Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis

by P. T. Dilloway

  “Jim. You remember?”

  “No.” She looked around the room. “Where am I?”

  “You bedroom.”

  “My bedroom? But this isn’t the dorm.”

  “Dorm?”

  “The dormitory, where I live at school, with Amanda.” Emma gasped again. “Where’s Amanda? Did you do something to her?”

  “Who Amanda?”

  “My roommate.” Emma put a hand to her temple. “Oh no. The fire. I was trying to get her out. I was lowering her on a ladder I made.” She reached out to take his arm; tears sparkled in her eyes. “Do you know if she made it?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “We have to call the hospital or the police, or somebody. I have to know.”

  She tried to grab the phone on the nightstand, but he took her wrist. “Not call anyone,” he said. “You relax. Sleep. You safe now.”

  “Sleep? Did you bring me here…are you going to rape me?” Her face had gone from rosy to bright red; her breathing turned ragged and labored.

  “I not hurt you.” He bent down to look her in the eye. “It me, Jim. You my friend.”

  “My friend?” She rubbed her temple and winced as if in pain. “I don’t remember seeing you before.”

  “Emma—”

  “Emma? My name’s Megan. Megan Putnam.”

  This hit Jim like a slap in the face. He wondered if perhaps he and Pepe’s highly-trained noses had been wrong. Maybe this girl really wasn’t Emma. Maybe she really was this Megan Putnam who lived at the school with someone named Amanda. In which case, all of this had been for nothing. “You not Emma?”

  “No, I’m not. Now, can I please go? I need to find my friend.” Her face had turned magenta; a pronounced wheeze accompanied every breath.

  He pushed her back onto the bed. “You stay here. Rest. I find you friend. What her name?”

  “Amanda Murdoch.” Tears streamed down her violet cheeks. “Please, you have to find her. You have to make sure she’s—” Emma’s voice—or perhaps Megan’s voice—cut off abruptly. She put a hand to her throat and clawed at it.

  Jim pressed her down onto the mattress and then remembered the whistle the nurse had given him. He reached into the pocket of Emma’s sweater to take it out and put it to her lips. He squeezed it—nothing happened. He tried again but still nothing happened.

  Her eyes widened at this and then rolled up into the back of her head. Her face began to turn blue again, as it had been when he’d found her earlier. “No,” he said. “No die now. Not now.”

  He reached for the telephone, but knew help couldn’t get here in time. Again he cursed himself that he hadn’t taken her to a hospital where she could be properly looked after. Even the nurse at the college would have been better than to bring her here to die.

  Her body bucked on the mattress as she struggled to get air into her lungs. He pressed her down and did the only thing he could think of—he put his lips on hers to try to blow air into her lungs. The moment his lips touched hers, he felt a tingle like electricity run through his body. He didn’t pull away; he kept his lips pressed to hers to force air into her lungs. “You no die,” he whispered. “No die. I love you.”

  ***

  Megan stood in a great hall; the vaulted ceiling went up at least three stories. From this ceiling hung full-scale models of birds and even a pterodactyl. Though she couldn’t remember being here before, she knew she was in the Plaine Museum.

  “Can I help you?” a woman’s voice asked. Megan turned to see a slightly older woman with dark red hair at the ticket counter; her green eyes glared at Megan. “You want a ticket?”

  Megan patted the pockets of her sweater and jeans. “I don’t have any money.”

  “Don’t worry, it’s free today,” the woman said.

  “Oh, well, I guess I will then.”

  As Megan approached the counter, she saw the woman’s nametag read, “Sylvia.” Sylvia ripped off a ticket to press into Megan’s hand. “Well, young lady, I think we’re all done here.” She motioned for Megan to step past the counter, into the museum’s main gallery.

  Megan saw the skeleton of a mastodon at the end of the gallery. She walked towards the mastodon; her footsteps echoed throughout the museum, which at the moment seemed devoid of any other patrons. She pressed against the velvet rope that surrounded it and yearned to touch the mastodon’s smooth tusk.

  She couldn’t reach it; her arm was too short. A man’s voice said in her ear, “Excuse me. I just need to sweep over here.” She leaped back a step to see a burly janitor with thin brown hair and kindly blue eyes. He winked at her and then lifted the velvet rope.

  “Thank you,” she whispered. She stepped inside the rope and reached out again to touch the mastodon’s tusk. The moment her hand touched it, she pulled it back. “It’s so cold,” she said. She turned and saw the janitor had vanished. For that matter so had Sylvia at the ticket counter. She was alone once more.

  “Hello? Is anyone here?” she asked. She put a hand to her chest and felt it begin to tighten. She stepped away from the mastodon and knocked the velvet rope and herself to the floor. The floor felt just as cold as the mastodon’s tusk.

  She gasped on the floor for a moment, until a hand took hers. She saw a man with long, tangled hair in a black suit. He helped her stand and then smiled at her to display buckteeth. “You want tour?” he asked.

  Megan shook her head. The emptiness and coldness of the museum prompted her to shiver. “I want to go home.”

  “No go yet. Not until see new exhibit.”

  Megan looked around, but she didn’t see anything besides the mastodon. “What new exhibit?”

  “You see. Follow me. I give you tour.”

  To tour an exhibit with this man didn’t hold much appeal to her, but his shy smile and the kindness in his eyes indicated his feelings would be hurt if she didn’t. “Well, I guess if it won’t take long.”

  “Not long.” He tightened his grip on her hand. “We go.”

  She followed him around a corner, into a darkened gallery. Her chest tightened again as the tour guide dragged her into the darkness. “What is it?” she asked.

  “You see,” he said.

  She let out a startled cry as a light snapped on to her left. She saw a glass display case that featured a life-sized diorama of a bedroom with pink walls and a periodic table over a desk. On the floor beside a canopy bed sat mannequins of two little girls—one chubby with lopsided brown pigtails and the other who looked nearly identical to Joanna. The two girls were hunched over sheets of paper, a box of crayons between them.

  Megan took a step towards the diorama and sucked in a breath. The mannequins looked so real that she wanted to reach out and touch their skin. She screamed when the mannequins suddenly came to life. The dark-haired girl held up a picture of an enormous box of a house with square windows and smoke curling from a chimney. Beside this stood the stick figures of a woman in a pink dress, a much-taller man, and three smaller children. “This is where we’re going to live with our children. We’re going to have three boys—not any girls like my sisters.”

  “Your sisters ow nice,” the redheaded girl who looked so much like Joanna said.

  “No they aren’t. They’re whiny brats, especially that Brandi.”

  The redheaded girl held up her picture of a medieval castle, in front of which was an oval-shaped thing with four stick legs and a stick tail Megan thought must be a horse. A man with a sword sat on the back of the horse and behind him a woman in a blue dress, who from the red hair Megan assumed was the adult version of the girl. “When I gwow up I’m going to mawwy a handsome pwince and we’w wive in a castle.”

  Megan pressed her nose to the glass; she wanted to reach out and touch the little girl’s picture of the castle. In the bottom corner of the picture, embedded in the too-green grass, the girl had printed her name: EMMA. Megan put a hand to her mouth. Then she felt the tour guide take her elbow. “We go,” he said.

  They walked a f
ew feet in the dark before another light snapped on. “Oh my God,” Megan said. She backed away into the tour guide’s arms.

  Behind a pane of glass was another diorama, this one of a city street. Two cars sat in the middle of the street, the nose of one buried in the front left fender of the other. Megan’s stomach fluttered as she saw the man slumped over the wheel of the car with the damaged fender.

  That wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was on the street itself, a short distance from the car. A woman with curly auburn hair lay sprawled out on the street, a pool of blood around her. The little girl from the previous frame knelt beside the woman, only Megan could tell the girl was a few years older now. Tears streamed down the little girl’s cheeks as she shook the woman’s lifeless body. “Mommy? Mommy wake up! Pwease!”

  Paramedics appeared from nowhere; one reached down to take the girl by the shoulders and pull her away from her mother’s body. Megan wanted to turn away from the grisly scene, but the tour guide wouldn’t let her. “Come on, honey,” the paramedic said. “Let the nice man help your mommy.”

  “No, I don’t want to weave!” the girl shouted. Her hand clutched the hem of her mother’s blouse; her grip loosened little by little until the paramedic finally managed to pull her away. “Mommy! Mommy, come back!”

  Megan turned her head and buried it in the tour guide’s shoulder as tears streamed from her cheeks. “What kind of exhibit is this?”

  “Yours,” the tour guide said. He led Megan farther down the hall. When the next light snapped on, she didn’t want to look. “You look.”

  When she finally did, she was relieved to see a much more peaceful scene. A teenager with red hair sat in a room nearly identical to Megan’s dorm. The girl had pimples and the beginning of breasts now, but it was clear it was the same girl whose mother had lain dead in the street.

  The girl sat hunched over a book on a desk, her face a mask of intense concentration. The scene came to life as loud music shook the glass of the diorama. The girl didn’t seem to notice this as she continued to read her book and write on a piece of paper.

  Megan’s stomach fluttered again; she could feel something bad was about to happen to the girl. A moment later the door opened and a young woman and young man stumbled into the room; they leaned against each other for support, bottles of beer in their hands. From their gait and the way they giggled, Megan could tell they’d already drank more than a few bottles of beer. The man planted a sloppy kiss on the woman’s cheek until she pushed him away.

  “Oh shit, the kid is still up. Isn’t it past your bedtime?”

  “I can’t sleep,” the redheaded girl said.

  “Whoa, is that the little genius?” the young man asked.

  “Yeah, that’s the freak. Maybe I should read her a bedtime story.”

  “Maybe we should go somewhere else. This kid is giving me the creeps.”

  The woman sighed dramatically. “Fine. Let’s go to your room.” On her way out, the woman grumbled, “Why’d they have to put the baby with me?”

  After the door closed, the girl put down her pencil and stared at the page in her book for a long time. Megan pressed herself against the window and saw the tears that ran down the girl’s cheeks. The girl took off her glasses to rub at her eyes. Megan put her hand to the glass and wished the girl could see her, could take her hand. “It’s all right,” she wanted to tell the girl. “You’ll be fine.”

  As if the girl could hear, she reseated her glasses and went back to work. The tour guide took Megan’s elbow again to pull her away. “Who is she?” Megan asked.

  “You know,” the tour guide said. Before she could ask any other questions, he pulled her along to the next diorama.

  This time Megan didn’t see the redheaded girl. Instead, she saw a woman in scarlet armor with a golden cape in an alley, surrounded by a half-dozen men all bigger and more muscular than her. Megan didn’t feel the same nervous flutter in her stomach this time, but she did put her hand to her mouth as she watched the woman in the armor execute a series of kung-fu moves at blinding speed. Before Megan even had time to gasp, all six men lay on the ground at the woman’s feet.

  It was then the woman reached up to take off the helmet that covered her face. She shook out a mane of red hair drenched with sweat. With her gloved hand, she wiped the sweat off of her face. Though the face was leaner and no longer dotted with pimples, Megan could tell it was the same girl who’d been crying in the dorm, the same girl who’d lost her mother, and the same one who had once dreamed she would marry a man with a castle.

  “It’s her life,” Megan said. “This exhibit is her life.”

  “Yes.”

  “But who is she?”

  “You know,” the tour guide said again.

  Tears came to Megan’s eyes now. “No I don’t!” she shouted, her voice punctuated with a wheeze. “I don’t know her. I don’t even know me!”

  He started to drag her away from the diorama, but she dug in her heels on the floor. “We go,” he said.

  “No! Not until you explain this to me.”

  “You find out. One last stop.”

  She let him take her to the end of the gallery; the final diorama took up an entire wall. The light snapped on to reveal the interior of a pipe that overlooked the harbor. Freighters coasted along the water to head into or away from the setting sun. Two people sat on rickety, mismatched chairs to watch this scene. Megan recognized the redheaded woman in the beige suit as the same one in all of the other dioramas. Next to her was a man in a dark suit, his face obscured by his long, tangled hair.

  “It’s so beautiful,” the redheaded woman said breathlessly at the same moment Megan did.

  “Many beautiful things people not see,” the man next to the redheaded woman said. He looked into her eyes as he said this and now Megan could see his face clearly.

  “It’s you!” she said in the same breathless voice as the woman and turned to the tour guide. He didn’t say anything; instead he leaned towards her as she leaned towards him. Their lips met in the middle. From the corner of her eye, she could see the man and woman in the diorama doing the exact same, as if they were mirror images.

  Mirror images. At last she understood.

  Her eyes snapped open and she realized he was kissing her as in the dream. No, he wasn’t kissing her; he was trying to resuscitate her. She raised her arm and cupped the back of his head to pull him away. He looked down at her, his lips still puckered and brows knit quizzically.

  Then she smiled at him and thought of what Joanna’s mother had told her, “When you feel his kiss, it’ll all come back to you.” She whispered, “You’re my Prince Charming.”

  “Emma? It you?”

  To answer his question, she pushed his head back down so she could kiss him again, as long and as deeply as in the pipe that overlooked the harbor. When they finally had to pull away from each other, she said, “You saved me, Jim. I was lost and you found me.”

  “I love you,” he said.

  “I love you,” she answered. She had been unsure before, but she was certain now.

  He brushed hair away to tuck it behind her ear. “You rest now,” he said. “We talk later.”

  He tried to pull away, but she grabbed the front of his shirt. “Stay with me,” she said. “Don’t let me go. Don’t ever let me go.” Her fingers fumbled with the buttons of her sweater. He nodded again and helped her take the sweater off, followed by her T-shirt.

  “I no let you go,” he whispered as she clumsily tried to unbutton his shirt. “Not ever.”

  Chapter 26

  For hours she hung suspended in a murky area between sleep and wakefulness. As much as her body wanted to sleep, her mind desperately needed to stay awake. If she fell asleep, everything that she remembered—everything that was her life—might slip away again like the fragments of a dream. It might be Emma who woke up or it might be Megan, or it might be someone else entirely. She didn’t want to take that chance.

  Instead, s
he lay on the bed—her bed, she remembered—and faced Jim, her arm across his chest to clutch him tight. He was her anchor; the memory of his kiss reminded her of who she was. The moment she let go, she would be adrift in a sea of uncertainty once again. Only this time she might never come back; she might be lost forever.

  For his part, Jim abided by her wishes to not let her go. His eyes were closed, but from the way they shot open if she shifted her weight, she knew he played possum, an ironic phrase for someone who spent so much time around rats that he was practically one of them. He kept his left hand around her wrist and she wondered if he felt the same way she did, if as he held on to her, he maintained his certainty that this was real and not some figment of his imagination.

  As time drifted by, she could feel things solidify, as if she were waking from a dream. Her dream of the Plaine Museum exhibit of her life had filled in the essential blanks. She had grown up in Parkdale with Becky, in a somewhat normal suburban existence. Then her parents had died, murdered by criminals as they attempted to flee from another crime. She had thrown herself into her studies; she advanced so quickly through school that she had earned her PhD by nineteen. And then she had found the case of red armor to become the Scarlet Knight; she began to spend her nights breaking noses instead of with hers in a book. And in that process she had met Jim in the sewers and he had saved her life—and she’d fallen in love with him.

  As she squeezed his hand, she remembered when she and Becky had sat in her bedroom just like in her dream to fantasize about their lives as grown-ups. Emma had always imagined herself with a handsome prince. Someone like Dan—if he owned a horse. Instead she had the Sewer Rat, whose possessions all came from the trash. In a way it was like a fairy tale, only the frog had remained a frog instead of turning into a handsome prince. She didn’t mind at all. Even if he didn’t look like Prince Charming on the outside, in his heart he was as noble as any prince who’d ever graced a storybook.