“Be careful,” says Brenda.
“I will.” I need to be: there’s a witch somewhere near here who enjoys prisoning ghosts in glass, and I’m in Mill Hollow. Every mirror in this town is a danger to me. I also don’t need to be careful, because all the mirrors in this theater are already being used. Can’t cram more than one ghost into the same glass without cracking it. That’s why mirrors can be uncovered after a little time has passed between the funeral and the taking down. If a ghost was going to wander by, they’re already in there.
It’s dark in the lobby without Brenda, but I know this building like I know my own hand, and I’m dead: I’m not afraid of the dark. I walk, quick and sure, to the manager’s office, and pause before reaching for the doorknob, taking a moment to close my eyes and sniff the air. It still smells of the green. Brenda isn’t in this room, and yet it still smells of the green, of the cornfield, roots in the earth and ears in the sky. Something isn’t right.
The door isn’t locked. I twist the knob until it clicks, the latch letting go and allowing me to step through. It’s no surprise, somehow, to find that the back wall is gone, leaving a gaping hole that looks out on the vast stretch of tangled grass and incipient swampland behind the theater. There were big development plans for all this, once. The people who owned the theater were going to sit on the land until Mill Hollow became the booming coal town it was always meant to be, and then they were going to sell big and profitable, retire on the proceeds to someplace fancy and far away, like Ann Arbor.
I always knew that was a lie. Even if they could have sold—even if the price of coal had continued to rise and the mine had suddenly become twice as successful as it had ever been, even when it was bright and new and the environmental groups hadn’t started sniffing around—they would never have been able to leave Mill Hollow. Only the young ever really left, and half of them still came creeping back, tails between their legs, unable to put the shadow of the mountain and the memory of ghosts in glass aside.
That’s what I always expected Patty to do. That’s why I was sad but not afraid when she left me behind. And now here I am, forty years gone, and the field’s still here, because the boom never came; the boom is never coming, not here.
There’s something wrong with the grass. I take a step outside, and another, and another, until I’m standing in what should be kudzu and brush, and somehow it towers around me, taller than I am, blocking out the sky. Corn. I’m standing in a sea of corn, stalks rustling as far as the eye can see, and everything is green, blocking out even the smell of the Hollow itself. No no no. This isn’t right. This isn’t real. This isn’t—
“I thought I told you to stay in Manhattan, Jenna.” Danny’s voice is soft and apologetic. I turn and there he is, standing behind me with his hands jammed into his pockets and an apologetic look on his face, like he can’t believe he has to do this. “You weren’t supposed to be here. You were never supposed to be here.”
“Danny.” There’s no surprise in my voice, no relief, only dull acknowledgement. I’ve known he was in Mill Hollow since he called my apartment. It only makes sense that he would be here now. “What’s going on? Where are all the other ghosts?”
“You’re about to find out.” The voice is unfamiliar, but when I look toward it, the face is one I almost know. Her chin is rounder than Brenda’s, her forehead higher and her ears smaller, but she has her mother’s eyes, and her mother’s tight, thin-lipped mouth. There’s a mirror in her hand. I recognize it from Patty’s vanity, many years and not so many miles from here.
Then she holds it up, and the glass is big enough to swallow the world, and everything is gone. Even the corn.
12: By the Birchwood Bed
Piece by piece and sliver by sliver, I come back to myself, piecing mind and memory together one shard at a time. It feels like I’m trying to do a jigsaw made entirely of broken glass, all without opening my eyes, but I’m managing it. With every piece that slides into place, a bit more of who I am comes back into the light, until finally, I find the piece that is my eyes, and I open them on a world gone silver.
It’s not the monochrome of being insubstantial; it’s gilded, covered in a layer of gleaming metallic light, like the world has been dipped in glitter. I raise my hand, holding it in front of my face. It isn’t there. There isn’t even a glow. It’s like I’ve been wiped from reality, even though I’m still here, still thinking, still feeling, still aware of my surroundings. Everything is silent, motionless. With my deletion from the world, even when I move, nothing else does.
With dim horror, I realize what’s happened.