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Silas is no stranger to fear, but the terror coursing through his veins now is a new and oppressive acquaintance, pushing its way past reason to scatter his thoughts like so many broken shards of glass. As he scrambles farther along the wooded trail, he can no longer keep the thread of the past, that thread he’s been so careful not to tug, from unraveling. It trips him up as the worn tread of his boots slide on the exposed granite and tree roots with each crushing footfall, taking him one step backward for every two steps forward. It’d be poetic, given how often he’s found himself in this precise position in life, if it weren’t so damned tragic. His breath comes in heaving bursts, and his mind buzzes in agitation, reminding him—unnecessarily—of the insistent ticking of a clock reverberating outward from the pulse pounding behind his ears.
“Spencer!”he shouts as he runs.“Cameron!”And then again. And again.
At the crest of the hill, he pauses only the briefest of moments to take stock, hands braced on his knees, lungs screaming. Even as he gaspsfor breath, he curses the necessity of this moment’s rest. The minutes are accumulating too quickly. Every second that passes is a second more he’s separated from his children.
He should call the authorities. Right now. He should ignore the voice in his head that’s reminding him what happened last time. To Jessica. To all of them. Because these are his kids it’s happening to now. Hiskids.
But it’s only a philosophical question anyway: the closest cell tower is miles away, on Banner Peak near town, and the nearest landline is at the lodge, now half a mile or more back in the direction he came from. He cannot fathom turning back so soon, and so he resumes his punishing pace long before his body is ready, half running, half stumbling onward. In under five minutes, he’s turned the final corner of the well-traversed trail above his mountain lodge and arrived on a lower ridge. He jogs along it, still shouting his two sons’ names repeatedly into the gathering night.
“Spencer!”He doesn’t pause.“Cameron!”
Still nothing. No one returns his call, save for the screaming in his own head.
He yells until his voice is a thick croak, the back of his throat burning as he sucks in the chilled air, but still gets no response. The wind—whooshing now through the tops of the conifers high above his head like an invisible river—has picked up. He’d forgotten it’s even more pronounced up here, bringing his own cries back to him.
After another five minutes he’s forced to stop again, his lungs screaming in protest. He fumbles for the flashlight clipped to his belt and flips the switch. Below him, he can no longer make out the lights from his lodge; if he were still lower on the ridge, he’d see the living quarters and recreational building shining brightest, surrounded by the metallic roofs of the cabins and outbuildings, illuminated by the new moon like beads of a necklace slightly tangled. Can Spencerand Cameron see these lights, from wherever they are? Or are they in blackness, too?
Cameron’s afraid of the dark,his brain conjures up against his will. Silas installed a star-shaped night-light in their bedroom just the day before, ignoring Spencer’s protests. Though that night, it was Spencer who asked for it switched on as Silas tucked them in, wasn’t it?
The whisper of dread he’s been trying to outrace snakes back into his thoughts, ensnaring him. Is it time to turn back? Time to pick up the phone? No, he carries on, stumbling in his haste and fatigue, falling and finding his footing repeatedly as he runs on in ever-widening sweeps through the sea of trees in every direction.
This is real,his brain screams between gulps of breath. This is truly happening to him ... to hischildren.
Silas can barely process the fact that less than an hour ago, they were safe and sound. Annoying to him, even! He summons the rec room to his mind, the well-worn sofas and the cheery fireplace, and the homey warmth of it makes the threat he feels closing in from all sides seem bizarre, as far removed from this life he’s trying to carve out for his boys as a fairy tale in one of their books.
How, he asks himself, fingers raking impulsively through his hair, the heels of his hands grinding into his eye sockets, could a person go from the end of an average day—chores, responsibilities, irritation at rowdy play—to this level of terror in the span of only a few minutes?
He, of all people, knows how, and so he calls their names out into the darkness again. And again. But now that he’s spent, reality is a brick wall he’s having trouble scaling. Amid his calls, he begs aloud for this to be a dream, though he isn’t awakened. The earth remains still and silent, save for the wind in the trees. There’s no nudge to spur him out of his warm bed, no jarring signal of morning.
He closes his eyes tightly and wills all three of them back into the kids’ new room where they belong. With their Star Wars comforters on the twin beds. The Nerf guns and Legos cluttering the floor.
When he opens his eyes, Silas is looking down at his own clenched fists. The thought of his boys out here alone, without light, without water—God, he hopes Cameron has the hydro pack—explodes in his brain anew, inadequacy tearing like shrapnel. His boys may have stood here, right in this very place, only minutes before, and the thought spurs him back into action. Running again, he screams on repeat for his sons.
After thirty more minutes, some corner of his mind reserved for cold, calculated logic tells him what he already knows in his gut:I’m not going to find them like this.He knows his way back—a fact that sends a new jolt of guilt shooting down his spine—and a few minutes later, he’s returned to the lodge porch steps. His back to the rec-room door, he yells one last time, because how can he not? He shouts from somewhere desperate and guttural, his voice ringing out a full octave lower than he planned, and his throat burns strangely with the effort. He yells until he thinks his lungs may burst, but it’s useless. His words are snatched from his mouth and carried away by the night.
He throws open the door with all the aggravated energy he cannot exert elsewhere. Inside, the lights are still on, cardboard puzzle pieces still scattered across the floor. One booted foot sends the puzzle box—Dinosaurs of the Jurassic Period—skidding from the entry to the worn rug by the fireplace.
Once he reaches the staircase, Silas cranes his neck up toward the second-floor landing, looking. Listening. He knows he’s delaying the inevitable, but maybe, just maybe, the boys returned while he was out looking. Maybe they were playing a trick on him—the irony slays him—and maybe they’re hiding from him right this minute, giggling in the upstairs closet amid the Raid. Maybe they’ll all laugh about this just as soon as he’s done reprimanding them within an inch of their lives.
“Cameron!”he yells one more time.“Spencer!”
Nothing. No one.
“Come out right this minute! This is not funny!”
Impenetrable stillness.
They are not hiding. They are not taking a page out of their old man’s book, playing a joke and laughing. They’re bothgone.
The sickening sense of déjà vu Silas has been holding at bay throughout his search finally overpowers him, because he has been here before, calling out into the night, grasping at thin air.As he crosses the room, lunging blindly for the phone, dialing 911, four words are repeating on a loop.
This cannot happen again.
Surely, lightning cannot strike twice.
5
MEG
