"Claire! You're daydreaming again, aren't you?" The voice came out of nowhere, startling Claire Martingale out of her dimly-lit fantasies. She smiled sheepishly, adjusting her seatbelt and turning toward the other girl in the car.

"Sorry 'bout that," Claire said, shaking off the lingering remnants of her daydream. "You know how my mind gets away from me..."

"Yeah, yeah," replied Lisa, eyes on the road but attention focused on her friend. "But I couldn't help but say something. You looked like a total zombie back there."

Claire looked uncomfortable for a moment. "Did I do anything... weird?"

"No, silly, nothing like that. You were staring off into space again, looking like someone'd just scooped out your brains like Ben & Jerry's from a jar."

Lisa's comment had been intended to defuse the sudden tension, but all it did was make Claire's insides squirm. Claire giggled nervously. "Yeah. Brains." She reached up and twirled a lock of auburn hair around her finger, and a few strands came out in her hand.

The two girls went quiet for a moment, and Lisa turned on the car radio to break the silence. Claire caught the first three notes of a pop song before Lisa gave a sudden, excited gasp. "Oh! I almost forgot," she said gleefully, smiling from ear to ear. "I've got to show you this thing McKenzie got me for my birthday."

Lisa pulled to a stop at the red light and rummaged through her bag, coming up with a black unlabeled cassette tape that had a single, tentacle-like wire trailing out of one end.

"What's it do?" asked Claire, perking up with interest the way she did whenever she saw some unfamiliar form of technology.

Lisa was aware of her friend's tendency to get all excited in the presence of shiny objects, and she played this new possession for all it was worth.

"You put it in, see, like a regular cassette that no one ever listens to anymore, but then the wire can go into your iPod and play your music through the speakers. Cool, huh?"

Claire nodded, genuinely excited for Lisa and eager to hear some of the music from her iPod, but the spark had gone out of her. Her little mental checklist ticked off all the things she usually noticed about new science or technology – is it big? Important to society? Is it a weapon? Does it change the way that people live? Does it have any implications for digging or drilling or otherwise investigating things that should seriously just be left alone?

The answer to all of these questions was a deep, resounding Nope, but Claire still tried really hard to care. "Sounds awesome," she said appreciatively, examining the place where the thin black cord entered the sleek, silver metal.

"I know, right? What do you want to listen to first?"

"How about that song by Dr. Reanimator?" Claire suggested. She wanted to hear something upbeat, something that would take her mind off her destination and the swiftly approaching night.

"Sure," said Lisa, and managed to find the song on her iPod right before the traffic light changed back to green. Claire leaned back into her seat as the techno beat began to vibrate through her bones. "I looked up that song, by the way," Lisa cut in. "I figured I should, since just kinda stole the file from your computer that time we traded music. Turns out, I think I know why you like it. It's that H.P. Lovecraft, guy, isn't it? The one you used to be obsessed with?"

Claire nodded. She had gone through a Lovecraft phase quite recently, but she'd since gotten over him. The guy's ideas were great, not to mention spookily close to reality. For all Claire knew, maybe Cthulhu and the others were real after all. It was just the writing that got to her. Lovecraft may have been a prophet, but he wasn't very good at portraying likeable characters and wrote as if he rarely –if ever- got out of his basement to interact with actual people.

"Yep, it's from Lovecraft," she agreed. "The song's about one of the short stories he wrote, about that guy who could bring the dead back to life."

"Google told me as much," Lisa said. "I mean, really, it's not like that's so impossible, is it? Maybe someday science will actually be able to do that, and the song will just seem silly. People from the future won't understand why we're getting so worked up about it."

"Or maybe someone can already do it," said Claire, suddenly aware that she was straying into dangerous territory. "M-maybe something…" Oh shit, the stuttering was kicking in. "What I mean is," she croaked, trying not to fall into the mental sinkhole that would leave her practically unable to speak for the next few minutes. "I m-meant that, with the d-defibrillators and the adrenaline and stuff, d-doctors can practically do it already." Okay, good, she'd avoided it this time.

Lisa gave Claire an odd sideways look. The setting sun glinted off her hazel eyes. "Ooookay," she said slowly, using that condescending tone that people got when they played along with some ranting crazy. "I get what you mean. Just relax, okay? You're really making me rethink this little road trip of ours."

Claire just nodded, not trusting herself to say anything else without tripping over her words. She'd been nodding a lot lately. Must not fuck up, she told herself. I've gotta hold it together for like five more minutes until we get to Clayton Crossing.

"Thanks again for that, by the way," she told Lisa. "I know this is probably weirding you out, but I promise I'll be fine. Just tell my dad I'm hanging out at your house for the next few days, and then pick me up from here when I call."

"I've heard this crap already," said Lisa, an edge in her voice. Claire realized it had been stupid of her to even bring up the specifics of this "road trip" again. "What I don't understand," Lisa continued, "is why you won't just tell me what you're up to. I mean, I can guess, but… What's so freaking mysterious about this guy that I can't even know his name?

"He's just… different," Claire replied, knowing even as she said it that the phrase was a horrible cliché. But it was true; They were different, and Claire couldn't help but start thinking of the way They had seen right through her with those brilliant blue eyes. "You wouldn't understand."

Lisa sighed sadly as she flicked on her turn signal and took the next exit off the highway. "What's happened to you, Claire? You've been like a totally different person ever since you ran away with him last year."

"I'm just a little nervous," Claire said truthfully. "We've been keeping in contact and stuff, but this is the first time I'll actually be seeing him again."

"Whatever," Lisa grumbled. "Good luck with him, I guess. Don't do anything that I wouldn't do."

Lisa was usually pretty easygoing, and if either of the two girls took some kind of risk then she'd be the one to do it. She'd been the first to have a boyfriend, the first to smoke a cigarette, the first to skip school on one lazy Friday afternoon. This time, however, Claire had overstepped even Lisa's implicit boundaries.

Claire agreed with her friend, then took another look out the window. It was nearly dark now, and the sky stretched out in a bruised shade of purple above the valley. Familiar lights twinkled around them as they drove through the small-town streets, passing quaint little shops and establishments. Claire caught glimpses of a nursery called The Grass Pad ('High on Grass For Over 50 Years!') and a souvenir shop by the name of Nigro's Western Store. Places like that meant no harm by their names, but they probably wouldn't have existed in a larger town.

Claire closed her eyes and concentrated. "Turn left at the next light, please," she breathed. She could feel the car turning, aligning itself with her internal compass. The light shining against her eyelids dimmed a little, and Claire could tell that they were heading away from the main street now. "Then take a right over at 43rd street up ahead," she dictated.

"Hey!" Lisa said suddenly. "I think I know where we are. Isn't this that one place where you used to live before we met? You've told me about it all so many times, even that stupid western store, and the name of the neighborhood looks familiar."

"Yep, you've got me," Claire admitted, finally opening her eyes. Her mind raced to find an explanation for this turn of events. "We… The guy and I, I mean…. We knew each other as kids. Then he moved away a while before me, and last year I heard he'd come back, so I came to visit. See?" she declared triumphantly. "He's not even creepy at all."

Actually, she'd come back the year before just to visit in general, without having a particular goal in mind. She'd wanted to reconnect with old friends… friends who were girls, mostly. She'd only lived in Clayton Crossing during elementary school, back when she'd been in her "boys have cooties" phase. Claire had gone to visit mostly for the quaint backwoods charm of the place. She'd been curious to see if her old house looked any different, and she had wanted to take a walk into the woods behind the subdivision that her parents had always tried to prevent her from entering. Just the appeal of untouched nature, she guessed. She must have wanted to take a break from people and drama and the complicated nature of life.

There had been no "guy," at least not initially. But Lisa didn't have to know that.

"I guess…" Lisa said slowly, trying to digest this new development. "Man, Claire, I really wish that was the truth. It'd make me feel at least a little better about this whole crazy thing."

Claire's only reply was another instruction to turn left at the next street. The two girls were now winding through a suburban neighborhood; in fact, they were already in the same subdivision where Claire had once lived. "Drop me off here," she said suddenly.

"What?" Lisa squawked. "Right in the middle of the road?"

"No, silly, on the sidewalk. Just do it, okay? He lives like a block away from here. I can make it."

"Oh my god this is so weird…" Lisa muttered, but loyalty won out over concern and she finally stopped the car.

"Now remember, don't tell anyone," Claire instructed as she gathered up her backpack and stepped out of the car.

"Okay," Lisa promised. Claire squinted at her friend's face, trying to detect signs of insincerity, but it was too dark to see much inside the car.

"Seriously, I mean it," Claire was saying, but Lisa had already pulled away. Her friend's dingy white Pontiac circled once around the dead-end street, then passed by the other way.

It was fully dark now. No pedestrians walked the scarcely-lit streets. A dog barked in someone's backyard, and the windows of the houses shone with a golden glow that Claire could not allow herself to share. The girl shivered at the sudden October chill in the air. She had a mission, a purpose that would keep her going, but she still felt very much alone.

Claire shifted the backpack on her shoulders and began to walk up the suburban street. It was, in fact, the same street on which she'd lived until the age of ten, and she was actually pretty curious to see how her old house was getting on.

It was that white one near the top of the street. She could make out its shape already, and as she strode down the sidewalk it became clearer in her vision. Nothing much had changed since she'd seen it last year, except for maybe some new roofing – it was hard to tell in the dark – and a different car parked in the driveway.

The great oak tree in the front yard must have grown at least a foot since she'd been a child, but even at night it didn't seem as tall or imposing as it once had been. That tree used to wake her up at night, scraping its branches across her window in the creepiest way a little girl could imagine. Claire found herself smiling at the memory. It would take much more than a few branches to scare her now.

She approached the house and walked up the side of the driveway, noting that no lights were on inside. Maybe the new family was asleep already, or perhaps they'd gone somewhere in their other car. Whatever they were doing was none of Claire's business, but she was glad that they weren't watching as she hoisted herself over the fence – it was so easy now, much easier than it had been even the year before – and cut straight through their manicured yard. Claire didn't so much climb the back fence asvault over it; only one hand on the top to steady herself as she leaped.

Lisa was silly to be so worried about her. Claire was more than capable of taking care of herself.

She landed softly on the other side of the fence, imagining herself as some kind of ninja on a mission in the dark. Her earlier apprehension was all but gone, diminishing more and more as she got closer to the woods behind her childhood home.

Before she actually entered the woods, Claire stopped briefly to pull a flashlight out of her bag. Sure, she had a pretty clear sense of where to go, but she didn't want to trip over a tree root and break her ankle before there was any chance of getting it fixed.

The narrow beam of the flashlight revealed a dense mass of trees and a forest floor that was carpeted with fallen leaves of every color and description. Claire stepped across the last bit of semi-maintained lawn and soon found herself in the forest proper.

She strode purposefully between the trees, moving with a greater sense of urgency than she'd had before. Her flashlight moved back and forth, scanning the area ahead for obstacles, and she only deviated from her course to skirt around wide trees or duck under low-hanging branches. She was not distracted by the rustling of leaves or the occasional hoot of an owl.

Even though she'd only been this way a few times in her life, Claire knew exactly where she was going. As she approached her destination, her internal sense of direction became more like a GPS than something as vague as a compass.

She walked for – oh, maybe ten or fifteen minutes or so. Her old neighborhood had been at the very edge of the town, and beyond it was just pure Western wilderness. This forest was one of the last undisturbed areas of its size, nowhere near the magnitude of a reserve or national park but still pretty large compared to anywhere else Claire had been.

Even though Claire still had her cell phone with her, she wasn't exactly keeping track of the time.

Oh yeah. The cell phone.

Claire pulled out the phone and made sure to turn it off before stowing it back in her purse. She didn't want it ringing or vibrating in the forest while she was gone. What if someone heard and came across it? Claire herself had never gone this far into the woods as a child, but she knew there were hiking paths scattered across the area.

Sometimes people came here to "get back to nature" and collect ticks on their ankles… And, according to some of the stories she'd heard as a kid, not all of these hikers made it back in one piece. Her parents had told her of wild cougars, precarious cliffs, and poisonous berries; of people literally just going missing and never being found… But she hadn't believed them, not then. They were just rumors, with no actual facts to substantiate them. No records of any authorities investigating the area. Nothing but an inspiration for her own unfounded curiosity, and the vague admonition about those unfortunate people that "never came back."

But I'll be coming back, Claire reassured herself. I've already stared into the abyss, and it's had a good long look into me. At this point, what do I really have to lose?

With that pleasantly disturbing thought in her head, Claire walked the last five minutes until she finally reached the clearing she was looking for. The trees around her began to get thinner, then suddenly dropped off entirely.

She was there. She was home.

Claire's heart began to beat faster; her anticipation slightly tinged with fear. She approached the abandoned mine shaft with caution, mindful of what had happened the last time she'd tried to climb that ladder into the dark.

The hole itself must have been at least ten feet across, and it gaped so blackly that the surrounding night forest was a sunny day at the beach by comparison. Claire shone her flashlight into the mine, but it illuminated nothing but that endless stretch of stairs. They'd been repaired, she noticed. No more of that rickety rust that had greeted her the year before. No more crumbling rungs like the ones that had given way under her feet.

This had to have been the work of the Deep Ones. Who else would have gone through the trouble of fixing the stairs without actually sealing the shaft or putting up warning signs in the area around it? Perhaps Z'tagn themselves had done the repair job in anticipation of her return. They were so thoughtful, so kind… Her heart swelled at the thought of seeing Them again soon. The happiness she felt at the prospect of Their arrival was almost enough to eclipse the thought of what They would actually be doing. Almost… But not quite.

Claire laid her backpack on the ground near the hole, making sure to turn off the flashlight and safely stow it in a side pocket. She didn't want to accidentally drop it down the shaft and ruin it like last time. It would be dark, yes, but hopefully Z'tagn would be waiting with Their own light.

Without any more second thoughts, Claire stepped down onto the top rung of the ladder and began her descent into darkness.