Okapis are coming,
Stilt-legged and stripe-slashed,
Long-necked and languorous.

Okapis are coming,
Chestnut and velvet,
Dainty and ponderous.

Okapis are coming,
Cropping and chomping
With indigo tongues.

There in the shadows the shadow-stripes moving,
A sunlight-shaft shifting,
Okapis are coming.

Dark in the undergrowth, placidly browsing
With tasselled tails twitching,
Okapis are coming.

Cream-colored star-rays splash light on their haunches,
And rusted black waistcoats wrap shade on their shoulders.
They all wear white gaiters and saunter like dandies,
But their eyes are much softer with diffident lashes.

They tenderly gaze at the green vegetation,
Lovingly looping the leaves with their tongues.
Their eyes deep and dreamy,
Their tongues lithe and lissome,
They gaze and they graze
And they gaze and they graze,
Philosophically chewing with infinite grace.

Gerald was an upstanding squirrel, well known and respected in the community. He had oodles of grandsquirrels and almost seven acres of territory. In his youth he could smell a willing female from six miles away.

He was a bit of a gourmand, dining on not only the usual assortment of acorns, pine nuts, berries and the occasional small bird egg, but also gathering truffles and other dainties, placing them amongst branches to dry in the sun. He took excellent care of his incisors. Daily chewing off small branches and carefully rubbing each tooth spotless before sharpening the points, keen as daggers.  All male tree squirrels take twice as long as the females to groom themselves, but Gerald took all day. He could afford to.

Gerald diligently masticated each nut or seed before stashing it away for the winter, marking it with his scent, rendering it redolent of Gerald, even through a heavy blanket of snow.

He had stowed away so many acorns, pine nuts and berries, raided so many bird feeders, dried so many mushrooms that he could have feasted for twenty years off his stash, without even raising a whisker. During especially cold winters, Gerald would throw house parties, raising the temperature inside the nest to sauna incandescence. But no matter how smart or how careful you are, age sneaks up on quiet cat feet, silent as sunset, inevitable as night.

One winter Gerald began to forget. It didn’t really matter; after all, he had so many caches of nuts buried all about his seven-acre estate, he could hardly leap off a branch without landing on one. The winter wasn’t particularly bitter that year, but Gerald threw a house party nonetheless. Even a ground squirrel snuck in, something that had never happened before.

Spring and summer were warm and fine. Gerald lolled around his domain. On balmy nights he often slept spread out on branches like a rug, not even bothering to return home for the night. Each winter his nest rang out with raucous cries and the shrill piping of inebriated rodents. But still the years crept up like icy unwelcome visitors.

One spring Gerald scampered (although to be honest it was more of a perambulation) out of his nest and almost brained himself on a young but sturdy oak sapling growing only a few meters from his door.

Now how did that get there? Gerald mused. I would have noticed that…

It was odd how often he found himself stumbling into new trees these days. His estate had been mostly open grassland when he’d moved in. Often he’d need to travel four or even seven miles searching for acorns or pine nuts. But now, almost overnight it seemed, he was in mixed oak and pine woodland.  Truffles too, seemed more plentiful. It was a mystery.

That winter was a cold one. Gerald found himself so tired he could barely poke his head from the nest, let alone extend his usual insouciant invites to wandering rodents.

Only a few ground squirrels showed up and they were ungracious guests, bringing nothing, partying late into the night and wee hours of dawn with never a thought for their exhausted host.

 Gerald barely survived the winter. When spring finally arrived, cautiously as a mole in daylight, Gerald could barely stumble out of his den, fortunately, the thick woodland that had seemingly materialized from nowhere, made food gathering easy and plentiful. It was lucky, because he couldn’t remember where any of his nuts were stashed. His olfactory glands were failing and his memory… well let’s face it… his memory was shot!

On good days he’d stumble home, scarcely recognizing his nest. On bad days he couldn’t tell a grey squirrel from a ground squirrel, or a rabbit from a raccoon. Once he mistook a coyote for a Chihuahua and only escaped by a whisker.

His old friends all seemed to have died or moved away…And let’s face it, he had never been close to his offspring, grandsquirrels or mates. But the worst, the most disorienting development was the forest…

Gerald could have sworn only yesterday he had buried nuts in open grasslands, yet now he was enclosed by this woodland that was so thick, there was hardly a bare patch of earth to excavate.

One winter he returned to find his home had been co-opted by a gang of ground squirrels. They were squirrely rodents who gnashed razor sharp fangs, grumbling about the scarcity of space in which to construct burrows and the lack of grain.

Gerald was forced out to wander amidst the cold, white woodland. Through misty eyes he peered, hoping to spy an old friend, or a den hosting a winter house party. Finally, almost dead with hunger, fatigued and half frozen, he spied someone waiting for him by the entrance to a large hole. Could it be that he had at last found a gracious ground squirrel? One able, willing, perhaps even eager, to repay Gerald’s magnanimous mingling of species?

Although Gerald’s whiskers were so weighted with frost that he could barely move, he attempted a grin, and made what haste he could toward the waiting figures.

As a young squirrel he had always been warned to stick to his own kind. Most grays wouldn’t even share a nut or have a berry with a red, let alone hang with the grounders. But he had ignored it. He had risen above the petty specism of his ancestry. Now, here before him, in his most desperate of moments, was visual proof that specism didn’t pay.

However, his faltering senses had once again played him wrong. It was not three grounders waiting to welcome him. Instead, Gerald was given his final opportunity to play the gracious host, providing a mid-winter hors d'œuvre for a hungry coyote and her cubs.

Solomon swam slowly through the shoals. Pearls bump-bump-bumped beneath his palms; he panned for the prettier ones. They rolled over his knuckles like sweet sea cherries; he let the dimmer ones fall from his palms. Pearl plucking was not for the undiscerning.

One, two, three, four passed beneath his fingertips, then the fifth caught his gleaming eye. He picked it from the sand to behold. A subtle shimmer reflected his gaze back. He rolled it on his cheek and felt it catch his scales just so; he placed it under his tongue.

Pan and pluck and test and taste. Pearls accumulated in Solomon's mouth, safe for the keeping. His cheeks began to bulge, so it was time to retire for the night. Back to his burrow with pearls in tow, he swam with quick strokes of his tail.

His mate Seaglass awaited him, and proudly Solomon poured the pearls from his mouth; they clicked against sharp teeth with sounds of satisfaction. Each one another reason tallied that Seaglass should stay, that another would not do.

His mate was draped in offerings. Ropes of pearls round his neck, his chest, his tail; they trailed from his tresses and ringed his wrists. Seaglass gathered up the freshly-fallen gems and tucked them to his heart; in thanks he twined his tail with Solomon's, then flitted free. So shy, Solomon's mate, and jealous with his spoils. Solomon would not see the pearls again until Seaglass had strung them across his scales.

Duty done, Solomon settled to rest, sipping the meat from a clam. In the morning Seaglass would venture, so adorned, and catch him something meatier. In the meantime, clams it was, and sleeping with one eye open to guard den and pearls and Seaglass, the rarest pearl plucked of all.

At night, my mom and I went swimming in the East River. Dad had moved to Long Island. He hated water anyway. He said he was drowned in this family.

For me, being in the water was like being in the air. I was born in a bathtub. Mom said I almost swam out of her womb. We slipped soundlessly under the Brooklyn Bridge and headed south. It was late spring and the water was a little chilly. A Coast Guard boat honked from behind, headlight sliding across the dark river. We took a deep breath and went under the water until the boat whirred away. 

We swam side by side, changing to backstroke when we reached the foot of Lady Liberty. We saluted her and her torch. 

Mom didn’t say where we were going or when to turn around. I didn’t ask. After we escaped from the mouth of New York Harbor, the Atlantic Ocean embraced us. On the horizon, a large cruise ship sailed by. I heard the songs and music. I imagined people dancing on the deck, women wearing shimmering dresses, and men sunny smiles. And then fireworks shot up and bloomed on top of the floating city. It was such a beautiful view. I longed to join their festival. I hoped someone noticed me, otherwise I might turn into lofty foams and pop at the first light of dawn.  

The waves picked up, heaving and rocking me until I broke my pace. I kicked and kept my head up. Another wave swept over me and pulled me down to the deep ocean. In a blurry world, I saw Mom waving to me, long and bony fins protruding from her flanks. Her feet extended and translucent webs grew between her toes. She moved close to me, hair spreading and swaying like a brown halo.

“You’re a natural,” she said, bubbles spurting out of her mouth. 

My neck tingled and split. I felt a set of gills fluttering under my chin. My skin hardened to pink scales—I was a red snapper, blushing at the unexpected compliment. Air filled my lungs and I pushed myself up.  

The cruise was nowhere to see. A huge yellow moon rose above the ocean. Mom was ahead of me, her fins opening and closing in an unbeatable style of butterfly. The water glowed and shattered into silver pieces. 

I paddled up next to her. “Can fish drown?” It was a silly question but if a man can drown on land, certainly a fish can die at its home.

Mom didn’t say anything. A gust of wind came and she choked. I guessed the answer was yes. We adjusted our strokes to fit our newly formed bodies and kept paddling.

There was a child I loved, her hands soft as eider down, her sweet face open and beguiling, her laughter a tumbling cascade of water. A daughter’s warm smile is a flame against time’s meandering breeze, her eyes seeing beyond my years, her words to be her own yet prefaced by mine. There is moment when I see her most clearly, my Laura; we’re in a canoe following the burnt umber colored wetness of a cedar canopied river. Her paddle rising and falling before me, its wide blade dripping crystalline drops of cold water, her kneeling frame erect in the bow of the boat. A yellow-throated Vireo glides from one tree branch to another whistling, eyeing us with that awkward way that walleyed birds see, first one eye then the other in sideward glances. And Laura laughs as the fire-bird follows us around bends in the river, swooping above the sand shoals and along bank cuts of misshapen red clay. We pull past flooded swampland, wide open meadows, across deep pools and through bubbling riffles where dragonflies rise and fall in the breeze. Green sphagnum moss hangs from the branches of willows overarching the stream and the crocodile-scaled trunks of red cedars, as freckled bits of sunlight slip over Laura’s shoulders, the shimmering illumination of the forest reflected a deep fiscus blue in the water around us. There is no time on the river, there is no metronomic growing old on the river because time on the river is an endless streaming of seconds, a dreaming from which it is hard to awake.  At times neither of us talks, we just rest with paddles akimbo and let the current pull our canoe downstream captured and mindless in oceanic dreaming, carrying us gently, resolutely, towards the sea.

As the fatty tissues of the brain pulsed around the memory, Bart’s tongue flickered out of his lipless mouth. Energy encased the globule like a plasma ball. In his time, he’d met more than one core moment such as this. He made the approach on his belly, careful to slither between the electric surges of motor neurons.

A deep inhale. Exhale. Inhale again.

The matter before him smelled of stuffed turkey and deep-dish pumpkin pie. Of fragrant and melted marshmallows. No hint of Campari or orange pith, disguising regret. This was a good one, through and through.

He couldn’t be indiscriminate like he used to, swallowing any and all parts of life before him whole. Over time, doing so had made him fat and sluggish, slow to respond and, more importantly, it destroyed his hosts at a faster rate. In a way, there was an art to it: wear them down without expiring them too quickly — take a bit from childhood, a bit of adulthood, swallow the sandwich filler whole but leave the bread long enough to molder. He’d come to accept that these humans, wasting away, were his home, and eviction was not a comfortable process, as parasitic as he was.

The memory’s placenta glinted aluminum, and he tapped gently around the outside, looking for air pockets, unexpected hollows, places where someone else had wormed their way in before him. His skin shivered at the firm jelly. Satisfied that it was safe to proceed, he unhinged his jaw. Toothless, his strain had evolved over time to siphon rather than chew. He latched around the outer oval. Closed his eyes and sucked glibly.

A carpet rose to encase his feet, his legless body transforming into a biped. He never got a good look at his hosts because, in these moments of their past, he became them. In front of him at eye level, a Christmas tree, striped knit hat topper protecting the ceiling. The room smelled of spruce and cigar smoke, and laughter filtered out to him as if underwater.

Something hit his legs at full speed, and he looked down to see a tiny human dressed in a red tutu, rain boots, and a pajama top.

“The train’s coming by,” she shrieked.

She tugged his hand, and they sped toward the back door and out into the frosted air. Even though he was only in his socks, he reveled in the cold. The mind was always a tropical place, damp and humid, but here, outside, the air crisped and crackled with the dry cold. He let the flakes fall around his host’s face. Lifted the girl onto his shoulder and, together, above the fence, they watched a train speed by.

“Wow,” she said. “Where are they all going?”

“Home,” he replied.

“Can I tell you my favorite part of Christmas, Grandpa?”

Warmth, not his own, flooded his belly and stretched up to his pate. His nerves tingled at the tiny human, the tiny flakes, the tiny seconds pat-pat-pattering by.

“I love being all together.”

Bart knew: whatever it was, this all was what this man also loved and yearned for every day of the year. That, in his semi-conscious, amnesiac mind, he pulled toward this day even if he only remembered flashes. Red rain boots. Two fingers around his thumb. And Bart could tell that this man wanted, deeply, to tell her she could come any day to watch the train rush by, not just Christmas.

In the end, though, he kept that bit to himself.

They stood for precious minutes, perhaps a quarter of an hour, in the snow until the cold saturated his toes and began to crawl up his legs, long after the train and all its cars had rattled past.

“Dinner,” someone called from behind them and as he turned toward the door, the scene spiraled into black, nothing but the lingering touch of someone’s fingers around his, holding tight.

His meal finished, Bart laid himself out where the memory had been and let the plaque begin to creep towards his limbs, a feeble attempt by the host to swallow him, beat him back. It was desperate, the death rattle of cells trying to retrieve that precious, gone thing. There was regret in Bart, yes, he was sure of it, but he was full now, content and he could not give it back.

In the grand scheme of memories, he decided as he lounged there, it was nothing special. Or at least, he told himself, he didn’t have the palate to fully understand its significance.

***

She walked into her grandfather’s room as she always did, timidly. Red boots squeaking against the linoleum. Most of the time he was asleep, his mouth drooping to his chest, spittle dribbling onto his crepe skin. That day, though, she’d caught him at an awake time.

“Hey,” she said. “Took the train up to see you.”

She said this every time she saw him, even if she drove, because something about those words helped. Something in them normally brought him back.

He looked pointedly at her shoes, his brow furrowed and then to her face.

“Who are you? What are you doing in my room?” He asked.

Her boots squeaked as she took a step back, motioning the nurse in and herself out so she could catch her breath. Put her head against the doorframe and try to remember what it had been like, sitting on his shoulder, waiting for the train to come, the train to go. Wondering if this time, it really wasn’t coming back.

We remember it differently now, that summer when the cicadas came. How the air buzzed thick with wings and wanting, how we convinced ourselves we were immortal.

You were there too, weren't you? Or maybe that was someone else. The memories blur like watercolors left in the rain. 

Remember how we'd gather at the quarry after midnight, our bare feet dangling over the edge, passing around warm beer? You'd always sit closest to the edge. Always testing gravity's patience. The rest of us are pretending not to notice how your toes would curl over limestone, how your eyes would fix on the black water below. 

We told ourselves we were invincible then. Seventeen and stupid with it. Smoking cigarettes we'd stolen from our parents' bedside tables, wearing their secrets like borrowed jewelry. None of us talked about the empty chair at Danny's dinner table, or how his mother stopped hanging laundry out to dry.

But you remember that too, don't you? The way his sheets would snap in the wind like surrendering flags, until they didn't anymore.

Some nights we'd pile into Marcus's pickup, six, seven, eight of us deep in the bed, limbs tangled like puppet strings, and drive nowhere in particular. Just away. Away from the weight of our parents' expectations, away from college applications moldering in desk drawers, away from the ghost of Danny's laughter that still echoed in the halls at school. The wind would tear the words from our mouths, scatter them across county lines like seeds. We shouted anyway. Sang anyway. As if volume alone could drown out the questions we didn't want to answer.

Tell us again how it happened. No, tell us the truth this time.

But the truth is slippery as summer sweat, isn't it? It changes depending on who's doing the remembering. Some of us say you were there that night at the quarry when Danny took that last step. Others swear you were home sick with strep throat, that we have the timeline wrong, that it was earlier in the summer, before the cicadas.

We've spent years trying to piece it together. Like that game we used to play as kids, telephone, whispers, whatever you called it. Each retelling distorts the story just a little more, until the truth becomes something else entirely.

Would you tell us if we got it wrong? Sometimes we think you're the only one who knows what really happened. Other times, we wonder if you exist at all, or if we invented you as a place to put our guilt. A repository for all the things we couldn't bear to carry ourselves.

The cicadas are coming back this summer. Seventeen years, right on schedule. They'll burst from the ground like resurrection, filling the air with their desperate song. We'll gather at the quarry again, those of us who still live in town, those of us who can stand to look each other in the eye. We'll drink warm beer and tell old stories, and maybe this time we'll get it right.

Or maybe you'll finally show up and tell us your version. We're ready to listen now. Ready to hear how the story ends.

But we're betting you won't come. Some truths are better left buried, aren't they?

Like cicada shells in summer soil, like secrets at the bottom of quarry lakes, like the answer to that question we're all still afraid to ask:

Where were you that night, really, and why didn't you stop him?

I lean against the door to the B&B, tears squeezing from my eyes.

The door catches. The foundation of this old Victorian must be bad — everything in this house is angled wrong. I throw my whole weight against the door and spill out onto the front porch. I gasp a breath that feels like being born.

I don't know where I am.

That's not entirely true — I know we're somewhere on the Oregon coast. Connor picked the place, and we wound through miles of old-growth forest to get here.

This night was a surprise. He does things like that for me all the time. Personalized playlists. Flowers on Wednesday afternoons. Sweet gestures. Little surprises.

What he just did back in our hotel room was a little surprise.

I smile at my own joke, even though it's terrible and everything's coming undone.

It's not possible, not after a whole year together. Not him. Not to me.

But I watched the way his face changed like lightning, so brief I could have missed it if I blinked. Only I didn't blink, and now when I shut my eyes, his rage is all I can see.

I have to leave. It's what you're supposed to do, and I need air and I need space, but I desperately want him to throw the door open behind me and sweep me into his arms, swear it was an accident or a terrible, terrible prank he'll never pull again. I want him to wipe the tears from my cheeks with his thumb, gentle like he did when I forgot the strawberries for our picnic last weekend.

"I'm sorry," he'd say, kissing my forehead. "You're my fiancee. I love you more than anything. I never meant to hurt you."

The porch sags underneath me as I cross to the front steps. I'll hear him when he comes after me.

I lean against the railing and try to listen to the waves, even though I don't care about them. I care about Connor, about us and the life we're building.

But the waves crash anyway, breaking against the cliffside over and over until my breathing slows down.

I inhale again, longing for the freshness of the salt air, but this whole town smells moldy and faintly of sulfur. Seaweed, maybe? Or some unfortunate beached creature in the darkness below.

Connor doesn't come for me. I can't bear to wait any longer.

I walk down the steps and wrap my arms around myself as I wander down the sidewalk. It's uneven, jagged edges of concrete jutting upwards like the tectonic plates shifted below this exact street, but I step carefully. The last thing I need is to scrape my knee or something. No new scars. Nothing that leaves a mark.

My stomach squeezes.

I take a right and follow the sloping hill down toward the town, if you could even call this place that. I counted a grand total of one gas station, one diner, and one shuttered dive bar on our drive in. That's it.

But anything's preferable to the stillness pressing in from the dark.

I haven't seen a single person or car since I started walking. There aren't even cars parked alongside the road. If not for the orange lights of the gas station up ahead, this stretch of road would be nearly pitch black.

I wish I'd thought to bring a sweatshirt.

I hadn't really thought at all, just reacted. That's what Connor did, too — just reacted.

"It was instinct," he'd said as I slammed the door behind me.

Instinct.

I shake my head like that's going to clear the memory.

It could be worse out here. The wind is practically nonexistent, which strikes me as lucky for a coastal town. The drizzle is light, cooling my flushed skin.

Up ahead, I notice something laying on the sidewalk under a flickering street lamp. My prescription is outdated — these glasses are strictly for the few steps between the bathroom and the bed once I take my contacts out — but I could swear whatever it is is moving, wriggling like a snake.

I approach cautiously, in case my eyes deceive me and it's something cuter than a snake in need of my assistance. A kitten, perhaps. Something tender and needy that I can tuck under my arm and bring home as a peace offering.

But it's not a kitten. It's not even alive, not anymore.

It's a leg.

I recoil. A deer leg, unbloodied like it just snapped right off at the hip. The fur is glossy in the misty light. There're no bite marks, no signs of decay. It's just detached, as if it was never moving at all.

I whip around, suddenly certain someone must be watching. This has to be a sick joke — locals messing with tourists — but there's no one around. There aren't even any houses on this street to peep from.

I inch closer not because I want to, but because some terrible part of me needs to see more. The break is clean. The leg looks like it was left here on purpose, not discarded.

Up ahead, a door creaks open slowly somewhere in town, then snaps shut sharply. My heart races as I step carefully over the leg and jog toward the sound. I want nothing more than to not be alone here.

The bar and diner are closed, but the gas station is well-lit. As I make my way into the convenience store, I look to the attendant leaning against one of the pumps on his phone. He can't be more than 17, but I wish he'd acknowledge me and reassure me somehow.

That's not his job. He's paid, like, $3 a month to deal with assholes all day. Don't bother him.

Once I'm inside under the fluorescent lights and the cashier in sight behind the counter, the deer leg doesn't seem so strange. This is a rural area, after all. Maybe it was roadkill. Maybe it was scraps from somebody's hunting trip.

I rifle through the chocolate candies until I realize with a pang of guilt: I don't even have my wallet. Of course I don’t. I left in a hurry. I just stormed out, no phone, no bra, no plan. Just me, in holey leggings and a sleep shirt, standing stupid in a gas station convenience store trying to center myself.

I drift towards the refrigerated drinks and an older woman stocking the shelves.

"Hi," I half-speak, half-mouth as I squeeze by her. I pretend to care about the selection just to look less like I'm casing the joint.

"You didn't pick it up, did you?"

She mumbles, so I almost don't catch it.

"Sorry?"

"You didn't pick it up, did you?" Her eyes are trained straight ahead on the half-empty shelves as she funnels energy drinks out of a pallet.

I hold up my hands. "I'm just browsing."

At this, she turns to me. She's in her mid-50s, short and round with a brow so furrowed she could hold a pencil right between her eyebrows.

"You saw it, right?" she asks. "The leg?"

I blink back at her. "What?"

"Most people turn around," she says, and she resumes stocking.

I search for the right words. "I thought it was a prank."

"It's not."

My stomach squeezes. "What is it, then?"

She glances back at me. "A deer leg."

Her tone doesn’t invite more questions, but I ask anyway. “But why is it just...there?”

“Things end up where they’re meant to.”

I smile politely, because I don't know what else to do. “Right. Of course.”

The sliding door squeals as it opens behind us. It's the teenager from the pumps, still looking at his phone as he heads straight to the back.

“Was it bleeding?”

Her question comes right as I start to walk away. “What?”

“Was there blood?”

I feel goosebumps prickle up my arms. I shake my head.

“That’s good,” she says, more to herself.

"Why?"

"Oh, I can't answer that," she says, shaking her head quickly. She lets the door to the refrigerator snap shut. "You'll probably be fine."

I leave without saying goodbye. The woman’s back is to me anyway.

Outside, the air feels significantly colder. The mist has thickened, hanging just below the tops of the evergreen trees. I follow the same road back toward the hotel, picking my way along the uneven sidewalk.

The deer leg is still there, and even though I try not to look at it, I'm squinting all the way up the hill.

I freeze when it comes into clear view through my scratched lenses. It's bloody now, skinned and raw like a lambchop. I stop dead, unable to tear my eyes away from the jagged bit of bone at the top. The ball joint?

It wasn't like this before.

Some animal could have come along while I was at the gas station, but what kind of animal skins its prey and leaves the rest behind?

I almost turn back, but instead I step over the leg again.

A prank, I tell myself again, picking up the pace. These people have literally nothing better to do.

Something's dragging on the asphalt behind me. It sounds metallic, kind of like the underside of a car bumper scraping the road, but it's deeper. Fleshier.

I don't turn around. I just start to run.

I don't care about the fight anymore. I want to be inside that B&B room, peeling off my wet clothes and locking the door. I want Connor snoring in bed next to me.

What kind of person goes running out into the night after an argument? Clearly it's not safe out here. Clearly I'm not thinking straight. Yes, he acted on instinct, but I overreacted.

This is all fixable. I'm sure he's sorry by now, anyway. He probably went out to look for me-

Oh God, what if he went out looking for me? What if he's out here right now with whatever the fuck is in these woods?

By the time I reach the Victorian, the rooms are all dark. It's silent inside the house, and colder than I remember. The lamp in the foyer hums softly. The staircase is empty.

The door to our room is ajar.

“Connor?” I call, my voice barely above a whisper.

No answer.

I flick on the light by the door, bracing for the worst.

His bag is gone and the bed is made. My things are all still there but his are gone, like he never checked in at all.

My throat tightens. “Connor?”

I take my phone from the bedside table. The battery is nearly dead. I left it charging, but the charger is Connor's, so that's long gone, too.

But there is a text message from an unknown number.

'You shouldn't have come back.'

I stare at the words on the phone screen, unable to make them compute. Did that woman from the gas station somehow get my number? Maybe it's the B&B host fucking with me?

I lay the phone on the bed and cross to the bathroom. The mirror is fogged up like someone just finished a hot shower, except the air is crisp and dry. The rot I smelled outside seeps in through the cracked window.

I touch the mirror, but the condensation seems to be on the inside somehow. My fingerprints don't disturb the fog at all. I half expect my own reflection to be missing, or something, but there I am, wide-eyed and panicked.

Outside, the dragging, scraping sound I heard before is getting louder.

I hold my breath and peer out the window but the street below is empty. In the distance, a little boat is buffeted by the waves. I watch the light dance in the water for a moment before stepping back and retreating to the bed again.

There's another text, this time from Connor. My fingers shake as I hurry to open it:

'Gone.'

As I read the word, another gray bubble appears below it: 'Gone.'

'Gone.'

'Gone.'

'Gone.'

Over and over my text alert dings as the words repeat.

A noise thuds from downstairs on the porch, followed by the scraping. I hold my breath as the front door bumps shut.

Footsteps, too many and too fast.

On instinct, I lunge forward and lock the door to the room. I freeze with my back pressed against the wood, waiting for voices, the sound of keys. It's luggage being dragged, surely. It's the footsteps of children, too energetic, too eager.

I could believe the lies I tell myself, but even I know they're wishful thinking.

Whatever's coming isn't supposed to be here tonight, and it certainly isn't Connor.

Maybe it never was.