Something terrible.

He turned, but he was alone this time. No lounging vision of Emily Sweet. Her absence made the whole world emptier.

From the darkness of the tunnel, a faint rasping. A movement sound, but indistinct and wrong, like snakes squirming across one another in dark pits, like the slow inhale of some huge beast. His fear was childlike in its perfection. It seized him completely. He wanted to run. Told himself to run. To turn and flee, feet splashing through the trickle of water in this lost basin.

Instead he took a tentative step forward.

I don’t want to. Please don’t go in there, don’t, stop . . . He took another step forward. His hands were heavy. The rasping again. His skin was too tight for his bones. His

breath came fast.

Run! Don’t go in there, don’t go in there, don’tgointhere— Something moved in the darkness of the tunnel. A shape his eyes

couldn’t fix, a swirling. Madness made physical.

Runrunrunrunru—

The darkness leapt at him. He threw himself back, arms and legs flailing, foot cracking into the side window of the BMW hard enough to set off the car alarm. A screaming horn yanked him upright, eyes wide, heart slamming against his ribs, hands fists and armpits sweaty as he stared around, placed himself, the car, the backseat of the car with the alarm going off, the cacophony hideous, the alarm screaming look at me look at me look at me until he fumbled for his keys, finally found them, stabbed the button. The horn died mid-honk.

“Fuck,” he said, gasping. “Fuck me.” Sunlight pounded in the windows, and his skin was sticky. He flopped back against the seat.

Sleep was becoming more trouble than it was worth. What were these dreams, this feeling of a terrible looming danger? Was it just his subconscious painting a picture of his situation? Electrical signals bouncing around the inside of his very confused brain? Or did it mean more than that?

Something must have caused all of this. Something set him in motion. No matter who he had been, he couldn’t believe he just woke up one morning and decided to drive across the country to drown himself.

He closed his eyes, tried to concentrate on the world he’d just left. He remembered a tunnel and an abandoned place. A darkness that loomed. But the details were melting away even as he tried to hold them. He could invent reasons for being there, but that’s all they were, inventions, and he couldn’t be more certain of them than of anything else.

Maybe I did something horrible. Maybe that’s why I don’t want to go back.

Daniel rubbed at his eyes, listened to the settling beat of his heart. He’d made some distance last night, all the way from rural Maine to rural New York, long blank stretches of night country briefly broken by shimmering cities. Somewhere east of Buffalo his chin had hit his chest for a second time, and so he’d pulled off into this hideous parking lot of a KOA campground. RVs hunched on concrete pads, electrical cords trailing to junction boxes. Amazing how ugly much of the country was.

We had the whole wide world, and the best we could come up with was McDonald’s and miniature golf.

He sat up, pushed open the car door, and went in search of the bathrooms.

Back on the road, he kept to the speed limit. Daniel figured he was safe so long as he avoided notice. He’d swapped plates again last night, trading the stolen Maine plates for freshly stolen New York ones. And the cops couldn’t stop every BMW on the road. He should be safe.

Simple as that, huh? So let me ask you, genius. You woke up without your memory once. What if it happens again?

Shit.

Shit.

Another thing. Money. His remaining cash wouldn’t even cover gas to Los Angeles. Plus he had a thing about eating, wanted to keep doing it.

Okay, well, so. No one said it would be easy. He’d have to be smart.

He spent the day sliding down the spine of Lake Erie, then across the flat, bland plains of Ohio into Indiana. Somewhere outside South Bend, as the sky began to sadden, he left the highway for a grungy strip of retailers, car dealerships, and gas stations. There was a drugstore beside an Applebee’s. Daniel bought himself a school-lined notebook and a pack of pens, then went next door. Bypassed the chipper teenage hostess and took a seat at the bar, a gaudy mess of Christmas lights and televisions tuned to sports. A guy who looked like he’d sampled a few too many appetizers took his order.

“A,” flipping through the menu, “steakhouse burger with everything. Rare.” Saying it with confidence this time.

“Something to drink?”

Daniel stared at the taps. God, a beer would be good. Money, though. He should save—“Yeah, gimme a tall Sam Adams.”

He uncapped the pen. How to start?

Simple. Start with what you were trying to say. That was the secret to writing. Daniel bent over the page:

Hi.

Your name is Daniel Hayes. At least, you think it is. That’s the name you found on the insurance card of a BMW that saved your life. And in case you haven’t yet guessed, I’m you.

Let me back up. This starts with you waking on a beach in Maine, naked and very, very cold . . .

His burger arrived, and he ate one-handed, not noticing the taste, getting lost in the process of telling his story so far. He’d only intended the journal in case his memory went on the fritz again, but as he wrote, he found that he was enjoying himself. There was a strange pleasure in stringing sentences together, in trying to evoke the scene as fully as possible with the fewest number of words. Something trance-like about it, and therapeutic, too—

“You look familiar.”

Daniel blinked, looked up. The woman sitting next to him had a white blouse and real estate agent hair. He hadn’t noticed her arrival, wondered how long she’d been sitting there. “I do?”

“Yeah. I can’t put my finger on why, though.”

“Me either.”

“Maybe you just have one of those faces.” She reached into her

purse, pulled out a pack of Parliaments. “You mind?”

“Nope.”

“Want one?” She held the pack out.

Huh. Do I smoke? “Thanks.” The cigarette felt natural between his

fingers. She cupped a match and he leaned into it, then took a deep drag.

His throat caught fire. A thick wave of smoke bellowed out of his mouth. His eyes teared as he coughed and struggled not to gag.

Apparently not.

5

Massive steel mills blasted flame into the night like something out of Blade Runner. Gary, Indiana, Chicago’s reeking stepson—cracked earth fronting twisted mazes of pipes and smokestacks. One of them had a Christmas tree on top.

Nothing quite as festive as toxic waste.

Farther west, the south suburbs of Chicago were a blur of strip malls and big-box signs. Modern constellations; instead of gods and heroes, his sky was filled with Home Depot and Best Buy. The clock told him it was after midnight, though his own time sense had gotten skewed. Had it been less than twenty-four hours since the cop hammered on his door, bellowed his name with weapon drawn?