In my mind’s eye, I do. A memory, imprinted seconds ago, of something blowing softly in the wind, barely visible in the darkness. I stiffen slightly.

“You can’t see his face. You can never see his face. Not until he’s on top of you. The last thing you ever see.” His grip shifts on my wrist, and I feel my fingers move on their own, stroking a texture that isn’t there. “One look would probably drive you crazy, anyhow.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s something that shouldn’t be. What our brains say can’t be real. When you have to believe—when you have no choice because he’s there, in front of you—” He breaks off, and I wait, listening, straining for what comes next. “I can hear him breathing. All the way over here. Listen. All whistle-y and dry, like—”

Cornstalks. Dead leaves over a sidewalk. I suck air through my teeth, then hold my breath, eyes squeezed shut. “It’s the wind.”

“Then open your eyes.”

“I don’t want to.” My arm in the warm hollow under his, the only thing keeping me from running. “I don’t want to see.”

“He sees you. He smells you. Us.” Kincaid’s grip tightens, but his voice is soft. “I wonder what he’s waiting for.”

“Clarabelle!” The call echoes down through the trees, and my eyes snap open, faced with the hollow of darkness across from us—a tree, some reeds, some shadows—then I’m leaving, crunching back through the overgrowth in the direction of the voice, my skin alive with gooseflesh, feeling the nighttime chill all at once now that I’m unlocked from him.

I don’t wait to make sure Kincaid is following, but I hear his footsteps, behind me, to the right, like he’s only there to see that I don’t get lost again. Like he would’ve stayed on that bank alone, staring down his made-up monster in the darkness. A fresh wave of gooseflesh washes over me, and I walk even faster, calling, “Here! Coming!” the next time the searchers shout my name.

Nine

WE DON’T TALK with the others around. I go over to Bree and Sage, and Kincaid fades back in with the rest, the charge built between us on the banks returning to the atmosphere, leaving no proof it ever existed except for a numbness in my left arm, a minor loss of circulation, like he’s still holding it, my senses still full of the marsh and an unseen something that was probably, almost certainly, nothing.

Bree sent everybody out to look for me when I didn’t end up back on the main trail; now they’re all asking me questions as we reach the park, telling their own versions of when and how I must’ve gotten lost, nobody laughing at me like I’d expected.