bare seconds of light, Margie scours the clearing around the cabin, terrified of seeing something out there that doesn’t belong.
Eventually, when her legs fall numb, she moves to the table, where the flashes of lightning illuminate the atlas and tattered notebook. The change time came when Sally was in third grade and Margie in tenth. Her sister’s handwriting is stiff and careful, the letters showing the unsteadiness of her little hand as if she’s still stuck in the before time that happened years ago.
Margie flips through the book: page after page of adventures and plans. Details of a path across the entire continent, as far as their maps can take them. It’s to be the grandest road trip ever, according to Sally.
Margie wonders when Sally will figure it all out. Figure out the truth of their life.
Because it’s the end of summer, another big thunderstorm rolls into the valley the next afternoon. The sky glows a sickening green, and nothing feels right to Margie. Heat settles thick and humid, the wind holding its breath before the storm pushes in hard. Sally seems oblivious, sorting through the guidebooks, flipping through the pages with an almost manic intensity.
“Whatcha looking for?” Margie asks. She crouches next to her sister but keeps glancing out the window. The air’s so saturated it’s hard to see much farther than the porch.
“West Virginia.” Her voice comes out almost breathless, that kind of sound you get on the edge of panic. “I can’t find West Virginia. We haven’t finished the route through, and I need to find someplace where we can stay the second night or we’ll be trapped outside.”
She looks up at her older sister with eyes wide and wet. “We can’t be outside, Margie,” she whispers harshly. “We have to be inside where it’s safe, and I can’t find the book of inns and hotels.”
“It’s okay.” Margie lays a hand on her sister’s shoulder, but she shrugs it away. “We had it last night. It’s here.”
“It’s not here!” Sally cries, shaking her head. “It’s not here,” she says again.
“We’ll keep looking,” Margie reassures her. Beyond the window the storm finally hits, wind hissing and rain bending trees to the ground.
Margie convinces Sally to skip West Virginia for now and figure out where they should stop in Maryland. “I’ve always heard they have great crab cakes there,” Margie says. She finds the Maryland guidebook and sets it on the table.
The picture on the cover shows a faded blue bay and white sails, with a red crab bursting from the text. It makes Margie ache for something she’s tried to give up. It makes her feel lonely in a way she hasn’t before—an intense desire to share something as simple as a chair by the water with someone who understands.
Sally keeps her head bowed low over the map, stringy tips of her hair brushing the crinkled pages. “After that we’ll go to Maine. It’ll be safer up north in the winter,” she says without looking up. “They don’t move as much in the cold.”
Margie presses her lips together tight. She remembers planning vacations that didn’t revolve around monsters. When snow meant sledding and snowmobiles and fun. The aching part inside her wells deep, spreading fast and hard through her—pounding in her blood.
“Right,” she finally says. “That’s right.”
She leaves Sally sitting at the table and steps out onto the porch, where the rain beats against the ground as if to punish it. In two steps Margie’s deluged, letting the heavy drops sting her skin and mix with her tears. She feels helpless under this weight of water. The world’s too big for her to survive in, much less for her to keep another being safe.
She knows a day will come when it’s too much. When she’ll trip up and miss a sign or signal, and that will be the end of that. She feels like a windup clock—and now she’s winding down and doesn’t know what to do next, how to twist herself back up again to keep on going.
The storm shifts and the wind howls like the dead. They’re out there, she knows, climbing the mountain, pushing at the circle of laurel, tripping over strings of tins cans that beat and rattle in the storm.
Eventually this tiny fortress will no longer keep them safe. She’ll have to tell Sally to plan the next trip, and they’ll move on, and the clock will keep ticking until the gears wind down to nothing.
Margie climbs back onto the porch, every bit of her body soaked and cold with rain. Just as she reaches for the door, the glint of light off water makes her pause.
There’s a puddle at the end of the porch with two ovals of mud dissolving in the middle, the edges blurring and washing away. A strip of damp leads up the wall, as if someone in dirty shoes recently stood there, leaning against the cabin.
Margie’s throat closes. Her body jerks rigid. Behind her the storm menaces—howling and beating and breaking. It’s as if the entire world’s turning inside out, the cacophony of the mountain splitting apart.
She turns around. The sky’s dark, everything that color of deep dusk, when shapes bleed into each other and your eyes play tricks. Movement hums around her but always out of sight. Her teeth chatter as she forces air into her lungs, willing everything to just shut up a moment so she can figure out what’s going on.
She waits for someone to burst out of the rain. To throw her against the wall and attack her in the way of men or monsters or both. A thin thread of light from inside cuts across the porch, dissolving into the storm. Through it she watches individual drops of rain plummet and splatter, running together over and around the cabin.
Every muscle in her body tight and trembling, she slips into the cabin and wraps her hands around the shotgun, its weight a comfort. She carries the lantern from room to room, listening for a sound out of place under the beating of the storm. Everywhere’s empty just the way it should be, but she leaves the lantern burning on the table because she can’t bear the dark.
Tucking the gun under her arm, she climbs up to the loft and pulls the rope ladder after her. Sally’s gone to bed long enough before that she already sleeps deep and even, her breathing a syncopated hiss mixing with the storm. Margie spends the night pressed against the wall, staring out the windows to the clearing around the cabin. Tiny squares of light spill from downstairs, flickering like fire against the darkness.
The storm clears before dawn and, exhausted, Margie sneaks back onto the porch. She’s almost convinced herself she dreamed the puddles—of course no one had been there, of course it was just the rain collecting under the eaves. The cabin’s old, the gutters unrepaired.
There are a million explanations for what she saw the night before. Margie’s just about convinced herself of all of them as birds wake up around her and start calling to the day.
But then she sees the book. It lies on its spine, flipped open to the middle, pages fluttering in the remnant wind. When she picks it up, the cover curls a bit and wet fingerprints smudge some of the corners.
It’s the Visitor’s Guide to West Virginia.
“Found your book.” Margie tosses it onto the table, causing one of the chipped plates to rattle. “You should be more careful with it—if it hadn’t been tucked behind one of the planters on the porch, it would have gotten soaked,” Margie adds.
Sally looks up at her, lips stained dark with juice. “I didn’t take it outside, duh.”
Margie stands at the sink and looks out the window. She loves her sister, knows she’s probably right. But she has to believe Sally’s lying because otherwise someone came into the cabin and took the book. Someone stood leaning against the wall, flipping through pages while Sally and Margie sat inside, oblivious.
Her fingernails scratch against the old dingy grout of the tiled kitchen counter. This cabin’s the safest they’ve found since the change time. They’ve built a quasi-life here perched on the tip of a steep mountain. Margie’s garden is coming in, she has supplies enough to can and pickle, and the well has a hand pump so they don’t