He shrugs on the coat, grimacing a little.

“I feel so gross right now,” he mumbles. The coat is big on him, big enough to cover the T-shirt, probably too big to look natural, but it’s all we have to work with. He rolls up the sleeves.

“Sorry,” I say.

“Well?” he says, adjusting the cap on his head. “How do I look?”

I look him up and down, surprised by the difference a few small changes make. In the coat and hat, Jacob could almost pass for an old-fashioned boy.

I glance from the photo of Richard to Jacob.

“One more thing,” I say. Then I drag my hand along the top of a low stack of bones and wipe the dirt along his cheeks.

Jacob grits his teeth. “Did you seriously just wipe dead-people dirt on me?”

The resemblance isn’t perfect, of course.

But it might just be enough.

It better be, because I’m running out of options.

And out of time.

My vision is beginning to swim a little, and I know I’ve been down here too long.

“You owe me so many comics,” Jacob says, but the joke is thin, and I can tell he’s unsettled. Even scared. I forget, sometimes, that so much of Jacob’s fear is an act, made to make me feel braver.

Seeing him genuinely afraid is, well, terrifying.

I tell Jacob the rest of my plan, then point to the nearest tower of bones.

The skulls form a wavy band every two feet, grinning out at us with empty eyes. I use them as a handhold, and Jacob laces his fingers and gives me a leg up, helping me hoist myself onto the top of the wall. That’s how I think of it. A wall. Not a stack of femurs and skulls, the bones shifting dangerously under my weight. Nope. Just a wall. A place to crouch, to hide, to wait. The ceiling overhead is low and damp, and I cringe as it brushes the top of my head, try not to think too hard about any of it.

From this angle, Jacob’s face is hidden by his borrowed cap, and it’s not hard to imagine he’s someone else. A boy looking for his little brother.

“Thomas!” he calls out, voice ringing through the tunnels.

Thomas … Thomas …

For a long moment, nothing happens.

“Thomas?”

… Thomas … Thomas …

And then.

The little boy comes out of nowhere. He doesn’t peer around a corner, doesn’t come running. One second, Jacob is alone in the tunnel. The next, he’s not.

Jacob doesn’t see him, not at first.

He’s got his back to the boy as he calls into the dark.

“Thomas!”

… Thomas … Thomas …

The boy tilts his head, confused, and the red light in his eyes flickers once, like a shorting bulb, but then comes back. He takes a step forward, then stops when his foot comes down on the slip of paper. One of the photographs I’ve scattered through this stretch of tunnel like bread crumbs, meant to lead a lost boy home.

I watch as Thomas crouches and picks up the photo. He stares at the shot of Richard with his hand on his little brother’s shoulder. His eyes narrow. The red light flickers again.

It’s working.

Jacob keeps walking, just like we agreed, and Thomas follows.

The bones beneath me dig into my palms as I creep forward.

Thomas kneels, picking up another photograph. And another. And another. The red light around him weakens with each slip of paper. Each memory.

I keep crawling, trying to keep pace as he makes his way toward Jacob.

The front layer of the wall is rigid beneath me, the bones locked to form a rough but stable structure. But the piles behind that facade are nothing but stacks of rotting old bones, so I’m careful to stay on the narrow strip of solid ground.

Up ahead, the tunnel ends.

Jacob stops, lifts one hand to the bones that bar his way, and then turns back.

I can’t see his face, but his whole body stiffens in surprise at the sight of the boy clutching those old photos. Either he’s a better actor than I thought, or he genuinely didn’t hear Thomas coming up behind him.

“Thomas,” he says, and I can hear him fighting to keep his voice steady.

Hold on, I think as the air coils nervously around Thomas.

“Richard?”

Thomas’s voice is quiet, uncertain.

Jacob holds out his hand, and Thomas is about to reach for it. The red light in his eyes is almost gone, and I’m almost there when my knee comes down on a brittle bone— And the bone snaps. Not enough for me to slip, but the sound rings out through the dark like a branch breaking in a silent forest.

Thomas twists away from Jacob, the red light surging back into his eyes. I cut sideways, out of his sight, and into the deeper dark.

Too late, I realize my mistake.

Too late, all my weight shifts from the stable wall to the stack of rotting bones.

Too late, and the pile gives way, crumbling like ash beneath me, and I’m falling down, down, down into the dark.

There are many kinds of dark.

There’s the warm, reddish dark you see when you close your eyes.

There’s the rich dark of a movie theater, the audience lit only by the screen.

And then there’s the true dark of lightless spaces underground, places where the black is so thick you can’t see your own hands. Can’t see the lines of your body. Can’t see any of the things you know are there with you in the dark.

This is that kind of dark.

I cough, my lungs filling with ash and soot. Something digs into my side. And for a moment, all I can think is, This is how he died. Thomas, buried by bones.

But I’m still alive.

I’m still alive.

Even if I can’t see.

And then I remember my phone. I scramble to pull it out—there’s no service down here, but I don’t need to make a call. I just need some light. I turn the phone on and activate its built-in flashlight. The world around me bursts into glaring white light. The sight is … unpleasant. I’m on my back at the bottom of the hole, the edges above me flaking with dust. I get to my hands and knees, trying to hold my breath against the plume of death and decay as I swing the phone’s light. The hole isn’t deep, maybe four feet. I can reach up, curl my fingers back over the edge, but the crumbling bones are soft in places, sharp in others. And every time I move, the air fills with things I don’t want to breathe, don’t want to think about.

“Cassidy!” calls Jacob, his voice tight with panic.

“I’m all right!” I call back.

“Well, I’m not!”

I look around, nothing but darkness on three sides, but the wall of femurs and skulls on my left. When I press my eye to the gaps, I can see Jacob, lined with red light as his arms wrap tightly around Thomas, pinning the boy back against him.

Thomas thrashes, trying to twist free. The air around him ripples and glows red, and the whole tunnel begins to shake as the crimson light spreads over everything, splitting across the floor, the ceiling, and the walls of bone.

The poltergeist is angry.

I reach up, trying to haul myself out of the hole, but I can’t get a grip. The sides of the hole slough away, dirt and dust and gritty stuff coming away in my hands. I can hear the sound of footsteps, the shuffle of feet, and I have the unsettling feeling that soon, we won’t be alone in this section of the tunnel.

“Cass!” yelps Jacob.

“Hold on!” I call back, turning in a slow circle, trying to figure out what to do. I try to wedge my shoe in a gap, but it’s no use. Up is out of the question.

The whole ground begins to shake with the force of Thomas’s displeasure. Even the wall of bones to my left begins to tremble and shift.

Dad has a saying: The only way out is through.

I slam my shoulder into the wall, feel it shudder and slip. I hit it again, biting back a jolt of pain as the whole wall bows and leans, and finally tips and tumbles.

And falls.

The tunnel fills with the shattering sound as hundreds of dry bones crash against the dirt and stone. I spill out, coughing ash, tripping as I try to wade through the shallow tide of bones.

Jacob looks at me, eyes wide, the word unspoken but clear.

Hurry.

His hair floats in the air around him, his own eyes bright, as the boy in his arms screams and twists and fights to get free.

But Jacob doesn’t let go.

I start toward them, ash dusting my skin, the mirror clenched in my hand as the walls of bone on either side sway and threaten to fall. But Thomas’s eyes are still red, the photographs whipped up and torn by the whirlwind around him.

And my heart sinks, because I’ve tried everything, and Thomas still hasn’t found his way back. Still hasn’t remembered.

I don’t know what to do.

But in the end, I’m not the one who does it.

Jacob’s arms tighten on Thomas, and he says, “C’est finit.”

I remember us back in the hotel room, sitting on the floor as Adele told the story of what happened to the brothers that night.

Richard called out, “Thomas, c’est finit”—“it’s over”—but there was no answer, except for his own voice, echoing in the tunnels.

The red light flickers in Thomas’s eyes.

The tunnel shudders, and I fight to stay on my feet. Bones crash around us, brittle as glass.