by Rix, Dan
“Drive,” I croaked, my throat dry and tight. “DRIVE.”
But when I turned to check on Zoe, she was gone.
Her seat was empty.
Her door hung ajar, wobbling on its hinges.
“Zoe!” I spun wildly to see where’d she gone and glimpsed her back as she ducked into the trees, and my heart lurched. “Zoe, come back!”
She was heading in the same direction as the Glipper.
Oh God.
“Where the fuck’s she think she’s going?” Jace muttered.
“Nowhere good.” I unbuckled my seatbelt and vaulted over the door, then sprinted into the woods after her.
“Remi—NO—shit!” Malcolm shouted, but my adrenaline was doing the thinking.
“Zoe, wait!” I called again.
I dragged out my cell phone and jabbed the screen, slowing just long enough to tap open my flashlight app. The sudden blaze blinded me.
Blinking away the spots, I barged between two shrubs, stepped out into empty air and, with a shriek, began sliding down a hill, my feet crashing through tall grass and snagging on roots until I sprawled face-first on a muddy riverbank at the bottom.
I leapt to my feet and panned my flashlight, catching the gleam of her white tennis shoes before she vanished into foliage.
“Zoe, wait!” I plunged into the underbrush, determined not to let her out of my sight. “Where are you going?”
She crashed through a sapling, which whipped back and slapped my face.
“Ugh, Zoe, stop!” I yelled.
But she wasn’t listening. She was on autopilot, driven toward only God knew what.
Driven by God knew what.
The Glipper.
It could be anywhere—ahead of me, behind me, closing in from the sides.
I needed to get to her before it did.
When I lost sight of her, I dropped the flashlight to her footprints, stamped clearly in the mud. Leading the way.
Up ahead, I could hear the crash of brush, her panting, her grunts.
I was gaining on her.
There! Between the gaps, I glimpsed fragments of her sweater, flashes of her blonde hair, not ten feet ahead of me.
I burst into a clearing, right on her heels, and caught one final glimpse of her torso. “Zoe—”
But she was gone.
I pulled to a stop, gasping for breath, jerked my head left and right.
Gone.
The forest grew deathly quiet.
But she was right here, I was practically on her, I fucking had her.
I spun in frustration, shining the light around the clearing, where shadows shrank back and cowered among the underbrush.
“Zoe!” I screamed, my voice echoing in the night.
I stomped across the clearing. “Zoe!”
Not a cricket stirred.
But I fucking had her, I was right on her.
Breathing heavily, I dropped the flashlight to her footprints, gouged deep in the mud, and followed them from the edge of the clearing to the center.
Where they simply ended.
Chapter 17
In the bushes next to me, a shadow flitted among the branches.
I jerked my phone toward the movement, but the puny light only deepened the shadows, made them darker, blacker, until they seemed to be crawling out of the very ground itself.
The darkness slithered through the grass, circling the clearing, closing in on me.
I backed away, my frantic breath raspy in my throat.
It’s still here.
Zoe had been snatched out of thin air.
Snatched by the Glipper . . . just like Vincent.
Just like all of us would be.
As I stared, horrified, the shadow leapt to a thicket right in front of me, then began to rise, oozing up through the branches like black tar.
My breath froze in my throat.
A blazing light came on behind me, turning night to day. The shadow shrank back from the glare.
I turned, squinting, to see Malcolm step into the clearing, holding a handheld spotlight.
“Time to go, Remi.”
He gripped my waist and steered me out of the clearing.
Back at the car, we found Jace lounging in the passenger seat, drumming his fingers on the door.
When we emerged without Zoe, he stopped and his eyes darted to the woods behind us. “Where is she? Where’d she go?”
“Gone.” Malcolm pried my fingers from his—only then did I realize I’d been clinging to his hand—and, after depositing me, trembling, in my seat, went around to his door.
He pulled back onto Ridgeway Drive.
“What do you mean gone?” Jace peered backward as we sped away. “We’re just going to leave her there?”
“We’ll call the police, tell them what happened. But first we’re getting the hell out of here.”
“Will they remember her?” I asked weakly. “They didn’t remember Vincent.”
“Jace, call her mom.”
“I’m not calling her mom. You call her mom.”
“I’m driving, numchuck.”
“Remi, you want to call Zoe’s—” Turning around to ask me, Jace took one look at my face and thought better of it. “Er, never mind. I’ll call her.”
He raised his phone to his cheek.
“Hi, uh, is this Mrs. Caldwell?” he said. “So . . . we have some bad news. Zoe just ran into the woods and vanished.”
I couldn’t believe it, I was still in shock.
Zoe. Gone.
My teeth began to chatter.
“Yeah . . . yeah, we’re calling the police now.” Jace hung up. “Well, her mom’s freaking out, so she remembers her—and her number’s still in my cell phone—so that’s different than last time. Here, I’ll call the police.”
While he made the calls, I watched the forest slide by, its deep, impenetrable blackness more menacing than ever.
What secrets did that forest hide?
What creature was on the loose out there?
A being that was only shadow, that could erase people midstride, erase the very memory of them, so it was like they never existed at all.
Another shudder racked my body. What in God’s name were we up against?
“Radiation poisoning,” Malcolm said abruptly.
“What?” Jace and I both said.
“The symptoms Zoe had—vomiting, ulcers, disorientation, thinking she was telekinetic and all that bullshit—I’m wondering if she had radiation poisoning. You know, the flash, whatever that was. If we all got hit by radiation.”
We were silent as that sank in.
“Just a theory,” he said.
I didn’t want to think about that.
Could that explain why she’d been so off lately? Or why I’d felt so off, like there was something wrong deep in my bones?
Just then, Jace got a call from officer Schapiro.
“Apparently,” he said, hanging up, “Schapiro just heard from Special Agent Meyer. The DIA’s taking over this site, too. We’re to direct any questions about Zoe’s disappearance to them.”
“The fuck we are,” Malcolm muttered.
No sooner had he spoken than a convoy of Humvees roared past us going the opposite direction.
It scarcely happened ten minutes ago, and already the Defense Department was moving in. Shutting down the local police.
“How?” I said. “Who do we even call?”
“He gave me a phone number.”
I typed the number Jace read off into my phone.
“Special Agent Meyer,” the DIA agent answered.
“Hi, uh, our friend just disappeared—”
“We’re looking into that as we speak,” he said.
Malcolm, who had driven us into town, now pulled in front of Jace’s house.
I jogged behind them to his door, squeezing the phone to my cheek. “Do you know what’s going on? I was there, and there was this thing chasing her—”
“We’re looking into
that, ma’am.”
Following Malcolm and Jace into the basement, I asked over the phone, “Do you know what made that flash? Do you know where they go, when they’re taken?”
“Like I said, we’re looking into that,” said Meyer.
“Do you know anything?”
“We’ll contact you if we find anything, Miss Weaver. Good night.” He hung up.
I collapsed on the couch and screamed into my palms. “Ugh, they won’t tell us anything.”
“Or they don’t know anything?” Malcolm said.
“Remi, did you see what happened to her the moment she vanished?” Jace asked.
“No, I just caught glimpses of her through a bush, and then she was gone.”
Mrs. Johnson poked her head into the basement. “I just got off the phone with Zoe’s mom. She’s missing.”
“I know, Mom. We’re dealing with that right now.”
“Do you know what happened—?”
“No, Mom. Tell her mom the DIA’s handling the case. Here, tell her to call this number.” He scribbled it out on the back of a magazine and tossed it to his mom, who retreated from the room, looking stunned.
“Something’s different about this,” Malcolm said, squeezing his jaw. “No one remembers Vincent, but everyone remembers Zoe.”
“Unless the memory erasure hasn’t happened yet.” I glanced around the basement, which suddenly seemed about to cave in. “Maybe all this gets erased . . . maybe this happened last time, too, only everything got reset.”
“She was saying she was dead,” Malcolm muttered, lost in thought. “Why was she saying she was dead?”
Jace pressed his fist to his mouth. “Guys, I think it’s time I told you something.”
Malcolm and I both looked at him.
He blew out a hiss of air, and slowly, met our gazes. “I remember dying in the car crash. I did die.”
I blinked, a wave of chills climbing my back. “You . . . you remember dying?”
He nodded. “I wasn’t wearing my seatbelt. I went through the window, headfirst into that branch.”
“Maybe you just got knocked out?” I offered hopefully.
“No, he’s right,” Malcolm said. “We all woke up with our injuries. He would have woken up with a head injury. And that other body did have a head injury.”
“I know I died,” said Jace. “I don’t know how I know, but I know.”
“But you don’t feel dead now, do you?” I said, remembering Zoe’s haunting words.
This isn’t the world of the living. I’m dead. I don’t exist anymore.
“No, I feel fine,” he said. “That’s why I was so sure it was a dream when you guys thought it wasn’t . . . because I remember something else, too.”
I leaned forward, hanging on to his every word, trying to hear over the loud percussion of my heart.
“After I died, I could still see my body,” he said, “but it looked two-dimensional. Everything looked two-dimensional—the trees, the sky, the ground, my parents’ car—it looked like it was all being projected on a ceiling above me, just out of reach. And I was slowly falling away from that ceiling.” He shrugged. “Then I woke up in my bed.”
Hearing him, my heart felt strangely heavy. For some reason, that sense of wrongness I’d felt earlier came back to me.
Both times I’d felt it—before Vincent vanished, and before Zoe vanished—and I’d felt hints of it in between, too. Brief echoes of that same bottomless despair. Like the very fabric of reality was subtly off, subtly corrupted.
And I suspected it wasn’t just a fleeting emotion, but a symptom of something bigger, something going on with all of us.
Something much bigger.
That night, whatever had caused that flash, it had done something bad to us.
Malcolm’s ringing cell phone interrupted our silence.
“Someone better have some good news—” But when he glanced at the screen, he went deathly still.
I leaned closer. “Who’s calling?”
The phone continued to ring in his hand. He merely stared.
“What, Malcolm? Who’s calling?” said Jace impatiently.
“It’s Vincent,” he said quietly.
Chapter 18
“Put it on speaker . . . put it on speaker!” Jace shouted, rushing to Malcolm’s side, while I squeezed against his other side.
It was Vincent’s name on the caller ID, Vincent’s face grinning up from the screen.
Vincent was calling us.
Holy crap, Vincent was calling us!
My pulse took off like a jackhammer.
“Answer it!” I cried, clutching Malcolm’s rock-hard arm.
“Dude, put it on speaker,” Jace continued to urge.
“Both of you shut it. I will do the talking.”
Malcolm accepted the call, tapped the button for speakerphone, and placed the phone carefully on the coffee table in front of us.
Then he cleared his throat and said, in a clear, deep voice, “Vincent.”
The phone emitted a hiss, a burst of static.
“Vincent, can you hear me?” Malcolm said.
“Vincent, are you al—?” I started, before Malcolm jerked up his palm to silence me.
The sound on the other end began to distort, throbbing and rippling like audio feedback.
Then I heard it.
Beneath this static, a faraway voice slipped in and out of hearing.
Vincent.
My heart leapt, and I squeezed Malcolm’s arm even tighter.
He gently pried my hand off. “Vincent, where are you?”
Amidst the crackles came Vincent’s ghostly reply, echoing as if he was calling out from the bottom of a deep well.
“. . . real . . . uestion . . . are . . . ou?”
Malcolm glanced between me and Jace. “Anybody catch that?”
We shook our heads.
“Vincent,” Malcolm said calmly, “we need to know where you are. Can you tell us where you are?”
We leaned forward to listen to his next reply.
“. . . right . . . ere . . . een here . . . whole . . . ime . . .”
Jace glanced at us, scrunched up his eyebrows. “Did he just say he’s been here the whole time?”
I felt the back of my neck bristle.
It sure sounded like he said that.
Malcolm leaned over the phone. “Vincent, give me a location. Where. Are. You?”
“. . . at . . . ouse . . . ere are . . . ou . . . uys?”
“Vincent, we can’t hear you. You have to speak up.”
“. . . mi . . . oom . . . at . . . ouse!”
“In his room, at his house.” Jace frowned. “That’s weird.”
“We checked your house, Vincent,” Malcolm said loudly. “Your room’s gone. It is literally not there anymore. And FYI, your mom says you died when you were seven.”
“No, at . . . emi’s . . . ouse . . . Remi’s house . . .”
I shared a surprised look with Malcolm. “My house? He’s at my house?”
“That’s what he said—Vincent, listen, what happened the night of the car crash?”
“. . . was a . . . atter . . . anti . . . lation . . . vent . . .”
“A what?”
“. . . matter . . . anti . . . atter . . . nihilation . . . vent . . .”
“The hell?” Malcolm muttered.
Jace snapped his fingers. “A matter-antimatter annihilation event. That’s what the homeless guy said, too—”
The cell phone made a spooky hissing noise, like wind howling, and Vincent’s voice faded into static.
Then the line went dead.
Call ended.
We stood for a moment in stunned silence.
“He’s alive,” I blurted out. “He’s at my house. He’s alive.”
“Possibly.” Malcolm redialed Vincent’s number, but got the three beeps and the intercept message. With a grim expression, he tucked the phone back in his pocket.
I stared at him. “W
hat do you mean possibly? We heard him . . . you heard him. He’s at my house.”
For the first time in ages, I felt a whisper of hope.
He was there right now, waiting for us. I could totally picture what he’d say.
Guys, are you daft? I’ve been here the whole time!
And he would tell us how to rescue Zoe.
“Malcolm, we heard him.” I said.
“We heard something.”
“That was Vincent! You’re saying that wasn’t Vincent?”
“He said he was at your house. We were at your house, Remi. There was nothing there. So where’s he been this whole time?”
“Well, maybe he’s there now. We can at least check.”
His nostrils flared, but he conceded with a nod. “We can check.”
He straightened up and swiped his car keys off the coffee table.
“Out of curiosity, if you don’t think he’s alive,” I said, “then what is he? How was he talking to us?”
Malcolm chewed his lower lip, but didn’t answer.
“You think he was calling from beyond the grave? You think we talked to his ghost?”
“Was that even him?” Malcolm shook his head. “Was that Zoe just now in the car? Is that even Jace?” He gestured toward Jace. “I don’t know.”
But Jace wasn’t listening.
He was staring past us at the wall, his face drained of all color.
“Guys . . . guys,” he whispered.
I turned toward where he was looking.
The adrenaline jolt hit me like a shockwave, and suddenly my heart was pounding in my chest, my nerves screaming in my ears, a scream dying in my throat.
Rising the full height of the wall behind Jace’s amplifier, watching us, was the shadow of a man that was not cast by anything.
But no man.
Its legs and arms were much too long, its torso squashed by comparison, its head too narrow.
The fluorescent bulbs overhead sputtered.
We stared at the Glipper, and the Glipper stared back at us.
Chapter 19
“No one . . . move,” Malcolm breathed.
I doubt I could have moved anyway, frozen as I was in terror.
It was here.
It had come for us.
Like Vincent, like Zoe, we would be snatched out of thin air.
Yet, as we stood there, still as statues, it just seemed to be watching us. Could it not see us?