The bridge disappears completely.
Marie stands beside the water, staring at the empty space where the stone arch once rose. Smoke covers the hill, blurring the boundaries between sky, trees, and flames.
The faceless woman is still before her.
“Where’s Sunny?” Marie asks.
The figure does not answer at once.
“In the cabin.”
“Alive?”
“Still.”
Marie feels something break inside her.
“Let me go back.”
“You’ve already come back.”
“No.”
Marie points to where the bridge should be.
“I want to go back to my daughter.”
The woman tilts her head.
“That’s what you said the first time.”
Marie steps back.
“Who are you?”
“The one who remains.”
“What does that mean?”
The woman raises a hand and points at the water.
Marie lowers her eyes.
The stream still flows powerfully, yet its surface has become smooth and motionless, like a sheet of glass. The woman before her does not appear in the reflection.
Marie does.
She is standing on the bridge in the white nightgown. Her hair clings to her face, and mud covers her body. The image seems to belong to the first night, when the motionless woman stood at the center of the arch.
Marie moves closer to the water.
Her reflection raises its head.
It has no face.
Marie puts a hand to her face. Her eyes, mouth, and nose are still there. She can feel them. Yet when she looks back at the stream, the image is still that of a woman with nothing where her face should be.
“No,” she whispers.
“The bridge doesn’t lead somewhere else,” the woman says. “It leads to what you are when you can no longer return.”
Marie looks back at her.
“I’m not you.”
“Not yet.”
The woman slowly steps aside. Behind her, the smoke begins to disperse. The burning cabin vanishes. In its place appears the deck of the first cabin, lit by the gray light before dawn.
Marie makes out Joseph by the railing.
His back is turned as he looks toward the stream.
Sunny stands behind a window, her phone in her hands.
The scene does not seem to be an image of the past. Everything is happening at that very instant, across an impossible distance.
Joseph turns toward the deck.
Marie hears his voice, though water, trees, and smoke lie between them.
“Marie.”
She tries to answer, but no sound comes.
Joseph keeps looking toward the opposite bank. He cannot see her.
A figure appears at the center of the bridge that no longer exists.
It is the woman in the white nightgown.
The faceless woman raises a hand and points toward the cabin.
Marie understands.
That was what Joseph saw. That was what she herself saw on the first night. The woman had never been there to watch the other cabin. She had been waiting for Marie to reach her.
“I don’t want to become you,” she says.
The woman regards her with the smooth surface of her face.
“You already are.”
Marie thinks of Sunny. Of her motionless body on the bed. Of the notebook. Of the words she read too late. Then she looks toward the cabin reflected in the water.
Sunny raises her head. For a moment, Marie thinks her daughter can see her. The girl approaches the glass and rests a hand against it. Marie does the same against the surface of the stream.
The water is icy.
As she touches it, she feels her face go numb. First her lips lose all sensation. Then her nose and eyelids. She tries to pull her hand away, but the water holds her.
The faceless woman opens her arms. Marie tries to scream Sunny’s name. She cannot; she no longer has a mouth. Her face begins to dissolve. The skin smooths over. Her features sink inward until they vanish. The pain is not physical: it is the feeling of losing, one by one, the things by which she knew herself.
Marie looks at her reflection one last time. She no longer knows whether the woman in the water is herself or the figure that was waiting for her beside the bridge.
On the other side, Sunny takes her hand from the glass. The cabin is empty again. The smoke dissolves. The stream resumes its movement, and the bridge reappears in the uncertain light before dawn.
Marie stands at the center of the arch. She wears a long white nightgown, soaking wet. Her hair covers part of her head. Her body remains motionless as she watches the cabin from a distance.
Joseph steps onto the deck. Marie raises a hand. He cannot see her.
Then a woman’s scream rises from inside the cabin. The echoes multiply, striking the slopes and sweeping through the valley from hill to hill.
The faceless lady remains on the bridge.
Waiting.
THE END