Dead Girl in 2A (ARC)

by Carter Wilson

  It’s not here.

  What do we do?

  I don’t know.

  I’m scared.

  Me too.

  Then, a scream.

  A terrible, night-piercing scream.

  Sixty-Nine

  Jake

  In the water, in the deep, I’m taken to an impossible blackness.

  I don’t think I can do it. Two minutes is too long.

  Jesus, what is happening? I’m going to die in this pool.

  Em. I’ll never see her again.

  Don’t think that way.

  Think of every challenge you’ve ever had. The moment you wanted to give up, then pushed harder.

  Do that now.

  Push harder, Jake.

  Your body can do it. Hell, you did it as a kid. I’m sure you only have a few more seconds.

  Markus will shout, then you can get your air. Until then,

  Push harder.

  I don’t think I can.

  Seconds pass. Maybe years.

  You have to.

  Suddenly, a blinding light.

  Then,

  I’m back.

  I’m a child.

  I’m lighting tiki torches with Clara. She tells me I stink. I tell her she’s ugly. She’s right and I’m wrong, and we both laugh. Raymond comes over and asks if we want to throw the football. I don’t want to, but I say yes because I feel bad for him. No one likes Raymond, which must be hard, I think. There’s so few of us.

  He seems angrier lately. I think since we’ve gotten our books. We throw the football, but he wants to play tackle. One on one. I ask him how it works, and he just says whoever has the ball gets tackled. Without me agreeing, he just comes over and knocks me to the ground. The air rushes from my lungs, and I struggle to replace it. As I lay wheezing, Raymond rips the ball from my hands.

  There. That’s how you play.

  I’m still aware I’m underwater, but that’s a distant thought. Hardly a concern, though I must be near death now. Somehow, that doesn’t matter. All that matters are the images flooding my brain. The memories.

  I have memories.

  I’m willing to die just to have more.

  Maybe that’s what death is. A permanent state of remembrance.

  The scene changes, like an abrupt movie cut.

  It’s dark. I’m in a house with the others. It’s the home of the headmasters, and we’re looking for something.

  The vitamins. We’re searching for the vitamins.

  Another child is in charge. The Leader. It’s the Leader who convinced us all to break into the headmasters’ home at night.

  The Leader told us we have to find and destroy the vitamins. The vitamins are hurting us. The headmasters are experimenting on us.

  I think…

  Eaton is the Leader. But he’s not Eaton. He’s just Alex.

  I don’t know what to believe, but we’re all here. Except Landis, who’s six but seems even younger. We didn’t warn Landis. He might tell his parents.

  We’ve split into groups. I’m with a girl in the study. It’s either Kate or Clara, but I can’t tell, even when I hear her voice.

  Maybe they’re in here, she whispers.

  I’m looking at a large wall safe, my flashlight beam sweeping along the numbered keypad.

  How do we open it?

  We don’t, stupid. That’s why they call it a safe.

  We could guess some numbers.

  And we do, but nothing works.

  The image dissolves, replaced by darkness. I’m still in the house, I think, but I can’t see anything.

  There is no more sight. There is only sound.

  Someone is screaming.

  We race upstairs, toward the sound, the horror.

  There, at the end of the hallway.

  Into the bedroom.

  Dark. Mostly.

  The screams are in here. They pierce through me.

  I think they come from a child.

  Orange numbers glow near the bed, perfectly sequential.

  12:34.

  Seventy

  Landis

  I see them. My god, I see them. First, only snippets. They flash by so quickly I cannot keep up, but enough shape and color stick to my brain to understand what they looked like. Mother, her hair a chestnut brown, pulled back so tight it gives a severe look to her face. But when she smiles, it radiates, and she smiles often, especially when she looks at me. Father, so busy, pen to paper, or at his computer, never ceasing with his notetaking, studying, experimenting. He is stern yet caring, his face as pale as mine, his eyes more blue than gray. He believes in what they are doing, believes it so much he’s willing to put his own child through the program. But that’s the thing. We are all his children in his eyes. The six of us, all orphans but me. The others, are they jealous? That I have parents and they don’t?

  The images slow and my brain fills with memories, and it’s dizzying and painful to contain them. I’m a starving man suddenly feasting, unable to stop the consumption. A small corner of my brain reminds me I’m submerged in the foulest of water, that my brain is nearly depleted of oxygen, and I will die if I don’t surface soon. But the rest doesn’t care. It wants me to stay right here, absorbing my childhood memories until I implode under their crushing weight.

  Then they stop. No more colors, no more light. Blackness. Then a door opening. Another memory comes, but this one is slow to build.

  My little hand is on the doorknob, and I enter more darkness. The only light comes from glowing orange numbers. My parents’ clock, garish and utilitarian.

  I’m in their bedroom, and I shuffle up onto their bed, squeezing between them.

  My father mumbles.

  What are you doing?

  I was scared. I wanna sleep with you.

  You’re six, Landis. We’ve already had this discussion.

  Just for a few minutes. Please? I promise.

  My mother’s voice, groggy with sleep.

  Let him stay, William.

  Okay, but just for a few minutes.

  They fall back asleep quickly. I do not. I fixate on the glowing numbers, watching them change.

  12:17

  12:18

  12:19

  At 12:20, I get out of bed, knowing I’ll never sleep if I keep watching the clock, but unable to look away. I’m still scared, so I don’t want to return to my room. I choose to sleep on the floor, between the bed and the wall. Somehow, there is safety here on the floor, but not in my room.

  My eyes are closed, and things begin to feel heavy, and I sense myself drifting away.

  Then, wet, punching sounds, and a terrible thrashing coming from the bed. My mother—I think it’s my mother—makes noises I’ve never heard come from her, somewhere between a scream and a gurgling plea for help. She’s drowning, I think. It doesn’t make sense.

  12:32, the clock glows.

  My father shouts, not from anger, but from pain. The light from the clock shows me nothing more than shapes twisting and convulsing on the bed, and all my mind can conjure is animal attack. A bear has broken into our house and is killing my parents. I am helpless to stop it. In fact, there’s nothing I can do but add my own screams to theirs, which I do with every fiber of my six-year-old being.

  It doesn’t do any good.

  12:34

  Lights flood the room.

  My parents are just meat and blood. The attacker isn’t a bear at all. It’s a boy.

  I know him.

  Seventy-One

  Eaton

  Birth or death.

  That’s what this is.

  I hold my breath and count the seconds in my head.

  Thoughts about God.

  It’s too late to ask for forgiveness. Any god who
created me will discard me as the waste I am.

  I want to change. I always have. No one will believe me.

  Not even God.

  But You made me like this. The irony of it all.

  The program is my only hope. It all starts or ends here, in this water.

  Seconds pass, a full minute. Another count to thirty, and I’m reaching that space between will to survive and a nudge toward endless sleep. The sleep begins to win. I think how comforting death would be.

  Then a sudden, blinding light, followed by a kaleidoscope of imagery. Images twist and turn, dissolve and reappear, but somehow I can focus on them, tune into each frame, put them in a logical order.

  Memories.

  Actual memories.

  From childhood. The first I’ve ever had.

  A policeman holds me, telling me my parents are dead.

  Somewhere in the distance, another officer utters, “Murder-suicide.”

  I want to push away from the arms of the man who holds me. They think my parents killed each other. They don’t know the truth.

  About who really put the poison in their coffee.

  I didn’t hate them. I didn’t love them. I didn’t feel anything.

  I just wanted to see what they looked like dead.

  Then, a flash to the school. This school. They’re trying to help, make us better versions of ourselves. They say.

  Don’t fear the methods here.

  Don’t fear death. It’s natural.

  Do take your vitamins. Every week.

  The headmasters make promises. I want to believe them.

  Whatever natural talents you have, our methods will make you use them to your fullest potential.

  I want to raise my hand.

  I want to ask them the question that’s been festering inside me since I arrived here.

  Surely they’ve thought of everything, so I want to ask:

  What if my natural talent is killing?

  Because I think the headmasters did not account for that.

  Maybe they do in their final moments, as I stab them in an uncontrolled frenzy in their bed.

  In my frenzy, I briefly spy the orange numbers on the bedside clock.

  12:33

  Maybe in these final seconds they realize they made me into an extraordinary version of the monster I’ve always been.

  I wanted to stop them by destroying the vitamins, hoping that would be enough.

  But the moment I entered the house with the others, I could not help myself. The others searched for the pills. I went to the kitchen and grabbed the knife.

  Landis is screaming nearby, but he does nothing to save his parents. He’s too young to help. All he can do is suffer.

  12:34

  Someone turns on the light. I’ve left the bed and steadied myself against a wall in the back of the bedroom. The others don’t yet see me. Maybe they hear me wheezing from exhaustion. I’m still holding the knife. Blood paints my body.

  Little Landis, on the floor, hugging his knees, his face bright red and contorted in horror, mouth wide open in a permanent shriek.

  He’s the only one staring directly at me.

  Seventy-Two

  Clara

  A gunshot, unmistakable and deafening, even underwater. It jolts me instantly from my past, severing the thin and fragile cord connecting this world to the other. It also saves me from drowning, because it forces me from the water.

  Markus is shooting. That animal has shot someone, just as Eaton instructed. It has to be…

  Jake.

  I push up through the muck and burst through the water’s surface, becoming an easy target for the next bullet. I expect it to come, yet I don’t cower from the thought. Air floods my lungs, nearly toppling me with relief, and as I open my mouth, I take in a mouthful of this putrid, slime-filled water.

  I gag as I lunge to where I think Markus is standing, but even as I storm through the pool I know this is a suicide mission. He’s already shot Jake, maybe killed him. I can’t save Jake, and now Markus will kill me.

  Still, I advance.

  I’m at the edge of the pool by the time I fully open my eyes. I wipe algae from my face as my stomach lurches, and without any ability to stop myself, I heave water and my last meal onto the concrete pool deck.

  “Don’t shoot him!” I can finally make out the watery image of Markus, gun held high in his right hand.

  Nearly the same words are shouted from behind me.

  “Don’t shoot her!”

  I spin and see Jake, gasping for air as he rushes over to me. What I don’t see is fresh blood. I don’t think he’s been shot.

  “Relax,” Markus says. “I shot into the ceiling. You couldn’t hear me when I yelled that two minutes had passed.”

  Another whoosh of water, and Landis spears through the surface, gasping nearly as much as Jake. Three of us are now above the surface. Eaton is nowhere to be seen. Elle is still writhing on her side, in obvious pain. At least she’s still moving.

  Harsh rain assaults the roof, and water dribbles through a leak in the ceiling. The bullet hole.

  “Eaton?” Landis says.

  “Still under,” Markus replies.

  The three of us in the pool share a collective gaze and, likely, the same thought. Eaton has either drowned or is close. Do we make any attempt to pull him from the water? Or will Markus?

  No one moves. Five seconds, then ten.

  Finally, movement.

  Eaton surfaces, and not with a rush and a gasp, but calmly, still breathing just through his nose, as if he could have remained under another five minutes.

  Markus speaks first. “Everyone was under for two minutes. Unbelievable. You all made it for two whole minutes.”

  Eaton says nothing. The only sound is the rain pelting the roof and a muffled groan from Elle.

  Jake fills the silence.

  “Okay, we did what you wanted. Now we need to get Elle help.”

  Eaton says nothing. He even has the trace of smile on his face.

  “For fuck’s sake,” Jake yells. “We have to save her. So, now what?”

  Eaton slowly lifts his hands, slicks back his hair, then wipes a thin layer of green slime from his face.

  “Now it ends.”

  Seventy-Three

  Jake

  Eaton must have finally lost his fucking mind underwater. That means I need to act, and now.

  I take small steps until my lower back touches the edge of the pool.

  The only real threat here is Markus, who’s standing directly behind me on the deck of the pool. I don’t turn around, but I should be within an arm’s reach of his legs.

  Deep breath.

  I have memories now. Not complete, but they’re there. Colors and smells, smiles and tears. I saw my parents—my birth parents—for a thousandth of a second, but that was long enough for me to capture them. And I saw Clara. She grabbed my hand in the bedroom that night as the Müllers’ blood poured from them.

  I know it was her because I turned and saw Clara’s face, and in it, I saw the face of my own daughter. That’s when everything clicked.

  In that moment, all the responsibilities I carry became fully realized. A responsibility to raise Em, to be a true partner to Abby. A responsibility to life, to complete whatever journey this is with more joy and less resignation. To be better today than what I was yesterday, and be better still tomorrow.

  I don’t know Eaton’s intentions, but I’m done waiting.

  You’re in control, I tell myself. You’ve always been in control.

  Markus begins to speak, and I don’t even know what he’s saying.

  Now, Jake.

  I push off the floor of the pool as hard as I can, spin, and lunge for Markus’s legs. As my body turns, I see he’s as close
as I hoped, but my bad leg fails me. I hoped to clear the top of the pool. Instead, my chest slams on the concrete pool edge, rearranging my ribs once again in a fresh torrent of pain. I’ve managed to catch one of Markus’s ankles and, just by virtue of falling uncontrollably back into the pool, I yank his legs out from under him, sending him crashing to the deck.

  But it’s no use. I’ve fallen back in the water, and it’s all I can do to keep my head above the surface. Markus can just stand up and start shooting.

  As I finally find footing, shouts erupt all around me. I think Markus is cursing at me, but then Clara’s voice rings in my ears.

  “Stay there. Right there.”

  I finally stand, my ribs like snapped matchsticks. Clara is out of the pool and holding a gun on Markus, who is flat on his back. She’s leapt from the pool and taken his gun.

  “Take it easy,” he says. He starts to get up.

  “Don’t move,” she says.

  He does. He very carefully gets to his knees, and as he starts to stand, he takes his other gun from his ankle holster.

  Clara doesn’t shoot. Her hands shake.

  “Shoot him,” I tell Clara.

  She doesn’t. She can’t.

  By the time he’s fully upright, they’re standing five feet from each other, gun barrels pointed at each other’s faces.

  Clara is panting. Elle, close by, has stopped moving.

  “I won’t if you won’t,” Markus says. His face is rigid as stone, but now I see the slightest shake in his outstretched hand.

  I don’t feel the rage I did earlier, but goddamned if I’m going to die in this filthy muck.

  “Shoot him,” I say again. “If you don’t, we’ll all die.”

  Each of them stiffens, their arms stretching out an inch more, their guns seeming to lean in for a kiss.

  The next spoken word is “no.” It comes from Eaton.

  I turn.

  “Both of you, put your guns down,” he says, his tone less bitter than resigned. I turn back, and neither Clara nor Markus has obeyed, but Clara has pulled her arm back a few inches.

  “Him first,” I say.

  “Markus,” Eaton says. “Put your gun down and take Elle for help.”