“I just want you to know that I’m sorry.”
Emma hugged me. “It’s all right. We’re alive.”
“For now,” said Enoch. “But that maniac is still out there, and considering how willing he was to feed us all to his pet hollowgast, it’s a good bet he’s figured out how to get into the loop on his own.”
“Oh god, you’re right,” said Emma.
“Well then,” I said, “we’d better get there before he does.”
“And before it does,” Bronwyn added. We turned to see her pointing at the wrecked icehouse, where broken boards had begun to shift in the collapsed pile. “I imagine he’ll be coming for us directly, and I’m fresh out of houses to drop on him.”
Someone shouted Run! but we already were, tearing down the path toward the one place the hollow couldn’t reach us—the loop. We raced out of town in the spitting dark, vague blue outlines of cottages giving way to sloping fields, then charged up the ridge, sheets of water streaming over our feet, making the path treacherous.
Enoch slipped and fell. We hauled him up and ran on. As we were about to crest the ridge, Bronwyn’s feet went out from under her, too, and she slid down twenty feet before she could stop herself. Emma and I ran back to help, and as we took her arms I turned to look behind us, hoping to catch a glimpse of the creature. But there was only inky, swirling rain. My talent for spotting hollows wasn’t much good without light to see them by. But then, as we made it back to the top, chests heaving, a long flash of lightning lit up the night and I turned and saw it. It was off below us a ways but climbing fast, its muscular tongues punching into the mud and propelling it up the ridge like a spider.
“Go!” I shouted, and we all bolted down the far side, the four of us sliding on our butts until we hit level ground and could run again.
There was another flash of lightning. It was even closer than before. At this rate there was no way we’d be able to outrun it. Our only hope was to outmaneuver it.
“If it catches us, it’ll kill us all,” I shouted, “but if we split up, it’ll have to choose. I’ll lead it around the long way and try to lose it in the bog. The rest of you get to the loop as quick you can!”
“You’re mad!” shouted Emma. “If anyone stays behind it should be me! I can fight it with fire!”
“Not in this rain,” I said, “and not if you can’t see it!”
“I won’t let you kill yourself!” she shouted.
There was no time to argue, so Bronwyn and Enoch ran ahead while Emma and I veered off the path, hoping the creature would follow, and it did. It was close enough now that I didn’t need a lightning flash to know where it was; the twist in my gut was enough.
We ran arm in arm, tripping through a field rent with furrows and ditches, falling and catching each other in an epileptic dance. I was scanning the ground for rocks to use as weapons when, out of the darkness ahead, there appeared a structure—a small sagging shack with broken windows and missing doors, which in my panic I failed to recognize.
“We have to hide!” I said between gasping breaths.
Please let this creature be stupid, I prayed as we sprinted toward the house, please, please let it be stupid. We made a wide arc, hoping to enter it unseen.
“Wait!” Emma cried as we rounded the back of it. She pulled one of Enoch’s cheesecloths from her coat and quickly tied it around a stone plucked from the ground, making a kind of slingshot. She cradled it in her hands until it caught fire and then hurled it away from us. It landed in the boggy distance, glowing weakly in the dark.
“Misdirection,” she explained, and we turned and committed ourselves to the shack’s concealing gloom.
* * *
We slipped through a door that was hanging off its hinges and stepped down into a sea of dark, aromatic muck. As our feet sank with a nauseating squelch, I realized where we were.
“What is this?” Emma whispered, and then a sudden exhalation of animal breath made us both jump. The house was crowded with sheep taking shelter from the unfriendly night, just as we were. As our eyes adjusted, we caught the dull gleam of theirs staring back at us—dozens and dozens of them.
“It’s what I think it is, isn’t it,” she said, lifting one foot gingerly.
“Don’t think about it,” I replied. “Come on, we need to get away from this door.”
I took her hand and we pushed into the house, snaking through a maze of skittish animals that shied from our touch. We threaded a narrow hall and came into a room with one high window and a door that was still in its frame and closed against the night, which was more than could be said for the other rooms. Squeezing into the far corner, we knelt down to wait and listen, hidden behind a wall of nervous sheep.
We tried not to sit too deeply in the muck but there was really no helping it. After a minute of staring blindly into the dark, I began to make out shapes in the room. There were crates and boxes stacked in one corner, and along the wall behind us hung rusted tools. I looked for anything that might be sharp enough to serve as a weapon. Seeing something that looked like a pair of giant scissors, I stood up to grab it.
“Planning on shearing some sheep?” said Emma.
“It’s better than nothing.”
Just as I was taking the shears down from the wall, a noise came from outside the window. The sheep bleated anxiously, and then a long black tongue drifted through the glassless enclosure. I sank back to the floor as quietly as I could. Emma put her hand over her mouth to silence her breathing.
The tongue poked around the room like a periscope, seeming to be testing the air. Luckily, we’d taken refuge in the most fragrant room on the island. All that sheep aroma must’ve masked our scent, because after a minute the creature seemed to give up and reeled out the window. We heard its retreating steps.
Emma’s hand came away from her mouth and she let out a shuddering breath. “I think it’s taking the bait,” she whispered.
“I want you to know something,” I said. “If we make it through this, I’m staying.”
She grabbed my hand. “Do you mean it?”
“I can’t go home. Not after all that’s happened. Anyway, whatever help I can be, I owe you that and a lot more. You were all perfectly safe until I got here.”
“If we make it through this,” she said, leaning into me, “then I don’t regret one thing.”
And then some strange magnet was pulling our heads together, but just as our lips were about to touch, the quiet was shattered by terrified, bleating shrieks from the next room. We pulled apart as the awful noise set the sheep around us into frantic motion, bounding off one another and pushing us into the wall.