Then it stopped and all was silent again. But the presence remained there, watching, waiting. He could feel it in his gut, the realization he was being watched, eyes staring a hole through the tent. Jonathan took up his rifle and flashlight and moved slowly toward the front of the tent. The presence did not move or make a sound. As far as Jonathan could tell, it stood at the edge of the trees, where the forest met the rocky beach. It stood in silence and waited, and Jonathan waited with it, barely breathing, heart racing.
In the silence he heard a light and innocent voice: Daddy. Daddy, come find me.
He felt the same panic as the day Jacob wandered away from the house alone. It was like a hook pulling at his heart, overwhelming and desperate. He tried to tell himself it was not possible, that it was some trick of his imagination, a waking dream, a night terror of his own in the forest. But he felt the clammy cold of his skin; he felt the heft of his rifle and the cold of the air.
Daddy. Daddy, come find me.
Jonathan unzipped the tent. The empty night air blasted his face and he looked out toward the lake. There were four inches of snow on the ground, and it glowed with a soft, deathly light. The trees shot straight up in deep, black lines to the night sky. He looked at the dead fire and then beyond to the lake. It was out there, just beyond the limit of his sight. He heard something shift in the darkness.
Jonathan turned on the flashlight. The sallow circle of light rolled over the trees and the ground, capturing them for a moment in its pale eye and then letting them disappear back into the unknown.
Conner stood at the edge of the tree line, his skin dripping, cold and blue white. He did not seem to support his own weight. Instead, he looked like a marionette held upright by strings from the darkness above. His mouth hung wide open – far too wide – as if he could swallow a human head whole in his mouth. His jaw appeared broken, merely skin and sinews keeping it from falling to the ground. His clothes dripped with water from the lake. His eyes were dead white.
From the black hole of his unmoving mouth came Jacob’s voice: Daddy, do you see me now?
Jonathan’s skin ran with pinpricks, and the blood drained from his limbs like a cut artery.
In that moment, he could think of nothing; he could do nothing. He merely sat staring in wonder, paralyzed by the sight, terrified at what he beheld. As he stared, the skin on Conner’s face seemed to slip just a little, threatening to slide off and fall to the ground.
“You aren’t real,” Jonathan said. “You’re only a disguise.”
The thing that was Conner moved sudden and fast. It bent toward him and stretched out its arms in a fit of rage, animated and life-like, and from its mouth came that ghastly high-pitched scream, full of all the terror and pain and helplessness of the infinite. The sound overwhelmed him, so loud he felt his eardrums would burst. It seemed nothing on Earth could create such a sound.
With sudden swiftness, it bounded off into the night faster than any deer Jonathan had ever seen. Its strange limbs moved awkwardly, pulled up and down by some unseen force. It disappeared into the trees. Jonathan could hear it bounding – its leaps and footfalls – as it faded into the darkness until all was silent again.
Jonathan sat there in the night, unable to move. He waited and listened in the deep and heavy night with only his breath and heartbeat.
Then something much softer and quieter whispered in his ear.
Daddy. Daddy, come find me.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Jonathan sat outside the tent, his eyes felt bloodshot, sinking into hollows, his skin cold and breath weak in the morning light. He still clutched his rifle and flashlight in his arms. As the air brightened and sunlight touched his eyes, he moved his arms slightly, afraid to turn his head and see the corpse of his friend dancing in the trees. The whole night he sat frozen, staring out at the lake, waiting for what came next. During that time, he thought of nothing; it seemed his mind spun, but no conscious thought stepped out from the chaos. It was just a swirling mess of visions of his family and friends, nightmares and questions, warped by the impossible things he saw and heard in the night. It taunted him.
The morning sun lit the top of the mountain, which glowed bright and white in the fresh snow, and slowly the light began to roll down the mountainside to the shadow of the valley in which he sat waiting, watching. The sky was clear now, but the air smelled of snow and burning wood. In the west, clouds rose like floating kingdoms.
Then, like a stone statue suddenly coming to life, he stood. A light covering of frost shook itself free from his coveralls, and he walked down to the water’s edge. He stared out across the lake to the tops of the mountains glowing in the sun, and he wondered how different the world looked from the top of the mountain or the bottom of the lake.
Then a voice from behind him: “Whose tracks are these?”
Jonathan turned and saw Michael standing outside the tent, looking sunken and withdrawn. His pale eyes seemed distressed, seemed to look through Jonathan to the lake where his brother
