Chapter 27
"Help me."
It didn't cry.
It whispered.
Like it knew Lila's name before she ever had one. Like it had been waiting in the cradle of roots and ash not for a savior—but for a witness.
Lila jerked her hand back.
The baby blinked slowly. One eye was wet. The other dry and sunken, like it had wept for a thousand years and finally stopped believing it would ever be held.
Olivia stood across from her, fingers wrapped around a spine-thin candle. "Do you know what she is?"
Lila didn't answer.
Couldn't.
Because she did know.
She knew it in the hollow of her stomach. In the pit that opened inside her when the world first began to crack. In the way the roots moved beneath the motel floor. In the way Henry screamed as if something ancient had torn his soul from the inside out.
She knew this child.
She had made her.
Not with love.
But with grief.
—
"She's not alive," Lila said.
"No," Olivia agreed. "But she remembers what it feels like."
The baby watched her.
Unblinking.
Unmoving.
The room grew colder.
A memory bloomed like frost.
—
They were back in the field.
Not as it had looked in ruin—but as it had been before.
Green. Wild. Full of tall grass and distant thunder.
Lila was nine. Henry was twelve. Olivia was somewhere between them, always hard to pin down, even then.
They were chasing fireflies.
And then—
A flash of light that wasn't lightning.
The air split.
The ground opened.
And something whispered from the soil:
"Feed me."
Only Olivia had heard it.
Only Olivia had obeyed.
—
"I didn't want to remember," Lila whispered. "I didn't want any of this."
"You didn't want to hurt," Olivia said. "But you did anyway."
Lila turned on her. "Why are you showing me this?"
"Because the forgetting is killing us," Olivia said. "One by one. It's always been her price."
"Then why not let her die?"
"Because she's not the only one inside that cradle."
Lila froze.
"What?"
"Henry's in there too," Olivia whispered.
"No."
"He didn't just die. He was taken."
Lila felt something break.
Like a mirror cracking beneath too much weight.
—
She looked back at the cradle.
The baby had changed.
Its features shifting. Sharpening. Fading.
Now it looked a little like Henry.
But not the real him.
A warped memory of him.
His hair a shade too dark. His nose wrong. His smile twisted just slightly at the edges.
"What is this?" Lila choked.
"It's grief," Olivia said. "Given a body. A name. A hunger."
"No," Lila shook her head. "This is something else."
"It's you," Olivia whispered. "What you buried. What you left behind when you chose to live."
—
The baby began to cry.
Not loud.
Not shrill.
Just… hollow.
Empty.
Like a sound you could fall into and never reach the bottom.
Lila covered her ears.
But the cry wasn't in her ears.
It was in her blood.
—
She stumbled back from the cradle.
Away from Olivia.
Up the stone steps.
Back into the library.
Back into the world above.
She ran.
Through the school halls.
Past James' body.
Through the parking lot.
Past the church where Henry bled.
She ran until her knees gave out.
Until the sky opened up.
And still, she heard the cry.
—
That night, Lila didn't sleep.
She sat in the field where the house used to be.
The same spot where Henry had once kissed her for the first time.
Where he had said:
"When this is over, we'll go somewhere quiet."
But there was no quiet now.
Only the cry.
The remembering.
The pain of knowing you loved someone so much that their death didn't end them—only changed the shape of your sorrow.
And that sorrow… had become flesh.
—
Lila looked up at the stars.
But even they had started to dim.
Like the sky was tired of pretending too.
Like it knew—
The end was not coming.
It had already arrived.
And they were still pretending to be alive inside it.