And Anders. At the front of the stage. At the microphone. The black guitar in his hands. Anders.

Anders.

My hands are always cold

she says, she says

I forgot my coat

she says, she says

Would you walk me home

Walk me home and I’ll be warm

I’m not the only one who knows all the words. Half the crowd is screaming along.

Just a little more

she says, she says

It’s lonely underground

she says, she says

But we always leave the door—

We always leave the door open

By the second song there’s a pit forming in front of the stage. Bodies are jumping, writhing, smashing into one another. The music gets faster. Harder. The floor trembles. Energy crashes off the raggedy walls. It shoves back at the woods. It pushes out the emptiness.

I stay at the edge, sipping my coffee. But the music has gotten into my blood, too. My heart thumps in rhythm.

Finally, when the energy can’t rise any higher, everything stops.

There’s a hush. That floating feeling, after the ground disappears beneath you but before the fall.

Anders plans all of this. The order and number of songs, the moment when the hunger will peak. The pause.

He trades Yvonne for the acoustic guitar.

The roaring, thrashing crowd goes still. Patrick rubs a thick forearm over his face and rests his sticks in his lap. Takes a long drink of water. Jezz backs toward the wall, where the shadows erase him.

The song starts with a few instrumental lines. A melody moves up and down the lower strings.

The room has been sealed in glass. No one moves, or everything will shatter.

Anders starts to sing.

For most songs, he uses a growl, a mix of low tones and monster rasp. But this is his real voice. It’s smooth and warm and softer than you’d expect.

The song is called “Deep Water.”

I’ve heard it four times, because that’s how many times he’s played it. I’m at every show. At the edge. Keeping watch.

Nothing you can do

She’s got secrets, depths where you can’t go

She’s been here before

One day she’ll carry you away

Everyone keeps still. No whispers. No click of cups on tabletops.

The woods are listening, too. A soft, cold wind, a wind that has passed through the palms of ten thousand rustling leaves, moves across my ear like a breath. The woods are getting hungry. But they’ll wait. For now.

The song holds us all. Metalheads. High school cliques. The things that wait in the woods.

Anders’s fingers move over the strings. Slowly and softly enough that the strangeness is hidden now, wrapped up in the perfection of the song like one knot in a silver tapestry, one tiny bug in a dewy spiderweb. Most people are too caught up in the music to notice. But if you watch as closely as I watch, you see.

A final note soars and soars, holding everything still, until Anders silences it with the press of his fingers.