Chapter Eight
The lightning arc sears the sky, casting a stark, flickering white light that burns the image into my brain.
The figure on the truck is a silhouette of impossible familiarity.
Her hair is plastered to her skull in the same wet, dark ropes as mine; her shoulders are hunched in the exact posture of my own exhaustion.
But it's the eyes that anchor the horror.
They reflect the flash with a crystalline clarity, wide and unblinking, mirrors of my own terror.
"Get back!" Emmett screams.
He lunges forward, his body a blur of motion as he swings the heavy iron poker at the space where the figure stood.
The metal clangs against the truck's roof with a bone-shaking vibration, but the figure is already gone.
She has vanished into the black maw of the storm as if she were made of the rain itself.
The wind howls into the open door of the Airstream, spraying me with a freezing mist that tastes of pine and ancient stone.
As I watch him head back toward the doorway.
I back away, allowing Emmett to take up the threshold, his chest heaving, his bare back slick with rainwater. He scans the darkness with the flashlight, the beam cutting through the downpour like a desperate searchlight. "Who are you?" he bellows into the canyon. "Show yourself!"
There is no answer, just the roar of the falls.
A sound that has grown so loud it feels like the mountain is screaming.
He slams the door shut and turns the deadbolt, the mechanical click sounding like the final strike of a gavel.
He is shaking, but it's not from the cold.
It's a vibrating, primal rage that makes the air in the tiny cabin feel sharp enough to cut.
"I saw her, Emmett," I whisper, my voice barely audible over the drumming of the rain. "She looked like me. She had my face."
He turns to me, the flashlight beam hitting me directly in the eyes.
I flinch, shielding my face with my hand.
The silver ring on my finger catches the light, a mocking glint of blue.
"It was the light, Ava. A trick of the shadows and your own hysterical mind. You’re seeing ghosts because you’re looking for them. "
"She was on the truck! The ring... your phone showed three signals."
He looks down at his phone, the screen still glowing with the biometric map.
The third dot is gone. There are only two pulses now, overlapping in the center of the vintage section.
"It was a glitch," he says, his voice taking on that flat, terrifyingly reasonable tone he uses when he is gasping for control.
"The storm is interfering with the satellite. There is no one else here."
He walks toward me, and I find myself backing up until my heels hit the small bench. He doesn't stop until he is looming over me, the scent of rain and ozone clinging to him. He reaches out and grabs my chin, his fingers cold and insistent.
"The sketch, Emmett. Someone drew me this morning. Someone who knows exactly what I look like when you aren't watching."
He pulls the wet, crumpled paper from his pocket and stares at it.
In the beam of the flashlight, the lines of the drawing look even more precise, a hauntingly accurate capture of my melancholy.
He doesn't speak. He reaches into his pocket, pulling out the soaked matches he must have swiped from the counter earlier.
He strikes one and holds it to the edge of the paper.
I watch as the image of my own face curls into black ash, falling onto the teal leather of the bench.
"There is no one else," he repeats, his eyes boring into mine. "There is only us. There has only ever been us. Anything else you think you see is just a symptom of you drifting further away. You’re trying to create a narrative where you’re a victim of a conspiracy instead of a wife in a struggling marriage. "
"A struggling marriage doesn't involve GPS rings and biometric sensors, Emmett! It doesn't involve locking me in bathrooms or burning my past."
He drops the charred remains of the sketch and leans in close, his forehead resting against mine.
"This isn't a normal marriage, Ava. We are a wreck, remember?
We are the wreckage and the repair. I am doing what is necessary to keep you from going over the edge.
If that makes me a monster in your eyes, then I will be the monster you need. "
He pulls me toward the bed, his grip on my wrist unyielding.
He sits me down and begins to strip off my wet clothes with a clinical, detached efficiency.
His hands are cold, but where they brush my skin, they leave a trail of possessive heat.
He doesn't look at me as a lover; he looks at me as a possession, a masterpiece he’s trying to salvage from the mud, a version of “us” he’s desperate to keep polished, even as the metal around us groans.
He pulls a dry sweater over my head, the wool scratchy and smelling of cedar, before he stands and starts to change his own clothes.
The power is still out; the only light comes from the frequent flashes of lightning, illuminating the chrome fixtures in strobe-like bursts. The interior of the Airstream feels smaller than ever, a metal lung that is slowly running out of air.
"Lie down," he commands.
"I can't sleep. Not with her out there."
"There is no one out there," he says, his voice a low growl.
He lies down beside me, his large body a physical barrier between me and the door.
He reaches out and pulls me against him, his arm a heavy weight across my waist. He doesn't cuddle me; he anchors me. In the strobe-light flashes of the storm, I can feel the frantic thrum of his heart against my spine. It’s a terrifying rhythm, a reminder that I am the only thing keeping him from drifting into the abyss himself. I am his gravity, and he is my cage.
I lie there in the dark, my eyes wide, listening to the mountain.
The storm is beginning to move on, the thunder becoming a distant, rhythmic grumble, but the rain remains a relentless force.
I feel the pulse of the ring on my finger, a tiny, digital reminder that my heart rate is being logged and judged.
Is it possible? Is my mind so fractured by the isolation and the control that I am hallucinating a version of myself? Or is the "original" Ava truly out there, watching from the shadows of the Red Trail?
Emmett’s breathing slows, becoming deep and even. He is an expert at compartmentalizing terror, at shutting down the world once he has secured his perimeter. But I can't shut it down. Every time I close my eyes, I see those identical eyes reflecting the lightning.
I wait until I am certain he is asleep. It takes nearly an hour, the silence of the cabin broken only by the occasional groan of the metal skin.
Slowly, with a precision born of desperation, I begin to move.
I slide his arm from my waist, inch by agonizing inch, holding my breath every time he stirs.
My heart is hammering against my ribs so loudly that I’m certain the sensor in the ring will trigger an alert on his phone.
I reach the floor and crawl toward the kitchenette. I need to see his phone. I need to know if that third signal was truly a glitch.
The phone is sitting on the small table, its screen dark. I reach for it, my fingers trembling. I know his passcode; it’s our wedding anniversary, a date he treats as the beginning of time. I enter the numbers, and the screen blooms to life, its brightness a physical assault in the dark room.
I navigate to the biometric app. The graph of my heart rate is a jagged mountain range, a record of my fear. I scroll back through the logs, looking for the moment on the ridge, the moment the third signal appeared.
There it is. At 4:12 PM, the map shows three distinct pulses. They are labeled: A1, E1, and... A0.
My breath catches in my throat. A0. I am A1. Emmett is E1. Who is A0?
I tap on the label, and a sub-menu opens. It contains a series of dates stretching back five years. Five years. Emmett and I have only been married for three.
I scroll through the entries. They are all biometric logs.
Heart rate, sleep cycles, stress responses.
They are structurally identical to mine, but the data is different.
The stress levels for A0 are off the charts, a constant, vibrating high that suggests a woman living in a state of permanent fight-or-flight.
The final entry for A0 is dated July 4th, three years ago. The day before, Emmett and I met at that gallery in the city. The day he told me, I looked like an angel who had lost her way.
The log ends abruptly at 11:45 PM. The heart rate monitor shows a sudden, sharp spike to 180 beats per minute, followed by a flat line.
A flat line.
The phone is suddenly snatched from my hand.
I scream, spinning around to find Emmett standing behind me. The lightning flashes, illuminating his face in a mask of cold, absolute betrayal. He isn't angry anymore; he is something much worse. He is certain.
"You couldn't just leave it alone, could you?" he asks, his voice a whisper that chills my marrow.
"Who is A0, Emmett? Who was she?"
He grabs my arm, his fingers digging into the muscle, and hauls me toward the bed.
He throws the phone onto the mattress and pins me against the wall, his hands on my shoulders.
"She was a mistake. She was a version of us that didn't work because she couldn't keep up with the rhythm.
She thought she could walk the Red Trail and still be mine. "
"What did you do to her?"
"I didn't do anything!" he roars, his composure finally breaking. "The mountain took her. She thought she could run in a storm like this, and the falls claimed what was left of her. I tried to save her, Ava. I tried to hold on as tight as I’m holding on to you, but she resisted my hold."
"And then you found me," I say, the realization washing over me like ice water. "You found someone who looked like her. Someone you could mold into the version of her that wouldn't run."
"I found you because you were perfect," he says, his voice dropping to a terrifyingly tender tone. "You are the repair, Ave. You are the second chance.” He reaches out and strokes my hair, his touch sickeningly gentle, the way one might handle a fragile, priceless artifact. “We are going to find the rhythm that she couldn’t. Because I can’t lose you twice, Ava. I’ll burn this mountain down before I let the water take you too. '"
"The figure outside... she's not a ghost, is she? She survived."
Emmett’s hand stops. He looks at the door, then back at me. A slow, dark realization seems to dawn on him. "No. She didn't survive. I saw her go over. I watched the water take her."
"Then who was on the truck?"
A slow, rhythmic scraping begins on the roof of the Airstream. It sounds like fingernails on metal, a deliberate, agonizing sound that moves from the front of the cabin toward the back.
Skritch. Skritch. Skritch.
Emmett reaches for the fire poker again, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. He is terrified now, a look I have never seen on him. The predator has realized he is being hunted by something he thought he had buried.
"Stay here," he commands.
He moves toward the door, but before he can reach the handle, the entire Airstream jolts. It feels like something massive slammed into the side of the trailer. The metal groans, and the vintage camper tilts precariously to the left.
"Emmett!" I scream, grabbing the edge of the table.
He lunges for the door, throwing it open into the rain. He shines the light out, but again, there is no one.
Then, a voice comes from the darkness. It's a voice I know as well as my own. It's my pitch, my cadence, my vibration.
"Emmett," the voice calls out, drifting through the rain like a silk ribbon. "You forgot to lock the gate."
I scramble to the door, peering over Emmett’s shoulder.
Standing in the middle of the muddy path, illuminated by the dying glow of the lodge lights, is the figure.
She is wearing the same white dress I wore to the parade, the red belt cinched tight around her waist. Her face is a perfect, terrifying duplicate of mine, but her eyes are empty, voids of black that suggest there is nothing left inside.
She isn't looking at Emmett. She is looking at me.
"Run, Ava," she says, her voice a distorted echo of my own. "Run before he decides you need a third version."
She turns and sprints toward the Red Trail, her movements fluid and unnatural. Emmett doesn't hesitate; he bellows a sound of pure, homicidal rage and leaps from the camper, sprinting after her into the dark.
"Emmett, no!" I shout, but he is already gone, swallowed by the trees.
I stand in the doorway, the rain soaking my sweater. I look at the silver ring on my finger. The blue light is flashing rapidly, a frantic signal in the dark.
The twist comes when I look at the phone on the bed. A message has appeared on the screen, a notification from the biometric app.
Warning: Signal A1 disconnected. Tracking lost.
I look at the ring. The internal spikes have retracted.
The band is loose. It slides off my finger and falls into the mud with a soft thud.
I am no longer being tracked. I am no longer a ‘we’.
For a second, the silence where his chest presses against mine is louder than the falls.
I am free, but the cold spot where the ring used to be feels like a brand of its own.
But as I look toward the Red Trail, I see the figure standing at the edge of the woods. She isn't running anymore. She is waiting. And in her hand, she holds a heavy iron key that looks exactly like the one for the Airstream.
The cliffhanger isn't that I am free. It's the realization that the figure didn't come to save me from Emmett. It seemed more like she was on his side. And as I hear Emmett’s scream of agony from deep in the woods, I realize that the mountain doesn't just demand honesty. It demands a sacrifice.
The original Ava is coming back for her cage. And she needs me to take her place in the falls.