She’s standing, Olympia’s hand in hers.

“You’re not wearing sleeves,” Malorie says.

“We don’t need to.”

“But…”

“We don’t need to. I promise.”

“How could you let me think we did?”

Immediately after asking it, Malorie wishes she hadn’t. She wants to know everything, all of it, all at once. But for now, she needs to find her son.

“Lead me,” she says. “Take us to Indian River.”

“Mom…”

“Olympia, we need to go this second.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Malorie feels hands at her neck. Olympia is pulling her face closer.

“Here,” her daughter says.

Then Olympia is tying fabric around Malorie’s eyes. Tying the fold, her fold, tight to her head.

“I’ve never killed anyone before,” Malorie says, speaking her thoughts.

“Mom, we don’t have to do this.”

“We do.” And her voice is resolve. Her voice is truth. “Because if we don’t, he’ll hide in the dark, our dark, forever.”

Malorie turns once toward the hole.

Olympia is immune. Olympia can see. And she says the hole was empty.

But Malorie doesn’t feel mad anymore. Doesn’t feel like she could ever go mad in any way ever again.

“We have to hurry,” she says. “The real monster’s got Tom.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

“Well, they’re really just a pair of glasses,” Tom says, his voice shaking with nervousness. “I made them out of this…this…do you know what a two-way mirror is?”

The woman sitting before him on a stool nods. She sits on the very edge of the wood, her veined hands gripping her knees, a long brown ponytail with streaks of gray reaching past her shoulders.

Tom hasn’t seen her enormous eyes blink since Henry brought him into the tent.

This is Athena Hantz.

“Okay. Good,” Tom says. “Yeah…in the office of the camp we lived in, we lived there forever, it felt like. You ever feel like that? Yeah? Okay. Well, in the office was this two-way mirror so that the camp director could look down at the campers eating or at whatever was happening in the main lodge area without everyone being able to see him.”

He pauses. Is she following this? Are any of them?

Two men younger than Malorie sit on the ground, flanking Athena. There are others in the tent, too.

Tom hears constant motion outside the tent. Indian River is active.

“Go on,” Athena says. “This is interesting.”