Our Last Echoes

by Kate Alice Marshall

  “So forget yesterday. Both of you. Go home. Go back to your lives and be safe.” She looked at me. “I promise you I’ll find out what happened to your mother. I’m a professional, or as close to it as anyone can get. This doesn’t need to be on your shoulders.”

  “What doesn’t? What’s Sophia’s mother got to do with any of this?” Liam demanded.

  “I’m not leaving,” I told Abby. “And Liam does deserve to know.” Or at least, I wanted him to know. Abby had known about otherworldly things for years before she ever heard my name. It was easy for her to believe me. I wanted Liam to choose to believe me.

  Her lips thinned. Then she sighed, waving a hand in surrender. “Your call,” she said.

  I turned to Liam, and took a deep breath. “My name is Sophia Novak,” I said. “And I think I’m the Girl in the Boat.”

  EXHIBIT F

  Excerpt of a letter sent by Vanya Kapoor to Persephone Dryden

  AUGUST 7, 2003

  Many people think of crows and ravens as nearly the same bird, but only someone who has never seen a raven could make that mistake. The scale of them is incredible when you’re used to the more familiar little tricksters. Their feathers are so black and their bodies so enormous that you imagine if they spread their wings, you would see galaxies hidden beneath them, full of nebulae and distant, cold suns.

  When Joy’s little girl first saw Moriarty, she ran right up to him. Joy looked panicked, and I don’t blame her. He was nearly as big as the girl. But Sophie wasn’t afraid at all. She is obsessed with him, and he seems to return the affection. He’s always snapped at Liam, but he preens when Sophie tells him he’s pretty. Maybe Liam’s mistake is failing to appeal to his vanity. And it was thanks to Moriarty that we found the girl when she went missing last week.

  She was up at the research center with us, and then she wasn’t. Moriarty was missing too, and Joy and I were both frantic—her more than me, of course, though I’ll confess it was a close call. The mist had come in hard and thick, and it was dusk.

  It was Misha who found Sophie, thanks to Moriarty’s calling. He brought her back bundled in his huge coat, fast asleep, and Moriarty flapped up behind her. The bird seemed annoyed by our relief. He seemed to say, What’s the fuss? I was looking after her.

  Misha said he’d found Sophie down by the water, Moriarty perched on the rocks beside her. She was sitting with her hands on her knees, looking straight out at the waves. Toward Belaya Skala. She said that she’d followed a girl down to the water and had stayed to listen to the singing. But there are no children on Bitter Rock.

  When I mentioned it Mrs. Popova, she got an odd look on her face, and made me promise not to tell anyone else. But you know me. I could never keep a secret from you.

  Sometimes when the mist rolls in and dusk is threatening, I stand on the porch, listening. I can only ever steal a few minutes before Mrs. Popova hurries out to usher me inside so she can lock the doors for the night. But I swear last night, when I was straining to listen in the direction of Belaya Skala, I thought I heard it: singing, almost inaudible over the sound of the sea.

  I couldn’t make out the words, but it was beautiful. Beautiful, and oddly frightening. Or maybe it was only a trick of the mist. That’s what they keep telling us, whenever we have questions, whenever we see something strange. The mist plays tricks, that’s all. Now get inside, and lock your doors.

  VIDEO EVIDENCE

  Recorded by Joy Novak

  AUGUST 14, 2003, TIME UNKNOWN

  The shriek comes again, and is answered by something on the other side of the island, a voice that could be human or bird.

  HARDCASTLE: We need to get somewhere safe. I—

  The cries are drowned out by a bellowing roar, echoing over the island.

  NOVAK: The town’s closest.

  HARDCASTLE: Come on.

  He sets out. Kapoor begins to follow—and then Novak shouts. Rocks skitter and scrape.

  KAPOOR: Hang on!

  The camera tumbles, coming to a rest upside down, showing nothing but a slash of grass and gray mist. Kapoor speaks from nearby.

  KAPOOR: I’ve got you. Are you all right?

  NOVAK: My leg . . .

  KAPOOR: Shit, that looks bad.

  NOVAK: Sophie?

  She seems calm at first, but her voice quickly grows panicked.

  NOVAK: Sophie? Where are you? I had her—I was holding her hand and I must have let go when I fell. Where—

  CARREAU: Stay calm. We will find her.

  The video cuts out again. Kapoor turns it back on.

  NOVAK: Does anyone see her?

  HARDCASTLE: Everyone keep sounding off. Don’t go too far in this mist.

  BAKER: We have to keep going! We’re never going to find her in this. That thing—

  CARREAU: Hold on, I’ve got—

  The video cuts again. It resumes with the view angled downward, as if the cameraperson has given up trying to capture anything.

  HARDCASTLE: Down this way!

  KAPOOR: The mist is thinner higher up. Maybe we should head that way.

  HARDCASTLE: There’s nothing up there but the airstrip. At least we can find some shelter if we head down.

  Another unearthly shriek pierces the mist.

  SOPHIA: Mama, I’m scared.

  NOVAK: It’s okay, sweetie. Martin’s got you. I’m right here.

  BAKER: I say we get out of the open.

  KAPOOR: Fine. Carolyn, grab the camera so I can help with Joy.

  She hands the camera off to Baker, who trains it on the mist behind them as the others start to move. A shadow shifts within the thinning mist. It seems humanoid. Baker whispers.

  BAKER: What are you?

  The figure shrieks and shakes, the air around it distorting, fracturing like digital glitches. Video cuts out.

  When the recording resumes, the camera is lying on its side, discarded on a bench along the wall of the old chapel. Hardcastle and Carreau are struggling with a half-rotted pew, bracing it against the doors.

  HARDCASTLE: That should hold.

  KAPOOR: Against what? We don’t know what’s out there.

  HARDCASTLE: Did you want to stop and find out?

  NOVAK: Will you two please stop sniping at each other?

  Novak sits on one of the more solid pews, her leg stretched out in front of her. Sophia sits, knees to her chest, on the floor next to her.

  CARREAU: Let me look at that leg.

  He steps over and carefully rolls up Novak’s pants leg. She hisses, and he winces in sympathy.

  CARREAU: We need to clean this and get it bandaged.

  A muffled shriek sounds outside, but it seems to be coming from a distance.

  BAKER: Those things aren’t human. Are they?

  KAPOOR: The people on the beach seemed human enough.

  HARDCASTLE: But those other things in the mist . . . They didn’t move right.

  KAPOOR: What were they? Were they people?

  SOPHIA: Not yet.

  Everyone looks at her.

  NOVAK: Sophie? Why did you say that? Did you see something?

  Sophia buries her head in her arms, overwhelmed by the scrutiny. Hardcastle is peering out through a crack between the door and the crooked frame.

  HARDCASTLE: Where’s the camera?

  BAKER: It’s over here.

  HARDCASTLE: Bring it here, will you?

  She complies, and he mutters as he gets it lined up with the crack in the door. He zooms in on a distant splotch, brings it into focus.

  HARDCASTLE: What the . . .

  Three of the humanoid figures are walking in the middle distance, one after the other, single file. They move with an unnatural gait, sinking deeply as if their legs can’t quite support
them, their bodies sagging with each step before whipping upright again.

  Above them, like tongues of white flame, countless birds wheel in the sky. As the procession moves out of view, Hardcastle backs away from the door.

  HARDCASTLE: Where did those things come from?

  NOVAK: I don’t think they came from anywhere. We’re the ones that came from somewhere else.

  HARDCASTLE: What are you talking about?

  NOVAK: This isn’t the church. Not the same church, at least. Unless that was always there.

  She points upward. Hardcastle lets out a whistle, then fiddles with the camera, switching the view back to normal. He points the camera upward as the others make sounds of astonishment.

  The beam of the camera’s light is not strong enough to illuminate more than a small patch of the ceiling at a time, but that is enough to make it clear that Joy is correct. The ramshackle appearance of the room gives way at the ceiling, which is domed and covered in a massive mural. Around the edges the figures are like those outside—gangly, walking crookedly, their eyes and mouths empty orifices that seem to blaze with light.

  Within are a series of images separated by patterns like thorns and vines.

  A woman in a crown stands before a pattern of waves and towers, a flooded city.

  A trio of people, two women and a man, stand facing away, flanked by pine trees.

  Thorny vines sprout from the shoulders of a featureless man, twining in all directions.

  A white-haired woman’s hands rest on the shoulders of two young women. One girl’s ribs and sternum seem to shine through her skin. A goblet of red liquid hovers above them.

  And at the very center, so large it dwarfs all the other figures, is a creature painted in pure matte black—not just a silhouette, but a void. Like an angel, with six wings spread from its shoulders. Its only features are its eyes—an empty white. Whatever black substance has been used to paint the thing is still wet, dripping with fat, oily drops that vanish into smoke, or rather steam, before they strike the ground.

  BAKER: Where are we?

  NOVAK: Better question: How do we get out?

  11

  “THE GIRL IN the boat,” Liam repeated.

  “You’re saying it wrong,” I told him with a faltering smile. He let out a breath and sat against the bank of drawers behind him. My smile faded. I wrapped my arms around my middle as I spoke. “My mother was here in 2003. She worked with your mom and Dr. Hardcastle. She was one of the people that supposedly died in the storm.”

  “And you think that whatever happened to her was, what, supernatural?” Liam asked.

  “Yes.”

  He scrubbed his hand over his mouth, then crossed his arms. Uncrossed them. “All right.”

  “‘All right?’” I repeated. “What does that mean?”

  “It means I follow you so far,” he said. “Sophia, I watched you walk into the water. And then you were right behind me, safe and dry. I saw what happened to you on Belaya Skala yesterday. Either I’m going mad, or something unnatural is happening. I mildly prefer the version of the world where I have a moderate mood disorder and there are monsters to the one where I’m hallucinating. Besides.” He shrugged. “I trust you.”

  “Wait,” Abby said. “What was that about Sophia walking into the water?”

  I bit my lip. “The night you came,” I said. “There was a girl in the mist. I didn’t see her face, but Liam did. She looked like me.” Like my reflection, I thought, thinking of the tangled hair and weary eyes that stared back at me so often.

  “Echoes,” Abby said thoughtfully.

  “Say that again?” Liam replied.

  Abby opened her messenger bag and pulled out a thick three-ring binder. She set it on the chest of drawers beside her and flipped it open, paging through. “Echoes are what we call doppelgangers—doubles. They can look just like a person. Sound like them. Sometimes even have the same memories. Here.” She beckoned us over.

  She’d flipped to what appeared to be printed still frames from a video. A girl with colorful leggings and long black hair was bent over her apparent twin—they were even wearing the same outfit. But the girl on the ground was battered and wounded, blood staining her clothes. She gaped up at the standing girl, who wore a sly little smile. Vanessa Han and echo, Briar Glen, MA, read the label.

  “That one was on a road that didn’t exist,” Abby said. “One of the remnants of the old worlds I told you about.”

  “Are these echoes evil?” I asked.

  “That one was,” Abby said, tapping the picture.

  “How do you fight them? A stake to the heart? Silver bullets?” I asked.

  Abby regarded me with an expression that was one part approval, one part sorrow. “The other worlds are dead or dying, and things like the echoes? They’re like bacteria, breeding in rotting meat. They mutate. What works once won’t work again. What’s true once won’t be true again.”

  “So even if you defeated them once . . .” I started.

  “They might be different here,” Abby said. “There’s just so much we don’t know. Why the other worlds died. What the things that come from those worlds want. Whether their intrusions on our world are scattered, random incidents, or whether they add up to something.”

  “Like what?” Liam asked.

  “That’s the big question, isn’t it?” Abby said. “Dr. Ashford’s life’s work. And mine now too, I guess. Not like I can go work retail after watching a girl dissolve into ash and getting thrown across the room by a ghost.”

  “That happened?” I asked her.

  “Yup. Met a lovely girl named Dahut. She was possessing another girl, Becca—but we got her out. Mostly. Little bit left behind, but nothing Becca can’t handle. Probably. We’re keeping an eye on it.”

  “So is that whole binder full of supernatural stuff?” Liam asked.

  “Yup,” she said. The binder was huge, filled with a million different tabs labeled in tiny, precise handwriting.

  “It’s very organized,” I noted.

  “You were expecting a scrappy, overstuffed notebook covered in manic scribbles?” she guessed. “We’ve got a lot of those in storage. Dr. Ashford insists on a more methodical approach.” She turned the binder so I could see the labels on the tabs—everything from Spectral phenomenon to Doors appearing in forests, fields, etc. “There’s an index,” she told me.

  “Your boss let you take this?”

  “I sort of stole it. I did mention we’re pissed at each other right now, right?” she said idly, but she didn’t meet my eyes.

  “You were talking about those things—echoes,” Liam said suddenly. His arms were crossed, his gaze on the floor, but now he lifted his eyes to look at Abby. “How good are they? Could they convince you they were real?”

  She frowned. “Some of them can. Why?”

  He tensed his jaw. “Nothing,” he said after a beat. “Look. I’m in. I’ll help you.”

  “You don’t have to,” I told him. It was enough that he believed. That he wasn’t running.

  “I want to,” he said seriously. “Just tell me where to start.”

  Abby sighed. “I’m not going to try to talk you out of it. Maybe Ashford could, but truth is, I hate working alone. Plus, it’ll be easier getting back to Belaya Skala with the connections you two have, and that’s definitely got to be our next stop.”

  I shook my head. “We don’t have to get back to Belaya Skala—not yet, at least.” I spread my hands, indicating the room around us. “We’re in a room full of specimens and documents from and about Belaya Skala and Bitter Rock. We’re exactly where we need to be. So pick a drawer. It’s time to be good little worker bees.”

  I walked to the nearest drawer—labeled Bones—Mounted—and opened it with a flourish.

  It was full of Tupperware.

  “I t
hink you’ve cracked the case,” Liam deadpanned.

  I threw a Tupperware lid at him.

  * * *

  We settled into a rhythm after a while. Empty a drawer, sort the contents—which never matched the label—move them in front of the drawer that did match the label, repeat. So far we had mostly managed to make the room look significantly less organized.

  One of the cabinet drawers—one of the long, flat ones, the kind that contained maps and documents—was rusted shut. I hauled at it. Useless. It probably hadn’t been opened in years.

  “You need a hand?” Abby asked, looking up from a shoebox full of USB drives, which she’d been plugging into her computer one by one to check for anything interesting.

  “Nope,” I said through clenched teeth. I cast around for something to force it open with. I found a screwdriver and jammed it into the bent corner of the drawer. I shoved. I pulled. It creaked ominously but didn’t open.

  “You will not defeat me,” I told the drawer sternly. It remained shut, all innocence and aluminum. I braced myself against the cabinet behind me, lifted my foot, and kicked hard at the handle of the screwdriver.

  It popped open, the screwdriver pinging off to hit the wall.

  “Look at the badass,” Abby said. I leaned forward eagerly.

  Inside I found a map showing Bitter Rock; I recognized the fat, fishhook shape immediately, along with the streets and buildings. Almost none of them had changed, although the LARC was absent from this map. There were a series of notations, X’s with dates scribbled next to them, scattered throughout the islands and the surrounding waters. The note-taker had sketched a series of wobbly circles around Belaya Skala. And then around the rest of Bitter Rock. The circles expanded to contain later dates and marks, as if whatever this map was tracking was growing. The last circle was dated 1981, and it covered almost all of the island, leaving only a tiny curl of land untouched.

  “Check this out,” I said. I slid it across the floor toward Abby, and she scooted over to take a look. Liam crouched down next to her.