shaun kneels at her feet, hand pressed to the side of his head. Dark red slithers down his forearm, making a lacy cuff. Lucky Shaun, the invincible, trying to steal the future from her.
She stands over him, seeing stars, skateboard heavy in her hands. She was not marrying him, not having his baby. She was not going to end up like her mom.
She could smash his head in right now. It would be easy. All those months of feeling powerless catching up with her all at once, a storm pushing back against his force, blowing it down like a house of cards.
“I hate you, Shaun Henry-Deacon.”
These are the last words she ever says to him. Maybe the last ones he ever hears. And in that moment, she means them with every piece of her soul, but they still punch a hole inside her.
Then she turns and swings the skateboard as hard as she can.
A picture of it spinning sideways in the dark.
It flies out the hole in the wall and disappears, Shaun’s blood-laced hand reaching after it. “You fucking idiot!” he spits. The last three words she hears him say.
He gets up and goes to the fire escape, shaking the blood from his arm. She has seen him go out that broken door a hundred times. Monkeying down the busted escape, thrum of rusted metal under his hands. He doesn’t think twice about it now, just leaps straight out into the black. And she just stands there, letting him go.
34
R
Ré dreams of a bright yellow bonfire. Hot sparks dotting the night sky. At his feet lies a red flannel shirt. He lifts it in his fingers; it’s soft and sopping wet. He thinks, Evelyn, but there is no one else here and no sign that there ever was but for the shirt.
When he balls up the flannel in his fist, a sharp, familiar smell meets his nostrils, and fear slides like a blade in his gut. The shirt is soaked with blood.
He sees his shadow half crouched by the fire. He asks it, “What have you done?”
But it only asks him the same question.
Beyond the fire is a ring of trees, and he knows he’s been here before, in this very spot, up to his knees in snow. Starving. Choking. Between the black tree trunks, white eyes stare. His heart skips like a fly on water, bright ripples vibrating in his veins, making him shiver though the fire is warm.
So here it is, he thinks. This I where I fall. Where I can’t fight anymore.
There is no snow now, but it’s as if the ghost of it is still there. A thin red trail stands out as cleanly as if there were snow to stand on. He swallows hard. The dream has never taken him this far before. He’s always woken long before this part.
This time, he follows the trail.
When the white eyes see him coming, their owners turn and move deeper into the woods. Deer walking slowly on hind legs, hunched so their fur stands up at the shoulders, greasy and matted in small spikes, like soft armor.
He doesn’t try to catch up to them but doesn’t get left behind either. He can see his way by the moon, hear his way by the sound of antlers knocking on trees. A soft bone-orchestra, playing a path of hollow tocks, drawing him deeper into the woods.
As they cross an invisible line, the deer drop to their forefeet, shaking off their strange illusion of humanness. They are animals again, not creatures, not monsters. When he steps on a twig, they leap on spindly legs, ears twitching, and he can’t help but laugh, though it feels a little like crying. They seem so gentle now, not the fearful things he always dreams of. And if they’re taking him to the demon, they are breaking his heart.
From the corner of his eye he sees the woods thinning, sees train tracks and a pale blue light hanging high, but it’s not the moon. It’s an arc light.
He goes
