The Lost Village

it. Something like rust, but not quite.
When I tilt the lens to take a shot of the bed, I do a double take. My hand hesitates above the yellowing sheets. The top of the sheet has a simple lace edging, stiff and paper thin.
I pull it down sharply.
Beneath the sheets, the mattress is soiled with layer upon layer of rusty stains. Blood.
For a few seconds, I just stare at them, but then the resounding silence is broken by a sudden crash behind my back and the sound of something breaking. And a prolonged, ear-splitting scream.

 NOW
“Lean into me more,” I say to Tone. “Don’t put any weight on that foot, I can support you.”
Tone gives a steely nod. Her mask is pulled down so it dangles around her neck, and I see the muscles in her jaw tense up with every short, limping step her injured foot has to make across the cobbles.
Max sees us coming from afar. I wonder if he’s been looking out for us, because he’s with us in just a few seconds.
“What happened?” he asks. His question is directed at me, but Tone is the one who answers.
“Went through a step,” she says sharply. “In the school. The wood was rotten.”
“Is it her foot?” he asks.
I nod.
“Can you find her something to sit on?”
Max sprints off in the direction of the vans before I’ve even finished my sentence. He roots around in the back of our van and pulls out a cooler box that he sets down on the cobbles. I help Tone to sit down. Her forehead is shiny despite the cool air, and a twisting blue vein has emerged on her temple.
I sit down on the cold cobblestones in front of her.
“We need to get your boot off,” I say. She closes her eyes and nods.
“Wait,” says Max behind me, and I turn around. He pulls a small, silvery pack of pills out of his pocket, then presses two out into his palm and hands them to Tone.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Tylenol,” Max says.
Tone shakes her head and hands them back to him, the movement making her grimace in pain.
“We have to get the boot off now,” she says firmly. “It won’t kick in fast enough, anyway.”
“But—”
“Could you fetch the first aid kit?” I ask, cutting him off. “It’s in Emmy and Robert’s van. Check the front seat.”
Max is thrown for a second, but then he nods.
“Sure,” he says. “I’m on it.”
The moisture from the moss between the cobblestones has started to soak through the knees of my jeans. I look at Tone’s chunky boot and then up at her face. Her lips are pale.
“We can check if there’s anything else you can take,” I say.
She shakes her head.
“I don’t know what painkillers will work,” she says. “Just get it off.”
I start untying her tightly laced bootlaces, trying to ignore the short, choked sounds she makes when, despite my best efforts to be gentle, my movements cause her pain.
After loosening the bottom laces, I take the boot with both hands and look up at her.
“Ready?” I ask.
Tone nods.
I start slowly pulling the boot, and though she doesn’t make a sound, her teeth are clenched so tightly that her jaws have gone completely white. But then, just as I’m coaxing the foot itself out of the boot, she can’t hold out anymore. She lets out a long, drawn-out moan that’s almost worse than the scream she made when her foot went through the step. I can still taste the adrenaline in my mouth from that moment; the fear still has my body in an iron grip. It hangs in my joints, like an ache.
I put the boot down and look up at Tone. Her eyes are wet, and when I wipe my face I realize my cheeks aren’t dry, either.
“That’s the worst of it over,” I lie, and she tries to respond with a faint smile that, in its own way, is worse than the tears.
I peel the sock off her foot. She isn’t bleeding, which is a relief, at least, but I can see that her ankle has already started to swell. The skin around it is crimson.
“I heard something,” says Tone.
“It’s probably just Max looking for the first aid kit,” I reply.
“No,” she says quietly, “in the school. I heard something below us. That’s why I was on the stairs.”
I look up.
“What did you hear?” I ask.
Her gaze is steady, but her lips are pale.
“Footsteps,” she says. “There was someone walking around down there.”
“But there was no one else there,” I say, and Tone purses her lips.
“There shouldn’t have been, no,” she says.
Something inside me lurches. I think of Emmy’s pale face last night, and can’t help but ask:
“Are you sure that … I mean, are you sure what you heard was … real?”
Before either of us can say anything more, Max comes running back from the van with a white box.
“Here,” he says, putting it down beside me. “It had fallen behind one of the tripods, so I had to move things around a bit.”
“Thanks,” I say as I open the box, and then pull out a roll of gauze. I am just winding it around my hand when, out of the corner of my eyes, I see Emmy and Robert running across the square. Robert is carrying their things, so Emmy reaches us first. She stops breathless in front of us, small spots of perspiration visible under her arms. Like Tone, her mask is dangling from her neck like a macabre necklace.
“What is it?” she asks, before her eyes land on Tone’s rolled-up pants and swollen ankle. “What happened?”
“They’re saying she went through a step,” says Max.
“Were you the one on the walkie?” Emmy asks Tone.
Tone’s eyes are shiny and confused.
“I haven’t touched mine,” she says.
“Someone was calling into their walkie-talkie. Moaning in pain.” She looks at Robert.
Tone puts her hand into her back pocket, as though searching for something.
“No—I don’t even have mine,” she says. “It must have come out when I fell.”
Emmy