The Golden Hour

by T. Greenwood

  But there was no fade to black.

  There was the metallic sound of the teeth of his zipper and a trembling knee pressed against my stomach, pinning me to the forest floor like a butterfly. There was his soft, hot flesh on my bare stomach. My body stiffened. The sky above him was impossibly blue. Blindingly blue.

  There was Rick, hovering over us now. His laughter throaty and hoarse. And Robby, who kept looking up at him, as if waiting for his approval.

  I shook my head side to side. No, no, no. But when I opened my mouth to set the words free, there was his clumsy hand pressing so hard against my lips, I could taste his palm. Bitter, salty. Tears stung my eyes.

  “Can’t you get it up?” Rick goaded. “What are you, some sort of faggot?”

  At this, Robby’s expression changed. He seemed to snarl, then he was tearing down my shorts, the denim burning my skin. And he pressed his flaccid penis against me, stuffing it between my clenched legs. I gasped. No, no, no.

  “Jesus Christ, you freak,” Rick said and stomped over to Robby and threw him off of me. Then he was the one standing over me, legs on either side of my body.

  He pulled something out of his pocket, and for a minute, I thought it was candy. But then I realized it was a condom. Hanna Lamont had found some in her parents’ drawer and brought them to school one day.

  Then he was on top of me, the elastic of my panties digging into the tops of my thighs before he finally just tore them off. There were his hands wrapping around my neck, and it went on for so long I thought it would never stop. There was the bass pumping, the music thumping, my heart pounding in my ears, my stomach, and my head. The sky above him was so blue it made my eyes ache, but I was afraid to close them, afraid that in blackness I might disappear. There was his breath in my ear, the smell of Big Red gum, the sweet cinnamon so strong it made my stomach turn. I watched as his eyes rolled back into his head, his jaw slackened, his mouth fell open.

  There was no fade to black and a new scene where I awoke in a clean, bright hospital surrounded by the loving faces of my family. There was only his heavy body still, like death on top of me. And his heart beating against my chest. And me thinking that his heart was just like mine. That mine did the same thing after I ran or rode my bike up a steep hill. And how could this be that our hearts beat the same?

  There was no fade to black and a cut to the next day when the police combed the woods for clues about who had attacked the girl. Instead, there was him scrambling off of me, yanking his pants up by the belt loops, throwing his head back and howling. Like a dog.

  My pelvic bones throbbed, and I was certain I had somehow ignited. I was aflame. Burning from the inside out.

  “We gotta get out of here, Rick,” Robby said. He was standing with his hands in his pockets, head hung low.

  Rick reached into the pocket of his Windbreaker, the Windbreaker that had been pressed so hard across my mouth at one point I thought I might suffocate, and pulled out a knife. It was the same kind of knife I’d seen Robby show some other boys at recess once. A small one. The kind you might whittle a stick with, or maybe use to cut twine.

  “We gotta go,” Robby repeated.

  “You think we can just leave, you retard?” Rick said. “She’ll have the cops here so fast. Take care of it.” He tossed the knife at Robby, who jumped back to avoid it, and it landed at his feet. “You fucking deaf?”

  Robby picked up the knife but stood motionless. Paralyzed.

  I started to push myself up onto my hands and knees. The sky burned blue, and I felt like I was two people. Me and not me. Cold and hot. Whole and broken. I couldn’t get the smell of Big Red gum out of my nose. My stomach turned as I began to crawl. Rick stomped on my back, pushing me back down into the wet leaves.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” he said to me, and then to Robby, “I said take care of it.”

  Robby dropped to his knees next to me and fumbled with the knife. He turned me over onto my back, and I shook my head again. No, no, no.

  I could hear Rick walking away. “Hurry up, asshole.”

  He stabbed at my shoulder, my arms. I squeezed my eyes shut, and felt the cold blade against my throat. And I could feel it shaking in his fingers even as it sliced. I kept my eyes closed as the warm blood ran down the sides of my neck, into the wet leaves.

  From the ground I watched his knife fall, and his sneakers crushing the wet leaves.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Rick said, and then he was next to me. He picked up the knife.

  “Please,” I said again. “I promise . . . I promise I won’t tell anybody what you did. I promise. It’s okay. I won’t tell anybody. Just don’t kill me, and I’ll keep it a secret.”

  And even then, there was no fade to black. There was only his ragged breath as he pondered the bargain I was proposing. And the cold blade against my throat, and the fire between my legs and the ache behind my eyes. And the sound of the church bells in town ringing five o’clock.

  “You better not be lyin’,” he said. “Cause if you’re lyin’, I’ll come back and kill you again.”

  What did he mean? Kill me again? I remained conscious. As slowly and as carefully as I could, I rose to my knees. But the pain in my chest felt like he’d stabbed me in the heart. And I was awake, my eyes open wide, the whole thirty minutes it took me to crawl through the woods to the other side, where my mother was on the phone with Mrs. Lamont asking if she’d seen me.

  “Miss Davies, without your testimony, we’re taking a big chance. Can’t you please just tell us exactly what happened?”

  I was alive. He’d kept up his end of the bargain. Now it was my turn to keep mine. And so I shook my head. Kept my promise.

  “No, no, no.”

  Fade to black.

  Into the Woods

  I stood at the tree line now, staring into the dark woods that separated me from the safety of Seamus’s house. My blood pounded in my ears. And in my peripheral vision, I saw movement. My body tensed.

  I stood still, holding my breath, my arm throbbing.

  In the distance, I heard the crush of leaves and brittle ground. Footsteps.

  A small cry escaped my mouth when the footsteps stopped. It was so dark, I could barely see. There was only the faint bit of light from Seamus’s house shining through the forest, the weak beam of my flashlight. I just needed to run through the woods and get to his house. My ears were playing tricks on me. I was in so much pain, I was delirious.

  Crunch.

  The whisper of something, the sound of pant legs brushing against each other? Wind?

  I took a deep breath, and holding back tears, plunged into the woods.

  The footsteps followed me.

  When did you realize he was following you?

  Who?

  Robert Rousseau.

  In the dark forest, I was vertiginous. The sky black, the ground beneath me black. The trees cast no shadows. The whole world was a shadow. Bone black.

  The footsteps grew louder and closer, and I pressed my hand against my chest to keep my heart inside.

  “Wyn,” a male voice said.

  Oh my God. How did he find me?

  This time I wouldn’t let it happen; this time I wouldn’t plead. This time I would run.

  Cradling my elbow with my hand, I charged forward, running as fast as I possibly could. Branches and twigs snapped beneath and around me. Scratched my face. I was sobbing as I emerged from the other side of the trees onto the Fergusons’ lawn, my heart lodged in my throat.

  I glanced behind me. No one was there.

  The pain, from which the trees seemed to have offered a momentary reprieve, returned. My knees were weak as I staggered across that enormous lawn to the front door.

  The porch lights were on, but they were always on, even when Seamus was not home. I swallowed hard and pressed the doorbell. The sound rang out in the night. “Seamus!” I screamed.

  I leaned against the wall next to the door, pressed my ear against the wood. As if I might be able t
o hear some sort of evidence of life inside. I worried momentarily Fiona might be back and wondered if she’d simply slam the door in my face again.

  I peered into the darkness, the thick wall of trees beyond.

  The wind snapped at me again; it had teeth, this cold, snapping jaws.

  Jaw snapping, chewing his gum. Tongue clucking. “Come on, you pussy. Fuck her! You fucking coward.”

  I rolled my head back, felt hot tears streaming down my cheeks. I wasn’t even aware I was still crying. I rang the doorbell again. And when nobody answered, I felt my legs start to give way.

  “Hey!” the voice said.

  For a moment, as my knees began to buckle, I had the disorienting sensation I was standing at the top of those stairs again and was beginning to fall. My vision began to darken at the edges, a constellation of stars appearing before my eyes. Stars, or snow? The world was upset down.

  My eyes fluttered open at the sound of my name. I started to scream.

  “Hey, hey, wait. Please don’t be afraid.”

  The glow of the porch light made him a silhouette, hovering above me.

  “I’m sorry,” the man said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “What do you want?” I asked, scrambling across the porch floor, pressing my back against the house.

  “I’m Mike, Michael, Ash.”

  My eyes struggled to focus.

  “I met you earlier at the restaurant in town.”

  His familiar face. Dark beard, brown eyes.

  “I’m a documentary filmmaker. I’ve been following the Robby Rousseau case. I came out here because I hoped I could interview you.”

  The guy from the paper. Had he followed me from Haven?

  “Why didn’t you tell me that earlier?” I asked, furious now. “How the hell did you find me?”

  “Crazy story, actually,” he said. He reached his hand out, and I looked at it. When I didn’t accept it, he shoved it back in his pocket. “Your friend, Pilar Santiago, was on CBS This Morning and mentioned your name.”

  “What?”

  “She was talking about the house she bought out here on the island, and said her best friend, another artist named Wyn Davies, and she were living out here working. If I hadn’t seen the show, I’d never have found you.”

  Goddamn it, Pilar.

  “I’m not stalking you. I just really want to give you a chance to tell your side of the story. I know that woman is convinced Robert Rousseau is innocent, but you and he are the only ones who really know, right?”

  “So you came to my house in the middle of the night for what reason?”

  “I actually called your cell first,” he said. “Then I thought maybe you didn’t get reception out here on the bluffs. So I came by, and that’s when I saw you running toward the woods. You looked hurt, and I was just trying to help you. You are hurt, right?”

  I closed my eyes and nodded my head.

  And suddenly the front door opened, bright light spilling from the Fergusons’ foyer.

  “Wyn?” Seamus said. “What happened?”

  “I fell,” I said, the memory assembling itself like fragments of a broken vase. “Down the stairs.”

  He helped me up and ushered us both inside. Mike explained he was a “friend” visiting, and I didn’t have the energy to correct him. To explain. Seamus brought me to the living room and sat me down on a plush couch.

  “It’s your arm?” he asked. “Can I see?”

  I rolled my head to the right, gesturing to my elbow.

  Seamus gently lifted my arm up, and I yelped.

  “I think it’s broken. You’re shaking,” he said. And I realized despite being inside the warm house, I couldn’t keep my body still. “How long ago did this happen?”

  I shook my head. It could have been minutes. It could have been days.

  “We need to get you to a hospital.”

  “How?” I asked. I hadn’t heard any planes overhead. After returning the guests to the mainland, they must have stayed there.

  “We’ll take the boat,” he said.

  Boat? What boat?

  “Stay here with her,” he said to Mike, and then to me, “I’ll come back for you in just a minute.”

  I felt myself drifting in and out as I waited for him to return. I sank back into the couch when the pain was too much. I was barely conscious when I felt him wrap me in a soft blanket and lift me up like an infant. And I thought of the little girl. When I closed my eyes to ride out the next wave of pain, I saw the image of him, young Seamus, with his finger pressed against his lips, hushing the photographer. Telling her without words this was their secret.

  So many secrets.

  I don’t remember him and Mike getting me to the boathouse, I only remember waking again as he lay me down on a small bed inside the cabin of the boat, the way the stormy sea rocked us back and forth as Seamus navigated us away from the island. Through the storm. And oddly, instead of feeling terrified, I felt safe. Something about the way he’d carried me, cradled me, the way the boat, the sea itself, seemed to be cradling me, made me feel, for the first time in a very long time, protected. And so I let myself fall, again, only this time into a blissfully pain-free slumber.

  I woke up twice. Once as Seamus, Mike, and the paramedics were unloading me from the boat and the gurney rolled across the wooden dock, the washboard rhythm of the wheels along the wooden boards. The second time was when the automatic doors to the ER opened and I was greeted by the blinding lights of the hospital. For a single, horrifying moment, I was thirteen years old again. A nurse’s face hovering over my own, scowling, oblivious there was a girl behind all the blood and bruises. Unaware I wasn’t just a collection of pain.

  Exam

  “Sweetheart, I am going to explain everything to you as we go, okay? You can just nod or shake your head. I know you are having a hard time talking right now.”

  Nod.

  “Are you currently taking any medications?”

  “I take Flintstones Vitamins.” My voice sounded ragged, rough.

  “No prescription medication? No birth control pills?”

  No.

  “Do you have any allergies?”

  “Cats?” The sound of my voice made me think of a serrated knife.

  “Next I’m going to need to take some samples and swabs from the areas where he hurt you. And if you’re uncomfortable or scared or need to stop, you just let me know.”

  “Okay.”

  “Are you comfortable?”

  I was covered in mud. And leaves. And blood. I wasn’t allowed to take a shower, and all I could smell was the cinnamon. I reached to my hair and felt something sticky. Stifling a sob, I gestured to the wad of gum in my hair.

  “Oh, sweetheart, let me get that out for you. You have such pretty curls; I hate to have to cut it though. Maybe we could get some peanut butter from the cafeteria to loosen it?”

  Tears rolled down my cheeks. I shook my head.

  “Cut it,” I managed.

  “Is this his?” she asked, her eyes wide and sad.

  Yes.

  And so she took the tiny pair of scissors, snipped the lock of hair, his wad of gum stuck to it, and slipped it into the plastic envelope.

  “Okay. Here we go. Remember, you stop me if any of this hurts or is too scary, okay?”

  I closed my eyes.

  Broken

  “Good morning, sunshine,” someone said, and I fought against the pull of sleep.

  I opened my eyes and saw a guy with red hair smiling over me. He was in green scrubs and he had a stethoscope around his neck. He was carrying a tray with what I assumed from the smell was breakfast.

  “Nice ink,” he said, setting down the tray.

  “Thanks,” I managed, looking down at my right arm.

  The tattoos were still there, of course they were, but they disappeared inside the cast.

  “You took quite a tumble,” he said as he helped me sit up. The pain was strange, not sharp and agonizing as it had bee
n the night before, but somehow muted. Submerged under what I could only assume was a painkiller haze.

  I felt very, very foggy.

  “What’s the damage?” I croaked.

  “Broken elbow, a hefty concussion,” he offered. “And probably a pretty bad hangover?”

  “Shit,” I said.

  He set the tray down, and the smell wafting up to my nose made me nauseated.

  “My insurance?” I started to panic.

  “Don’t worry about that now,” he said.

  While Gus and I had only catastrophic health insurance for ourselves, we had made sure Avery’s plan was more comprehensive. And I thought of Avery. My God, what if it had been Avery who had fallen down the stairs? What if it had been her instead of me out there on the island? Whatever these bills ultimately were, at least it hadn’t been Avery.

  Thinking of money made me remember the commission. The birches. Ginger. Ikea. My right arm. Oh my God.

  “How long am I going to be in this?” I asked, gesturing to my immobile arm. My useless limb. “I’m a painter. Right-handed. I have a deadline.”

  The nurse smiled sadly and shook his head.

  “I’ll let the doctor talk to you about that,” he said. “But it was a pretty nasty break. You’re lucky you don’t need surgery.”

  “Shit,” I said again and sighed. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  I wondered what happened to Seamus. To Mike. I had no phone number for either one of them. I had no phone. The night was hazy; like the pain, it was just out of reach, a gauzy film separating me from it. I remembered running through the dark woods, the beam of my flashlight bobbing through the darkness, the terrifying realization I was being followed. That goddamn filmmaker freaking stalking me into the woods. I recalled the sound of the waves crashing against the side of the boat. The way the snowflakes landed on my hot face as they wheeled me into the ambulance and later through the hospital doors.

  “Have you seen the guys who brought me here?”

  “Yep. The older one said to tell you he’d be back this afternoon. He was going back to the island and would catch the early afternoon ferry,” he said. “I didn’t speak to the other guy. He your husband?”