None of us moved or spoke for minutes. I don't know what the others were thinking, if they were thinking at all, but I was thinking about the steam in Carl's story, the way it spilled from the cracks and stained the underground air pink. I was thinking about the blood that had melted the faces off his crew. Blood as hot as the blood of the earth itself, deep down where magma flows. And I was thinking about the eyes in the mountain. Both of them. One had been blinded by Cricket's knife, but the other eye . . . the eye that Carl had sensed down there in the darkness of Widow's Peak . . . the eye whose eternal gaze was aimed up at Honaw . . .

Was the other eye watching us now?

"Billy," I said, "I think it's time for you to give us back our phones."

His gaze fixed on the rising fog, Billy reached into his pocket, pulled out our phones in one big handful, and dumped them in my lap. I stared down at the pile, knowing something was off but unable to pinpoint what. It was like one of those picture-problems teachers give young kids. Two apples, a pear, and a rock sitting on a table. What here does not belong? Smartphone, smartphone, flip phone, switchblade.

Switchblade.

There was a crash inside the house. After the torture my ears had just been through, the sound of breaking glass was soft, almost pitiful. Billy ran in through the front door, leaving Ash and Nip and I standing there on the porch. His footsteps crunch-crunched through the kitchen and down the hall. As he banged into his father's bedroom, I heard a twig snap on the side of the house and turned my head in time to spot a pale form moving across the yard.

Carl Rascoe loped like a two-legged jackal, one red oven mitt pressed to his right eye, his jaws stretched wide. Jagged gashes bled on his stomach. Tears streamed down his face. He slipped into the woods and became a flitting whiteness among the trees before he vanished entirely.

I looked back at Nip and Ash, but they were staring into the house. Only I had witnessed Carl's escape.

Billy burst onto the porch and vaulted down into the weeds. His hood fell off. He ran along one side of the house and less than thirty seconds later appeared on the other side, moving slowly, unsteadily. "The window. He broke the window. He's gone." Billy put his hands in his unwashed hair, like he was about to start uprooting it. "He's gone. I'll never find him. He's gone."

"Billy—"

He spun on me. "What?"

His bloodshot eyes, his bitten knuckles. I shut my mouth.

"I'm sorry," Ash said to him. "Really."

Billy sat down in the weeds.

The feel of metal in my palm reminded me. The switchblade. The phones. I reached for mine and flipped it open. No reception. I reached for Ash's. The same. Nip's. The same. Not a single bar of service between them.

Ash was watching me.

I shook my head.

"Sandy," she said.

I nodded. It was all I could manage to do. My aunt's name had grown barbs. I couldn't speak it, couldn't even think it, without cutting myself.

"We have to go," said Ash.

I nodded again.

"We have to go." Ash turned to Nip, who was staring at the pink fanning out above the tree line. It was hard to look at, the fog. It was even harder to look away from. The way it moved, the way it seeped across the sky, heavy and thick . . .

Only liquid was supposed to move like that.

"Nip." She gripped him by the shoulders.

"This is really happening, isn't it?"

"Yes. Yes, it is."

"I should have stayed home like I was supposed to."

"If you stayed home, you'd be alone. Do you want to be alone?"

"No."

"Then. Come. Fucking. On." She shoved him toward the steps. "Joel. Out of your chair."

I was already climbing down from Bitchmaster's seat, the switchblade and phones shoved into my leather jacket. A splinter snagged my palm as I dragged myself across the porch. Soon I was level with the dark below the beams, where Billy's father had hidden after coming home. Would he come home again?

Somehow I didn't think so.

"We'll go back to my house. Take my van. We sure as shit aren't riding in that." Ash flicked her chin at Billy's smashed truck. She slammed the house's front door, grabbed my chair, and hauled it one handed down the steps. Her cross bounced on her neck. I got back into Bitchmaster, my whole upper body tensed, ready to get moving.

There was just one thing.

I pushed myself across the yard to where Billy was sitting, his head bowed. I stopped beside him. "Get up."

"He's gone."

"I know. Get up."

Billy lifted his head. "Why?"

"Because you're coming with us." I held out my hand. Billy stared at it like he'd never seen one before, so I made a fist instead and punched him in the face.

That did the trick.

Billy scrambled to his feet. "You motherfucker."

"Hit me if you want. Get it out of your system. When you're finished, push me up that hill." I pointed to his driveway. "It's steep."

Billy looked up at the fog soaking into the blue sky.

He decided he didn't want to be alone either.

♫

I don't remember much of the way back. I remember Billy steering me through ruts instead of around them (payback for punching him, I suppose). I remember Ash humming Two Minutes to Midnight, her throat pushing harder and harder the closer we got to her house. I remember Nip moving along with us like this empty cup of personality, this human answering machine: the person you are trying to reach is not available right now, please try again later. And I remember how the trees hid above from sight, so that the day, except for being a bit dimmer than normal, seemed almost like any other day. With the stillness of the woods it was easy to imagine nothing had happened. I wanted to believe that. I wanted to believe that so badly I actually started to, I think.

Until we reached the top of Ash's driveway.

"Thank God," she said as she looked up at her house, which was miraculously still standing on its stilts. "Thankyouthankyou-thankyou—"

Her voice cut off as she took in what we all were seeing. Stretched out before us to the south lay Honaw, in full view. The color of it shocked the eyes blind to anything else. Our town had become an impressionist painting, green earth below and blue sky above and pinkness in between. Winding away through this otherworld was a single stripe of black. The Road. Where it straightened to cut through Honaw, there stood nothing on either side but ragged and burning flesh. Buildings in crumbles. Buildings in flames. Houses glowed like distant campfires. The gas station smoked black. In places I could spot the moving glint of a vehicle, but nowhere could I hear a sound. Not a siren. Nothing. Complete and utter silence beneath the fog. And behind the fog, low along the horizon . . .

Darkness.

"It's coming from Honaw High," said Ash. "From all of the schools."

"No," said Billy. "It's coming from where the schools used to be."

"What is it?" said Nip.

I watched the fog swell. In my mind a pair of daggered jaws slid open, exhaling a pink mist.

"Breath."

The others looked at me.

"What Billy's dad found down in the mine had eyes. And something that has eyes usually has a mouth."

Nip and Ash and Billy turned their heads slowly to the horizon, to the shadow of the pit behind the fog.

____ ____

Author's Note:

Thank you for reading! If you're enjoying Poor Things, please consider hitting the vote button—it will help other readers find the story. Comments are always appreciated, too. Seriously, I love them.

Coming up on Tuesday, the kids head south toward Aunt Sandy's house . . . 

. . . and into the fog.