“What do you say? About a mile?” Michael said.
“Mile and a half,” Conner said.
“We should have been walking back by now,” Jonathan said.
Michael looked at the sky. “Snow is coming.”
They searched again for animal tracks around the tent and near the coffin, but there was nothing. Jonathan tried for a cell phone signal, but it was gone.
“We should just bury it here,” he said.
“With what? We left the shovels back in the Gulch,” Conner said.
“Fine. Then just leave it and go,” Jonathan said.
“Just out in the open? No. We finish this. Stick to the plan.”
“Are we even going to talk about what happened last night?”
“I don’t know what happened last night. I don’t know what that noise was. But what I remember most is you acting insane.”
“I heard something.”
“We all heard something. An animal, the wind, doesn’t matter.” Conner picked up one side of the case. “Let’s get on with it. Mile and a half and we’re done. We can be back by nightfall.”
Jonathan looked back over the meadow to the Gulch and shook his head. It was cold, even through his coveralls. Beyond the mountains to the west the sky seemed to be building toward something; there was a gray haze where the deep blue disappeared into a fog. He walked to the other side of the box. His legs were sore and he walked slow and stiff. He picked up the side and tried to walk and then put it down to catch his breath. “It’s heavy as hell.”
“We’re just tired, is all,” Conner said.
Jonathan waited a moment and then picked it up again, and, together with the weight of his pack, clothes and rifle, tried to start walking with Conner. Their steps were awkward. The case bumped into the side of his knee, the same raw and bruised spot as the day before, and he became angry again. They walked down the slope toward the lake. Gravity pulled them through their steps. They walked together like a broken animal, stumbling, hobbling down the hill. The long grass scraped against the underside of the case and moved around them, and it sounded like a crowd of people speaking in hushed tones.
He tried to hear it. He tried to make words out of the long, rustling grass the way one might try to discern conversation in a crowded room. The sound seemed to come from everywhere, carried down from the mountains on the cold, open breeze. He stared at the tree line; long, broken fingers, a maze of pale trunks and branches, reached up to claw at the distant sun. He heard the whisper of the grass against the plastic case again. It sounded like the voice of a child, and he listened harder.
He looked at Michael, but Michael was staring into the trees. He looked at Conner beside him, but his head was turned, looking into the distance. There were no faces, and he suddenly felt as if he were alone with this burden. Jonathan turned to look everywhere, to the whole expanse of field and mountains, but he saw nothing. The world seemed like a picture or a painting. It looked so unreal that, for a moment, he wondered if it was all an elaborate hoax, a maze for lab rats. The wind moved the trees and the tall grass. He reached out his hand to try to touch it, but there was only air and distance. The boy in the box shifted, sloshed to the other side, and the weight of it pulled him sideways.
The lake disappeared behind the tree line and Jonathan sweated in the cold sun. The dark trees rose up before them. They stopped at the edge of the field and waited, breathing heavily. The woods seemed to slide up to meet them, and they peered inside. The ground was rocky and covered with leaves and devoid of underbrush, which had choked and died long ago. The tree trunks were thicker and spread apart. Lichen grew patchworks on the bark. It smelled wet. The tall branches were thick and darkened the ground, and roots rolled above and beneath the surface, like thick snakes.
They weren’t walking now, but the whispering grew louder. It sounded familiar. They tried to look past the trees – another mile to the lake, but they waited, catching their breath before taking the final plunge. Jonathan thought of Thomas Terrywile in the box; the thought of dropping it into that lake forever suddenly terrified him more than being caught, than living with it.
The end somehow seemed worse. He wondered if there was an end.
Jonathan turned away from the trees and looked up toward the top of the field, to the ridge of the meadow, the sky pouring across the horizon, and saw a humanlike figure standing dark against the sky, staring down at them. From this distance it was a small, erect shadow, but he could see it. He could feel its eyes. He heard the whisper through the meadow, through the trees and through the box by his side. Something spread across its unseen face.
Jonathan tapped Michael and Conner and nodded up the slope. “About five hundred yards off.” They turned and looked. The wind pushed against them. Michael raised the rifle and looked through his scope. The figure at the top of the meadow did not move. Michael stared through the scope for a long time but kept his finger on the hilt.
“What is it?” Conner asked. Michael was silent. His face paled; the skin around his eyes softened as he opened his left eye and slowly lifted
