Kane needed time and space to think, and the path had always given him both.
He looked up through the birch trees that webbed across the dimming sky. By the time he was alongside the creek, night shaded the distance and drew a curtain of shadow right up to the path’s edge. Every few yards stood a glowing lamppost wreathed by moths, neon and frantic. Down a steep bank the creek slid over its bed of worn rocks, silent and unbothered and everything Kane was not. On the path two kids scraped by on scooters, followed by their parents. They stared at Kane, which is how he realized he looked as dismal as he felt.
Kane took out the postcard Dr. Poesy had given him, his hands shaking. In the corner were the initials MO. Maxine Osman. Smothering dread curled in Kane’s throat as he forced himself to stare into the painting’s pleasant colors. The image wasn’t any different now that its creator was dead, yet it somehow brimmed with new life. It was all that was left of her, and so in a way it was where she existed now. Trapped, in her own watercolor world.
Kane thought of how he had stood and looked at the mill, imagining it in the dreamy brightness of watercolor. At the time it had felt like just another daydream, but now? He itched with his usual instinct to run, to hide. To stop himself from discovering anything else.
He knew now it wasn’t a daydream before—it was a memory.
Waves of anxiety bubbled up from his stomach. What had he done? Who was he? He didn’t want to remember, but he also didn’t have a choice. The truth was his only choice if he wanted to survive this story, Dr. Poesy had said.
Kane breathed steadiness into his nerves, imagining their frantic energy drifting from his hands as waves of writhing static. He shook himself out, hopping in a small circle, then hopping in the reverse direction to undo the coil. These small rituals often worked for him, and the tension eased from his body. He had made it this far, hadn’t he? He wasn’t going to let himself crack apart now.
“I’m not an egg,” Kane told the night, pulling out the journal. Into its soft leather cover, he whispered, “I’m not an egg.”
By now his only company on the path were the clots of gnats around his head, and the moths, and the occasional glimmer of moonlight on the creek’s edges. When he reached a bench beneath a lamp, he slumped into it and opened the journal.
Experimentally, Kane clicked the pen twice. It made a clean, expensive sound. He clicked it six more times, then drew a few squiggles.
“What your waking mind cannot bear,” Kane muttered, printing the words in careful letters. He read them over and over, until they no longer looked like words, finally turning to the postcard.
Whatever had happened to Kane, it somehow connected him to Maxine Osman. This meant he needed to learn everything he could about her. Already he had some details. He wrote down her name. Dr. Poesy had said she was born in 1946, which made her seventy-four. Kane didn’t add when she died, because he refused to know that. Not yet. Poesy had also said she’d always lived in East Amity, but where? And she did paintings for the tourism board, a series for the town’s calendar. One such calendar was hanging in Kane’s kitchen right now, had hung there every year since Kane was little. In a way, he’d known Maxine Osman all his life.
Now what?
Kane thought of the frustration that boiled through him—fine and corrosive, like soda bubbles—when he stepped into the water near the mill and felt nothing. He thought of watercolors, and of what Sophia had said about how someone must have dragged him from the fire. He didn’t think an old lady had rescued him, which meant someone else had to have been involved.
But who?
Hunched on the bench, Kane penned in a version of what had happened that afternoon at the mill, sanitizing it for Dr. Poesy. When he got to the part where they were running, specifically when he looked back to see what chased them, he stopped. He still didn’t know what he’d seen. The more he imagined it, the more he remembered. It had not moved like a person, one leg at a time. It moved like a spider, every leg at once.
Chills spread over his body, the night turning cold on his thighs. He tapped his boots against the pavement, eight taps each side then eight taps together. He should go home. Get inside. Dr. Poesy had warned Kane about those that wanted to keep him silent. What did that mean?
And then it hit. Dr. Poesy believed Kane had been with Maxine Osman when she died but had not killed her. That meant two things: someone else had murdered Maxine Osman, and that someone knew who Kane was.
Why hadn’t Dr. Poesy pointed this out? Kane’s hand tightened around the pen. He was about to stand when a gleam like moonlight on a blade drew his eye across the creek. He squinted into the flat darkness.
There it was again: an edge of light floating above the creek’s other bank. His heart raced as a portion of shadow shifted, and the glare vanished. Was it a wolf or maybe a bobcat? East Amity was nestled in rolling forests and sometimes the animals got curious, but something about the shadow seemed unnatural in a familiar way.
He clutched the journal as he crept to the edge of the path, his eyes never leaving the other bank. Whatever it was, he couldn’t see it now, and so he listened for the sound of splashing to determine if it was coming closer. Instead, he heard a needling click, like claws on smooth stone. And it was right behind him.
Something massive scampered over the bench, knocking Kane’s backpack to the ground. Dimly he registered a great many legs, long and multi-jointed like a gigantic spider, all fused together in a grotesque jumble. It skittered backward, sprawled out, and then leapt straight up into the trees.
Kane’s heart jammed against the back of his ribs. Too scared to even scream, he grabbed his backpack and sprinted toward the end of the path. Around him the night filled with wind and chanting cicadas, a strange sort of laughter that filled Kane with white-hot dread. Those legs. He couldn’t unsee those legs. There was no cloud of dust this time. Nothing hiding the thing that had chased him and his sister from the mill earlier that day.
It had found him, and it was going to finish him off.
Kane hit a bend in the path that sloped up toward the road. He threw a glance backward. The beast swayed from the lamppost, like a cocoon of shadow. A spindly leg separated from the main body and plucked something up. The Witches.
Kane tripped over himself and crashed to the ground. His hands stung, his fingernails jammed with grit. He was almost upright when he heard that clicking again, ahead of him now. He drew back a second before another mass of legs skittered over the path to block his exit.
“Leave me alone!” Kane shouted, hurling his backpack at the thing before running toward the creek. He dove into the reeds, muck sucking him down to his knees in the creek’s sulfuric stink. Unblinking, his eyes ticked between the two banks, watching for movement. He waited, clutching the red journal for security.
And waited. The night waited with him, totally silent.
Then there came a voice: “Hello? Is someone down there?”