The Last Resort

by Susi Holliday

  James squeezes Amelia’s hand. ‘Do you recognise this?’

  She doesn’t answer. It doesn’t really matter what’s on this video. There’s only her and James left now, and it’s unlikely they’re going to get out of this alive.

  ‘The smaller island looks like here, doesn’t it?’ he says softly. He’s trying to coax it out of her – why? – but she’s not ready. She’s scared to speak. Terrified to see what’s coming next. Her body starts to shake suddenly, and she feels cold. So, so cold. Perhaps sensing the change in her, he doesn’t push further. Instead, he lets go of her hand and gets up. Folded blankets are draped over the backs of the other chairs across the room.

  He comes back, wraps a blanket around her shoulders. ‘It’s OK,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t matter now.’ He pauses. ‘I’m sorry, Amelia. I didn’t know it was going to end like this.’

  Amelia is puzzled. How would James have any idea how it was meant to end?

  The two small figures on the screen walk up the hill to the headland. The one with the long hair walks over to a small copse of drooping trees and starts gathering sticks. The one with the short hair stands watching, hands on hips. The sounds are muffled, their voices carried away by the wind. She can’t work out whose memory feed this is. It was only the two of them there that day, wasn’t it?

  Amelia in the blanket watches as the feed switches to another perspective, and she sees now what George saw, all those years ago. The man appearing from over the side of the cliff behind the small long-haired figure. An old man with wild hair, his clothes tattered. His arms are raised out in front of him, zombielike, and he opens his mouth to speak.

  But before he can, a voice cries out to the long-haired figure: ‘Behind you!’

  The figure turns to face the man, whose arms drop to his sides as they regard each other for a silent moment. Then the long-haired figure rushes towards him with arms thrust forward and pushes the man’s chest, toppling him over the edge.

  Then the perspective changes again, taking in the two figures as the long-haired one spins round from the cliff edge. It’s a much younger Amelia – frozen in shock – looking back at the shorter-haired girl who had called out to warn her of the man’s approach . . .

  Of course, Amelia knew all of this was coming. Her younger self was right there, after all. She’s the girl standing on the cliff edge. But whose memory is this? Who saw the two of them?

  James stands up. ‘Enough of this now,’ he says to the room, to whoever is showing them this scene. ‘We don’t need to see any more. You’ve tortured us enough.’

  Amelia is crying now, her shoulders shaking under the blanket. ‘I’m sorry.’ Her words are punctuated by sobs. ‘I thought it was a . . . a game. And then I wanted to help him.’ She shakes her head angrily, pointing at the place where the screen was, where it’s now just air. ‘It was her,’ she says, her finger trembling as she points at the empty space where the short-haired girl had been. The holographic screen might be blank, but she still has the image etched in her mind. ‘She told me we couldn’t save him . . .’

  ‘You ran away, remember?’

  They both turn at the sound of the voice. Behind them, from a door they hadn’t paid any attention to before, stands a woman with short, dark hair. She’s dressed in neatly cut black trousers and a black, fitted polo-neck sweater. She smiles.

  ‘I’ve been looking forward to this—’

  ‘You!’ James leaps from his seat and lunges towards her. ‘Who the hell are you?’ His voice shakes as he shouts. He has the woman pinned up against the wall, his hands on her shoulders. ‘Is this all your doing? Are you the other girl in that projection?’

  But the woman doesn’t struggle. She just smirks.

  ‘Are you quite finished, Jago? Your acting has been tolerable up until now, but you seem to have lapsed into melodrama. Maybe seeing your own dark secret wasn’t such a good plan after all . . .’

  James keeps her pinned to the wall, but his shoulders sag. After a long, silent moment, he says in a hollow voice, ‘You bitch, Merryn.’

  He turns his head towards Amelia. ‘I’m sorry. I really am.’ He draws in a long breath, releases it in a sigh. ‘I should never have gone along with this. I just thought she wanted to ruffle a few feathers. Make some sort of point. She promised to help get me back on my feet.’

  ‘What?’ Amelia says. ‘Help you . . . ?’

  ‘I’ve been struggling, ever since I moved to the mainland. That terrible scene you watched on the canal was only part of it.’

  ‘You were always weak, Jago,’ the woman he called Merryn says. ‘Did you really think I was going to give you a new chance at life? It’s not as if you helped me out when I needed you.’

  Who is this man? Amelia wonders. And why did the woman call him Jago?

  He turns back to the woman, who is still pinned up against the wall and not attempting to struggle at all. She clearly feels no threat from this man. ‘We were kids, Merryn,’ he continues. ‘We both suffered at Father’s hands. I thought you just wanted to bring Amelia back into your life. But people are dead . . . and Amelia still wants nothing to do with you.’

  ‘We’ll see about—’

  In one swift move, James’s hands have shifted to the woman’s throat. Her face starts to turn red and her eyes bulge. Her arms go to his, grabbing him at the elbows, trying to push him off. But Amelia can see she has no real strength.

  Amelia’s mind whirrs as she watches this man she knows as James continue to throttle her. Obviously the woman is behind all this, and getting rid of her means they might be able to get away. But if he kills her, there’s no chance of justice for any of the others, not to mention any insight into everything that’s gone on. Who the hell does she think she is, brandishing her moral compass . . . punishing them like this? Killing her isn’t the answer – she owes them an explanation at the very least.

  Amelia throws off her blanket and rushes over to stop him from choking her to death, but before she can get to him he flinches and releases the woman’s neck, then he starts to buck and writhe, as though he’s being electrocuted. He falls to the floor, still shuddering, until a rush of bloody foam pours out of his mouth and his whole body goes slack.

  ‘James!’ Amelia cries out. But it’s too late.

  The woman steps over him and walks over to the dining table in the main room, pulls out two chairs. ‘Come on then,’ she says.

  ‘What . . . what did you do to him?’

  The woman shrugs. ‘The trackers’ tasering function is new. I hadn’t actually trialled it before. Might need to dial down the voltage a little. I got a slight shock myself with the first burst.’

  Amelia grabs the back of the chair, feels her legs ready to buckle. ‘You killed him. Killed them all.’

  The woman sighs. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Yes, I did. But it’s your fault.’

  Amelia

  Amelia sits down hard on the dining chair, her body heavy and numb. Her head falls forward, the weight of it too much now on her shoulders.

  What have I just witnessed?

  She can’t take it in. These people have died because of her. Six innocent people. OK, maybe not so innocent. Maybe they have done some terrible things – but hasn’t everyone?

  The woman in black turns the other chair around, then sits on it, legs astride, leaning on the back. ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.’

  Amelia’s head snaps up at the sound of the familiar voice.

  ‘Hello, Anne. It’s been a long time.’

  She looks away. ‘Don’t call me that. My name is Amelia.’

  ‘And mine is Merryn, but I never really liked it. I always saw myself as George. Just like the one in the stories. Living on that island, desperate for friends. When you came along that summer, I thought I’d made a friend at last. We’re blood, Anne. Don’t you remember?’

  Amelia turns back to face the woman sitting before her. This is . . . George?

  This woman who, according to Harvey a
nd the various presentations, is the most gifted technological scientist in the world. This woman’s inventions have made the impossible possible. The implausible come to life.

  Amelia remembers that day on the island with that strange, bright-eyed, watchful girl. The comic books, the talk of Star Trek and all the futuristic powers that George was going to harness. And then the old man. The wild-haired, desperate old man on the cliff.

  She looks away, her eyes moving slowly around the room, watching the staff carry out their duties. Clearing up.

  Not the food and drinks. Not the upturned chairs and the smashed glasses.

  Bodies.

  James’s head is still turned towards her at an unnatural angle, his eyes wide open. His mouth set forever in a silent scream. She’d thought he was a friend. An ally. He’d been part of this? But then he’d tried to help her? She still doesn’t understand.

  Did all these people really die because of her? All because of one stupid mistake she’d made such a long time ago? An accident.

  ‘Tell me, Anne,’ this madwoman says. ‘Did you think about me much over the years? Because I thought about you. I thought about you all the time. On the days when I had to kneel for hours at a time, with bare knees on rough hessian sacks, repeating the prayers. Begging Father . . . atoning for my sins – I thought about you.’

  ‘My name is Amelia!’ She shakes her head. ‘But . . . but what are you talking about? What have I got to do with your praying, or your weird bloody father? It was me who pushed that old man . . .’ She pauses, wipes away a tear. ‘But we could have saved him. There was time.’

  ‘There was no time.’

  ‘Of course there was! You brought me up that winding path to see your den and to show me the lighthouse over here, but the main path was quicker – I got to the bottom and I ran to the shop, but . . . I was too scared to tell anyone.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter now anyway,’ Merryn says. ‘I told you about this island, and the lighthouse – and how Father said we shouldn’t come here. The island is cursed, he said. Father was damaged . . . tainted . . . but he wasn’t wrong. If it hadn’t been that man with his broken boat, and if it hadn’t been you – something would’ve happened eventually.’ Her face falls, and she looks almost genuinely sad. ‘I could’ve coped with it all, if you’d stayed my friend. But you ran . . . just like all the other children did. No one wanted to be around me. Not with me living there with Father. Even Jago was bloody useless.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Who is Jago?’

  Merryn nods towards James’s body. ‘Your best friend there. Bloody useless. When he came to us after his mother died, I thought – at last, company! A little brother. Well, half-brother. But a companion, at least. A partner, maybe. Or at least someone other than just me and Father. But no, none of that. All I got was Jago skulking around, snapping his infernal pictures.’

  ‘Jago?’

  A flash of annoyance at her obtuseness. More than that – rage. But Amelia watches her rein it in. ‘He was there that day, you know,’ Merryn says. ‘Hiding in the bushes. He saw everything – as you’ve just seen, from his memory feed that I spliced with my own. He ran off down the hill back to the village shortly after you did. I’m surprised you didn’t see him. Maybe you did and just didn’t know it.’

  ‘I still don’t get it,’ Amelia says. ‘Who is Jago?’

  Merryn flaps a hand in front of her face. ‘Jago . . . James . . . whatever. He took on the anglicised version of his name when he moved to the mainland. Disappeared down to London. He was no use to me, but then he got himself into a mess and he needed my help. So I helped him . . . and then he was meant to help me today. Help facilitate this little “adventure”. I was hoping he might’ve helped you . . . to stop hiding from everything. Face up to it. Face up to what you’ve done.’ She pauses. ‘If you’d admitted to it all earlier on in the day, I might’ve spared the others, you know.’ She’s grinning now. ‘But it turned out to be quite fun, setting everyone against each other. Pawns. That’s all they were. You’re the queen, Amelia. My queen. You always were.’

  Amelia wants to ignore all this. Wants to beg to be taken home. But is there any point? This woman – Merryn or George or The Host, as she likes to call herself – is completely mad. Aren’t all geniuses mad in some way? But this level of mad . . . She sighs. ‘Tell me then. About Father. What did he do to you?’

  Merryn shakes her head. ‘I told you the stories. That day. I’m not sure I can tell you them again.’

  ‘Why not? Because you made them up and you’re not sure you’ll stay consistent?’

  Merryn laughs, but there’s no humour in it. ‘I only wish I could forget. Everything he did to me – to us all – it’s imprinted in my brain. Why do you think I’m so fascinated by memory? It’s the most powerful thing. It can be manipulated so easily. To help draw you here, I picked those people based on their profiles, which I had my staff dredge through. They searched keywords, millions of names in thousands of databases. I have access to them all. I watched hours upon endless hours of CCTV feeds, looking for things to use. Why do you think I create things for others? Because then I have them all. I have everything, and I can do what the hell I want with it. You think each social media platform controls its own algorithms? Each search engine? Cookies? All of that is mine. Those paranoids who think that Big Brother is watching them through their machines and their feeds – they’re not wrong. I am watching. I see everything. And believe me, there’s no glory in it. People are disgusting. I make people’s choices for them, since none of them deserve to make their own.’

  Amelia says nothing. The woman is a megalomaniac as well as a psychopath. From what she remembers, ‘Father’ was deeply religious and deeply controlling. What Merryn is suffering from is PTSD.

  ‘All I want to do is stop the memories,’ she says. ‘I thought I’d have to implant false ones via the trackers, but those people you spent the day with – they had plenty of big secrets. Huge suppressed memories. As do you . . .’

  ‘So why not give me the tracker? You could’ve made this a whole lot simpler for yourself.’

  She shakes her head. ‘What would have been the point in that? You’d obviously suppressed your memories of that summer so deeply there was a chance they might never resurface. I needed you to remember it for yourself. I needed you to remember me.’

  Amelia swallows and a lump sticks in her throat. This is exactly what she’d thought earlier, in the cave. This is what she’d told James as they’d walked together to the big house. But he’d told her not to tell the others, so she hadn’t – and now they’re dead and it’s all her fault. Everything is her fault.

  ‘What happened that day . . . it was an accident.’

  Merryn slams her hand down on the table and the plates and glasses jump. A couple of them fall over, rolling across the table. ‘It doesn’t matter. That’s not the point! It was something we shared. Something we should’ve dealt with together. I never got over what happened – and you were long gone. I needed you, Anne.’

  ‘I keep telling you . . . I’m not Anne.’ A glass rolls off the table, smashing on the floor. ‘You’ve got some twisted idea that we were friends. But we were never friends—’

  ‘We could’ve been,’ Merryn says, pulling her chair closer. ‘We should’ve been.’ She shakes her head. ‘You didn’t give me a chance. But we shared blood! Does that mean nothing to you?’

  Amelia is struggling to find the words. The woman in front of her is clearly very ill. Delusional, among other things, and for all these years harbouring this strange, twisted obsession with a young girl she spent time with for one day – many years before. Yes, they shared a traumatic event together. But that can’t be what defines them both forever.

  Merryn changes tack. ‘I know what you’re thinking. It was one day . . . how could we be friends? But it was a special day, Anne. We formed a bond. What happened that day set the course for both our lives, did it not?’

 
She can’t deny that. The number of times she’d wanted to tell her parents what had happened, and decided not to. She’d been petrified. Her parents weren’t harsh people, but they were law-abiding and they would have wanted to do the right thing – go to the police, tell the truth. But what might have happened to her? She’d read things, seen things on the news about children who do terrible things being taken away – put in care – and what might have been done to her there? Being away from her parents and friends? Being known as ‘the bad girl’ . . . ‘the evil girl’. The man from the boat was dead. Nothing was going to bring him back. She’d spent over twenty years trying to make up for it, and although she’d had to push her family away – to protect them from what she’d done – she’d managed to get on with her life. Somehow.

  Stupidly, she’d assumed George – or Merryn, as she was calling herself – had done the same.

  ‘You don’t even know what happened to me,’ Merryn said. ‘Do you even care? It was fine for you. You just ran away, went home and pretended it didn’t happen—’

  ‘But I—’

  ‘Don’t interrupt me!’ Merryn jumps up from her chair and sweeps a hand across the table, knocking plates and glasses flying. ‘Look at all this. Look at all the lovely food I had made for you . . . and you didn’t eat a thing. Why? Why, Anne? I did this for you. I wanted you to enjoy the party.’

  Amelia feels sick. She’s struggling to cope with Merryn’s flashing mood changes. ‘You killed all those people, Merryn. Those people had nothing to do with this . . . with us.’ She sighs. ‘With anything that happened.’

  ‘Do you know what Father did to me when he found out, Anne?’

  Amelia says nothing. She doesn’t want to know, but she’s trapped her now, and she knows she’s not getting out of this place. She glances around at the staff still carrying out their duties. What stories do these people have? Because surely only people with everything to lose would be willing to knowingly participate in this whole sick charade.