“Good-bye, Malorie.”

“Good-bye.”

Just a simple, everyday talk on the phone.

Malorie hangs up. Then she hangs her head and cries. The babies shift in her lap. She cries for another twenty minutes, unbroken, until she screams when she hears something scratching at the cellar door. It is Victor. He is barking to be let out. Somehow, he was blessedly locked in the cellar. Maybe Jules, knowing what was coming, did it.

After rehanging the blankets and closing the doors, she will use a broomstick to search every inch of the home for creatures. It will be six hours before she feels safe enough to open her eyes, at which point she will see what went on in the house while she was delivering her baby.

But before then, with her eyes closed tightly, Malorie will stand up and step back through the living room until she reaches the top of the cellar stairs.

And there she will step by Tom’s body.

She will not know it is him, believing it to be a bag of sugar that her foot nudges, as she kneels before the bucket of well water and begins the laborious job of cleaning the children and herself.

She will speak with Rick a number of times in the coming months. But soon the lines reaching the house will die.

It will take her six months to wash the house of the bodies and blood. She will find Don on the kitchen floor, reaching for the cellar. As if he raced there, mad, to ask Gary for his mind back. She will check for Gary. Everywhere. But she will never find a sign of him. She will always be aware of him. The possibility of him. Out there. In the world.

Most of the housemates will be buried in a semicircle around the well out back. She will forever feel the uneven lumps, the graves she dug and filled while blindfolded, whenever she gets water for herself or the children.

Tom will be buried closest to the house. The patch of grass to which she takes the children, blindfolded, as a means of getting them fresh air. A place where, she hopes, their spirits run freest.

It will be four years before she answers yes to whether or not she is coming soon to the place Rick described on the phone.

But now she just washes. Now she just cleans the babies. And the babies cry.

forty-three

Tom’s recorded voice plays over again.

He is leaving a message.

“. . . Two seventy-three Shillingham . . . my name is Tom . . . I’m sure you understand the relief I feel at getting your answering machine . . .”

The blindfold is still held an inch from her closed eyes.

She raises a hand and brings her fingers to the black cloth. For a moment, both she and the creature hold the same blindfold. This creature, or ones like it, stole Shannon, her mother, her father, and Tom. This thing, and the things like it, have stolen childhood from the children.

In a way, Malorie is not afraid. They have done everything to her already.

“No,” she says, tugging on the cloth. “This is mine.”

For a moment, nothing happens. Then something touches her face. Malorie grimaces. But it is only the fold, returning to its place on her nose and temples.

You’re going to have to open your eyes.

It’s true. Tom’s recorded voice means she has arrived where Rick said the channels split. He speaks as he once did, in the living room of the house, when he used to say, Maybe they mean us no harm. Maybe they are surprised by what they do to us. It’s an overlap, Malorie. Their world and ours. Just an accident. Maybe they don’t like hurting us at all.

But whatever their intentions are, Malorie has to open her eyes, and at least one is near.

She has seen the children do incredible things. Once, after flipping through the phone book, the Boy called out that she was on page one hundred and six. He was close. And Malorie knows she’s going to need a feat like that, from them, right now.

There is movement in the water to her left. The creature is either no longer curious about the blindfold and is leaving, or it is waiting to see what Malorie does next.

“Boy?” she says, and she needs to say no more. He understands the question.

He is quiet at first. Listening. Then he answers.

“It’s leaving us, Mommy.”

Despite the distant, warring birds and Tom’s beautiful, calming voice coming from the speaker, it feels like a moment of silence is occurring. Silence emanating from this thing.

Where is it now?

The rowboat, released, is being pulled along with the current. Malorie knows that the sound of the water ahead is the sound of the split. She doesn’t have much time.

“Boy,” she says, her throat dry. “Do you hear anything else?”

The Boy is quiet.

“Boy?”

“No, Mommy. I don’t.”

“Are you certain? Are you absolutely sure?”

She sounds hysterical. Whether or not she is ready, the moment has come.

“Yes, Mommy. We’re alone again.”

“Where did it go?”

“It went away.”

“Which way?”

Silence. Then, “It’s behind us, Mommy.”

“Girl?”

“Yes. It’s behind us, Mommy.”

Malorie is quiet.

The children said the thing is behind them.

If there’s one thing she can lean on in the new world, it’s that she has trained them well.

She trusts them.

She has to.

Now they are level with Tom’s voice. It sounds like he is in the boat with them.

She swallows hard.

She wipes tears from her lips.

She breathes deep.

Then she feels it. Just like when they let Tom and Jules back into the house. Just like when they thought they were letting Gary out.

The Moment Between.

Between deciding to open her eyes and doing it.

Malorie turns to face the channels and opens her eyes.

At first, she has to squint. Not from the sunlight, but from the colors.

She gasps, bringing a hand to her mouth.

Her mind is emptied of thoughts, worries, anxieties, and hopes. She knows no words to explain what she sees.

It’s kaleidoscopic. Endless. Magnificent.

Look, Shannon! That cloud looks like Angela Markle from class!

In the old world, she could have looked at a world twice as bright and not had to squint. But now, the beauty hurts her.

She could look forever. Surely another few seconds. But Tom’s voice urges her on.

As if in slow motion, she leans toward where his voice comes from, savoring his every word. It’s like he’s standing there. Telling her she’s so close. Malorie understands that she cannot keep the colors she sees. She must close her eyes again. She must cut herself off from all this wonder, this world.

She closes her eyes.

She returns to the darkness she knows so well now.

She begins rowing.

As she approaches the second channel from the right, it feels like she is rowing with the years. The memories. She rows with the self she was when she found out she was pregnant, when she found Shannon dead, when she answered the ad in the newspaper. She rows with the self she was when she arrived at the house, met the housemates for the first time, and agreed to let Olympia in. She rows with the person she was when Gary arrived. She rows with herself, on a towel in the attic, as Don pulled the blankets from the windows downstairs.

She is stronger now. She is braver. By herself, she has raised two children in this world.

Malorie has changed.

The boat rocks suddenly as it touches one of the banks of the channel. Malorie understands they have entered it.

From here, she rows as the person she was when she had the children alone. Four years. Training them. Raising them. Keeping them safe from an outside world that must have grown more dangerous each day. She rows with Tom, too, and the dozens of things he said, the countless things he did and the hope that inspired her, encouraged her, and made her believe that it’s better to face madness with a plan than to sit still and let it take you in pieces.