Siena

She'd thought she was better.

She took her meds on time and slept through the night and hadn't felt a single bug in two years.

And seen the bugs? Never.

But she hadn't only seen beetles in the tunnel beneath the tree. She'd hallucinated an entire reality. The heartbeat in the roots, the cabin in the woods. The man with the mask.

Terrified by the song on the radio, she'd let it ferment in her brain long enough to cause a psychotic break. Was she truly so fragile?

Siena sat hunched in the desk chair, hugging her torso, and tried calming herself with a few deep breaths. Her whole body vibrated as she shivered. Cam and Emmett stood on the porch, arguing loud enough for her to hear all the way from the closed lab.

"I told you she shouldn't be alone," Emmett said. "Not in that tunnel, and not right now."

It didn't matter what the situation was... he still managed to be a prick.

"And you're the one walking meat sack here who's a trigger for her," Cam said. "Or are you too arrogant to realize that?"

"She needs a companion."

"You should have thought about that before—"

"Fuck, Cam! I don't care if it isn't me! She just needs someone watching her!"

"Well, it's a good thing you didn't knock me unconscious, isn't it?"

"I... didn't mean that."

"Don't worry, Emmett. I know stress brings out the worst in you."

Siena rubbed her forehead. God, their fighting was getting out of control.

Something knocked against the window, and she jerked her head up. Isaac stood on the other side of the glass in his backward CalTech baseball hat, bashfully holding up a bottle of whiskey and a Twix.

She rolled her eyes, but got up anyway, rounding the desk and shoving open the grimy window.

Isaac pushed the bottle and the candy into Siena's hands. "Cam told me to bring you these."

Siena rested the items on the desk. "And you complied?"

"No, I told her I wasn't her intern and to get lost."

Siena burst out laughing, clapping a hand over her mouth in surprise.

Isaac grinned. "But I like you, so I brought them anyway. I'm sorry that, uhh..." His expression sobered, and he scratched the back of his neck. "I'm sorry that happened to you. Freaked me out, T-B-H. Freaked everyone out."

"Thanks," she said. "I'll be okay."

He nodded. "Cool."

Desperate to change the subject, Siena asked, "You get a good sketch of the tree?"

"Oh, yeah." Isaac flipped his hat around. "Way sick. Trying to figure it out, though, you know? Soil nutrients, genetic mutation, fluke..."

"Don't forget to journal your hypotheses. You should do that while today is still fresh." It was something Feyrer would have told her to do when she was his age.

Isaac tapped his forehead. "Smart."

"And we probably need a few more soil samples." She thought of the body. "Just be careful, okay? Maybe ask Emmett to go with you."

"Oh, don't worry about me. I can watch my back. Got a blue belt in karate."

Siena pressed her lips together to hide another wave of laughter, unsure if Isaac was being serious this time. She gave him a thumbs-up, and he shot one right back, darting around to the front of the cabin and taking off.

Siena returned to her seat at the desk and tuned back in to Emmett and Cam, but their argument had devolved into whispers. Distracting herself, she cleaned out her pockets, lining up her soil and bark samples next to her knife and recorder.

The front door slammed a few minutes later, and someone approached the lab with a quiet knock.

"I know you don't want to talk—" Cam began.

"It's fine," Siena said. "I heard Emmett."

The door creaked open, and Cam slipped in. She gave an awkward smile before sliding down the wall and sitting on the ground. She said nothing at first, which Siena appreciated, but soon the silence became uncomfortable.

Dr. Reyes had told her she shouldn't keep mental health stuff to herself, but confide in someone she trusted. Even when she was engaged, that person had never been Emmett. But Cam hadn't treated Siena any differently after her diagnosis. Maybe she could help drag Siena back to reality.

"I saw shit, Cam," Siena said. "I hallucinated. That's never happened before. Not visually." She hated how scared she sounded—how out of control she felt.

Cam watched her, but didn't react right away. Finally, she asked, "Hallucinated what? The bugs?"

"And other things." Siena's eyes burned, and she looked out the window. "I... I thought I'd found a passage back to the cellar. I thought I was at the cabin, but things didn't look right. The trees were different. There was a man inside, and..." She trailed off, deciding to skip the part about the mule head. Dr. Reyes was right, but Siena wasn't yet ready to describe some of the horrible things her brain had conjured up.

"Hey... hey," Cam said.

Siena looked at her.

"You are not schizophrenic." Cam was calm. Serious, too. There was something comforting about the way she acted when she threw all jokes aside. "I don't know what happened to you in there, but there could be a bunch of reasons you saw what you did. A lack of oxygen in the tunnel. Maybe the air was toxic."

Siena wanted to believe her, but she couldn't blame what had happened on a lack of oxygen. "I don't know, Cam. What I saw was—"

"Don't move."

Cam's eyes had widened, her expression fixed and cautious. She pushed herself from the wall and crawled forward, sitting up on her knees when she was in front of Siena. Reaching forward behind Siena's ear, she pulled something from Siena's hair and opened her hand between them.

Shock pulsed through Siena's body.

An injured beetle twitched in Cam's palm. "These your bugs?" she asked.

Siena opened her mouth to say something—anything—but any coherent string of thought inside the chaos of her brain proved impossible to locate.

"But... they're not real," she finally stammered.

"Feels pretty real to me," Cam said. "Maybe they have some sort of self-defense biotoxin that makes you see things." Cam set the beetle belly-up on the ground and wiped her hands on her pants.

"I didn't eat one." Siena rubbed her eyes, anger burning through her fog of confusion. "The bugs aren't real, Cam. Everyone told me. You told me!"

"Because they weren't real."

Siena pointed at the now-dead beetle. "Then what is that? A figment of my fucking imagination? What about everything else I saw?" Cold sweat prickled the back of her neck. No. There was no way. No way in hell.

"Okay, okay." Cam pressed her fingers to her temples. "Let's just think about this for a sec."

A blinking light on the desk caught Siena's eye. Her recorder.

She picked it up and read the screen, the newest recording time-stamped an hour ago. "How long was I in the tunnel?"

Cam shrugged. "Five, ten minutes."

"I mashed the buttons on my recorder while I was crawling." Siena's thumb hovered over the play button, but she couldn't push down, unsure she was ready to confront whatever she was about to learn.

Cam grabbed the recorder from her and hit play.

They listened. Nothing.

Cam fast-forwarded a bit and hit play again.

"Give me some slack so I can push forward a little!" Recorder Siena yelled. A few seconds later, she muttered to herself, but it was unintelligible.

There was some feedback—the rustle of fabric scraping against the microphone. Just noise, until amid it all, Siena made out a pattern. A beat.

Cam leaned closer to the recorder. "What is that?"

Siena's blood ran cold, just as it had in the tunnel when she had realized the pulse of blood wasn't coming from her own ears.

"How deep am I?" Recorder Siena yelled. "Cam ... CAM!"

"I didn't hear you," said Cam. "I'm sorry. I... I was arguing with Emmett. Is that... is that noise your heart? Did you have the recorder in a shirt pocket?"

"No," Siena whispered. She ducked her head and listened, biting down hard on her lower lip until she tasted a small burst of blood.

"I've reached the cabin! ... I'm gonna unclip. I'll meet you back at the tree!"

"Siena..." Cam began.

"I was seeing things," Siena said. "Imagining them." Please, she begged silently. Let this prove it.

The recording fell quiet. Siena shut her eyes and began counting. Every now and again, the fabric of her pants shifted against the mic.

"We would have pulled you out by this point," Cam said.

"Then why haven't I screamed yet?" Siena tilted her head, as if it would somehow help her hear better. Nothing on the recording changed.

"Maybe that's the end," Cam said.

Siena shook her head, her eyes still shut. "Play it until the recording stops."

She kept listening through the rustle of Recorder Siena's clothes, past the noise of muffled movement in the background.

Eight-hundred and six. Eight hundred and seven. Eight hundred and—

"You shouldn't be here."

Siena's eyes snapped open. She slapped a hand over her own mouth as Cam stared in horror at the recorder.

On the recording, Siena softly whimpered as the other voice spoke.

"You aren't strong enough ... It will fight to keep you here. Drag you deeper. You can't let it. PROMISE ME."

Siena grabbed the recorder from Cam, turned it off, and threw it across the room. It crashed into the wall and clattered against the ground. She slid from her chair onto the floor next to Cam, her hands pressed to her mouth so she wouldn't scream.

Even if she could make her voice sound as deep as this one, she'd heard herself whimpering as it spoke. She hadn't pulled some Exorcism shit. She'd been with someone else. The man in the mask.

All of it had been real.

Cam took Siena's face in her hands. "Siena, what the hell happened to you in there?"

Siena shook her head. How was she supposed to explain? She couldn't, not yet.

Not here.

She'd wanted to complete the study so badly that she'd ignored all the signs. Even science couldn't dissuade her from believing Dr. Feyrer had been right. This place was cursed.

"We're not safe here," Siena said. "We need to get off this mountain, Cam. Now."