Mr. Waits shuffles lethargically through the gentle morning haze of light peeking through the blinds, to find his daughter on the couch, droopy-eyed but not asleep. As he approaches, fingering the sleep from his eyes, she doesn't even notice him coming. Her gaze is unfocused on some chipped bit of flooring, and her chin is pressed to her chest, unable to hold it up anymore.

It takes a good yank on the blinds to get her to jump back into her senses and, with brightness heralding vigilance, her head of knotted hair jerks to a start, and she blinks with a wildness. Frightened fingers tighten on the blankets before loosening at the sight of her father. "Ay. That wasn't nice."

"You looked half cracked out. Be lucky I didn't dump a bucket of water on you." A hand runs down his face and he sighs through the fingers, squinting at the flood of natural light. "Why'd you sleep down here, anyhow?"

Lacey, slowly recollecting the events of last night, clears her throat. "Dust. Hotels consider that a health hazard. I learned that off TV."

"Lovely." Dad raises his brows. "Did you even sleep? Those eyes are bloodshot to hell."

"Yes, I slept and no, they're not. Probably just the lighting. Y'know...it does some strange stuff." She emphasizes this by smiling very bright, feigning complete restfulness, and tapping her temple with enough enthusiasm to power a football game. (Granted, the smile doesn't help her "half cracked out" appearance, and the first tap misses the mark and nearly jams into her eyeball.)

Dad nods and purses his lips. "Right. The lighting, of course. I wouldn't know anything about that. It's not like I'm an electrician or anything."

Lacey blanches. Oops. Still, she laughs off the silly mistake and stands up unsteadily from the couch to bump her father on the arm. "You're a funny one, Dad. Keep up the good work. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to tinkle." Get the hell out of here, gogogo, he's staring us down-

"Before you go-"

Her whole face scrunches up. Damn it. "When a lady's gotta go, a lady's gotta go."

"-I was thinking maybe you'd like to stay with Eli today while I'm at work. He's going on another search, but I'm sure he'd like the help."

"I don't know, Dad. It didn't seem like he liked me all that much yesterday. Plus, I've got a lot of cleaning to do, y'know, with all that dust and all. Can I pee now?"

"Just hold it a minute. He likes you, don't worry 'bout that. Just he's got a lot to swallow right now. I think your company could help. Plus, that keeps me at ease knowing you're being watched over." He pauses, sees Lacey open her mouth, and adds, "It's for Erie too, y'know. They're looking for Erie too."

Lacey pulls back and thinks through the filmy glaze of exhaustion on her brain. Stella. Missing. Erie. Missing. But a search is an awful lot of work, and an awful lot of weight on the shoulders of a girl who doesn't know what to even start looking for. Candy wrapper? Lost jacket? Full-blown decomposing corpse? And then the terrain is muddy and slippery and meant for strong legs and slender figures and someone who doesn't mind maggots or spiders...

And she's just so, so tired.

"I mean, I don't exactly want to..." Lacey gnaws the tip of her thumb. Let's hope he says we can stay home and lounge about with some wet wipes and yogurt.

"Well. That's unfortunate, because I called him last night and he's counting on you being there." At first, Dad shies, smiling away this mistake of his, but then more of his fatherly instinct emerges and his smile brightens with the most confidence he's exhibited since she arrived. "Better get yourself ready! I'll make breakfast and drop you off. Pick you up around, say...five-thirty?"

With a drag in Lacey's shoulders, she nods, swaying there on the spot while digesting the task ahead. What a shitty time to lose your bodyguards. That creepy little shit could've showed up after I had a good night's sleep. Inconsiderate.

While she stares at the floor, her father coughs. "You can pee now."

"Thanks."

And thus, a trial of inconvenience begins. Lacey has things to work through - like getting those souls back on her side and breaking through whatever hold that snotty bugger has on them, in order to regain their oh-so-special salt - but now she'll be off searching aimlessly for clues that won't be there. You can't think properly with three dozen people crunching through the forest and those on either side of you sniffling away pneumonia and grief.

Her plans will have to wait, however, while she readies herself for the day and wolfs down burnt toast with frozen slabs of butter. It will have to wait while she slips on a raincoat and flips the yellow hood up, while she sticks her ankles in too-big boots, and all the way into the 'ole red pickup, manned by her father. It will have to wait while the windshield wipers slap at every stray drizzle and while the radio declares in its falsely interested weatherman voice:

"Be careful as you drive out to Carrick this week, as there has been minor flooding in areas of lower elevation. Expect intermittent drizzling throughout the day, and as another cold front moves in it brings with it a chance of thunderstorms later tonight. We'll bring you more updates later. Janice?"

They pull up to the same place as yesterday, with the same people mingling about and the same calmly frenetic Elijah de Almeida pacing, phone looped under a piece of black hair that'd strayed from his ponytail. He appears to be in a heated conversation, but you can hardly tell with the kindness born into his face.

Dad exits the truck first, and Lacey follows with an uncouth hop straight into a puddle. It starts with a greeting; Elijah nods and finishes his call, but doesn't put the phone away when shaking hands with an old friend. "Your daughter's wonderful, helping out." He turns to Lacey. "God bless you. You'll have to come over for dinner again soon to catch up."

"We'll think about it," Dad intervenes, "but I've gotta get going or my boss'll have my ass on a platter. I'll see you, Elijah."

As her father walks away, Eli and Lacey both watch after him, the former with a grateful nod, and the latter with a noticeable tinge of desperation. But when he's gone, he's gone, and both of them acknowledge his absence in different ways.

Eli already has the phone back to his ear, waiting for someone to pick up. She watches with mild interest, scanning him and then behind him, him and then behind him, over and over as cars park and papers shuffle and he opens his mouth in a borderline panic to speak as someone finally answers.

"Hello, Georgia. I'm just calling to let you know there's another search; we're all congregating, same place, right now. Bring flashlights, maps, and anything you can use to pry something open. Tell your friends, your family, and if you can't come, search your basement, your backyard, under furniture, in closets. These kids, they might be scared, hiding. They're somewhere. Look. Please."

He hangs up without waiting for a reply and calls the next person, and when they answer, he repeats the same speech. He does this enough to where Lacey has it memorized within ten minutes, and he does it so rapid-fire that she can't tell when he starts one and ends another.

The people come a-running, meeting up with the supplies on their backs and plastic ponchos tight around their necks. When the deed of calling the entire population of Carrick has finished (at least, it felt like the whole population, with how the time dragged), Eli marches towards the large group, with Lacey following like some small, wet puppy. There isn't much else for her to do here - thus, proving the senseless move of making her come out here and participate in this. I bet Eli'll whip out his jazzy little phone and tell my dad how useless I've been when it's over.

Elijah claps his hands together and speaks with the wide berth of his belly. "Alright, folks! You've all come out here to find anything you think might relate to the missing persons Stella, young Ro-Anne, and Erie. These next two days will be extremely important for that last boy, but even if we don't find anything we'll just keep going until we do. We have no other option. Now, I want Georgia, Camila, and Robert out driving 'round town. See if you can catch what the police are doin' up by Mott's car. This chunk-" He gestures to a general collection of people. "-I want starting up that hill there, and this chunk-" He gestures to another group. "-is going through this stretch with me. If you find anything, call."

There's something in his voice that gives the directions weight. It's the sort of voice that makes you think, "If we don't do this right, we're fucking up the balance of everything." Naturally, everyone already knows their place, and they know how to handle this sort of dialogue, but Lacey's new to the business of searching for lost souls who aren't yet dead. Give her a dead man and all she has to do is whistle in the comfort of her own home.

This is not home, and these people are convinced what they're searching for isn't dead.

And so when the call is given, they all line up, shoulder to shoulder, in a line fringing the woods. She has Eli on her left, and in a last minute slip-in, Erie's mother situates herself on the right. It surprises Lacey for a moment; first, that she's right there, and second, that she hasn't seemed to age at all from the last time she'd seen her. Her brown cheeks shine with sunlight that doesn't exist, and they glisten in dry streaks every time she moves her head. She looks so much like her son: mature and complete. It's abnormal, seeing tears on her face.

Ms. Mott looks down, and her face sharpens. She's a pretty woman and her gaze slings brightness down upon Lacey with a red-rimmed eye. "Hi," she sighs. "It's been a while, chickadee."

Lacey forces a tight smile, but it isn't under the best of circumstances.

The whistle blows. The march begins.

It's a silent venture, this search party. Though the two women want to say much to one another, they remain quiet.

What else can one do - when they find twitchy little figures hanging in the branches - other than stare? They're the bone-thin, nearly skeletal ones this time, the wanderers who like to show up in strange places and never say a word. They're neutral parties, Lacey likes to think. They don't breathe salt, so Lacey never stirs up any interaction with them. They move slow, too, like her father in the morning, or a sloth traversing a tree upside-down (which some of them opt to do). Harmless and aimless. Unpleasant to look at, nonetheless. Nothing but bones.

She stops staring at these guys in favor of staring up at a more fleshed-out entity kicking their legs against the trunk of a tree. To the rest of the party, it comes across as the pecking of some confused bird, but she can see how the boy sitting there sometimes raises his eyes to Lacey and then quickly darts them down whenever she returns the look. Once, they maintain eye contact, and Lacey raises her brow as if to say, "Will you talk to me? Will you breathe salt?" but the boy merely looks down as if he were trying hard to ignore a shunned member of the family.

Damn that little girl. Even the desperate ones can't reach out.

She huffs and picks up the pace, lips pulled down and the area between her brows creased in a rather nasty fashion. That'll show them. That I'm pissed. When they come crawling back, we'll see who listens.

Time passes in hours, and after just one, exhaustion broils deep in her legs. Sweat lathers her back and her cheeks sit bitten with cold. Her eyes threaten to close. It's damn pointless, and they haven't found anything but another fuss about litter. And the hours pass, and the sun moves behind the clouds, and the woods thicken enough to let them all believe they might not find their way back - oh, no, they have to walk back, don't they?

Lacey isn't the only one starting to feel burnt out. The other adults have decided on taking a break to munch on the rations they brought, and even Erie's mother sits herself down on a rock to recover. Eli shows no sign of stopping, however, and someone has to jog to catch up with him in order to say, "Hey, man, you should rest and eat something."

The suggestion is tossed aside with a gruff grunt and a dismissing wave. Thus, the group keeps moving steadily behind him, just to prevent losing the man in the repetitive cycle of dead trees and brown grass.

This proves to be a wise thing. A sudden wheeze sounds from up ahead, and Elijah collapses into a crouch, palm pressed to the earth to hold himself up. "Shit," Lacey murmurs. And, being rather close, she runs ahead (maybe a jog, actually; she doesn't want to trip). As she nears, she hears the hoarseness of his struggle to breathe. "You should really take a break," she says, crouching beside him. "Are you okay?"

He doesn't respond, but a hand lifts from the ground, and a trembling finger protrudes from the rest of his meaty fist. Lacey follows the finger out. She doesn't see anything at first. But then she sees what would be the start of everything.

There, snagged between two fallen branches, is a shoe. Converse, actually, the staple of the common teenager. It's green with white rimming the edges, shoelaces tangled in the display of twigs. It's also red. Little splines and spatters of it, and then a messy sheet across the bottom of the shoe, like the color'd been stomped in. It doesn't drip, it doesn't shine. But it isn't gray, so it isn't old.

Lacey blinks profusely and can't help but mutter a clear-cut, "Oh my God."

Others hear this statement and see the man crouched down and they come running, forming an audience behind the two. One forces their way through the gasping crowd and, unlike Lacey, Erie's mother catches on immediately. She, too, seems shocked, but then the red blossoms in her eyes and, with nowhere else to place this anxiety, she releases it into the air as a scream.

Lacey flinches and covers her ears, but the shriek quickly devolves into sputtered muttering. Nobody can blame her, though: Erie always loved the color green, and nobody else would pick out a shoe as hideous as that. That meant this shoe is his - but is the blood?

Someone from the crowd moves towards the shoe, arm outstretched to pick it up, but Lacey hollers, "No!" and Eli's hand lashes out to grab their ankle. They trip and catch themselves on the ground.

"Don't touch it! Call the police so they can collect it! Don't fuck this up!"

Another person, a tall one, points from amidst the audience. "There's something else out there!"

"I don't care, nobody move unless you're going back!" Eli hollers, releasing the person's ankle. He struggles to stand again, all the harsh leadership back in his bones. "In fact, everyone get moving back to the lot. When the cops come, they'll need as much space as possible. Thank you all, really, but it's time to go."

Lacey lifts herself up on tiptoes to see where the other person had gestured, and sure enough, something's out there. It's small and white, and equally as rust-spattered as the shoe. A sock, maybe. A shiver rolls through her bones to think that this trail might keep on going. The other shoe, the other sock? Jacket and a hat? Erie himself, shivering cold or laid out limp?

The thought threatens to gag her, and Eli sees. He steps over, a solemn tilt to his eyes, and places a sure hand on her shoulder. "You should go with the rest. It shouldn't be too long before your dad gets there to pick you up. I'm sorry. I didn't really think we would find anything. I always want to, but I never think we will." He ducks his head. "Talk to your dad about that dinner."

"I will."

He claps her once more on the shoulder and turns back to the scene of their discoveries, fingers stuffed into pockets too small to contain them. Lacey turns in a circle, confused, but then figures that she ought to catch up with the group, and hauls herself up the hill.

The bony fellas aren't in their places in the trees anymore, she notes, probably off to survey another stretch of nothingness. She wonders about them. Did they see who took these children?

Even if they had, it'd be impossible to learn anything from them. They serve nothing and no one, not even themselves. As for the lingering little boy, well, secrets are always well-kept with the dead.

Where Everything Ends, by Grace Acladna