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The real Jackson winces as he faces the wheel. He fumbles with the gear shift before driving forward in a quick, graceless jolt.

The Mimic peels open its mouth to flash an impossible amount of teeth before tilting its head back to screech. Jane tries to cover her ears, crying out at the sound as the creature strips its body from Jim’s truck. It raises both of its arms out wide, its taloned hands practically touching the stars.

“Jackson!” she shouts. “Jackson, get out of there!”

But he slams the car into reverse again, racing backward fast enough that clouds of dust rush up into the air all around them. There is no sound of collision this time. The Mimic catches the back of the Jeep swiftly, sinking its talons into the car’s steel siding. The creature screeches again before swinging its arms wide, flipping the Jeep forward in one clean motion.

“No!”

Time slows as the car sails through the air, until it lands upside down with a cartoonish crunch. From the open driver’s-side window, one of Jackson’s hands is flopped out across the ground, unmoving.

When she screams his name, the rattling starts.

At the front of Jim’s truck, the Mimic’s bones snap and crack as it unfolds its true body into a height nearly ten feet tall. When it turns, she finally sees the entirety of its hideous form, like a human’s body was submerged in the world’s darkest shadows, then pulled and stretched out far too thin. It watches her with its omniscient black eyes. Its taloned hands curve downward, and she knows it is the darkness that looms over her bed while she sleeps, weaving poisoned nightmares; she knows it is the source and creator of fear itself.

She has no choice but to meet its eye, allowing the chill to roam over every part of her.

No more hiding.

The creature smiles, baring rows upon rows of overlapping teeth.

“Run! Jane, run!” voices shout from somewhere up above, like terrified guardian angels.

Her legs are numb, glued in place as the creature suddenly goes from standing on two legs to down on all fours. It charges toward her, and the pounding on the ground finally shakes her from her daze.

She turns and runs toward the back of Jim’s truck, standing just beyond the liquid circle of lighter fluid Thomas created. As the Mimic closes in, she keeps hold of its stare, gripping tighter to the hair spray and Zippo in either hand.

“Come on,” she says, inching backward. “Come on!”

Something flies through the darkness. A balloon bursts against the Mimic’s back, covering it in the lighter fluid and blood mixture.

“Get out of there, Jane! I’ve got it!” Thomas yells, and she can see him fumbling to light his makeshift Molotov, but the Mimic rushes forward before the bottle even leaves her brother’s hand.

The bottle shatters on the ground uselessly where the creature stood, just as the Mimic raises its arm and flings Jane backward in one violent sweep.

The air clears from her instantly, sucked out like a vacuum. She chokes at the feeling, gripping her stomach where she now lies in a heap some ten feet away. As she rolls onto her back, the Mimic stalks toward her, now well past the circle of lighter fluid they had laid to trap it.

The bottle of hair spray she’s been carrying rolls toward the other side of the parking lot, but the Zippo lighter is lying in the dirt and leaves only an arm’s reach away.

“Come on,” she urges the creature while reaching out her right arm carefully. “You want my heart, right? My terrible, guilty heart,” she hisses, watching as the monster takes another step closer. She stretches out her fingers, wincing at the sharp pain in her wrist and searching blindly for the lighter’s cold surface.

The Mimic’s tongue slides out from its mouth, salivating as it morphs. “You’re the reason I died, Jane,” it says, changing into Evan’s kind, teary-eyed face. “I was going to be a father, and you just sat back like a coward and watched while it took me instead of you.”

“Stop lying,” she snarls, placing her other hand on the fire poker at her hip as the sounds of bones snapping flood her ears, violent and piercing.

Jim is standing over her then, his tired face fully intact as he flashes those judgmental eyes. “You could have stopped this, Jane. You had the chance to save me—to save all of us. But you chose to sit back and do nothing. You chose to be a coward.”

“Shut up,” she says through gritted teeth as the form changes again.

Thomas stares down at her with contempt burning in his dark eyes. “When I die tonight, you’ll be the reason why. You’ve let this happen, just like you let it happen the night of the accident.”

He leans down, hovering closely enough that the lighter fluid burns her nostrils from where it drips off his body and onto her clothes. “I hate you, Jane.”

When the Mimic takes its new form, she has no choice but to stare back directly into its eyes.

Into her own eyes.

“They blame you, you know.” The words come from her own mouth, curved into a cold, pitying frown. “Your family will never love you the same way after what happened. Not your parents, not Tommy.” Her face leans closer, until hands grip round Jane’s throat. “They might put up with you, Jane, but they will never forgive you. Just like you’ll never forgive yourself.”