Minutes later, patches of sky began to pierce the thick canopy and the road widened. Around another bend, part of the forest gave way to a meadow laced with yellow wildflowers. A blue spruce rose from its center, guarded by three small scarecrows. As the car drew closer, Finn realized the scarecrows weren’t scarecrows at all, but rather, young girls. All three stood perfectly still as though they had been caught in a game of freeze tag. “Joel, stop the car.”

Joel did as he was told without asking why. Zadie, on the other hand, seemed very interested in the why. “Why are we stopping?” she asked, sitting up in her seat. Finn pointed out the window to the three motionless girls. “What are they doing?”

“I dunno.”

Finn turned to Zadie. “We should see if they need help.”

Joel leaned over to peer through the passenger-side window, then instantly recoiled. “Are you crazy? Have you never seen Children of the Corn?”

“Are you telling me you’re scared of a few little girls, Joel?” Finn teased.

“No,” he said defensively. “But someone needs to stay with the car.”

“Suit yourself.”

Finn and Zadie trudged through the grass slowly, not wanting to startle the girls. When they were about ten feet away, Finn stopped and gestured for her sister to do the same. “Hi!” she called out.

The girls were silent and eerily still. Finn couldn’t see their faces, but she imagined they weren’t blinking, either. She tried again. “We were driving by and saw you out here. Do you need help?”

“I don’t think they can hear you,” Zadie whispered, eyeing the girls nervously.

Finn began approaching again, this time making a wide arc so she could face them. By their chestnut hair and the gentle curves of their noses, she guessed they were probably sisters. The youngest was seven, maybe eight, and the oldest looked like she had just finished her first year of high school. Finn had been wrong about one thing: the girls were blinking, but their expressions were contentedly blank, like domesticated rabbits.

Finn turned back to Zadie with an inquisitive grin. “Is that what I look like? During my echoes?”

“Yeah. Kinda.”

“It’s freaky.”

“I told you.”

The girl closest to her, the youngest, resembled Huckleberry Finn in her dirty overalls that she’d rolled up to her knees. It was only once she saw the girl’s sneakers lying beside her that Finn realized why she’d rolled her pant legs up.

“Look.” She pointed to the girl’s feet—or rather, what she could see of the girl’s feet. “Huck” was standing barefoot in a shallow hole, only deep enough to cover her toes and part of her heel. A quick glance at the other girls revealed they were doing the same.

“What are they doing? Mud pedicures?”

“Beats me,” Finn said. “Should we try to wake them up?”

“That seems like a bad idea.”