Tanya stirred. She was chilly and still cloaked in darkness. She wished to remain there. She couldn't remember what awaited her when she woke, only that it was something horrible. Her eyes were forcing themselves open, even as she tried to keep them shut. When they did open, confusion replaced her dread. She didn't recognize the place as hers, but it was slightly familiar. She hugged her chest to stave off the chilliness, but the effort proved futile. To her relief, her hands were hers again. There was no itch and no strange textures. She started to sit up.
"Take it easy," a voice she only sort of recognized said.
She finished sitting and looked in the speaker's direction. There was something icy in the gaze of the woman on the couch, but she also had a new aura of power about her. She was sitting up straight, shoulders squared. Her stillness was so complete yet so at ease that even a nearby explosion would be unlikely to shake her. It was almost Zen.
"Vanessa," Tanya said. "How did …"
"I'm not entirely sure myself."
Tanya spotted the crossbow laid across Vanessa's lap and got a flash of a memory.
"Wait. Did you shoot me?"
Vanessa held up the bow as if to say, oh, this old thing?
"I had to stop you from—"
Another memory, more sudden, more stinging.
"Oh, shit. Athena!"
"She's resting, but she'll be okay."
Tanya pressed her hands to her head. "I can't believe I tried to kill her."
"It wasn't you."
"It was my hands," Tanya said, holding them out for Vanessa to see.
"That thing at the end of your arm was not your hand."
Tanya laughed dryly, remembering the mutation. "Yeah, I guess you have a point." Her teeth chattered, and she rubbed her arms again.
"Here, let me get you a blanket."
Vanessa grabbed an Afghan draped across the back of the couch and put it around Tanya's shoulders.
"Thanks." Tanya pulled the blanket tightly around her torso. Vanessa sat back down and picked up the crossbow. "So, what now?" Tanya asked.
Vanessa looked at something on the wall. Tanya followed her gaze but saw nothing other than cream-painted stucco. She didn't like the faraway look in Vanessa's eyes. She got the impression the other woman saw something she couldn't.
"What is it?" she asked.
Vanessa faced her. "We can rest here for a bit, but we can't stay long. I unplugged all the electronics, but that doesn't mean they can't find us."
Vanessa's words trampled over Tanya as she tried to make sense of them.
"Wait, what?"
"That shit that made your hand change? It came from a TV or something, right?"
Tanya recalled her and Athena's visit to Frank's apartment. Not even twenty-four hours had passed, yet so much had happened since. It should've felt like a long time ago, but she was all too keenly aware how recently it happened. The change may as well have come from the flip of a switch. And somehow …
"How did you know?" she asked.
"Same way I got here."
"You're not sure."
Vanessa started to nod but stopped herself. "I'll tell you what happened, but you probably won't believe me, and you can't expect me to understand the how of it all."
"I'd believe almost anything at this point. As far as how … well, try me."
Vanessa told her about Restless Void popping up on her laptop, how she spilled into the game, or the game spilled into her world, forcing her to pass through some nightmare version of space and reemerge in Tanya's house through some weird goop in her shower stall.
"That's the same ooze that changed my hand," Tanya said. "Is it playing both sides?"
"Assuming there are sides."
Tanya's head started to hurt. She felt again like Vanessa's words were trampling her.
Vanessa then went on to tell her about the messages popping up everywhere and what they told her to do.
"My parents saw you?"
"Yeah, and your mother seemed to … understand somehow."
Vanessa seemed baffled by this detail, but to Tanya, it made sense right away.
"Uncle Bentley," she said.
"Who?"
"My mother's twin. The one who—"
"Disappeared. That's right."
"Oh, man. If this has something to do with that … What's going on?"
"I don't know. I just knew I had to get here and stop you from doing something terrible."
Vanessa spoke so coolly, even though everything she said only unsettled Tanya further.
"Like killing my best friend."
"Like that."
Tanya turned it all over in her mind. Her gaze drifted to Vanessa's lap, to the oddest detail in a scenario full of odd details, but an important one nonetheless.
"Where'd you get the crossbow?"
Vanessa burst out laughing. Tanya joined her but nervously and stuttered. On one hand, it was good to know Vanessa still recognized how absurd and frightening this all was. On the other, she laughed way too hard considering the frightening circumstances. It made her sound like she'd lost her grip on reality.
"It was just waiting for me next to one of your parents' vehicles, outlined in neon, of course."
Then again, reality was a funny thing these days.
"Of course." Tanya forced out another laugh, but it sounded more like a cough. As Vanessa's last statement echoed through her, she felt a sudden pang. "Fuck. My parents. I need to call them."
Vanessa looked to the side as if ashamed of something.
"Yeah … about that …"
"What?"
"Remember when I said I unplugged all the electronics?"
"Yeah?"
"I might've also flushed your cell phone."
Tanya let the news settle over her. The accompanying numbness surprised her.
"Athena's too?" she asked with a deflating sigh.
"Athena's too."
"Fuck, Vanessa." Tanya groaned and clutched the blanket in her fists.
"Look, I couldn't take any chances."
"Let me guess: your weird wall words told you to do it?"
Vanessa shrugged one shoulder and gave Tanya a wry smile.
"And you just did what they told you?"
"What else could I do?"
Tanya searched Vanessa's face. In the other woman's eyes, she saw someone as uncertain as she was, and she imagined she would've done exactly as Vanessa had.
"Okay, so what do we do now? Did your weird wall words tell you?"
Vanessa nodded, but she didn't say anything at first. Several uncomfortable seconds passed. Tanya almost yelled, come on, out with it, but finally, Vanessa spoke.
"There's a town we need to visit called Avalon Lake."
Tanya blew out her breath. She thought the name should've sent a chill down her spine, but instead, she felt a sad resignation.
"In Texas, right?" she asked.
"So, you know it?"
"It's the last place where my Uncle Bentley said he was heading."
"Can you handle it?" Vanessa asked it without looking her in the eye.
"I can handle it just fine. We just can't go."
"Why not?"
Tanya remembered all the official reports she pored over while doing research for her first They Slipped Through video. This had to be a fever dream brought on by that slime. She was somewhere on the side of the road, crashed while driving to the hospital. Nothing she remembered after getting in her car had happened. It was pure fantasy.
Why can't we go to Avalon Lake?
"Because it doesn't exist."
"It does, and I know how to get there."
"How?"
"Same way I found you."
"Through the restless void."
Vanessa nodded. Tanya looked toward Athena's bedroom door.
"She'll be fine, but she can't come," Vanessa said. Tanya looked at her and frowned. "Because it's not her story."
"Not her story," she said under her breath, barely able to believe but having little choice. "So, assuming we get to Avalon Lake, what do we do then?"
Vanessa held up the crossbow. "Find the source of all this shit and send it back to hell."
Tanya laughed. "You sound awfully sure of yourself."
"Fake it 'til you make it."
"Yeah. Fake it."
Tanya entered Athena's room to see her friend lying in bed, eyes pinched closed. She contemplated approaching the bedside but suspected her prior attack had made Athena fear her. It was better not to risk it. She watched Athena sleep for what felt like both a long time and too short all at once. Vanessa put a hand on her shoulder and said it was time to go. All she could think of was the title for her video series on missing persons whose cases remained unsolved.
They Slipped Through.
She was slipping through, or maybe, she already had.
__________________________
The man who called himself Russell, a man only Tanya remembered from that night at the diner, watched them leave Athena's apartment. Beside him, the man who used to be Frank also watched the women go.
The woods, though thinning of leaves by the hour, still obscured them well enough. Nighttime helped too. It blanketed the parking lot and the brick rectangular buildings of the complex and deepened the shadows of the trees.
Without either man speaking, the Russell thing could tell the Frank thing wished to enter the apartment. Russell didn't need to be a mind reader either. He could see it in the way the vessel beside him stared at the building. It was as if Frank still lived somewhere in the altered flesh. It didn't matter if he did. Once someone had been changed, there was no changing back.
At least, that was how Russell understood things before he saw Tanya leaving the apartment with Vanessa. She had changed back. A part of him didn't like that at all. It made him feel like somewhere along the way someone had lied to him.
The women were nearly to the sewer channel on the opposite end of the lot. The Frank thing still hadn't taken his eyes from the apartment.
"Forget," Russell said.
His companion faced him, then followed his gaze. "Follow?"
"Follow."