Dead Girl in 2A (ARC)

by Carter Wilson

  “Not much,” I answer, then call to the back of the pack. “Jake, are you doing okay?”

  “I’m managing,” he replies, adding, “The smell is stronger.”

  “I know.”

  Eaton sniffs the air again. “Faint,” he says. “But it’s there.”

  “I think I remember you as a child,” I tell Eaton.

  He peers at me through the branches.

  “Hopefully soon I’ll be able to say the same about you.”

  “I only remember snippets. But you were the oldest. And you were never happy.”

  Eaton pushes through the limbs separating us and walks up to me. Sweat trickles down his forehead, which on him looks more like a by-product of sickness than physical exertion.

  “Happy is an emotion I’ve never known,” he says.

  “That’s such a sad thing.”

  “It’s neither here nor there. It’s just who I am.”

  “How have you made it this far in life without happiness?” I ask.

  “I haven’t found it to be a necessary ingredient for success,” he replies. “My adoptive parents came from old money, mostly from banking. I’ve never had to work in my life. Money hasn’t bought me happiness, but it did purchase everything I’ve ever needed. And without my money, I doubt we’d all be here right now.”

  The others are catching up, but I take a moment. Here, with this man at the root of everything, I take him in. His smell, his energy. There is the familiar scent he carries, as I noticed when I first opened my hotel-room door. A rot. A core of putrescence, deep below his surface.

  “And you think if you can experience what I did, it will change you?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is I cannot continue living as I am.”

  As I am. Such a lost man.

  “Keep moving,” he says. “We only have so much daylight left.”

  I turn and continue to push myself through.

  The metaphor hits me as I get closer to the end.

  This is a birth.

  We are being born today, the orphans. Reborn, perhaps. Reborn in the mysterious world that’s always been a part of us, but hidden out of view.

  I fall silent as I focus on my task. Whatever time I wanted to kill is gone; there is no more contemplating what will happen when we arrive. There is just fate.

  At last, I reach the small clearing where I watched the crow seize up and die. I push into the open with Eaton on my heels, and the first thing I notice is the maintenance shed. There’s an audible gasp from Eaton as he looks upon it, as if finally seeing a ghost he’d only ever heard about in stories.

  My focus, however, is on the ground.

  There is no dead crow. No trace of the bird I watched convulse and perish just a few hours ago.

  I suppose it wouldn’t be unusual that another animal came along and took it in its jaws.

  And yet.

  I can’t help myself from wondering if it ever existed at all.

  Sixty-Three

  Jake

  Something is happening.

  I fucking feel it.

  A shiver runs through my entire body, the kind you get after a long run, when the sweat runs cold on your skin and your body has nothing left to give. I’m suddenly raw and vulnerable, and though I’m sure some of it has to do with blood loss and fatigue, there’s something more.

  My god, this place.

  I’ve just made it past the fallen trees with their bony branches, earning scratches on my face and arms. My leg hurts, but the real pain comes from my upper body. I’ve never had a broken rib, but I’m certain there’s at least one inside me. Every breath is a struggle, and bending over and under the tree trunks has become an advanced course in pain management.

  Worse than the pain from the hike was watching Eaton ahead of me, scrambling behind Clara, so close to her heels he kept threatening to trip her up. As I struggled along the path, the rage continued to well in me, and I kept thinking about how I could take him out, resisting only because I knew I had no chance of hurting him in my condition.

  Then, the clearing.

  I tripped on the final fallen tree, and when I tumbled into the clearing, a fresh wave of pain shot through my midsection. I managed to get onto my knees when Clara turned and rushed over to me, asking if I was okay.

  Elle came from behind, and when she and Clara helped me to my feet, a shiver of ice shot through me and I wondered if I was going into shock.

  Now, as I stand here looking at an old metal shed, the shiver fades, leaving a tingle on my skin, as if I momentarily grabbed a low-voltage electrical wire.

  The smell nearly overwhelms.

  “This is it,” I say. “Right?”

  “Yes,” says Clara.

  I begin walking forward and nearly lose my balance, but Clara and Elle seize me, holding me upright.

  “Walk me to the shed.”

  Eaton has already disappeared inside the small, metal structure, followed by Landis. Markus is behind us, keeping guard.

  The door is half-open, a broken and rusted chain on the ground.

  “I can walk the rest,” I say. Clara and Elle release me, and I hobble inside.

  It’s an ordinary shed. Tools on the walls, an old snow-removal machine in the corner. No one has been here in here for years, I think. This place is stuck in time.

  And the smell of citronella, stronger than ever. Now I see the source. An entire metal shelf of bottles filled with citronella oil, and next to them a dozen or so tiki torches.

  I reach up and touch one of them, and this is when it happens. A found memory, something I last experienced in Eaton’s apartment. That was a memory of horror. Not this one.

  As in the last memory, in this one I’m a child.

  * * *

  Standing here. In this shed. I reach for the bottle of citronella oil, but it’s a stretch for my little arms. The bottle nearly topples but I seize it, then lower it to my chest. I turn and see her.

  Clara.

  She can’t be more than seven or eight, but it’s her. Kinked red-brown hair, which falls well past her shoulders. Pale and thin, almost scrawny. A little gap between her front teeth, which I see because she’s smiling at me. She holds a tiki torch to me.

  “Fill her up,” she says.

  I unscrew the bottle as she removes the top of the torch. I tip the bottle over the torch, but the liquid weight shifts faster than I’m expecting and the oil sloshes over the side, splashing on my skin.

  “You spilled!” she shrieks, laughing.

  “I didn’t mean to,” I say, resting the bottle on the floor. “It’s all over me.”

  “It stinks!”

  I reach over and wipe my bare arm on hers, ensuring I’m not the only one slicked in oil.

  “Yuck, what’d you do that for?”

  “Now we both stink,” I say.

  Her smile is eaten by a frown, which itself doesn’t take long to disappear.

  “We’re never going to get that smell off.”

  “Look at the bright side,” I tell her. “You’re also never going to get a mosquito bite.”

  * * *

  Like that, the memory is gone and I’m back in the shed, dizzy.

  Her voice. Clara’s voice as a child fills me with such longing I don’t know if my ribs or my emotions are causing the pain in my chest. I think it reminds me of my daughter, only with deep sorrow, as if my daughter had died and I’m hearing her voice on an old recording.

  “Jake.” It’s Clara, coming up behind me.

  She doesn’t even need to ask the question.

  “Yes,” I say, turning to her.

  She smiles. That smile—no longer gap-toothed—but still the same. Same kinked, red-brown hair. Same bit of scrawniness to her.

  “Yes, what?” Eaton leans in and
studies me, his eyes darting back and forth, as if trying to read in mine a language he doesn’t know. Sweat glistens his forehead. “Are you feeling something, Jake? What is it? Tell me.”

  I have to steady myself against one of the walls.

  “I remembered something.”

  Landis walks in, and Eaton immediately interrogates him.

  “You? What about you? Do you remember anything?”

  Landis barely acknowledges his presence. He steps inside the shed—which now barely contains us—removes his hat, and squints.

  “No,” he at last proclaims. “I don’t feel…really anything. Maybe a light current of electricity. But very light. I don’t remember this place.”

  Eaton snatches a bottle of citronella oil off the shelf, holds it against his nose, breathes it in. He closes his eyes for a few seconds, and then twists his face in frustration. He throws the plastic bottle against the wall, where it doesn’t even give him the satisfaction of breaking open.

  “Me either,” he says.

  “It’s okay,” Landis assures him. “We have time.”

  As if to prove otherwise, a rumble of thunder fills the shed, and seconds later, rain assaults the metal roof, sounding less like water and more like thousands of insects trying to break in and consume us.

  “So, what now?” Elle asks.

  I turn to Clara. “What else is here, besides this shed?”

  “I don’t know, some burned-out buildings. I haven’t explored anywhere else yet. I wanted to bring you here first.”

  I reach out and hold her hand, which feels so natural, as if we did this as little kids. Maybe we were each other’s crush at this school.

  “I only saw… It was brief,” I tell her. “We were here, in this shed. I spilled some of the oil, and you laughed. Somehow the smell of the oil became a memory, I suppose.”

  “I remembered more than you,” Clara says. “I remembered the school grounds. Faces of the others. The recollection hit me for several minutes, then started to get fuzzy.” She looks over at Eaton and Landis.

  Eaton wears a feral snarl as he turns around in the shed, as if looking for an elusive clue.

  Eaton.

  It just hits me as I watch him. He hasn’t changed in the last few minutes, but I have.

  I take a step closer to him.

  “Don’t get any ideas,” he says. “Markus is just outside.”

  We lock onto each other. In the moment, I feel a shallow kind of sorry for him, like I would seeing a mean stray dog stranded in a downpour.

  But there’s one thing I don’t feel.

  The rage is gone. I even try to summon it, to hate this man, to will myself the desire to hurt him. Yet I’m completely unable to bring myself beyond anything but pity and, perhaps, compassion.

  That’s the pattern.

  Clara and I had the same memory of Landis’s dead parents, and immediately thereafter we became consumed with violent urges. For Clara, it was a desire to kill herself. For me, it was an urge to kill Eaton. The same thing must have happened to Kate and Raymond, who carried their own urges to completion.

  But here, in this shed, on these old school grounds, the urges dissolved. If Kate and Raymond had come here, I’m certain they never would have done what they did.

  This place is some kind of closed loop. A circuit completed. Whether this is a beginning or an end, all I know is I feel good. Damn good. Despite the physical pain and a heartache I cannot explain, I feel alive. Purely, viscerally alive, in the way someone who has just fallen in love, or maybe found their version of god, or has simply walked outside into the fresh air after a lifetime locked indoors might feel.

  Christ, I want to go home. I want to tell Abby everything is okay now, that whatever was happening to me has reached the place I was hoping for. A plane of existence that will make us better as a couple, as a family. I want to touch Em’s face, because I feel as if I could simply wipe her scars away, erase all the pain, restore to her all she’s lost.

  Maybe this feeling will be fleeting, but right now, wounded and hobbled, I feel whole. I am in control.

  It’s fucking elating.

  This is how Clara felt when she was here. Why she rushed back to the hotel to call me. She wanted me to experience this, and now I have.

  “Thank you,” I tell Clara, who doesn’t need to be told what I’m talking about. I can see it on her face, and she gives me a smile and a nod. My chest wells with emotion, and I push away tears.

  My emotions seem to enrage Eaton further, as if I’ve stolen something precious from him and smashed it on the ground.

  “We need to keep going,” he says.

  “This is crazy,” Elle counters. “It’s raining. It’s getting late. Jake needs help.” She steps up to Eaton. “I don’t know what you’re expecting to happen to you, but it’s clearly not happening. You’re a lunatic, and standing in a magical shed isn’t going to change that.”

  Eaton pushes past her and reaches the door of the shed. Markus has moved just inside, though he’s already wet from the rain. He’s holstered his gun away, perhaps worried about it getting wet.

  “We keep going,” Eaton commands him. “And if any of them try to get away, kill them.”

  With that, Eaton walks out into the rain, a lone figure trying to find direction. He trudges along a mud path until the rain blurs his image, dissolving him, breaking him into pieces, until finally he is gone.

  “Out,” Markus orders.

  We all hesitate for a moment, perhaps testing him, seeing how willing he is to do what his boss has asked. The answer becomes clear when he removes his gun and points it directly at Clara’s head.

  “I said out.”

  Landis sidesteps and places himself between the gun and Clara. “It’s okay, Markus. They understand.”

  Then, turning to us, Landis says, “Let’s see this thing through, shall we?”

  He slips on his fedora and is next to leave the shed and step into the downpour.

  The rest of us file out, and the rain is an instant chill on my skin.

  I look up to the heavy clouds as I hobble through the fresh mud.

  Darkness creeps.

  Sixty-Four

  Clara

  We fan out, like soldiers on patrol. Only Markus hangs back, shepherding us through the grounds of the old school. The rain shifts from pelting to spitting, and despite the bitter cold it’s invigorating. Cleansing.

  None of this is familiar, yet all of it is.

  The small campus consists of a cleared piece of land, perhaps five acres at most, with the maintenance shed the only structure set apart by a path. Four buildings occupy the clearing, three of them fire-damaged and partially collapsed. Each building blends into the mountain environment, no more than two stories high, and each consisting of log-and-stone construction. Ahead to my left, a house. This is the most damaged structure of all. A sand-filled playground occupies a swath of land next to the house, with rusted swing sets and slides that haven’t held the weight of a child in decades.

  A larger building lies straight ahead, half its roof collapsed under the weight of time and neglect. I’m guessing this is the main school building. I try to remember it, but I have only a sense of familiarity rather than direct memory. Three wooden picnic tables sit in front of the building, and these seem the most recognizable things to me.

  Tucked behind this building is a simple boxy structure. The word that comes to mind is barracks. Maybe that’s where we lived. I start walking toward that structure, but Eaton has something else in mind.

  “Over there,” he says, jabbing to the smallest structure of them all. It’s the only one appearing undamaged, at least on the outside. A small, one-story log cabin with, curiously, no windows.

  He pivots toward the cabin as we cross a large, overgrown field. Two soccer goalposts decay on each side of th
e field. I imagine myself running along the field as a little girl, kicking the ball, squealing. I imagine it, but don’t remember it.

  Eaton beelines to the cabin, and the rest of us follow. He’s losing it; I can tell. He’s desperate for even a hint of his past, and I’m worried what will happen if he doesn’t find it. A treasure seeker finding an empty chest.

  As I get closer to the building, the tingling in my skin begins, as if the structure itself is alive, pulsing its energy outward. Just like what happened outside the shed.

  Eaton reaches it first. He stares at a sign on the outside wall, the letters artfully carved in wood. I can’t make it out until I’m standing next to him.

  Hydro-Retientia Room.

  The name is meaningless to me, but apparently not to Eaton.

  “Yes,” he says. “Of course. Yes.”

  The others soon join us. I look to Jake, who appears no more enlightened than I am.

  “What is this place?” Elle asks.

  “Perhaps exactly what we need,” Eaton says, quietly enough that I suspect I’m the only one who heard him.

  Markus’s voice grumbles from behind. “Whatever it is, let’s get out of this goddamn rain.”

  We file in, Eaton again leading.

  The outside door is unlocked and opens into a small room, cedar-plank floor and walls, wooden pegs on the wall. It reminds me of a sauna, minus the heat. Two of the pegs hold simple white towels left behind years ago.

  A second, solid-wood door is the only option for going farther inside this building. This time, I go first.

  The door pushes open easily, and I’m immediately struck by an intense smell. A faint scent of chemicals, but it’s overpowered by a musk of decay.

  There’s only one thing in this room.

  A small, square pool.

  Sixty-Five

  Jake

  Hydro-retientia.

  I don’t recognize the name, but I think I know what this is.

  The smell is terrible. Death kind of terrible.

  “Shit,” Markus complains. “I liked it better out in the rain.”

  “No,” Eaton says. “This is exactly where we want to be.”