We trudge through it to reach the gate.
There, we discover that the broken chain on the fence has been replaced with a much thicker one, along with a more sturdy lock, a gold one, shiny new and too solid to get through without a big hammer. The top of the gate is still woven with coils of barbed wire, but Fiona is undeterred. I expect her to hoist herself up on the chain link and climb over—because how would the barbed wire cut through smoke, if that’s what she’s made of? How would it cut through a ghost, a memory, an idea? But she won’t do it. She says we’ll have to find another way in.
After maneuvering over a snowbank and circling widely past the first set of trees, we do find another entrance.
Really, the whole pine forest is an entrance. We come in through the back way, past the offices and a maintenance shed made of gray concrete blocks.
There are prints in the snow leading up to its door, there are prints to the compost pile, and there are prints heading into the darkened woods, but Fiona waves at me from far up the path.
I’m slow.
Fiona isn’t cold, but I am, and then, like it’s been left out for me to find, I discover my own scarf lying in a knot in the snowy path—I must have dropped it weeks ago, though I don’t remember walking this particular path at the edges of the campground. So how would I have dropped it here? It doesn’t matter, because I pick it up and shake off the snow and wrap it twice around my neck.
And it helps, a little.
It won’t be so cold soon, Fiona tells me, making me shiver. I can’t help but wonder if she means it won’t be so cold after you die. If it’s warm and snug when it’s over, and the star-shine glowing down over you warms your skin. If that’s what she’s telling me. If that’s really what’s about to happen tonight.
I follow her along a path and up a hill, made more difficult by the container of kerosene we discover and liberate from under a tarp near the firewood. She makes me carry the kerosene to the circle of stones, so we can build ourselves a fire. It’s what will bring them out the quickest, she says. A fire, she says, to smoke out Abby and the rest of the girls.
A fire, like she was pointing to in the hospital. Fiona Burke has always wanted a fire.
I’m following her and doing what she tells me to do—just like that night when I was a kid. But also, I know she’s right.
I’ve seen the girls in reflective surfaces: mirrors and windows, and once in the exceptionally clean surface of a fork from the dishwasher. And I’ve seen the girls in small spaces, where they emerge only if no one’s looking, and in the trees, where the shadows make good places to hide. But I don’t know how being out in the open, with the pine forest all around and no roof above, will let them know it’s safe to emerge. The only other way is the flicker of flame, the mask and smell of smoke. That’s why we have to do it, Fiona says.
Once we do, they’ll be lured out, and so will their stories. I think of them like apples bobbing to the surface of water, though these are real girls, and real girls’ heads. Soon, families and friends will have closure. Mysteries will be untied and left out in the sun for the finding. I’ll mourn every last one of them, hoping against hope I’m wrong.
And Abby Sinclair, the girl my thoughts keep returning to. The one girl whose end I can’t see. Her story starts here, on this closed-off tract of land in the pines. She’ll have to step out of the woods once the fire starts. How could she ignore us now?