Chapter Penelope
PENELOPE
It was dark in Penelope’s hiding spot, dark and colder and smaller than you might think, but thanks to Adeline it was mostly dry, and Penelope had brought her sweaters, a cushion, snacks.
“We won’t be down here for long,” Adeline had whispered, but that had been hours ago, back when Tabitha had started screaming at dinner and everyone had gone running and left Penelope alone in the motel’s cafe.
Except, she hadn’t been alone. Adeline had still been there with her in the cafe, practically perched on Penelope’s shoulder, whispering in Penelope’s ear like she’d been doing since the weird silver light had passed over the desert at four o’clock sharp.
Not that Penelope had a clue why any of this was happening. Or how any of it was possible.
“We’re trapped in a time loop,” Adeline had whispered, back in the van as Stanley’s Odyssey had barreled toward the motel.
Penelope had whispered all the usual things you would think—“This can’t be real, you’re dead, I’m hallucinating your voice, I have brain damage”—but after a while Stanley had called from the driver’s seat, “Why are you talking to yourself, Penelope?” and the weird Adeline presence nestled against Penelope’s back had said, “Hush, Polly, or he’ll make things more complicated than they need to be. Just listen.”
So Penelope had listened, even though she didn’t believe a word of what she heard. At least not at first. Adeline kept talking about “a time loop” and “we’ve been doing this over and over” and “if you want to survive you need to do exactly what I say.”
“Survive?” Penelope said. “If I’m just going to wake up again tomorrow, why should I worry about surviving?”
“Because you’re the most important part, dummy,” Adeline said. “If you die too soon—if we all die—then it’s over. For good.”
“What’s over?”
“Everything. Literally everything.”
Obviously, Penelope had believed she was just going crazy in the back of Stanley’s minivan, that the weird silver light in the sky had done something to make her brain snap, but then things started happening exactly like this weird Adeline presence had said they would.
Adeline had said, “Stanley is only a couple hours’ away from home, but he’s going to stop at a little motel on this road. He says he’s going to need gas, but if you look at the meter, he doesn’t. He’s stopping here for some other reason. The place is called the Brake Inn Motel. Just watch.”
Adeline had said, “As Stanley pulls in, he’s going to see a car that belongs to a guy named Lance. He’s going to see two girls leaving the office and say out loud, ‘That looks like Fernanda and the waitress from the steakhouse.’ ”
Adeline had said, “When Stanley parks, look to the right. There’s going to be a man watching you from the door of room nine. It’s the man from The Bad Night. Whatever you do, don’t try to talk to him.”
Talk to him? Adeline must have been the crazy one, because even though things proceeded exactly the way her sister had told her they would, nothing could have prepared Penelope for the face of the man watching her from room 9 of the Brake Inn Motel.
He was a muscled man with hard hazel eyes, and at the sight of him Penelope’s whole body had squeezed up, from her toes to her eyes.
Only her bladder seemed loose. For the first time since she was Adeline’s age, Penelope had thought she was going to wet her pants.
The last time Penelope had seen that man with the hard hazel eyes, he’d been standing beside her bed in her mom’s house with a gun pressed to Penelope’s forehead.
They’d watched each other, Penelope and the man with the hazel eyes, and somehow, even before he pulled the trigger, she’d known that her mother and her sister were already dead.
Back then, on The Bad Night, the man hadn’t said a word. He’d pulled the trigger, and Penelope had seen bright silver.
“Now do you see why you need to be so careful?” Adeline had whispered in Penelope’s ear in the back of Stanley’s van. “You need to do what I say. You have no idea how important it is.”
Penelope had swallowed. It was crazy, but it was hard to argue with a girl who clearly wasn’t lying. “What do I need to do?”
There had been a lot of screaming tonight.
First Tabitha, and then what sounded like Stanley getting eaten by a bear (scary, of course, but Penelope hadn’t been as upset as she would have thought to realize her grandfather was dead).
There had been some weird SHRIEKS that had made Penelope think of nails on a chalkboard, and some weird moans that sounded like a massive animal getting crushed under a big rock.
“What the heck is that?” Penelope had whispered.
“Trust me,” Adeline said. “You really don’t want to know.”
She’d gotten bored (who wouldn’t), and for old times’ sake she thought they could play The Game, but Adeline hadn’t gone along with it for long. “You have to stay quiet. Please. You have no idea.”
“What are you so afraid of?” Penelope said. “Aren’t you, like, dead?”
“Not as long as you’re alive.”
Fair enough, she guessed. But the silence left Penelope with nothing to do but think about all the strange things Adeline had made her do today. It made Penelope think of the shower, and sneaking out of Stanley’s room, and the things they’d done in room 4.
Penelope really, really did not want to think about room 4.
Dark as their hiding place was, Penelope had known when the motel’s lights had died. There was a wave of SHRIEKS and screams and some weird hisses and gunshots and more screams and then—silence. The desert was quiet. Penelope understood, in a way that was hard to understand, that everyone was dead.
Now Penelope was scared.
“You’re the last one standing,” Adeline said. “And you need to keep it that way until it’s too late. Don’t move a freaking muscle.”
Overhead, Penelope had heard footsteps. They sounded close. A man called her name even though Penelope was certain she’d never met him before. She would know. She was good with voices.
“It’s not too late, Penelope!” the strange man shouted.
Adeline hissed in her ear, “Don’t make a sound. It’s almost over.”
“The ritual is failing!” the man shouted outside.
There was another moan from the direction of the mountain. The man had to shout over it.
“We can’t keep doing this forever, Penelope. One way or another, the seal is going to break.”
Panic was rising in Penelope. She didn’t like this voice. How did he know her name?
How did he know her name?
“Just come out, Penelope. I won’t hurt you. I just need to know where you are.”
Another moan came from the mountain, louder than the any of the others, and this one didn’t stop. A tremor shook the earth so hard it threw Penelope from her seat and slewed her sideways. Her head hit the wall of her hiding place. Hit it hard.
Her shoulders sank into cold.
The tremor, like the loud noise from the mountain, didn’t stop. It seemed to be growing stronger and stronger, an earthquake, but didn’t earthquakes stop at some point? Penelope stopped trying to be sneaky. She was too scared for it.
“What is this?” she said. “What’s happening?”
“Relax, Polly,” Adeline said. “It’s just the end of the world.”
A new sound came, a great crash of breaking stone. It was the last sound the planet would ever know.
All sound stopped, then. In the final silence—in this new, absolute hush—a great flash of silver light flooded the world over Penelope’s head, followed by an explosion so powerful it flattened her against the wall of her hiding place.
She was about to die. The entire world, she realized, was about to die.
Penelope started to scream, even though there was no one left to hear.
And then, between one moment and the next