The next day, Agnes was at the population sign long before first light broke through the sky.

Just as she'd predicted, the previous night proved to be a sleepless one, full of tossing and turning with struggles to keep her thoughts quiet. She had so many questions left over from the day before, and as she stood under the rising sun now, she made a vow not to allow anything to sway her focus.

And her first test was arriving now.

"You look even more dreadful than usual," a high pitch voice squawked to her right.

Squeezing her eyes shut, Agnes groaned loudly. "You were not invited."

Margot shuffled up next to her, peering at the young girl humorously. "As if you could stop me from going where I please. You aren't the boss."

"There must be somewhere else you please to go," Agnes muttered back, holding her hand over her glasses to block the glare from above. She had kept her promise to Yvonne by waiting, but the shadow girl was already trying Agnes's patience. If the pitiful girl didn't show up soon, she would leave her to deal with Margot alone.

"There is not," Margot said matter of factly, spinning circles around young Agnes. "This is precisely where I want to be in this exact moment in time."

Just as Agnes was tempted to stick her foot out and catch Margot by the ankle, the shadow girl was saved by the bell—er, shout.

"I'm here!" Yvonne was a flurried mess as she flew down the street, Hugo lumbering behind her. Her under eyes were even more purple today; Agnes felt slight pleasure at the thought of her having an equally horrible night.

Hugo, however, looked more refreshed than ever. Another dosage of the Good Stuff before their departure from home had ensured he arrived with the clearest of minds. Instead of cowering behind his sister, or murmuring into his shoulder to self soothe, he made direct eye contact, first with Agnes, then Margot.

"Hello again," he said, using the same monotone he had adopted the previous evening. The Good Stuff made his words very nice indeed. "It's a pleasure to see you once more."

The shadow girl's jaw dropped. "How did he do that?!"

Everyone ignored her, especially Agnes. Nudging Margot out of the way with her shoulder, she faced Yvonne straight on.

"Today is going to be different," she started, cutting straight to it. "We're going to walk for as long as I say so, and you'll answer all of my questions without hesitation. You will not lie, or I will find out, and then you will be terribly sorry. If you don't like any of this, you and your brother can buzz off," then, after a beat, she gestured to Margot, "and I'll make you take the dog, too."

The shadow girl didn't hear the jab; she was too busy inspecting Hugo closer. She pulled at his wild black curls like he was a science experiment.

"Please stop," Hugo requested politely.

This time, Margot was the one who did the ignoring; she picked out another strand and tugged.

Yvonne would've intervened—had she not been busy glaring at Agnes. She didn't like any of what the other girl had said, and she had half a mind to take her brother and march them right back home. But then she thought of carrying on trying to provide for Hugo, begging Nickels for more supply without cluing him in to her ulterior motives. If there was any possibility of finding a more permanent fix to Hugo's mind, she was going to get it.

Even if it meant taking an attitude from Agnes.

So even though pride wriggled in her stomach, begging to shoot back an insult—or five—she forced herself to raise a hand. "That all sounds mighty fine, Agnes. It's a deal."

Not one to take anyone at face value, Agnes hesitated to return the handshake. The pitiful girl appeared a bit too willing to give in, but without a clue what Yvonne's angle was in coming quietly, Agnes had little choice.

They shook on it briefly, an understanding between them. For now, the two girls were on the same team.

Emphasis on two.

"Shake mine too! Do it now or I'll scream!" Margot demanded, stepping between the duo.

But neither Agnes nor Yvonne took the shadow girl's outstretched hand. Rather, Agnes shifted back around to face the sign again and what lay beyond it. Yvonne, who had yet to notice what nightfall had hidden previously, followed her gaze and processed just what she was looking at. With the help of first light, all four children could see very clearly what was waiting on the other side of the edge. Not a winding road. Not another town to explore. Not the trailer young Agnes had been holding out for.

Sand.

Miles and miles and miles and miles of sand. It stretched on until it hit the horizon point, and who knows, perhaps even farther than that. Regardless, the children could see it, clear as day, that amongst all that gritty sand, there wasn't a trailer to be found.

"You're not thinking of walking out there...are you?" Yvonne asked cautiously. She wanted to take back the handshake already.

Agnes scoffed. "I don't know about you, but I'm not trying to die of dehydration or heat stroke. Who goes walking in a desert?"

"Is that what it is? A dessert?" Margot chirped up, tip-toeing closer to wear the pavement gave way, jagged and sharp. She inspected the sand closer. "This doesn't look at all like something to eat."

"It's not an after-dinner fig, you idiot. It's a desert." Yvonne was covering up her own insecurities with petty insults. True, she knew it was a desert, but never in her young life had she known one surrounded Eldritch. Had it really been here this whole time? Biting back her growing anxiety, she leaned in closer to Agnes. "Does it go all the way around town?"

Agnes took a beat, studying the landscape pensively. She was reluctant to admit she too hadn't known about the desert beyond Eldritch—and was equally distraught about it. But of course, she would never let anyone see her sweat. "There's only one way to find out," she finally faced Yvonne again, "Left or right?"

This time, there was no laughter at the notion of asking. None of them had ever walked the full circumference of Eldritch before, and so had no clue just how long a journey like that would take. Sure, they wouldn't get lost walking in a straight line, but should they make the wrong choice, the group could walk away from any clues all day that might've been just steps in the other direction.

"Left, I suppose," Yvonne finally decided. "And we will just have to hope it is right."

And so, Agnes took the lead once more, hanging a left and walking with the desert on her right. Yvonne and Hugo walked two by two just behind her, and Margot brought up the rear, her eyes glued to the sand. It glistened under the growing intensity of the sun, and soon, heat waves danced in the distance, creating mirages that kept the shadow girl very much entertained.

Up front, Agnes was asking her first question, the one that had been delayed because of the ugly boy's previous mental state. "Who is it that's trying to take you, Hugo?"

Glancing down at his sister, he waited for an encouraging nod before responding. "I do not know. My voices never say who. Just that I can only trust them to keep me safe."

Agnes failed to understand. "These voices, what do they sound like?"

"It is not always the same." Hugo felt them nudging at him from the depths of his mind, but encouragingly, as if they wanted their presence shared—understood. "At times, they are soft and nice. Other times, they shout for me to listen, and that is when I become confused and my words not so nice. It is always the worst when I am around Father and Mother."

"Or the crows," Agnes added, still facing forward. She failed to see him flinch at the word.

"Ravens," Margot corrected from the back, but of course, no one acknowledged her.

"That...is different," he finally responded, doing a quick scope of the sky just in case. "It is not the voices that disrupt me then. They only warn when they are near. Then, everything is static."

"As in still?" Agnes questioned.

"As in the television," Yvonne clarified. "He describes it like the sound from the television when it's on."

Agnes nodded. Her family home hadn't come with a television, but she'd seen them at School before. She couldn't stand the sound they made, their scratchy black and white screens always the same. The thought of that blasting inside her head was enough to make her stomach queasy; suddenly, she was much more understanding of Hugo's aversion to birds.

"So what makes you think someone is trying to take you?" This was the piece that still wasn't clicking for Agnes, and the part she wanted to understand the most. "And do you think they could've taken Bogart too?"

Hugo pondered that as the children kept following the bend around Eldritch, the sand never letting up. His eyes wandered inland towards the desolate junkyards and warehouses that littered the outskirts of town. Not a person was around, which was often how Hugo saw his world: as if he were the only one in it. Yvonne was the closest he had to a companion, but even she could not understand what life with the voices was truly like. He had never met someone else who experienced them; then again, he did not talk to many others, either.

"I do not know. My voices do not mention speaking to anyone else. They only say I am in danger and it is only them that can keep me safe."

"Yet they make you say things that provoke the adults..." Agnes couldn't think of anything more dangerous than that.

Hugo looked at his shoes then, getting lost in the way his sneakers squeaked as he walked. All he said more was, "The voices hate adults most of all."

When the ugly boy didn't elaborate further, Yvonne picked up her pace to give him some space. Even for his clear mind, that was the most talking he had done with a stranger in his life, and she knew he'd need time to recover.

"Has Bogart ever mentioned voices before?" she whispered quietly to her new ally.

Agnes thought back to her brother in the weeks leading up to his disappearance. He had seemed a bit reserved, sure, but there was never a mention of voices in his head. At the same time, his thoughts had come across jumbled in the most recent conversations she could remember. It's what keyed her into a possible connection between him and Hugo before, but hearing the ugly boy recount his experience now, she wasn't so sure.

Eventually, she shook her head. "But that doesn't mean he just didn't tell me."

"Did he keep secrets from you often?"

This, Agnes interpreted as prying. Giving Yvonne an icy glare, she pulled ahead again. "That isn't your business."

"But it's well enough you ask my brother all his secrets, right?" Yvonne called toward the stubborn girl's back. Agnes kept facing forward. She was done talking—for now, anyway.

For the next few hours, the children walked, their eyes peeled for...well, something. Every empty building was open for closer scrutiny, each passing box or trash can inspected for clues. Any landmarks were quickly taken note of for later. Agnes peered closely at the large water tower that loomed over them as they passed, its legs wrapped up with CAUTION tape.

Yvonne was far more interested in the passing warehouses, searching for more than just clues on Bogart. Feeling around in her pocket, she could tell her supply of the Good Stuff was waning, and she still had two more doses to give Hugo that day. Whether or not their search was successful, she would still need to report back to Nickels to cover the stolen goods, and without securing extra last time, she'd be seeing her supplier sooner rather than later. She was still hopeful that anything uncovered with Agnes's plan would continue to be valuable enough for her boss, but she always found it best to have a backup plan.

A particular factory caught her eye, its exterior stained with a black splotch facing out towards the sand. Chimneys rose high above the building, but nothing churned from within to produce any smoke. The pitiful girl was growing tired of swiping cobwebs from her hair, only to find another dead end. So, Yvonne defaulted to working smart rather than hard. Taking the lack of smoke as a sign, she moved along.

Margot didn't have any agenda in particular; she was still enjoying the ways of the sand. Along their walk, she had adopted a stick to help with her passing interest. She wasn't too keen about stepping on the unknown terrain without proof it was safe, but her twig worked just grand. She adored the way it weaved through the sand, like her finger gliding through puddles of water in the alley. If Margot had known how to spell, she certainly would've written her name.

They watched their steps carefully whenever the street curved again, the cracked pavement serving as a great tripping hazard. It was as if the whole town had been picked up from one place and dropped haphazardly in another.

A claw came down from the sky and ripped Eldritch from the world, Yvonne thought to herself. It was the line to the myth she couldn't remember before, which brought the tale back to her consciousness.

"Tell me more about the trailer."

It seemed Agnes was having similar thoughts; the young girl's voice nearly made Yvonne jump after so many hours of silence.

"I already told you, it's not—"

"Our agreement was no hesitation," Agnes bit back, glaring over her shoulder. "If you know more about the myth, tell me now."

"I don't remember rudeness being in the agreement," Yvonne mumbled to herself, then louder, "It's just supposed to be a rusty old trailer. They say it's mystical in origin and never in the same place twice, and some days, it doesn't appear at all. Then there's more contradicting details about why it comes and where it goes when it's not here. You get the gist."

"And this...king." Sounded a bit archaic to young Agnes, but what did she know about mystical trailers? "Is he a good character, or one meant to scare kids like us from searching in the first place?"

"Mmm, a combination of both, I suppose. He's just a provider for the adults, so I assume children are meant to fear him and what he distributes. But there isn't much on what he does if a child does seek him out. At least, not that I've heard."

While the two girls worked on piecing together the myth, Hugo lagged back a little, still utilizing his space. Just then, he felt the voices prick up, warning of winged creatures lurking nearby. Instinctively, he took a deep breath to help calm down.

"Are you going to speak like an adult again," Margot inquired, suddenly next to him. She studied his pinched up face. "You look sickly."

"I am fine," Hugo assured her, lifting his head again to search for the crows. "They are just near. I can feel them."

It was soft at first, as it always began—a simple buzzing that increased with every step closer to the wretched things. There it was, perched on a crumbling brick wall just to the left of them. Yvonne, caught up in her conversation with Agnes, failed to notice the upcoming offender.

"Don't you scare it away again," Margot warned, tugging on his hair to be sure her point came across. "If you do, I'll make you sorry!"

"I will try to be good," Hugo barely whispered, lowering his eyes as they walked past the watching bird. It helped a bit not to meet their gaze, but he could still feel them inside his head. The static raised two more decibels before decreasing once he passed the beady-eyed bird.

Margot lingered, giving the raven a gentle pet for being good. "I won't let the nasty boy hurt you. Worry not."

It watched her long after she rushed away, its head tilted curiously.

When she caught back up with Hugo, his face was clear of any pain. Instead, he stared at her in awe. "They let you touch?"

Margot giggled at the simple boy's words. "They like to be touched, just not by ugly children like you."

Normally, this would've hurt Hugo's feelings, but he remembered what the shadow girl had said before. This was her way of being nice. He gave Margot a stupid grin in return. "You are very lucky then."

Surprised by his kind response to her cruelty, the shadow girl did something neither one of them were expecting. She smiled back. "You might be my new favorite."

They were on hour four and morale was running low. Just as the sun reached the highest point in the sky, a familiar structure came into focus ahead. Stopping short, Agnes spun around to check behind the group, then back again towards the tower. Then, she was running, kicking up dust the whole way. Agnes sprinted until she was next to the legs of the water tower once more, its CAUTION tape still flowing in the breeze.

"We were already here," Agnes whispered to herself, just as the rest of the gang caught up. None of them had bothered to run after her.

"What's the matter?" Yvonne called once she was close enough.

"We passed this already," young Agnes said, giving the pitiful girl a cruel look. "Were you even paying attention before?"

Yvonne bristled. "There could be more than one water tower in Eldritch. You don't know it's the same one."

"Do all of them have the tape?"

"I don't know, but it doesn't help to panic without reason. We knew we'd reach where we started at some point. We must've passed the sign back there somewhere."

"We didn't," Agnes insisted, gesturing over Yvonne's head to where they had come from. "It's huge. What are the odds none of us noticed when we passed it? The answer—no odds. I can't even see it now!"

"So then this is a different tower and we keep walking," Yvonne concluded, pulling on Hugo to follow her. "Come, sweet boy. Agnes may be in need of some space herself."

Agnes stepped in front of them. "That's not how this works, remember? We do as I say, not you."

"Well, you're saying a whole bunch of nothing, so there's nothing really to listen to." Yvonne was fed up with the petulant girl and her sharp tongue. She'd been pushed around enough for the day. "What exactly is it you want us to do, if not to keep going?"

"I want you to stop and think, if you know how." Agnes was fed up too—of working with others. They weren't her brother, and she hated how she had to keep explaining herself. "This is the exact same water tower, I'm sure of it. And yet, the population sign is gone. You truly think that isn't something to give more attention to?"

"I truly think the sun has gone to your head. Perhaps red hair conducts heat two times as fast." Yvonne squared her shoulders and met Agnes's steely look straight on. Hugo stood nearby, watching the whole ordeal.

But not the shadow girl Margot, oh no. She stood at the edge, looking out over the sand, waiting for all the bickering to cease so she could go on with her pleasant walk. She had seen many interesting sights, enough to sing about to the ravens later that evening. For Margot, the day was already a success in her book. The only thing that could make it better was finding a filling meal on her way home; she'd had little luck with the cans around the outskirts.

Or—a sudden apparition in the distance.

At least, that's the way it seemed; she certainly didn't remember seeing it when they were walking. About a mile off from the edge of Eldritch sat an indistinguishable building. Margot didn't have a word for what she was looking at. It was stout, round, and had a bunch of pointy things sticking out from the top of its head. The sight of it made the girl laugh out loud.

"What is that strange thing?!" she cried.

The group ignored her; Agnes and Yvonne were much too busy yelling themselves.

"You are impossible to work with. Have you any clue what it's like talking to you? I'd have better luck with the tower!" the latter spit.

"Well, when you speak with him, make sure to ask what it's like to actually serve a purpose. Maybe he can teach you a thing or two about it."

"We are never going to get anywhere if you do not start to trust me, Agnes. You can't always be the one that's right!"

"I beg to differ."

The more Margot stared at the strange building, the more details seemed to materialize. Broken windows, a crooked door, even a cactus planted just out front. The shadow girl clapped her hands with glee. "This is the best day ever!"

Still, the shadow girl was ignored. Hugo scooched closer to his sister, trying his best to help. "Maybe there is a way?"

"A way to what?" Agnes snapped, earning her another glare from Yvonne.

"Watch how you talk to him, or I'll—"

"A way to know," Hugo clarified...kind of. "If it is the same, there will be a line. The nice girl drew one in the sand as we walked."

Both Agnes and Yvonne paused, bemused. His sister found her voice first, pairing it with a quirked brow. "Who is the nice girl?"

Hugo pointed confidently at Margot, who was tottering just on the edge. That was when the group finally acknowledged the girl's cheers—and what she was cheering about.

For you see, though the uneducated shadow girl was unaware of what she was entertained by, the rest of the children knew immediately. Agnes's jaw dropped at the sight of the trailer. It was as if it were waiting to be found all along.

Agnes sprinted over to Margot, then pinched the girl's ears painfully. "Why did you not say anything!?"

Margot struggled to push the vile girl off. "You are the most dreadful at listening, it's a wonder why I should even try!"

Yvonne pulled them both back from so close to the sand, then apart from each other. "Be careful, you're going to fall in it!"

"So?" Agnes asserted, shaking her stupid ally off her arm. "We have to step in it to get there, anyway."

"To get where?" The pitiful girl looked from Agnes, to the trailer, then back in disgust. "Surely you don't believe that's really there."

"What are you talking about? I'm looking right at it."

"How do you know it's not a mirage?" Yvonne rolled her eyes, but inside, she was a fidgety mess. No part of her wanted to go over the edge, especially for something she still didn't believe was real. "It could just be a trick of the light. We've been walking out here for too long and now we're seeing things."

"Coward," Agnes said shortly, bending down to untie her laces. "I haven't any time to deal with fearful children who aren't willing to do whatever it takes. I don't care if you come or not. Our agreement ends here, as far as I'm concerned."

"And you seemingly don't care that the trailer wasn't there just moments ago. What happened to the paranoid mess that was riled up about the water tower?"

"Your myth explains it all. Sometimes there, other times not." Agnes had both shoes off now and was tucking her knee-high socks inside. "Today, it's right here. When Bogart went missing, maybe it was somewhere else, and maybe he's in there now. I will not miss the chance to save him for the likes of you. Stay, come, I care not. Just get out of my way."

Then, without a moment's hesitation, Agnes pushed Yvonne aside and confidently stepped off the edge of Eldritch.