Emrys frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Today, at school. Horrible things. I saw hands try to push through a whiteboard in third period. During gym, this woman entered the room wearing an old-timey nightgown. Bizarre, but it wasn’t until my eye started twitching that I realized something was really wrong.” Serena took a deep breath. “Her whole body was burned. And the moment she noticed me noticing her, she opened her mouth to scream—but no noise came out. Just a thick plume of smoke. That’s when I started screaming.”
Serena whirled around, her eyes wide with real fear. “My friends looked at me like I was having a fit. And who could blame them? I was! I tried texting all day, but neither of you would answer. And I couldn’t talk to anyone else about it, could I? Who would have believed me? So I was alone with these … visions, just trying not to panic every time I turned a corner!”
“I’m sorry …” Emrys said flimsily. “A teacher really did take my phone.”
“This is just going to keep happening, isn’t it?” Serena asked. “We’ll see monsters and shadows and—and freaks everywhere we go.”
Emrys flinched from the harsh word, but what could he do but nod? “Probably.”
“Then why do you seem so happy about it, Emrys?”
Serena’s gaze changed now, cold fear igniting into something else. Something hotter.
“Is this fun for you?” she asked pointedly. “That awful book has tossed us alone into the ocean, and you can’t seem to wait to drown.”
“That’s not …” Emrys faltered, taking a step back.
“Isn’t it? You heard Mr. Pierce’s story. That thing eats people. They disappear and no one ever sees them again. They’re just forgotten! But rather than running away from something that awful and unbeatable, you want to run toward it—and take Hazel with you!” Serena shook her head. “Mark my words, Emrys. By the time this is over, one of you will be dead.”
Emrys crossed his arms, narrowing his eyes. He remembered what Van Stavern had told them the night before. “This is happening, Serena,” he said, “whether we want it to or not.”
“That’s exactly the problem!” Serena threw her hands into the air. “You do want it! For some twisted reason, you want it so much! Probably because you’re a creepy little weirdo.”
Emrys recoiled like he’d been slapped. Even Serena seemed to recognize she’d gone too far. The anger fled from her eyes, replaced with what looked almost like surprise. Then her expression hardened.
Again, she turned her back on Emrys. “I’ll take the long way home,” she said flatly. “Google how to get eaten on your own.”
And with that, she was gone, marching away from the Shallows. The wind picked up, a held breath finally released. Emrys stood alone on an empty street, in a town where he didn’t belong at all.
Emrys’s mom greeted him from the living room when he arrived.
“Hey, hon! How was school?”
So the school hadn’t informed parents about Brian’s disappearance yet. His mom would have mentioned it, otherwise. Emrys wondered if they ever planned to. Maybe that was just how things worked here. His mind flashed to the mugs and T-shirts filling the New Rotterdam gift shops, cheerfully depicting real-life monsters. It was a lot less fun now, knowing each jokey souvenir might represent countless lost lives. Lives the people of New Rotterdam seemed all too happy to sweep aside.
Lives like Brian Skupp’s.
“Good,” Emrys lied, with a small pang of guilt.
“I’m on a work deadline, so your dad’s cooking tonight,” Emrys’s mom said. “But want to watch a movie after dinner? Nothing scary, sorry.”
“Actually, I have some work to do, too,” Emrys said. “School project. Maybe tomorrow?”
“It’s a date.”
Back in his room, Emrys scrolled through the tenth page of search results for missing persons, frowning into the glowing screen. The usual search engines hadn’t turned up much. Apparently local disappearances didn’t always make the news, either. Mostly he was getting a bunch of ads for unrelated vacation rentals.
At least he’d been able to find a photo of Edna Milton. Despite her ghoulish entry in the wiki, the woman pictured looked … nice. Unassuming. Emrys supposed this was partially why no one had suspected her for so long.
Hopefully the wiki contributors would know more about recent disappearances. He opened the StrifeChat window where he’d posted his question about missing locals, but no one had responded yet.
The New Rotterdam Wiki Project had a dedicated chat server for those with mod privileges, where they could compare notes, discuss articles, and—more frequently—talk about nothing in particular. Emrys wasn’t technically old enough to use StrifeChat, but he rarely logged in anyway. Only when he had a real question for the wiki community, like now. His parents wouldn’t be happy with him if they saw the chat window, though. There were plenty of people who used the anonymity of the internet to hurt others, but Emrys knew better than to trust strangers online. He knew it better than some grown-ups, he figured.
As soon as he got his answer, he’d exit the chat.
“Emrys …” Van Stavern sighed from his perch on the bookshelf, surrounded by Emrys’s collection of square-headed Jazzo-Bop! horror figurines. Emrys had found it necessary to keep the Atlas high out of Sir Galahound’s reach. The dog had developed an instant curiosity for the talking, blinking book. Even now, his tail wagged at the sound of Van Stavern’s voice.
“That was quite a conversation you had with Serena earlier. Are you all right? Do you want to …? What I mean to say is … Oh, I was never good at these things.”
“It’s fine,” Emrys said, keeping his eyes squarely on the computer screen. “Not the first time someone’s called me that. And let’s face it, it won’t be the last.”
Van Stavern lapsed into silence, but Emrys found the quiet was worse. It just provided better acoustics for Serena’s insult to keep ringing in his ears. After a moment, he spun his chair around to face the book.
“You know, Serena was right about one thing,” Emrys said. “I shouldn’t go jumping into danger without some way to protect myself and Hazel. Is there anything in there that I could use to fight Edna? Like, Magic Missile or something?”
The book blinked slowly at him. “I’m going to pretend that you did not just quote a first-level Dungeons & Dragons spell at me and simply show you the standard hex I used when situations became volatile.”
As in the bathroom at school, the Atlas flipped open of its own accord, pages fluttering by in rapid succession. Emrys stood from his desk chair and made his way to the book. Words were inscribed at the top of the page in looping cursive. The text that followed was as dense as a brick wall.
“Pror-ror luh tiss-a-gee?” Emrys sounded out.
“This … may take a while,” Van Stavern’s voice sounded from the book. “Pourrir le tissage—‘rot the weave.’ A hex that tugs at the very strings of reality. Anything caught within its energies will be pulled apart at the quantum level.”
