“There’s something in the fog,” Owen said softly, his eyes fixed on the windows. His glasses had slipped down his nose and he made no effort to push them back up.
Tyler rolled his eyes. “It’s probably just a deer,” he said, moving out into the hall. “I’ll stay on the path. You’ll be able to see me from the door.”
This stupid jock archetype…Levi followed him, not quite sure what he was going to do, but he had to try. “Tyler —”
“Two minutes, time me.” Tyler grinned as he placed his hand on the front door’s handle and pulled.
The cold came through the gap before the door was half open and then the fog pushed into the lodge with a weight behind it, arriving as pressure against Levi’s chest, his face, the inside of his lungs on the first inhale. The entryway went grey in seconds, the floor and the walls disappearing into the fog that poured through the opening.
“Tyler —”
“I can see the path. It’s right here. Two minutes.” He stepped through. One step. The porch boards creaked under his shoes. Two steps. His outline was still visible. Three steps. The outline thinning.
In four steps he was gone.
Levi stood in the doorway. The fog pressed against his face, cold and wet, and he could feel it starting like a heaviness behind his ribs, settling in, whispering to him:You’re alone.
His legs ached. They wanted to move, to stumble forward after Tyler into the nothingness outside the door. He shook his head, slamming a hand against the doorframe to grip it as he took in another breath, goosebumps prickling on his skin as the fog wrapped around him. The bottoms of his jeans felt strange, like small hands were tugging on them, urging him to step over the threshold.
You’ve always been alone. There’s no one coming. There’s no point to any of this.
His chest went heavy and his grip on the doorframe loosened.
You’ll always be alone. Ethan knew. Ethan found the answer—
Asher’s hand closed on his shoulder and pulled him back from the door. The thought broke. The heaviness cracked and the air in the entryway hit his lungs and his chest was his again, and Asher was between him and the fog, his body a wall as it wisped around him instead.
“Don’t,” Asher said, low, his hand still on Levi’s shoulder. “Don’t stand in it.”
The fog kept pressing through the open door, the cold spreading into the lounge.
“We have to close it,” Asher said.
“He’s still out there —” Levi protested.
“We close it or the fog fills the building.”
He pushed Asher’s hand off his shoulder. “We’re not locking him out.”
“Levi —”
“We are not locking him out,” Levi snapped.
Then Tyler screamed. The sound came from nowhere and everywhere, directionless, the fog stripping the distance fromit. It started as Tyler and ended as something else, his voice cracking in the middle and the thing underneath it not human.
God dammit, no. We need everyone. We can’t lose people this fast into the game.
“TYLER!” Levi jolted forward, but Asher’s arm went around his waist, pulling him back from the door. Asher kicked the door shut as he yanked Levi further from the fog.
The door almost closed, then bounced back inward. Tyler stood there, the tip of his shoe just over the threshold of the door, and he walked back in slowly, shutting the door gently behind him and locking it. Levi let out a sigh of relief.
Tyler just stood there, his arms at his sides, hanging like sleeves on a coatrack. He faced forward, but his eyes were wrong: open, pointed at nothing, and utterly blank.
The person who went outside is not the person who came back.
“Tyler, what happened?” Levi stepped in front of him. “Tyler, can you hear me?”
Nothing.