Headlights(91)

Freezing cold. Suffocating. Pressure, on the ears, through the body. Like standing inside a bell tower, inside a wind tunnel. I don’t know if Hannah could hear me if I spoke now, don’t know if she’s trying to speak to me. I don’t know if I can speak. But I hold her hand and her back, and she holds me, and it’s hard to keep dancing, hard to keep moving in this cocoon of black, in this onslaught of strange sound. But we do. Slowly, haltingly.

And I beg it to speak to us, this thing. Beg it to tell us anything at all. Hannah’s hand is growing colder, her face, her shaking more violent. If it stays cold like this, she could become hypothermic. We both could. Pressure, so much pressure, on the ears, this sound, this feeling so intense.

VOOM.

The thing in the room, moving nearer to us. I can feel it, sense it.

Static. Discordant music, pressure, noise. I squeeze my eyes shut, like it will help somehow. It’s loud, so loud, so crushingly— Every muscle in my body strains against the pressure, my joints on fire, my brain. It’s killing me, I think, whatever this is. I don’t know if I can take much more. Don’t know if— Hannah cries out.

She pulls away. Breaks contact.

And all the volume stops.

Silence.

Slight ringing in my ears.

The black recedes, pulls back to the corners of the room. It slips away through the walls to somewhere else.

The lights come back on, dim and flickering, but there. The air clears.

There is no one, and nothing, here in this room but us.

I double over and catch my breath as some warmth comes back into my body. Ryder Smith said the thing came to them at night in prison, tested them, as if it was looking for something. Was it like this?

Hannah runs her hands through her hair, holds them there, pulls it back off her face as she tries to come back to herself. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m sorry, I know we were close, I … I just…”

“It’s okay,” I say. “There’s probably another way, a safer way.”

But when she turns to me, I see it in her eyes. If there is some other way, we have no idea what it is. And time to figure things out is the one thing we know we don’t have.

Against the window, red smeared, in front of the swirling snow beyond. I step toward it, see blood in four places, feathers stuck in one of them.

Birds. That was what was hitting the window. Birds … at night? In a snowstorm?

I turn back to Hannah, and she’s got that look of resolve on her face, of terror. And I think I feel the same way. I think we have this time, this room. For the moment, I don’t think anyone will catch up with us. At least until the storm is over. And if there’s any way to solve this thing, to even get to the bottom of a part of it, we might need to just do this. Whatever … this is.

If we’re going to communicate with this thing, we need to do it now.

Still, the fear on her face. “We don’t have to,” I say.

“No. We have to bring it back. We need—”She looks around, frantic. She swears, searching. “I can make it worse,” she says. “The fear. Um. Tight space. That’s what we need. The bathroom, maybe. The meat, and the tight space, and the dark. It’ll be…” She chokes, tears streaming, and swallows down the terror. “I think we have to,” she says.

I don’t move. I don’t know what the fuck that thing was or what is right. But her words register. Bathroom.

Hannah and me in the bathroom, together.

Bathroom. Mirror.

“I think it might be now or never,” she says.

And the way she looks at me, the resolve with which she holds herself, makes me realize she’s right. We have to do this. And if she can do it …

Hotel bathroom in the dark. Hotel bathroom with a mirror.

Hotel bathroom with her.

If it feeds off fear and pain and grief and self-hatred, then this is it. This would have to be it. For me. The mirror.

For all the victims, for the killers. And for this person in front of me.

We draw this thing out and find out what it wants.

One more time, I say the word to Hannah Lawrence, and I think it very well might be the last I ever say.

“Okay.”





3



We step into the bathroom. A double vanity with granite countertop and two copper sink basins, the mirror behind. I don’t look at it. Not yet. On the left is the toilet, and on the right a step-in shower. The take-out container sits on the edge of the counter nearest the shower. Hannah steps in first, and her nostrils flare again. She turns to face me, and I hesitate in the doorway.

“So I’ll just … come in?” I say. I’m finding it hard to get air in, finding it hard to make my feet carry me forward.

“I guess,” she says. “Yeah.” Tears fall silently down her face, tension radiating off every part of her. The smell of the meat is strong in here. I can tell already.

I nod, and on the count of three, I pass through the doorway into the bathroom, turn, keep my eyes off the mirror. Hannah steps to the shower side. I’m in front of the vanity, facing her. The closed toilet behind me, the mirror on my left—her right—the door to the bedroom on our other side.

“So we just…” She clears her throat. “Close the door.”

“Right. And then…”