If you have been paying attention, you will know who the girl is that I see in the basement.

“It’s her,” she says, her voice floating on the dark. “She’s coming.”

I follow Meriday out of the basement, trailing water from my rain boots, still holding the dead flashlight in one hand and the candles in the other, trying to keep up with the girl.

We emerge from the house into the backyard, where the storm rages violently, shuddering the black trees in the distance as lightning sears the sky in arresting patterns. Rain blankets the distance.

Then I see her.

Not the Swamp Witch—Clementine.

Here she comes, lurching stiffly toward us, lit with an unholy glow—but it is only, I realize, the sun, for it was daytime in that other when. She appears brighter than the world around her, coming to us in the guise of a terrible angel, exuding her own inner deadlight.

Words seem inadequate. This is the first time I have seen, with my own two eyes, the woman herself, and have known that the story is true. It is true, just like Julian, just like the future.

Clementine beckons to Meriday, who refuses to move closer. She says, in that warbled, watery voice, “I will protect you from what will happen to you. If you come with me, we can stop it. I will make you safe.”

Meriday shakes her head, terror in her eyes.

Then August emerges from the house, raises a gun, and shoots Clementine three times in the chest.

The shots do not kill her; she is already dead. Dirty water pours from the holes in her chest like a perverse fountain.

The others retreat. Meriday will not go with her mother. Clementine, seeming to understand this, lets them go.

She turns her dead eyes onto me, now, with a steady gaze, and I am surprised to find she is not looking past me, or through me, or slightly to the left of me—no, she is looking right at me.

And she says, in a muddy voice that I can yet hear over the rain, “Who are you?”

Before I can respond, she is gone, and I am left once again alone, standing in the pouring rain, soaked and chilled to my bones. Holding a wet flashlight and wet candles like failed totems.

This is a moment I will have to mull over for hours.

She should not be able to see me. The house shows us visions of what was (or will be—yes, I know that now), but it does not transport us there. It bends time but doesn’t break it in half.

So why is she able to see me with those haunting fiery eyes? How could she possibly?

Behind me, I hear my mother call my name. I should go back inside and shut the door that is banging on its hinges in the wind and letting in the rain.

I know what I should do, but I cannot move.