But I couldn’t look away from the picture on the wall.
It seemed impossible that I would have found this place after all this time.
It couldn’t be real.
I was dreaming.
I was somewhere far away from here, and I was dreaming.
Except….
Except there was still blood on my hand from where I’d cut my palm.
The pain had been biting.
I reached up and touched the frozen boy’s face.
Something moved behind me.
I whirled around in the gathering darkness.
There was nothing there.
Not even Kelly, the ghost that he was.
Except….
Except there came the smell of an old-growth forest, and try as I might, I couldn’t convince myself that it came from the woods around the house.
It was soaked into the floor. The walls. The ceiling. I sucked in a great breath, letting it fill my lungs, and as the moon called to me, as it whispered run little prince it’s time to run it’s time to run and sing your songs, I knew I was close, closer than I’d been in almost a year.
I thought of him as he was when we’d run in the forest together, just the two of us.
The way he’d lay against me in the grass, head on my chest.
I took a step toward the open doorway.
“Hello?” I croaked out. “Are you….”
I took another step, and the forest was alive, it was so fucking present, and there was blood on my hand, a red smear that told me I was here, that I was here and this was real. All of this was real.
Another step.
I swore I heard the low growl of an angry wolf.
Another step and I was almost to the door. Almost to the ruined porch.
And then—
The rumble of engines.
I blinked slowly.
Lights through the trees.
Headlights.
There were vehicles coming down the road. A bunch of them, by the sound of it.