Outside, a face presses itself against the glass.
I shriek again.
He grins.
Peter, my brain tells me. It’s Peter. I consider for a moment whether that makes me feel safer or not. I don’t trust him, but unlike the people in town, he doesn’t seem to want to hurt me. He did find me shelter, as he promised. And maybe he can help me find a way home, even though he and Claire said he couldn’t. I open the door.
He’s leaning against the door frame, arms crossed, which makes his muscles bulge. He pushed my car to town without breaking a sweat, so I shouldn’t be surprised that he looks strong enough to lift me over his head and twirl me like I’m a ballerina. But still, I stare at him. He’s nearly too beautiful to be real. He’s also grinning at me as if I’ve done something monumentally amusing. “Little pig, little pig, let me come in.”
“Didn’t you just leave?” I ask.
“I got bored.”
“You know it ruins a dramatic exit if you return a half hour later.”
“Next time, I’ll leave in a puff of smoke,” he promises.
I step out of the house onto the porch. “Did you see Claire— Wait, can you do that? The puff of smoke thing?” I don’t mean to be distracted when Claire could be in danger, but he seems so casually earnest.
“Water vapor, actually.”
“Really?”
“No. Sadly, I have no puffing abilities whatsoever. Told you, all I do is find people.”
“Can you find Claire?” And the Missing Man. And a way home.
“Not unless she’s lost in the void.” He scans the yard and the houses beyond. “She knows to be careful. Have faith in her.” But I think I hear a note of doubt in his voice. Or maybe that’s me, projecting my own fear onto what I hear. In a singsong voice, he adds, “‘All the world is made of faith, trust, and pixie dust.’ Except our dust is not exactly pixie dust.”
I listen to the wind cross the desert, stirring up brambles in the loose dirt. It’s still warm. I sit at the edge of the porch and stare out into the darkness. I wish I dared turn the porch light on, to force back the encroaching shadows. “She was hungry. Who takes care of her here? And the other kids in town?”
“You ask the wrong questions.” Peter steps up onto the porch railing. He walks along it, balancing, and it creaks under his weight. Any second it will snap. Before it can, he reaches up, grabs the gutter overhead, and swings forward to land catlike on the ground.
“How do I go home?”
“Better. But still not quite it.”
“How do I find what I lost?”
“Close.”
I want to yell at Peter, shake him until he tells me how to go home. But I don’t want to alienate the only person with answers who’s willing to talk to me. “So tell me. What should I be asking?”
He scoops a button off the ground and tosses it into the air. It’s a black disc that winks in the moonlight. “You could ask why the caged bird sings. Or what is in a name? ‘That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’” He catches the button.
Breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Stay calm. He might not even know how absolutely infuriating he is. Gorgeous, yes, but infuriating. “Where did you find Mr. Rabbit?”
“You know that’s a highly unoriginal name.”
“Can you just try to answer a question? Any question?”
“Granted, it’s more dignified than Mr. Bunny.”
I peer into the darkness for any hint of movement. She’s just a kid. I shouldn’t have let her wander off. I picture everything that could have happened to her: tripped over junk in the dark and broke her ankle; found by hungry feral dogs and ripped to bits; lost in the dark...or more lost. Lost in Lost. She knows this place better than I do, I think. My bumbling around after her won’t help. “Claire?” I call softly, knowing it won’t work.
She bounds out of the darkness like a happy puppy. Her arms are full of shoebox-size boxes. School lunch boxes. “Peter!” Her voice is full of joy. Running to him, she dumps the boxes into his arms, and then she skips over to me. He dramatically mimes being wounded by this quick rejection. She doesn’t see. “Entire school bus with backpacks and lunch boxes!”
“Great,” I say, and in the light of the moon, I see her smile. She has the ideal kid smile, one missing front tooth and one fat grown-up tooth, recently grown. Her cheeks puff up round like she’s a chipmunk with nuts. “Where are the kids?”
“What kids?”
“From the bus. The bus must have had kids that owned those lunch boxes.”
She shrugs. “Not in the bus.” She pauses. “But I bet they’re hungry.” She skips after Peter. I follow them inside and shut the door. Instantly, it’s darker. I widen my eyes as if that will help me see better, and I find the dead bolt by feel and slide it locked.
I wish there were more locks.
I wait in the hallway for my eyes to adjust. After a minute, I can see the shadows of furniture, a hint of the staircase, the dark holes that are the doorways. Feeling along the wall, I follow the sounds of Peter’s and Claire’s voices to the dining room, and I wonder if I should do something about a busload of kids who might or might not be here somewhere. I picture them scared and shivering in the cool desert night. I picture them shuffling off the bus as zombies. And I decide that since I can’t do anything about them and since I have zero evidence that this place has zombies, I refuse to worry about it.
The dining room is bathed in blue shadows. Over the table, the chandelier is a tangle of glass that catches the stray bits of pale blue moonlight. Peter dumps the lunch boxes on the dining room table—there are at least half a dozen. He and Claire rifle through them.
“Where did all this come from?” I ask.
“Told you,” Claire says, chewing. “School bus.”
“I mean, all the lost things. This place.” You. Me.
“From the void,” Peter answers, as if this were obvious.
“But what is the void? Do you mean the dust storm on the highway? It’s not just a storm, is it? Where did it come from? Is it always there? Why have I never heard of it, of Lost, of Finders and Missing Men? None of this should exist.” And I shouldn’t be here.
“Eat,” Peter says, not unkindly.
“But...”
“I don’t know,” Claire says. “But the void is real. I think.”
“It’s a servant of despair,” Peter says, “and it will destroy you if it can.”
“And you?” I ask. “What are you?”
“A servant of hope.” He bows but there’s no mocking in his voice or his eyes. In fact, he looks sad, an ancient kind of sad, as if he carries the weight of a century’s sorrow.
I don’t know what to say to that insanity. So I turn to Claire. Scooting past me, Claire selects a Disney princess lunch box and scurries to one corner. She tucks herself into the shadows, and I hear the snaps open on the box. I don’t know how she can see what she’s eating, or why she doesn’t sit at the table or closer to the window.
Maybe she’s used to hiding as she eats.
I try to imagine what her life has been like here, surrounded by madness, and I can’t. Near as I can tell, she’s been on her own, scavenging for herself, taking care of herself, with only Peter as an older brother figure. I don’t know what she’s had to do or how difficult it has been.
Crossing to the table to join them, I bump into one of the chairs. I push it aside. It’s coated in dust, and I wipe my palms on my pants before I pick up a Spider-Man box, open it, and feel around inside. One squishy sandwich. One limp banana. A plastic bag full of soft orbs, either old grapes or eyeballs. I shut the box.
Less hungry, I open a second box and feel a sealed package. Aha! Crackers? Maybe a package of crackers and cheese, or fake cheese since I doubt that orange goop has ever encountered a cow even in a former life. I tear open the package and test a cracker, nibbling at its edge. It’s actually a pretzel chip with a tiny cup of hummus, also sealed air-tight. Sliding into one of the dining room chairs, I eat a dinner that would probably appall my mother, even though it’s healthier than some of the dinners I ate in college. Mom is the sort of person known to slip pureed squash into brownie mixture. She’s been worse since...lately. Thinking about her makes the cracker taste like cardboard in my mouth. Peter continues to sort through the boxes. He tosses items over his shoulder. They splat on the floor.