And in the Dark They Are Born, Part 12
"She’ll light what she can."
CHAPTER 16
REYN LIFTS HER ARMS over her head, and up goes her sweatshirt. Once off, the bearded man folds it gently and sets it on the green-quilted cot to his left. The other man stands nearer to the hallway, naked, watching, working to get his penis hard. His mouth moves but, in this dim light, Reyn cannot pinpoint any particular shapes, any syllables. The bearded man steps back toward her, grinning. He unbuttons her jeans. His fingers find her zipper. They find her belt loops. And—
The floor quivers.
Again.
And again.
The bearded man’s fingers stop. He turns his head. The naked man bends to his discarded clothes, locates his pistol, and, with it in his hand, walks down the hallway.
And then the floor is sent into mild convulsions, short but rapid waves striking Reyn’s toes.
The naked man quickens his pace. The bearded man turns away from Reyn entirely. Flash. Flash-flash. Reyn watches the bearded man reach for the pistol on his hip. Flash-flash. Blood splatters onto her arms and chest. She drops to the floor. Shields her face. Coils her body.
Footsteps. More. More.
Reyn unshields her face. The bearded man squirms on the floor, jaws clenched, right shoulder slimed red. She watches Vitri shove the barrel of the pistol she carried into the man’s mouth. There it stays for three seconds, four, five, the bearded man trying to speak around the barrel. And then Vitri pulls the trigger. Again, and again, and again. Blood, lots of blood. Splattered, leaking, pooling around the bits of pulp on the floor. There are ears, a sliver of an eye. His face appears more as an upside-down funnel than a face at all, jagged red cylinder leading to the skull.
Vitri stands. Walks down the hallway. Comes back dragging the naked man, places him next to the bearded man. Lets him speak. Then aims the pistol at the man’s head and fires, fires, fires, fires until the pistol just won’t anymore. Only then does he drop the pistol. He walks to Reyn, not once looking her in the eye, not once seeming to notice just how quickly she is retreating from him. Closer now, and closer. He reaches for her. She swats at his arms. He stands her up. Buttons her pants. Once done, he searches beneath each cot. Yanks out a rifle. Black, compact, and with too many contours for Reyn to count. Still unsure of what to do—stand still, run, cry—Reyn watches Vitri rise and walk down the narrow hallway. Watches him kneel where the hallway meets the open area and aim the rifle at what Reyn, still in the bedroom, assumes to be the front door of McPHERSON’s ACCOUNTING.
For minutes she watches him. For minutes she waits for him to stand once more, approach her once more, write to her once more, explain this, explain it all. She steps forward. She steps—
Three flashes from the rifle.
Vitri stands and walks out of Reyn’s sight. She waits a moment before continuing down that hallway. When she does, she is met by Vitri, bent over, walking backward. Reyn backs herself against the hallway wall, allowing Vitri the room he needs to drag the skinny man neck to toe in black. On the man’s chest, stitched in white: MARTINEZ.
MARTINEZ’s limp right hand skids over Reyn’s foot. Her eyes follow the blood streaks beneath him. Vitri does his best to toss the man toward a cot. Once he catches his breath, he starts kicking MARTINEZ’s face.
The McPHERSON’s ACCOUNTING door is still open. Night has come. The only light is the candle upon the desk, its almond scent combating the smell of urine and feces drifting down the hallway. Reyn keeps the candle close, as close as she can. Her fingers are trembling less now, adrenaline slinking somewhere other than her eyes as she watches the flame. Alongside the candle, atop the map, is the notebook, open to a blank page, an uncapped pen propped on its binding. SORRY, she has considered writing. SORRY, for being the cause of Vitri’s killing of more people. Yet, in the time she has been waiting for Vitri to emerge from the bedroom, she has been unable to bring herself to do so, her heart sending the tiniest of jolts to her hand before pen can reach paper. No, she thinks it says. And she has been listening. She has been thinking. Letting it churn. You did not cause this. You are not responsible.
Moments later, when she carries the candle down the hallway, Reyn finds Vitri naked on the floor, his pale skin looking like wax paper in the dim light. He has stacked the three dead men in the northwest corner of the bedroom. He lies on his side, facing the opposite wall. Two empty syringes lie near his hand. A small pile of feces is on the floor, against the backs of his thighs. A puddle of urine expands before his groin. This is as close as she gets. This is as close as she wants to be. She does not want to see his face. She wants nothing to do with his eyes, or his hands. Nothing. She wants nothing of him. Die here, she thinks as she walks out of the bedroom. Die right here, Vitri.
Reyn sets Ralph’s sickle on the desk and, next to it, DEEP THROAT. No more weapons, she thinks—a declaration that half of the time terrifies her. The other half? A declaration that gives her pride.
In the weapons’ stead, she places more cans of food in her backpack from the plastic crate against the wall. Barley soup, stringed green beans, fiesta corn, spinach. Reyn searches Vitri’s backpack for anything useful, extracting from it three more palm-sized candles, the flashlight, two and a half bottles of water, and all but one book of matches, which she shoves into her pants pocket. Into her backpack all of it goes, toppling, gravity and shape delegating where it is they’ll rest. Because Reyn is leaving.
She is leaving.
She is leaving.
Going, gone.
Far away from here.
She is leaving.
Not tonight, though, not in the dark. Doing so, she thinks, will be suicide, even with the flashlight clicked on. She pictures herself mauled by some starved predator. Crossing paths with yet another man or woman she’ll fail to understand. Cornered into something just like this, just as painful. She zips the largest pocket of her backpack, then struggles to slide its straps over her shoulders, the added weight enough to alter her posture. Before leaving McPHERSON’s ACCOUNTING, Reyn lifts the lit candle from the desk. She doesn’t think once of closing the door.
Across the road she goes, to the theatre. She carefully sets the backpack on the ground and, candle in hand, walks to the northern side of the building. Nothing but dirt, and weeds, not even a rock. On the southern side, however, sits a small pile of loose yellow bricks, two of which Reyn grabs with her free hand. Back at the entrance, Reyn sets the candle next to her backpack. She then positions herself just so—feet from the door, enough room between for her arm to wind up and follow through, for each brick to gain velocity, make a dent, an impact—and, attempting to channel as much anger as she can, offers her first throw. Though a beetle-sized shard of glass has chipped off, she has missed the mark; all she needs, all she wants is a hole above the handle, large enough to snake her arm through and turn the lock.
CHAPTER 17
Gone, gone, gone, she is gone, they are gone, all are gone and crack-crack, crack-crack, the sound of glass, the sound of anger, the sound of hope shattering, falling where it belongs, where it starts, where it leads, and crack-crack, crack-crack, crack-crack, crack-crack. Crack-crack—
Gone, all gone—
crack-crack—
you are not floating—
crack-crack—
there is no song—
crack-crack—
you are what makes it end.
When the crack-crack from across the road subsides, Vitri opens his eyes. Beneath the cot nearest him is a boy’s head. No body to speak of; just his head, parallel to Vitri’s, eyes aligned. Seven years old. Eight. Grey face. Dark, disheveled hair. Violet eyelids. An indifferent stare.
“You did this,” the boy says. It is not a whisper. It is not a scream. It is not his son. He has never seen this boy, in life or in dream, but he somehow knows him and trusts him.
“I did,” Vitri says. He scoots himself closer to the boy. Wants to feel his cheek. Wants to find the rest of him and hold him close.
A rifle inches itself from under the cot.
“You don’t belong here,” the boy says.
Vitri stops. Stares at the rifle. “No,” he says. He grips the rifle. “No, I don’t.”
And then, like everyone else, the boy is gone. Gone, gone, gone.
Once Vitri discontinues his search for the boy, he, rifle in hand, rolls onto his back. Empty syringes fracture beneath his weight. The pile of feces flattens across the back of his right thigh. He checks the safety. Off. Flips the barrel of the rifle to his chin. Rests the stock on his abdomen. Locates the trigger. Works the barrel of the rifle to the roof of his mouth.
One flash of yellow-white light rushes through MCPHERSON’S ACCOUNTING and spills onto the road, onto Reyn’s back.
CHAPTER 18
By the time Reyn can fit her arm through the hole that she has created in the theatre’s glass door, the candle has gone out. Her forehead glistens. Her breath is heavy. After allowing herself a moment of rest, she reaches her hand through the hole, jagged glass wide enough for her to angle her wrist without being gashed, find the deadbolt and unlock the door. She retracts her hand carefully, returns to her backpack and slings it over her shoulders. Then, propping the door open with her hip, she pulls the book of matches from her pants pocket. She re-lights the candle. She enters the theatre.
Half of the floor is carpeted with what Reyn can see now are chunks of various rugs and floor mats, a mosaic as they are, when spliced together. The other half is gravel, and cold, on which dozens of posters lie, rolled tight and rubber-banded. Near the eastern wall, one projection screen hangs from the rafters, moderately sized and greyed by dust. No more than ten feet from the screen sits one row of four multi-colored seats. Black and grey, beige and red, one cloth, two leather, the last some ratty version of suede, all with gouges mended by duct tape, and armrests made of plywood, semi-wrapped in rubber tubing. Three of the four still have seatbelts, male and female ends dangling.
In the northeastern corner, at the edge of her candle’s glow, Reyn spots the start of a basement staircase. She sets her backpack on one of the chairs facing the projection screen. Carefully places the lit candle on the floor and reaches into her backpack for another. Lights it; waits for the flame to settle. Then, she descends the staircase.
Ten feet down she goes, candlelight climbing up and across the nearest concrete wall. She turns right when she reaches the bottom. Dozens of weapons hug the eastern wall. A pile of pistols. Leaned rifles and shotguns. Further south are two stacks of empty duffel bags, ammunition boxes and cleaning kits between that give the towers structure. Reyn examines little here. Reaches for nothing. It’s when she turns to leave that she sees anything of interest: at the edge of her candle’s light, in the southwestern corner, lies what she knows to be a generator, its tires dusty, stones lodged between treads. She approaches. Crouches. Hovers the candle over CHOKE, over START, over the small engine and the pull cord. She wonders what would illuminate if she were to start it, wonders what of this small town draws its power from this stout rectangle. She pictures lampposts that have yet to be erected, neon signs that have yet to be placed. She pictures building interiors aglow, the theatre’s projector flickering. She pictures wanderers along the river’s shore, spooked at the sight but unable to defy their desire to approach, drawn to the light like moths. Not yet, Reyn thinks. Not here. Not now. She stands. Looks at the generator from this angle. Knows that she won’t be able to get it up the stairs by herself, knows but wants to try in the morning anyway.
Back up the stairs she goes. She blows out the candle in her hand. Lets the candle on the floor burn. She sits down, facing the projection screen, knowing that nothing will play, knowing that no one will join her. And, for now, she is more than okay with that. She is content, alone in this theatre, thinking not of Vitri, not of her father, of Faye, or her mother, but of herself and of that shipwreck, of the American Queen.
Before swigging from that open bottle of water and spooning chunks of soup from that pre-opened can at the bottom of her backpack, she wonders if there is a way in, a way to the deck, a ladder or rope to climb, a window to fracture and crawl through. She pictures herself standing upright in a room forever sideways, taking days to tailor it all to her liking—muscling over the tipped beds, the end tables, the nightstands. She’ll read every page, every last word of the books that have flown from the shelves, scribbling notes in the margins, observations aligning with what she sees the world as. At dawn, she thinks. At dawn she’ll start. She’ll re-hang the curtains. She’ll scrape the sap from whichever healthy trees remain and use it to glue the shattered lamps together. She’ll come back here when she’s done. Grab the generator. Wheel it north. She’ll light what she can.
Reyn is at her home on LaFontaine, lying on the living room sofa, and she feels fine. Her cheek has returned to normal, as has her tongue. Nothing of her body throbs. And yet, something feels off to her. Not her body. The home.
Though she for the life of her can’t remember what images were seconds ago flashing across the television, gone is the picture, reduced to black and white lines that whip like downed telephone wires. She sits up and blood dribbles down her chin.
The wall nearest the kitchen vanishes, ripped off like a scab. And through the new opening walks her mother. Her healthy mother. Back is her style. Back is her midsection. Back is her smile. And she walks straight to Reyn. Instructs her to lie her head back. Reyn does. Feels her mother’s fingers caress her throat. Seconds later, her mother stands, turns, walks off.
Reyn sits up. More blood dribbles down her chin. She wipes it away. More spills from her lip. She wipes it away and then gone is the wall nearest her. In walks her father, who, drunk, stumbles toward the kitchen, doing a double-take once he sees Reyn on the couch. He stops. Smiles. Stumbles toward her. Leans down, goes to kiss Reyn on the cheek, stubbled face smearing across her chin. He smiles as he rises, blood on his lips.
After him walks Faye. Through the house she goes. Crossing her path is JOHN. Crossing JOHN’s path is the old woman with the American Queen shirt. Through the house they all go, past Reyn. Oblivious.
Reyn sits up once more. Blood pours from her mouth, down her chin, to her chest, on her lap. She stands but immediately feels weight on her shoulders, a force pressing down that she fights, fights-fights-fights. And then there are hands, and then there are feet, and then there are shins, and thighs. A chest. Shoulders mirroring hers. She looks up to see Vitri, eyes wide, scarf over his mouth and nose. He shoves her to the sofa. Pins her hands to the cushion. Mounts her. Thrusts. And thrusts. And thrusts, paying no mind to the same people that pass through the house once more—Reyn’s mother, Reyn’s father, Faye, JOHN, the old woman. Only when he is finished, only when he is face down on Reyn’s chest does the roof begin to cave in.
Reyn does not wake at dawn, but hours after, when the shadow looming over the theatre is shifting, when sunlight leaks through the glass and onto the floor. When she does wake, it’s in a panic.
That was not real. That was not real.
She rises from the two seats she’d shoved together in the night and rubs sleep from her eyes as she walks toward the glass door. It isn’t until she begins pushing the door open that she sees the small boy standing in the doorway of McPHERSON’s ACCOUNTING, plain blue mask on and loosely over all but his lips and eyes, the diamond-shaped holes for each glared by sunlight skimming off the plastic.
He wears no shirt, only baggy blue shorts that flare at the calf. In his lone hand he holds tight the two blue masks he’d found in the crate.
They stand like this, staring at one another across the road. For one second, for two seconds, three, and up to six before Reyn, assuming the boy to not be acting on his own, glances south. As she does so, as she shifts her eyes for but a moment, the small boy takes off. Sprints north, arms pumping but head still, legs churning, sandaled feet sending plumes of dust into the sky.
Reyn hurries through the doorway and onto the dirt road, scuffing shards of glass along. Before the boy, still sprinting north, reaches the slope she and Vitri surmounted en route to the town, Reyn sees one of the two masks slip from his grasp. But soon he is down the hill, out of sight.
Reyn slowly walks north but soon finds herself picking up speed. He’d come so far, she thinks, somewhere between a jog and sprint now, feeling the aluminum cans smacking her back. She feels the remaining liquid in the bottle of rubbing alcohol slosh around, jostling for position with the candles.
Reyn struggles to bend down and pick up the abandoned mask. But she does and, mask in hand, she covers the remaining yards to the crest of the hill. Looking down on the gravel shoreline, she sees the boy, two hundred yards north, veer slightly to the west, toward the treeline. To the east of him is the river, its coverage growing thicker the further north he goes, its top layer comprised of still-green grass and weeds not yet yellowed by the sun.
She focuses on the boy once more, who has begun turning his hips toward the river, his eyes, his feet following, all churning just as fast as before. At this moment, maybe more than ever, Reyn wishes she could scream, wishes she could shout, “No,” and that he’d listen, and turn back, away from what she is sure are traps.
But onto the layered river the boy leaps, and sprints across, all two-hundred-plus feet, straight across loose grass kicked to the sky by his feet instead of dust.
Once on the eastern side, the boy slows eventually to a walk, either winded or bogged down by a sense of security. He then stops entirely. He turns around and holds his gaze with Reyn for only a few seconds, then is gone again, into a northeastern sprint, over the first of several small yellow-green hills.
Reyn stands, on the crest of the hill, and looks northeast, hoping the boy will come back into view. When, after moments, he doesn’t, she turns her attention to the blue mask still in her hand. The inside of the mask, formed to a small nose and round cheeks, is white, save for a smear of red near the forehead. There is an indent an inch or so from the right eye, the impression no larger than what a grown man’s thumb could make. Reyn flips the mask. The blue paint is uneven in spots, lighter around the jaws, nearer to purple on the chin, but for no obvious reason. Other than that, however, the mask is, like the sprinting boy’s, plain, void of design, the two of them unified by a lack of identity.
Go to the boat, Reyn thinks. Just go to the boat; that is your home now. She walks north, cradling the mask. Drop the mask. He’ll find it. Drop the mask. Go to the boat. Drop the mask. Go to the boat. Drop the mask, go to the boat. Drop the mask, go to the boat, drop the mask, go to the boat, drop the mask, go-to-the-boat, go-to-the-boat, go-to-the-boat.
Go. To. The. Boat.
Fifty yards later, Reyn stops. She looks again at the mask. She looks north. She looks northeast. She can’t. He had no weapon. He did not attack you. He did not beat your face. He is not Vitri. He is a boy, a boy who has been looking for something he’d lost.
The thought, no matter how much she fights it, stays with her for another twenty yards or so, until, staring north once more, at the treeline, at the gravel, Reyn realizes that all she is walking towards, the only thing that lies ahead is the past.
If she stays on course, if she sticks to what she knows, if she walks to that boat, she’ll pass Vitri. He’ll be there, on the forest floor, gasping for air. He’ll be there, near that pile of ash. He’ll be there, and there is nothing north, nothing she can do but walk west to avoid him, travel around him, only to watch him stare once more at the American Queen.
Reyn approaches the river, long stick in hand. Where she figures the small boy sprinted across, she pokes aside the top layer of grass and weeds, revealing beneath it what appears to be a thin mound of wet clay. She inserts the end of her stick into the mass, then struggles to pull it free. A bridge, she thinks. Or a dam. Something made, something shaped.
She paces north and proceeds to fling more grass and weeds aside. She sees that the clay is no more than a foot wide, with still brown water on the north and south. When she looks closely enough, she can still make out the sprinting boy’s footprints in the clay; barely visible, barely felt.
For a few minutes, after easing the blue mask into her backpack, Reyn tests just how much weight the clay can hold. Backpack on her shoulders, she steps atop and stands still. Within seconds she sinks half an inch. She steps off, tries again and again, holding the backpack in different positions but knowing it won’t make a difference; weight is weight.
You’re too heavy. You can’t run as fast. You’ll sink. You’ll take one misstep and fall off this shallow wall, into deeper water. Your leg will be snared in a trap. You will drown. The boy is a magician. Go back to the town. Search the alleys and theatre for a rope. Search for a crate. Tug the crate across the river as you run.
Reyn walks backwards until her heels nearly touch the treeline. She keeps her eyes northeast. Furiously, Reyn sets the backpack on the ground, unzips its largest pocket, and begins plucking cans of food from the bottom. She tosses four of the seven on the gravel, knowing someone, or something, will someday find them, will find it all and put it to use, survive if only for a few days more. Three of five candles. One bottle of water.
Reyn zips the pocket. Stands up. Pulls the straps over her shoulder. Takes one deep breath. Two. Just go.
And then Reyn takes off. She keeps her weight as forward as she can without toppling over, arms pumping, feet digging into the gravel, focusing on her line, the narrow line she must hit, and keep, stepping over the water that filled in her trial-run footprints, until she is sprinting atop the clay, across the river.
For fifty-plus feet she sprints, relentlessly, with both violence and grace, springing off of her toes. Ten more feet. Ten more, ten more. And then she loses it. Her right foot slips. Her left knee slams into the clay. She falls, taking with her into the water the topmost layer of grass and weeds and twigs.
Panic. She kicks her feet. Water splashes all over her hair, the backpack, her shoulders. Loose grass flings every which way. She digs her fingers into the clay, peeling away chunks, shoving the mound further into the water, allowing a slow current to begin in the middle of the river. Reyn feels that ball forming in her chest, forcing its way to her throat.
Forward, she thinks. Forward, forward, forward, and, whether or not the ball makes its way off her tongue, Reyn crawls her way along the clay toward the eastern shore. Forward, forward, forward. Forward, forward, forward. Fifty feet from shore. Forward, forward, forward. Forty. Forward, forward, forward.
Reyn’s shins graze the riverfloor. She continues crawling until she can stand. When she does, she is up to her thighs in soggy grass, what water she’d soaked up along the way returning itself to the river with the help of gravity. And, standing there, her weight taking her and the clay an inch or so lower, Reyn allows herself to smile. She looks back at where she began and thinks it far away now. She can even see where she fell, evident by the current that continued to flow, carrying with it what its hands could grasp. Satisfied, she turns back around and steps toward shore. Twenty feet remaining. Fifteen. Ten, her knees high, feet down, water splashing around each step. And then she feels it. Some sort of hiss across her right calf. A snap in the water. She looks down, sees nothing but brown. But there is a sting in her leg, a growing sting, a throbbing sting. Forward, she thinks. Forward, forward, forward.
Once ashore, Reyn takes off the backpack and sits down on the gravel. With the amount of water that had soaked into her clothes, Reyn struggles to roll up her pant leg, grimacing with each fold. There is a gash on the back of her calf. Two gashes. Three, the first short and shallow, the second deeper, longer, the third even more so. All three bleed onto the stones beneath her.
Immediately, Reyn reaches for her backpack. Lying on her side, she unzips the largest pocket and plunges her hand toward the bottom, searching for the bottle of rubbing alcohol. She pulls it out, twists off its top and pours more than she needs over her leg. A harsher sting, a broader sting, a series of gasps.
Right pantleg still rolled, Reyn gingerly walks northeast, toward sparse groupings of trees, into ankle-high grass.
The river is no longer in sight.
She passes an empty hunting shack, two of the four walls caved in, handfuls of bullet casings left behind and rusting. She walks over patches of uneven ground she assumes to be places the blue-masked boys have dug and replaced as best they could, small footprints leading further northeast. Between two particular ridges, she spots two white-tailed deer, one buck, one doe, both sets of ears perked, their hair patchy but their frames, for the fifteen seconds they remain still, appearing as elegant as they should.
Reyn maintains her pace for upwards of an hour before her thighs and groin begin to burn—a reminder of Vitri’s attack. She seeks shade beneath a wilting willow, which, thus far, having walked entirely over gradual ridges and into the sun-fried valleys between, has been difficult to find. She sits against the trunk, her left leg flat on the burnt grass, the right crossed over to examine the gashes. Dry now, reduced to slivers of pink.
Forward, forward, northeast, northeast, then northeast some more. Sun high, hotter than it has been for days. No wind. Sweat, lots of sweat, lots of steps, lots of sweat seeping into the cuts, lots of steps, lots of burning. Northeast, northeast, past thicker clusters of trees—oaks and elms and sycamores—past thicker knots of weeds and brush, past shade, over hearty grass, eventually back into a valley as the sun continues to arc.
Forward, forward, forward, up the steepest incline Reyn has come across, struggling all the way to the top, breathing heavy, toes dug in. Young trees, as high as her chest, trunks the size of her ankles. High enough now to see just over the crest of the hill, Reyn watches smoke eddying into the sky. Forward. Forward, forward, forward. Once atop, she wipes the sweat from her forehead and looks down on an old loghouse in the process of being painted light blue, two of four sides completed. The smoke comes from its center, a narrow circle in the roof. Leaning against the westernmost side of the longhouse is a bicycle. Small dark blue frame, white handlebars, white seat, evidence of its last ride able to be tracked all over the lawn, narrow trails all around the house, up and down the slope, weaving beneath trees to the north that, through its sparse leaves, appears to have taut ropes strung from branch to branch.
Reyn, weight on her heels, walks down the slope, head up and scanning for any reason to turn back, or head west. Steel traps. Rifles. Arrows. While she sees nothing of the sort, Reyn, unable to completely combat the doubt, raises her arms in the air as she walks toward the longhouse, surrendering before anything even begins.
Fifty yards. Closing. Arms: still in air. Mouth: dry. Sweat. The burn in her thighs easing, overpowered by nervousness. Flutters in her muscles.
Twenty-five yards, on flat ground. A blue door, uneven logs as steps, bound by twine. Windows. Blue shutters. East of the trees: glimpses of green, shin-high corn stalks, the beginnings of what look to be caged tomato plants. She doesn’t tell them to, but finds her arms dropping to her sides.
Ten yards. The smell of food cooking. Meat. Fatty meat. Potatoes. Greens. She notices the window nearest her is fogged but looks anyway, albeit briefly, seeing only varying flashes of white light from the southeastern corner of the interior. She can continue this way, she knows—gawk through the windows, spy, intrude from a distance. But that is not why she has come here. Nor is she here to beat on this door, to wait for them to answer with alarm, misguided to violence.
After gathering her breath, what Reyn does is take the backpack once more from her shoulders and set it on the ground. She again unzips the largest pocket, pulling from it the pen and notebook, its pages mostly dry. She writes:
Reyn sets the notebook on the top step, against the blue door. She places the blue mask the beside the notebook, eyeholes skyward, then reaches back in for the remaining cans of food, arranging all in a line on the bottom step and placing atop them the candle, into the heart of which she’d carved R + V.
With every intention to light the wick, Reyn pulls the book of matches from her pocket and, upon feeling their dampness, understands that there is no point in trying. It will not light. She backs away from the door and sits on the ground, pulling her knees to her chest. She hugs them tight. Curves her spine, rests her chin. She tilts her gaze from candle to door, from door to candle. This is how she’ll stay, for minutes, for hours, however long it’ll take to be found.
Listen to Part 12 Author Commentary
Peek behind the scenes of Part 12 with author Garrett Francis.