He will be here soon, the Dark reminds the girl. I can hear him among the trees.
The man’s approaching heartbeat is quick now. It is erratic with fear. He is an animal afraid of a predator, yet he still runs toward it.
As if on cue, the man bursts through the cabin the door and the Dark shudders. It has pictured this moment all these months. The man is the original host. He is the one who pulled the Dark from the ether, who gave it a form. He is the only one who can unmake the Dark, and the Dark will not be unmade.
Say hello to your father.
“Logan,” the man gasps, nearly collapsing with relief. He takes a step toward her, but he senses that she is wrong. He hesitates and his eyes land on the gun in her hand. His face drains of color.
The girl sucks in a sharp breath. “Hello.”
The man is frozen. He looks at her, and he recognizes it. He didn’t recognize it in the sheriff, but he recognizes it in her. He sees the shadows he is so familiar with in her eyes. He has seen these shadows in the mirror a thousand times. It pleases the Dark that the man remembers so well. As hard as the man has tried to cut it away, the Dark’s presence still lingers in him.
“Logan, what happened?” the man asks. “Did it—？”
Tell him what will happen now, the Dark hisses into the girl’s ear. Tell him what he will pay for.
The girl steels herself. Her grip on the gun tightens, slick with sweat. “You’re gonna finish what you started,” she chokes. “You knew it wouldn’t last. We weren’t both gonna make it.”
Almost too quickly, this breaks the man. It is so much easier than the Dark thought. Behind thick lenses, his eyes close to keep from clouding with tears. The man’s sun rises and sets with the girl. The Dark remembers that the girl wrapping her small fingers around the man’s thumb was the first time he had ever felt truly alive. It is only right that she end him. It is only right that the girl the Dark brought back for him be the one to take his life.
A life for a life, the Dark whispers to her.
“Logan,” the man says, “I know it’s so strong. And it doesn’t feel like you can fight it. But just … think about who you are.”
The girl’s brow twitches in a small act of resistance. The Dark doubles down in her bones. It scrapes against her skull, filling up her head so there’s no room for anything else. It finds the small, trembling part of her that it needs; it finds the part of her that hates the man standing in front of her. It finds memories of forgotten birthdays, of nights spent watching his face on the TV, of dinners all by herself. It finds the tunnel in Tulsa, the hateful way her father looked at her, the fear that filled her up. It finds the lonely, quaking beat of her heart and takes hold.
He doesn’t love you, the Dark reminds her. He didn’t save you. I did.
The girl raises the gun. Her hand shakes.
“Hey, hey,” the man says, hands raised in defense. “Logan, listen to me. It seems louder than everything else. But you can ignore it. If you just—”
Shoot him.
The girl does.
She hesitates at the last moment, swinging to the left to avoid the man’s chest. The bullet pierces his shoulder and he col lapses to his knees. He groans in pain and it sounds like music to the Dark. It is much better than piano song. Blood pools in the man’s hand, and he bites his lip to keep from crying out.
“How are you here?” the man demands. His gentleness dissipates and he is only frantic agony, voice rasping with pain. “Why didn’t you die? It was years.”
The man still doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand how the Dark came to be in the first place. He doesn’t understand why he was chosen to be the Dark’s first host. He doesn’t understand what sustains it now.