“I was wondering if you still made those dream soundtracks.”
She was referring to my hobby of creating albums for movies I made up. It was just something I did. I didn’t know why. As a child I’d always been painfully shy, so terrified of speaking in class, my teachers often thought I had a stutter or a hearing problem. I began crafting pocket-sized books with lyrics and hand-drawn art for movies I wished existed, like the soundtrack to a hit teen vampire movie called Blood Academy. Or Dove Nova, the biopic of a Swedish teen pop star who vanished into thin air, her disappearance forever unsolved. There was no point to these albums. I couldn’t even explain why I made them, except that I liked to imagine they were artifacts of some other world that existed beyond the one we could see, a world where I wasn’t timid, and unsaid words didn’t collect in my mouth like marbles, and I was brave. They were my what-ifs, my glass menagerie, as Jim said.
One night freshman year during a snowstorm, the whole school was in the auditorium for Holiday Dance when the power went out. I had accidentally ripped the back of my dress, so I left Jim to run back to my dorm to change. To my surprise, I encountered Martha in the dark of the common room, reading Pride and Prejudice with a flashlight, so absorbed she hadn’t realized one of the windows was wide open and snow was collecting in the corner three inches thick. We ended up hanging out for two hours, just the two of us. It was the only time we ever did. For some reason, probably in the hopes of making things less uncomfortable between us, I’d shown Martha my collection of dream albums. Ever since then, when we were alone, she tended to ask about them, like they were some one-size-fits-all subject she could rely on to get me to talk. It could be a little unnerving.
“No,” I said, feigning a yawn. “Not really. I think I’ll go find a bed upstairs.”
She nodded, her face solemn. “Good night, Beatrice.”
I slipped out—Martha returning to her book—and trudged upstairs, finding my favorite guest room at the end of the hall. I pulled back the comforter and slung myself into bed.
Any other night I would have been kept awake by the memories inside that room. I was curled up under the heavy covers, same as always. The only thing missing was Jim snuggled beside me, composing lyrics by the light of his cell phone.
I set my alarm for six and closed my eyes. I’d sneak out before any of them were awake.
And that, for better or worse, would close my final chapter on Wincroft.
When I awoke it was light out.
I was freezing and covered in sweat. No, not sweat, I realized after a moment, blinking. It was rain. I was soaked because I was sitting in the backseat of the Jaguar convertible, the top still down. It had been parked, seemingly by someone very drunk, in a flower bed in the front yard of Wincroft.
It was still pouring rain. Kip and Martha were beside me, wearing confused expressions.
“What are you doing?” Kip asked me. He was soaking wet, his eyes bloodshot. A raindrop dangled off the end of his nose. “Where are you taking us?”
I had no clue what he was talking about. I scrambled out of the car, raced across the driveway to the mansion, and threw open the front door. I nearly collided with Whitley. She was frozen in the foyer, wearing the same outfit she’d had on last night. She surveyed me with a look so stunned, I understood immediately that something terrible had happened.
“What? What is it?”
She only stepped past me, staring out the door, speechless.
I hurried past her into kitchen. Shivering, I took inventory of my body. I felt fine. My head was clear. Yet somehow I’d overslept. I wasn’t going to make it to the Crow by opening. My parents would be scrambling to keep up with the morning crowd, then lunch, and my dad would be so strapped he’d forget to tell people about the specials, and my mom would use this as an excuse to say they didn’t need specials anymore, they were too expensive, which was sometimes enough of a spark to make them start arguing, which they rarely did.
Cannon was standing at the kitchen island typing on his open laptop.
“See, look!” he shouted over his shoulder, seemingly believing I was Whitley. “New York Times. It’s the exact same thing.”
I stepped beside him. He was amped, like he’d had about six cups of coffee.
“What is it?”
“What is it?” he mocked, turning to me. He grabbed my head, directing it at the screen.
“?‘Senate Pushes for New Immigration Initiative,’?” I read.
“The date,” he snapped.
“Friday, August thirtieth. So?”
“So? So? It’s yesterday.”
Scowling, he was tapping the keyboard, loading CNN.
“CNN. The Post. Time. All of them say the same thing.”
He shoved his iPhone into my hands. I blinked stupidly down at the date overlaying a photo of what had to be his fencing-champion girlfriend.
He was right. August 30. 5:34 p.m.
There had to be an error with the International Date Line. Terrorists had hacked the network. As if reading my mind, he held up his wristwatch, the hour and minute hands set to 5:35, the date turned to 30.
“How could hackers get into my TAG Heuer?”
I could only stare.
At that moment, his phone rang. Someone named Alexandra. He snatched the phone.
“Alex. Hold on. Now, wait a—wait a— Tell me what day and time it is. The date and time. I’ll explain in a sec—would you tell me the goddamn date? I’m not asking you to recite the Declaration of— WOULD YOU PLEASE JUST SHUT UP AND TELL ME—”
Whatever Alex’s confused response was, Cannon furiously hurled the phone at the sliding glass doors. He collapsed on the couch, staring wild-eyed at the floor. I hurried to my purse and dug out my phone, which was actually pretty strange because the last time I’d seen it, it’d been upstairs.
My phone read the same thing. August 30. With a shiver of panic, I dialed my mom.
“Hi, Bumble—”
“Mom. Mom? Where are you?”
“On our way to the Dreamland to see His Girl Friday. What’s the matter?”
“You didn’t see the movie yesterday?”
“Yesterday?”
“Mom, what day is it?”
“What? Why are you shouting?”
“What’s the date?”
“It’s—it’s Friday, August thirtieth.”
“Are you positive?”
“I’m looking at the dashboard right now.”
“It’s the thirtieth,” I heard my dad chime in.
“Mom, I called you last night, remember?”
“Last night? What?”
“Last night I called, and said I was spending the night at Wincroft, and you asked me to be in for opening because Sleepy Sam was getting a tooth pulled.”
“Sam is out tomorrow? He called you? Sam is out tomorrow,” she told my dad.
“He called Bee, after we’ve made sure he has our number about nineteen times?”
“Bee, what’s going on up there? Is it awful? Why don’t we come get you?”
I hung up, blood rushing in my ears.
My mom called back, but I was too shaken to answer.
I sat on the couch, trying to calm down. This had to be some kind of lucid dream. I willed myself to wake up. Wake up. After a moment, I realized Kip and Martha had drifted inside. They were standing stiffly with stricken expressions, like they’d just woken up from sleepwalking. Whitley had stepped back into the kitchen, her every gesture slow, as if pretending to walk on the moon.
“Y’all?” whispered Kip, his voice scarcely audible. “Was there an earthquake? Or some end-of-days world event we’re just finding out about?”
That was when the doorbell rang.
I didn’t wait for the others. I jumped off the couch, sprinting past Kip and Martha, and yanked open the front door.
“Perhaps this time I’ll be invited in for tea,” said the old man.
“The first thing you must do is stay calm,” said the Keeper. “Panic will get you nowhere.”
He was making tea.