Kyla did the honors. She read aloud,
“?‘T and T. If you’re reading this, the ceremony has failed. I’m sorry I didn’t explain more—no time for it at this point. You two are now the stewards of this place. If we’re lucky, someone will come today, someone who has been brought here to continue the ceremony, and you must help them in whatever way they ask. In the meantime, you must prepare this place. Clean out the rooms and the luggage. Use the gas we set aside to fuel up the cars left behind by last night’s guests and drive them around the mountain, out of view. Be prepared. Things will probably be uglier for you than they were for us. That’s entropy. But everything depends on you. Maybe life itself. Don’t give anyone a chance to escape. Don’t deviate from any instructions you are given. And if you awaken tomorrow and things are the same, then that means the ceremony has succeeded. Life is safe.’?” The next part was underlined. “?‘If that’s happened, you must repeat everything you did the night before. Repeat every moment as perfectly as you can. You CANNOT risk letting it break.’?”
Ryan said, “The person who came today to repeat the ceremony—that was Sarah Powers, wasn’t it?”
Tabitha nodded. “Yes. Sarah came in the early afternoon, though she didn’t tell us much either. I think she was terrified. We all were. All Sarah wanted was a dinner plate and a box of matches, and she asked that I bring her some food around eight o’clock. Then she went to the old house out back. She was there until five thirty, when Mister Cross and Hunter walked in from the road.” Tabitha looked between Ethan and Kyla. “That first night, and all the nights that followed, you two never met, not really. In all the original nights, Miss Hewitt and Fernanda arrived in their Malibu and shut themselves up inside their room. Mister Cross and Hunter came much later and did the same. Everyone came running when I found the body and lost my head. Everyone came to the office, and Thomas and I—we made a rash decision.”
Ryan said, “Y’all wanted to find out who killed her. You made up some bullshit story about having a place to hide when really you just wanted revenge. Or at least some sort of satisfaction.”
Of all things, Tabitha smiled. It was clearly a relief, after God knew how long, to come clean.
“Yes. In many ways, it was Thomas’s idea. He was indignant.A crime had been committed on our land. I was just frightened. I thought that with Sarah dead, the ceremony would never take place. I thought we’d failed. That none of it mattered because the world would end that night. So Thomas decided we should get revenge, like you say. He wanted to torment the killer. Scare them. We invented the ultimatum about having a place of safety, for all the good it did us. That first night and the nights that followed, nothing seemed to change. You all did the rational thing and barricaded yourselves in your rooms.” Tabitha hesitated. “For all the good it didyou.”
Kyla said, “Jack Allen came that night, didn’t he? At midnight on the dot?”
“Yes. Originally, I think Thomas came up with the idea of making midnight the ultimatum’s deadline out of a… a dramatic flourish. Something to unsettle you all. Unnerve you. We had no idea that Jack Allen would come that night. We had no ideahowhe could have come, seeing as we’d left him in 1955. And even though he hadn’t aged more than a day in the intervening years, something had happened to him. He was different. He’d gone mad.”
“And he killed everyone when he got here,” Kyla said. “Just like he did last night.”
“I’m not sure.” Tabitha swallowed. “Thomas and I were the first to go.”
The light flickered over their heads again. Once more, at the edge of his vision, Ethan imagined he saw the shape of a man watching him from the cafe’s window.
He refused to look.
Kyla said, “But why? What does Jack Allen gain from killing all of us?”
“I don’t know. Truly. Just like I don’t know how he went from 1955 to now without aging a day. But he’s come every night since, at midnight on the dot. And just like us, he’s done the same thing over and over and over again.”
“Because of this letter from your dad,” Kyla said. “Even though it means you and your brother had to die every night, you’ve repeated everything as precisely as you can.”
“Yes.Somethingabout it clearly worked. We awoke the next day and found the motel just the same. And so we did it again. And again.And again.” Tabitha swallowed as another moan shook the cafe. “We went rather out of our heads for a while there, I think. Even with all the blood, it seemed like the right course of action. Look at what Father wrote at the bottom of the page.”
Ethan and Kyla scanned the letter again. There, written in a cramped hand near the bottom corner, was a short line, written even faster than the rest.
Kyla read it aloud, “?‘Remember: death sustains it.’?”
Ethan went very still. Ryan rose from his stool, anxious like a schoolboy stuck too long at a desk. He said, “The fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“That line is the great point of contention between my brother and myself. Thomas believes ‘it’ refers to ceremony. He thinks that the death—all of this death, from Sarah to us, and yourselves—he believes it necessary to sustain the ceremony. Thomas thinks that Sarah Powers isn’t the person Father referred to in his letter, the person who will come to continue the ceremony. Thomas thinks the person responsible for continuing the loop, perpetuating the ceremony—he thinks Father was referring to Jack Allen himself.”
“But that’s crazy,” Kyla said.
“Is it?” Tabitha said. “Somethingclearly worked that first night. And whatever our disagreements, Thomas and I do concur on one point: this cycle, this horrible night that repeats again and again, is serving to keep Te’lo’hi sealed away.”
“So where’s the contention?” Ethan said.
“?‘Death sustains it.’ I don’t believe Father’s last line is an instruction. I think it’s a warning.” Tabitha looked at the letter herself. “These last few nights, I’ve come to fear that ‘it’ refers not to the ceremony, but to Te’lo’hi. I don’t think Jack Allen is a component of the ceremony: I think he’s a scourge. A danger. He seems to have devices of his own, and he’s clearly insane. I fear that death—all of this death, this endless violence—might be somehowfeedingTe’lo’hi, night after night. And I think it’s working. The ceremony is breaking down. Te’lo’hi is gaining the power to resist it.”
“Like the crack in our bathroom’s mirror,” Kyla said.
“Yes. And the sheer fact that you’ve remembered last night—that’s never happened before. I’m afraid Te’lo’hi is growing strongerwith every night of slaughter. And the longer we let the cycle of carnage repeat, it will simplycontinueto grow stronger until it’s able to break the ceremony entirely.”
“So we need to figure out a way to stop the violence,” Kyla said.
Ethan stared at the wall of liquor behind Tabitha, not seeing it. He felt something stir at the bottom of his mind. He saw a flash of silver light. For a moment, the pain in his head abated.
He recalled—
