“Kane!”
He caught Sophia’s wrist just as her leg plunged through a rotted portion of the roof, but their weight was too much. In a plume of dust and decay, the roof tilted beneath them, throwing them down so hard Kane’s teeth snapped together.
They were…outside? They’d tumbled over the mill’s back edge. Around them shivered desiccated ferns bathed in thick yellow light. Behind them the structure continued to shake ominously. Kane’s hand found Sophia and they ran, crashing through the forest of scorched saplings as a portion of the mill collapsed completely. Splinters showered their backs.
Kane threw a glance over his shoulder and saw a towering shadow printed upon the rolling cloud of dust and ash, so tall it could have been a tree. But then it turned and, finding them, lunged forward.
Kane focused only on keeping up with Sophia as they shot into the Cobalt Complex’s sprawling maze of ancient buildings, pitted roads, and equipment overgrown with ivy, to the edges where rotten fences held back the forest. They’d hidden Sophia’s car in the neighborhood that backed up against the mill, behind a wall of mountain laurel.
“Well, shit,” Sophia said as she flung herself into the driver’s side. She gulped breaths. “That was—”
The sound of sirens cut into Kane with the finality of a guillotine as a police cruiser rolled out of the shade, stopping before their idling car. Sophia let loose an elaborate string of bad words.
“Mr. Montgomery, we thought it might be you,” said one. Kane couldn’t even look her in the eye. “Step out of the car, please.”
Together, they scooted from the car. Sophia shook off her shock first. “You don’t understand. We were just walking along the path when this thing came out of nowhere and chased us. This massive animal…”
Sophia’s voice fizzled out, leaving Kane to wonder if she’d seen the shadow that chased them. One officer said something into their radio. The other turned to Kane. “The Cobalt Complex is a crime scene, Mr. Montgomery.”
Kane’s mouth was dry. He nodded.
“And private property.”
Nod.
“That you’ve trespassed on once already.”
The world went wobbly beneath him. He grabbed the car’s hood to keep from falling. What the hell were those things? There was no way to describe them and no point in doing so. The police wouldn’t believe any of it. They would think Kane had caused the damage to the mill himself. Again.
Holy shit.
“It was my idea,” Sophia blurted. “It was, I swear. I asked to come here. I wanted to see…to see it all for myself. The mill. Kane didn’t even want to come. I made him come back. Please don’t get him in more trouble.”
The officers eyed Sophia incredulously. Her hair, the color of cocoa powder, had come unbraided and floated around her jaw, a few strands caught in glistening spit at the edge of her frown. She had on her Pemberton uniform—the all-girls private school in town, which was an honorable and mysterious institution that gave all the locals a superstitious pause—but it was a mess from their run. Still, the cops paused.
One nodded toward Kane. “Detective Thistler let us know you’ve got an appointment with him and your parents this afternoon.”
“Yeah,” Kane said. “We were on our way. We’ll head over right now, I promise.”
Everyone waited to see if a consequence would happen, and it did. The same officer rounded the cruiser and popped open the back door. “Miss, you head home. Kane, grab your stuff. You’re coming with us.”
• Two •
THE WITCHES
The East Amity Police Station had three interview rooms. Two of them were simple boxes of concrete, containing only steel tables and steel chairs. Interrogation chic. The third, Kane was told as he was led through the halls of the station, was called the Soft Room. It had couches, a basket of plastic geraniums flanked by tissue boxes, and a lamp.
Kane clung to these details. No one was going to torture him in a room with upholstered couches, right? The blood would soak into the fibers. It’d take a small pond of seltzer to scrub out.
No one had told Kane what was going to happen to him. They weren’t allowed to talk until his parents arrived, which made him want to throw up. He wondered what would happen as he pulled himself into a knot of shivering limbs on the couch. He wondered if a person could shiver apart. If they could, would it happen slowly, or all at once, like a Jenga tower flying apart after one, singular piece is oh-so-carefully removed?
Kane became sick of wondering. He held himself tighter and clutched a book—The Witches by Roald Dahl, a favorite he’d stashed in his backpack. He’d grabbed it from Sophia’s car before he was dragged off in the police cruiser. He turned the pages every few minutes, but only pretended to read in case he was being watched.
Were the police meeting with his parents separately? Should he text Sophia? His phone had been lost in the crash, but he had her old one on loan.
Kane turned another page, though it wasn’t words he saw but the shadow from the Cobalt Complex. His mind drifted over it, tentative, like approaching the memory of a dream you know will break apart if it sees you coming. Even at the edges, he knew there was something messed up about what he’d seen. Something unreal and unbelievable.
He shook off the notion. He couldn’t afford unbelievable right now. He needed to figure out a way to explain all of this. A real explanation for what really happened. And he needed to figure it out before Detective Thistler did.
Kane tensed at the thought of Thistler, who wore a suit with a badge clipped to his belt, who smelled like cigarettes and spearmint. Thistler was always smiling when he questioned Kane, like he thought they were about to share a secret adventure. Kane had a fear of people who smiled too much, and Thistler proved why. In their first meeting at the hospital, Thistler laid out Kane’s circumstances in a cheerful, rushed explanation, like someone enthusiastically describing their odd hobby. He let loose terms like “Third-Degree Arson” and “Permanent Record” with a flourish. When Kane was suitably panicked, Thistler started his strange, meandering questions about Kane’s life. Did Kane have a girlfriend? No. A boyfriend? Not yet. Did he participate in any clubs at school? No. How did he feel about school? Good. And so on.
Toward the end of their two hours, Thistler began circling in on something much larger than useless details about Kane’s life. He was targeting Kane’s stability. The questions turned pointed. Why do you find yourself lying to avoid people? I…I…don’t. Why would you decide to hurt yourself? I wouldn’t. I didn’t. You seem angry. Does talking about what you did make you angry? Yes, but—Why is that?—but I didn’t do what you think. You seem upset. Why are you upset?