Apologies

don’t mean a thing

when the injuries don’t end

Weigh my heart, tear it apart

Don’t forgive me

Don’t forget

There’s another guitar solo, this one so piercing and fast that the crowd’s thrashing can’t keep up with it. I see Jezz staring from the corner, his bass dangling on its strap. I see something like panic on Patrick’s face. I see Frankie turn to watch the stage over her shoulder. And I see Anders’s hands become a blur. They move so fast, so viciously, they look more like claws.

As he plays, something presses in against the walls of the Crow’s Nest. It’s huge and dark and hungry. It could crush us all.

The woods have moved in.

The chorus lashes back, Anders screaming the last words into the microphone.

Weigh my heart, tear it apart

Don’t forgive me

Don’t forget

It ends.

Anders lets go of the guitar. It swings against him on his strap. He’s breathing hard. His arms are slack. There are blue hollows under his eyes.

I watch him. I breathe with him. I stand still, my back pressed to the trembling wall.

For a few seconds Anders simply wavers there. If it weren’t for the look on his face, he could be basking in the applause, which is long and loud and frenzied. But he looks sick. He looks stunned, like he’s just woken up and he can’t remember where he’s supposed to be.

Jezz strides across the stage. He nudges Anders’s arm. Anders seems to jerk awake.

“‘Frozen’?” Jezz’s lips murmur.

Anders nods.

Another few heartbeats and they are back on, back into their usual polished rhythm.

But Anders is shaken. I can see it. And the woods press in.

They finish with “Superhero.” By the end of the song, the energy is raging so hard that the air could ignite. The last notes scream through the room.

“We have been Last Things,” says Anders, into the microphone. “Thank you. Good night.”

The band exits through the stage door. Even though the screaming goes on and on, as on every night but the last one, there is no encore.

The crowd is slow to leave. There’s an edge in the air, something rough and fierce. Ike scans the room, his eyes sharp, his big arms folded, ready. A fight breaks out somewhere near the doors, and Ike moves so fast I lose sight of him for a second. Then there he is, side by side with Janos, hauling three stubbly-headed guys out the door by the backs of their T-shirts.

Frankie’s circle is still at their table, talking, sharing something on their phones. Frankie keeps quiet. Finally, when half the room has emptied, I see her whisper something to Sasha. Then she turns and heads outside.

I follow.

The band is in the parking lot. Patrick, Jezz, and Anders have been cornered by a bunch of people I don’t recognize, fans who might have driven hours to get here. The woods have crept in so far that the air is black. Even the moon looks like it has been rubbed with a lead pencil.