“A song that plays on every station,” he says, still too calm, too logical. How can he be so logical right now? “Road signs that can hear what we’re saying and our thoughts. And there were no bodies in the hospital, and too many cars in the garage. What else has happened that shouldn’t be able to happen? What else might give us a better idea of what we’re dealing with out here?”

The answer strikes me. I stare at the steering wheel under my hands. “The car,” I say numbly.

Elliott’s gaze snaps to me. “What?”

“This is my brother’s car.” I swallow. “It’s the same—color, model, year, everything. Even his tool bag, it was exactly where he kept it. But it can’t be the same car. We watched that car get junked a year ago. And … and, ‘Stand by Me,’ that was his favorite song. He was always listening to stupid old music. Campy stuff.”

The static is filling up the car like a third presence. I risk taking a hand off the wheel to slap the off button. The silence that takes its place seeps in the same way the darkness did back at the hospital last night, filling up all the cracks, suffocating me.

“And the key, too,” I remember, trying to force myself to think straight, clinging to lucidity like a drowning man grabbing for a raft. “The key that opened the door on the hospital roof, it shouldn’t have worked. It was my key, to my loft. It had fallen out of my pocket right before you saw it.”

Elliott’s eyes narrow in thought. A strange expression steals over him. He stares at the dashboard again for a long moment, like he’s trying to concentrate on a difficult riddle, and then, suddenly, he squeezes his eyes shut. “I’ve never been on this road before,” he announces. “I have no idea where it goes or what’s on it.”

My brow crinkles. “Is that supposed to be some kind of metaphor?”

He shakes his head. “No, just—look, tell me what you see on the side of the road.”

“What? Why?”

“Just do it. Outside, the things we’re passing. Tell me.”

I hesitate—but there’s an odd note in his voice, something that sounds almost excited. It makes me think he might’ve figured something out. I decide to humor him just in case he really has, and squint through the windshield. We’re coasting at about thirty miles per hour now. After a moment, a bulky, mechanical shape looms through the fog on the side of the road. “It’s—”

“A broken-down dump truck,” Elliott interrupts.

I cut a glance at him—his eyes are still tightly shut—then look back at the rusty green and brown truck as it disappears behind us. “Yeah. I thought you said you’ve never been down this road before.”