Our Last Echoes

by Kate Alice Marshall

  Something had carved this, I thought, but not a human something.

  I walked forward cautiously. The tunnel narrowed, almost scraping my shoulders, and the ceiling was only a few inches over my head. My breath filled the space until it seemed it was the tunnel itself that was breathing. The walls cinched in, and now my shoulders did bump against the damp rock, and I realized what the ripples reminded me of—the ridges of a trachea.

  Soon I was moving sideways, and every breath was cool and wet and tasted of silt. The flashlight beam struck stone ahead and stopped. No more dark corridor, only a final narrowing of gray rock with a crack the width of my hand running through it.

  “Come on, Abby. Where are you?” I whispered. No answer. I growled in frustration and slammed my hand against the wall beside me, only succeeding in scraping the side of my fist. I forced my way forward to the crack.

  “Abby!” I called. She had come this way so there had to be a way through. And maybe there was, in that other place. “Abby, can you hear me?”

  There was a breeze through the crack, faint as a sigh. I could sense the void on the other side, the emptiness of another tunnel, maybe even a cavern. Nothing and nothing and nothing answered, and then at once there was an eye, pressed to the other side, glistening in the thin sliver of light from the flashlight. I let out a startled scream and jerked back, forgetting the cramped quarters. My back smacked against the wall.

  “Sophia?” It was Abby. I steadied myself and leaned close to the crack again.

  “Are you all right?” I asked. “Liam wasn’t making a lot of sense. He said something took you.”

  “It’s coming back,” she whispered. “I got away, but I don’t know how long I can hide,” she said. She made a gulping sound of fear and animal distress. “I hear it. Please—”

  She reached for me through the crack, and I reached for her, as if I could pull her through, as if I could save her. But it was so narrow I could barely fit my hand through. She looked over her shoulder and her eyes widened. “No, no, no,” she said, in prayer and panic. I thrust my hand farther in, wriggling to try to eke out one more centimeter, and she did the same, frantic.

  Our fingertips touched for one instant. I shoved forward, and my hand closed over hers. If only I could hold on to her. If only—

  Something pressed into my palm. The sharp wooden wings of a bird, and with it something smooth and plastic. She closed my fingers over it. “So he knows,” she said. “Don’t let me be another mystery to haunt him, Sophia. Don’t let him follow.”

  She meant Dr. Ashford, I realized. The man who’d protected her for years. Raised her. And if I didn’t get this out of here, he would never know what had happened to her.

  “Next time you see me, don’t trust me,” she whispered.

  “Abby—”

  “Sophia. Run.”

  The tunnel echoed with the sound of wings. Abby snatched her hand away.

  “Abby!” I called, jamming my flashlight against the crack, but I couldn’t make out anything but emptiness beyond. Emptiness, but not silence. In the deep, in the dark, someone was singing.

  20

  I RAN BACK through the tunnel and squeezed my way free into the circular room, half fearing that the others would be gone, but Lily was kneeling at Liam’s side and looked up as I stumbled in. “Did you find her?” she asked.

  My breath came too fast. My fear was turning to panic, the useful edge of adrenaline giving way to a frantic confusion that would only get me killed. But the void was waiting. I focused inward, feeling my breath expand my lungs, letting it out—and letting the fear go with it, into the darkness of the void. It drank up my fear, leaving me steady again.

  “We have to go. Now,” I said, smooth as glass. I looked down at my hand, closed in a fist around the thing Abby had given me along with the bird. I eased my fingers open to find an SD card. Not the one we’d found earlier—this was different. From Abby’s camera? “Liam, can you walk?”

  But he was staring at the wall, eyes unfocused. His lips moved, and he was mumbling something, but it was impossible to make out.

  The music was getting louder. It was like a hundred voices, all overlapping over each other, but it was somehow only one voice at the same time. A language I knew and didn’t know. I kept catching the edge of understanding and then losing my grip on it.

  “We have to go,” I said again, shaking Liam’s shoulder.

  “I’ve got him,” Lily assured me. She got her arm under Liam’s and hauled him to his feet, surprisingly strong for her size. We shambled to the stairs, cajoling Liam into moving at every step. And at every step, I waited for the sound of wings. We reached the first landing, and I turned, shining my flashlight back toward the black mouth of the tunnel.

  It had gotten wider, and there were people in it. The beam didn’t reach far enough to illuminate their faces, but their silhouettes were crowded together, watching.

  I didn’t look back again. Not until the top of the stairs, and then only fleetingly, and all I saw was the wild leap of shadows as the flashlight beam raked across the stairwell. Then we were back in the main room of the bunker, and Lily paused to catch her breath. Liam pulled away from her, stumbling and catching himself on one of the tables.

  “You all right?” I asked. He shook his head, which was its own kind of progress. “We need to keep moving. Fast.”

  “The door is stuck closed,” Lily reminded me. I ducked out from under Liam’s arm anyway and jogged toward the entrance. Had the walls been striped with that much mold before, glistening and black, shot through with silvery lichen?

  The door hung open, and beyond was only gray. The mist. Lightning flashed sporadically in the sky, but no thunder to follow it. The flashes illuminated shapes in the air, strange and twisting things far above.

  “We’re on the wrong island,” I said dully.

  “Sophia!” Lily yelled. I twisted to look behind me, back toward the stairwell. Mold crawled from the stairwell, creeping its way along the walls, and among it bloomed strange mushrooms that looked like teeth. A sound rose up from the stairwell, a dusty, thrashing sound, and the soft percussion of feathers striking stone.

  Liam stood rooted in place. Lily grabbed one of his arms, I grabbed the other, and we pulled him with us. Lily was muttering, eyes wide, keeping herself from total panic with visible effort.

  Before, the mist’s landscape matched the real one. I’d tumbled in through a reflection and escaped—how? I didn’t have time to stop and ponder.

  “Follow me,” I said. “Stay close.” Anywhere was better than staying put.

  Liam moved to follow without prompting, blinking as if coming awake, but Lily kept close to him just the same. I set out for the beach where we’d left the boat. The ground shifted, the grass thinning as we came toward the rockier shore. I followed the slope and the sound of the water, and tried not to think about what might be chasing us. I reached the edge of the shore and there, as if waiting for us, was a boat. A skiff. Larger than the Katydid, though not by much. I couldn’t read the name on the side; black mold covered it, swallowing half the hull, the seats, and wrapping across the lettering so only a hint of an R was visible.

  “That’s not our boat,” Liam said, voice full of confusion. It was the first time he’d spoken since we left the bunker.

  Lily looked at him, then back at me. “So should we take it? Sophia?”

  I heard her, but the words didn’t register as my pulse thudded in my ears. I tasted salt on the back of my tongue.

  “Sophia? What’s wrong?”

  I wasn’t sure. I only knew that the sight of that boat shattered the calm I’d constructed. My throat constricted around my breath. “We can’t,” I said. “We can’t I can’t don’t—don’t—” I stuttered over the word, not knowing what I meant to say, what I was saying. There was a roaring in my ears like the rush of water.

&nb
sp; A hand in mine, the hillside falling away before us, the shore waiting

  The wood beneath me, splintering, worn gray

  Water sloshing in the bottom of the boat

  Screaming, shouting voices

  Hands on me, tangling in my hair, shoving me pulling me forcing me deep

  Water in my mouth, water in my eyes, the harsh salt sting of it

  “Sophia.” Lily was holding my arms, looking into my face. “Listen to me. Listen to my voice. You’re having a panic attack.”

  I wasn’t having a panic attack. I didn’t panic. When I was afraid, I sent my fear away, and this was something else—this was dying. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t think, I felt like I was collapsing inward, like my heart would beat so hard it would burst.

  “Focus on breathing slowly. You’re okay.” Lily gripped my hands, and I focused on those two points of pressure. Her hands were warm and callused and strong.

  Breathing. I could do that. I could breathe. Breathe air, not water. Focus on the ground beneath me, not the heaving of a boat or the endless dark of the ocean.

  “You’re here. Now. With us,” Lily said. “And I need you to tell us what to do, so I need you to be here. Understand?”

  I did. I nodded. The fist around my throat hadn’t released, but it eased, and whatever flood of memories had dragged me under was a formless trickle now.

  “Good. Good?”

  “I’m good,” I confirmed, only somewhat untruthfully, and Lily gave a wry sort of chuckle. She let go of my hands with one final squeeze and stepped back a bit.

  “I was worried I was going to have to drag both of you around, and I’m not feeling exactly with it myself,” she said, and then paused. “I don’t think anything followed us from the bunker. We don’t have to rush down to the shore. We can take our time and be—”

  A mass of darkness hurtled from the mist and slammed into her.

  At first my mind could only process it in pieces. The dark sweep of wings. The emptiness at the core of it. The fingers, too long and with too many joints, wrapped around Lily’s neck as it held her up. She thrashed, legs kicking, clawing at the hand that gripped her throat. It lifted her close to its face, and her eyes grew dark with its reflection.

  And then—a crack. Her head twisted to the side. It cast her away like a bit of trash, whatever it was searching for not found.

  I reached out, as if I could still do something. As if there were anything left of Lily to save but bones and blood. Liam made a sound, the start of a scream, and the creature turned toward us, eyeless, featureless, yet somehow staring directly at us. And there was that sound. The hum, the vibration in my bones. And there was the song—wordless and yet full of words, many voices and one voice all at once, and I could also hear how the thrum in my bones matched the song. And how the song matched the crying of the birds who flocked this island. Who vanished without a trace.

  Ravens, I thought, are excellent mimics. And Moriarty had slipped into the echo world and back to save me. Had he mimicked the terns? Is that how he’d slipped from one world to the next? Echoes were sound, after all, and this place was a kind of echo.

  Hardcastle and Kapoor were studying the birds’ cries. That’s what all of that fancy audio equipment was for. Crafting sounds to match the songs of the birds. The song of the Six-Wing. Maybe they were searching for a certain sound, a certain song, that could carry them between the worlds.

  And I’d heard something, felt something, when I slipped from the echo back into the real world. That song was in me. If I was right, if I could use it—

  The Six-Wing started toward us. I grabbed Liam’s hand, held it tight, and focused on that vibration. It wasn’t something I felt, it was something in me, something emanating from my body. It was mine and I seized it, changed it, acting on instinct. Get me away from here. Get me out, I thought, and the hum grew higher-pitched, sliding out of synch with that hideous song, and then—

  The mist rushed away like a sigh, and the Six-Wing with it.

  I sank to my knees with a cry of relief. Liam reeled back, staggering in a quick circle. No dark angel, no mist. Just the island, and the bright white, perfect wings of birds gliding and wheeling above us, calling contentedly to one another.

  “Are we out?” Liam said. “Did we get out of that place?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Look around.”

  “But how can you be sure?” he demanded. I opened my mouth to answer and realized I didn’t have an answer. Except that I could feel it—hear it—in my bones.

  “We’re safe,” I told him, which wasn’t exactly true. “We got out. And there’s the boat.”

  I pointed down the slope. The other skiff was gone, the LARC boat in its place. And Kenny stood on the beach beside it, equipment heaped next to him, speaking into a radio. I’d lost its match somewhere along the way. But he spotted us and waved frantically.

  Liam was staring at a patch of hillside. The place where Lily had fallen. He walked toward it.

  “She’s not there,” I said softly, but if he heard me, he didn’t respond. I followed, trailing behind him. He crouched down and pressed his hand against the smooth hillside.

  Liam looked up at me. “How are you not . . . ?” he asked. He gestured around him, but I knew what he meant.

  How was I not a complete mess? How was I not paralyzed with fear and confusion and the utter wreck that reality had become?

  “There’s nothing we can do now.”

  “Don’t you at least feel bad?” Liam demanded, rising suddenly. I took a step back, startled. “Doesn’t it bother you? She died right in front of you and you’re acting like you don’t even care.”

  “Of course I care,” I said. And I did. But it was knowledge, not emotion. I knew that Lily shouldn’t be dead, that it was tragic, that I wished I could have done anything to help her. I just didn’t hurt yet.

  That would come later.

  “You’re not acting like you care. Fuck! I can barely breathe. I want to scream. I want to tear my bloody skin off because this feeling hurts so fucking much and you’re standing there cool as a fucking cucumber!”

  I stared at him. His face was reddened with anger. Maybe most of it wasn’t really meant for me, but some of it was, and maybe I deserved it.

  “Hey!” Kenny was calling to us from down below. I turned away from Liam and headed toward the boat, my cheeks hot. He thought I was a monster, then. He wouldn’t be the first.

  I was halfway down before I heard Liam following. If he wanted to avoid me, he’d have a hard time. Wasn’t like the boat was that big. Unless he wanted to stay here by himself.

  “Yeah, I’ve got Liam and Sophia here,” Kenny said into the radio.

  “Are they all right?” Dr. Kapoor’s voice was crisp, efficient, without undue emotion. Maybe she and I actually had something in common. The thought struck me as funny—odd things often did when I was emptied out like this. I had the sense not to laugh.

  “They look okay,” Kenny said uncertainly. “Hey, where’s Lily and Abby?”

  “They’re not coming,” I said. Kenny’s finger was still on the button; Dr. Kapoor had heard me.

  There was a long moment of silence. Then, “Mr. Lee, bring my son and Ms. Hayes back immediately.”

  Liam didn’t seem to hear. He stared at me with a look I knew well. Like there was something wrong with me. Like my calm, my ability to push away any inconvenient emotion, was freakish.

  Like I wasn’t a person at all.

  VIDEO EVIDENCE

  Recorded by Joy Novak

  AUGUST 14, 2003

  Novak and Baker draw closer to the others. Martin sees them first and lets out a sound of relief.

  CARREAU: There you are! We thought we lost you.

  BAKER: Didn’t you hear me calling for help?

  Hardcastle looks disturbed.

>   HARDCASTLE: We didn’t hear anything. What happened?

  BAKER: I—

  She glances at Novak.

  BAKER: I fell and panicked, that’s all.

  SOPHIA: Mama!

  She squirms out of Carreau’s grasp and runs to her mother, who holds her tight. Hardcastle clears his throat and gestures toward the bunker door, which is open.

  HARDCASTLE: Nothing in there I can see. It should be safe.

  KAPOOR: Should be?

  HARDCASTLE: Might be. Better than staying out here.

  He waits, shrugs, and heads inside when no one else takes the lead. The others trail after with varying levels of reluctance. Novak remains outside a moment longer.

  SOPHIA: Mama? Is it safe?

  NOVAK: I don’t know, sweetie. But I promise I will keep you safe. I will not let anything happen to you. No matter what.

  She starts to lead Sophia inside, and then she stops.

  CARREAU: Joy?

  NOVAK: I thought I heard something.

  SOPHIA: Mama, something’s out there.

  Her voice is soft and trembling.

  NOVAK: Get inside with Martin, Sophie.

  SOPHIA: Mama, I’m scared.

  Novak steps out into the mist cautiously. Now the microphone picks up what she hears: a faint whimpering. She takes another step, and another.

  A small figure stumbles out of the mist. Her knees are muddy, her hands scraped from a fall. Tear tracks line her cheeks. Novak lets out a low moan as her daughter lurches toward her.

  SOPHIA [?]: Mama, I’m scared. I got lost and I couldn’t find you. Mama?

  Novak turns slowly. Looks at the Sophia in the doorway to the bunker, clinging to Carreau’s leg. Then back to the girl, wide-eyed and trembling, who reaches for her.