Everly shook her head. That was too much speculation, even for her. This letter could have been in that crate for decades; there was nothing to suggest it had anything to do with her dad’s death.
But still, she couldn’t stop thinking about it.
The week before he died, there was something off about him. He came home one day acting strange, and he refused to tell her where he’d been or what he’d been doing, only turned aside and walked away. She followed after him, and he shook her off, leaving her standing behind in the hall as he closed himself in his room.
A few days later, he left again—went out without telling her why. When she’d seen him that morning, the sight of him had left a twisting in Everly’s gut.
He hadn’t looked like her father. His eyes were sunken in, empty, frantic. His skin—so wane, so sallow. He left quickly that morning, running out the front door without noticing Everly standing behind in the shadows. Afterward, she tried to banish the image of her father escaping the house like a wild animal set free—but then she had walked into the kitchen and found the note.
Don’t follow me, it said. I will be home soon. I promise.
But he’d lied.
The police found him later that afternoon, and she was so unable to reconcile the image of the man she had seen that morning—the man who hadn’t looked or seemed at all like her father—with what they said happened to him.
They said a car accident, and who was she to question that? He had been found in his car, after all, and it had been totaled. Wrapped around a tree, according to the cops.
She didn’t know much, but she did know her dad was always a careful driver, the kind who never went more than three miles per hour over the speed limit, who used turn signals when there wasn’t another car within five blocks of him.
Not the kind of driver to wrap himself around a tree.
And Everly didn’t know much when it came to injuries, but she didn’t think his sounded right.
Lacerations up and down his arms. Burns covering his whole body. More skin damaged than not.
He wouldn’t have been so careless as to wreck his car like that.
And he was supposed to come back. He always came back.
He had promised.
Something had rattled her dad that week, and somehow, because of all that, he died. The explanation could have been as simple as he hadn’t been in his right frame of mind, and that led him to swerve his car off the road, but she didn’t believe it, not really. The man she’d seen that week, the one with the crazed eyes and frantic energy, hadn’t seemed at all like the man she’d known all her life.
But he had seemed like the kind of man who might receive ominous, unsigned messages and not tell her about them.
Everly placed the lid back on the wooden crate. Her dad, Richard, the Eschatorologic. This box full of her mother’s keepsakes.
It was all too much, all at once.
And what about her? It was undeniable that something was also happening inside her head—something beyond the headaches. Visions, memories she shouldn’t have, images that made no sense.
Her thoughts strayed to that picture of herself found in the back of the old photo album. The one she had no recollection of being taken.
Maybe she was losing her mind. Maybe that’s all this was—her own slow descent into madness.
Everly didn’t know what was happening to her, or what had happened to her dad, and she didn’t know what was happening in that building.
But with a sinking in her stomach, Everly understood that there was only one place she could go to get more answers.
As Everly approached the Eschatorologic the next day, she saw Richard waiting outside. She waved a hand in greeting, trying to smile despite the anxious energy that coursed through her.
“You’re waiting for me today,” Everly said.
“It’s a large building,” Richard said as she reached the top of the stairs, falling into step beside him. “Easy to get lost. Dangerous, in fact. I didn’t want you alone in there anymore, so I figured it would be easiest to wait out here.”
“What if I hadn’t come back?”
Richard glanced down at Everly. “I had faith that you would. And besides,” he said, gesturing around them, “it’s a beautiful day to wait outside.”
It was a beautiful day, but Everly could see there was something Richard wasn’t telling her, a tension to his posture that hadn’t been there the day before. “Are you okay?” Everly asked. “You look a little pale.”
Richard shook his head, face suddenly serious. “I want you to meet a few more people today,” he said. “Some really amazing people, actually. Men and women I have come to care for greatly during my years working here.”
As she followed Richard into the Eschatorologic, Everly again felt the floor buzzing beneath her feet, as if the building itself were rumbling from all the pent-up mysteries stored within its walls.
The same woman as before sat behind the desk in the lobby, and Everly glanced at her uneasily as she walked toward the elevator with Richard. The woman didn’t acknowledge either of them, continuing to sit straight with her head lifted high, her eyes unblinking.
Once in the elevator, Everly turned to Richard. “Who is that woman?” she asked, indicating the direction of the lobby beyond the closed elevator doors. “The one who’s always behind that desk. She seems . . . I don’t know. Strange? Yesterday, she wouldn’t even look at me when I tried talking to her.”
Richard’s face softened, his eyes going distant. “That’s Sophia,” he said. “She’s . . . very special, very dear to me. She’s one of our runners. More or less. Was the very first one, actually.”
“Runners,” Everly repeated. “What does that mean—” Everly started to ask, but then the elevator chimed as the doors opened to the third floor, and Richard cut her off, exclaiming, “Here we are!” as he strolled out. Everly stood where she was a moment, watching him walk away, before huffing a sigh of frustration and following behind.
This floor was identical to the second floor in every way—same gray walls, gray floors, gray doors going all the way back to the end of the lengthy hallway. Richard passed by the first door in the hall, stopping in front of the second.
Inside was another bare apartment, this one with a man who sat at the small wooden kitchen table. He was slight in stature and hunched over, staring at a plate in front of him with something that looked almost like mashed potatoes. His head was bald and shriveled, reminding Everly of an overly large raisin, and he wore a gray uniform identical to the one Lois had worn the day before. Also identical to Lois was the thin, silvery scar that Everly could see running up the back of his neck—much more visible on this man, with his bald head, than it had been on Lois. Everly wanted to ask.
