Mr. Echo's Arc

Chapter 7 of 25

The path north climbed through thin pines. Mr. Echo walked at the front with the loaded box against his chest. Kate walked behind. Two Bunnymen guides padded ahead, quiet on the needles. The elders had warned him of a closed door on this path. He did not know where it lay. He only knew that if he led the guides past it blind, they would step into whatever waited on the other side. He had to find the door before the door found them. He stopped at a flat stretch and knelt. The little ghost girl slid off his shoulder and stood in the pine straw, waiting. "A closed door," he said to her. "On this trail. Somewhere ahead. Can you find it?" She shook her head. She did not know. But she pointed up the slope, where a small pale shape drifted between two trunks. Another ghost. A round, drifting one, no bigger than a lamp. A hill ghost, thin from the peak's hunger. It watched him with wet eyes and did not come closer. Mr. Echo set the box in the dirt. He did not press the lever. The sound inside was for the pale woman, not for a child. Instead he tapped the lid, the same rhythm the Bunnyman had taught him. Three light, one heavy. He tapped it again. The hill ghost drifted one tree closer. He held out his palm, empty. The little girl at his knee copied the tap on the ground. The hill ghost came down the slope and stopped an arm's length away. "There is a door on this path," Mr. Echo said, slow. "Closed. The rabbits are afraid of it. Show me where." The hill ghost turned in the air. It drifted uphill along the trail, then stopped and looked back. He followed. Kate followed him. The guides came last, ears flat. They passed a leaning pine, a stump, a bare patch. The hill ghost stopped at a place where the trail bent left around a boulder. It pointed at the boulder. Then at the ground in front of the boulder. Then it faded. Mr. Echo crouched. The pine needles lay in a neat curve, too neat, brushed flat in a half circle. He picked up a pebble and rolled it onto the flat place. The pebble sank without sound. No thump. No skitter. He drew his hand back. There it was, the shape of a door in the dirt, closed against the living. One more step and the lead guide would have dropped through. He marked the edge with a line of salt from Kate's pouch and stepped the party wide around it. The guides breathed out. Above the pines, a thin bright moon watched with a woman's face. She had not caught them yet. But she now knew where they were.