Page 100 of Hell Bent

She felt an unpleasant shiver move over her. “I know where we are.”

Dawes was nodding slowly. She’d put it together too.

They were standing in front of Sterling. Except Sterling was the orchard now, the basin full of water was the Women’s Table in their world. And that meant that all the rest …

“We’re in New Haven,” said Tripp. “We’re at Yale.”

Or something like it. Yale stripped of all its grandeur and beauty.

“Good,” she said with a confidence she didn’t feel. “Then we at least know the layout. Let’s go.”

“Where exactly?” asked Turner.

Alex met Dawes’s gaze.

“Where else?” she said. “Black Elm.”

It should have taken them an hour on foot to reach Black Elm from campus. But time felt slippery here. There was no weather, no movement of the sun overhead.

They crossed through a concrete courtyard and then down to what she thought was Elm Street, but it was lined with big apartment buildings. When Alex looked behind, it was as if the street had shifted. There was an intersection where there hadn’t been one before, a right turn where there’d been a left.

“I don’t like this,” said Tripp. He was shaking. Alex remembered the slide of the wet rope, the sea heaving beneath her.

“We’re okay,” she said. “Let’s keep moving.”

“We should … leave bread crumbs or something.” He sounded almost angry, and Alex supposed he had good reason. This wasn’t an adventure. It was a nightmare. “In case we get lost.”

“Ariadne’s thread,” Dawes said, her voice unsteady.

The silence was too complete. The world too still. It felt like they were traveling through a corpse.

Alex kept her hand wrapped around the porcelain box. I’m coming to get you, Darlington. But she couldn’t stop thinking of Hellie. She could still feel Babbit Rabbit in her arms. He’d been alive. For a moment, they’d all been together again.

Alex didn’t know how long they’d been walking, but the next thing she knew they were standing outside of a chain-link fence. A huge sign read, Future Home of The Westville: Luxury Living. The render was of a sleek glass building towering over a landscaped slice of lawn, a Starbucks at the base, happy people waving to each other, someone walking her dog. But Alex knew this path, the lumps of stone that had once been columns, the birch trees now cut down to stumps.

“Black Elm,” Dawes whispered.

It seemed wise to keep their voices low. The houses along the street looked empty, their windows shuttered, their lawns gray and bare. But Alex caught movement from the corner of her eye. A curtain pushed aside from an upstairs window? Or nothing at all.

“We’re being watched,” said Turner.

Alex tried to ignore the fear that moved through her. “We need bolt cutters if we’re going to get past that fence.”

“You sure?” Turner asked.

Alex looked down. The flame surrounding the Arlington Rubber Boots box was brighter, nearly white. She walked toward the fence, and then she was walking through it, the metal melting away to nothing.

“Cool,” said Tripp. But he sounded like he wanted to cry.

The driveway to Black Elm seemed longer, the road stretching like a gallows walk between the stumps of trees. But the house itself wasn’t visible.

“Oh no,” moaned Dawes.

Of course. The house wasn’t visible because it wasn’t a house anymore, just a forlorn pile of rubble. Alex caught a glimpse of something moving between the heaps of rock.

“I don’t like this,” Tripp said again. He had his arms crossed over his body as if to protect himself. Alex felt a softness toward him she hadn’t before. She could still taste the sharp tang of chlorine at the back of her throat, feel Spenser’s foot digging into her crotch and the weight of Tripp’s shame, forever pinning him beneath the water.

“Alex,” Turner said quietly. “Look back. Slowly.”