Yet, when I hold it up to eye level, I see that there’s something inside.
Quickly, I unscrew the lid, and pull out the thing: a piece of paper.
A notebook page, just like the others.
I found it.
They had a gathering tonight, I watched from the edge of the trees. They think they’re safe here, inside the boundary, but I don’t trust any of it.
My talent is fading—I touch things and only get a diluted flicker of an afterimage. It feels like I’m a damn windup doll whose batteries are low. I haven’t been keeping track of the days as well either. At first I was marking them in the journal every morning, but now I can’t be certain how long I’ve been here. Nine days? Twelve? They’re starting to bleed together.
Something’s wrong, and I need to find a way out of here.
Maybe the woman at the gas station will call the police, let them know I never turned up again after that night. But I doubt it. She had an aversion to cops and no reason to think anything happened to me.
I need to leave. But Maggie refuses to come with me, refuses to accept that she can’t stay here. I don’t want to do it—but I might have to go without her.
I stand in the hall, rereading the note over and over until the words lose their meaning. The front door clicks shut—Theo is home—and I hurry down to the kitchen, abruptly handing him the page.
“Where was it?” he asks once his eyes have finished scanning the words.
“Under the floor, in the back hall.”
He reads the page again, several more times, before folding it back together.
“They were leaving us clues,” I say. “Messages they wanted us to find.” Our house has been keeping secrets, and now they are being stirred loose, like dead leaves caught in the corners, blown free by an open door.
“But none of it tells us what happened to them.” Theo’s eyebrows buckle together. “Maybe Travis did leave without her, like the note says. Maybe he left her here.”
“Then where is she?”
Theo presses the folded page tight in his palm, like he could squeeze out more words, more meaning from it. “There were three missing pages in the notebook. We’ve found two, so there’s one more.” His eyes flick past me. “We have to search the rest of the house.”
We spend all night prying up floorboards, running our fingertips along the creases and puckered edges of wallpaper, we lift old dusty paintings from the walls, and pull all the books from the shelf in the living room, fanning through them for some hidden, secret page tucked inside. But we find nothing. If Travis hid the last page inside the farmhouse, he hid it well enough we can’t locate it.
As the morning sun begins edging above the trees, we climb into bed for at least an hour’s rest. Our bodies exhausted, our minds rattling with all the mismatched pieces we can’t make fit. And I have the feeling, if we could uncover this last page, just one more hint, it all might suddenly make sense.
* * *
One night has passed since Ash and Turk were buried up to their necks beneath the Mabon tree. And when I enter Pastoral, carrying a mason jar filled with water and fresh slices of ginger, the mood is somber, the early afternoon sun a bright, unwelcome eye. I pass Marla, who works in the community kitchen with Roona, but she doesn’t meet my gaze. No one will. Their heads are lowered, moving through the community, tending to their daily work but refusing to acknowledge one another. Maybe it’s shame: knowing that we have all agreed to do nothing, to let Ash and Turk be buried for three long, cruel days. We are each just as guilty as the next, as guilty as Levi, for this thing we are allowing to continue.
I walk to the gathering circle, where Henry leans against the Mabon tree, carving something in his hand with a knife. A piece of wood. A figure in the shape of a deer, a giraffe maybe—something he will give to one of the children.
He nods at me when I’m close enough, lifting his eyes to watch my movements. Ash and Turk look worse than yesterday, their hands are a deep blue and they hang slack in their binds. Both men’s eyes are closed, heads slumped to one side, barely touching the earth.
“Are they still alive?” I ask quietly.
“Yeah,” Henry answers, his tone grave. He’s been posted to keep watch over the men, to keep them from freeing themselves （which seems unlikely）， but also to keep anyone else from trying to help them.
I kneel down beside the two men, holding the jar of ginger water.
“Don’t get too close,” Henry warns. “You don’t want to catch it.”