Karin closed the bathroom door behind her, locked it. Downstairs, she could hear Adam telling the story of the time he met Pierce Brosnan, the laughter of their friends punctuating each beat. He was good with stories. They came easily to him. It was one of the things she first fell in love with, his easy confidence, his comfort being seen. She told stories, too, but they weren’t to entertain, to fill time after dinner while the espresso machine did its thing. Her stories helped her hide.

She leaned against the sink to steady herself, her legs uncertain and shaky. Everything was happening in the center of her chest. The text on her phone had surprised her.

She’s in.

Karin looked at it again, not believing. When Erika said she was going to North Carolina to track down Claudine, she’d laughed it off. Claudine had avoided the press almost entirely, and for the last two years had become something of a ghost. Karin knew the reports from that sorority house slaughter in Boulder would be enough to pull Andi out of the shadows, but she didn’t think it’d be enough to bring a woman back from the dead.

Karin felt her phone vibrate in her hand.

A new text from Erika: ???

Karin took a deep breath, replied as fast as she could type: Dinner party. How late r u up?

She slid the phone in her pocket, not waiting for the answer. She’d have to deal with Erika and Claudine and the others later. There were people downstairs, people who wanted another glass of wine, another story about some stupid celebrity encounter Adam had when he lived in Los Angeles, people who only knew the Karin that came after his knife.

When she got downstairs, Adam was rounding the final bend of his Pierce Brosnan story.

“So we’re standing there, right? Both of us eyeing the last available stall, and he’s just assuming he’ll get it, you know, because he’s Pierce fucking Brosnan, right?”

Karin took her seat next to Adam, and took a generous sip of wine. The people around the table were their go-to friends, a couple that Adam knew from the university’s theatre program where he taught, nice educated twenty-somethings with decent politics and sharp wits. She liked these people, and she endured these evenings with them because it meant a lot to Adam, an extrovert actor always in search of a stage.

“So he says, ‘You do know who I am?’” Adam delivered his mediocre Pierce Brosnan. “And I was like, ‘Yeah, dude, but your dick ain’t semi-famous. See ya.’ And into the stall I went.” Their friends laughed, harder than the story deserved thanks to the three empty bottles of wine on the table.

Adam turned to Karin and smiled, leaned in. “You okay, babe?”

Karin nodded. This wasn’t the time. He knew everything -- the weekend trip, the blood, the screams, the gash across her midsection -- and she’d tell him when they were gone, but not now. Not in front of them.

“I think we’ve got one more bottle. We got time for one more bottle?” Matt, the bearded one that played the guitar badly, was up and headed to the kitchen before anyone could answer. “We good, dude?”

“We good?” Adam was still leaned in, concerned.

“Yeah, we’re good.”

“Go for it, Matt! Y’all wanna hear about Scar Jo?”

“Jesus, have y’all heard of this thing in Boulder?” Annie, Matt’s girlfriend, was scrolling through her Facebook feed. “Sixteen people in a sorority house. Fucking terrifying.”

Adam slid a hand to Karin’s knee and squeezed it three times, a reassuring gesture that he’d taken up as habit.

“Awful. Let’s not talk about it. We’re having fun. So, Scar Jo --”

“It’s that same guy.” Annie wasn’t listening. “Which is insane, I know, because how can it be the same guy? He’s dead, right? They killed him a couple of years ago, right?”

“They found a body.” Karin chose her words carefully. There was an apartment, the mask, “overwhelming evidence” from the police reports, and a body. A man. It could be him. In the stories she told herself, it had to be him. But they’d never seen his face. Only his shadow, the arc of knife cutting through the air, through skin, through her.

“ So he’s dead. But it’s all the same. Like, carbon copy of the other ones.” Annie was on Twitter now.

“Except he killed more girls this time.” Matt was back with the wine.

“ Sixteen. That’s like…” Annie extended her glass for Matt to fill. “You read these reports, and it’s like he’s… superhuman or something.”

He is superhuman. She’d gotten ahead of him in the woods, and then he was right there behind her.

“But it can’t be him. Because he’s dead, right?”

Karin’s chest got tight. He’d dispatched them so quickly, one after another, that the precision was...impressive. That was the word. Impressive. Six of them dead, before she’d even registered what was happening. It was his job, and he was virtuosically good at it.

“Yes. He’s dead. Now can we get back to Scar Jo?” Adam squeezed her leg again. A sign of support.

“And what did they call him? ‘The Remember Man?’ Which is so… Doesn’t it bug you? It’s not a stupid slasher movie, it’s real fucking life.”

It’s my life. Karin choked back tears. It was a slasher movie, a real fucking slasher, not some stupid news story on your goddamned phone.

“Doesn’t this scare you?” Annie was now speaking directly to Karin, eyes up from her phone for the first time since Adam finished his story. “Doesn’t it? It’s not the same guy, but whoever did this, whoever this is, sixteen women, and there’s always one left behind, and doesn’t it scare you that no one knows who he is?”

He’s the end of the world. Karin bit her bottom lip, just like she did as she hid, pressed against the wall of the boat house, listening for his footsteps. He’s the nighttime and the dark hallway and the sound upstairs. Annie looked at her, eyebrows raised, waiting for some kind of answer. He’s the deep-dark, the blacker than black, the whatever is there at the end of everything.

“Annie, just leave it.” Adam’s voice was soft, but firm.

“What, I don’t get what the big deal is --”

“He killed my friends and left a six-inch scar across my stomach.” Karin stood up from the table and lifted her sweatshirt to reveal the knotty scar that ran horizontally across her midsection. Annie inhaled a quick, sharp breath. “I lived.”

Stories weren’t enough to keep the truth at bay. Adam’s stories weren’t enough. The police report and the body weren’t enough. All the versions of herself made up for friends and coworkers and strangers at coffee shops weren’t enough.

Sixteen girls were dead. One remained. And Claudine was in.

“I’ll take another glass, Adam.” Karin lifted her glass and held it out in front of her.

The night air was crisp, and it felt good against Karin’s skin. She dialed Erika’s number, and waited for her to pick up.

“Hello?” The voice on the other end was groggy, either drunk or half-asleep.

“It’s Karin.”

“Hey. How was the dinner party?”

Karin smirked and rolled her eyes. “I still suck at small talk.”

For a moment, just their breath, on either side of the line, underscored by the echoes of a dog barking down the street.

“She’s softer than I expected. Claudine.”

“I don’t know why that surprises you. We all are, aren’t we?”

“I guess. But she’s… I don’t know. Mythic. I half expected her to beat my ass in the Waffle House.”

“You met her at a Waffle House?”

“Better than Denny’s.”

Karin always felt more like herself talking to Erika or Andi or any of the other survivors. It should have been Adam, because he loved her and kept her safe, but there was always some part of her that refused to meet him. That part, wounded and skittish, was the most real part, and it only trusted others with wounds like hers.

“So… we’re doing this?”

“We’re doing this. Claudine needs a few days, which should be fine.”

“Yeah, it sounds like that girl is still in and out of consciousness.”

“Can you get to Boulder by the weekend? That work for you?”

“Karin?”

She turned to face the house and saw Adam in the front door, framed by the soft lamplight in the living room. For a second, before her eyes adjusted to that light, he was more shape than person, and her brain screamed panic, recognized the shape as him, her nightmare man at the end of the world, and her body froze. Then her mind caught up as the light adjusted, and the nightmare was gone and Adam was back, waiting for a reply.

I don’t want to live like this. As long as he was out there, he’d be lurking in every shadow, and her life would always belong to him. I don’t want to be this girl forever.

“Karin?” Erika’s voice was in her ear.

“I’ll see you in Boulder.”

She ended the call without saying goodbye -- something they all refused to do with each other -- and walked toward the house, searching for some way to explain this to Adam.

Next Chapter: 4. The End of the World