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Like a zombie.

He grits his teeth. Not a zombie. Not Ellie either, thankfully. His night vision has kicked in enough for him to see that there isn’t a body lying on the ground. Just a pile of fallen leaves.

So what is he hearing? A branch moaning, and he’s misidentifying the direction? Or is there an injured animal under those leaves?

He wants to just walk away. Get back to the road. Get back to Ellie. That’s safe. He could laugh at the thought, remind himself he only met her a couple of hours ago, but it doesn’t matter. She feels like safety. Whatever’s happening, he’s not alone.

He should just get back to her and ignore whatever’s making that sound. But he doesn’t know which way the road is, and even if he thought he did before, he’s hopelessly turned around now.

Also, if he walks away and he can’t find her, he’ll keep thinking about that sound. Wondering if it somehow could have been her.

He steps toward the heap. It’s gone silent now, and as he moves closer, he can hear the groan of tree branches overhead. That’s probably all it’d been. He was just so discombobulated that he thought the noise came from the ground.

He reaches out with the crowbar and flips over the leaves—

A hand grabs the bar. A rotting hand, pale flesh and bone, and Henry lets go of the crowbar and hits a tree, half falling before he scrambles to his feet and …

And the crowbar is lying there, beside a pale fungus ripped from the ground.

That is not what he saw.

He saw a hand. It grabbed the crowbar. A rotting hand.

That isn’t possible. He’s freaking out because of that fungus he’d touched.

What had Ellie said?

I’m seeing things.

That’s what he’s doing now. He’s trying to stay calm about the accident, about hitting Ellie’s car, about her being injured, about that weird dive bar and that weird woman and—

It’s his imagination shifting into hyperdrive, as Raine would say when shadows spooked her in the yard.

Is it? The voice of doubt snakes up again, but he squeezes his eyes shut and silences it.

He slowly bends for the crowbar, his gaze on the fungus, which remains a fungus. Because that’s what it has always been. He poked into leaves and the end caught on that fungus, and he ripped it out and—

“Henry!”

He grabs the crowbar and straightens. “Ellie!”

Silence.

That was her. He knows it was. “Ellie! Where are you?”

A one-second pause. Then, “Over here!” she calls, and he starts jogging.

TENELLIE

Henry has disappeared. I pull back, breath catching, flashlight sweeping from side to side as if I’m somehow missing him.

I’m not missing him. I blinked, and he vanished.

“Henry!” I shout.

The forest is still and silent, and that is not possible. He was there. Right there, and it’s as if he were a video projection that got stuck, freezing in place and then disappearing altogether.

I run forward. Yes, my brain screams for me to stop, do not go into the damn forest where someone just vanished. But I can’t listen. I just run, heart hammering as I shout his name.