"You have the audacity to ask for help?" Wednesday said, her tone dry. "When you usually behave as if there is no problem you cannot solve."
There was a faint trace of amusement in her voice. Ethan getting locked somewhere was clearly entertaining to her.
Selene's mouth moved again as Ethan answered.
"Of course I can still escape from here," he said. "But doing it the easy way takes about a month."
A pause followed.
"And in that month," he continued calmly, "the guy who trapped me here will probably open the gates of hell."
Enid slowly raised her hand.
"Ummm… is that metaphorical?" she asked cautiously. "Or like… actual gates of hell?"
Considering everything they had seen tonight, she wasn't confident about the answer.
"I'm really hoping it's metaphorical," Enid added.
"It's not the literal gates of hell," Ethan said through Selene.
Enid immediately exhaled in relief.
"Oh thank god—"
"But it's worse."
Her relief died instantly.
"It's a doorway to another dimension," Ethan continued calmly. "One filled with nightmare entities that want to dominate the Earth and enslave humanity."
The wind moved through the broken remains of the cabin around them.
"In some ways," he added, "they're worse than what people usually imagine when they say 'hell.'"
"…I really wish it had just been hell."
Enid said it half to herself and then looked down at Lucy, expecting the girl to be terrified after everything that had just happened.
Lucy didn't look scared.
She was watching the adults around her with a kind of quiet focus, like she was thinking through something rather than panicking.
"Lucy… aren't you worried?" Enid asked.
Lucy shook her head.
"Not really."
She glanced at Wednesday, then at Selene's guns, then at the torn ground where the tornado had just been.
"This is kind of like the novels I read," she said.
Enid blinked.
Lucy continued like she was explaining something obvious.
"In those stories something bad happens first. Then a group of people show up who can fight the monsters."
She pointed slightly at them.
"You have guns. She has a chainsaw. And Uncle can control blood."
Lucy looked up at Enid.
"That's the hero group."
She said it with complete certainty.
"And I'm part of it now."
"…What about me?" Enid asked.
Lucy looked at her for a moment, thinking about it seriously.
"You're the comic relief of the group."
For a second there was silence.
Then Selene let out a short laugh.
It wasn't quite her usual expression.
"Wow," Selene said.
That was definitely Ethan laughing through her.
"Okay, okay… fun time is over," Ethan said through Selene's mouth. "We need to find that guy and get the book before he finishes whatever he's planning."
"If we don't," he added, "our future becomes uncertain."
Enid frowned.
"Why?"
Ethan didn't answer immediately.
Wednesday did.
"Because we are currently in the past," she said calmly. "And large-scale supernatural events have consequences."
"But we're already born," Enid said. "How can the future just disappear if we're standing here?"
Wednesday looked at her like a teacher preparing to correct a very basic misunderstanding.
"Because time is not obligated to preserve your personal comfort," she replied.
"If our enemy opens a dimensional gate here in 1981 and releases entities capable of overwhelming humanity, history changes. Entire civilizations can collapse before reaching the present we came from."
Enid stared.
Wednesday continued explaining, her tone steady and clinical.
"Think of time as a sequence of causes and outcomes. The present exists because countless events in the past occurred in a specific order. Change enough of those events and the sequence reorganizes itself."
"In extreme cases," Wednesday added, "the timeline corrects itself by replacing the present entirely. That means the world we came from could cease to exist."
Enid swallowed.
"…Including us?"
"Yes," Wednesday replied.
She looked toward the dark forest where the storm had passed.
"If the past changes significantly enough, the future that produced us may never occur."
"So we must stop this attempt in the past to make sure it doesn't affect the present," Wednesday said while looking toward the forest.
"Another possibility," she continued, "is that our arrival here was always part of the sequence of events."
"What do you mean?"
"It may not be a coincidence that Lucy opened the book and we followed her and arrived at this exact moment," Wednesday explained. "History may already include our interference. In other words, this situation might have always required our involvement."
She paused briefly before adding,
"The timeline could already account for us fixing the problem."
Enid tried to process that.
"So… this already happened?"
"Perhaps," Wednesday replied. "If that is the case, we are not changing history. We are simply fulfilling it."
"That somehow makes it worse."
"Time is not a straight line," Wednesday said. "It behaves more like a structure of interconnected outcomes. When an event becomes large enough, the timeline naturally forms corrections to maintain continuity."
She glanced toward the forest again where the Dark One had taken Ethan.
"Our presence here may be one of those corrections."
Ethan, who had heard almost everything, looked impressed. He hadn't thought of that until now. Maybe they would be the ones to place the curse on the book so that, in the future, Lucy would open it, get pulled in, and they could follow her.
*****
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