A Map of the Dark

by Karen Ellis

  Two or more atoms held together by something.

  What is an organelle?

  Part of a something that has a specific function.

  What are the five types of organelles?

  Nucleus, mitochondrion, something something, something, something body.

  Order from smallest to largest.

  “I hear water,” Hope mumbles, tripping forward.

  “No,” the new girl says, “not now. We have to keep going.”

  “I’m so thirsty.”

  And then, laced into the gurgle of water, the leaf crunch of a footstep. Two.

  Someone else’s footsteps. His.

  “Help me,” she says to her little people. “Please.”

  They ignore her and repeat: Order from smallest to largest.

  A third footstep, closer now.

  And a fourth.

  But it’s an irresistible craving, not fear, that propels her. Water; thirst; molecular compound and human tongue. And then he can have her, if he wants her that badly. She can’t fight him anymore, not even in her mind.

  “Come with me,” she begs the new girl, but she yanks her hand away and runs in the opposite direction.

  The gurgling draws Hope forward and there it is: a sparkling, bubbling stream. She falls to her knees, laps at the shallow edge—sweet bliss!

  Why couldn’t the new girl at least wait for her?

  She drinks again but it’s not enough.

  A plank across the stream promises passage to a clearing on the other side where it’s deeper and she could dip in her face and gorge. The thought of it. She moves forward onto the plank, old wood warping underfoot.

  The footsteps, faster, harder, louder.

  His quick weight heaving onto the plank behind her.

  When she’s nearly there, it snaps and gravity releases her and as she’s flying, her board of directors, whom she pays to prevent just this kind of mishap, swarm ahead, repeating the demand:

  Order from smallest to largest.

  34

  Deb is a master gardener; she could be a professional if she wanted to. You learned early that she’s happier around plants and have often wondered why she chose to make her living as an elementary school teacher. “Always around kids,” she’s been known to complain, “never get a break.”

  One springtime afternoon, on your way home from school, you and your mother and your sister stop at a landscaping center. Following your mother’s instructions, you and Tara carry twenty-pound bags of rocks to the trunk of the car. The rocks are for Deb’s garden—she’s always creating something new—and you’re proud that you’re strong enough to assist in the effort. Then, with a heavy bag cradled in your arms, you recognize something vital: You have grown capable; you could resist her next time her rage flies.

  Which it does, of course, not long after your realization.

  It’s just before dinner. You’re alone with your mother in the kitchen. Roy isn’t home yet, and Tara is at a friend’s.

  You dig in your heels about something and that look overtakes Deb’s face, the mask of forced patience falling away, replaced by a contortion that makes your pulse spike.

  You can’t help yourself; you take off running.

  She follows.

  At thirteen you’re quick but she’s a grown woman and catches up with you in the second-floor hallway. She grabs your hair on both sides and smashes your head against the wall. And again. And again. She, enraged. You, in shock.

  And then you remember your strength. You can hit back. Maybe you could get through to her if she got a taste of her own medicine.

  You draw your hand back and slap your mother’s face, hard. Just once. Shouting, “How do you like it?”

  You’ve never seen her so surprised. You freeze, terrified of what might come next. You didn’t anticipate that this warrior woman who has won every battle in your life would burst into tears and run away to her room and weep. But that is exactly what she does.

  The guilt is overpowering. You’ve hurt your own mother. Proven your point by assaulting your own mother.

  Her pain haunts you.

  After that, the violence stops.

  Gradually, over time, a new worry grows: What if someday you should become a mother; won’t the cycle inevitably repeat? Because even though the hitting has stopped, the fear of it is still inside you. You are not to be trusted, because she made you in the likeness of her rage.

  35

  The group of searchers breaks past the dense trees and into the clearing where the nearest stream meanders, but Elsa senses they won’t find the girls here. It appears thoroughly undisturbed except for the sounds of cheeping birds and the leafy crunch of the searchers’ footsteps. In the near distance you can see the elaborate roofscape of the old mansion that houses the college. From their left tromps a group of half a dozen searchers.

  “Water!” Elsa shouts to them. “We’re looking for water!”

  Bennett points. “This way—there’s a reservoir.”

  They all veer to follow Bennett.

  Elsa asks, “How far?”

  “Not very—a thousand feet maybe.”

  As they move deeper into the woods, sunlight fades with an encroaching cloud, and with the loss of visibility, Elsa’s heart begins to sink. They’ll be too late, she feels it; feels, suddenly, that wrapped in the loss of Ruby is Hope, and wrapped in the loss of Hope is Mel, and wrapped in the loss of Mel is the renewed loss of Deb, and wrapped in the echo of the long-ago loss of Deb, as always, is the loss of herself…girls and women ribbed together by a single spine. In one’s collapse, they all go down together.

  Elsa shakes off the haunted thoughts and tries, tries to push past the inner headwinds of doubt and fear and shame and recrimination.

  Lex moves ahead of her, along with two of the faster searchers. As Elsa watches him leave her, emotions conflict: resentment that he’s abandoning her, and relief to be alone. Every now and then he glances back at her but he doesn’t wait.

  After a minute, Greenberg shouts, “I found something!”

  In the craggy center of his broad palm he holds a thimble-size enameled pink-and-yellow cupcake frosted with rhinestones. A tiny metal loop shows where it would attach to a chain. Hope must have ripped it off a necklace or bracelet and dropped it as she ran or walked or crawled along. And if Hope was here, Mel could be nearby. Elsa rejects the images flashing through her mind of the girls blanketed under leaves, fallen or buried. No. She won’t succumb to that yet.

  The terrible thirst chafes at the back of your throat, closet-dark and insistent.

  Another stream appears, this one longer. A pair of searchers follow Bennett in that direction, edging northward, while the remaining two stay with Elsa. Elsa, skin map tightening, slowed by a pull of dreamlike exhaustion. Soon, everyone has moved ahead of her. As the distance grows, she makes out the edge of what must be the reservoir Bennett mentioned. She can see searchers, like ants, fanning out around the bank.

  She stops walking, so far behind now that there’s no point trying to catch up. Alone and out of breath, she doubles over and gives in to the weight of helpless frustration.

  They’ll never find Hope.

  They’ll never find Mel.

  Roy is going to die while Elsa is away, her past going with him but never really gone.

  She will be forever unmoored. Lost. She has failed at everything.

  She sinks to her knees. Pebbles and sticks dig into her flesh, rip through her pants. Her brain is sloggy, heavy; her skin alight. It’s foolish to keep working when her father is dying. She should take a leave of absence, face the gathering storm head-on, race straight into it.

  She should go back to Sleepy Hollow immediately. Sit with her father. Just be there, for whatever it’s worth. Talk to him. Listen. It’s suddenly clear.

  They don’t need her help finding the girls; it’s presumptuous of her to think that her presence is of any real importance. Between Lex, Joan, Ernie Bennett, Greenberg, and the army of
searchers, if the girls are still alive, they’ll find them. And if they aren’t alive, they’ll find them. Everywhere, people swarm, looking. And Elsa does not want to be the one to find Mel if finding her will be anything like finding Ruby.

  The pathetic wailing sound leaking through Elsa’s tears embarrasses her, and she forces herself quiet, sucking back the flood of self-indulgent remorse. Standing, she brushes leaves off her knees and the palms of her hands.

  And then, as the last searcher vanishes into the distance behind the tower of Greenberg, in the growing quiet she becomes aware of a low thrum, gulpy and emotional, as if she hasn’t stopped crying, although she is sure that she’s no longer making any sound.

  A stream babbles somewhere near.

  And then the hard crack of wood breaking.

  She moves toward the sound, and there it is: water lapping onto a bank of pebbled earth. Just to the left, beyond a thicket of overhanging branches, the broken halves of a long board, someone’s intention for a footbridge. It appears to have fallen in and obstructed the flow of water, creating the glurping sound. Her heart sinks lower. She’d thought, for just a moment, that the sound she heard could be someone else crying. That she isn’t alone here. That she actually did hear another voice.

  She steps into the stream and, pushing aside branches and prickly brush, moves closer for a better look.

  And sees them.

  Hope, obscured by the brush, wouldn’t have been visible to the searchers. You have to veer in sideways, into the stream, or come in from the other direction to see her at all. She must have come across the plank while it was still in place. His sudden weight must have broken it—that crack. And now, here they are: she, curled into the muddy bank; he, kneeling over her.

  Through the slick skin of his stream-wet clothes you can see the undulations of strain as his back and shoulders engage in some kind of effort. The cervical knobs of his neck appear grossly pronounced. Beneath him, her body subtly twists, legs barely kicking.

  Alive.

  Eyes glued to him, Elsa reaches into the water and feels for the Glock holstered to her ankle. She slides off the safety strap, grips the handle, tugs out the gun. Frozen in place, hand underwater, she studies him.

  She focuses on the burl of neck and skull where his hair is skewed in all directions, a tender spot a mother might have kissed. She will aim exactly there. If she misses, Hope could die, but if she doesn’t try, Hope will die.

  She lifts the gun out of the water. And then, in a moment, the wet grip slicks out of her hand. Her weapon lands in the stream with a heavy plop, ripples orbiting. Nelson turns. Sees her.

  His eyes blink like shorted neon. Mouth drops. The voice that sails out of him doesn’t resemble the one that spoke to her on the Haverstocks’ lawn, the voice of nerdy Teddy with his book and his button and his “analog message.” This voice is massive, dense, guttural. Untamed. The sound of it spreads across her skin in high-voltage tendrils.

  He shouts: “You!” And, like a bird of prey, launches himself in her direction.

  She staggers backward, trying not to fall, and then pivots in an effort to skirt around him to get to Hope. Takes two steps, three, and then he lands on her, huge and powerful. Forces her down into the water until she’s submerged. Eyes open, sinking in the up-bubbles of underwater breath, hands flailing on the streambed, drowning and drowning and drowning with shame for all her failures before this monster, who is herself, who is her mother, who is her past and present and future, when all she had to do was pull the trigger before he noticed her.

  His fingers web around your neck with the tight, inevitable feel of a Chinese finger trap; the more you struggle, the harder the grip, the worse your chances. Pushing down, he holds you underwater, his thumbs pressing into the hollow of your throat.

  Oxygen drains away like the end of a brilliant afternoon, leaving you in a lavender twilight, and for a split second you’re convinced that it’s the most beautiful place you’ve ever been. You are unlatched; an inconsequential feather set afloat. The end of time is the beginning of time. You become a slippery birth out of yourself, at the hands of another, prepared for a simple release. Ready for it.

  So this is how it feels when he kills them.

  What surprises you most is how willing you are to give yourself to the prospect of your death.

  But then you remember Mel, somewhere out there. And Hope, so close, at the edge of the stream.

  Rallying, Elsa raises a knee into Nelson’s groin, hard, and again, harder. He flinches briefly, enough for her to squirm partially out from under him. He recovers himself, fingers curling around her neck, but not before her right hand lands on a rock settled into the streambed.

  She twists to the side, gets a grip on the rock.

  His fingers bear down on her throat.

  She sweeps her arm upward until she feels a shock of cold air on her hand. Calculates. Slams the rock into the side of his head. And again. And again.

  His fingers flower open, releasing her, as if she’s pushed a button and turned him off.

  Water races into her mouth, fills her lungs. She surges upward, desperate for air, expecting him to come at her again.

  But he doesn’t. He’s stupefied, balanced on his knees like one of those inflatable punching bags that can’t stand but doesn’t fall. Moaning like an injured animal. Blinking, struggling to regain his equilibrium. His little daughter’s face smiling, still smiling, from the dripping-wet button.

  Now, she tells herself, right now.

  She forces her hand into her wet pocket and pulls out the knife, her knife, with its array of implements she knows by heart. Plucks out the longest blade. Crashes through the water toward him.

  His arm lifts, but slowly. She grabs his hair and jerks his head toward his left shoulder, revealing the long right side of his neck, his jugular vulnerable, all hers.

  One cut. Precise. Swift. With force.

  His flesh parts like the opening of a mouth. A lipstick-red smile. A yawn. A scream. Ribbons of blood pouring from the lips of his wound. His eyes seem to fix on her, staring, but empty. And then his body keels backward as if hinged at the knee. She thinks fleetingly of his mother, how he was once someone’s beloved child. Even him. And then the reality of what just happened vibrates through her hand and arm and brain and awakens her.

  She struggles forward, thrashing her way through the stream to Hope.

  She can’t see the girl’s face, but the chain of her spine is still and her rib cage doesn’t move at all. She doesn’t seem to be breathing. There is no sign of life other than a trickle of blood that appears to be leaking from her wrist.

  Shaking, Elsa crouches down. Hope’s hipbone juts high above a sunken waist, a girl’s narrow waist from which ribs flare to broad shoulders. Tattoos of impish figures, like those from her bedroom wall, march single file up the side of her neck, holding hands. Four of them: two laughing, one crying, one staring right at you with a look of curiosity. The side of Hope’s rib cage rises, and falls, and rises again.

  “Good girl,” Elsa whispers, “just keep breathing.”

  “Auntie Elsa!” The voice calls from the opposite side of the stream. And there, there is Mel. Blood caked on her wrists. An angry bruise on her cheek. Shoeless. Sodden and filthy and alive.

  Thursday

  36

  Lex Cole opens the chapel door for Elsa, continuing his trend of kindness, having covered for her over the past couple of days as she helped move her father into hospice, and she thanks him.

  The cheerfulness of the airy chapel, with its blond wood and cream walls and the splashes of sunshine on the pale green carpet, feels disorienting, a counterpoint to the end-of-world hopelessness of the cave where Ruby drew her last breath. Elsa has hated funerals ever since her mother’s, watching her father serve as a pallbearer, the blank misery of his expression, the deep sag of his shoulders under the unbearable weight, heavier than the casket or the body inside it.

  Peter and Ginnie Haverstock w
anted their daughter buried here, at Flushing Cemetery, because although neither parent came from Queens and they have no extended family here, it’s the only home Ruby has ever known and they want to keep her close.

  Lex, in a pressed black suit, slides into a pew. Elsa follows, too warm in a linen pantsuit, pale gray, with a black blouse and a triple-strand pearl choker. Real pearls, passed down from her mother, something she almost never wears. Tara got the diamond engagement ring and plans to pass it on to Mel someday.

  Peter and Ginnie occupy the front-most pew, closest to the gleaming casket that encases their only child, bookended by white-haired couples, a pair on either side. No flowers anywhere, Elsa notices, but nothing surprises her anymore. The eyes of all three women are swollen and red, and one cries openly, presumably Ruby’s maternal grandmother, as she sits pressed closely into Ginnie’s side—Ginnie pale, bloodless, her shaking hand clutching a ragged tissue. Peter’s utter stillness touches something deep inside Elsa, deeper than the sadness and regret that have rooted inside her since Tuesday—the burning seed of their failure to save Ruby’s life.

  That maniac, she thinks, wishing to reduce Sammy Nelson’s culpability to something already made, inborn, inexorable; to strip him of his vengeful rage, the whole dangerous knotted tangle of a person who chooses—actually chooses—to prey on other people. But even now, today, sitting here in the solemn aftermath of a girl who came so close to reaching eighteen but had the bad luck of crossing paths with him first, even after everything Elsa has seen in her life and in her work, she can’t bring herself to believe that anyone is born preprogrammed to kill. Even so, one way or another, we become who we are, and she will never forgive him for what he did to all those girls.

  She doesn’t realize that she’s digging her fingertips into the tops of her thighs until she feels Lex’s arm settle on the back of the pew behind her shoulders. She takes a deep breath and stops the grinding mechanism of her mind. They didn’t get there in time for Ruby. They were too late for her. But Hope and Mel, they managed to save. Mel barely scathed, not physically, at least; Hope’s recovery will take more time.