The Returned

by Seth Patrick

  Still, she’d had the beer, and the price was a few minutes’ walking with a cute guy, even if he was almost completely distracted. After that, she’d just head on home and let Frédéric suffer.

  “That way,” she said and pointed. The guy set off. “Can’t you slow down?” she said. Simon was walking as fast as he’d been drinking. He slowed a fraction, and Léna kept pace. “I’ve never seen you at the Lake Pub before,” she said.

  “I’ve never seen you either.”

  “Really?” said Léna. “I practically live there. Not much else to do in this town. Have you lived here long?”

  “I was born here.”

  “Right,” said Léna. “I wondered why you were so cheerful.”

  “How do you know Adèle?”

  “She tutored me last year,” she said, then frowned. “It was a complete waste of time. Not her fault, though. I was failing to give even the slightest shit about anything much. And you? Did she tutor you?”

  He stopped walking and looked at her, bemused by something. “No.”

  Léna laughed. “You’re pretty mysterious.” She pointed to a row of houses ahead. “OK, beer payment. See the first house, there? That’s her place.”

  He was already walking again before she’d finished, faster than ever and without looking back.

  “You’re welcome, dickhead,” Léna called after him.

  It was another ten minutes before she reached home, climbing up the trellis and into her room rather than using the front door. She was still annoyed with her mum for ringing Frédéric. Let her worry.

  As she took off her jacket in her bedroom, she heard a sound. Two knocks on the wall. A pause. Another knock.

  She froze. It came again.

  The code she and Camille had used. A request. Can I come in?

  Léna went to the wall that separated her room from Camille’s. She put one hand on it and tapped out an answer with the other. Yes, you can come in. She was dreaming, she knew. Drunk and overtired and dreaming on her feet.

  Then she heard a door open. Camille’s door.

  She took a step back, away from her own door, watching as the handle began to move. Slowly, the door opened.

  A mirror, four years into the past: Camille, looking at her with confusion on her face, as if she didn’t recognize her. Camille took a step closer. Léna started to panic, tried to scream, but didn’t have the breath in her lungs. She backed away, away, reaching the bed and climbing over it, getting it between herself and…

  “Who are you…?” said Camille. Then her eyes widened in horror. “Léna?” she said. “Léna?”

  And as one, they both started to scream.

  10

  Lucy Clarsen left the Lake Pub twenty minutes after the last customer had gone, Toni sending her on her way before cleanup was completed.

  “I’ll finish it,” he told her, and she thanked him. When she’d arrived in town one year before, she’d lived in the room above the pub for a few weeks, the one she still used for clients. Now, she had a small apartment in the center of town, but she’d learned from prior experience to keep home and business life separate. Especially with the kind of business she had. People thought she was a prostitute, of course, but it was easier that way. The reality was much more complicated, much less likely to be accepted.

  As she walked home, she checked her cell phone. A dozen messages had built up over the day. She would wait until she was in her apartment before she sorted through them, but they were almost certainly requests for new appointments or changes to those already made. Business, in other words, and she was off the clock now.

  The late-night streets were quiet as she approached the main road and started down the long stairway to the underpass. There was nobody else around. As usual, the tunnel smelled slightly of stale piss and damp earth, but it was well lit. After the rain earlier in the night, the banks along the road were still draining off, and a long, thin stream ran along the center of the tunnel. She stayed to one side, keeping her shoes dry.

  At the other end of the tunnel she saw a man enter, walking toward her. She glanced quickly: hooded top, hands in pockets, and head down. She had a knack for spotting trouble, she thought, and she didn’t reckon this guy was anything to be worried about. Even so, as the echo of their footsteps mingled in the harsh fluorescent lighting, she kept an eye on him. She could take care of herself. She’d been in enough bad situations over the years to have taken every self-defense course she could.

  As she and the man passed each other, Lucy tensed, just in case.

  The man lunged from behind.

  She’d been so sure he wasn’t a threat that the surprise nearly did her in, but she moved quickly enough to grip the hand holding the knife, grip and twist, the way she’d learned, wrenching it up, biting until the knife fell, then…

  Then she saw his face.

  She couldn’t place it, couldn’t work out the feeling, but there was something about the man that startled her, like a splash of cold water. They looked at each other for a few seconds, and, for Lucy, the pause was catastrophic.

  The man pulled his hand free and retrieved his knife from the ground, then grabbed hold of her. Lucy saw the knife come up and she slapped it away, feeling the deep cuts in her hand as the blade bit into her flesh. She didn’t feel the pain, though, only sensed the damage, but dread was building inside her. She knew where the advantage lay now. She managed to fend off another blow, but the next found its way through—the knife plunged into her stomach.

  The shock of it was absolute, an intense, burning agony that stole away what hope she had left.

  She opened her mouth, ready to plead with him to let her go, but she saw his eyes—eager, ecstatic, no mercy in them at all. The words wouldn’t come.

  He stabbed again. Again. He was sighing, breathless.

  Lucy felt tears drop from her eyes. She started to convulse and realized she was sobbing.

  “There, there,” he said, wiping the tears away with his left hand, the fingertips lingering on her skin. “No need for tears. It’s OK.”

  There was suddenly no strength in her limbs. Her back was against the wall of the tunnel, and she started to slide down. He took her weight, slowing the fall, lowering her gently to the ground. She could feel the legs of her trousers grow wet in the stream of cold, dirty rainwater on the tunnel floor. Around her midriff, it was her own blood that was soaking through her clothing.

  He stabbed again, five more times. Each was slow, deliberate. Even over the terror, the pain was everything in her mind. Almost everything—there was also despair.

  “It’s over,” he whispered in her ear, as if he thought he was being tender. “It’s over.” He let her fall to the side now, slowly. Holding her, caressing.

  She felt him pull up her shirt. He unbuttoned her jeans, then splayed the top of the material, but made no attempt to lower the zip more than a couple inches. He placed his hand on her bared stomach, blood pouring from her. He took his hand away and brought his lips down to her bloody skin, breathing like a consumptive, ragged and sickly. He kissed her once. She felt his tongue enter a wound, and she prayed for dark, prayed not to be there anymore.

  He sat up. “Yes,” he said. “Yes.”

  He still had his knife. And he wasn’t finished yet.

  11

  Michel Costa was walking. He’d been walking for hours without really knowing what his intention was. The sun was rising. Maybe that was it, he thought. Maybe he’d been waiting for the daylight to come back. Maybe it would show him his path.

  He’d burned her. What else could he have done? His wife, thirty years dead, back at the door. Hungry. Dismissive, as she’d always been. The shock of seeing her face had nearly killed him. She’d seemed so young to him, looking exactly how she’d looked when she died. She’d been forty-five and even then had regularly bemoaned the loss of her youth,
but now, after all that time…

  She’d seemed so young.

  He’d almost told Julie about her when she came to help. Almost. But as he’d waited for Julie to arrive, he’d made his decision. He would handle it in his own way.

  His wife had let him tie her up in the kitchen. She hadn’t struggled. She’d looked at him with something halfway between amusement and derision, and she’d kept talking, talking. He hadn’t listened. He didn’t want to know.

  He’d spent his life as a teacher, devoted to the children he taught, passionate about sharing with them the joy to be found in knowledge, in comprehending the workings of the world.

  He was a man of reason, a man of science. Not a man of God, not by any means. Not for a long time. If he had any god at all now, it was gravity, it was light; it was the idea that things could be understood and superstition could be banished. For all the good it had done him.

  He had burned it all. His life and everything in it, putting a flame to the pile of photographs and documents he’d assembled in his living room. A lifetime of certificates, of deeds, of bills.

  There are always costs, he thought. Always payments to be made.

  The flames had spread. Too late, he’d realized that the fire was out of control. He’d run from the house, his wife calling for him to untie her. He didn’t stop. She didn’t stand a chance, he knew, but he just kept walking as the fire raged behind him. He wondered if that hadn’t been his intention all along.

  He’d felt so tired, so glad it would soon all be over with.

  It was the sight of the water that snapped him from his thoughts as he realized where his walking had taken him. He was halfway across the dam. Of course, he thought. Given everything that had happened all those years ago, where better?

  Michel Costa climbed the low wall at the edge of the road that formed the top of the dam, looking out over the town that was waking after a long night. He moved his gaze to the hard ground far below him. He looked to both sides, taking in the sweep of the arch that was holding so much back, standing guard over the people in the valley ahead. Such a graceful structure, he thought.

  But always payments to be made.

  He leaned forward until gravity claimed him.

  12

  Adèle Werther lay on her bed and tried to think of nothing, because whatever she thought of, it brought her back to him. To Simon.

  She hadn’t told Thomas about what had happened the night before, not yet—if she ever would. She had managed to ease the fears of her daughter, Chloé, ease them enough for Chloé to promise not to mention it to Thomas either.

  But she saw Simon whenever she closed her eyes, saw him the way she’d seen him last night: standing outside the house, looking in through the living room window, his hand on the glass.

  Thomas had been out working, the downside of him being made police captain. He was justly proud of what he’d achieved, and she was proud of him too: “Captain Thomas Pellerin” had a ring to it, and in a fortnight, they would be married. But it was a small town, and Thomas was diligent at his job. Any significant police incident meant he would be gone.

  Chloé had been upstairs in her room at the time. If she’d been with Adèle in the living room, Adèle could have asked her to look.

  Do you see anyone there, Chloé? No? Nothing. It’s nothing. All in your head.

  But Chloé hadn’t been with her. Adèle had closed her eyes, and when she’d opened them again, Simon had gone from the window. Two seconds of relief was all she’d had before the knocking on the door had paralyzed her.

  Then: “Adèle, it’s me.”

  His voice. Ten years since Simon’s death, and in all the times she’d imagined seeing him since, she’d not once heard his voice.

  “Open up!” he shouted. “Open the door!”

  No, she thought. Not again. I can’t start this again.

  “Adèle, I know you’re in there. What’s going on?”

  The knocking became more violent: hard, repeated thumps, Simon losing his patience suddenly, something she remembered so well no matter how hard she tried to forget. Adèle found herself beating the wall beside her in time with the knocking.

  “I know you’re there,” he said. “Open the fucking door.”

  “Leave me alone!” she yelled. The knocking stopped. She heard Chloé’s door, heard her footsteps coming down the stairs.

  “Mum?”

  She looked at her daughter. Nearly ten years old, and Adèle could see much of Simon in her face. Not in her temperament, thank God.

  She could feel the tingle in her hands from hitting the wall, and she looked at them, wondering if it had been her own fists making all the noise. If it had all been her.

  Of course it had.

  “It’s over, Mum,” said Chloé, holding her tight. “It’s OK.”

  She’d gotten Chloé to bed again, then had gone to bed herself, checking the security locks on every door, closing all the curtains, crying and trembling in her bed.

  Thomas had come home soon after midnight, and Adèle had pretended to be asleep. Her eyes were closed, and all she could see was Simon’s face.

  The last night she and Simon had spent together, she’d been working a shift in the Lake Pub while Simon’s band played. Every chance she could, she caught his eye, smiling, knowing what she knew and wanting to tell him.

  After the set had finished, she’d gone to him, hugged him. A little redheaded girl, one of the Séguret twins, had sat at the band’s drum kit and started to mess around. The girl’s father had reprimanded her, but Simon had gone over and shown her what to do.

  Adèle had borrowed a camera and caught the moment on film.

  The girl had probably been the same age as Chloé was now. Adèle imagined the picture, imagined Chloé in place of the twin, sitting at the drums and smiling. The closest thing Adèle would ever have to seeing Simon as a father.

  She’d stuck the Polaroid on the pub’s photo wall ten years ago, and she hadn’t been back in that building since. Not once.

  They had spent the night in her apartment, and the night was long and good. They were twenty-three, and in a matter of hours, they would be getting married. She was happy.

  In the morning, they woke much later than they’d intended. Time was pressing.

  “Shit!” she said. “We’ve hardly slept.”

  “We can sleep when we’re dead,” Simon said, kissing her until she pushed him off, laughing.

  “Stop it! I need to get ready.”

  “Go on then,” he said.

  She shook her head. “It’s bad luck if you see me in my dress.” They’d talked about this already, Simon finding the superstition amusing, but he was willing to indulge her.

  “OK, OK,” he said. “I’m going.” He moved to get up but saw it in her face: her sudden need to tell him something. “What is it?”

  “Nothing,” she said. Her smile said otherwise.

  “Come on, out with it…”

  She hesitated. Tempting as it was, it didn’t seem like the right moment. “I’ll tell you tonight.”

  “Come on,” he said. “What is it?”

  “No, tonight.”

  “What? Are you pregnant?” He’d been kidding, of course, but he’d gotten it. She raised her eyebrows in answer. “Really?” he said. “You’re really pregnant?”

  She nodded, suddenly unsure how he would take it. “Are you glad?” she said. He hugged her close, and she realized he was crying.

  The good kind of tears, he’d told her, and by the time he left to go to his own apartment to get ready, she’d believed him. Three hours later, she was standing in the church, and he was late. She was already becoming angry with him when she saw the priest’s eyes move to the church entrance behind her. She saw something in those eyes. The smallest hint of panic.

  And she turned. When
she saw the police, the bouquet fell from her hands. She’d looked down at it and had left it on the floor. She’d known she wouldn’t need it anymore.

  • • •

  Adèle was alone in her bedroom; Thomas and Chloé had both been up and around for a couple of hours. Thomas had left the bedroom door open so the sounds of activity and the smell of breakfast would come up to her. Gentle nagging that she should get out of bed; Thomas always on guard, always there to make sure she didn’t slip back into her old ways.

  But not pushing. She was glad of that. At work, she knew, Thomas had a reputation for accepting nothing less than total commitment, but at home he was all kid gloves.

  Even when, like this morning, they had an appointment to keep.

  At last, she dressed and went downstairs. She paused outside the kitchen when she heard Chloé’s voice from inside.

  “What’s Mum doing?”

  “She’s having trouble getting up,” said Thomas.

  “Like last time?”

  Adèle felt her stomach twist hearing Chloé say that, so much anxiety in the girl’s voice. Last time, which had only been a few months back. Adèle had hardly left her bed for a week, the depression sudden and severe.

  “No,” said Thomas. “She’s just tired. Eat your breakfast.”

  Adèle took a breath and went in. Thomas saw her and beamed. “You OK?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. She walked over and hugged him.

  “It’s OK. You’re up now. Should I go to the church on my own?”

  “No, I’ll come,” she said. “Just give me five minutes.”

  He lowered his voice so Chloé wouldn’t hear. “I can call Dr. Boisseau.”

  “No, I’ll be fine. Please, I’m OK.”

  Thomas watched her closely, appraising her. After a few seconds he nodded, satisfied that she was being honest. Thomas understood. He’d been there that day, one of the police to give her the terrible news, and after, he’d helped her pick up the pieces that her life had become.