Generation Loss cn-1

by Elizabeth Hand

The black canvas shower curtain was moving—the slightest ripple, as though from a faint breeze.

  But there was no wind, only the wail of music in the next room. I drew the flashlight from my pocket and stepped toward the shower stall; grabbed the curtain and yanked it back.

  She lay on her side in five inches of black water, her head above the scummed surface, hair plastered against white skin, her hooded sweatshirt and jeans soaked with filth. Dried blood webbed her cheeks. Her wrists were bound with duct tape, her knees drawn to her chest. There was duct tape across her mouth; duct tape across her eyes, where he had drawn circles in magic marker. A scrawled star was in one of them.

  She didn’t move. The water did.

  A black shape emerged from the muck and began to crawl across her face, claws scratching her cheeks, its shell black with slime.

  The girl moaned. She was alive.

  I grabbed her shoulder and pulled her up. The baby snapper fell as dark forms suddenly bobbed everywhere, scrabbling at her head and arms.

  “Kenzie—it’s me. Cass,” I whispered. “From the motel. Hold still, for Christ’s sake—”

  She struggled to kick me with her bound legs. Turtles slopped over the stall’s lip and scrambled across the floor. I dragged Kenzie from the stall, pulled a corner of the tape covering eyes.

  “You have to shut up!” I breathed. “Kenzie, please—”

  The wet tape slid off easily. Beneath, her eyes were blood-red slits in oozing skin. I thought she’d been blinded, but then her eyes widened. She began to shake her head frantically.

  “Listen!” I hissed. “Don’t scream. I’ll take it off your mouth, but you can’t fucking scream—”

  She nodded, and I peeled the tape from her mouth. She leaned over and vomited, bile and bitter almond. On the other side of the door, Denny’s voice rose with the music, singing wordlessly.

  A baby turtle cracked beneath my boot as I grabbed Kenzie and dragged her into the darkroom. I shut the door and turned on the safelight. Kenzie leaned against the sink, gasping. I jammed the dark tent’s legs beneath the doorknob, grabbed the bag of sugar, and poured some into my palm.

  “Eat this!” Kenzie gagged as I shoved my hand into her face. “Eat it!”

  She retched but kept it down. Glucose is an antidote to cyanide—Rasputin survived poisoning because of sweet pastries and Madeira. I had no idea if it would help, but Denny obviously hadn’t given her enough cyanide to kill her; not yet, anyway.

  She wiped sugar onto her filthy shirt, and I reached for her hand. Her fingers were scraped raw, her knuckles black with bruises.

  “You fought,” I said. “Good girl.”

  “There’s a gun.” She began to sob. “He—”

  I clamped my hand over her mouth. “Shhh.”

  The music had stopped.

  “Get under there,” I whispered. “Cover your eyes.”

  She scrambled beneath the table. I grabbed the largest bottle on the shelf and turned off the safelight.

  There was a soft knock on the bathroom door. “Cassandra?”

  In the next room the door opened.

  “Oh no, oh no…”

  His cries were like a bird crooning. I heard something skitter across the bathroom floor. Denny swore under his breath and gave a guttural shout. The darkroom door shook as an object was flung against it. I heard stomping as he crushed one shell after another beneath his feet.

  Then silence.

  I could see nothing. From beneath the table came Kenzie’s ragged breathing. I braced myself against the sink and pried the cork from the bottle.

  There was a rustle of cloth, the scrape of wood as Denny pushed against the darkroom door. The dark tent’s legs snapped. The reek of dead fish and musk filled the room. Kenzie whimpered.

  He was inside.

  I grasped the bottle in one hand, with the other found the flashlight in my pocket. Phantom shapes swam in front of me in the darkness. I began to shake, imagining each of these was Denny. The floor creaked a few feet from where I stood.

  “Cass,” he whispered. “Cass, Cass…”

  Nausea overwhelmed me, a darkened street.

  “Cass, Cass.”

  I couldn’t move. The sound of my own name bound me, formless horror and Aphrodite’s voice in my head.

  Both of you—nothing.

  Something brushed my foot.

  No, I thought. Not this time.

  I turned on the flashlight. Denny’s dazzled face hung before me, his mouth a gaping hole as I shouted, “Kenzie! Run!”

  I flung the mercury at his eyes.

  With a scream he fell. Kenzie bolted for the door with me behind her.

  “Run!” I yelled as we stumbled into the living room. “Run and don’t stop! Here—”

  I thrust the flashlight at her. She took it and stared at me blankly until I pushed her roughly toward the front door.

  “Get the fuck out of here!”

  She fled outside. Behind me Denny’s screams rose to a howl as he staggered from the bathroom.

  “Come—BACK!”

  Kenzie was right. He had a gun.

  Mirrors exploded as a shot went wild, then another. Denny clutched his eyes with one hand then aimed the gun at me. I turned and ran out onto the front steps, icy rain slashing at my cheeks.

  Kenzie was gone. I grabbed the boat hook, whirled to see Denny’s face, gray splotched with mercury. The gun’s barrel thrust against my temple.

  “You can’t go.” His breath was cold and stank of rotting fish. “I see you, Cass. I know.”

  He twisted his hand. I cried out as metal bored through the skin beside my eye.

  “Tell me what you saw,” he whispered. “You saw them. I know you saw them.”

  I didn’t move.

  “I know what you saw.” He licked his lips. “Tell me. Tell me.”

  I swallowed. My hand tightened imperceptibly around the boat hook.

  “All of them.” My voice came in a hoarse whisper. “I saw all of them.”

  “Where?”

  “In the quarry.”

  “Where else?” He dragged the gun’s barrel across my cheekbone and I moaned, feeling my skin tear.

  “The photos,” I gasped. “All your photos—I saw them too.”

  “And the mirrors?” His voice was so soft I could barely hear him. “What did you see there?”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  “Yes, you do. You saw me.” I heard him breathing faster. “You saw me, Cassandra. And you saw—”

  I struck his shoulder glancingly with the boat hook then staggered backward. Blood streamed into my eye as I caught my balance, grasped the boat hook with both hands, and swung it like a club.

  The bronze end struck his hand. There was a deafening retort. Fire lanced my upper arm, and I screamed.

  Denny stood at the edge of the granite step, his long white braids spattered with blood.

  “I see you,” he whispered and laughed.

  I screamed again, beyond rage and pain, beyond everything.

  “You fuck.” I hefted the boat hook and with all my strength smashed it into his face.

  I heard a sound like a jack o’ lantern hitting pavement and swung again. Denny roared and dropped to his knees. The gun spun into darkness. I kicked him, felt my boot’s steel tip dig into his chest as though it were loam. He tried to roll away, and I kicked him again and again then raised the boat hook and rammed it against his skull. He tried to raise his hands as I struck him repeatedly, half blinded with weeping and my own blood.

  Finally I stopped. I leaned on the boat hook, panting, and looked down.

  He lay on his side, staring at me. A black stain crept across his forehead like a spider. One eye bulged like a crimson egg, a white petal of skin folded beneath it. As I stared, his other eye opened. His mouth parted in a wash of red and indigo as he gazed up at me. He smiled.

  “I see you.”

  I backed away as he began to get to his feet. Another voice echoed faintly thr
ough the rush of rain and wind.

  “Cass!”

  I clutched the boat hook and fled down the steps and into the darkness, past the granite sentinels with their green-flecked eyes, until I reached the road.

  26

  Kenzie waited near the quarry, her white face glowing in the flashlight.

  “I told you to keep going!” I grabbed her roughly, spat a mouthful of blood, then snatched the flashlight from her hand. “Come on.”

  She stared at me wide-eyed. “Oh my God, your face. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fucking great.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “No.”

  She began to sob. I whacked her with the butt-end of the boat hook.

  “You want to go back and finish for me? Come on, there’s someone at Ryel’s house; we have a boat, if—”

  “If what?” she wailed.

  “If you keep your goddam mouth shut.”

  I dragged her after me, still sobbing. For several minutes we stumbled along the road in almost total darkness, following the flashlight’s wan beam. Then I stopped. Kenzie stared at me.

  “What is it?”

  I killed the light and clapped my hand over her mouth. Beneath the rattle of wind in the trees and the crash of waves I heard another, fainter sound on the road behind us.

  “It’s him,” I breathed.

  Kenzie moaned. I found her hand, icy cold, and pulled her to the side of the road. I turned on the flashlight, just long enough to pick out a break in the trees, then moved as quickly as I could, feeling my way with the boat hook with Kenzie right behind me.

  We struggled through a tangled hell of brush and whiplike trees, icy stones and frozen earth. My face burned where sleet slashed it; my right eye was swollen shut. Not that I could have seen much of anything. I listened for more sounds behind us but heard nothing above the rising wind.

  I had no idea where we were but figured we couldn’t be too far from the road, with the smaller quarries between us and Denny’s compound. After a few minutes the trees thinned and I halted, panting. Kenzie drew up beside me as I leaned on the boat hook and fought to catch my breath. I strained to see something, anything, that might signal safety, finally gave up.

  “Can you see?” I whispered hoarsely.

  “I think there’s a light,” Kenzie said.

  She pointed, and I could just make out a blurred point that might have been light, or maybe just a break in the trees. But I thought it was the right direction for Lucien’s house.

  “All right. Here—”

  I fumbled for her hand in the darkness, thrust the flashlight into it. “You take this. Stay right in front of me and don’t move too fast. Keep the light close to the ground and listen for me, I’ll tell you to put it out if something happens. Go on, I’m right behind you.”

  She nodded then went on ahead, the flashlight’s beam so feeble that more than once I lost it among the wind-thrashed trees and underbrush. I followed her as best I could, lurching clumsily, my boots sliding across stones and fallen tree limbs as sleet lashed at my face. My feet were so numb it was difficult to move. I jammed the boat hook against the ground with every step, feeling my way in the dark.

  There were fewer trees here but more rocks. Several times I tripped and nearly fell, catching myself with the boat hook at the last moment. The wind shifted again; the hiss of sleet against dead leaves fell silent. I breathed on my fingers, trying to warm them; then held my hand out, palm up, and felt a touch like another, colder breath. Snow.

  Through the trees I saw a pale glimmer, like the moon but moving, slowly, resolutely: Kenzie.

  Good girl, I thought.

  I kept going, head down, when a thin wail drifted back to me. I looked back but saw nothing and staggered on toward the sound.

  I found her standing at the edge of a large clearing, the flashlight turned so it blinded me.

  “Put it down!”

  She ignored me, just moaned and pointed the light into the clearing. I came up alongside her, grabbed the light and swept it across the ground. Snow sifted down, flakes fine as dust, but enough to leave a thin white tracery across several dark, humped forms. I handed the boat hook to Kenzie and walked toward them slowly then stopped.

  Three huge turtle shells had been arranged in a rough circle. Each was so large that my hands, extended, would not have encompassed it. Instead of legs and tails, grayish shapes like driftwood protruded from the shells. Large white fragments were scattered where the heads should have been. I thought of tiny shells being crushed beneath Denny’s feet then bent and picked up a cusp of jawbone as long as my finger. Between two teeth, long white strands of hair were snagged, like fishing line.

  I dropped it and stumbled to where Kenzie waited.

  “What—” she began.

  “Just go,” I said and pushed her. “Faster.”

  We stumbled on across the island. Snow changed to rain again; the wind rose and fell. My heart felt like a fist pounding at my chest. Kenzie whimpered; I pulled her to me and held her, murmured until her voice stilled and I drew away, and we both moved on. We saw no further sign of Denny Ahearn, heard nothing but wind and then, gradually, a noise that I recognized as waves beating against rock.

  “There…”

  I pointed at a phantom light that seemed to waver ahead of us. I coughed, spitting blood, touched my swollen eye and winced. The light remained, and I began to run.

  Ahead of us, Lucien’s house loomed into view. A single light shone from the kitchen.

  “Toby’s there,” I said, but Kenzie had already raced ahead of me.

  I staggered inside after her, locked the door, and turned to see Toby standing unsteadily in the living room.

  “Cass?” His voice was thick. He looked down, saw the glass of Moxie on the floor, and reached for it.

  “No.” I kicked the glass away. “We have to get out of here.”

  I grabbed his arm and pulled him into the kitchen.

  “Is that Kenzie?” He stared at her in disbelief, then at me. “What the hell happened to you?”

  “Denny Ahearn happened.” I flinched as he reached to touch the corner of my eye. “Your harmless hippie friend.”

  “Let’s go, let’s go.” Kenzie looked at us wild-eyed. “Why are you waiting?”

  Toby blinked, uncomprehending. “Kenzie? Were you—was she here? In this house?”

  “Toby. We have to go. Now.”

  He shook my hand from him. “Cass. You did this, didn’t you?” He didn’t sound angry, just confused and stoned. “You … drugged me, right? Like a roofy?”

  “Yes! I’m sorry! I’m a shit! We still have to leave!”

  He glanced back at Kenzie. “Jesus Christ.”

  “It was bad, okay?” I said. “I’ll tell you when we’re on the boat. Right now we have to get out of here.” I pounded the door in frustration. “Can you sail that fucking boat or not?”

  “I guess.” He ran a hand across his face. “I don’t feel too good, but…”

  He looked at me, holding the boat hook like a lance, then at Kenzie’s bruised face. “But I guess I’ll take my chances.”

  He put a hand on Kenzie’s shoulder and rested it there for a moment. “Come on. Let’s get you home.”

  They went outside. I grabbed my camera, ransacked kitchen drawers till I found some dish towels. I used one to stanch my bleeding arm; with the other made a bandage for my eye. I bound it in place as best I could then hurried after them.

  A stiff wind sent curtains of freezing mist up from the water’s edge. Toby and Kenzie had already dragged the dinghy into the shallows. I clambered in beside them, using the boat hook to push off as Toby rowed us out to Northern Sky.

  “We’ll have to motor,” he yelled above the wind. “It’ll be rough. Kenzie, you better stay below.”

  We boarded the sailboat. Toby tied off the dinghy and pulled on his foul weather gear, then turned to Kenzie.

  “You wait below like I said, okay?”

&
nbsp; She shook her head fiercely. I thought of the bound figure on the floor of that filthy shower stall. Toby started to argue, and I cut him off.

  “Just give her a life vest. She’ll stay out of your way.”

  Kenzie shot me a grateful look. Toby frowned.

  “If you say so. Here—” He tossed a life vest at each of us. “You too, Cass. I need you to help navigate.”

  I started to pull it on, wincing as it snagged my wounded shoulder, then gave up. It wouldn’t fit over my camera, anyway.

  Toby began coiling lines. “You going to tell me what the hell happened back there?”

  I did. When I was finished, he shook his head.

  “I can’t believe it,” he said. “I mean, I do believe it, but…” He glanced at Kenzie huddled in the cockpit. “It’s hard.”

  I snorted. “Yeah, well, I don’t know what you guys were smoking thirty years ago, but I think Denny got some of what Ted Bundy was having. Aren’t you going to call someone? Like the Coast Guard?”

  “The Coast Guard rescues people,” said Toby. “Is our boat in distress? Do we need to be medivaced to a hospital?”

  He glanced at my bandaged eye, then at Kenzie, and shrugged. “Yeah, but by the time they got here we’d be on shore. They’d tell me to radio the police. We’re better off just getting out of here fast as we can.”

  He held up two oversized flashlights and tossed me one. He shielded his face from blowing sleet, pointed past the bow to a distant gleam like a dim emerald star.

  “See that light? It’s a buoy. There’s a bunch of them between here and Burnt Harbor. Some are lighted, some aren’t. We need to follow one to the next, point to point. Use the flashlight to find them. I’ll tell you where to look, right or left.”

  He switched on the running lights. A dull green glow illumined the right side of the cabin, red on the left, white at the stern. “Think you can handle it? I’ve got spreader lights up there on the mast, but they mess up my night vision. Plus, if Denny’s really out there looking for us, it’ll be like a billboard. You stay in the bow and I’ll yell out to you. Once we get past Paswegas it’s clear sailing to the mainland, and we should be able to see the lighthouse up to Togus Head.”

  His voice was calm, but he moved quickly and nervously, ducking beneath the rigging and pausing only to light a cigarette. “Get Kenzie settled, I’ll be another minute.”