Chapter 9 - The Threshold
Ethan lunged forward, grabbing Lily by the shoulders just inches from the front door. He pulled her back against his chest, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs. Don't touch that, he commanded, his voice cracking with a mixture of fear and protective fury.
Lily didn't fight him. She simply lowered her arms, her big blue eyes remaining fixed on the wooden screen door. Outside, the porch was empty. The gray mist hung heavy in the air, blurring the edge of the yard where the swollen creek had already begun to recede back into its muddy banks. There was no little girl, no white dress, no footprints on the freshly washed boards.
She just wanted to come inside, Daddy, Lily said softly, her voice carrying a strange, heavy sadness that pierced straight through Ethan’s defenses. She’s been out in the rain for a very long time.
Clara walked over, her steps unsteady as she wrapped her arms around both of them. We have to leave, Ethan. Pack whatever we can carry and walk up the ridge toward the highway. I don't care about the car, I don't care about the house. Something is happening to our memories, and if we stay here much longer, we won't remember who we are at all.
Ethan looked down at his wife, seeing the raw terror mirrored in her eyes. He nodded slowly, knowing she was right. They couldn't fight an enemy that wore the face of their own history. He stood up, gently setting Lily down on the sofa with her stuffed white bunny, and hurried toward the bedroom to grab their emergency pack from the closet.
The bedroom was dark, the curtains drawn tight against the lingering gloom of the afternoon. Ethan flicked on the wall switch, but nothing happened. The power was still out. He crossed the room in the dark, his hands reaching instinctively for the shelf in the back of the walk-in closet where the heavy nylon backpack always sat.
His fingers brushed against the canvas, but as he pulled it down, a shower of heavy objects spilled out onto the floorboards with a dull crash. He knelt down, switching on his phone flashlight—which, inexplicably, now showed a full battery.
The beam illuminated the scattered items: old photo albums bound in faded leather, a rusted soldering iron, and dozens of small, waterlogged white stuffed bunnies, identical to the one Lily held downstairs, all piled in a heap like discarded bones.
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Ethan picked up one of the photo albums and opened the cover. The pages were damp and stuck together, but as he pried them apart, the photographs revealed a smiling couple standing in front of a newly framed house, holding a little girl with long light brown hair and a teal knit sweater, dated October 2005.
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