Flashback

by Amanda Carpenter

  The nozzle of the gun turned slowly to point right at David. Dana just shivered and shook, backed up against the wall in a classic example of sheer animalistic fear, her face near to crumpling into tears, lips trembling and eyes full of sickness.

  “Mrs. Haslow,” David said quietly, never moving, “is it possible that the gun is loaded, or do you know for a certainty that it’s safe?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered. “It could be loaded. There were bullets in the cabinet and she had her back to me and was doing something to the gun. But I don’t see how she would know to load it—she’s never handled a gun in her life—she wouldn’t know how to use it if she wanted to. What’s wrong with her? She looks half dead from fright!”

  “I think I’m afraid to find out,” he said reluctantly. He tentatively put out another foot and eased forward. Dana’s eyes, like a cat’s, never left him, unblinkingly. He asked her gently, “Dana, what’s happened? Why do you need the gun?”

  “I—I crashed,” she whispered dully. “I crashed the helicopter. They shot me down. I can’t get to those poor kids, they—they’re dying. I know they are.”

  David looked and felt like he’d been hit unexpectedly in the stomach. He moaned something under his breath, queerly. Then he took a deep breath, the passage in his throat sounded ragged in the tense filled room. “Oh, Dana, Dana—the kids are all right. I know, I’ve just come from there. I’ve seen them. You don’t have to worry. The fighting’s all over with. Please put down the gun. You’re scaring your mother, see?”

  “You’re lying!” Dana screamed, and Denise screamed too. Only David was as still as a statue. Furiously, Dana continued, “You’re lying to me, damn you! I know they aren’t all right! I was the only pilot free to answer their radio signals! They’re dying! Those kids…” Her eyes, after misting over with such anguish that both Denise and David caught their breath at it, sharpened into such a look of fury and hate that her whole face was altered. She spat out, “Get the hell out of my way! Move back from the door! Both of you, go on! Get over to that side of the room!”

  Slowly both David and Denise complied. Dana’s mother’s face was so grey and full of fear that something in Dana’s face flickered for a moment as a sliver of reality wedged into her nightmare. But it was gone again in a split second, and her face was full of desperation and futile determination.

  Dana edged from behind the desk, opposite to the two watching her, and she slowly inched out of the door, never taking her eyes from them. Then she whirled and ran as fast as she could, forsaking her little bundle of supplies and breaking out of the door fast, hitting one of the many paths that converged to their lawn at a dead run. She had to find those kids and help them, she had to.

  Back at the house, David took a deep, steady breath and then turned his attention to Denise, who looked suddenly older and completely colourless. He was alarmed at what he saw, and he took her gently by the arm and forced her to sit down. She stared up at him fearfully. “What happened to her?” she asked. “She’s never been this way before, never! Oh, God, what if she hurts someone? David, we’ve got to stop her!”

  “No—no, Mrs. Haslow,” he said, making her sit still in the chair with both hands. “Just take a few minutes and try to calm down a bit. Will you do that? Will you try to keep as calm as you can about this? I’ll go and look for her. I promise, I’ll find her, and everything will be all right.”

  Denise stared at him and she saw the emotion that darkened his eyes, the expression of something horrifying that clung to him like a black clawed thing, how he was so utterly white. He was labouring under some terrific stress. “What was Dana talking about when she said she crashed?” she asked him slowly, staring. He swallowed and her eyes sharpened. “You know, don’t you? This has something to do with you, doesn’t it?” He didn’t answer, and she said, seemingly to change the subject, “I tried to call you when she left the house earlier. She was acting so strangely then, too, and I—I thought that maybe you could see her safely to the store and back, to make sure she was all right. But you weren’t home.”

  A muscle jerked in his jaw. His hands tightened on hers, tightened spasmodically and then, as he became aware of her stare, and his tight grip on her, he let go and stood back. “I was coming over here,” he said flatly. Her eyes widened.

  “Why? You surely didn’t knock on the front door, did you? Did you change your mind? David—”

  “I went to the store instead,” he said interrupting her harshly, and his face creased with some kind of pain. He saw her expression and continued angrily, “Don’t look at me like that! Of course I didn’t know that your daughter was going to the store—how could I? I just went to the store and—and…” As Denise watched, he turned away from her and raked his hair, rumpling the dark glossy mass agitatedly. He said again, in low tones, “How could I know? I couldn’t.” He stopped and shook his head as if it hurt.

  Denise was one of the few people in the world who had good cause not to scoff or disbelieve anything that might happen to her daughter, or be connected to Dana in any way. She asked him urgently, “For God’s sake, what happened? Did you see Dana? Did something happen to upset or frighten her in any way? How did you know to come back here?”

  “I don’t know!” he shouted, and something violent seethed inside him briefly, frighteningly and then was bottled up again and contained. He repeated, “I just don’t know. All I knew was that I had to come here. I—yes, something happened in town and it did upset Dana, but I don’t really understand how—Mrs. Haslow,” and he looked at her with a stunned expression overlaying the stress and emotion, “your daughter wasn’t in the store or anywhere else that I would know to look for her. But I walked around to the back of the store and found her anyway. I knew where she was. I knew she was in trouble.”

  Denise stood quickly and walked over to him, tears filling her eyes. She touched him on the arm. “Then do you think you could possibly find her and coax her out of whatever’s got a hold of her?” she whispered. “God, I’m so afraid of what might happen to her. Maybe we should both go out looking—maybe I should—should call somebody for help, oh, I don’t know what to do!” And she broke into tears, wringing her hands futilely.

  “No!” he said sharply, grabbing her by the shoulders. “No, don’t call anybody. I’ll go out looking—she can’t have gone far. I’ll find her and bring her back safe. Just stay here, all right? It’ll be…” and he hesitated before continuing, “…better if you’re here calm and waiting for her. Look, are you okay? I really should leave.”

  Reassured because she wanted to be reassured, Denise smiled and stepped back. It was a pitiful attempt at a smile, but it seemed to steady her. “I’m fine, really. It’s just—please, David, bring her back safe.”

  He started to say something but stopped and just looked at her for a moment. Then, with another shake of his head as if to clear his mind, he left.

  Sunlight glinting peacefully through deep green pines, making her half blind from the light. Dana blinked, and heard a far off, raucous call from a blue jay. Another bird answered. She smelled her own sweat, a faintly tangy scent, along with the fresh, aromatic smell of tree sap, along with rich earth. She was breathing hard as if she’d been in a race, panting.

  Her eyes, drawn by the heavy weight of something in her hand, dropped, and shock coursed through every fibre of her being, along with the utter terror of not knowing how the gun got to be in her hand. A revolver! How did she get a hold of a revolver? What in Heaven’s name was she doing with it? How had she got here, in the forest?

  What, in God’s name, was going on?

  “Oh, no, no, no…” she whimpered, body shaking, mouth dry, muscles aching, as she thought back frantically, furiously over the immediate past. It was a smooth blank. What had she been doing? There was something that had upset her terribly, had got her so furious that she’d been shaking. What had happened?

  Her eyes narrowed as memory clicked. Mick and the young girl. The nasty, so
rdid little scene behind the grocery store. Rage, fear, being threatened, and then…nothing. She couldn’t remember, for the life of her, how she’d got the gun. How she’d got from there to here. What had happened to her. What she had done.

  A total blank. She had blacked out and yet had apparently acted. She’d left her reality as she knew it and had travelled through something else. She’d fallen into the pit. She’d lost control. God knows where or how she’d acquired the gun, and what she’d done with it. She’d got the gun and then had run away. She was on the run and trying to escape and—Dear God, What had she done?

  A moan of horror tumbled from her lips as she stared at the gun in her hands, and yes, her hands, too, as if it were all poison. Violence and then the gun, and she couldn’t remember. It was really true then. She really was going crazy. It was sunlit and the world was normal, but she was never going to be normal, had never been normal in her life. And now she was in that black pit and she was never going to get out again. She was absolutely mad. It echoed in her mind, over and over, and she wanted to scream at it to stop, but the slam of reality was too immediate, too shocking, too much to be ignored.

  She’d wondered if she would be dangerous, if she were ever to go crazy. The black gun in her right hand blurred over as the sudden tears swam in her eyes.

  She knew.

  Suddenly she did scream, and a bird shot right up into the air in a panic as her scream rolled over the forest. She thought of that angry young man named Mick; she thought of the terrified girl; she thought of her mother; she thought of Mrs. Simms, the grocer’s wife, of David, of Mrs. Cessler. She thought of everyone she loved, and she looked at that gun, sobbing, so desperately afraid, and she slowly brought it up, pointing it right at the pine tree’s trunk. Shaking, crying, and so sick at herself, she shot it until all six bullet spaces had clicked. One empty click, flinch, two, three, four… Two shots, in rapid succession, echoed through the forest, in the silence after her scream. Two bullets, four empty spaces. Two bullets and four unremembered shots.

  The self-disgust, the sweating fear, the panic and rage at herself, the self-hate became too much. She’d go home—no, she couldn’t! Oh, Mama, I don’t want to hurt you! I’m sick, I’m sick—

  Dana’s head jerked up as she heard a far-off shout. David. He was coming her way, his deep voice filled with desperation and sharp concern. He was calling her, had heard the shots. He couldn’t find her. She couldn’t face him, couldn’t face anyone or anything else. Her head jerked back again as she looked at the gun and moaned again, flinging it at the tree in front of her. It landed with a dull thud. She suddenly wished she’d saved one of the bullets for herself.

  She couldn’t be allowed to hurt anyone else.

  She started to run, pantingly, exhausted but making her legs work anyway, making them pump and drive, sending her up the slope. Running, she recognised where she was, and an intention fixed itself firmly in her mind. There would be no more pain, or loneliness, or numbing, nagging worry that she might again go into that black darkness.

  “Dana!” David shouted. He was not far behind and gaining quickly. She was so tired. Her chest heaved and her face burned, and fire shot through her legs and chest. “Dana, for God’s sake! Stop a minute, let me talk to you—”

  She shook her head, blindly. He must not catch her, must not stop her. It would be for the best.

  “Dana, you’re not by yourself in this! Just stop a moment and let me catch up with you, please!” His ragged voice was closer, and she could hear him running now. He was not far behind and catching up, but she was getting to the clearing at the top of the slope. She heard his words and wondered very fleetingly at how he’d known how lonely she felt, and then she was racing across the clearing to the cliff that plunged forty feet to rough, deadly rock. It would be enough.

  “Dana, my God, don’t do it!” David roared behind her, the bellow ripping out of him with the full force of his sudden, sharp, overwhelming realisation and stunned fear.

  It cut through her own teeming emotions like a sharp knife, making her stumble as, not only the sound pierced her but the emotion itself, the fear knocking her over. But she’d picked herself up in an instant, and she could still make it if she pushed it and herself beyond the point of pain. She couldn’t live with herself, she just couldn’t.

  At this point, her emotional crisis, the adrenalin flowing, her own awful decision—everything combined seemed to force her awareness into high gear. Her perception clicked over with an amazing rate of efficiency, recording every single instant of time, like frames from a movie, each movement, each gesture, each sound and sight being printed indelibly on her mind forever.

  The sun was so very bright, and her legs quivered as she thrust up from the ground like a sprinter leaving the block, feet digging into the uneven ground for holds. The clearing seemed suddenly very small. Her chest heaved just one big, last breath and she held it. A drop of sweat had trickled into her mouth and she tasted salt. She had the mental image of something hugely powerful and incredibly fast being hurtled her way, at her back, and only looking back later could she realise that what she’d felt was David, bending all of his intellect and surging male body and screaming, protesting mind her way to halt her any way he could.

  But for once in her life, Dana was so wrapped up in her emotions, she didn’t heed his mental protest and she ran, so physically exhausted at this point that she was barely jogging instead of the sprint she’d tried for. She was just that much ahead of him. She hurtled herself, and the ground dropped from underneath her. Everything whirled and shifted and spinned, as she left the edge of the cliff, and her body twisted as she went over the edge. And the sunlight was so bright and beautiful, and the deep green, wonderfully graceful pines swaying in the wind, and the blue in the sky with the white from the clouds, and the brown earth and the smell of summer. She was going to remember it all, no matter what followed this life, and it would be the very last thing she knew of this life, that wonderful, majestic, aching beauty of this world…

  …Something latched on to her wrist cruelly hard, manacling her like a band of iron, jerking her body up tight from that free, graceful last fall. Her body stopped short. She screamed in pain, from the lancing stab from her tortured, torn shoulder muscles, from her bruised body as it slammed stunningly into the side of the cliff. Something dark obstructed her yellow summer sun: David’s head, hanging over the edge of the cliff, along with his long, tremendously strong arm and wrist and slim, quick, ruthless fingers. He was flat on his stomach, in one last ditch effort to stop her, and he’d somehow, incredibly, burst into that last moment of needed speed, throwing his body like a spear, leaping out full-length to snatch her wrist with an astonishing accuracy in aim.

  Dana remembered thinking all that, as she hung between life and death, for several seconds just hanging in mid air, with the wind gusting behind her and cooling her, her shoulder practically torn from its socket, David’s harsh, sobbing breathing sounding nearly in her ear. She thought about how terribly thin her wrist was, after all, and how the chances of him grabbing her right at that moment had been astronomically low, and how now she would not be able to escape the pit.

  She heard him and felt him fighting for control over his straining body, only a few seconds ticking by since she’d tried to jump to her death. He was a very strong man and she was a comparatively small girl, weighing little. But bearing her full weight in such an abrupt jerk must have been excruciating for him as well as for her, and it took him a few moments to gather himself to the effort of dragging her back to safety at the top.

  She heard his breathing as he took a deep breath, and then his shoulder muscle flexed and he started to pull her back slowly, inch by sweating, straining inch, and Dana felt herself being lifted inexorably up.

  Overwrought, sobbing, immersed in the only true death-wish she’d ever experienced in her life, Dana clawed at his fingers and wrists, kicking, convulsively against the cliff in an effort to get his hold to sli
p, drawing blood with her fingernails without realising, panting, “No, let me go! Let me drop! Please, just let me die!”

  He snarled out, “Damn you, I will not! You aren’t going to smash yourself to death, I won’t have your blood on my conscience, too!”

  She heard his strange words, the determination like iron that ran through his body, but he’d stopped pulling her up in spite of all the will in the world, for it was just impossible to drag her up when she struggled. His body weight was stretched out too far. They hung there, her wrist nearly broken by his white knuckled clamp on it. She had no feeling in that hand. “I won’t do it,” she gritted out, so exhausted and aching and so full of pain.

  “Dana,” he panted, the hoarse sound not like him at all, something different and elemental, not a voice but a raspy whisper from the soul. It brought her head up and she stared into those dark eyes, now so desperate. Desperate for her sake. “I can’t bear to see you die, I can’t. I can’t bring you up. Your struggling. It’s too much. You want to die, you can die. But I’ll fall with you. I won’t be left behind.”

  Eyes already dilated from the strain of her emotion, Dana stared up at him and she saw the utter seriousness and implacability in him. She felt it. He was totally prepared to do it.

  She made some kind of whimper, she didn’t know what, and he suddenly shifted forward, bringing himself to the edge of the cliff, never lessening his grapple hold on her wrist. She felt herself shift downward a foot or so, a scraping slide against the rough jagged rock that lacerated her skin. “I swear,” he whispered, “I’ll do it.”

  At that keen point between life and death, where both met at the edge of the two sides of the coin, there was an utter stillness.