The Returned

by Seth Patrick

“No.”

  “Come off it,” said Frédéric. “It’s obvious. You look so similar.”

  Camille was getting more and more agitated. “Stop it, Léna,” she said.

  “Shut up!” hissed Léna.

  “Leave her alone,” said Frédéric. “What did she ever do to you?”

  Léna took off her coat and lifted the back of her shirt. “That.”

  Frédéric stared at the wound, shocked. “Christ! How did it get so bad?”

  Léna pointed at Camille. “Ask her.”

  “Don’t, Léna,” warned Camille.

  But Léna felt defiant. If her sister wanted to be out in the open, if she wanted to try to steal Frédéric… Let’s see if he wants her when he knows the truth. “Tell him who you are,” said Léna. “Or should I?” She got a blank stare from Frédéric. “Don’t you recognize her?” she whispered. “For fuck’s sake, it’s Camille!”

  Frédéric shook his head, angry with her. “That’s not funny, Léna.”

  “Ask her, if you don’t believe me.”

  “I’m Alice,” said Camille, visibly furious. “You know that. Maybe you should still be in the hospital.”

  Léna, exasperated, looked at Camille, then at Frédéric. Both of them were looking at her as though she was mad. Maybe she was. That would be better than the reality.

  “Fuck both of you!” yelled Léna before storming out into the darkness.

  • • •

  As she left the pub, she started to feel too hot. She knew she’d overdone it, that she hadn’t been ready to leave the hospital, but she kept on going, too angry with Camille, with Frédéric. With the whole fucking world.

  Even as she grew weaker, she had to keep moving. Each time she paused, her thoughts roiled in her head: she thought of her sister’s face, back when it was the face that they both shared, laughing and loving and without a care; she thought of standing by her sister’s grave, falling apart, knowing half of her soul had been ripped out of her. And she thought of Frédéric, keeping her alive. Keeping her from going under.

  Camille died, and her life turned to shit. Camille came back, and it happened again. She didn’t want it in her head, any of it. She walked as fast as she could, keeping those thoughts at bay.

  She reached the underpass, stumbling down the steps, barely keeping her balance. Moments later she found herself leaning against the tiles on the tunnel wall, gasping for each breath. She slid down until she was on the ground, unable to go any further.

  Someone was coming. She could see a blurred shape at the far end of the tunnel. A man, hooded, walking purposefully toward her.

  Scared now, she tried to stand, but it was impossible. Just before she blacked out, she saw his face, and she thought, Thank God. Thank God that it was someone she recognized.

  Toni’s brother. Serge.

  42

  Anton breathed the early-morning air, still heavy with mist that had barely cleared. He looked out into the valley, to the shrouded banks of the lake. The water level hadn’t been this low for eight years, Eric had said, since the last time the dam underwent a full maintenance cycle.

  He had volunteered to walk the inspection galleries within the dam, and as he descended, he found it curious how, even with the water level so low, the psychological weight of water above him felt no less than it always had. Indeed, if anything, it had grown.

  In the lower gallery, as he approached the far end of the tunnel, the lighting started to falter, pulsing slowly off and on. A glitch with the power feed, he thought, taking the flashlight from his belt. He switched it on, only to find that it was failing too, in perfect timing with the strips hung along the wall. He did what everyone did when faced with the impossible: he tried his best to ignore it, stopping for ten seconds or so each time the total darkness swallowed him, waiting for the light to come back. It felt as though he was playing some perverse childhood game.

  Then, standing still in the dark, he heard it. Just ahead, where the tunnel finished near the western abutments. It sounded like breathing. Like an animal, scuffling around, maybe fifteen feet away from him. Something large. He strained to hear anything more, certain it was coming closer. Closer.

  Slowly the lights started to return and he could see a shape right in front of him in the gloom. He backed away in panic. The lights suddenly flickered fully on. The tunnel was empty.

  He hurried out and told Eric that there was no way he would be doing the inspection next time. “If ever,” he said.

  Eric smiled, not in humor. Sympathy. “So you finally heard something,” he said and refused to say any more about it. Instead he changed the subject and started to talk about his family, rambling on about this and that. Anton was glad of it, taking his mind away from the dark of the tunnels and the ragged breathing that had seemed close enough to touch.

  “My grandfather once told me something about pain,” Eric said. “People hold on to their pain, he told me. Sometimes they nourish it, the way an oyster nourishes grit to make a pearl. They take the pain, and if they’re lucky, it becomes something positive. Something beautiful.” He swigged from the mug of coffee he was holding. “But other times, he told me, pain was like a thorn. You try to forget about it, and years later it works its way out and leaves a hole that will never heal.”

  Eric took a long breath. He stood and wandered over to the window in the control room, looking out at the lake ahead. “And I said, ‘But what if it never comes out?’ And he frowned and said, ‘Well, then it works its way in so deep, it changes what you are. Steals the good in you. Robs you of your soul.’ He said to me: ‘Eric, a body without a soul is the thing I fear most.’”

  He turned around to face Anton, the lake at his back. “I was twelve years old at the time. Years later I learned that when he told me that, he’d just been diagnosed with dementia. It took him a long time to go, piece by piece. A body, without a soul.”

  They sat in silence for a while before Eric asked: “Will you be going on any outings with our friend Dreyfus today, Anton?”

  “None planned,” Anton said. The divers would come tomorrow to check the lake bed. Until then, Anton presumed Dreyfus would spend his time handling the power station crisis. He hoped Dreyfus would have no more need of his services and would stop filling his mind with worrying questions.

  The day before, late morning, the call had come through from the power station, one third of a mile downstream of the dam. It was experiencing flooding issues and they had no idea how to deal with them, with no obvious source for the water, asking if there was a chance of leakage from the lake.

  Dreyfus had taken Anton along with him.

  “Just back me up,” Dreyfus said. “Whatever I tell them, back me up.”

  When they got there, it was the switchyard that had been the worst affected, and the transformer arrays. The whole area was flooded and the drainage seemed to be doing nothing. As things stood Anton knew it was dangerous, that the electricity generation should ideally be shut down, but the issue wasn’t raised by the power station’s chief engineer—as if it wasn’t even an option.

  He listened in to the discussion the engineer was having with Dreyfus and he could tell at once that, for the senior staff at least, the employment situation was similar to that for the dam engineers.

  Do what you’re told. Don’t ask questions.

  Dangerous or not, the generators could keep running as long as the water didn’t rise too much farther. Tankers were already on their way and would be able to pump the water out, drive it through town, and pump it back into the river downstream.

  “We’ll need a phased shutdown tonight,” the engineer had said. “The maximum duration allowed.”

  Dreyfus had given the engineer a long look. “Is that really necessary?”

  “We’ve already had outages this week. Maintenance is overdue. We’re behind schedule on repairs. We need the
time.”

  Anton had returned to the top of the dam that night, bristling with questions. And this morning, he still had them buzzing around in his head, eager to escape. But he would keep them inside and hold on to his job. For now.

  Through the control room windows Anton looked out into the diminished lake and wondered why Dreyfus had paled at the thought of a blackout.

  In the middle of the lake, the steeple of the old village’s ruined church was showing above the water. The image came to him of a thorn, working its way out.

  43

  Toni drove to the old house. He kept an eye on the road behind him, still wondering if the police were watching his movements. He’d heard rumors that the investigation had moved on and there were other men being interviewed about Lucy. Even so, it always paid to be careful.

  He’d left Serge in the house with strict instructions to stay out of sight. If that proved impossible—since the prospect of the police showing up there unannounced couldn’t be ruled out—he’d told Serge to say as little as he could.

  “Who do I say I am?” Serge asked.

  “When you—when you died,” said Toni, “if anyone asked, we would say you’d gone to Paris to find work as a mechanic. So tell them you’re back to visit.”

  Serge nodded, while in his head Toni thought about how few people had known Serge was there at all, even before the killings had begun. The story about Paris had been in use long before Serge’s death. Long before.

  He’d known from an early age that there was something off with Serge. It had been animals to begin with—Serge and Toni, hunting together; Serge the loving brother looking out for Toni, teaching him the basic hunting skills he’d learned from their father. They brought home venison and rabbits, Toni proud that his brother treated him as an equal. Nothing had seemed wrong on those trips, yet Toni had known how his big brother liked to go out alone sometimes, how he would shoot to wound the animals, bring them down for the real sport he sought.

  Once, Serge told him about a deer he’d shot only to discover the animal was heavily pregnant. Serge told him how he’d cut the fawn out, cleared its mouth of gore, then watched as the animal fought to live, as it stood and cried out. And then, how he’d looked into the mother, pulled apart the workings of life itself, peered inside and tried to understand how something could contain so much power.

  “I felt blessed,” Serge said. “To be so close to it.”

  It was the first time Toni had felt the stirrings of unease at his brother’s unusual fascinations. “The mother was already dead?” he asked. “When you cut out the fawn?”

  Serge said nothing. Then Toni wondered aloud how long a fawn could be expected to live, without a mother to look after it. “All children need their mother,” said Toni. “To keep them safe.”

  “I know that,” Serge had said, suddenly angry. “Of course I know.”

  All children need their mother, Toni thought now, as he drove to the house. But sometimes the mother wasn’t strong enough. He remembered shouting at her that terrible night. Shouting at his own mother, seven years ago: “Why did you let him out?”

  “He pleaded, Toni,” his mother said, distraught. “He was in a prison. It was killing him. He promised me he wouldn’t do anything, just walk in the forest. He promised me.”

  Toni looked at her with such a lack of respect, with such contempt, that it had haunted him ever since. They had known beyond doubt after the second killing, when he’d come back to the house in a daze with a blood-caked face, but surely his mother had been suspicious even after the first, just as Toni had been. Their guilt was shared before, but now she alone had let him go. It was all on her.

  He ran to his truck and drove into town. Serge had talked in the weeks he had been locked inside the house, talked of the thoughts that ran through him, the urges and the needs. He had spoken of the places he would wait, the times he knew would be best, the times that had more power. The turning of the year had been the best of all, Serge had said. When the old year dies and the new is born.

  Mother and child.

  “My last,” Serge had sworn. “Let me go. It will be the last.”

  But it would never be the last, Toni knew.

  He had had to work that night, but he’d promised his mother he would be home well before midnight, when he expected Serge to become more restless and harder for his mother to deal with alone. Toni was true to his word, only to find his mother had been weak. She had given in to her firstborn.

  As she always had, Toni thought with real bitterness.

  The underpass was the second place he’d looked. If he’d gone there first, then he might have been in time to stop it. Instead, as the fireworks continued all around the town, he reached the base of the steps and saw Serge on his knees, leaning over a body.

  Toni ran at him, tire iron in his hand. As he drew close, the sight made him freeze. Serge looked up, almost unrecognizable as the brother he loved, his wild eyes full of a terrible lust, his mouth and chin coated in blood. Below him the woman lay dead, her stomach pouring with blood from a dozen wounds. Serge’s eyes had just enough time to focus, to recognize his brother standing over him, before Toni brought the steel down, hearing the crack of his brother’s skull resonate in the tunnel, mingling with the thumps of the fireworks.

  He hit him again, wanting it over. Serge lay silent but was still breathing.

  As Toni bent down to lift Serge he realized that the woman was breathing too, in shallow gasps. She was unconscious, not dead after all. He stared at her for a few seconds, but he knew what needed to be done.

  He took her first and placed her gently in the back of the truck. Then he returned for Serge, throwing his brother in beside the woman. Seeing the severity of his head wound, he wished that Serge would stop breathing, just stop and end this for all of them.

  He drove to the hospital. Not wanting to be seen, he left the woman in the road under a streetlight near the ambulance bays, hoping he wouldn’t have to somehow call attention to her. He waited in the truck further on, praying. At last the bay doors rolled up. Someone noticed the body and ran to it.

  Toni drove.

  At the house his mother emerged. “He did it again,” he told her. For a moment she was too shocked to speak. It wouldn’t last, and Toni didn’t want to hear it: excuses, pleas for another chance. “Not a word, Mum,” he warned her. “Nothing. We’ve let this go on too long.”

  Her tears came. She closed her eyes and bowed her head. Toni took it as a nod, as agreement.

  He took a shovel and started to dig. When it was deep enough he threw Serge into the grave. His brother came around as Toni shoveled the dirt onto his face. Serge spat out the soil, dazed and horrified. “What are you doing?” he shouted. “Christ, Toni! Stop it!”

  Toni could hear the fear in his brother’s voice, but he said nothing. His mother was inside the house now, but he could see her, watching through her bedroom window.

  Toni kept shoveling, remembering Serge as a boy, running through the woods together, curled up inside the house, his big brother’s arms sheltering him from the cold. He remembered the stories Serge told him, of gods and wild things in the forest.

  And he thought of the expression of bestial obscenity as Serge consumed a young woman’s still-breathing body. Toni looked at his brother, lying in the hole he’d dug. Serge called for his mother, called again and again, but Toni knew what had to be done to a rabid animal. He brought the shovel down hard, twice, three times, sobs pouring from his body until the skull gave way and his brother, finally, was silent.

  • • •

  Toni’s mother hadn’t spoken to him again. Not really. Not beyond simple requests and instructions. They moved around each other, living separate lives in the same house, both hollowed out by the deed that had been committed. He soon came to realize, as he relived that night again and again, that what he’d taken as a nod from h
is mother, as her permission to do what needed to be done, had only meant she was resigned to Toni’s actions. The rights and wrongs were never discussed and his mother gave up on living.

  Everything Serge had done, all the pain, all the terror. All the death. Even with all that, their mother had loved him without question.

  But not Toni, no. Not him. His morality had cost him that love, and the price was one he couldn’t bear. Now Serge was back and Toni didn’t dare hope…

  Perhaps there was a way. A way to make amends.

  As he drove up to the house, he saw Serge outside chopping wood. Only when he parked did he see that it wasn’t wood he was hitting with the ax. It was a cell phone, shattering under repeated blows.

  Toni took a deep breath and walked over. “Is it hers?” he asked.

  Serge frowned. “What?”

  “Is it Lucy’s phone?”

  Serge wouldn’t meet his eyes, but he nodded.

  “You should have told me you had it. If it had been switched on, it could have brought the police here.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Serge.

  Toni shook his head. His anger was spent, for now. He’d already railed at his brother about Lucy, raged at him all night, triggered by the self-pity Serge had shown.

  “I saw her and I couldn’t help it,” Serge had said. “It’s hard for me.”

  Toni had become enraged. “It doesn’t matter how hard it is for you,” he said. “You’ve terrorized, tortured, killed.” Toni talked about trust, about decency to others. He talked about how his mother loved Serge more than him, about how that made him feel. That she loved a monster and despised a man who tried to do the right thing.

  “I will change, Toni,” Serge said. “I will change. For you. I swear it.”

  Serge thanked Toni for promising to look after him and vowed again and again to change. If only that was all it took, Toni thought, then things would be so much simpler. Too many promises, too readily given: as many as the wind can carry, his mother used to say.