She smiles at his reaction. “Oh, but that is worrisome, isn’t it?” She pauses to contemplate the attachment. “Why is a funnel necessary? What could she possibly be intending to put in there? Could be anything, really.”
She resumes screwing it onto the hose. “Well... Not anything, I suppose. If it was something you’d actually want in your belly, we wouldn’t need to go this route, would we?”
Fully tightened, she sets the funnel down. Drags forward an oversized glass jar. Small white balls suspended in a viscous amber fluid. She undoes the lid. Releases a noxious scent. Whatever they are, they’re well past their sell-by date.
Ignoring the smell, the nun selects one. Holds it up to the light. Admires it. “Precious cargo.” Bigger than a marble. Smaller than a ping pong ball. Rubbery between her gloved fingers. “Not that I would expect you to appreciate that.”
Roscoe does not. Not at all. He pushes his fingers through the grate. Grabs on. Strains with all his might to move it. Bend it. Failing that, to turn his head. To no avail. Held fast.
The nun is nonplussed.
“Here’s what I saw one time.” She leans in close. “We had a girl down there. Strong. Not big like you, but an athlete of some kind.” She thinks for a second. “I wanna say, a gymnast? Anyway, she fought it. She twisted and she turned, and she pushed and she yanked, and then: Pop!”
Roscoe flinches in spite of himself.
“Broke her own neck.” The nun sits back. Lifts up the funnel again. “You wouldn’t think a person could do that, but she did. Not to say you will or anything. Just that it’s possible.” She shrugs. “Just something to bear in mind.”
She releases the little orb into the opening. Gravity takes it. Pulls it down the tube.
Roscoe squirms as it descends. Twisting. Clenching his abdominals. Trying to stop the progress of the unwanted whatever-it-is. Wriggling until the futility sinks in.
The nun peers inside. “Huh.” She lifts the hose. Looks for a bulge. A shadow. No sign. “Guess it got where it was going... Did you feel anything?”
Roscoe scowls up at her. Manages a more menacing noise this time: Not quite a growl. Closer to a groan.
“Right, well... Probably best if you don’t.” She reaches into the jar. Grabs more of the little spheres. Shakes off the jelly.
Roscoe squeaks. His eyes ask a question.
The nun looks at him. “Oh, you thought that was it?” She plops them into the funnel all at once. At least ten. Down they slide. “I’m afraid we’re only getting started.” Without pausing, she scoops in another handful. Gives the funnel a shake. One globe at a time, they slip inside him.
Roscoe definitely feels each one.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The kicking stops. The beating ends.
Max holds tight. Afraid of what might happen if he lowers his guard. But soon - with no further attacks - he peeks out from behind protective forearms. Finds himself alone amongst the alder trees.
He gets to his feet as best he can. Scans the area. The figures in the brown cloaks are gone. Either that or better hidden. Regardless, there’s no sign of them. His own fresh bruises, notwithstanding.
He turns to the ocean. Looks for Aaron’s cousin. The subject of their interest, before Max caught their eye. She’s nowhere to be found.
On the beach: Just her towel and sunhat. She must still be in the water.
He stumbles out onto the sand. Testing himself as he heads for the shoreline. Nothing broken, so far as he can tell. Everything stiff and sore. He stops at the waterline. Calm. Ripples, not waves. Nothing out there but water.
How long had his beating lasted? It had seemed eternal.
Had she even made it to the water? Maybe one of them had taken her.
He grabs for his phone. Uncertain whether to call the Watch or 911. Dilemma resolved when he finds it’s missing. Dropped when he was first struck. Back in the trees. No time to look for it. No time to wait for help to arrive, anyway.
It’s all on him.
A broken-down picnic table is nearby. He drags it forward. Loose bolts let it lean into the move. It shifts treacherously as he steps up. To its bench. To its tabletop. From this height he can see farther out to sea. On tiptoes, he spots...
Something black. Like her bathing suit. Farther out than Max has ever been without a boat beneath him.
It can’t possibly be Aaron’s cousin. Not at that distance.
But if it is...
Max hops down from the picnic table. Steps off his shoes. Pulls his shirt over his head. And dives.
~
She’s dead for sure.
Bobbing. Face down. Motionless.
Max swims. Not quickly, but at an even pace. Body aching from the beating. From the sheer distance demanded. Out-of-practice arms heavy in the water. Dizzy from rhythmic breathing.
He’s pretty sure he’s been in the ocean this year. At the beginning of summer, maybe. Much longer than that since he was last called on to lifeguard.
Not that there’s any life left to guard.
He reaches her. Finally. Treads water. Gently rolls her over. Face-up. Loose-limbed. Her flesh cold. Sympathetic goose-bumps rise on his own arms as he gets himself beneath her. Wraps an arm across her chest. Holds her tight.
Flashes on: Aaron. Spread across the generator. All-but dead.
Flashes on: Something black. Scaly. Wet. A slash across his arm as it passes.
Then, he’s back in the ocean. Very nearly pushing Aaron’s cousin away in his terror. Arm aching along the still-healing wound.
Instead, Max pulls himself together. Gets a good grip on the girl.
Strokes for shore.
~
Lifeguarding had mostly been an excuse to hang out at the beach. Far more work than Max had expected, but still a good deal of slacking off and screwing around. Even so, CPR was a necessary part of the repertoire. One that was drilled and re-drilled. Tested and certified.
Once he’s dragged Aaron’s cousin out of the water, he goes through the checklist:
He shouts. Slaps her lightly on the cheeks... No response.
Puts his ear to her heart. Listens for a beat... Nothing.
To her nose. Feels for breath... Nothing.
He tilts her head back. Opens her mouth. Water. She’s full of it.
He pushes her onto her side. The ocean pours out. Gallons. No way she’s survived. Chest compressions would’ve been next. But what’s the point? He’s waited too long. Again. Fretted while someone needed him instead of jumping into action. And now, Aaron’s cousin was...
Waking up?
Her mouth closes. Her eyes open.
There’s no sudden gasp. No panicked intake of breath. Nothing big or shocking. The girl just... Comes back. Sits up. Looks around.
Max is frozen. Afraid a movement might somehow ruin her surprise recovery. Undo it. Kill her dead, again.
She looks at him. Kneeling next to her in the sand. “It’s Max, right?”
He nods.
She nods back. Blinks.
“You know a place to eat around here, Max? I’m absolutely starving.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
The skull stares up with bloodshot eyes. Blue ballpoint pupils. Surrounded by red ballpoint capillaries. Drawn onto whiteout.
DO NOT OPEN is written above. THIS MEANS YOU below. A final line at the bottom, much smaller: OR YOU’LL SURELY REGRET IT FOR THE REST OF YOUR EXISTENCE.
Aaron’s most recent journal. Held closed on Trevor’s lap. He turns it over. A black spiral notebook. One of many. Corners tattered. Coil sat on at some point. How much of a betrayal would it be for him to read this? He will, eventually. There’s no question of that. But would Aaron have understood why? And really, could it be any worse than letting the Circle take it?
He sets it with the others. Today it’s enough to have everything back. All the stray elements of Aaron’s existence collected in one place. No need to be greedy.
When he does read them, he will start at the
beginning. Surely any statute of limitations would allow him access to the innermost thoughts of ten year-old Aaron, even if those of the seventeen year-old incarnation should remain verboten a few more years to protect the innocent.
He rises from Aaron’s bed. Gathers the journals into a stack. Slides them onto an empty bookshelf. Not certain that’s where they originated, but the full collection fits well enough to belong there.
He looks over the rest of his son’s temporarily purloined belongings. Still spread out on Aaron’s bed. A rainbow of stuff, arcing around Trevor’s butt-dent. On the floor, the newly-emptied box looks far too small to have ever contained it all. In moving out of the house and back again, nothing appears to have been lost. Nothing he’d been aware of, anyway. Everything he’d realized was missing from the house has now been returned.
Most of the selections make a kind of sense: Journals. Laptop. MP3 player. All carriers of information. Where Aaron might accidentally have left mention of the Circle. Inadvertently let slip their secrets. Other items? A Monopoly set (minus the boot). A flashlight. The flattened and folded inflatable T-Rex that once looked down from the corner of the room. How these items could possibly have threatened Circle interests was beyond Trevor’s imagination.
Also - to his great relief - he found nothing especially shocking in the box: No pistol. No porn. No cache of drug paraphernalia. Nothing bizarrely out-of-keeping with his conception of his son.
In as much as he knows where anything goes, Trevor puts the rest of Aaron’s things away. Yearbooks onto a shelf. Pen-pal letters from Second Grade into a shoebox in the closet. Cheap stuffed hippo he’d won at a carnival propped up on his bed. Laptop onto desk. Sliding into place between printer-scanner and tripod. Trevor plugs everything back together without being able to explain why.
Soon, everything in its place. Bed cleared. Box flattened for recycling. Trevor stands in the doorway. Unable to leave. Something doesn’t feel right. It’s all... Off, somehow. Might just be the uninflated T-Rex. Missing from its rightful corner position. But he doesn’t have the breath to spare today. Resolves to dig the beach pump out of the garage. Blow the thing up, tomorrow.
Nothing more to see here. Job done. Finger on the light switch. Pulling the door closed...
But then, Trevor returns to the bookshelf. Pulls a journal at random. Determined to give himself a preview. The date on the cover tells him Aaron was twelve at the time of writing. Warns him once again to turn back before it’s too late. He cracks the book to a middle page. Finds:
Black rectangles.
Drawn onto nearly every line. Permanently obscuring the vast majority of whatever had been written there. Back a page: More of the text has survived. Aaron mentioning a birthday party invitation. He hadn’t wanted to go, but had fun anyway. Whose birthday?
Redacted.
Trevor riffles the pages. Finds some more-or-less untouched entries. Not many. None escape the censor’s pen entirely unscathed. Easily three-quarters of the book - of his son’s twelfth year on earth - has been obliterated.
Of course, Trevor should have expected this. After all, that was the whole point in the first place. But if the material contained in these journals - written five years before Aaron had even heard of the Circle - was so sensitive, why bother returning them at all? It seemed unnecessarily cruel.
Trevor looks through the others. None have escaped the black chisel-tip marker.
The MP3 player has been wiped clean.
Aaron’s phone contains no photos. No videos. No address book.
The laptop turns on. Four years old. Near-obsolete. Aaron recently started saving for a new one. It boots to a welcome screen. Congratulating the new owner on their wise purchase. Instructing them on how to get started.
Everything they’d taken, they’d returned, true enough: Stripped. Sliced. Wiped.
Trevor clenches his jaw.
The Circle had taken his son. Decided his future. Thrown up a barrier of secrecy between them. Directly or indirectly, it had caused his death. Now, it has stolen what little Trevor had left. Those last few opportunities to learn something new about his boy, crossed out in black ink. And he allowed it to happen.
Well, no more. He is now officially done respecting the Circle. Its rules. Its secrets. Its bullshit. They can go right ahead and put him on their enemies list, or whatever it is they do with people who don’t clam up and turn tail at the mere mention of “Circle business.”
Plain and simple: The Circle can go fuck itself.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Polly?”
Her head remains braced in the halo. Her face still in rough shape: Bruised. Swollen. Both eyes black. But when they flutter open? They sparkle. Paula’s still Paula. Her unmistakeable inner light shining through all the damage.
She hones in on Ren. Smiles broadly to find him at her bedside.
“Hey, Ren... You here just to see little old me?”
He doesn’t flinch. Pretends not to notice the gaps where her teeth have been knocked out. “Who else could get me back on this ridiculous little rock?”
She laughs. “You’ve always been too hard on this place. I told you how much I like it, right? When I wrote you? It’s been, like... SO, so good for me.” A statement hard to reconcile with her condition: Immobilized. Arms in casts. Legs in traction. Whatever isn’t broken is at least fractured.
“Doctors say you’re improving.” Her fingers poke out the end of her cast. Ren lays his own burnt digits over them. Gives her a supportive squeeze.
“They don’t even know, Ren! I can honestly tell you: I’ve never been better than I am right now. This very minute. I’m feeling fantastic!”
“That’s... Good, Polly.” Ren is dubious. Tries not to tamp down her enthusiasm. “It’s great you’re staying so... Positive.”
“It’s the island! The people are so nice. Everybody down at the site, they’ve been so sweet. Did you see the...” She strains to turn her entirely restrained head. “They sent flowers. The nurse held them up for me... And a giant card all the guys signed.”
“Yeah, they really love you down there. The foreman--”
“I know just where I’m going to put it. Not that there’s any room in my office.” She chortles. “You know me! My whole life’s in there.”
“Guess some things never change.”
“Yeah...” Paula’s energy abruptly runs down. Smile fades. Brow furrows. “Ren? I’m so sorry about your hands... I didn’t mean to... To...”
He frowns. “To what? What is it you think you did?”
She looks away. Deeply worried. “I just put it down how it had to be. That’s how it is. Everything’s always how it has to be...”
For a long moment, Ren tries to figure out how to respond. Before he can, Paula perks up. Grins. “Hey! Are the girls here too?”
Taken aback, Ren does his best to keep up with the sudden turn. “Dawnie is. She’s come to see you a few times. Sat by your bed with you. I left her a message with the good news and I’m sure she’ll be out here the moment she hears you’re awake.”
“Awwww... She’s so awesome.” Paula rests her eyes. “She must be so thrilled. Always wanted to visit the homeland, right? How’s she liking it?”
“Well, let’s just say: There’s no accounting for taste.”
“Ren!” Paula laughs. “You’re so bad!”
He smiles. A bit teary. “It’s good to hear your laugh again, Polly. We weren’t sure you were ever coming back to us.”
“Are you kidding? I’ve been so happy here. I’m not going anywhere. Don’t think I’m ever going to leave.”
“I used to worry the exact same thing.”
She laughs. “Bad.”
Ren smiles sadly. Once again registering Paula’s sorry condition. The horrible injuries inflicted by unknown assailants. Lucky to be alive at all, let alone conscious. Meanwhile, Netty’s investigation has seemingly stalled. No movement he can see, anyway. It’s obvious Islanders must be protecting their own
. After all, the victim was from away. She doesn’t really matter as much, does she?The injustice sticks in his craw.
He steels himself. Treading softly. “Paula? I know it’s hard, but... Do you think you could tell me what happened? It might really help the investigation if you tried to remember.”
Paula looks at him. Her eyes crinkle. Initially, he misreads this as pain. Then, she bites her lip. Tries to hold back a snicker. It escapes anyway. Followed by a torrent of giggles.
Ren frowns. How did he provoke this reaction? “It’s okay if you can’t. Don’t feel you need to force it. Your head suffered some... Trauma. Not too surprising if you don’t remember what--”
“But I do, Ren.” Her eyes flash. She whispers: “I remember everything.”
Ren’s confused. “But... The Sheriff said you refused to talk to her about any of it.”
“That’s because it’s private.” A disquieting grin splits her face. “Some things, you just don’t share. And definitely not with strangers.”
Her fingers pull back beneath his. Grab onto his burnt hand before he can react. He flinches. Doesn’t pull away. “But family? Maybe I’ll tell you all about it one day. And Dawnie! For sure I’ll tell Dawnie. I just love you guys so much. And everything that’s happened? It’s all thanks to you, really.”
Ren goes white. Wounded to his core. “Paula, I’m sorry... I never wanted to--”
“Don’t apologize, idiot!” She scoffs at the idea. “It’s only good. Only right. I’ve found a place, now. And all of it... Everything... I owe it all to you.”
She grasps at his fingers. The pressure on his already wounded hand doubles. The blisters on the backs of his fingers bulge. He recoils. Tries to free himself from her grip. She won’t release. Crushes. Yanks him close. Disconnecting crucial wires. The monitors squeal in protest.
“Polly! You’re hurting--”
“You sent me here, Ren!” Shouting now. Laughing. Hysterical. “You gave me this, and you don’t even know!”
FROM AWAY ~ BOOK THREE Page 7
