The Girl in the Water

by A J Grayson

  ‘You aren’t remembering killing them, Amber. You are remembering what they did to you.’

  Me, the monster. Him, the monster. So much was collapsing around me. Explanations, stories, all colliding. But visions appearing, too. Reappearing. Of those men, and my childhood, and …

  Oh, God.

  ‘David,’ I say, ‘I can’t, I can’t remember …’

  ‘I know you can’t,’ he answers tenderly, ‘but I think you will. As much as I wanted you not to, I think you will.’

  ‘They hurt me.’ It seems a complete statement. I don’t know how to expand on it.

  ‘Yes, Amber. They hurt you, and a lot of other girls.’

  ‘And I killed them,’ I repeat. But now, even I don’t fully believe the words.

  ‘You didn’t,’ he insists. ‘I promise you, you didn’t.’ He tries to step closer, but his feet are stuck in the mud beneath the water. ‘I was trying to protect you.’

  ‘Protect?’

  ‘At least, in part.’ His face contorts. He’s frustrated with himself. ‘But I have to be honest with you, now. It wasn’t just for you. I was acting for my sister, too. For her memory. For the justice she deserved, a long time ago.’

  His sister. This new story, again. I don’t know why he keeps repeating it.

  He attempts a consoling expression.

  ‘My life with you has been a lie,’ he says, simply. ‘I’m sorry about that. There’s a lot about me you don’t know. A lot I’ve tried to repress.’

  ‘We lived a good life,’ I whisper.

  ‘We did,’ he answers, and he seems grateful to hear me say it. ‘But it wasn’t your life. I understand that now. And it wasn’t mine. You’ve never really been my Amber, and I’ve never really been your David.’

  His face looks different. I see honesty there. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it before.

  ‘All I wanted,’ he says through tears that start to flow more freely, ‘was to love you, and to save you. And the love, Amber … that was only ever real.’

  For some reason, I want to agree.

  ‘I know, David. I love you, too.’ I genuinely, actually do. ‘And I’m sure your sister loved you.’ I hesitate. For a moment I wonder who his sister was. I wonder who he is. There are so many new questions.

  ‘And I think,’ I finally add, ‘that you really did want to save me. But in the end,’ I lower my hand from his face, where it had automatically drifted, ‘that wasn’t possible. Some people are beyond saving.’

  ‘I don’t believe that,’ he answers. His voice implores. ‘There’s always hope.’

  ‘Not here, David. Not in the river, with a string of bodies behind me. You’ve tried your best for years, and in these past days – I guess you did everything you could. I could wish you hadn’t. That you’d been willing just to love me instead of trying to save me, or create me. But it is what it is. And at the end of the day, I’ve become a killer, David. That woman … those were my hands that pulled our dog’s leash around her neck, whether it was you who killed the others or not. I’ve become a, a …’

  I’m strangely calm as I speak. This is simple reality. It can’t be denied. Like distinguishing up from down. You don’t get emotional about it, you just identify it for what it is.

  ‘There’s no way to rescue this situation,’ I say. ‘They’ll figure out I did this, eventually. Of course they will. And I can’t face what will come.’ My voice wanders. Then, ‘It just needs to be finished.’

  ‘But there is,’ David answers, suddenly resolved. I keep my eyes on his face, which has grown serious and resigned.

  Peaceful.

  ‘There is a way out everything that’s happened. A way to save you, like I’ve always wanted.’

  I am ready to protest again. David is a man who doesn’t want to admit failure, who needs to realize that reality doesn’t always bend to our wishes, however well intentioned.

  But he’s speaking again before I have a chance to say anything.

  ‘This way, Amber, I’ve already set it in motion.’ His eyes sparkle as a branch moves high above and the sun hits them. Shining bright and bold in the unique hazel that’s wholly his. All the intimidating darkness I’d seen in them in the kitchen is gone.

  ‘What are you talking about, David?’

  ‘No one is going to come after you.’ He lifts an arm and wraps a comforting hand around my shoulder. ‘I’ve made sure of that. You’ll be safe, Amber. Above suspicion.’

  ‘That’s impossible.’

  ‘You’ll be able to go on with your life. To make something of it. Something better than all this.’

  There’s a certainty to his words that throws me. What he is saying simply isn’t feasible.

  His hand is at my cheek again.

  ‘I want you to know, I really tried.’ His fingers dance at my ears. ‘I did everything I could, from the moment I found you till now. I’m just sorry it wasn’t more. I’m sorry I couldn’t escape my past, or yours. I’d tried for so long, but …’

  His face suddenly grows serious.

  ‘I’ve left a note on the kitchen table, Amber. I wrote it last night, just in case. When you stormed out now, I knew it was time. You’ll find it there, when you get back.’

  ‘A note?’

  ‘Guard it, Amber,’ he continues. ‘It’s your ticket out.’

  ‘David, I don’t understand what you’re—’

  ‘It’ll make sense when you read it. And you’ll have to show it to the police, when they eventually come. I admit everything. I use terms clear enough to satisfy any investigator. I promise.’

  I’m not hearing him correctly. ‘David, you admit what?’

  ‘The whole of it,’ he answers. ‘That I killed each of those men, that I murdered them in rage. It’s not a lie, Amber. I’m only confessing the truth. That I was never able to get past what my sister had been through. That it filled me with fury at men who would do that to anyone, and that I decided to bring justice about myself.’

  ‘David, that’s not going to end this.’

  ‘And,’ he adds, squeezing my shoulder, ‘that I killed Emma Fairfax.’

  I freeze. I can feel the earth tremble beneath the waters.

  ‘David, you didn’t.’

  ‘It’s all in the letter, Amber. It’s done. It’s what the police need to hear, if you’re going to escape this. That I hunted down the woman who’d led you to your torment, and systematically ended the life of her and everyone at whose hands you suffered.’

  ‘David!’ I cry out, agonized at hearing these words from him.

  ‘They’ll believe it,’ he answers, energy in his voice. His eyes are locked on mine. He intensely wants me to comprehend what he’s saying. ‘It’s rational. And it’s not like it isn’t something I’ve craved doing my whole life. Of course I wanted to track down those men, so many times over these years. But I could never risk upsetting what we’d created here. Our life. Your recovery. Still, I thought about it more times than I can count. The only difference is that now I’ll have actually gone through with it. “Enraged husband, grieving the memory of his sister, seeks retribution for the pain inflicted on his wife.” You read the papers every day, even you have to acknowledge – it’s a perfect headline.’

  ‘They’ll find the same records I did,’ I protest. ‘They’ll find out we aren’t married. They’ll piece together that you’ve concocted a charade for my whole life.’

  ‘Let them! It’ll only help spell out my obsession with you, my desire to steal you away from your former life. Make you mine.’

  There are tears in my eyes now, to match David’s.

  ‘You did make me yours, didn’t you?’ They roll down my cheeks.

  ‘No one else needs to know the real reason why,’ David continues. ‘To keep you from going down a path I’d seen before. To offer you hope. To the world I’ll be an obsessed stalker who invaded your life and spilt the blood of everyone I felt had harmed my prized possession.’ He takes a few deep, controlling breaths. ‘I
’ve also left a large bottle of the drug I’ve been using on you. You’ll find it on the counter by the sink. That will clinch the story. I drugged you secretly, forcing you to be a part of my games. No one will doubt my guilt, Amber. No one.’

  I can’t bear to hear him say these things. ‘I won’t let you do this. I won’t permit you to live with that … that shame. You’ve done things that are hard to forgive, but so have I. You’re not going to take the blame for this alone.’

  The tender resignation returns to his features.

  ‘I’m afraid you still don’t understand. And that’s okay, it really is.’ He takes another step closer. ‘I won’t be living with any shame at all.’

  He lifts both hands to my face, cupping my cheeks in his warm palms. Our eyes lock – two lovebirds intertwined in the midst of the water – and he leans in to kiss me. My lips part into his, and we’re connected. The warmth flows through me like a new surge of life.

  His hands slide down my face, over my shoulders, rubbing human warmth into my arms.

  As his left hand meets my right, with the knife still in my clutch and the blade still pointed at my skin, he gently unwraps my fingers from its handle. The man who loves me, drawing the instrument of suffering and death away from my side.

  ‘But please,’ he says, breaking our kiss and whispering so closely I feel his breath drift across my face, ‘just once before this is all over, tell me it’s okay. That you’ll be okay. That for all I’ve done wrong, it hasn’t been entirely in vain.’

  I look into his eyes. God, I’ve always loved his eyes. But I don’t know how to answer him, and he seems to accept this.

  Then, without moving his face, he wrenches the rest of his body in a firm, singular contraction. His eyes stay fixed on mine, lingering in my gaze, but something changes in their presence.

  I am drawn to look down, a sudden compulsion, and clarity instantly comes. With that one movement of my head, I finally understand the fulness of David’s plan.

  The knife I’d held in my grip is in his, and the blade is deep inside his flesh. His fingers are still clinging to the handle, even as blood pours out of the deep wound in his stomach.

  ‘Oh God! David!’ I cry. Comprehension of what he’s done comes crushingly. ‘No! Don’t do this! Don’t—’

  But his other hand is firmly on my arm and he tilts me back to gaze into his eyes again. His face is whiter, but his features are warm and loving.

  ‘Shh, Amber. It’s already done.’

  I can’t speak. I can only sob.

  He forces a smile, though the action pains him. ‘The killer, racked with guilt, takes his own life in the end, you see?’ A little laugh – spots of red at the corners of his lips as it comes. ‘The only ending to this story that works. The only one that sets you free.’

  I realize that there is nothing I can do. His colour is draining, he’s already starting to slouch. My rock and my stability is wilting, turning to sand.

  I reach out to him, wrap him in both arms as he starts to crumble. With all my strength I embrace him, enclosing him in myself. I feel the life ebb from his body, his weight increasing in my arms. And before he’s fully gone, I say the only phrase that comes into my heart.

  ‘I love you, too, David.’

  And then there’s one phrase more, as his body becomes too much for me to hold and I lower it into the gentle flow of the water beneath us. A phrase I don’t expect, and may never understand.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Epilogue

  Months come and go in a steady rhythm. The tides ebb, the tides flow. The world spins.

  I’ve read all the pages of the story that went before, most of them from a computer screen, secreted away in the solitude of home; but more recently, from the stacks of papers in my desk at the bookshop, where I’ve gradually returned. It was horrible, my story. Painful, but also filled with love. With sacrifice. And like all compelling stories, it’s hard to admit when it’s genuinely come to its end – when the last page has been read and the back cover closed, and there are no more revelations to be had. No more threads to follow or questions to be answered. When the book has to be put down, and the next step of life taken up.

  It didn’t end the way I would have hoped for. Then again, it didn’t begin the way I would have liked, either. But we’re not always the authors of our own stories. We find ourselves characters in a saga penned by others – by their desires, by their faults, by their virtues. Shaped by actions heaped upon us, rather than those we’ve sought out or embraced. But they become our story, still.

  As that one concluded, I had to deal with all the trauma of its closing pages. I had hated so many of the characters and so much of the plot; but others I had loved. Some had filled me, for a time, with a joy deeper than I’d ever known.

  How can you not be grateful for a story that gives you that?

  The investigations came, and the enquiries, and the interviews. David’s note was the lynchpin he’d hoped it would be. He admitted to each murder, described it in detail, offered facts about the crime scenes no one else could know, including homes in Felton and Santa Cruz where three of the murders had taken place. The drugs mixed in the bottle on the counter had enough psychotropic power to them that the only emotion shown towards me in the whole process was pity. You poor creature, look what that vile monster did to you! Thank God you made it through.

  I had no trouble bringing forth the tears that were expected of me throughout the process. My agony wasn’t feigned, it was just of a different sort than any of them expected.

  I remember the headline our local paper ran when all the details had finally come to light.

  STALKER STEALS A LIFE, TAKES FOUR, THEN TAKES HIS OWN

  Simple, unadorned. The stealing, the taking – just the right bit of wordplay to pass as journalistically witty while not crossing any lines.

  I read the story. We all did. Chloe, Mitch, and everyone else in the shop. We read it, came to grips with its reality, and then realized we had to move on.

  The final page of that book had been turned. The cover closed. But we would move on. And we decided we might as well do it together.

  I find myself now at the first page of a new story. I’m meeting new characters – above all, a new protagonist, a woman and a self I’m only beginning to know. At this stage, at least, she’s also going to work in the little bookshop in downtown Santa Rosa, with the staff who have been so supportive of her, so much like family. She’s in therapy and counselling and on the right kinds of medication; and above all she has these friends, and she wants to learn to fall on them more. To let them be with her. She’ll move house – she can’t quite bear to stay in the same apartment where so much took place – but she’ll stay in the area. At the edge of nature, with an orange-furred dog and a love for flowers.

  She’s broken, this new protagonist. She has a past. But she also has a strange optimism, that as awful as yesterday was, and as painful as today feels, tomorrow can be better. That life is not just the sum of past experience. That it can be held, driven, and propelled towards something new.

  I don’t know yet if it’s to be a heroine’s tale, if she’s some great monument to fortitude and strength who will come blaring through the pages to a trophy finish; or if she’s the gentle maiden, tossed about by the storms we get here in the springtime, who will be broken up as much as she strives to be made whole. There will be pits and there will be mesas, darkness and light. There are glimpses of her I can already see, and so much that still remains a mystery.

  I only recognize a few similarities, in these opening pages, to the woman in that other story I so recently finished. Each morning, her blue eyes stare back from the mirror and tease her. The same straw-coloured hair falls to her shoulders.

  But she’s afloat in a new reality. There’s a new breath in her lips, and her chest rises and falls with a different strength.

  And she blinks. And life is starting again.

  Acknowledgements

  The
Boy in the Park, the book I wrote immediately before this, proved to me that a novel could be both astonishingly engaging to write, but also surprisingly painful. That story dealt with some of the darker realities of human experience — hardly the happiest of realms in which to submerse oneself, but one that I was able to explore in a way that, I’m relieved and delighted to say, so many of you found a captivating, haunting read.

  I could hardly have imagined that a follow-up could be even more painful to write, but entering into the world that has eventually become The Girl in the Water proved just such an experience. Behind what I hope is the tension of the psychological twists and thrills, is a world of suffering and pain beyond the comprehension of most people — but not all. As before, I am fortunate not to have experienced such suffering myself; but to all who have, and especially to those who have opened themselves up to me with their very real stories — far more terrible than anything I could fictionalise, and yet often far more inspiring, too — to you the better parts of this book are dedicated.

  My setting for this book is the peaceful, in so many ways idyllic, world of the Russian River basin in northern California. There, in the hills of a wine country that is less well-known than Napa Valley, just to the east, winds this strangely beautiful river that meanders through the hills and countryside until it meets the pacific along a cliff-shorn coastline that is almost too spectacular to be real. I’m sorry that for the purposes of our story I’ve filled such a peaceful quarter of the world with evil and more than its reasonable share of corpses, but I hope in my own strange way this serves as a tribute to a section of North America of which I truly stand in awe, and which I visited several times while writing this novel. My thanks to the kind people of Santa Rosa, Windsor, Santa Cruz, Felton, and all the other locations I scouted out during writing, and who were hospitable and friendly one and all.

  I continue to be represented by the industry’s finest, my friend and literary mentor, Luigi Bonomi of LBA Books. We must have another lunch, Luigi, and soon. Every time we do, a new book seems to be the result — and because of you, each one is better than the last. I also owe a debt to Dani Gerard of LBA, who pushes me forward with drive.