Chapter 21
CHAPTER
BEHIND US THE trees halted abruptly at an invisible line. Their trunks leaned forward, straining toward the shore. Unwilling or unable to cross. Roots curled at their face like fingers. We stepped through the last veil of branches, and the sea appeared.
Or what remained of it.
The shoreline stretched into a long, blackened scythe beneath the starless sky. No moon. No light. Just where that sickly glow seemed to rise.
The water did not move, not really. It quivered, slick as tar, thick like oil. Reflecting nothing and swallowing every stray glimmer. Small ripples spread across its surface in patterns that had nothing to do with wind or tide. Something was breathing down there. Waiting.
The sand beneath our feet glittered with what looked like crushed glass. It wasn’t sand. As we continued moving through it, something deep within me kept saying: Bone, Wendy. These are pulverized bones.
Movement crossed my vision. Something in the sky. I blinked. Feathers, dancing in the wind. He was here and he knew we were as well.
The shore came back into focus. Michael stepped forward first. His boots crunched in the bone-sand, and the crunch was so loud in the silence. “All of it, it’s nothing like I remember,” Michael said.
John looked at me as if I had all of the answers. “For all the horrors that happened here, it was beautiful once.”
“I don’t know. Maybe this happened while it’s been asleep. Maybe it needs to feed in order to make this place alive again.”
The hook behind my chest tightened. The ache of being reeled in. I took a deep breath, exhaling through the pain, knowing that regardless, it would end somehow.
“Agnes!” Michael shouted, her name ricocheting off the strange sky.
“She’s here. Somewhere.” I just didn’t know where that somewhere was.
Above, more black birds. Crows. Circling. Dozens of them. Maybe even hundreds. Their wings beating in unison, making no sound. Just that steady, patient circling, tightening each time they passed us.
Beneath my feet, the ground hummed. A vibration felt more than heard. Thrumming up through my bones.
The tide moved backward, pulling inward, not out.
I watched the water shiver and retreat. We continued walking. The crows continued following. All until we came upon it.
The Black Rock.
It rose from the retreating water. Massive. Ancient. A point where the people who lived here long before Peter visited. It was on that rock they shared their warnings about a shadow eater who could be stopped with its name, a knife, and a punctured heart.
The rock gleamed wet and dark. So much water had retreated that I could now make out shapes and symbols carved across the surface the sea previously obscured.
And … something else. Handprints.
The former island inhabitants.
Just don’t ever repeat the name carved on the Black Rock, Roger had told me once. Its name is the source of its power.
But the truth was clear now, a truth even Roger didn’t know.
It wasn’t that warning, that rhyme, Peter, Peter, shadow eater, that brought him back to life.
He lived in cycles of twelve years. Me thrusting a knife into him so many years ago just started that cycle sooner, because he wasn’t really dead.
To end something completely is to face it and call it what it is.
“What is this place?” John asked.
The letters, the children’s handprints seemed to glow faintly.
“I don’t remember ever coming here,” Michael said.
“That rock tells us how to end this story.”
“Agnes isn’t here, Wendy,” John said. “What now?”
Black feathers fell from the sky.
Something tugged inside me. Not forward. Inward. Toward a hollow where an old ache slept. The world flashed black and I screamed.
When my eyes opened, I saw my shadow stretching long across the sand, warping, thinning, bending away from me like an animal testing the limits of its leash.
“Michael, help me.” I heard John, who took one of my arms, and Michael took the other, helping to keep me steady.
“What hurts?” Michael said, panicked. Searching for a wound.
“Everything,” I gasped, unable to catch my breath.
It was as if sharp talons scrabbled their way inside of me, digging beneath my skin, behind my eyes and into my skull. Nails hooked inside me, behind my flesh and then dragged down the length of my body. Invisible tears.
My vision blurred. I coughed. Blood hit the sand, flecked with glitter and black dust.
I coughed again, harder, and something caught in my throat. I choked. Gagged and clawed at my neck, doubling over.
My fingers clawed at my mouth, scraping against my teeth, reaching deeper, searching for the obstruction.
I felt them. Quills. Slick and sharp against my fingertips.
I caught hold and pulled.
My hands broke away; they were so slippery. I dug in again. Coughing, hacking. Tears rolling down my face.
My fingers hooked on them and I pulled.
They resisted.
Rooted somewhere deep in my chest. I yanked harder and harder, and they came loose with a wet ripping sound.
A bundle of feathers. Black and matted with blood and mucus.
I tossed them onto the sand. They twitched. Once. Twice. Flapping like live fish.
I dropped to my hands and knees, gasping. Heaving. Searching for breath that wouldn’t come. My throat felt like I had swallowed knives or fire.
On the ground beside me, my shadow moved. Not with me, against me.
It spun and twisted. Its spine arched upward. Vertebra by vertebra. Like a cat bristling in defense.
Its head turned. Its mouth stretched open, wider and wider. Mocking me in that silent laughter.
All I could do was watch. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t do anything but know that he and I were merging as one in the world of shadows.
Michael was beside me now.
John shouted, “The sea! Something’s coming!”
And it was.
Small. Pale. Covered in a tangle of seaweed.
A child. A boy. No older than six or seven.
His body bloated and blue. He dragged himself up onto the Black Rock.
Water streamed out from his body, pouring out from his eyes, nose, ears, mouth.
Dark red liquid splashing onto the Black Rock.
He sat on the edge, feet dangling over the water.
He waved at us.
A small, cheerful wave. The wave a child gives when he spots his mother across a crowded room.
His mouth opened wider now, more water gushing out. Words strangling in his throat, but I could read his lips: Come away.
Another head broke the surface. Then another. Small bodies rising from the deep. Blue hands climbing the rock, sitting in a row. All of them waving. All of them smiling. Skin sloughing off their bodies in some parts, and in others, parts of them were missing. Lips and noses nibbled away by fish.
“Let’s go.” Michael’s chin quivered. “Let’s go back to the treehouse.”
A child’s laugh echoed across the still water. “Wendy …”
John supported me, holding me upright. “We’re leaving,” he said.
Above us, the sky tore open.
Birds spiraled downward, a storm of black feathers, and a thousand glossy eyes. Michael swung through the chaos.
The words on the rock flared gold. Then vanished.
Something inside me snapped. My shadow slammed back into place. Hot pain shot down my spine and I fell to my knees.
John and Michael dragged me up. Wind screamed. Birds gathered in the sky, their bodies shaping a single silhouette.
A boy in flight.
And then, through the pain, somehow, we all ran.
I don’t know how far. I don’t know how long. The forest blurred around us, branches clawing at our clothes, roots rising to trip us.
When we finally stopped I looked down at my shadow.
It was there. Whole again. Attached.
But it wasn’t mine.
Its shape didn’t match my body. Its edges were too sharp. And when I raised my hand, it didn’t move.
It smiled.
Every sound doubled. Our boots squelching through the muck. Michael’s and John’s breaths strained, too fast, too shallow. Even the boom in my chest. My heartbeat. A war drum. Keeping time as we marched back.
The trees parted without warning.
And there it was again. The treehouse. Leaning out of the darkness like a child’s lost toy waiting to be found.
Worn boards creaked and groaned. Shadows pooled at its base. Everything was as we left it before—but not.
The rope ladder hung in the same place. The tin cups, including the rusted ones, were still there. The same vines crawled up the supports, thick and slow.
But something had changed. A change I couldn’t quite name.
Not a leaf moved. Not a branch swayed.
Everything was frozen still. Holding its breath. Waiting.
Air sat heavy in my lungs, warm and wet. It was harder to breathe here than just moments ago along the path. The air tasted different too. Metallic. Old. Like touching a copper penny to the tip of my tongue.
Before, the treehouse had smelled of rotted wood, damp and decay. Now it smelled alive. Sweet. Almost too sweet, but underneath that scent there was something else. Burning.
My body knew before my mind did. My hands started to shake. My heart raced. I knew I had to face him, but I hadn’t seen him since I was a girl.
All I’d encountered in the days leading up to today was just a shadow. I was scared of how I’d feel when I looked into his eyes. Here I was, a grown woman about to face a child’s face, with a monster beneath.
“He’s here,” I said.
“What is that?” John pointed.
Agnes’s hair ribbon. Tied to the rope ladder. Pink silk stained dark.
“Agnes!” I shouted. My voice cracked.
Nothing.
“AGNES!”
The crows came first.
They erupted from the treehouse in a shrieking black mass, pouring from windows, gaps in the wood, spiraling upward into the sky. Their cries filled the air, sharp, relentless, circling overhead. Gathering like a storm cloud.
The door opened, and he stepped out.
Breath escaped me.
I had prepared myself for the boy. The eternal child with his cruel smile and dismissive eyes. The Peter I remembered, small and golden, but terrible.
This was not that Peter, but … it was him.