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Kyle’s up at the gate. He shakes it. “It is locked,” he says. “Do you think we can force it open?”

“You brought a key, didn’t you?” Miranda asks softly.

“Just my house key,” he says.

“Use it,” she insists.

He laughs a little. Like it’s any crazier than what we’vealready seen. “Okay,” he says. He digs in his pocket until he finds it, and we all stare at him. Watching. “You guys are giving me the creeps,” he informs us, but he turns and slides the key into the lock on the gate. It shouldn’t fit. It’s an old-fashioned lock, the kind shaped like a cartoon keyhole, a circle overlapping the top of a narrow triangle. But it clicks in and turns, and Kyle pulls the gate open with a groan that sounds like something dying.

Someone hums the theme fromThe Twilight Zone.

“Shut up,” Mel says, but without it the whole thing would have been too much. The black still looms, and nothing stands between it and us now. Empty air, and that’s no protection. It has a kind of pull to it. Like we can’t help but lean forward on the balls of our feet. Like one of us is going to plunge in soon, whether we mean to or not.

“We could still turn back,” I say.

“Can we?” Anthony asks.

“I don’t know,” I admit. But no one’s going to anyway. We’ve all made our decisions. Even Jeremy.

“So we pair up,” Mel says.

“There’s j-just one problem,” Vanessa says. “There are nine of us. We’ve g-got too many.”

“Or too few,” Trina says.

Vanessa nods. “Either way, it’s a problem.”

VIDEO EVIDENCE

Retrieved from the cell phone of Kyle Jeffries

Recorded April 19, 2017, 12:46 a.m.

The teens stand in a loose clump. Occasionally one of them rubs their eyes, or glances back the way they came, as if waiting for sense to reassert itself. The road remains. They remain. The darkness stands, unyielding.

ANTHONY: Okay. Nine of us. Odd man out. What do we do?

TRINA: Someone will have to go alone. I can do it.

SARA: No. No way. No one goes alone.

TRINA: Then what?

NICK: A group of three. That’s safer. There’s nothing that actually says you can’t have two partners.

MEL: Careful there, Nicky. Not sure Vanessa’s down for the monogamish thing.

Nick gives her a flat look and deadpans.

NICK: Ha ha. Your attempts at humor have absolutely put me at ease. I’m no longer terrified. Well done.

MEL: I live to serve.

ANTHONY: So it’s Vanessa and Nick, Miranda and Mel, Trina and Kyle, and then Sara can come with me and Jeremy.

Sara looks quickly at Mel, then away, a touch of pink creeping into her cheeks.

SARA: Yeah. That makes sense.