The Witch and the Dark Forest

A.D. Shinn

Published by Plastic Press, 2017.

This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

THE WITCH AND THE DARK FOREST

First edition. October 30, 2017.

Copyright © 2017 A.D. Shinn.

ISBN: 978-1386155454

Written by A.D. Shinn.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

The House: A Prelude

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Part Seven

Part Eight

Part Nine

Also By A.D. Shinn

The House: A Prelude

WITCHES DON'T HUNT. They build houses in the woods tailored to their desired demographic to lure the unwary, the greedy, the generally hapless. Houses of candy bring children, by far the easiest to trick, but a candy house is a commitment that hardly leaves time for anything else. Stylish and modern houses of granite and mahogany and stainless steel bring adults, but the materials are expensive, and adults are largely worthless; set in their ways, bodies damaged beyond repair, sad lives of unfulfilled promise. Really, what's the point? Teens, however, require little more persuasion than children, they're pregnant with promise, and—perhaps the best thing about them—they don't tell anyone of importance when the strange, the terrifying, the obviously evil befalls them. They bear the burden under the mantra: you wouldn't understand. All it takes to build the perfect house for a teen is patience. Time itself will do all the work for you. Time will rot the wood, peel the paint, set the boards to creak, and when the house lies withered and split like fallen fruit, the little flies will come. They'll come in pairs, they'll come alone, they'll come in droves, always trembling in fear—their fear like worship before the offering—and they'll give themselves to the house, and they'll never stop coming for as long as the house stands.

Part One

THERE WERE NO SHADOWS in the trees, despite the pink clouds that had cast the world beyond in perpetual twilight. The soft, purpling light was swallowed in black with the first steps into the treeline. Leaves crunched under foot only to have their cries follow the light into the oppressive black, leaving only silence behind. Words, breathing, the gentle giggling from the girls ahead, all swallowed by the twisted, looming shapes they threaded through in blindness. The darkness swam in their eyes, broken in brief moments by the sweep of dim blue-white from the flashlight of Joshua's phone. A small relief to believe that Joshua could see where he was going, and the pale light, once their eyes had adjusted, allowed them to follow his silhouette.

Weak, blue light greeted them as they approached a clearing—an oasis in the desert of trees. A break in the clouds allowed the pale moon to repopulate the world of the oasis in the shadows the forest had denied. In the center of it all sat a house, tall and proud, defiant in its solitude. Moonlight draped across its shoulders, shading its empty face in deeper dark and swirling shadow, making the whole clearing appear to be under water. A school of black-winged fish circled the house and, with a chorus of squawking, settled into the rustling trees.

Emily threw the first rock. She knew it was dumb, but Joshua was there, and she didn't want him to think she was a coward. Or worse, to ignore her altogether. She had expected to hear a crash, but what followed was a thud and laughter. She had missed the window she was aiming for by several feet, leaving a spidering chip in the aged paint on the thick wood siding of the house. Zoe and Jun—both of whom she doubted would have done any better—laughed and taunted. She was embarrassed, but smiled it away and shrugged, her eyes landing on Kelsey who just stood by with her arms crossed, glaring. She shook her head when Emily's eyes met hers. Kelsey had not wanted to come out here in the first place, but where Emily went, Kelsey followed, and if that meant getting murdered in a house in the woods, so be it.

"Come on. We never get invited to anything, and Josh asked me himself. That's gotta mean something," Emily had said, her face alight, as if she had won the lottery.

"Yeah? You think it means something good that the people who make fun of us in school now want us to go with them into the forest at night? Your instincts are all fucked up," Kelsey had said, trying to keep the anger from invading her words, fearing that Emily would think the anger was directed toward her. Kelsey hated Joshua more than she had hated anything ever before, which extended, by proxy, to Joshua's sister, Zoe, and her stupid friend Jun. She couldn't remember if she had hated him this much before Emily got her stupid crush on him, but she wanted to believe so.

A skittering of claws on wood exploded from the house and was immediately swallowed by the trees. The crows fluttered and readjusted their perches, but no sound escaped their beaks. The violent, albeit brief, sound was enough to set them all on edge. Even Joshua seemed rattled, his calm ease disappearing behind wide eyes and raised brows.

"We'd better check that out," he said, a smile ripping across his face.

Zoe and Jun each grabbed a sleeve on either side of him, pulling like spoiled children.

"Let's just go," Zoe said, her blue eyes shaking in the dark.

"Yeah, let's go to the bowling alley. My uncle'll sell us beer, as long as we don't get caught drinking it." Jun's eyes were an indistinct shade of green-brown that matched her skin and hair color. An arrangement that, in light, made her appear to be an art experiment in monochrome, which she only amplified with her makeup choices that were almost exclusively in earth-tones, many of which claiming to be nude shades. In the forest, in the dark, it made her disappear into the scenery, leaving an invisible presence that floated distressed denim and a cropped, leather jacket against the contrasting tree trunks and haunted house.

Kelsey almost let out a gasp of amusement at the thought of Jun taking her clothes off and blinking right out of existence. The idea stirred something in her groin, and it took her by surprise to imagine that she hated someone so much, the thought of them ceasing to exist roused sexual excitement.

"Well, that's unnerving," she accidentally said out loud, to the confusion of the group.

"K's right. We need to go in there, now. There's no other option." Joshua smiled at her, which did not alleviate a single ounce of hatred she had for him.

"I agree." Emily smiled and pulled her phone from her pocket, thumbing the button-less front and swiping at the flashlight. It was her first flagship, and she had only had it for a few days, so she was eager to show it off. How many other seventeen-year-olds had thousand-dollar phones? Not many around here, if any, she was certain. Of course, it was like fifty dollars a month, and she didn't have a job, so her mother paid for it, but still.

Emily set a tentative foot on the first of two steps up to the porch, feeling the wood give a little, releasing a fissured-ice squeal into the sky to be swallowed by the trees. The second step produced a similar sound, but the front porch, itself, was solid and barely creaked as she padded across it. At the door she tested the knob. She feared it might be locked, but with a bit of force, it popped free and turned in her hand.

She swung the door inward and panned the cold, soulless, white-blue light around the room. It was cleaner than she had expected an abandoned house to be. There were no empty beer bottles, no piles of trash, no discarded clothing, no graffiti on the walls, no blanket of dust. Something about the cleanliness was unsettling, so she pretended to have expected it, telling herself that it was closed up, so not a lot of dirt would really get inside. Right? Right. From the doorway, she could see past the beginning of the stairs that disappeared behind the living room wall and into the kitchen where her light glinted off the polished flooring and swept across a table with its centerpiece still intact. Her own insides were churning with nervous vibration and the intense, but fluctuating, desire to urinate. Her skin prickled.

Joshua had ignored the short, fragile stairway and walked straight onto the porch, surprising Emily at the door, making her shoulders jump up as she drew in a sharp breath. He set a hand on her shoulder, a little more gently than he needed to, and smiled at her, then leaned in close and whispered something in her ear before stepping into the house.

Emily followed Joshua into the house, which set off a race between Zoe and Jun, and, to her disdain, Kelsey, herself. Each footfall was a gunshot in the silence, and Kelsey was certain if anyone lived here, they'd know they had company by now.

Kelsey was last through the doorway, and was struck immobile in an instant. Inside the house warm afternoon light glowed through the windows and the house was all gold and honey. It took several seconds for Kelsey to realize that she recognized the inside of this house. The blue couch with the small pink flowers that dotted it, the ceramic Indian-chief bust that sat upon the mantel, the yellow formica laminate peeling at the edge of the kitchen table. This was her house. At least, it was the house that she had lived in until age seven. The woods outside, the crumbling exterior, the dead night sky, the four people who should have been standing right next to her, but were inexplicably absent; all forgotten in the moment. She hardly even questioned it.

There was a man seated at the kitchen table with his back to her, and she knew him. She almost thought that it had to be someone else, but she knew it wasn't. She took a step, hesitant to break the spell, but it held strong and she found that she could move through the vision. She wanted so badly to see him again, to talk to him, and if it had to be in a hallucination, well, so be it. After only a few steps, she stopped again. From somewhere off-screen came a voice. Her heart sank, chest collapsing, as the voice gave way to the familiar shape that flitted into the kitchen.

"Forgettable," the tiny girl said in response to her father's query about her school day, while she slid a note towards him, making a show of how unimportant the note should be.

"Except, of course, the pictures. They wouldn't let me and Emily take a picture together, so I screamed at them and threw a fit for, like, five whole minutes. It was hilarious." She faked a laugh and swatted at her father's leg. "You shoulda seen 'em."

"Yeeaahhh... Your mother is not going to like that," he said in a calm, reasonable tone. Just about the only tone Kelsey had ever heard him use.

"Oh, I know. There was no 'stepping on toes' I didn't do today. She's gonna hit me." Her smile faded a bit.

Her father set the note aside and placed his hand on her shoulder. "I wish she wouldn't hit you, but she believes it works and she won't listen to me. I, also, wish you would stop doing things you know will make her hit you, but I know you won't. I'm feeling..." He looked to the ceiling, then back at little Kelsey. "Ineffectual."

Little Kelsey didn't know what that meant, and she didn't really care to ask. She set her hand on top of her father's hand on her shoulder.

"In my memoir, I'll note that you did the best you could with what you were given. You'll be a sympathetic character," she said and smiled.

Kelsey could hear popping and crackling in the distance, and a wash of heat fell upon her, and she could smell smoke. She blinked away tears, which made the vision swirl and dim. She reached toward the ghosts as they faded to dull blue before disappearing into the inky blackness of the house. Before her eyes could adjust to the new dark of the living room, light exploded from the corner of the room, leaving purpled negatives as she tried to blink it away.

In the bright flash from Emily's phone, something grabbed at Zoe and Jun, which released twin, throat-tearing screams from them and forced them back into Kelsey, knocking her into the wall. She pushed them away. Now it was Emily's turn to laugh at them, and she had recorded the whole thing, so she could look back and laugh as much as she wanted. Forever.

Joshua had only begun to laugh when something creaked upstairs. Joshua held out a hand and hunched his back, with his ear cocked out. Whether the creak was from floorboards or a door, they couldn't tell, and they waited in silence to hear it again. They did not hear the creak again, but they heard a shuffle, and a slight drag. Something like loose, leathery skin, like a deflated elephant, seemed to be moving upstairs. Moving down a hallway. Moving towards the stairs. It sounded like it slid to a halt at the top of the stairs with a gentle "shhh" sound.

"No way," Zoe said as softly as she could. "No one lives here. There's no one here." She shook her head, as if saying the words would make it true.

Kelsey grabbed at her arm and tried to drag her away, but she had fallen into a heap on the floor when Joshua grabbed at her, and she was dead-weighting herself against Kelsey's pull. Something was wrong with this place, and Kelsey was not interested in sticking around to find out what. "No one doesn't mean no thing. It could be a mountain lion up there, for all we know. We need to go now!" She let her voice rise until she was almost shouting, but Zoe remained planted. Kelsey set the girl's arm free and met Emily halfway across the room, as she was on her way to flying out the door. It confirmed what Kelsey had already believed: that Emily was considerably smarter than these people she wanted to call friends.

Hand in hand they flung themselves through the door and off the porch, out into the trees as one, Emily only looking back long enough to make sure Joshua had made it out as well. It was only a quarter of a mile to the road where Emily's car sat parked behind Joshua's truck, but in the pure black night it was a dangerous and difficult flight. When they finally reached the road, they had gone too far in some direction: north or south, they didn't know. It all looked familiar, which meant that none of the scenery was distinguishable, except for the gentle bend in the roadway. Kelsey realized they must be just south of the cars.

The noise of leaves thrashing beneath feet came from up the road and Kelsey took it as a sign. Without hesitation, they took off in pursuit, and saw the door of Joshua's truck slamming shut as they rounded the bend. In the dark and distance, they couldn't tell if Joshua had Zoe and Jun with him, but Emily wasn't about to stick around to find out. Joshua's truck kicked dirt and small rocks up, pinging against Emily's car, and she winced as she fought to get her keys in the door, while Kelsey danced at the passenger side like she had to pee. Joshua didn't seem to see them behind him, or if he did, it didn't seem to matter.

Emily managed to fumble her way into the car, sliding into her seat and straining to lean over to unlock Kelsey's door. She fired the car up and launched into the roadway without bothering with seatbelts or turn signals or mirrors or even the concept of traffic in her mind. She watched in the rearview for anything following them, feeling foolish for it, but then she glimpsed something else spilling out of the trees. Kelsey saw it, too.

"Shit! Go back. That asshole," Kelsey cried, her body and neck twisted tight, looking out the back window.

Emily slowed and pulled far right, thinking she'd whip around like they did in the movies, but when she cranked the wheel left and floored it the car lurched and chugged and jerked through the turn, going wide and scraping at the dirt and rocks along the side of the road. Once she wrestled the wheel back in line, she snapped on the high beams, throwing light no farther down the road, but instead throwing it high into the trees. The harsh brightness turned Jun's shape into a washed-out, over-saturated specter. She was jumping and waving her arms like a madman. Kelsey started to open the door well before they came to a stop, and as soon as the car clunked to a halt, she flung the door wide, bounced out, and slid the seat forward.

"Is Zoe with you?" Kelsey was stern, anger coloring her concern, just as it tended to color any other emotion she tried to portray.

"I think she went with Joshua. I tripped like an idiot and they didn't wait for me."

"Uncharacteristically wise of them." Kelsey smirked and presented the open door like a prize that had been won.

Jun crawled inside, not a single whimper of protest about being sat in the back, and drew out her phone. She did not unlock it, she just looked at its dead, black face, her relief reflected back at her. Kelsey knocked the seat back into position and settled herself back in, somehow, for the moment, the need to rush seemed lesser, or even nonexistent. Emily was more reasonable with her turn back into the roadway this time. She kept close to the speed limit, though she saw no other traffic, cops or otherwise, on the way back to town. She left the brights on for the rest of the drive for no other reason than the odd comfort of seeing the trees so clearly.

A sort of nervous laughter rose from the back seat. A breathy, gentle, melodic jangling like a cackle with the gain turned down. Emily watched in the rearview, worried that Jun was having a breakdown, but was surprised to see genuine relief in her face. Her eyes were bright and clear, not the wild and wet eyes Emily had expected.

"That was a stupid panic reaction." She wheezed between upheavals of laughter and giggling. "Even if it was a mountain lion or something... I mean, Jesus."

Kelsey could not hold in her own chuckling, a sort of dumb lower register guffawing. She had to appreciate that the girl recognized how dumb they were all being, but it also made Kelsey wish she had handled her own fear better.

"Nippers?" Came the question from the back seat.

Kelsey considered asking the others what they had seen when they walked into that house, but maybe it would be better to leave it be, for now. If they went to the bowling alley, like Jun was suggesting, maybe she'd build up the courage to talk about it sometime later in the night.

"That's cool with me," Kelsey said, calming herself, not turning her gaze away from the road ahead of them.

Emily said nothing for several seconds, but after thinking about it, she figured that was the most likely place that Joshua and Zoe would be, which made her decision easier. "Yeah. Sounds like fun." She smiled into the rear view, but Jun didn't see it.

Part Two

ZOE SAT AT THE BAR of the bowling alley, eyes dead, blinks coming few and far between. She looked oddly placid, like a corpse at a wake. If it weren't for the gentle rise and fall of her bony shoulders, Kelsey would have believed she had died back there at the house. Her dark skin had turned ashen, her pallid face revealing the purpled bags beneath her eyes. She looked like she hadn't slept in days, although they had fled the house in the woods less than an hour ago. And she smelled like hell.

"Hey, kiddo, it's fine, really. We all got scared back there. Just let it go," Joshua said while rubbing her back awkwardly. It was his tenth attempt at placation, and it seemed to work no better than the previous ones.

Kelsey rolled her eyes and cracked open her second Gatorade, despite the offer of a more adult beverage. She'd had beer before, and it was disgusting, certainly not something she was going to pay five bucks a bottle for, and she had been drunk before, which was one of the least pleasurable experiences she had ever had. She had no idea why anyone would put themselves through the whole, sad affair, so she chalked it up to humans being inherently stupid, and that seemed to serve well enough as an answer.

Emily, however, was sipping at and pretending to enjoy the one beer she had bought. Kelsey watched her sway and giggle, touching Josh's arm and tossing in her own consolations at Zoe. The crash of a strike in the nearest lane consumed most of the words she spoke, but Zoe remained stoic. Catatonic.

"... imagined noises and we freaked out. I'm sure it was nothing," she said.

Zoe did not respond. Didn't even glance in Emily's direction, and it seemed like Emily might finally give up on her and try to get Josh to pay her a little more attention.

Emily slithered up to Josh, feeling a courage she did not ordinarily believe she possessed.

"Hey, sorry I didn't get more scared back there." She smiled gently. "That kind of stuff doesn't scare me, really. But, if you want to try again, I'm cool with it." Brazen. That was the word she saw tattooed across her mind's eye. She had never felt so confident before, and she wasn't sure if it was the beer, or the way she had seen his abject fear at the house, but something had made her feel elevated in stature.

"Yeah, that kind of backfired on me." He smiled warm and charming, and sat on the stool next to Zoe, facing Emily. "I guess it's harder to keep a macho image when you're pissing yourself and running away, huh?" He chuckled gently, but Emily could hear the genuine disappointment in his voice.

"I found it..." She paused, looking away, as if searching for the right word. An act as much for herself as for him. "Endearing." She set a hand on his shoulder, felt awkward about it and turned it into a pat, then sat down facing the bowling lanes.

Josh watched her sink down onto the stool, facing away from the bar, elbows on the bar top, hands hanging down with the beer bottle lazily dangling, and she suddenly looked so much older, so much wiser. And for the first time, possibly ever in his life, he saw someone who was too good for him. Someone he feared would be lessened by his association. A voice, small and distant somewhere way back in his head, told him to let her go. To leave her alone. Absolutely not, he responded to himself. If anything, seeing himself as undeserving only made him want her more.

"Feeling better?" Emily asked Jun as she walked up to the bar, returning from the bathroom.

"Yeah. Adrenaline sick is all. It'll pass." She smiled.

Kelsey felt pangs of what she hoped was anger every time Emily was nice to these people, which had become more frequent these days. Especially when that kindness was directed at Joshua or his stupid sister, Zoe. But especially Joshua. At least Jun was pretty.

What? No she isn't. Where'd that come from? Kelsey set her half-empty Gatorade on the counter and got up, deliberately not looking in Jun's direction. She walked away without a word, and was not surprised when no one asked her where she was going. That was fine with her. She would rather not have to interact with these people at all, anyway. In the bathroom, while washing up, she splashed cold water in her face and wet her hair that was beginning to tangle. She removed the hairclips that she loved, despite how juvenile they may have made her look, slicked her short, bottle-platinum hair back, and reinserted them, slightly askew. A quick appraisal in the mirror, and she flitted out, back onto the worn, ugly carpeting of the bowling alley.

Kelsey walked past the group, shaking her head at Emily, who didn't seem to notice, and kept going, only tangentially marking the absence of Jun. What did it matter to her who left and who didn't? She stepped outside and walked into a wall of sharp, floral nostalgia. She looked at Jun who was sitting on the edge of the brick-work planters that decorated the front of the bowling alley and smoking a black cigarette, daintily held too deep between her index and middle fingers. Jesus, there's no escape from anything in this town, she thought, but sat down next to Jun nonetheless.

"Can I bum one of those?" She tried to filter her curtness, but she could feel how much she had failed at it. Jun either didn't notice, or didn't mind.

"Sure." Jun pulled a crumpled, black box out from her jacket and presented it to Kelsey, holding the box open with one finger.

Kelsey selected arbitrarily from the offering of four black cigarettes, the back of her index finger brushing Jun's as she withdrew from the box, which sent an electric shock through her hand, up her arm, and into her chest. Jun may have mistaken this for a recoil of disgust, and Kelsey certainly wanted to believe that's what it was.

"Not fond of our little group, huh?" Jun asked, although Kelsey felt it wasn't something that really needed to be put into words.

"Eh." A shrug. "So. Nipper's, huh? Weird name for a bowling alley." Kelsey was not the least bit interested, but it seemed like a better conversation than the one Jun had tried to start.

Jun gave a weak smile, drew a long drag from the crackling black thing between her fingers, and exhaled, letting smoke pour out and up in a slow release. "My uncle named it after me. His only niece. Or nephew for that matter. The only child he's likely to have in his life, unless he adopts. I'm just glad he decided to buy a bowling alley instead of a strip club." She laughed, nervously.

Kelsey gave her a healthy side eye. "I don't follow." She did not join in the laugh.

"My full name: Juniper Kay Michaels. Jun for short to everyone but my uncle, who calls me Nipper. Well, at least he used to when I was a kid." She held out her hand. "Nice to meet you."

"Uh, yeah." Kelsey took Jun's hand and gave it a single limp shake. "Kelsey Lam. A... pleasure?"

The wind whipped through the entryway, crisp against Kelsey's bare arms. She rubbed at her arms and made a confused mental note about Jun's jacket, about what that said about herself for leaving her jacket on a stool at the bar. Kelsey knocked the cherry off her cigarette, scraping it with delicate force against the brick until she was certain it was out, before dropping it into her shirt pocket. There was a good two-thirds left and she saw no reason to waste it.

"Well, it's been fun." She got up and nodded at Jun, then went back inside, not waiting to see if Jun was going to follow.

Right through the door she almost regretted her decision to return. Joshua had his arm around Emily's shoulders while they huddled over the bar conspiratorially. Kelsey had never been able to see a man's arm on a woman's shoulders without seeing it as anything other than creepy. Not in a skin-crawly way, but in a way that she could assume with little doubt that the man was a creep. An unevolved monkey of a creep. The evidence was sitting right in front of her, on display for all to see, even though she knew no one else could see it. No one but her, and maybe some people on the internet, would recognize this as the affront it truly was. At least Zoe was still sort of dead-looking, and she could enjoy that in a small way. A consolation prize of sorts, but it was better than nothing.

"Hey, guys, I'm gonna take off." She picked up her hoodie from the stool she had been sitting on next to Emily.

"Wait, I'll take you home. You don't need to walk." Emily slid out from under Joshua's arm, while Josh eyed Kelsey, not with malice, but with something of an unasked question. A look that was somehow worse than straight malice could have been. Almost a plea, but for what, she couldn't tell.

This was, of course, exactly what Kelsey wanted. To split them up and take Emily for herself. But she didn't want it to look like that.

"No. It's cool. I can walk home. I need the exercise, anyway." She tried not to sound sarcastic, but she wasn't quite sure how to do that around these people.

Emily reached for her purse, and turned to say her goodbyes to Josh, but Kelsey stopped her.

"Really, it's fine. I want to walk. It's nice out."

Emily did stop, which was probably for the better. Kelsey didn't want to have to feel guilty about getting what she wanted. It would feel so much worse to have to replay this scene over and over, grilling herself about how she could have handled it better.

"Yeah, me too," Jun said behind Kelsey, making her jump in surprise. "I'll make sure she gets home alright." Kelsey could not see her smile, but she felt it burning into the back of her head.

"You're going to walk me home? Why the hell would you do that?" This night had already been weird, but now it was crossing some line into something worse than weird.

Jun looked slightly hurt, which gave Kelsey a tinge of guilt when she turned to face her.

"I live just down the street from you, so it, um, only makes sense." Jun shrugged, showing that she didn't quite believe herself, but she was going to go along with it anyway. "Hey, Uncle Bill, I'm heading home. I'll see you later."

The slightly pudgy man behind the bar smiled at her like some kind of summer-time Santa and waved in silence. The shadow of his arm swept across the bar, cutting up and blanking out the garbled reflections in its surface, which triggered something in Zoe. She twitched to life and blinked long and slow.

"I saw it," she said. "Trapped in purgatory, a lifeless object alive." She slumped back into silence and stares, the spell broken for only the briefest of moments.

"What? What did you see?" Genuine concern in Josh's voice, but it didn't matter. She was gone again.

"Those are lyrics," Kelsey said.

"Yeah, Raining Blood," Jun added, which made Kelsey's heart jump ever-so-slightly.

Kelsey slid into her hoodie and turned to leave. "Call me if she starts singing anything newer." Then, as if it were an afterthought, she turned and patted Zoe's back. "White whale, holy grail."

Jun issued a nervous laugh, but inside she was quivering and unstable. Where would Zoe have even heard Slayer, let alone well enough to know any of the words? It's not like she ever listened to Jun's music; it was always Zoe's music when Zoe was around, and Zoe's music was strictly top-40, bland and banal. Maybe Josh had slipped some metal in with his seventies crap-rock, but that explanation didn't really sound plausible. Made even less plausible by him not recognizing those words as lyrics. With a start, she realized that Kelsey was almost out the door, and she stepped quickly to catch up, calling out behind her as she left.

"See you guys later." She heard some of that inner quivering in her voice and hoped it didn't show on the outside as much as it felt like it did.

Kelsey and Jun walked together in silence for nearly half the trip home, Jun watching the ground and Kelsey watching the sky, searching for breaks in the clouds and lamenting the dome of light that blocked out the stars. It felt so cold, Kelsey could almost believe it was winter, but it was only October, and she knew it was only the contrast in how hot it had been up to this point. It was probably somewhere close to fifty out, even at this late hour, but she could see the pink in the clouds, and had almost convinced herself that it might snow.

"So..." Kelsey broke the silence. "You don't look like you listen to metal." She thought she wanted to say something more, but after she finished the sentence, with its accusatory tone creeping in, she just left it at that; let the statement be the question.

"Yeah? Well, I listen to just about everything, but no matter how far I stray, metal is always home. You can thank my dad for that." She smiled in the darkness, and Kelsey knew she was smiling, even though she couldn't see it.

"Maybe I will, someday," Kelsey said, off-handed, but there was some sincerity in it. She could feel something shift in the air, and somehow, she knew Jun was no longer smiling. "What? Did I say something?"

"No, it's not your fault. You didn't know." Jun drew in a breath, making it take longer than it needed to. Jun knew about Kelsey's parents. Knew about the fire. It seemed sort of, not really rude, but maybe kind of rude, that Kelsey didn't know anything about Jun's situation. "He's been dead for a few years, but I'm sure he wouldn't mind if you thanked him at his grave. I think he'd see the morbid humor in it. He always was a little on the weird side." The smile was back, but it was weaker.

"Ooo, I'm sorry," Kelsey said. "Something's wrong with me. I'm always doing shit like this. Sorry."

"No, it's fine, really."

Kelsey thought she heard some water in Jun's voice, but she couldn't be sure she hadn't imagined it. She reached out and took Jun's hand in her own, about to say something else, but she couldn't find the words. She kept Jun's hand in hers the rest of the way to her house, almost not even realizing it, although somewhere in the back of her head she knew and relished it in an odd way.

Jun stopped walking, taking Kelsey by surprise. She had been replaying the scene from the house in the woods and had not noticed that they had arrived outside her house.

"Sorry for tonight," Jun said, but did not get very specific about what she was apologizing for.

"No, I'm sorry. Sorry for being such a bitch all the time." Kelsey had not dropped Jun's hand, yet. "Tonight wasn't so bad. At least not for me." Kelsey faced Jun and had an awkward moment of indecision. Something in her body wanted to hug Jun. To pull her close and try to absorb that hurt she could feel emanating from her, to tell her that she could relate, as her father was dead, as well. But she didn't know how to start. She tried to break it up with some humor. "I almost said it was fun and we should do it again, but I don't think I could make that sound sincere in the least." She tried to chuckle. "I would, however, like to hang out sometime, if you'd be okay with that." She felt so young, suddenly. So unsure of herself. So insecure.

Jun stepped forward and folded her into her arms, letting Kelsey's face rest into her neck. It was a hug she knew they both needed, but she knew she needed it most. She had not stopped thinking about what Zoe had said and it was grinding her insides to a pulp. She was desperate for some comfort, any comfort, even if it was someone who clearly didn't like her. She could feel the warm wet of Kelsey's tears against her neck, and for a moment she was almost certain she was imagining, she felt Kelsey's lips against her neck. It almost made her forget about her gibbering insides, but then it seemed to add to them another, different kind of jitter. Kelsey's head lifted from her neck, but did not pull away. Jun turned her head, and almost without thinking, set her lips to Kelsey's. Her mind churned with too many thoughts to nail any single one down, but the over-arcing theme was "What the hell are you doing?" Kelsey let her lips rest against Jun's, accepting the kiss, and she reached her hand up and touched Jun's cheek.

Kelsey pulled away, eyes wide and wet. "Oh God. I'm so sorry. I don't know what I was thinking." She turned and ran down the sidewalk, disappearing beyond a streetlight, then reappearing beneath the next, then disappearing again, and not reappearing after that.

Jun stood dumb, not daring to make a sound and just watched until she could no longer see Kelsey. She turned her head to Kelsey's house, lights still on in the living room, a shadow breezing past the gossamer window shades, and then back to the empty sidewalk. The breeze flew in, whipping her hair into her face, but she just stood there in the dark and the cold, her vacant face pale and slack. What did this mean? What did any of it mean?

Part Three

JOSHUA AND EMILY EACH took a side and lifted Zoe to her feet. Zoe did not resist, and even seemed to cooperate a bit, which made taking her out of the bowling alley and folding her up onto the truck's bench seat that much easier. Emily stood outside of the truck with the door swung wide, looking over Zoe's thighs at Joshua climbing into the driver seat. She was deliberately taking longer to buckle Zoe's seatbelt than was necessary, trying to find a way to prolong her time with Joshua.

"So, you think she's going to be okay? Like, do we need to take her to a hospital, or something?" She tried to sound casual, not too needy.

"I dunno, I think she just needs to sleep it off. I wish I hadn't scared them like that. I thought it was going to be funny, you know, lighten the mood or something, but now I feel like a jerk," he said, and turned the key in the ignition. She was losing him.

"Well, I've got my phone if you need anything." She could hear the despondence in her voice, but it was too late to fix that, now. She closed the door and just hoped he didn't think she was as pathetic as she had sounded to herself.

"You know..." He called from the other side of the truck.

Emily almost ran, but managed to calm herself enough to walk as casually as she could around the bed and up to the door. He was a good two feet taller than her when he was up in the driver seat and she had to crane her neck up at him.

"I could swing by your house and check on you after I take her home, if you want." He smiled down at her without the faintest hint of slyness.

Emily's breath caught in her throat and she just stared at him like an idiot for a solid several seconds. His smile did not falter. She coughed and sputtered, clearing her throat.

"Yes!" Okay, dial it back a bit. "Well, yeah, I mean, I don't want you to have to go out of your way, or anything, but if you're bored or something..." She let the words fade out, while keeping constant eye contact.

"Give me about, " he made a show of looking at his bare, watchless wrist, "an hour or so. Unkay?"

"Cool. See you then." She patted the door of the truck awkwardly, turned and bounced away. Maybe it was the beer wearing off, or the memory of him quite literally shaking in his boots wearing off, but her stature felt almost back to normal now.

She spent an agonizing ten minutes driving home, worrying herself mad with possibilities. Before tonight, she had barely even spoken to Joshua, and now he was going to be in her house. In her room. Of course, he had been in her room dozens of times, but this would be the first time he would be there in the flesh. How far would she go? Would she chicken out? Would he refuse her advances? The thought had popped into her head out of nowhere, and now she couldn't shake it. By the time she pulled into the driveway, she was on the verge of vomiting with nervousness.

She worked the front door more gently than she ever had before, and she scurried as quietly as she could up to her room. The house was dark, her mother was asleep, but she wanted to shower, needed to shower. She began an animated panic, exaggerating her head movements, looking from the bathroom down the hall to the door of her mother's room. She played this game for a few minutes before deciding she was being stupid and wasting time. After all, it's not like her mother would be angry or suspicious if she heard her taking a shower.

She managed to take the fastest, hottest shower ever, thankful that she had the foresight to shave when she had showered in the morning. She had done her best to keep her hair dry, as well, and she had been mostly successful. She cracked the bathroom door open to let the cool air from the hall in, and also to listen for the arrival. She toweled herself partially dry and lotioned her glowing red skin before walking into her room. She peeked out the window, hoping that Josh would be wise enough to not try the front door, but the yard was empty. She had another brief crisis trying to decide if she should put on a bra, and ultimately decided against it. It would just complicate things, and who knew if Josh could even remove a bra, anyway.

She didn't want everything to be too easy though. She smiled and drew on a pair of small, plain white cotton panties, and then worked her way into the second-tightest pair of jeans she owned. There would be considerable wiggling to get her out of those. She slid into a loose-fitting, midriff-cropped, black t-shirt and sat on the edge of her bed, and waited. Would he try to call out to her? Would he throw pebbles at her window, because he had seen it in a movie or something? Oh God, would he ring the doorbell? He couldn't possibly be that stupid, could he?

A tri-tone bleeping informed her that it was she who was the stupid one. Joshua texted her from outside the house to let her know he was there, because of course he did, no other option had even crossed his mind.

Emily opened her door and peeked around the corner to see that her mother's door was still closed, and still no light showed beneath it, then she slipped down the stairs and let Joshua into the house. She took him by the hand and led him through the living room toward the stairs. He was quiet, and his feet stepped lightly on each stair, and every passing moment made her heart beat just a little bit harder. She was shaking so violently by the time they made it to her room that she had to let go of his hand and put a little distance between them. Joshua noticed, but pretended otherwise.

When she had finally calmed herself enough, she gave him a brief tour of her room, letting him linger here and there as he went along. He made no move to rush her, letting her believe he was content just to be in her presence. When, to her burgeoning frustration, it became obvious that he was not going to make a move at all, she marshalled her courage and invited him to sit with her on the bed.

He sat almost an entire foot away, his amused face turned towards her, hands in his lap. She furrowed her brow, pouted delicately, and scooted herself along the bed until her thigh touched his. His scent was too faint to be cologne. A perfume of some sort, probably something in a women's brand, but with "For Men" slapped on it. It was pleasant.

She set a hand on his, tentative, a toe in the water. She looked at his face, still smiling. She moved her hand to his thigh with a light grip, and she could feel him react, but he did not reach out a hand to her at all.

"Is this okay?" Sheepish. She leaned closer.

"Anything you want to do is okay with me." His voice gentle, smooth.

She reached one hand to his cheek, drawing it along the rough stubble of his jawline, stopping just short of his chin. She craned her neck to reach his lips, and, thank God, he leaned in to close the distance. The first landing was just off center, and she lifted away, tilted her head, and followed with a second kiss. This one she held longer, lips parted just so. She felt his mouth open, his breath hot and pungent, and his tongue touched her bottom lip. He pulled it away, then pushed further until her tongue met his. The silly courtship complete, they dropped the pretense of insecurity and began to explore and enjoy each other in earnest. There was laughter, muted and whispering, as he struggled to peel the tight jeans from her hips, scraping them down her thighs. There was a considerable amount of wriggling.

He had not brought a condom, and she had not given any indication that she cared, and when he came inside her, he stayed inside her, and they lay together until the heat and stickiness became unbearable.

Joshua walked to the window, naked and proud and dripping with sweat. Emily watched him, somewhat dubious of the pride in his strut, and jumped when he jerked away from the window, angling his head to see outside while trying to keep his body away from the glass.

"Whoa. What?"

Joshua turned to face her. "Zoe's out there, like, looking up at the window, I think."

Emily gave him a look and slid off the bed, slinking up to the side of the window and leaning out just enough to peek down into the yard. She didn't see anything or anyone.

"You sure? I didn't see anything."

Joshua leaned back to the window. Zoe was gone.

"I know I saw her, and with her being all weird tonight, she could just be out wandering and lost. I better go get her and take her home." He began to gather his clothes from the floor, seeming to forget which order they went on his body.

"Give me a minute to clean up and I'll go with you," Emily said, then thought she might be wrong to invite herself along. "If that's okay with you."

He smiled and dropped the crumple of clothes to the floor, leaning down to kiss her, taking her into a hug, then pulling his lips away.

"That would be great. Thanks." He turned and made a more deliberate effort to dress himself.

Emily stepped into the hallway, still naked, and glanced at her mother's door before heading to the bathroom. There was no light beneath her mother's door, which was a relief. Her mother wasn't stupid. There was a good chance she had heard something, and she probably knew what they had been up to, but Emily was just thankful that, if they were going to have a confrontation about it, it wasn't going to be right now while she was completely naked with cum dripping down her thigh.

She swiped and scooped at herself with tissues, surprised at how much was in there, and realized part-way through that she should probably not be throwing the tissues into the trash bin where they were so easily visible and so obvious in nature. Another thought occurred that she really should have had a lot earlier. What if I get pregnant? She mouthed the words, but kept them in her head. That was stupid and reckless, she thought, but it was in her mother's voice, not her own. She sighed and slumped her shoulders. There was nothing she could do about it now.

She returned to her room to find that Joshua had been dressed, and was fidgeting with impatience.

"Sorry. There was more cleanup than I expected." She smiled at him, but it was slightly less enthusiastic than it had been earlier. He noticed, but pretended otherwise.

She dressed in a hurry, choosing looser jeans and a thicker top, still opting out of the bra, then they crept downstairs and out the door into the chilly predawn air.

Part Four

KELSEY RAN UNTIL EACH breath became fire scorching her lungs. She had no idea where she was running to, but that didn't matter. All that mattered was what she was running from, and though the incident with Jun was mere minutes old, she felt like maybe she had been running from her for her entire life. All she ever did was run. She ran from the fire that orphaned her. She ran from that stupid house in the woods. She ran from the bowling alley where she was losing her only friend. She ran from Jun, a girl she barely even knew.

She had zig-zagged through streets blindly, letting her feet take her wherever, but now she saw trees and houses she recognized and everything came to a grinding halt. Air clawed its way out of her raw throat, wet cheeks froze in the crisp air, and she sank to the ground on hands and knees. The house—her house—loomed ahead, the street light burning a sickly amber against the blackened shipwreck like a taunt. Like a ghoulish invitation to self-harm.

"Here, little girl, have this shiny razor blade to play with," the scarred smile of the collapsed porch whispered in shadows.

She closed her eyes and hung her head, but she could still feel it. Could still feel the pressing insistence of those vacant eyes. Those windows whose glass had thrown itself to the street like sad, sick candy, ageless eons ago. It was a decade ago, it was yesterday, it was now. The flames licking up into the sky, the roaring and crashing, the enveloping silence the cacophony produced. Dry heaves wracked her body. She could taste the campfire-and-sulfur cocktail as fresh as Jun's lips in her mind.

She slowly rose to her feet, shaking and weak, and narrowed her eyes at the house. It sat still and calm, a ploy to blend in with its neighbors, to try to hold its place in this world. She could almost smell its fear. The fear that it would be found out and properly disposed of. It was a small wonder that it had not been, yet. How it had not been inspected and condemned long ago, Kelsey didn't know.

"Well," she spat out into the grainy orange light, "another year, and you'll be mine to do with as I please. And I'm gonna uproot you like a fucking weed."

She turned her back to the house, doing her best to ignore its drilling gaze, and limped away with aching muscles and a blistered heel. It was almost a mile back to her grandmother's house, assuming she took a direct path, but she couldn't take that one, as it would lead straight past Jun's house, and with her luck, Jun would be outside just sitting on the porch for no goddamn reason, and she would be forced to deal with something she was wholly unprepared for, for the umpteenth time tonight.

There was, however, a back way that led through dirt alleys, past a field that looked like it was owned by someone who farms trash, past a pocket of skeletal aspens. It was a path that she could have walked blindfolded and in a coma. A path she had walked a million times as a child, from her house to her grandmother's house. Although, it would have been her grandparents' house, back then. There was a certain odd nostalgia that began to seep in, coloring her trembling sickness. She could almost see the soot on her hands when she swung the gate to the back yard open, could almost feel her clothes in tatters, hanging from her shapeless seven-year-old frame, could almost feel the damp stickiness of the scraggly stuffed bunny she held by one ear as its feet and powder-puff tail alternated strikes at her kneecaps. Her grandfather had been outside that night, drinking beer and smoking a cigar at the patio table. She walked up the walkway towards the back door, and she could almost see him there with that smile. That smile that so quickly fell to pieces. She could smell the bite of his cologne that mixed with the sour hot of his breath when he swooped her up into his arms, so tall, so strong. His face so full of fear, his heartbeat drumming against her chest. He had always been a rock, an unmovable mountain, and now he was crumbling, and it was scarier than the horror she had just fled.

Kelsey reached out and cranked the back door open. It was unlocked as usual. Inside, she turned and looked back across the yard, now dark and empty, no patio table, no grandfather, just the oddness of the strength of the memory of her grandfather, how it could almost eclipse the old house. Giving it a few seconds to whirl around in her head, she pop-psyched an easy explanation: Adults had all the strength when she was a child, and seeing their frailty had, in some way, shattered her faith in their ability to protect and provide. That was probably complete bullshit, but it served well enough, so she went with it.

The house was dark, her grandmother in bed, but that was no surprise at this hour. She hadn't checked her phone since the bowling alley, but she guessed it had to be somewhere around one in the morning, by now. In the dark and quiet she sank into the stiff upholstery of her grandmother's ancient wingback chair. Street light filtered through the sheer curtains highlighting a few of the sharper corners in the living room, which only seemed to increase the ink-black of the room.

Kelsey closed her eyes and tried to remember the old house; how much of it was similar to what she saw in that house in the woods. No one else had said anything about what they saw in that house, unless you counted Zoe's lyric recitation. Of course, Kelsey had not said anything, either, so she supposed that wasn't a valid gauge of the weirdness. Had she really seen anything? Was it more likely that there was nothing special about the house, and she had just imagined the whole thing? The rationalist in her knew that was a better explanation than believing in some magical ability of a crumbling wooden structure, but there was the needling thought that she had never hallucinated anything before. At least, not so obviously. Was what she saw even an actual memory? She didn't remember it ever happening, but it wasn't impossible.

Kelsey had not intended to fall asleep in the chair, but when she opened her eyes, dry and itchy, the room was taking on a soft blue glow and her mouth tasted like the inside of a dumpster. The hallway upstairs creaked with a footstep and Kelsey realized that the noise was probably what had awoken her. With a grumble she pulled her phone from her pocket to check the time. Officially morning, though the blue light did little to illuminate beyond the front window, leaving the rest of the house in deep darkness. Her grandmother rarely got out of bed this early, but Kelsey took it as a sign that she should vacate the wingback and seek the refuge of her own bed.

She rubbed at her burning eyes and shuffled across the room to the stairs as another creaking footfall rang out. She said nothing, preferring to wait and croak out an explanation as she passed her grandmother in the hall. Her legs felt like they were sacks filled with molten lead as she dragged her sleep-deprived body up the stairs to the landing above. With a heavy pivot she turned to face the hallway, a straight line of sight to the bedroom doors, hers wide open, judging by the residual light spilling into her single-windowed room. Her grandmother's door, however, was closed and dark.

"I guess she changed her mind about getting up," Kelsey croak-whispered, drowsily. "Don't blame her."

She scraped her heels against the carpet, doing what she could to avoid the worst of the creaky sections of flooring. She paused at the door to her room, listening for any sound from her grandmother. After a few seconds, satisfied that the old lady wasn't getting up, she swished into her room, twisted the knob on the door, and gently set it against the frame before releasing the knob. No sense disturbing the old lady and starting a whole thing that would just cost them both sleep.

She crawled into bed, clothes and all, and drew the comforter up against her shoulders, eyes so close to closing, when she thought she saw movement in the corner of the room. Probably just light moving through the window, she thought, but she watched the corner intently, anyway. It was odd that the rising sun seemed to do little to lessen the darkness of the corner as she watched. Odd, but not particularly worrying. And it's not like she ever really paid attention to that corner, anyway. The thing could sit in darkness all day, for all she knew.

But still, she watched, the fog of sleep dissipating, leaving her dry eyes in its wake. It took a few minutes for the light to grow strong enough that she actually saw what was in the corner, or at least, the first hints of what was there. Her breath caught in her throat, chest beginning to palpitate, drumming on her inflated lungs. Short puffs of air escaped her nostrils faster than her body could quell them. Someone was in her room.

Part Five

"SHHH." A FINGER PRESSED to its lips, as it emerged from the shadows. "Grammaw's sleeping." Eyes wide and crazed, mouth smiling open, teeth apart. It was Zoe, and she did not look well.

"Zoe? What the hell?" Kelsey's voice was raspy. She cleared her throat. "What are you doing here?" She was shaking, sitting up in bed, not quite ready to run.

Zoe giggled, but did not answer. Her gait was awkward, hunched over, shoulders forward, arms hanging, knees rising higher than necessary as she crept toward the bed.

When Kelsey finally realized that Zoe was actually going to come near her, maybe even touch her, she scrambled out of the bed, planting her feet in a half-hearted fighting pose.

"Yes, good." The light rose enough to shine on Zoe's face, sallow and sunken, bones in an ill-fitting suit of dessicated flesh. "Fight before its mind rots. Body wither." Zoe reached out an arm, weakly, pathetically. So slowly that Kelsey did not, at first, understand that that was the first swing.

Kelsey shook her head to clear her thoughts, though she really didn't think that was how that worked. Probably just too much television, or movies, or something. Also, in light of this development, she was glad she had gone to bed fully clothed. She pocketed her phone and did her best to avoid contact with the potentially infectious girl as she sidled past and slid out of the room, stopping only to turn the lock on the inside of the door before she closed it.

She was sure that was a stupid gesture that would not in any way contain the crazy thing in her room, but she figured it was better than nothing. She drew the phone from her pocket, conscious of the fact that she was standing right next to her grandmother's door, but in some way almost hoping she did rouse the old lady. It couldn't hurt to have someone older and wiser, and just plain smarter to help. A button press, a swipe, a tap of the contacts icon, and a scroll, all done with her left thumb, before it dawned on her that she could have just gone to recents and initiated the call with two taps. A quiet thud came from the other side of her door, but she didn't dare open it to see what the noise was. The phone rang for an eternity before it went to voicemail. Emily was either ignoring her, or too deep in sleep to hear the phone. She left a message that explained nothing, hung up, and called again within seconds. She did not leave a second message, but she did send a text, and waited for several seconds staring at the phone, before deciding that a response was not coming. She slumped her shoulders in resignation. Without Emily—maybe she would have even with Emily, she didn't know—she was going to have to bother her grandmother.

Knuckles rapped lightly against the door. "Grammaw?" The lazy inflection stung her ears, reflected the taunting tone of the crazed, sick thing currently trapped in her room.

There was no response, so she knocked again, a little harder this time. Still nothing.

"Hey, I'm coming in," she said and entered the room softly, unconsciously feeling like the softer she stepped, the more respectful she could make the act of entering the room uninvited. "Sorry about this, but I really need your help." She stood in the doorway looking at her grandmother's shape in the bed, unmoving in the darkness. "Hey!" Louder than she had intended, but it produced no noticeable result.

She reached out and thumbed at the rocker-style light switch, cracking the dark with a single dim orange beam of light from a night stand lamp. The old lady remained motionless. Kelsey walked to the bed, her eyes shivering wet, her stomach churning, denying what she was seeing repeatedly, practically chanting denials in her head a thousand times in that short distance from the door to the bed. The old lady's eyes were open, bloodshot and staring at the ceiling.

"Grandma?" She didn't even notice the way she said it that time. She was too busy shaking her grandmother's shoulders like an idiot. "Grandma?" Louder. So loud. "Grandma!?" She screamed at the bulging eyes in the purple face, but it was stolid and stone.

A final attempt to call out tripped somewhere inside her and was swallowed by the bile rising in her throat. Her mouth, already dripping with saliva, twisted and her stomach raced to escape its prison. She turned away as quickly as she could to avoid showering the corpse with vomit. She could no longer hold herself upright, and she fell back into the closet doors, knocking them off their rails and clubbing her elbow in the process. Another wave of nausea overtook her and she heaved across her arm and part of her leg. She struggled to move at all, but with sickness, anger, fear, and sadness driving her, she managed to drag herself on hands and knees to the door and back out into the hallway. It had not occurred to her in the moment, but now that she was away from her dead grandmother, a thought swam to the surface of her screaming brain.

"Zoe," she growled, eyes blind with tears, body weak and shaking. She reached for the doorknob on her bedroom door. It did not turn. She had forgotten that she had locked the crazy bitch in her room. She steadied herself against the wall and pulled herself up into a standing position, her stomach swirled, her arms shook. Using the wall as a guide she limped down the hallway to the bathroom, not bothering to turn on the light, she clumsily swiped at a box of cotton swabs, knocking most of them to the floor, but eventually drawing one from the box. She pulled at the cotton on one side in frustrated clawing motions until it was bare. A key.

She needed the wall less on the return trip to her room, but she stayed against it, nonetheless. At the door she guided the bare end of the swab into the perfectly-sized hole in the middle of the knob. She felt the gentle give of the mechanism making contact with the swab and pressed against it, then turned the knob. Out of habit, without thinking, once she was inside, she flipped the mechanism to the proper unlocked position and left the door open. She didn't know what she was thinking. Didn't know what she was going to do. But whatever the plan, she knew Zoe factored into it, and not in a nice way.

The anger was a fire in her heart, in no way subdued by the initial inability to locate the girl. The room, at first glance, appeared empty, but this did not deter the hunting beast that Kelsey had become. Down on all fours, ripping the bedskirt up: the girl was not there. Back on her feet, trapezius muscles tensed, neck stiff, she threw open the closet door. Empty. She spun, so ready to strike, arms coiled, just waiting for release. But the girl was gone. Vanished. And the rage, impotent and all-consuming, became sickness and tears.

Crumpled to the floor, she dimly thumbed at her phone. Someone would be here. She just mumbled unintelligible nonsense at the phone between coughing and choking, but she was sure they'd find the house, anyway. She did not hang up the phone; she just let the woman on the other end blabber away, and she went silent, and the world went black.

Part Six

JUN WAS WAITING OUTSIDE on the sidewalk. She watched a paramedic push a gurney to the edge of the steps of the house where a second man lifted the front, the two of them carrying the gurney down the steps and setting it gently on the walkway. For a moment Jun thought it was Kelsey on the gurney, her chest heaved and tumbled, but Kelsey shuffled through the door just behind the paramedics. Kelsey followed them to the back of the ambulance, not taking her eyes off the ground, completely ignoring Jun.

The sky was a dull blue haze, the sun barely cresting the horizon. Lights flashed atop emergency vehicles, soundless in the still morning, echoing the shiver of Kelsey's thin frame. Leaves, yellow, orange, brown, crunched beneath the wheels of the gurney. Kelsey avoided stepping on them, couldn't bear to feel them crushed beneath her shoes.

Jun stayed back and watched the police talk to Kelsey. One knelt where Kelsey had sat on the curb, another stood towering over them. The one who towered was silent, letting the other one talk, but he was writing down whatever Kelsey was telling them. Body language said that neither of them believed what they were being told. The kneeling one rose and surveyed the house, his face blank, his eyes empty, until they landed on Jun. He smiled at her, his face a perfect mask of sympathy. She did not smile back.

"My aunt'll be here, soon. I can stay with her," Kelsey lied, hoping they wouldn't look into it any further.

The cop nodded at her and turned to his partner who just shrugged, writing it down in his notebook. Apparently, her word was good enough for them.

The ambulance left first. Silent. No need for the sirens. The two officers returned to their car, one on a laptop, the other's mouth never stopping, until the fire truck lurched away with a keening roar. A final half-hearted wave from the chatty cop, and they disappeared down the street, leaving Kelsey sitting on the curb and Jun standing back in the driveway, neither of them knowing what to do next.

Jun walked down the driveway, pulling two cloves from her pocket and lighting them together. She dropped onto the curb next to Kelsey and handed one over, cherry pointing up. Kelsey accepted it and drew a long drag, letting her mouth hang open, pushing the smoke out and letting it curl up around her cheeks. She pulled her phone out to check for messages.

"You're late for school," she said.

"I'm not going to school, today. I just decided," Jun replied.

Kelsey almost looked over at her, but decided it wasn't really necessary. Instead she shrugged and took another drag. "Your friends gonna miss you?"

"I don't know. They aren't answering my texts, so maybe they're not going to school, either."

Kelsey shifted uncomfortably, swiped her phone awake again, even though she knew there would be no messages. "Emily's not answering mine, either. It's been hours."

Kelsey stood up and brushed the dirt from her jeans, the clove hardly more than a nub hanging from her lips.

"You wanna come with me?" She flicked the clove into a pile of dead leaves, wondering if it would start a fire. Wondering if that bear would be around to shame her for it. Wondering if she even cared at all.

"Yeah," Jun half nodded, "sure." She didn't ask where. It didn't matter.

She followed Kelsey into the house, but stayed on the tile by the door. The house so full of tacky knick-knacks, but so empty. Like a void in a box. Soulless. Kelsey swooped some keys off a table near the door and spun back to face Jun, who opened the door and stood outside holding it for her. Kelsey got in the black sedan that sat in the driveway and fired it up. Jun closed the door, and rushed to the car.

"I didn't lock the door."

"Doesn't matter."

They pulled up outside a large, white, porchless house with black faux-shutters around the windows. Kelsey left the car running, and Jun followed her up to the door. A tall thin woman answered with a scowl.

"Missus Choi. Is Emily here?"

"No. She left a while ago in a beat up old truck. She thinks she's sneaky. You tell her she's not sneaky, I know what she's doing and she needs to come home now." She stood there watching Kelsey and Jun, not closing the door, until Kelsey assured her that she would pass on the message.

"Josh and Zoe aren't answering my messages, and Emily's with Josh, and she's not answering your messages. Do you want to go to their house, next?"

"I don't know." Kelsey slumped behind the wheel. "Zoe went crazy. Maybe she went back to that house. Maybe they followed her. I don't know."

"The house in the woods? Why would they go there?" Jun asked.

"I don't know." Kelsey's voice was growing frantic. "Do you believe in possession? Maybe the house possessed Zoe and that's why she's all crazy. And now they're back at the house for... I don't know. Something to do with possession."

Jun watched Kelsey's eyes, watering and frenzied, and she wanted to tread lightly, but couldn't quite stop herself. "That doesn't sound like something that actually happens."

"Fuck, I don't know." Kelsey was choking back tears.

"Okay, it's okay. Let's go check the house, then. Better in the daylight, anyway." Jun sunk back in her seat and stared out the window as they drove away. They rode together in silence out to the woods.

Part Seven

KELSEY WALKED INTO the house with Jun trailing just behind her. The hairs on her arms lifted like antennae, tuning into the hum of the house, the electricity in the air, something akin to anticipation. She stopped short, causing Jun to lightly crash into her, and held out an arm to stop Jun from going further into the house. Joshua sat propped against the wall with Emily on the floor, laid out like a fairytale princess, arms across her chest, head resting against the soft swell of Joshua's belly. If either of them were breathing, Kelsey couldn't see it.

From the wall, down around Emily's bare feet, and back up the other side in a horseshoe shape were several small items, each spaced about eight or so inches from the other. A ring, a wilted, dried rose, a few jars of liquids of differing color and translucence, a burnt-black Barbie doll, its platinum hair cropped close to its melted ears, and a few humanoid figures carved from dark wood, the last of which they couldn't see more than a centimeter poking up from beside Joshua's elbow.

Kelsey wanted to run to them, kick the garbage clear and drag Emily away, but she was frozen fast when she realized that Zoe was there, too. The revelation came on the heels of a quick, sharp intake of air from Jun, a sound like she had just pricked her finger. Zoe was kneeling beside Emily, softly stroking her hair with one hand, gently massaging her belly with the other, and whispering into her ear, and Kelsey started to worry that this was another hallucination. She turned her head slightly without taking her eyes off Emily or Zoe.

"Um, you... see this, too?"

"I think so," Jun said, trying to keep her voice small and quiet, although she didn't know why it mattered.

Zoe's eyes flicked up from Emily and landed on Kelsey, but she did not stop petting Emily's head, and her mouth kept going, whispering a low susurrus into Emily's ear.

"That's not Zoe," Jun whispered into Kelsey's ear, but did not elaborate. Didn't need to.

Zoe cast her eyes at Jun and smiled wide, the skin drawing tight along her lips as the hum of the house slowly died out. It was only then that they realized the hum had been coming from Zoe. Improbable, incomprehensible, but indisputable. With the faintest hint of a wink, she returned her attention to the girl laid out before her. The smile waned. The lips relaxed, but the color did not return. She adjusted her position, her song complete, and placed a dry kiss on Emily's forehead before raising up to sit on her knees.

"Didn't need you here for this." Zoe's voice was clearly scowling, although her pale, green face was placid. "Thought you'd be," she looked Kelsey in the eye without blinking, "busy." The smile returned, made even wider by the glare in Kelsey's eye.

Kelsey sucked in breaths short and quick, choking in and out, eyes narrow, whirling around in search of a weapon. Any weapon. Anything she could use to bash Zoe's head in. There was nothing in reach, and her eyes lost focus, anyway, and she did not see that Zoe had a weapon of her own. Jun set her hands on Kelsey's shoulders, softly squeezing, trying to calm her down. She let Kelsey rub the wet from her eyes before she brought the knife to her attention.

Zoe had raised a hand from the floor, letting the kitchen knife it held glint in the midday sun.

"Alright, let's not get crazy, here." Kelsey held out a hand, like trying to steady a frothing wild beast.

"Shhh." Zoe raised the knife to her own throat.

Jun squealed something that almost sounded like a word, but if it was, it wasn't English. Kelsey stared and shook, struggling to think of a way to defuse the situation, while at the same time, worried about how she would react when she saw the inevitable bloodbath to come. She had only taken a single step forward when the girl drew the blade across her throat. The dead-pale, stoic face disappeared as soon as the blade began its journey across the flesh, replaced with wide, fearful eyes of confusion. It would seem that Zoe had come back to herself, but it was a moment too late. Blood gurgled and spurted from the gash beneath her chin, covering Emily in the crimson river as much as herself. Her eyes pleaded, questing for answers that she just didn't have time for, anymore, as she fell forward. She didn't even move her hands to break her fall, and by the time her chest came to rest against Emily's chest, whatever life she had regained in her brief last moment was gone. Her head hit the floor with a dull thud and she lay still atop Emily, who didn't so much as flinch.

Kelsey turned to Jun, who had collapsed to her knees, with her eyelids fluttering, mouth hanging open and limp. Kelsey dropped to one knee, hands on Jun's shoulders, and she was saying something, but Jun couldn't focus, couldn't hear a word. Kelsey talked. Then she yelled. Then she screamed. But Jun was trapped between the whirling in her stomach and the dark that seeped into the edges of her vision. She was vaguely aware of the floor meeting the back of her head, but everything was so dark, and so quiet, and so spinny, all she really thought was she hoped Kelsey would turn her on her side, so she wouldn't suffocate in her own vomit. But the thought came from a world away, somewhere out beyond the horizon. There was nothing here now. Nothing but black and oblivion.

When she opened her eyes again, she was in the dirt beneath the trees, but she could still see the house, and it was still daylight. She tried to sit up, expecting to fail, expecting too much pain to move, but found it relatively easy to do. She lifted herself up, locking her arm behind her as a stand and looked at the girl next to her. Emily was in the dirt with one arm under her head, like she was napping on her desk in class. Her other arm, really the other half of her body, was drenched in gore and had picked up the dirt she had been, presumably, dragged through. She looked like a raw-sugar-dusted pastry. The image, for whatever reason, made Jun's stomach churn, but she averted her gaze and sucked in great gulps of the cool autumn air. She placed a tentative knee against the ground and took her time rising from the dirt. Everything seemed fine.

But it wasn't fine, and she knew it. And it probably wasn't ever going to be fine again. She slumped and watched the house, mind slowly emptying, feeling her eyes glazing over. She had almost forgotten what she was trying to forget when a flash of images assaulted her. The red painting the world, the eyes so big and confused, the blade so reflective, it had looked like a streak of light pulled across her throat. She kept blinking, trying to reset her sight, but it couldn't stop the images in her head. She wished she could be angry about it, like Kelsey probably was. Anger was easier to work with. But it wasn't anger. It was sorrow. It was loss. It was empty. And it was gross.

Kelsey inched through the doorway, out onto the porch, and Jun dragged herself into a walk. She made it onto the porch without a single sound, and reached down to help Kelsey with Joshua. Kelsey didn't jump, she just glanced over, like she had been expecting it, her face a mix of apologetic brows and weary eyes. Jun said nothing, and together they dragged Joshua's body out into the dirt and laid it next to Emily's. He was still breathing.

Jun looked to the increasingly orange sky and around through the trees, almost not noticing the birds. Her breath stuck in her throat and she swatted at Kelsey to get her attention. Kelsey looked at her, sweat dripping into her eyes, then followed her gaze up. She shrugged.

"It's just birds. Fuck 'em." She arched her back. "We're not going to be able to carry them out of the woods."

Jun didn't respond.

"Hey!" Kelsey snapped her fingers at Jun's face. It took a minute before Jun blinked and turned away from the trees.

"Crows," she said, although it looked like she had intended to say something else.

"Yeah. I know." Kelsey smiled at her. No need to be rude. "Are you okay?"

Jun looked down at her feet, at her hands, at Kelsey's face, and shrugged.

"We need help. Ambulance, police, fucking coast guard, I don't know. Something. And I don't think you should be here when they get here."

Jun looked at Kelsey's outstretched hand, keys jangling. She didn't understand. The words didn't make sense, and the gesture only confused her more.

"Go. Take the car and go home. Park it in my driveway and walk home, go back to bed. You weren't here." Kelsey took Jun's hand and smashed the keys into it, considered folding her fingers over them, like they do in the movies, but decided against it. It seemed superfluous.

"Yeah. Okay. Right. I'll go, but what are you going to do?" Jun was pretty sure she shouldn't be driving, and even more sure she shouldn't leave Kelsey alone.

"I'm going to call nine-one-one and roast marshmallows until they throw me in jail."

Jun gave her a quizzical look, but Kelsey just mouthed the word "go" and shooed her away.

Part Eight

KELSEY ROLLED EMILY over and shook her near-corpse by the shoulders, the silence enveloping the world. Emily would not be roused. Across the porch, down the stairs, and out into the growing shadows of the trees, crows perched. Wings fluttered. A squawk or two broke the serenity before being swallowed by the trees.

She stood and raised her head to the house, in mock appraisal, hands on her hips, pretending to decide, even though her mind had already been made up long before her body got the signal. It could only make things worse, right? She snorted.

"Fuck it." She proclaimed, as if that cemented her resolve.

She took one slow heavy step forward, then another, forcing herself to not think about it, just do it. Blindly, with little more awareness than an automaton, she crested the steps—black wings frenzied and settled around her feet—breezed through the open door, and began to gather the curtains. She overturned the coffee table and packed the curtains against it. The couch she dragged from the wall, claw-carved wooden feet screeching along the dry, dusty floor to be upended onto the pile. It would feed hot enough to set the floor to wilting, and once the process had begun, the whole damn thing would come down in purifying flames. After all, in a way, this was not her first rodeo.

She knelt to the pile of curtains and pulled her lighter from her pocket. The candy-pink plastic adding a sweet contrast to the arson. With a flick of her thumb the dry curtain corner set alight, its fragile threads shriveling and popping. The smoke, thin and barely visible, snaked up into her nostrils, its scent so familiar, and she was taken back in an instant.

That one stupid mistake had cleared the brush from the path she would follow for the rest of her life. The one match that she had thought was extinguished—lit only to smell the sulfur and see the pretty flame—discarded a moment too soon. How easily the carpet warmed, the medium-pile curling like closing fists with its burnt-hair smell. How quickly it spread, filling her room with orange light and black clouds while she swatted at it with her pillow.

She blinked away the memories and rose to her feet, cocking her head to listen to the house. It was quiet; only the gentle crackling of an infant fire. No boards creaked, no footsteps fell, no whispers on the breeze, no one shushing her. She let her head swivel, eyes sweeping toward the kitchen.

"Last chance," she said.

There was no response from the corpse, but, for a moment, she thought she saw a twitch. She let her gaze settle on Zoe's body and saw that what she had mistaken for movement was the air warping and writhing. Her skin shrank tight from the heat, and she turned away. With one foot in front of the other, in much the same way as she had entered the house, she left, closing the front door behind her.

She knelt in the dirt beside Emily and hovered a finger above her lips. She was still breathing. A soft crackle grew from the house, and Kelsey drew herself up against a tree, pulling Emily's head into her lap. She was conflicted. She knew the best chance to help Emily would be to call someone as soon as possible, but on the other hand, she really wanted the house to be beyond saving before help arrived. It only vaguely occurred to her that she was acting as if she believed the house had anything to do with what had happened. She was not a superstitious person, but she had seen it with her own eyes. But what, though? What had she seen? A hallucinatory memory from her childhood? A suicidal teenager? Hardly the smoking gun in a haunted house argument. Jun was right; it was stupid to think Zoe was possessed, but what else was she supposed to think. Especially after watching her slit her own throat.

The birds were leaving, a few spiraling above, but the majority disappearing into the trees and the silence of the forest. She didn't know why, but she felt better watching them go. Like maybe it meant they no longer believed dinner was waiting for them in the dirt outside the crackling and blackening house. The smell had gone from winter fireplace to summer bonfire, and she could hear beams crashing to the floor as the fire ate the house from the inside out. One bird stayed behind, dropping from the tree above and landing at Emily's feet. It was smaller than the others, no bigger than a sparrow, its black feathers glossed in blue. It nudged at Emily's foot with its beak, hopped back and eyed Kelsey. Kelsey stared at it, cocking her head to match. The small crow fluttered its wings, puffed backward into the air, and swept down to land on Emily's belly. It pecked twice before Kelsey swiped at it.

"The fuck out of here." Exhaustion lessening the anger in her voice, her hand no where near connecting with the bird.

The bird squawked at her, its voice violence and blood, and she screwed her eyes tight against the onslaught. A few smaller chirps, like laughter, and it rose in flight to disappear into the trees with its brethren.

The birds were long gone, but there was an odd, thin hum from somewhere. Kelsey tried to focus on it, but it was somewhere out of reach, possibly nonexistent, possibly just in her head. She worried her mind was going, too. Just like Zoe. What if the house chose her, next? Would she wander around for a few days, before the house brought her back to let her own blood? What if it fed on blood? What if it could rebuild itself? Would she return to find the house upright, unburned? Who else would she see inside the house?

The hum grew louder less than a second before a vehicle crashed out of the trees, skidding to a halt in the dirt. It was little more than a cage with wheels, but it had four seats and a platform hanging off the back. Jun bounded from the open passenger seat, eyes alight with shock. She stared at the house, now roaring with flames, black smoke roiling into the sky.

"What happened!?"

"Fire," Kelsey said in such a matter-of-fact tone, Jun just left it alone. Considered it answer enough.

There was a boy in a uniform. He didn't look a day over twelve, but his badge claimed he was with the forest service. He knelt to Kelsey, intensity in his eyes and voice.

"Are you okay? What happened here?" He lifted Emily's wrist, pressing his fingers to the veins, then set it down and did the same with Joshua.

"I don't know. We found them like this, passed out, maybe drugged, in the house." She looked up at Jun. "Our friend killed herself inside, and maybe she was going to kill them, too. I don't know."

Jun didn't argue her story. Technically that was what happened, but she hadn't really seen it that way.

The boy looked at the house, body suggesting that he was considering running in for the suicide victim. He almost looked like he was going to do it.

"Please. They need help." Kelsey let a bit of a whine edge into her voice, and it had the desired effect.

The boy looked away from the house. "We can't get an ambulance in here. We'll have to take them out to the road." He tested Joshua's weight, then dragged him by the shoulders to the side-by-side. "Help me get him in the seat," he asked Jun, who took Joshua by the legs and jostled him up into the seat while the boy pulled at his shoulders.

They did the same with Emily, although they were not quite as rough. Jun rode up front and Kelsey crouched on the back platform, gripping the cage as they bounded through the forest, dodging trees and rocks with seemingly little effort. An ambulance had already arrived by the time they reached the road, and a police cruiser pulled up almost as soon as they had crested the treeline.

Joshua and Emily were loaded into the ambulance while the single police officer took statements. Jun, who had been holding herself together fairly well, broke down trying to answer questions. Her throat gripped closed and she couldn't choke out the words anymore. Her eyes blurred and she couldn't blink them clear enough to see the officer. Kelsey expected more police to show up, but none did. She had seen trains of three or more cops stacked up for a single car on the side of the road, but they couldn't afford to send more than one guy for bodies and fires in the woods?

They could smell the burning house from the road, and the cop went back to his car, talking into the radio on his shoulder the entire time. They heard him request fire assistance, but they didn't know what good he thought that would do. They weren't going to get a fire truck in the woods. Right? Kelsey hoped that was true. The more the house burned, the less chance she was going to jail for arson. It also might make it harder to tell that Zoe had killed herself, which could bring a world of shit for her and Jun. Whatever. If it came down to it, she'd just tell them that it was her and Jun was innocent. It's not like she had anything to lose now, anyway.

Kelsey watched the ambulance pull away, and saw a small bird lift off from the top of the ambulance. It followed and disappeared with the ambulance in the distance. Jun was watching, too, leaning against the black sedan, arms crossed in front of her.

"Hey," Kelsey stood looking up into Jun's eyes. "I can't tell you how sorry I am for all of this." She hadn't exactly meant to say that, and she really didn't like how it made it sound like she blamed herself for everything, which she didn't.

Jun shook her head, but just looked down at the ground without saying anything.

"I'm... There's a good chance I might be going to jail... " Kelsey hesitated. "Just in case." Kelsey stepped closer to Jun and set her hands to Jun's face, drawing herself up on her toes and placing her lips to Jun's. This time she didn't pull away, and she didn't run.

Part Nine

THE COP LET THEM RETURN home with nothing more than a visit scheduled for some other day and the honor system. If Kelsey were a cop, she would have never let that shit happen, even if it was something that happened to benefit her in this instance. Pure lawless chaos. Jun rode home with her, but Kelsey didn't invite her to stay.

"I just need some time alone, really," she lied, but it was easier than risking what she may say or do in the depths of her grief, and for once, finally, she did not want to push Jun away. She was down to one friend—who was probably dying in the hospital at this very moment—and zero relatives, and she was probably going to lose the house. It just wasn't a good time for... well, any of it, really.

Kelsey locked the front door and leaned her face against the glass, watching Jun sulk away. It barely occurred to her that Jun had suffered loss, as well, and probably needed comforting. Maybe she could think about it later. Sometime in the future when she wasn't busy wallowing in her own misery.

The house was quiet. Painfully empty. The clock above the mantel ticked, its metronome-echo pinging from the far wall, a bleak, hollow song, and she found herself stepping in time with the ticking, through the living room. Left, right, left, and she was at the stairs. Her knees tried to buckle, but she steadied herself, dragging her hand along the rough-textured wall. Up the stairs, into the hallway. Left, creak, right, creak. And she choked, throat closing like a fist, eyes stinging wet. Maybe she'd gotten her vengeance. But maybe it didn't matter and it didn't fix anything and it didn't bring a single goddamn person back to life, so what the fuck good was it?

She almost looked into her grandmother's room, thoughtless, forgetful, but she caught herself in time, and managed to focus on her own door. It was open, still, and she leaned against the moulding, eyes just grazing the scene in a noncommittal way. Almost nothing out of place, save for the covers of the bed crumpled to the side where she had flung them away oh so long ago. It was too normal. Like an oasis of functional suburbia in the middle of an apocalypse. A small slice of the world that didn't realize everything else had been charred and left barren. She slunk inside and gently shouldered the door closed. She let her hands do as they pleased, mindless, automatic. They locked her door. She let her feet do as they pleased, oblivious, practiced. They took her to the closet, where she saw it was empty. They took her to the foot of the bed and eased her to her knees, cheek pressed to soft pile. There was nothing under the bed. She raised herself up, slowly turned to put wet, blurry eyes on every surface, and when the ritual was complete, she began to remove her clothes. They smelled like a wet dog fresh from the fireplace. The acrid scent now representing her arsonist past as well as her arsonist present—something about time being a wheel—but at least the latest fire was righteous, right?

She almost let herself chuckle, but she just couldn't do it. She kept her underwear and socks on, but left the rest of her clothes in a heap on the floor, and she crawled into bed. The late afternoon sun burned through the window, revelling in its cold, relentless existence, and she didn't care. Let it burn. Let it all burn, she thought, as her lids fell hard and the dark embraced her.

When she opened her eyes again, the fierce gold had been replaced with a dull steel-gray. Twilight or streetlight, she couldn't really tell, and she was distracted by the pounding in her chest. It didn't feel like she had slept at all, but her lack of awareness seemed to tell a different story. A fog swirled in her head, and her mouth was dry. If she had been sleeping, why was she so alert, right now? Her heart thudded against her ribcage, and she realized she was holding her breath, like she was listening for something, or hiding from something. Then she heard what she must have been listening for. What must have awakened her in the first place. There was a knock at the door. A knock at her bedroom door. Someone was in the house.

She lay motionless in bed, afraid to make a single sound that might give her away. She clasped a hand over her mouth, which only seemed to amplify the shallow breaths that sweated against her palm. Please let it be cops. Please let it be cops, she was almost screaming in her head. But something in there, a small, quiet, asshole of a voice said something about cops announcing themselves, and they didn't sneak around, and they knocked with authority. She knew that, of course, she just didn't want to know that for certain. But whoever was outside her door was not going to go away just because she wasn't responding.

Another knock came, this time just the tiniest bit harder, and a sound followed, like someone whispering. A call and response of whispers, perhaps two different people, perhaps not. It was too faint to make out, but it sounded young, possibly female, and for a moment, Kelsey thought it sounded a little like Emily. She tried to calm herself down, realizing now how stupid she was being. Of course, Emily would come by to check on her, and she probably brought Jun with her. She removed her hand from her mouth and let out the stale air, drawing in a gulp of fresh air, which helped to calm her even more.

She sat up in bed and swung her legs off to the side. She would need to throw on a robe or something. She couldn't answer the door half naked. She opened her mouth to plead for a second to get dressed, but stopped when she heard the whisper again.

"See. I told you she's in there." No, this voice was male. Something not quite right in the voice. Something strangled to a rasp.

"Shhh." Came the reply from the voice that was now clearly Emily's.

Also by A.D. Shinn

Plasticity

The Witch and the Dark Forest