I clenched my teeth and ignored her. I had to. If I listened to what she was saying I was going to punch her in the face. I turned and kept walking, now dragging Krista with me.
“Thirteen…fourteen…fifteen…sixteen.”
“Nonononononono,” Krista babbled, shaking her head. “No, please. No.”
“…come out, come out, wherever you are!”
“…never ever thought it would end this way…”
“…closer, dearie, just a little closer…”
A bony finger swiped my ear from top to bottom, tucking stray hairs behind it. I felt a chill down my back and almost squealed. Krista planted her feet and leaned backward, doing her best to root me to the spot. Luckily, I was stronger. I closed my eyes and took the last two steps, yanking on her arm.
“Seventeen,” I said. “Eighteen.”
We stopped. Krista shook from head to foot. I could hear her teeth chattering. I gathered every bit of courage I had left within me, my heart pounding so hard I could feel little else, and turned to the left. There was no sign of Fisher. Whatever he thought he might save us from, it wasn’t going to happen. We were on our own. Hopefully he’d just keep walking and find himself right back where he’d started, as I had two days ago.
“Roreeeee…” Krista called out. Sweat had pooled between our palms and turned to ice.
“Don’t worry. Everything is gonna be fine.”
This was for my family. This was for my dad and Darcy and Aaron. As much as I hated to think of him at that moment, I closed my eyes and conjured up a picture of Steven Nell, gasping and sputtering as he took his very last breaths. I held my own breath and whispered, “I took another person’s life.”
There was a loud bang, like the sound of a dump truck lowering its metal lift to the ground without care. The bridge beneath us shook. Krista somehow tightened her grip on me, squeezing my fingers until I thought my hand would shatter. The mist in front of us started to move, haphazardly at first, like smoke being waved off a fire, but it quickly organized itself into a vortex, swirling before us like a sideways tornado opening its mouth. We stood there, but we felt no wind.
I was staring at an endless depth of blackness, darker than anything I’d seen on Earth, and I was sure that I had been duped. I was certain that at any second, something cold and gray and slim
y was going to reach out and grab me and Krista and drag us into hell.
She was going to spend eternity suffering in the Shadowlands, and it was my fault.
“Krista,” I said through my teeth. “Run.”
“What?” she whined.
I was about to turn and push her as hard as I could back into the mist, but then—right then—I heard her. Her voice was so close she couldn’t have been more than two feet away.
“Rory! You came!”
“Darcy!”
I reached into the darkness—reached toward the voice—and my fingers found cloth. A sleeve. I dug my fingernails into it as hard as I could and pulled. I had her. I had Darcy. Then the person I was clinging to appeared, and it wasn’t Darcy.
It was Steven Nell.
He looked exactly the same as he had the last time I’d seen him. The stringy dark hair falling over his forehead. The thick glasses perched on his nose. The cruel smile on his thin, pale lips.
Suddenly time stopped. I felt the blade of his knife in my stomach as if it had just happened. Saw the blood in my sister’s hair. My father’s body crumbling to the ground. It was as if every nightmare I’d had for the past month was suddenly coming to life in vivid, horrifying, excruciating detail.
“Rory Miller,” he said gleefully. “You’ve come home.”
Suddenly I knew. He wanted to do it again. He was going to do it again. He was going to murder us, slaughter us, over and over and over again for as long as the universe existed. Until the end of time. He was looking forward to it.
I let go of him and ran. Right into Krista.
She looked up at me, her blue eyes dark with rage.
“Krista?” I whispered.