She doesn’t think she can finish. But she feels like she must.

“And me…I’m the one who survived long enough to go mad in the end.”

Malorie doesn’t remember falling back down to the dirt. She doesn’t remember lying curled up where two dirt walls meet. But here she is. Above her, the ledge could be as high as a hundred feet. Taller than the house she gave birth in.

She cries. She punches the ground. And she feels it, too, when something is near again.

“Stay away.”

She remembers a silly game Shannon loved to play. Her sister called it the third-eye test. You closed your eyes and someone slowly brought their finger to the space between your eyes and you said when you could feel it. The farther the person’s fingertip was from your skin proved how active your third eye was. How liable you were to feel things that aren’t of this world. Malorie feels the thing now. But it’s not a fingertip. It’s an entire presence, big as her own, maybe bigger, filling the rest of the Safer Room so that she has no choice but to remain curled up on the dirt. She’s hot and cold with it, and she thinks of Shannon’s fingertip, belonging to the same finger, the same hand that gripped a pair of scissors she drove into her own body.

“STAY AWAY!”

Her voice cracks; she’s reached her limit. She can’t speak or scream anymore. And while she still cries, her eyes have gone dry.

The presence gets closer yet, loaded air presses, and she can’t breathe evenly. She’s hyperventilating. She gets up because she’s too afraid to stay down. And she’s flatter this way, against the wall of dirt.

This creature may as well be the only creature on the planet, all of them the same thing, the point of perspective, the one place Malorie can’t look.

Everywhere.

She turns to the wall, tries to steady herself. Tries to calm down.

It’s close. Too close. Against her? Is it pressing against her?

It’s going to kill her.

Right now.

It’s going to rip the fold from her face.

Right now.

It’s going to force her to look.

LOOK.

Right now.

She wants to scream, but she can’t. She wants to run, but she can’t.

She raises an arm, reaching for the same ledge she hasn’t been able to reach yet.

And she cries out when a hand takes her own.

Malorie, nearly delirious, almost pulls away. But no, this is skin. This is bone. This is human. This is help.

“Mom!”

She recognizes the voice, because in an unfair way, this is not out of context. She’s heard this same voice with her eyes closed too many times to count.