THE GONE, PART FOUR

They had driven somewhere else—this was his first thought. The car was sitting in some safe parking lot of a motel, or idling behind a service station. He reached up to turn on the light, but it didn’t work when he slid it on. The car was turned off. Nothing worked. He opened the door without thinking, and the cold air hit him flush in the face. He blinked it away. His eyes suddenly worked. He could sense movement, hundreds of small silver ribbons: the motion of waves. He was still at the dam.

Simon stumbled out of the car, the grass wet, moisture flicking at his toes: in the darkness it could have been paint or blood. He could see more now, the distance—for some reason—appearing first, the low hills rolling around him, holding in the horizon; boulders clumped together at the water. The water itself was now nothing but a cavity, surface rippling traitorously, a distraction from the hollow trap beneath. Simon knew this was a bad place. His parents were gone. They had been lost to it.