Mayhem

by Estelle Laure

  “What if he checks the back seat?” I whisper after a few minutes, my anxiety getting the better of me.

  “He won’t,” Neve says.

  I wait a few beats, focus on the gray seat pocket directly in front of me. There’s nothing in it. In fact, the car is pretty pristine.

  “How do you know?” I say.

  “Because he thinks he’s invincible. Why would he think he has anything to worry about? And anyway, if he does, we’ll still get him. Now shut up!”

  A cop car shines its spot into the car and I hold my breath. The cop can’t see us in here, but in the harsh light I can see even Neve is sucking in her breath, trying not to make a sound. Even Neve is trembling.

  Maybe this is what it feels like to be the Sand Snatcher, stalking. Everything is a threat, and every near miss a sign you’re fulfilling your destiny. We rearrange ourselves so my head is on Neve’s hip, so we can both leap to action when it’s time.

  Nothing happens.

  Nothing happens.

  Nothing happens.

  Time creeps.

  I don’t like waiting.

  It gives me too much space for contemplating what I’m doing and how every decision I’ve made in my life has led me exactly to here.

  “Your hip is so bony,” I say. “You’re going to pierce my skull.”

  “He couldn’t get a bigger car?” Neve says. “It’s practically a clown car.”

  We both laugh but then I feel a whoosh, pressure. I hear a tick.

  “He’s coming,” I whisper.

  The whirring starts up in earnest, a warning. The clicking and whirring get louder, just as Jason lets out the crow call we agreed on.

  Neve says, “Hold it together.”

  “How do I do this?” I whisper.

  “You’ll know,” she says. “Follow my lead.”

  I am not a baby bird.

  Kurt the Sand Snatcher gets in, driver door still open, and the car fills with the stench of his misdeeds, and underneath them, a sweet beckoning. My throat thickens.

  He gets the key in the ignition, checks the rearview mirror, and the sound of Phil Collins fills the car. When he closes the door, Neve sits up in one smooth motion and reaches over the front seat, locking him in with an arm around his throat. He tries to fight but she’s got him pinned. She’s so strong. He writhes, his eyes searching.

  “Shhh.” She looks at me. “Well, help!”

  I climb over the seat, and Jason slides in the back. Kurt Sand Snatcher doesn’t say anything because he can’t because Neve has just shoved a sock she had in her pocket into his mouth. Jason slaps tape over the top of it and then sits back, expressionless, next to me.

  “We can all see. You don’t have any secrets anymore because we can see them all,” Jason says. “And man, you deserve what you get.”

  The car is filled with nightmares.

  I grab hold of his arms and get right up close to him. It’s easy to pin him. He smells like terror and the want clicks in. I will gobble his transgressions and they will satisfy me.

  “You tortured those girls,” Neve says. “They had lives and parents and people who loved them and you killed them. You took everything away.”

  He moans and tries to shake himself loose while I keep checking around for more cops. Elle said they were patrolling every thirty minutes but you never know.

  Neve makes eye contact with him in the rearview mirror and forces his face still with her free arm. “God has sent a reckoning, Kurt Selinger. And it’s us.”

  He squeezes his eyes shut and she pries one open. “I want you to look at me.”

  He stops fighting and is slack with confusion so palpable it’s a reaching thing. Nausea bulldozes over everything else and I lose my grip for a second, let go of his arm. He immediately flails and knocks Neve back.

  “Shit,” Jason says, scrambling, reaching forward. Kurt reaches for the handle and flings the door open. He pulls the tape from his mouth, spits out the sock, and shouts. It all happens so fast and my reaction is so swift, I almost don’t know how I got on top of him, knocked him to the ground. I have his foot first and use it as leverage to crawl over him, flip him over, and am now mouth to mouth with him, inhaling with new lungs that never end.

  I am two Mayhems. One who can’t believe what she is doing, and a second one who has discovered her purpose.

  The Sand Snatcher watches me, as I breathe in. The honeycombs are losing their shape, deflating. I feel Jason settle on one side of me. I know he’s talking and he’s pulling but I can’t hear him. Then Neve is beside me, inhaling, too. We breathe together, filling up. It’s all Phil Collins and the clicks and whirs slowing, like clockwork going backward, straining against its own machinery.

  And then, a beautiful silence. I stop, back away from his body lying in the street. A few seconds later Neve jumps off him and lands next to me, glowing like that first night on the boardwalk when they left me with Kidd.

  “That was good.” She hugs me. “You did a really good job.”

  “Good? That was amazing,” Jason says.

  His words don’t match his tone. He doesn’t sound like he thinks this is amazing. He’s a few feet away from me, squatted down with his head in his hands. He won’t look at me.

  I’m breathing hard. I see the beach without any light at all, as though it’s daylight. My lungs are infinite and my body buzzes, everything operating exactly as it should.

  Jason finally lifts up. “Mayhem, that was crazy.”

  I try to take his hand, but he lets go and shakes his head. He looks down at Neve, at the Sand Snatcher’s limp husk splayed out, and then at me.

  “Jason?” I say.

  He doesn’t answer, but silently wipes down the car with a cloth he pulls from his pocket. I sit on the curb, holding on to my knees. And then it hits me, why Jason is skirting me like I’m a wild beast who might attack any second.

  I killed someone.

  But that’s not what it is, at least I don’t think so.

  I did a really good job. I killed someone well.

  Everything in life is hard.

  But killing the Sand Snatcher was easy.

  TWENTY-NINE

  BILLIE BRAYBURN DAUGHTER OF JULIANNA

  1929

  Karen Thisby has taken her own life and it’s my fault.

  I confess I was lonely in this mission of ours. I would never speak of it to Tommy. He is my husband and would never allow me to continue if he knew, especially with a baby on the way, and then I made a horrible mistake.

  I showed Karen the cave. She seemed perfectly suited to it, having such character and physical prowess, and we get along so well. But after a few weeks she began acting quite mad. There’ll be no point in sugarcoating it. She took off all her clothes and tried to tear off her own arm. She tried to walk on water. She murdered men with little reason. And I attempted to get her to stop taking the water, but she grew gravely ill. She sweated and shook and scratched at herself. She didn’t want to stop. She couldn’t. She took her own life rather than continue. For all the lives I have taken, this is the one that will haunt me. Poor, dear Karen. If I hadn’t showed her, she would never have come to such an end. I will make sure to tell my child this news and see that she passes it on.

  I will tell her:

  Drink the water.

  Find true love.

  Embrace your fate.

  Protect Santa Maria and you protect yourself.

  And never, ever tell another about the spring.

  We are none of us invincible. We are all of us made of flesh and bone.

  It is for us alone to carry.

  THIRTY

  FATE

  When the phone rings out into the house I’m still awake, in the room I should be sharing with my mother. I jump and the Brayburn book falls off my chest. I run to the hallway, but Jason is already there with the phone against his ear.

  “Hello?” he says.

  I don’t move. Roxy wasn’t here when we got back. I had assumed
she was off screwing Boner, but now I am picturing that rickety old car she finally got gas for toppling off a mountainside. I’m picturing her wasted, careening or jumping or falling or drowning. I am wondering whether she even wants to be on this planet and whether I’m enough to keep her here. A person can have enough of it. Just look at my dad.

  Obrigado.

  Amor.

  “Hello?” Jason says again.

  He couldn’t look at me, down at the beach when the Sand Snatcher was lying there dead. He wouldn’t. But he’s looking at me now.

  After a few moments, he replaces the phone on its cradle. “Nobody there,” he says, and shrugs.

  It’s five in the morning, and I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to sleep again. I’m going to be awake, swirling in my own tornado until a house lands on me and puts me out of my misery.

  “I just realized I have to start school in a month,” I say. “High school.” I drop my face into my hands. I’m really not sure I can come through all this in one piece. Really.

  “You didn’t come upstairs.” Jason gets closer, so I can feel his body heat.

  “I didn’t think you wanted me to.” I keep my face covered. I don’t want to look up, not because I’m afraid, but because this way I can smell him, feel him inching in.

  “I’ve never seen anything like that. The way you took him out…” He peels my hand away, so gently. “It was mastery. It was fierce. And it was terrifying. I just needed a minute. But I wanted you to come upstairs. I couldn’t sleep. Like, at all.”

  “Me neither. I was reading. I’m…” I hesitate. “I’m trying to understand.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “I bet you are.”

  Above us, the fairy lights blink out their soft rotation of color: pink, purple, blue, yellow, green, pink …

  “It was different than when you did it?” I ask.

  “Oh, I’ve never done it. It’s part of the agreement I have with Elle. I can’t, and Kidd isn’t going to either.”

  “Then why did you drink the water in the first place? Why are you even here, Jason?”

  There’s a long pause.

  Finally he says, “I wonder that all the time. I wonder if I did something so stupid I ruined everything.”

  I pull him to me, half expecting him to push me away, but he doesn’t. He puts his arms around me and applies just enough pressure for me to feel safe. “I wanted Kidd to be able to protect herself,” he says into the top of my head. “Neve knew. She understood. She told me we would be invincible. We would be heroes.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “But I don’t think I really believed her. I thought it was some hurt girl pretending she was a witch or something. And the part of me that did believe it was like, yeah, we could use some extra help, my sister and me. I think I fucked up real bad.”

  I pull back so I can see his expression. He’s looking for me to reassure him, I think, but I can’t, not after what I just read in the Brayburn book. Because he may be right. He may have fucked up real bad.

  I watch him carefully for the signs of madness Billie wrote of in her diary entry, but he seems calm, just sad.

  Elle must know the risks for people who aren’t Brayburn blood. She must have felt like there was nothing to be done since they had already found the water by the time she got to them. She could only take them in and teach them, keep them as safe as possible, make them her own children.

  They did need her.

  “Speaking of fuckups, that was my stepfather on the phone,” I say. “I’m almost positive. Sending a message.”

  “Whoever it was didn’t say anything. There was just breathing. And you know people call Elle at all hours to help them.”

  “Yeah, except I know because I know. And time’s running out.” It’s such a relief to speak what’s been circling around in me. “If Lyle left right after he threatened to come here, stopping for some sleep at some point, he’ll be here soon. I mean, he should be here now.”

  Jason seems to think about this. “How do you know he’s coming? It’s a long way to come for someone who doesn’t want you.”

  “I made him mad. It’s hard to explain. I just don’t think he’ll let my mom go. And if he comes, he could be dangerous. It depends where he is on the loop.”

  “Loop?”

  I forget other people don’t know about this. They don’t have to watch for a cycle, a rounding of the horn from sweetness to violence. I know Jason has had other, worse things in his life, but it sounds like his parents loved each other the right way.

  “Like, in order to know whether or not he would hurt us, you have to know if he’s feeling repentant, or just pissed, and oh my God, my mom isn’t here. She’s with Boner, and if Lyle shows up, that’s a whole other issue. I wish she would have left him alone, but she didn’t. She called him. I know she was lonely but if she had just waited, she would have gotten better.”

  “Yeah, but it’s hard not to reach for comfort when you’re lonely, right?” Jason says.

  I soften, understand the question he’s really asking. “You think that’s why I like you? Because it’s not that. It’s that you make me feel crazy but in the best way. You … your actual self … it’s the better magic.”

  “The better magic,” he murmurs, slipping an arm around my waist. I almost go limp. My throat swells. There is pain and there’s hurt, and then there’s this, an ache right into my marrow.

  This isn’t like with Roxy, where our bodies fit together and I know I came from her, that she made me. It’s not the telepathic connection that’s all filled up with tinny resistance and being too close to be healthy.

  “Let’s talk this through,” Jason says, and we slide down the wall, hold hands. A lot has happened in this hallway, I realize. So much in between. Between rooms, lives, loves, locations. Between me and myself and me and Roxy and me and Jason and me and Neve.

  “Take this a piece at a time,” Jason is saying. “You think but you don’t know that this Lyle idiot is coming, right?”

  It’s true, except I feel he’s coming and lately that’s accounted for a lot. But still.

  “Right,” I say.

  “And if he does, you think but don’t know that he might have left after he talked to you.”

  “True.”

  “And you think if he comes here that you won’t be able to defend yourself?”

  This stops me. Lyle is strong. He’s wicked strong. But is he stronger than me? Now?

  Maybe not.

  Probably not.

  “You think he’ll be able to waltz in here and take you wherever he wants to and there’s nothing else you’ll be able to do about it?”

  I let out a little snort.

  “Exactly. Come on. Remember what you did a few hours ago. Remember who you are.” It startles me to realize I haven’t thought about the Sand Snatcher since we left the boardwalk. Because I truly feel no remorse. “You’re not that girl anymore, Mayhem. You couldn’t even pretend to be if you wanted to. Your body wouldn’t let you.”

  The images of Lyle coming in here and dragging me out of bed, of being trapped in the truck and going back to Taylor, evaporate. Instead, I see I could undo him. I could literally suck the life out of him and he’d be gone forever.

  “And anyway,” Jason says, “even if you were a normal girl and couldn’t defend yourself, I would do my best to make sure you were safe.” He sniffs. “For what it’s worth, which let me tell you, is not much.”

  And then I remember my father in this hallway, holding my mother, dipping her backward, telling me there is only one love like this. I hear my mother and my grandmother and her mother before her all saying Brayburns have one love and one love only that is the kind you don’t recover from, the kind you risk everything for. And I remember a Brayburn can claim that love and it will be hers if she wants it.

  “This is scary, Mayhem,” Jason says. “You’re scary, from your name on down the line. I don’t want Kidd … I don’t want this for her. She’s so int
o it. She’s only nine. What’s going to happen a few years from now? And I don’t want to do it either. I see the value, but I also see the problem. I feel like I’m trapped and I don’t like to be trapped.”

  I let my hand rest on his shoulder. “You know what’s funny? I’ve spent my whole life feeling wrong. Tonight is the first time I’ve ever felt totally, one hundred percent right.”

  “I get that,” he says. “Who are we to let murderers roam around doing whatever they want either? I don’t know how to get out of it or what I would do instead.” He shakes his head. “Like I said, I’m trapped.”

  “Elle said there was a way to get the water out, to go back to normal, but it hurts. Would you do that if you could?”

  “Yes,” he says without hesitation. He shudders and then spritzes the water in his mouth. “But have you gone without the water? It hurts like your bones are trying to walk out of your skin. I can’t put Kidd through that either. I don’t know what to do.”

  I feel the trap, too. I could no more walk away from this than he could.

  But I’m not like him.

  I wouldn’t. Ever.

  “Mayhem,” he says.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m glad you came here. I’m gladder for that than anything. You changed things and now it’s like there’s hope. I don’t know how or why, but there is.”

  I can’t stand to be so close to him but not close enough for one more second. I pull him into my room and we fall onto the bed, kissing. Sometimes words are not the answer. Jason and I kiss, and now it isn’t soft or gentle. All the troubles of the world are between our bodies. My chest hurts and my throat contracts and the closer he gets, the more I let everything out and onto him.

  I am a monster.

  I killed someone.

  My mother is an addict.

  My stepfather is coming.

  I am an addict, too.

  There is this boy. A hurt boy.

  It’s like my nerves have nerves and they’re all exposed to the air.

  “Mayhem,” Jason whispers.

  I’m on top of him. I kiss his cheeks, his neck, let my hair brush his chest.