Asher’s eyes widened before darting away and he mumbled something inaudible.
Before Levi could ask him to repeat himself, a voice crackled through the earpiece: “Riverbend Ranger Station.”
“We’re at Restorations Mountain Lodge, all of the staff is missing—” Levi began.
“The fog’s up,” the voice cut him off. “How many of you are there?”
“Seven,” Levi said, angling the phone so Asher could hear. “There were eight. We need help.”
The person on the other end sighed.
“I’m sorry, son. We don’t come up when the fog’s on the mountain,” the ranger said. “I told the new management not to open in August. The guy running the place understood that after the CEO lady disappeared. He just retired—” The ranger sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry about your friend.”
“What can we do?” Asher asked.
“Wait. Look after your people. Stay inside. Stay together. Talk to each other — don’t let anyone go quiet.” His voice dropped. “You hear me? Don’t let anyone go quiet. If someone stops talking, you reach into them and you pull them back. That’s the only thing that works.”
“What happens if someone goes outside?” Levi asked, adjusting his grip on the phone as his palm began to sweat.
“Then they belong to the shepard. Don’t go outside.” The line went dead.
Levi set the phone down.
He ran the lounge back through his mind…Maddie hadn’t spoken since Tyler. Jasper wasn’t talking, and Jasper always talked. Elliot said nothing. The only people he heard speak at all were Zoe and Owen...
Levi was already moving. “We need to go back. Right now.”
The lounge door was closed.
“Wait, we shouldn’t—” Asher grabbed Levi’s shoulder.
Levi put his hand on the handle and the metal was cold. “You heard what the ranger said. They were all quiet when we left. We have to try.”
He pushed the door open and the sound hit him before the door was all the way back — a deafening crack that punched through his eardrums and sternum at the same time, and his hands were over his ears as he dropped into a crouch. His ears were ringing, a high thin note inside the bigger silence the gunshot had made of the room.
Asher hit the floor beside him.
Levi’s eyes tracked down.
Asher’s mouth was open. His eyes were open.No.One eye was open. The other half of his face was — wasn’t — Levi’s mind refused the shape of it for a full second, kept trying to assemble a face out of what was there, and what was there was a wet red cavity and something pale and soft against the floorboards spreading outward in a slow dark halo. A piece of skull sat on the rug an inch from Levi’s knee. Curved. Pink on the inside.
The smell arrived a second later — copper, and under the copper something cooked, gunpowder maybe, and under that the mineral wet of brain.
Asher never dies before me.
He looked up.
Owen stood in the center of the lounge with the hunting rifle from above the fireplace — the wall mount, the decorative piece, the thing nobody had checked because of course it wasn’t loaded, of course it was just there for the look of the place. Owen’s hands were shaking on it hard enough that the barrel made small jerky circles in the air. His glasses sat crooked on his nose, his eyes open too wide, and he was covered in blood.
Behind Owen the room arrived in pieces.
Jasper by the fire. On his back. Zoe slumped sideways on the couch, her cheek pressed into the cushion, hair fallen forward.Her hand hung off the edge. There was a dark line running from the cushion down her wrist and dripping, slow, onto the rug.Drip. Drip.The drips landed in a sound Levi’s ringing ears could somehow pick out.
Elliot by the wall, sitting up, almost. A knife was buried in his chest to the handle. His hands were in his lap, palms up, like he’d been about to ask a question.
Maddie on the floor by the couch. The mug of chamomile tea shattered beside her hand. The tea pooled on the ground and spread out toward something darker that was already there, the two stains meeting in a slow dark seam.
He did this while we were in the office.
