Her Dark Lies

by J. T. Ellison

  “No. That’s okay. I can do it. I have my rehearsal dress. But our guests must be getting restless at this point. Should we tell them to wait downstairs? Or go ahead to the church?”

  Jack is already halfway to the door. “Where are you going?”

  “To find Fatima,” he says. “And get the party moving to the church. There’s no reason for everyone to be waiting below. We’ll make our appearance there. Together, this time.”

  “No need. They’re already going,” Ana says, looking out the window. “The funicular is full of people. Harper must have gotten everyone moving. Smart girl.”

  “Good. Still, Fatima and I need to have a conversation.” But before he can leave, my cell phone rings. I pull it out of the small beaded bag that is meant to hang at my elbow. I’d tossed it on the bed as we entered the room.

  “It’s Gideon,” I say, confused, halting and putting the phone to my ear.

  “Hello?”

  “Claire! My God, I’ve been trying to reach you. Jack isn’t answering his phone. I’m on my way up. Karmen is dead. She was murdered, stabbed, but she figured out who Ami Eister is. It’s Morgan Compton. Claire, you have to tell Jack. Morgan is alive.”

  66

  Revelations

  One last gong of the bell and the seats are all filled. The lights go down, bleeding away from the glowing orbs until the theater is dark. There is murmuring and shifting, a few errant coughs, the turn of a page in the programs. The curtain is still drawn. The murmurs stop. The audience leans forward the tiniest bit, breath catching in their throats. They have waited for this moment, paid money to experience it.

  An interminable moment ensues.

  Then the curtain whips back, pulled on lead wires that fly through their metal rings, showing the stage, and a lone actor in a pool of light. A woman. Head down. Feet bare. She wears battered clothes as if she’s survived a shipwreck. Her red hair hangs in stringy wet ropes. There is no music, only the heavy breathing of the woman and the gasps of surprise from the audience as she throws back her head, her eyes bright as glowing coals.

  * * *

  “Surprise!” I call.

  67

  She Is Risen

  “What do you mean, Morgan is alive?” I say, and Jack and Ana both whirl to face me. “Gideon, hold on, I need to put you on speaker.”

  Ana’s face has lost all color. “That’s impossible. She can’t be. She...she... I saw her...”

  “Gideon, go. Say that again.”

  He’s clearly running, his breathing is broken. His voice comes through the speaker, tinny and frantic. “Morgan Compton is alive. She has been posing as Ami Eister. Karmen found video of her coming to your studio, and got a facial recognition match. It’s her. There’s no doubt. I’m almost there. Lock the fucking door.”

  Ana has a hand around her throat, her beautiful features sharp in her delicate face. She is lost in memory, or agony, I’m not sure which.

  I touch her arm. “The wedding...”

  “If she’s alive, Claire, there is no wedding.”

  I must have looked confused because Ana’s face softens. “My dear, if she’s actually alive, they’re still married.”

  My heart sinks. My God, she’s right. If Morgan is still alive...

  It is impossible. If Morgan is alive, that means I’ve met her. I’ve talked to her. I spent months stalking her ghost and when she came to me, flesh and blood, I didn’t recognize her? No, it can’t be. It can’t be!

  Logic reasserts itself. “The woman posing as Ami Eister who came to my studio did not resemble Morgan. Her hair, her face...it wasn’t the same person. I am...intimately familiar with Morgan.”

  Jack glances my way, an eyebrow cocked. “I’ll tell you later,” I say, and he nods, convinced.

  “I agree,” Jack says. “This must be a mistake. We know she’s dead. There’s no way.”

  Gideon bangs on our door. “Let me in.”

  Jack does. Gideon thrusts his phone at Jack. Gideon’s pants and shirt are covered in blood.

  Karmen. Oh, God, another death.

  “Hit Play. She’s had some work done. And her hair must be dyed. But the underlying bone structure can’t be mistaken. Someone tried to delete the match, but Karmen had already sent it to me. Mrs. Compton, she’s dead, ma’am. Karmen’s dead. She was stabbed. I’m so sorry.”

  The video finally loads fully. The footage isn’t great, and we crowd around the screen, watching. The tall black boots, a black chignon, black Jackie-O sunglasses. She strides across the street with a warrior’s grace.

  She looks like Ana.

  I glance at Jack’s mother, assessing. The similarities are overwhelming.

  “The woman in this video is absolutely the woman who came to me and claimed she was Ami Eister. But that is not the Morgan I’ve become familiar with.”

  Jack is staring at the screen, mouth ajar. As I watch, he runs a finger across the blown-up chin of the woman. He glances back at his mother, then to Gideon, then the screen again. He sees it, too. Ana does, as well.

  “She’s dressed like me,” Ana says. “But that’s not me, obviously.”

  “There’s more,” Gideon says.

  He takes the phone and opens a file. This shows the technical comparisons. Morgan leaps out from the screen, that wide brow, those piercing eyes, that strong, pugnacious jaw, the flaming hair.

  The woman next to her is...less, somehow. Quieter. The jaw doesn’t seem as strong, the eyes are hidden behind dark glasses.

  “There’s no chance this is a mistake?”

  “No, Jack. No. The software is highly technical, we have a tactical identification system that merges with the FBI’s NGI facial recognition database. But there are vector templates and surface texture measurements, you can see they all match... Look, it’s not wrong. It’s her.”

  There is a moment, a brief, quiet moment, before Jack speaks.

  “Morgan.” Jack’s face makes it seem the word tastes of ash. “But how is that possible?”

  He looks at his mother wildly, and Ana shakes her head once, sharp.

  “Where is she now, Gideon?” Ana asks.

  “Karmen had a note on her desk. A flight number and a date. JFK to Rome. Two weeks ago.”

  “She’s here,” I say, utterly aghast. “My God, she’s here. On the island. That’s who I saw in the labyrinth. That’s who pushed Henna down the stairs. That’s where Malcolm was taking me. To her. To Morgan.”

  “Fatima,” Ana says, venom lacing her tone. “She must be involved with this. She knows. She has to. She could be behind Henna’s death, too.”

  But Jack is still in shock, still holding out some sort of hope that we’re going to be able to pull this off, that we’re going to have a future together. He turns to me and softly, softly, with the finger that traced his wife’s jaw on the computer screen a moment ago, traces mine.

  “Claire. This means nothing. She means nothing. You are the love of my life.”

  “Oh, please. He told me that too, once upon a time.”

  The contralto voice is familiar and strange at the same time, and I whirl around in time to see the massive tapestry behind the statue of Venus slip back into place. The woman who is Morgan but is not Morgan stands before us, a gun in her hand.

  “Surprise,” she calls, then pulls the trigger.

  68

  Drifting Down the Seas

  Gideon goes down first.

  Ana is hit and crumples to the floor without a sound.

  Jack dives for her with a shrill cry of “Mom!” just as a third shot rings out, and to my horror, Jack collapses on top of Ana.

  Blood. There is so much blood. I can’t see where she hit him, but he’s not moving.

  I can’t breathe. I can’t move. I am frozen, and she is here.

  Morgan struts to Jack’s body, stepp
ing around Gideon with a small sneer of distaste.

  “Tsk. Fatima will never get the stain out of this rug...”

  She focuses her dark gaze on me.

  “Hello, Claire. It’s nice to see you.”

  She’s going to kill you, too. Be brave, Claire. Don’t let her win.

  It takes every ounce of my being to look away from the black, empty cyclops eye of the gun, which is now pointed at my chest, and meet the eyes of the madwoman before me.

  Her hair is a mass of tangles, and her clothes—what was once a white knee-length dress and thin sandles—are stained with mud, and blood. All hail the ghost of Isola. The haunter. Jack’s Gray Lady.

  “Hello, Morgan.”

  “Oh, I like hearing my name fall from your lips. Morgan, she says. Morgan. Such a strong name. A witch’s name. For witch I am, sweet, darling, little Claire. A witch who rises from the dead to exact revenge on those who hurt her. My dress looked fabulous on you, by the way. I thought it might.”

  “How? How are you alive?”

  “It seems remarkable, I know. But I didn’t die when I went off the cliff. Not then. Not like he thought.”

  “Hard to make that mistake.”

  “Oh, I was dead. I’ve been dead ever since. Dead in my heart. Dead in my soul.”

  She’s not kidding—her eyes are flat as rocks.

  “When I went over the cliff, screaming until I landed, somehow, some way, I wasn’t broken in two. I lay on the rocks, in that freezing cold water, twisted, in such pain. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. I lay there while they flashed their lights on me, while they decided what to do.

  “And in the meantime, I let the water buoy my body. When I felt myself sinking and the sucking brine ran over my head, I moved my arms and legs, spread them out in the water. You know they call it the dead man’s float? Well, eventually, I floated. Floated right out into the crashing waves, but the current brought me into the cove that led to the grotto. We used to swim there, all the time. Jack liked to make love in the grotto, under the watchful eye of the statuary. Has he taken you there yet?”

  “No.”

  “Hmm. Pity. It’s terribly romantic. Well, the storm was frantic, the wind whipping the waves onto the shore as if it was punishing the land for being solid. The boats had been lashed to the pier before the storm came in, but one had worked its way loose and was bobbing in the waves. I unmoored it and crawled inside. It was small, but I was so waterlogged, so pained, I wasn’t thinking about the possibility of it capsizing. It was shelter. It was safety. I didn’t care anymore.

  “My little boat and I were swept up in the torrential waves. It floated out into the bay while I slept, while I was dead, while I was dying.”

  “Well, which is it, Morgan?” I feel a little hysterical pushing her, but I can’t seem to help myself. She’s mad. She even speaks like a crazy woman, sharing a story only she is experiencing.

  “What difference does it make? Sleep is only a kind of death, one from which we usually awaken. I was resurrected. And now here I am. I have yet to awaken from this particular nightmare. But that’s all about to change.”

  “That’s quite a speech.”

  “Did you like it?” She smiles coyly. “I want you to like it, Claire. I know how much you like me. I know how much you enjoy thinking of me.”

  “Oh, please. Don’t flatter yourself. I want you to explain yourself, Morgan. None of this mystical ‘I floated away in a little boat’ crap. You have been systematically trying to ruin my life.”

  “Not your life, Claire. His.” She gestures with the gun toward Jack’s prone body. “You, I find interesting. I’d prefer not to have to kill you.”

  This is utter bullshit. Her eyes are wild and mad. It’s either her or me, and we both know it.

  “All right. I’d rather not be killed. So, you floated away. Then what?”

  “And then, my dear girl, I was transformed. I ran. I hid. And I became another woman. I bided my time. I worked from within. I recruited, and I planned, and I watched. Oh, I watched. Especially since you came into his life. I was there the night you met, did you know?”

  Alarm fills me. What? “No. I didn’t.”

  “You were so radiant. I wish I had it on video. You lit up like a candle the moment he looked at you. And of course, since he was so interested in you, I needed to be, too.”

  She walks in a tiny half circle, and now she’s between me and the door. Fuck.

  Where is everyone?

  Assuming Jack and I are having a knockdown, drag-out fight, probably. Being discreet, a disease this whole family suffers from.

  She’s cut off my path to the door. But she came in elsewhere.

  The tapestry. Jack told me they used to bring girls to the emperor through a tunnel. The boats came to the grotto. She came through the fucking wall.

  If I can draw her down there, draw her away from Jack and Ana and Gideon, maybe someone will come find them, help them.

  And then I can kill her. But I need to keep her talking.

  “So, you watched me?”

  “I did.”

  “And how did you meet Shane?”

  “Research,” she says simply, with a flip of her hand. “It wasn’t hard to dig up your past. I am rather good with a computer, as you might have guessed. It was convenient, him getting parole when he did. I could have found any number of louts to do my bidding, but someone who wanted to take you down? Perfection. He couldn’t wait to see you punished. We had a deal, he and I. I got my revenge on Jack, he got his revenge on you. His was less...elegant than mine, of course. Baser.” She shivers delicately. “What you ever saw in him. Ah, the vagaries of youth.

  “Of course, you must know already, that man is a first-class idiot. He broke with the plan. I guess he decided watching you wasn’t enough anymore, he wanted to feel you again, taste you again. I didn’t tell him to, and until that moment, he’d been quite good at doing what I told him.”

  “Maybe he decided he was tired of being your lackey.”

  “Perhaps.” Morgan shrugs. “It doesn’t matter. Money speaks louder than words with some people. Malcolm, for instance. Always second fiddle, always being bossed around. He was desperate for some power. He was supposed to bring you to me, to the cottage, so we could talk this out, like adults. And instead, you killed him. Such aggression from you. Did you know then, sweet Claire? Did you know I was waiting for you?”

  “Of course not. And I didn’t kill him. He fell.”

  “Oh, keep telling yourself that, darling. I have it all on tape.” She continues as if I haven’t said a word. “No, it doesn’t matter. There won’t be any reason to watch you anymore. Speaking of watching—” she tips the gun back and forth, back and forth, as if hypnotizing me “—you’ve done your fair share of watching me.”

  How could she...no, she’s playing with me. “What do you mean?”

  “Claire, Claire, Claire. Your search history is incredibly...focused. You seem to have a slight fixation on little old me.” She smiles winningly, looking even crazier. Bat. Shit. Crazy.

  “How could you—”

  “Have you not figured this out yet? I’ve been inside your head, darling. I’ve been inside your body with him, and I’ve seen how you obsess about me. What was it like, falling in love with a ghost?”

  “You really are a narcissist. I hardly call trying to find out who my fiancé was married to falling in love. Jack despised you so much he didn’t bother uttering your name aloud. You were less than a ghost to him. You simply ceased to exist.”

  She flinches, her mouth thinning to a hard seam. She looks old, and tired, and wretched at that moment. This is how I win, I realize. I make sure she understands her insignificance.

  “Jack spoke of you to me once. Only once. He said you’d died. And that was it. He didn’t even care enough to tell me how. And I d
idn’t care enough to look until one of my friends pushed you on me. That was natural curiosity.”

  “Hundreds of photos stored in your little private website is more than natural curiosity.”

  “No. It wasn’t. I wanted to be sure I was nothing like you so he would never hate me like he hated you.”

  She laughs, hard and sharp, and I can see I’ve wounded her. She wants me to love her. She wants me to be obsessed with her. Disdain for her cleverness is the key.

  “I predict you—” she starts, but I cut her off.

  “Hey, you can do the whole witch of Endor thing all you want. You don’t scare me anymore. You’re just a woman, and as clever as you are, as much as you think you know, you will never have him. He’s mine. His heart belongs to me.”

  Lightning, and thunder close on its heels. Thunder so loud, so long, it takes me a moment to realize no, that wasn’t thunder at all.

  The sky outside my window is an orange ball, and Morgan is laughing behind me.

  “What the hell was that?”

  The percussion of the explosion hits the terrace doors and shatters them, spraying glass into the room. Venus topples, the tapestry blown aside, revealing the tunnel. The concussion is enough to fling open the door to the hallway. My ears pop painfully. Tiny slivers of glass rip through the sleeves of my robe, pinpricks of blood blooming like so many freckles.

  It takes me a moment to realize what’s happened. It’s The Hebrides. The Hebrides is burning. The long whistle of a lone firework dies, and the sky lights up with brilliant colors.

  “Aw, look at your surprise, all ruined,” Morgan says, eyes alight with happiness. I can almost see the reflection of the flames in her pupils. “Now you have no way to get off the island. Now you’re stuck with me.”

  The sky outside is popping and crackling as hundreds of fireworks go off at the same time. It is cacophonous, but I hear someone screaming my name.