"You're new here," Elisa said. "I'm sorry, you mentioned them and I... I thought you were making fun of me."

Why would mentioning the couple in white be making fun of her? She's not clearing anything up. "Who are they? You said people have seen them before."

"Yeah. Every few years there is a sighting, but no one really believes in the marsh sirens." The way she said no one made me wonder what significance was there. "They're an urban legend... a myth. It helps that the people who see them usually wind up leaving here shortly after the sighting. That makes it easier to ignore the sirens."

I pull the note out of my pocket and put it on the table. "I found this and a mask on the road. Is this some kind of prank on the new guy from the city?"

Elisa's lip trembles at the note. Is she going to cry? I don't know what I'll do if she cries. I feel all liquid inside. At her first tear, I'll turn into a pile of tears and mucus, writhing on the floor. She can't cry.

"Look, Elisa, I'm sorry if I'm being an ass."

"No, you're fine. And no, this isn't a prank. Why do you hate yourself, Len? What did you do? I promise whatever it is, you don't deserve this."

"Who've you been talking to?" I can't help the bite to my tone. But the truth is, she shouldn't snoop in my business. There is a reason I don't talk about myself. I can't.

"No one. They only come to certain people... people of a certain mindset." Elisa leans in, elbows sliding across the table. She drops her arms down, wrists up. Long puckered scars line her tan skin from the base of her palms nearly up to her elbows.

Coming to meet her was crazy. With each word the situation becomes clearer. Something in Elisa's brain is horribly wrong. I may not know what is going on, but it sure as hell doesn't involve some mythical beast I've never heard of. Yet she clearly believes it.

I can't let her pull me into her madness. I can't even save myself from the issues of the real world.

"I've got to go," I say.

"You're not at peace. If you go with them, you'll be lost." Her hand lashes out and latches around my arm.

"Let me go." I stare down at her sun-browned skin. So like my sister's hand as it clutches my forearm.

"Watch out!" Jen screamed. Brakes screeched. Tessa's face hit the glass, blocking Jen from view, but I heard Jen's scream turn into a gurgle. And a high pitch wail arched over all of it-a sobbing from the backseat which drove into me sharper than any blade.

I tug away from Elisa, trying to escape that scream as it echoes from the past through every nerve ending I have.

The crash wasn't an accident. "Accident" implies lack of fault. It was my fault. My hands were on the wheel.

"Len?" Elisa says.

"Len..." Jen moaned.

I stand, upsetting the chair behind me as I do.

I rush out of the café. Dealing with Elisa's crazy is beyond me. I have enough crazy of my own. But one thing is true-I'm not at peace. The marsh helps, isolates me from others so I can access my guilt at my pace.

My SUV waits around the corner. I climb in and peel out of the parking lot. Elisa shows in the rearview mirror, jogging after me.

I drive, pressing the gas until a cloud of dust blocks out the world and I speed blind down the road. Even without seeing, death fills my vision.

Jen coughed, blood staining her lips, glass in her hair like diamonds. Tessa, crumpled over the center console, the top of her head nothing but a bloody pulp. I struggled to move, pain splintering in my chest every time I tried. I kept watching Tessa's chest, hoping she'd breathe.

That's when the second impact happened, the one from behind.

Now, those images cycle with the crunch of glass and the raw grind of metal on metal.

I ease off the gas and let the car coast to a stop. When I look up, I'm outside the clearing. Even before the dust settles, I see the two white figures.

I switch the engine off.

The couple stands where I remember them, the woman next to one spindly tree, and the man in front of the tree that sits farther back from the road.

With my sister's screams still ringing in my ears, it doesn't surprise me to see the hem of the white dress hovering a few inches above the water. No feet protrude from beneath the woman's skirts, which are a pristine white. Her long dark hair drapes over one shoulder, the only thing about her that is not pure white. Expressionless as the plain mask she wears is, I know she's watching me, not anxiously or angrily, but impassively as the mask that obscures her.

The man hovers only a few yards back from her. His white mask is equally blank, but the stare from beneath, even unseen, is sorrowful, full of painful, rioting emotion. I feel their emotions riding on the air and in the ties of spirit that bind me to them.

Neither move.

I hunker down in my SUV. The sun is making its last stand behind the trees, casting bloody light into the sky. I sit frozen. If they moved, even a twitch, I could have, too, but as it is, I don't dare glance away.

Walk with us.

I reach for the mask.

The sound of footsteps on the road behind me rips me from my stupor. The rearview mirror shows me Elisa, jogging toward the car. Her long hair swings loose around her shoulders. Her white sneakers are coated in road dust.

The sun is partially hidden, making the shadows long and sharp like jaws closing around me.

When I look back at the clearing, the sirens are gone.

Elisa opens the passenger door and climbs in.

"Did you see them?" I ask.

She nods. "This isn't the first time I've seen them."

I turn the engine on and Elisa picks up the mask from the floor and turns it in her hands. She has a backpack which she tosses on the ground by her feet. Somehow the simplicity of this act, the normalcy, allows me to speak.

"I killed my sister and my girlfriend," I say and take in an easy breath. I don't say the rest. But I don't have to, I feel like somehow Elisa already knows what brought me here.

"No, you didn't." Elisa lays one hand over mine. She's cold from the winter night.

"Shit, you're freezing." I crank up the heat and drive. It should feel odd, driving with someone else in the car, but the idea of Elisa running all the way out here to save me-even if I don't understand from what-pushes the rest back.

"I first saw them three years ago." She reaches into her bag and pulls out a mask like mine, only warped and cracked with time. "They'll show you their faces, but they aren't the judges."

I glance at her wrists and wish I hadn't as a blush crawls up her cheeks.

"They aren't the judges," she says. "You are. And even if you don't walk with them... you have to face yourself."

"I don't want to die."

"You don't want to live either."

Elisa rubs her wrists and turns to face the window. The air hums with our silence until the gush of the heater grows in my ears to the roar of a primordial beast. The remembered silence of the marsh sings for me to return.

My mask glows in Elisa's hands and my fingers tighten on the wheel to resist reaching over and putting it on. I know with a certainty that makes the hairs raise on my arms that if Elisa weren't here, I would go back.

Walk with us, they'd said.

I didn't want to die, did I?

No. I couldn't want to die, even if I did want to. That isn't logical, but it's true. I came here to find a way to go on. I just need silence... I need... Jen.

The cabin comes in sight, seeming different in the dusk. Ghostly shadows lurk everywhere. I pull into the covered parking and sit with my head bent.

"Len?" Elisa says. "Len, tell me what happened."

"No." I climb out of the car. The wind hits me, like clawed fingers raking at my flesh. It shoves me and guides me away from the house.

Walk with us.

Elisa grabs my arm, and I spin to her, anger like an acid burning in my mouth. But it drains away at the sadness in her eyes. Her grip falls to my hand.

Our shoes crunch on the gravel as we approach the front door. Her fingers twine in mine. I lead her into the house, which is still warm from the logs I threw on earlier.

A strand of her hair has come loose and falls over her forehead. Tessa's hair used to do that, I remember, back before we started fighting all the time. I would brush it out of her face. Sometimes she'd take my hand and kiss my fingers.

I reach out. Fighting for each inch my hand moves closer to her face but finally, my finger brushes that strand of hair out of her face.

"Tell me," I say, "what happened when you saw them?"

"My story is my own, and...it has no connection to what's happening to you."

"Sorry."

"Look, I'll tell you what I can. How's that?"

I wait for her to start.

Elisa's smile goes crooked, making warmth flood through me. "Aren't you at least going to offer me a drink first?"

"Rum or water?" I ask. I wish I was joking, but that's all I have to offer.

"Got any coke, cowboy?"

Tessa never had a nickname for me. Our relationship was never playful. I had to stop-not think about her. Thinking about Tessa always led further, to a place I couldn't let myself go. I'd fall apart.

Elisa leans forward lifting an eyebrow, and I recall she asked a question.

"Nope," I say. "I'm not prepared to entertain."

"Rum it is."

Elisa goes to sit on one end of a long couch. The brown leather sighs at her weight and she pulls a crocheted blanket off the back to throw over her legs. Her feet tuck up to the side, so she's scrunched on one couch cushion. One foot spills out the side of the blanket onto the middle of the couch. Her sneakers are still on.

The image of her, tucked under Uncle Dewey's blanket, accompanies me to the fridge, where I pull out a bottle and scoop out ice to load up two glasses.

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