Chapter 2
It takes me another twenty minutes to make my exit. I escort Steph back to her cabin, exchange more hugs and I love yous.
“You’re perfect,” I tell her. “Tonight will be perfect.”
Now I hurry down the path trying to make good on my word. I approach the floral arches, attempting to gauge the distance to help me figure out where exactly I entered the woods that first day. But all the trees look the same, so I have no real way of knowing.
It comes back to me—the image of Ravi standing there under the center arch, Tanya’s fingers in his hair. The hurt I felt. The panic.
A vision of the Eyeball Man in the distance, partially concealed by foliage. He waved.
I see you.
I need to hustle. I need to go. The longer I stand here and do nothing, the closer I get to—
Tick tock.
A bird caws in the distance, and it startles me, steals the breath from my throat, drinks the warmth from me like the soul-thirsty phantom.
Rustling in the trees turns my attention. I search for that deer, its side ripped and rotting, hear the screeching noise it made as it barreled toward us, a vessel of absolute hunger. Empty and selfish.
I want to look away, but where? Up? To the sky? What will look back down at me?
Are the arches moving? Are they getting closer? Are there tiny beings inside the flowers, chittering away? I listen to the breeze, anticipating little whispers.
The sun beats down on the back of my neck, fire breath.
I know what I need to do. I know I need to look for the way out, but everything that’s happened makes it so hard. I’m terrified. Every move I make is haunted.
I want to walk back to the cabin, curl my hair, put on lipstick, drink canned margaritas with Cassie, pretend none of this is real.
What story worth telling starts with a retreat? What good story ends with one?
Imminent death should be enough to motivate me, but after you’ve died a few times, the novelty starts to wear off.
I turn around, contemplating going back to the cabin and trying again later after I’ve had some liquid courage, but…
Death.
Literally.
Standing near the reception hall.
Black hooded robe, an hourglass hanging from a frayed rope tied around the waist, skeletal hand clutching a towering scythe with a gnarled wooden shaft, the blade long and slim, shining, sharp.
The grim-fucking-reaper.
It points a bony finger as it slowly glides toward me, as it comes for me.
It could be bravery, or defiance, or instinct that compels me to run. All those things, none of those things. Or it could be that I’ve learned I’d rather run for my life than let it pass me by.
I dash into the woods, weave through the trees without looking back. I search for something, anything familiar. Tanya mentioned gravity, said that—
“Shit!”
The ground shifts under me, and I roll my ankle.
I collapse against a tree, hyperventilating. There’s no time to recover. I hobble forward; I can’t seem to get my footing.
The earth has gone elastic, I swear, and it’s impossible to balance on a surface that won’t hold.
A small, concentrated area that somehow exists in its own gravitational field. That’s what the sensation of falling was from. You’ll feel more unsteady the closer you get.
Am I close? How close?
Another step. My ankle gives and I slam against another tree.
The world warps. For a moment, everything is neon, wavy. Then sepia toned, still. Loud and pulsing. Eerily quiet.
My heart thud-thud-thud-thuds, vision blurs, the dirt surrenders underneath me—squish—soft, warm, yielding.
I crawl around on my hands and knees, looking for…something. Something incomprehensible.
I turn to see the reaper in the distance.
It points at me again, its long, tattered sleeve rippling in the breeze.
It peels back its hood, unveiling a smiling, desiccated corpse head.
Pocked, leathery gray flesh recedes in places, permitting its skull to peek through.
Worms slither out of its empty eye sockets; maggots pour from its open jaw.
No, no, no, no, no.
Mud collects between my knuckles and under my fingernails as I pull myself forward, toward who fucking knows what. And even if I find it, what then?
The future?
A future beyond the next few hours, beyond the familiar. A future I don’t know. That I can’t see. That I’ll face alone.
This is it. Here and now. The worst of it. The scariest moment. The most formidable monster. Not what’s chasing me through the woods, the grim reaper with its scythe raised high over its head, a mass of bugs swarming around the hem of its robe. Not even death.
It’s life. It’s the rest of my life. The time I’m not sure how I will spend, if I will find happiness within it. If I can embrace what’s ahead of me with everything that’s behind me.
I don’t know what’s next, but I do know that I want it. I want it so badly, and that’s what’s so terrifying.
My fingers dig deeper into the dirt; hands curl into fists. I scrape my knees forward to get to my feet. I’m tired and I’m filthy and I’m bleeding but I am not beat.
The stench of the reaper carries, stinging my nostrils and down the back of my throat. It’s coming.
“All right.” I spit at the ground where its maggoty brigade skitters toward me. “Let’s go.”
I turn on my heel and take off running.
My ankle screams, but I understand that pain is temporary.
I keep moving. I can’t tell if I’m just woozy or if the woods are swaying, undulating.
Changing. My arm clips a branch; it drags across my skin—or is it a skeletal hand?
Dizzy and disoriented, my eyes lose focus, and I knock headfirst into another tree.
I bite down on my lip to keep from screaming, from panting. I try to breathe quietly out of my nose. Hugging the bark, I peer over my shoulder to see how much distance I managed to put between me and the reaper.
Death stands in a clearing at the foot of a slight hill. Its skull swivels slowly, the rest of it remaining oddly still, even the bugs at its feet.
Its stillness gives me a moment to identify that this scene is familiar—and why. It’s where I first saw the Eyeball Man, at the top of that hill. It’s where this all started. Which means the wormhole is nearby.
I creep closer, transfixed, closer, closer, heart pounding, palms sweating, closer, closer, closer, and…
and I see it. An opalescence in the air, floating just beyond the reaper, like a fading rainbow.
Like a mirror that reflects the world without you in it but holds space for your shape. It’s magnificent. Mesmerizing. But…
The reaper’s skull snaps around a hundred eighty degrees, sockets straight to me, jawbone slack and shaking with silent laughter.
Death is not standing still.
It’s standing guard.
It’s standing between me and all my tomorrows.
Fuck me.
A cosmic problem I need to confront head on. There’s no running away, no hiding, no going around, no pretending this isn’t happening. There’s no easy out.
I know. There’s only through.
I don’t hesitate. I don’t waste any more time. I sink to my knees, feel through the dirt for the biggest rock I can find, and I whip it at the reaper’s skull. It lodges into the left eye socket.
The reaper reels back, dropping its scythe.
I sprint forward, slide into the clearing like it’s home-fucking-plate, reaching for the fallen scythe at the exact same moment as the reaper. My fingers lock against its cold, cold bones. We fight for it. Its strength is supernatural, but so is mine.
Every death replays in my head. Every time my eyes were shut for me. Every time I opened them again.
I see you.
Beyond the reaper, the wormhole murmurs, its iridescent edges expand, widening like a yawning mouth.
I stare into the infinite void, hypnotized by it, by the kaleidoscope of possibilities, of what-ifs.
What if I do somehow make it in? Does that mean going back to the first today—morose, sticky with margarita and anxiety?
And if I go back, won’t the wormhole remain open to inevitably lap up someone else?
Wormholes can, theoretically, collapse.
The reaper’s jaw dances again, more silent laughter as I struggle, my grip slipping as my hands sweat. This ugly, selfish, cruel thing is mocking me, trying to destroy me. To take my life.
Bugs crawl under my clothes, up my calves, my thighs, my back, onto my neck. Thousands of tiny legs pricking my skin.
If something were to happen, you could cease to exist in time.
But what if…
There’s only so much I can explain; a lot of this is hypothetical. Hypothetical.
So what if…
It’s a waste not to wonder.
What if…
You can what if yourself to death, Willa.
The colors pulse, and I know in my gut it’s now or never.
I want to live without anticipating the worst, to breathe without fear of the moment I stop, to exist in time without worry of wasting it. I want my past. I want my present. I want my future. My time. My life. This life. This world. This shitty, messed-up, amazing, beautiful world.
The wormhole flares brighter, brighter. In the glow, I catch glimpses of the days past. Eyes. The glint of a knife in moonlight. Dark feathers. Antlers. Spatters of blood. Neon lightning. Flowers. Fire.
The only thing that will come from constantly looking back is an inability to move forward.
I make my move. I act on pure instinct. I don’t question. I trust myself.
“The only way out is through.”
I release the scythe.
I let go.
The reaper falls back into the expanse of brightness, that folds in gently at first, then clamps down fiercely, like a predator’s teeth.
I watch fragments of light suspended in space, spinning slowly toward eternity, reflecting colors I’ve never seen before.
The reaper dissolves into the spectrum with a mind-bending, hyperphysical fizzling.
The soft murmurs of the void deepen into something guttural.
It’s shrinking. The colors begin to fade, swirling into shadow, retreating into the big, dark, hungry maw of the universe. It’s almost gone. It’s…
A final flash of light and a gust of wind that hits me like a train.