Kate Brian - Endless

Dorn handed each of us a schedule. Darcy and Liam flipped through theirs, then locked eyes, mutually overwhelmed. I was glad Darcy wasn’t the only newbie dealing with this situation. It was good to have someone in the same boat with her.

“You’ll see we’ve also put some of you in charge of the children,” the mayor continued. “As of last count, we have eight kids under the age of twelve on the island. They are staying at my house up on the hill, the better to keep them out of danger. Krista has managed to scrounge up some toys and video games from the relic room, and we’re planning to set up a playroom in one of our parlors. We need to keep these young souls as innocent as they were the day they arrived here, so if you’re in their presence, please, no mention of the unpleasantness we’re experiencing.”

The chief returned to her side and leaned in to whisper in her ear. Her jaw set, her expression darkened, and she nodded.

“Chief Grantz would also like me to remind you of our other special visitors,” the mayor continued. “It has been five days since we’ve moved anyone off this island. We’ve been concerned about those destined for the Light who might end up in the Shadowlands, but there are also those souls who belong in the Shadowlands—souls who committed heinous crimes in their lifetimes who should have been moved immediately to their final destinations. Those souls are now roaming free among us. We cannot usher them as hastily as we normally would, because we can’t risk them mistakenly ending up in the Light.”

She scanned the room slowly, and the murmur rose up again, louder and more urgent this time. I thought of Ray Wagner mocking the survivors this morning and shuddered.

“We must prevent these souls from harming our innocents and ourselves,” the mayor said darkly. “To that end, I would like everyone to stay after this meeting and register the names of any soul you are certain was destined for the Shadowlands, so that the rest of us may keep a close watch on them. When we finally rectify the issues we’ve been having, they will be the first to cross over.”

“Why not just lock them up in the jail?” someone shouted.

“We don’t have the space,” Chief Grantz replied. “Plus we don’t want to arouse suspicions by plucking people off the street and locking them up. This is a small island. Word would get around.”

“We can control the situation if we stay vigilant,” the mayor added.

Darcy turned to me, her eyes wide. “Nell? He’s gone, right?”

I grasped her wrist. “Long gone.”

She blew out a sigh but didn’t look comforted. I couldn’t blame her.

Out of nowhere, Joaquin stepped forward to share the circle with the mayor.

“There is some positive news today!” he announced loudly, his voice ricocheting around the room. “Two new souls have proved themselves worthy of being Lifers. Everyone, we’d like you to meet Darcy Thayer and Liam Murtry!”

There was a smattering of applause, which, at Joaquin’s cheerleader-type gestures, grew into a rousing ovation as Darcy and Liam waved awkwardly.

“We’ll be initiating them tonight, at midnight, at my place,” Joaquin continued. “I realize with the new schedule it will be a smaller group than usual, but if you can make it, it’d be good to have you there.”

He stepped back next to me again.

“Not the cove?” I whispered.

“In this weather? Personally I’d like to be dry for more than fifteen minutes in a row,” he replied under his breath.

I nodded. “Good point. Where exactly is your—?”

The mayor cleared her throat, staring us down. I stopped whispering. “Thank you for that interruption, Mr. Marquez,” she said acerbically. “Now, our last but certainly most pressing order of business is to locate Tristan and Nadia and bring them back here for questioning.”

The entire atmosphere of the room shifted, and from the pained looks on the faces of those around me, everyone felt it. Tristan was this island’s Golden Boy and had been for generations, but by now everyone knew what he’d done. The sense of betrayal was so thick it was suffocating.

“Please check your schedule. If you’ve been assigned to one of tonight’s search parties, see Chief Grantz, who has kindly separated a map of the island into quadrants and will assign one to each party.” She paused as papers fluttered and people compared schedules. “If we stick together and do this in an orderly fashion, they will be found and we’ll get to the bottom of this mess.” She took a deep breath. “Are there any questions?”

The double doors opened suddenly, and a howling wind tore through the station. It was those creepy twins from the clinic. They each wore clear plastic ponchos and had slicked their white-blond hair down and to the side, with opposite parts, so that they looked to be mirror images as they stepped toward the mayor. Their eyes slid left and right, taking in their surroundings. They stayed so close to each other that I assumed they were holding hands, but once they were clear of the crowd I saw this wasn’t the case. The backs of their knuckles were merely touching between them.

“Can I help you?” the mayor demanded.

Their scanning eyes snapped forward at the same time and focused on her. “Yes,” they said in unison. They lifted their hands to remove their hoods with such perfect timing it looked rehearsed.

Lifers around the room exchanged disturbed glances. Good. I wasn’t the only one who was completely wigged out by these two.

“I’m Selma Tse and this is my brother, Sebastian,” the girl said in a reedy voice. “There’s no Internet, and we can’t get cell service, even though our phones were protected inside our bags.”

“We just walked through town, and the place is pretty much deserted,” Sebastian added. They turned their heads in opposite directions, sliding their suspicious eyes around the room.

“It seems as if everyone is…here,” Selma said. “Together. The entire town.”

“What’s the deal with this place?” Sebastian added. “It’s not normal.”

Thunder rumbled outside. The pendant lights overhead flickered and half the room gasped. I instinctively grabbed Joaquin’s arm. Silence.

“I’m sorry, was there a question in there somewhere?” the mayor asked impatiently.

“Yes,” Sebastian began, taking a step forward. “Who are you people? How did we get here when neither one of us remembers even deciding to leave home? And what the hell is Juniper Landing?”

My fingers dug deeper into Joaquin’s arm. Normally the visitors here were programmed to think they were on vacation. They were sort of lulled into a sense of happy complacency. But not these two.

“I knew it,” I whispered. “I knew something was off about them.”

“Is someone going to answer us?” Selma asked, her voice ringing to the ceiling.

And from the looks in their freaky light eyes, they weren’t about to take no for an answer.

I speed-walked across town that night on my way to Joaquin’s for Darcy and Liam’s initiation, my head bent toward the ground, trying to stay as dry as possible. The sidewalks were crisscrossed with hairline cracks and deep fractures, a spiderweb of hazards in the darkness. Near the corner in front of the general store, one of the gutters was so packed with leaves the water burbled and rose around it, and I saw a dead mouse bobbing up and down on the swell, its eyes blank.

I shuddered and hurried on, wishing Darcy were with me. She’d been assigned to a late shift at the nursery and was meeting me at Joaquin’s. It was close to midnight, and the town that was quiet in midday was now graveyard silent, aside from the rain and wind. I saw a stray light illuminated in one of the upper windows of the library. As I was about to dip downhill toward the docks, something in the library window shifted. I paused, heart in my throat, clutching my hood together under my chin. A shadow passed through the light—a person, though it was impossible to tell whether it was male or female.