I stagger backward. Even with my eyes open again, for a second I can’t see anything. The flash strobes in my vision. There’s only light.

Fragments come back slowly, gray and red. Trees around me, the riverbed, a tendril of Thea’s hair.

The fragments solidify, and I can see in a way I’ve never seen before.

Every tree pulses softly with a cloud of light. The moss on the ground is a sort of luminous fog. I look down at myself. I’m glowing, too. The light burns through my shirt, like a bulb inside a lampshade. I move my fingers in front of my face. Streaks of light.

Thea’s voice comes from over my shoulder. “Look up.”

I stare up into the canopy.

Dangling above us, slowly twisting on thick black boughs, are five bodies. Their limbs are limp. Their heads are slumped. The thick branches that hold them also half hide them, and I can only see them now because of the glow that nests inside them all. Some glow more dimly than the others, but the one in the middle, the smallest one, seems to be the brightest.

The branches creak. The bodies sway limply, pushed by the wind. The face of the small one shifts into view.

It’s Frankie.

And the others. Jezz. Patrick. Mom and Dad, slightly higher, to one side. Mom is wearing her pink sweater and the gray pearl necklace she puts on for special occasions. I can see the scuffed toes of Patrick’s work boots.

All hanging there.

Their eyes are closed.

I can’t tell if they’re alive. Or if they’re—

Jesus. A wave crashes through me. I’m sick and frozen and I think I’m screaming, but I can’t hear anything, just a low, thumping hum that fills my entire mind.

I’m about to grab Thea, to start climbing tree trunks, to do something, anything, when I see what else is hanging above me in the trees.

Darkness. Not shadows, but living, solid darkness. They fill the trees: twisted shapes with long limbs and big, staring, milky eyes. I can hear them, or what I think is them; a deep, gurgling, clicking sound.

They crouch in the branches. They hide behind the trunks. They’re everywhere. Everywhere.

“Oh my God.” I’m not sure if I say this out loud.

“Hold on,” Thea says softly. “They’ll come for me first. Just hold on.”

But I don’t know what I can do against a mass of animate darkness. Demons. Monsters. Whatever they are. I don’t know if this is real, even now, when I’m staring straight at it. I don’t know anything.

“What do we—” I say, turning toward Thea.

And she’s only a flare of light.

It’s so bright I stagger back. I shield my face with my hands, and still I can see her, searing and golden, like the center of a fire multiplied by a thousand.

She is light. Solid light. So bright it makes me want to fall to my knees. If the dark things are demons, if they’re pure, hungry evil, then she is their opposite.