by Amy Cross
I start shaking my head wildly. Stepping back, I suddenly feel my right foot slip over the end of the jetty. I turn and try to steady myself, but it's Officer Dante who grabs my arm and keeps me from falling.
“Rachel, where have you been?” Robert asks. “We've been looking for you everywhere!”
I turn to him, and I feel an instant punch of shock to my chest.
“I thought you'd stood me up,” he continues. “Rachel, what's going on? Why are you covered in blood?”
Chapter Nineteen
“No, it happened!” I say firmly, through gritted teeth, as I sit in the hotel's main reception hall. I'm still wearing the torn dress, and my hands are shaking as I try to get everyone to believe me. “It's all true! It happened exactly the way I told you!”
“Rachel,” Robert says, stepping toward me, “I -”
“Don't come any closer!” I shout. “Don't you dare touch me!”
“Sir, please,” Officer Dante says, gesturing for Robert to stay back. “I just need to ask your fiance some more questions.”
“I'm not his fiance,” I sneer. “I know what he did!”
Robert stares at me with an expression of pure helplessness. He's a good liar, I'll give him that. He looks utterly lost, utterly hopeless. He looks innocent.
“M'am,” Officer Dante continues, as he takes a seat on the chair next to me, “I'm really sorry, but I'm going to need you to go over all of that again. Some of what you've claimed seems... unlikely.”
Taking a deep breath, I can't help feeling that everyone's looking at me as if I'm some kind of lunatic. I've told them twice now, all about Robert kidnapping me and taking me out to the pagoda, and about the horrific sight of that ghostly bride who came and attacked us. And about that Kimberly woman's body being dragged out of the ground and then shredded in mid-air. I know it all sounds bizarre, but at some point they're going to have to believe me. At the same time, every time I look at Mum I see real sadness in her eyes, and I know exactly what she's thinking.
She's convinced that I'm imagining things again.
“Rachel,” Robert says after a moment, “we went for a swim last night. We talked about a lot of things. I thought we had fun, I thought it was all very romantic. And then I walked you back to your room, and we kissed, and that was the last time I saw you until this morning.”
Glaring at him, I shake my head.
“I went straight to my room and went to sleep,” he continues, “and -”
“Stop lying to me!” I snap.
“How could you ever think that I'd do such awful things to you?” he asks, and now he's somehow managed to summon tears into his eyes. “Rachel, I would die for you. All these things you're saying, about me having some secret past identity, are just demonstrably false. Sure, there's a guy in a photo who looks a little like me, but that's just a coincidence. And the police officer here has already explained that he's made contact with the real guy from ten years ago. He lives in Japan now, but Officer Dante got him on the phone and spoke to him. He's confirmed that we're different people.”
I shake my head again.
How is he doing this? He must have hired someone in Japan to lie on the phone. That's the only explanation.
“Your fiance is correct on that point,” Officer Dante explains. “There's really no way that the two individuals can be the same person. I'm going to carry out some more checks, but I did speak to a gentleman in Tokyo, and that gentleman's social media information all checks out. A full check should be completed by the evening.”
“He's tricking you,” I reply. “He -”
“And how is this supposed to work?” Robert snaps suddenly, his anger finally boiling over. “Tell me, exactly what do you think everyone's trying to pull here, Rachel?”
“I told you, I -”
“Because it makes no sense!” he shouts. “I was planning to kill you in the forest? And then what?”
“I don't know!” I sob.
“Do you not think it's a little strange to want to kill someone at their own wedding? When all their friends and family are waiting to see them the next day?”
“I know, but -”
“And this ghostly bride in the forest. Was that this Kim girl?”
“No, I thought it was but -”
“That's right, it turned out to be someone else,” he continues angrily. “Who?”
“I don't know!” I shout.
“Not even a name?”
“I don't know!”
“And it was this Kim person who got lifted out of the ground and shredded in front of you?”
“I think so,” I whimper. “I don't know.”
“It's all nonsense!” he yells. “None of it fits together! None of it makes one jot of sense! I can't imagine any scenario that could be bubbling away behind the scenes, that could possibly explain what you've been telling us!”
“I know,” I say through gritted teeth, “but it's true! All of it's true! I'm not -”
Before I can finish, Robert mutters something under his breath and turns. I watch as he storms out of the room, and he slams the door as he goes.
“I'm not crazy,” I say as I turn to Mum. “Come on, you know I'm over all of that. And it was different before, I knew when I was hallucinating. I mean, I sort of knew. It was just different. You have to be able to see that!”
I wait for her to admit that I'm right, but she's staring at me as if she thinks I'm losing my mind.
“Officer,” she says finally, “would you mind giving me a moment alone with my daughter? Please?”
“Of course,” he replies, getting to his feet. “I'll need to speak to you again later, M'am, but... I hope you feel better soon.”
“I'm not crazy!” I call after him as he leaves the room. “Everything happened exactly the way I described it, even the...”
Even the ghostly bride?
That's what I was about to say but – as the door swings shut and Mum comes and sits with me – I can't help but admit that I sound like a lunatic. Do I really expect all these people to believe in ghosts and ghouls? Even without the past mental health problems, I'd struggle to be believed, but right now I can't think of a way to get the truth across. And as I look at Mum now, I can see such sorrow in her tear-filled eyes. Sorrow and something else, something so much worse.
Pity.
“Do you remember the night you were first forced into the hospital, all those years ago?” she asks finally.
“Mum, this isn't like that.”
“You were screaming about things that whispered to you in the night.”
“That was different!”
“Everything you said was so consistent. You claimed there were demons with burning eyes, things that came out of the darkness. I remember it all so well, Rachel. You screamed and screamed, and all those words are etched into my memory. And you said something that really stuck with me. You said that you couldn't tell what was real and what wasn't. You begged me to imagine how that felt, to not be able to believe what was in front of your eyes. I tried, darling. Really, I did. All I could imagine was that it must have been an absolute nightmare. Perhaps it still is.”
“Please try to understand.”
“No, you try to understand,” she replies, before placing a hand on my knee. “I never admitted this before, darling, but I knew it was going to happen again. I always claimed that you were better, but deep down I knew that we weren't going to be so lucky. You were sick, darling, and that can't just be wiped away. It needs to be managed. But the good news is, we've managed it before and we can manage it now. This little wobble can be corrected, and I think you know what you have to do.”
“Mum...”
“Let's do your hair and make-up,” she adds. “We can still pull this wedding together and make it a perfect day.”
“You have to be joking,” I reply. “I can't marry Robert, not after we he did to me.”
“He didn't do anything to you, Rachel.”
“He kidnapped me!
”
“No, he didn't.”
“He lied to me!”
“That's not true.”
“Mum, he -”
Suddenly she slaps me.
Startled, I sit back, and I immediately see a cool, calm expression on her face. It's an expression that I remember well from the old days, from the times when she tried to manage my illness. It's also an expression that I haven't seen in a long time. It's anger, but at the same time it's so much more than that.
“Robert loves you,” she says, her voice trembling as she tries to hold back from hitting me again, “and you love him. And before this madness started again, before you started trying to sabotage your happiness, everything was perfect. So I'm begging you, Rachel. Look beyond all these things that you're imagining and try to think about the rest of your life. Take that leap of faith.”
She takes my hands in hers and squeezes tight.
“Just believe that you can be happy,” she adds. “The way I do. The way Robert does.”
“I want to,” I reply, “but I know what I saw.”
“Rachel -”
“And I'm going to prove it to you,” I continue, interrupting her as I suddenly realize what I have to do next. “Mum, just give me this one chance. I'm going to prove to you that what I saw was real.”
Chapter Twenty
“We really don't have time for this,” Mum says as she follows me through the forest, heading back toward the pagoda in the morning light. “Becky and the others are getting the main hall ready. Forget the jetty and the boat, forget all this nonsense out here, there's a perfectly good hall that we're going to use. There's still time to salvage this wedding, Rachel, but we need to get our skates on.”
“It was right up here,” I continue, hurrying between the trees until finally I reach the pagoda.
I start looking around, hoping to spot some sign of the disruption from last night, but there's nothing. I'm not even sure what I was expecting. Blood, maybe, or perhaps some scraps of that rotten corpse that was torn apart in mid-air. As I step forward, however, I realize that the pagoda actually looks perfectly innocent. There are some signs of the work that Robert carried out yesterday, but there are no ropes attached to the wooden boards and there's nothing to even hint at anything untoward having happened here.
“It was here,” I stammer, looking down at the spot where I remember Robert pouring the blood. “It was right...”
My voice trails off ,as the tops of trees rustle all around us.
I look around, expecting to see that the ground is still disturbed, but there's nothing.
“It was so cold,” I continue, as Mum steps up behind me. “I was shivering. And it was dark.”
“I have no doubt that you were out here, darling,” she replies, “but you were quite alone. Robert was tucked away safely in bed. The nice police officer has even had a look at the hotel's CCTV cameras. You were spotted leaving, but no-one else could -”
“Is he sure?” I ask, turning to her. “Have you seen the images yourself?”
“Yes, and -”
“They were dark, right?”
“Yes, but -”
“So you can't be sure that no-one else left!”
She sighs.
“There was a creature right here,” I tell her yet again, “right where we're standing at the moment. It was hideous, it was screaming at me, it had these powers. It was dead, but it was right in front of me, and it wanted me somehow. Or it wanted Robert. I think it wanted to possess me, to take over my body, but for some reason it couldn't. Robert thought it was this Kim girl, but then it wasn't her at all, it was someone else. I don't know who the other person was, but then I think Kim showed up and got torn apart and -”
“This is all impossible,” she says firmly.
“I need you to believe me,” I reply, grabbing her hands. “Despite everything else that has happened, for once in my life I need you to believe that I'm not crazy. Please, Mum, just open your mind a little. As insane as it sounds, I'm telling the truth. I'm not sick anymore.”
“You are, darling,” she says. “It's not the end of the world, but you are.”
“But if I -”
Before I can finish, I hear footsteps moving through the leaves. I turn, half-expecting to see that Robert has come out here, but then I'm shocked to see that it's Elena. Suddenly I feel a rush of hope, and I let go of Mum's hands and hurry over to where Elena is standing between two trees. I should have tried to find her right from the start, because she of all people is in a position to prove that I was right last night. She might not have seen the ghostly bride, but at least she knows that all the stuff with Robert and Kimberly Hawthorne is real.
As I reach her, however, I'm already surprised to find that she's wearing her hotel uniform. I guess she wasn't fired after all; either that, or she somehow got her job back.
“I'm so glad you're here!” I gasp, grabbing her by the shoulders. “I need you to tell my mother everything that happened last night!”
She stares at me, kind of blankly, and then she furrows her brow.
“I'm sorry?” she says cautiously.
“When you came back,” I continue. “I need you to tell her everything you told me about Robert, and about what happened here ten years ago!” I step aside and turn to point at my mother. “Tell her!”
“Ms. Blaine?” Elena says. “I'm not quite sure what you mean.”
“ When you came to my room!” I say firmly, frustrated beyond belief that she's stalling. “You came to see me! No, wait, you left a note for me, and then I came to find you! That's what happened! And then you told me about Robert, and about how he was supposed to marry Kimberly Hawthorne ten years ago, and about how she vanished and now he's back with a different surname!” I wait for her to pick up the rest of the story, and then I turn to see that she still looks a little confused. “Tell her!”
“Ms. Blaine,” she says after a moment, with a hint of hesitation in her voice, “I'm sorry to disturb you, but I came out to check how things are going. You see, it's getting on in the morning, and I'm really sorry but we need to know whether you're going ahead with the wedding. There are a lot of people waiting and, well, I think they really need to know as well.”
I stare at her, unable to believe what I just heard.
“Do you want me to send them home?” she asks. “I'm so sorry, this must be a really bad time for you. I'm just trying to help. Plus, if we send the staff home now, we can get you a small part of your money back. Not a lot but, um, well...”
Her voice trails off, and she seems increasingly uncomfortable.
“You sent me a note,” I stammer finally. “Last night, remember? You're the one who told me about Robert, you had all the information about what happened last year. We spoke, it was around midnight. Or a little before. I don't remember exactly.”
She pauses, and then she looks over at my mother.
“Thank you, young lady,” my mother says to her calmly, “you've been very helpful.”
“I'll tell everyone that the wedding's off, then,” Elena replies. “I'm so sorry, Ms. Blaine. If there's anything else I can do for you, just let me know. Anything at all.”
With that, she turns to walk away.
“Just wait another half hour,” Mum says suddenly. “Please. I just need to talk to my daughter for a few more minutes. Don't tell anyone anything, not until we're back at the main building.”
Elena turns to us, and for a moment she seems uncertain. Then, finally, she nods and heads back through the forest. I want to call after her, to beg her again to tell the truth, but somehow I no longer feel the raging certainty that everyone's wrong. For the first time since I woke up this morning on the ground out here, I realize that maybe I'm the one who's somehow out of sync with everything.
That's not possible, though, is it?
I can't be sick again.
“Here's what I think,” Mum says, stepping over to me again. “I think you've been stressed. I think you were
in a state when you arrived here.”
“But I -”
“You were, darling. I remember how you were fussing over your grandmother's dress. It wasn't like you at all. I thought something was wrong then, but I held my tongue. And then there was that awful accident with the chandelier, which probably set you off all over again, and now you've reached your big day and it's all too much for you. But you have to understand, you can't let one bad day derail the rest of your life. I know you, Rachel. You're my daughter, and that means you've got a bit of me inside you, and that means you can suck all of this up and keep going. Do you hear me?”
I watch as Elena disappears into the distance, and then I turn to my mother again.
“You're strong!” she says firmly. “I know you are. You've survived so much already, and now you're at a crossroads. I've talked to Robert and I think he understands some of what you're going through. He's a good man. He loves you, darling, and he'll come around, but it all depends on you now. Are you going to succumb forever to your one little weakness, or are you going to be strong and brave and push on?”
She puts a hand on the side of my face, the same side that she slapped earlier, and now there are tears in her eyes.
“Make me proud, darling,” she continues. “Make your poor dear father proud, too. He's watching you, you know. Wherever he is, he can see you, and he wants to see you be happy. But for that to happen, you have to accept that you had a little hiccup last night and saw things that weren't real. Can you do that, darling? Can you be strong for your father?”
I open my mouth to tell her that she's wrong, that I can't possibly do any of this, but then I realize that maybe she's right. If I can just get past this day, maybe everything on the other side will be wonderful.
I just have to be brave. And I have to believe that none of those things happened.
Chapter Twenty-One
The music is playing up ahead, behind the double doors. With each step that I take, I feel more and more as if I'm going to panic and scream, but somehow I keep walking until I'm just a few paces from the doors. I can barely breathe, and finally I realize that I have to stop all of this, but at the last moment the doors swing open and I'm faced with the sight of my family and friends all standing on either side of the short, narrow aisle.
