“What is this place?”
“I have no idea, but if the Gray Man brought Bea here, I’m sure it’s not anything good,” I replied, my voice barely more than a breath.
Directly across from where we had spilled out of the vent, a door was set into the wall. It looked old and damp, like everything else around us —a door built from wide wooden planks, and held together with rusting metal hardware. In place of a doorknob, there was a heavy metal ring. Nova and I looked at the door for a long, silent moment, and then turned to look at each other.
She shrugged. “It’s the only way through, unless you want to crawl back up that vent,” she said.
I wasn’t even sure I could crawl back up the vent again, and anyway, I wasn’t turning back now. With a deep breath, I stepped forward, took hold of the metal ring, and pulled.
“Help me!” I gasped, and Nova leaped forward. Shoulder to shoulder we grabbed onto the ring, and pulled together. The door dragged grudgingly open with a grating, grinding noise against the floor.
With my heart pounding like a jackhammer in my chest, I stepped into the room beyond.
20
The word “room” was entirely wrong for the place in which we now found ourselves. A room was a box, straight walls, a ceiling, a floor. This place was a cavern—a space hollowed by the gentle but relentlessly greedy fingers of the ocean tide, weathering the rock away, millimeter by millimeter, over centuries. The floor was damp stone, polished smooth by the sand dragged over it by the undulating surf. The walls were pock-marked and twisted, a creation of jagged edges and sharp crevices. The air was briny and moist, moving in and out of my lungs like a tide as I gasped, trying to take it all in —to understand.
At the center of the room was what once might have been a stone dais, but was so worn down and broken apart, that it was now only an echo of itself. And upon the remains of the dais was a crumbled pile of ancient stone, built up into two piles, about waist high. It had once been something taller and grander, something… mystical. It was more knowledge than feeling, somehow. I felt no surprise or confusion upon seeing it. It was as though some deep part of me expected to see it. It felt at once like something humans had made, and somehow alsosomething endemic to the location, forming from the ground the way mountains did.
But it wasn’t only its physical form that drew my eye to the stones. There was something absolutely magnetic about it. It drew my gaze, and I didn’t know how to look away. It was as though it was calling to me, over and over again, asking a question in a language I couldn’t comprehend, and yet was desperate to answer. I took an involuntary step toward it, but Nova grabbed me.
The feeling of her frantic fingers on my arm was like the breaking of a spell. I tore my eyes from the dais, and once I had, everything else about the room came rushing back to me. The cold, the damp, the sound of dripping water. Nova wasn’t looking at me. Instead, her gaze was fixed on the far side of the room, where two figures stood. The first was Luca, his posture relaxed, hands thrust into his pockets, an easy smile on his face. The second was Bea, looking frightened and withdrawn, her arms wrapped tightly around herself. The sight of them wrenched a cry of relief from my throat.
“Bea!” I cried.
“Wren!” The reply echoed around the space, so that it took me a moment to understand that both Luca and Bea had answered. They’d both said my name at the same time.
“Are you all right? I was so worried!” I said.
“Of course, I’m all right,” the answer came again; and again, both Bea and Luca answered.
I started forward, but Nova grabbed my arm again, holding me back.
“What are you doing?” I asked, trying to shake her off, but she held me fast.
“Something’s wrong,” she whispered. “Something is very wrong.”
“What are you talking ab?—”
Nova held up a finger, silencing me mid-question. Then she turned to Bea and Luca and said, “What is this place?”
Both of them simply stared at me, as though Nova hadn’t even spoken.
“Now you ask,” she whispered, nudging me.
“I don’t?—”
“Wren, just do it!”
I turned to Bea and Luca. “What is this place?” I asked.
“I don’t know! I’m scared!” came the answer, again from both mouths at the same time, in an identical intonation. Bea’s expression matched her words, but Luca’s was all wrong. He was still smiling, still looking as cool and casual as he had when I’d first seen him lounging in the ticket booth, upstairs.
“Do you see it?” Nova asked.
“I… what is it?” I asked, keeping my voice low now, even as fear began to skitter up my spine.
“I don’t know, but something’s up,” Nova said. “They only answer you, and they only answer together. It’s like I’m not even here. Does that seem normal to you?”
