My hand moves. It jerks forward. It wraps around the scorpion. The Being is cold and smooth, like volcanic glass, an impossibility writhing in my fingers. I wrench it off before it can sting Elliott and lob it back into the thrashing mass below.

Elliott’s head snaps up. He stares at me.

I curl my left hand—the one that was just holding a Being—into a fist. There’s no time to think about what I’ve done or why. “MOVE,” I shout, and then I’m following my own advice, running pell-mell down the length of the massive trunk, dodging broken-off branches and slipping on bits of loose bark. The wind whips at me and rain pelts my poncho, but I don’t slow down. Elliott’s footfalls shake the trunk behind me. The scorpions have started climbing the tree after us but we’ve finally got a lead on them.

We run blindly into the fog. Within seconds, the dim light from the car’s single remaining headlight is gone and the thick darkness has swallowed us whole.

I slow down, feel my way forward. The scorpions’ chittering has been swallowed by the noise of the storm. We might actually make it.

“Get down here,” Elliott shouts. His voice comes from below me, on the ground.

I sit on the trunk and let myself slide blindly downward. I land wrong and something in my ankle twists too hard in the wrong direction. I yelp and hiss through my teeth, but force myself up and hobble off the road and into the grass. The storm lessens a touch, the forest blunting some of its force.

A light flicks on—one of the flashlights Elliott put in his pockets earlier. He tosses me another and I catch it with my right hand because my left is tingling and cold, like it’s still clutching the ghost of the writhing Being. I don’t want to think about the eerie sensation. I flick on my light. It casts a dim yellow glow around me, enough to let us flee at a slow jog without running face-first into a tree. I hold an arm up to shield my eyes from the driving rain.

“Don’t think about anything dangerous,” Elliott shouts from ahead.

“What?” I pant. I can hardly put any weight on my ankle, but I’m hobbling after him as fast as I can manage.

“I can’t focus on keeping us safe right now. Don’t think about anything.”

Ice slicks through my veins. “What? You know that doesn’t work! I can’t—I keep thinking about—” More Beings. Faster ones. More mirrors, everywhere.

A crackling noise ripples out through the forest around us. It could be the wind but it might be something worse. I speed up, grab Elliott’s shoulder, shove him around. “You have to FOCUS,” I yell in his face.