Elena Vale's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

Elena drove back to the cabin the next morning. Miriam Finch could wait. Raven had touched that locket when the notebook shook her. Raven knew more than she said. Elena meant to leave with the truth this time. Raven opened the door in a short dress and bare feet. She smiled slow, leaned on the frame. "Twice in two days. People will talk." "You went pale when I read that notebook," Elena said. "You knew what she saw. Tell me." Raven stepped close. Her eyes moved over Elena's face. "You really do have her eyes. She used to look at me exactly like that when she wanted something." "Don't." Elena held her ground. "Every time I ask, you flirt. You steer me off. My mother is gone, and you're playing." Raven's smile stayed, but it thinned. "Maybe I like having you in my doorway." Elena reached out and lifted the locket from Raven's chest. Raven's hand shot up to stop her, then froze. Elena opened the clasp. Inside sat a small photo of her mother, young, laughing. The game left Raven's face. She sat down hard on the step. "I loved her," Raven said. "Years. She never knew, or pretended not to. I kept this after she vanished." She closed her hand over the locket. "That's why I couldn't open her pack. That's why I flirt with you. It's easier than saying that out loud." Elena knelt in front of her. "Then tell me the rest. What did she see?" Raven looked toward the treeline. "The week before she went in, she came here shaking. She said she saw a man at the edge of the trees. Too tall. Gray skin, like old stone. Long arms, fingers like hooks. No face she could name." Elena went still. "A man." "She said it stood and watched the cabin for an hour. It never moved." Raven's voice dropped. "The next day she saw it again. But this time it had a face. Her own face. It smiled at her like a mirror." Cold spread through Elena's chest. The notebook words. It wears our faces. "She started sleeping out here, on my floor," Raven said. "She was terrified it would come inside. Then one morning she took the pack and walked into Blackwood anyway. To face it, she said. She never came back." Elena stood slowly. She finally had it. Not a lost hiker. Something waiting in those trees had marked her mother, worn her mother's face, drawn her in. "Why didn't you tell the police?" Elena asked. "I did." Raven met her eyes. "They wrote nothing down. Ask Miriam Finch why." Elena looked at the dark line of trees. Her mother had walked in to meet the thing that copied her. Now Elena knew its shape. And she knew where the buried truth was hidden next.