He remembers voices whispering from behind the sheet. He remembers
Here, tonight, the whispers cut out as Ethan approached the shrouded shape that waited in the long room. He pulled loose the sheet, just as he had last night, took a glance at what waited beneath, but he knew not to stare at it, not yet. If he started staring now, he might never look away.
It was Kyla who stared instead.
For his part, Ethan returned to the window that stood dead center in the house’s front wall. The window that had glowed with a silver light all night, beckoning to them. Outside, he saw the burning motel, the stars, and—where the road should be—an enormous black void, a field of pure nothingness, even worse than the darkness of the basement. That void was the edge of the ceremony, he thought. The place where this little pocket of time was sealed away from the rest of reality.
Three objects rested inside on the window’s sill. One was a simple leather pouch with a jute drawstring. The other was a black circle of plastic with the wordNikonprinted on it: the lens cap of Sarah’s camera.
The third was a folded piece of paper. A letter, written in a man’s hand.
Sarah,
Don’t try to steer the wind. The ceremony is drawing them together all on its own. It wants to be repaired. You’ll know when it’s time to check into the motel. There won’t be any mistaking it. And when it’s time to check in, here’s what you must do.
I am so sorry.
The instructions that followed were simple, clear-cut. They read less like an occult rite and more like the repair guide for a foreign engine. Ethan found himself nodding along. Understanding.
Remember, Sarah:suicide will not work.
The substance of my father’s mirror is like no other material on our planet. Which makes sense: he always said it was glazed with a little piece of Te’lo’hi itself, back when the creature first fell to the earth. A fragment of the mirror can break away easily, and even though it seems to be metal, Dad swore the material can burn like wood.
The bottom of the note was a final line:
And if anything goes wrong, if you need protection from the ceremony’s power, he said it can be drunk like water, whatever that means.
The letter was signed,
The Chief
Ethan folded up the letter. He crossed the room and stared at what had been concealed beneath the black sheet. It was a tall, rectangular mirror glazed with a quicksilver substance, like chrome. The silver should be reflective, but when Ethan neared the mirror, he didn’t see Kyla in its surface. He didn’t see the room around them.
Instead, Ethan saw himself and Hunter leaving Ellersby. He saw the fire starting in the shop. He saw them checking into this motel. He saw Hunter coated in blood. He saw himself screaming.
He saw himself and Hunter lying on the bed of their room:Hunter naked, fresh from the shower, curled up against the small of Ethan’s back.
He heard Hunter whisper, “Can I hold you for a minute? Just like this?”
More images came, too fast to make sense of them, but it was enough. With a strange, wet, tearing sensation—like a baby tooth coming free—Ethan felt the block in his mind loosen and release. The pain in his head disappeared.
He remembered last night.
Ethan remembered what Jack Allen had told him about Hunter.He killed families, Mister Cross. It was a specialty for Hunter.He remembered headaches, the smell of menthols, pain. He remembered everything.
Ethan understood what had happened to Sarah Powers.
Kyla was still staring at the mirror. In a dazed voice, she said, “You’re not seeing the same things I’m seeing, are you?”
“I doubt it.”
“It’s beautiful. And awful. And sad.”
“It’s life.”
Ethan came nearer to the mirror. He held the Zippo into the crack between the mirror’s back and the wall it leaned against. The lighter finally sputtered, died, but not before Ethan found words carved there in a language he didn’t know. He’d seen those characters before, though: words like this were all over the little room that had been locked away in the back of the motel’s office.
“This mirror is what The Chief’s father brought with him to the motel. It has the instructions to the ceremony. He probably needed the twins’ father to help him decode the language.”
