CHAPTER 5

The words reverberated through me like a gunshot. The quiet sincerity of it sent my head spinning. The flesh on my arms puckered up, the back of my neck was electric, and a cold shiver froze each of my vertebrae one by one. I knew, in that moment, what the feeling was when someone said that someone had walked over their grave.

“I vanished first?” I asked, unable to comprehend it.

Emma turned to look at Max, pointing at him. “No, you vanished first. Caleb and I went looking for you.”

Max shook his head violently. “No way. I went last. Caleb just vanished into thin air and you said we had to look for him, and then you started babbling about glowsticks and the world blinked and you were gone.”

“Are you crazy?” Emma asked, which felt like the wrong question to be asking at this point. “You disappeared and Caleb gives me this whole thing about how we can’t just let Stonestead High’s future prom king and America’s future president vanish into the caves after I’d sold him weed. Then I fucking trip over something, Caleb vanishes as I’m standing up, and the Grim Reaper jumps me from behind.”

“That does sound like me,” I said, trying to lighten the mood. But I looked from Emma to Max and knew that they weren’t lying. The same way I wasn’t lying. “The specifics don’t matter. Something happened there. We’ve all just got a very different set of memories about whatever it was that took place.” Incompatible memories, at that.

“How is that possible?” Max asked. “How is any of this possible?” He went quiet, and no one said anything. Max looked like someone trying to swallow a tablet, or vomit one up. “I thought I saw a man. Or something like a man. At the edges of my vision. Except when he—”

“Yeah,” I said. “Like a statue carved out of a black hole.”

“And you’re sure that your weed wasn’t laced with anything, Emmers?”

“Positive,” she replied. “Because Caleb didn’t have any, and he’s just as fucked up as we are.”

“Wait,” I said. “That’s consistent? I didn’t have any of it in any of our memories?”

“Seems that way, yeah,” Max said.

“That means, whatever happened, it happened after we went into the cave. Up until a certain point, everything’s consistent. But why?”

“Look, man... Caleb, you’re an interesting guy and all, but I really don’t want to give this anymore thought than I already have.”

“You think you’ll just be able to forget it?” I asked. “You’ll just go back to school and start thinking, oh, that night never happened?”

“What else can we do?” Max threw his arms up. “Like, how can we ever explain this to anyone?”

“We have to figure that out,” I said, as much as the thought made my skin crawl. “Because if we don’t, if we just try to pretend that it didn’t, it’ll eat us from the inside out. Because not a day will pass where we won’t worry that it’ll happen again.”

“And what if it doesn’t?”

“What if it does?”

“Fuck. Emmers, talk him out of this. He listens to you.”

Emma crossed her arms. “I don’t know what to think about this. Do you know how long I’ve just wanted to be normal, guys? Not having to deal with all those pitiful little looks, not having to slow everyone down. After the accident, I didn’t want to face up to it. Neither did my brother. Especially when he only got out of it with some bruising. And, I guess, a ton of guilt.

“And now, it’s like some reality TV show. Spend one night in the haunted cave and win a million dollars! And I did it. I can walk like a normal person again. I’d forgotten what it felt like to have feeling in the tips of my toes or to not get these weird random aches where I got crushed. And, yeah, TMI—but I don’t have to worry about pissing myself when I sneeze or laugh or whatever else anymore.”

She reached up, dragging her fingers across her hair. “So, I’m with Max. I want to walk away and pretend this never happened. The same way I tried to pretend all those years ago. But at the same time,” and she sighed. “At the same time, I regret taking so long to come to terms with it. So, I’m with you, Max, but Caleb’s right. We have to figure it out. We have to at least try.”

Some of that, I hadn’t known. Some of it, I’d heard rumors. Sometimes, she talked about it for a few seconds when she got drunk. I just nodded at her. Max fell back against his pillows again, sighing and closing his eyes.

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“Okay,” he said. “So, what’s the plan?”

“What else?” I replied. “We have to go back.”

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“Wait,” Fletcher says, “You went back there?”

“Of course we did. How could we not?”

Fletcher swirls his mug of coffee. His second mug. Then he takes a sip, sets it down, and leans across the table.

“I don’t know whether you’re brave or stupid, Caleb, or maybe just a very good liar. But if everything you said is true, that some shadow-man haunted you all like that, if you think some if not all of you died and somehow woke up back in your beds, then why would you ever go back?”

It’s a good question. It’s one I’d expected him to ask. It’s one I was still grappling with, myself, even after all this time.

“Because I didn’t understand,” I tell him.

“Understand what?”

“Any of it. I got dragged into it, exposed to something that even now I can’t really explain. How could I just walk away from that, without knowing what it meant? Without knowing what it was for? Without knowing why? Why it had to be me and Emerson and Max on that particular night? What connected us? No, I had to know. I had to understand. Even without the two of them, I would’ve gone back there. I’d have done it every single day for the rest of my life. That’s why.”

Fletcher eyes the little bowl of salt. I glance at it and transmute the contents back to sugar with a flick of my wrist. Another flick of my wrist and the Third Semblance of Forces slides the bowl toward Fletcher as if thrown, impelling it right to the edge of the table and no further without spilling a single grain of salt. Let him try to explain that one.

“That,” I continue, “and because, even then, I thought that the shadow was trying to tell me something.

“I just didn’t know what.”

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We drove out to the party palace in near silence. What was there to talk about? A part of me hoped that I wasn’t leading the two of them to their execution. What would’ve been worse--finding something, or finding nothing?

The old barn stood in the middle of a field of trash--bottles, cans, red cups, and more than a few items of discarded clothing--and the cars of those people who’d elected to crash there for the night, no pun intended.

“Well, come on,” Emma said, as we hopped out of the truck, “let’s go look this gift horse in the mouth.”

So, we did. We made our way into the trees and back toward the cave where everything had gone weird. As we walked, I felt odd. I realized I wasn’t afraid. With each step, it was like fear faded out to something closer to curiosity. Or maybe that was just the daylight. But if he wanted to hurt us, and I was sure it was a he, then why had he let us go? Healed Emma?

Max’s phone rang. “Shit,” he muttered. “Hey, Lise! Hey, listen, about lunch... Sorry, something came up. An emergency something. I’m with Em and her friend Caleb. I know, I know, we were supposed to do lunch—I’m sorry, babe.” He gave me a look that was somehow both apologetic and baleful. “Yeah, that Caleb. I know. I know. Listen, I can’t really talk right now. I’ll call you tonight, okay?”

“Sorry, man,” I said. “Is she upset?”

“A little. Nothing I can’t smooth over,” he said, flashing one of those smiles. “But hey, I think you were right. Better to sort this out now. And, I mean, I’d told Lise that I don’t like making reservations for a reason. I’m a busy guy. Things come up.”

“Just tell her it’s my fault. I mean, it kinda is.”

“That was the plan,” he joked, in a way that said he wasn’t. “You single, Caleb?”

I glanced at Emma. Or, to be more accurate, her back.

“Man, you know I am.”

“Yeah. Sorry, that’s my bad. Don’t take this the wrong way or anything, but this is the most we’ve spoken to each other. Like, we’ve known each other since we were freshmen, right?”

“Right.” We’d had physics together, I thought. “I’m just quiet. Don’t speak unless I have something to say. I don’t know. It’s just easier to see everything from the outside in.”

“Sure, and I respect that. It’s just, how can I put this. You and Emmers, you play those roleplaying games, right? What is it, World of Warcraft?”

“Some of them, sure. Em is big into WoW. It’s not my thing.”

“And you’re not screwing with me, right?”

“I thought we solved this an hour ago.”

“Yeah, but there was something I didn’t mention. Just wasn’t the right time.” He pulled out his phone, dialed a number. “Here, listen to this.”

I took his phone, held it to my ear. You have one saved message, the electronically pleasant voice told me. “Hey,” someone said, oddly familiar. “Listen, listen. Don’t freak out, okay? I know you just saw some shit, okay?”

It was Max’s voice.

“And it was insane. Like, completely insane. Don’t freak out. I know that sounds crazy, but do not freak out. Just think of it like an RPG computer game thing. I wish I could explain it but, jeez, it’s more their thing—Caleb and Emma, I mean. Look,” he said, laughing, “You’re going to want to freak out. But, seriously, don’t. You’ll be okay. I went through it, too. Trust me. You’ll turn out just fine.”

The recording ended. Unsure of what’d happened, I passed Max his phone back. “Was that—”

“Me? Yeah, I think so. Woke up to that on my phone. Like I called myself after that whole... everything. So, I kinda freaked out. Thought you and her were pranking me or something. Hoped you were, really.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“Hey,” Em said. “We’re here.”

And so we were. The trees thinned out into a clearing that was unfamiliar in the daylight. The craggy cliffs stretched up about a dozen meters, maybe more. The cave yawned before us. Emma bent down and scooped something up. “Glowstick,” she said, frowning. “Well, we were definitely here.”

We stepped up to the threshold, paused there. “We’ll go in together,” Max said. “Come on, hold hands,” and we did. Emma’s hand was so very warm, and her grip so very strong. “And on three. One, and two, and three.”

We stepped into the cave at the same time. My eyes took a moment to adjust to the dim atmosphere. I focused on my breathing, kept it steady. Nothing moved in the corners of my vision. No sense of static. No odd shadows.

“Everyone good?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Max said.

Emma nodded. “Yep.”

I cast my gaze around the cavern, looking at the dark rock that hadn’t been disturbed for hundreds if not thousands of years. It seemed much smaller than it was in the threads of last night’s memories. Almost cozy. I could see why Emma had picked it out.

“Wait,” I said. “But this can’t be right.”

“I think we’re thinking the same thing,” Emma said, eyes locked on the far wall of the cavern.

“We all went deeper into the cave, didn’t we?” Max asked.

“Right.”

“But,” I said, reaching out and touching the unbroken, impervious wall of the cavern, maybe half a dozen meters from daylight. “There’s no way we were able to walk through this.