by J. K. Holt
Mr. Winslow scrutinized Tess for a moment more. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll send a message to her that we’ve cleared up the problem.”
Her? Tess wondered. Maybe he wasn’t the boss after all.
“What do you want me to do with her?” Loren said, jerking her back to reality. He nodded to her. “She’s a loose end.”
“Not for long,” Mr. Winslow said. “Erase her.”
A sick feeling of dread washed over Tess, but she couldn’t find her voice to protest.
“And then? Drop her back at Wharfton?” Loren’s voice was tinged with disapproval. “It would be close to dawn by the time we finished. It’s too large of a risk.”
“Fine then,” Mr. Winslow said, rising from his seat and heading towards the door. “Drop her overboard. But weigh her down first, and wait until we’re clear of the harbor. We can’t risk some fisherman pulling up her body.”
He opened the door and left, and a heavy and angry presence filled the room. Bram was back. He lumbered in front of her, staring down at her with black intentions.
“What’s up, asshole?” she muttered.
The enormity of her impending demise had stymied all emotional processing. She was about to die. Correction- first, she would be erased, then she would die. She knew with certainty that no amount of fighting would change her fate.
She fought anyway.
It was quick. Bram pulled her up by her hair, then squeezed her body against his torso as she screamed, muzzling her mouth with his body. Two cool pieces of metal touched the back of her head, and a slight buzzing sounded. A feeling akin to an electrical charge climbed her skull as goosebumps erupted along her neck. She shivered. Oh, Russ, is this how it felt for you?
She tried to pivot her body, to free her head from Bram’s hand, but his vice-like grip tightened. Her fragile and bruised ribs, crushed against him, screamed in agony, and then, blessedly, she ceased to feel or think anything at all.
∞ ∞ ∞
Maggie? Is that you?
…….
Tess was on a beach, but not the wet, cold sand of Wharfton. Palm trees hugged the shore, swaying softly, and the white sand was finely ground, as soft as satin under her feet. The ocean lapped calmly against the shore, the brilliant clear colors of cobalt and aquamarine mingling across the depths. A verdant forest of trees and foliage rose at her back, and the trilling and warbling of birds filled the heady air.
All around her, an orange haze settled, obscuring her view of any distant points. It was so unnatural that she knew instinctively that she wasn’t in any real place, but she didn’t care.
Maybe she was dead.
If so, it was lovely.
There wasn’t another soul in sight, but she felt the presence of her mother. And, if this was heaven, it felt only fair that it be granted to her. After all, they should be able to be together now.
Maggie? Please. Come to me.
I’m here, sweet.
Oh! Maggie, where? Please.
Maggie wrinkled into existence, slowly, beside her, becoming almost opaque. She looked as she had before the illness took her, healthy and vibrant, her blonde hair framing her impish face. She looked impossibly young. She’d been only thirty-eight when she died.
Tess collapsed into her, and found shelter in her arms.
I’ve missed you so terribly much.
I know, babe. Me too.
I’ve been so lost.
You were for a while. But you’re finding your way now.
Tess didn’t understand her meaning. But I’m with you now.
Not for long, though, kid. You need to go back soon. They need you.
Who?
Maggie smiled, a soft, tentative thing, but did not answer.
Where are we?
An in-between place.
Can we stay?
I don’t think so, sweet.
Why not?
Because I’ve moved on. And you have so much life yet to live.
Tess shook her head. She rested it on Maggie’s shoulder, and they watched the orange haze shimmer, coalesce and disperse, swirling lazily around them. Though she knew it was temporary, Tess soaked in the long moment, and it seemed to last both a lifetime and a split second. Then-
I think it’s time now. You have to go back, love.
Maggie?
Mm?
How many times do I have to lose you?
As many as it takes for you to understand the truth.
What’s that?
That you’ll never lose me.
The orange mist descended, blinding Tess, and Maggie faded away into the light.
∞ ∞ ∞
The first full thought that Tess had upon returning to the land of the living was that she was still on this damned blasted ship. She again lay on her side, still bound, though no one had retied the gag. The waves had picked up, the sound of the wind increased. Out the window, the calls of deckhands from above drifted in.
The second thought was that she had not, in fact, been blurred after all. The shock of that fact took a bit of time to absorb, as Tess sifted through her memories to ensure that they were still intact, her brow knotting in confusion at the impossibility of the situation. How could she still be here? How could she still be her? She couldn’t fathom the implications.
She didn’t have time to sort through it. The doorknob turned, and Tess had just enough time to close her eyes and let her head loll to its side before it opened and footsteps approached. She was nudged, gently, with a boot in the leg.
“What are you doing?” Bram’s brute voice said.
Loren’s voice replied. “I need to be certain.” He pushed at her leg again, slightly harder now.
Oh no- he meant to make sure she was blurred. Quick- how would she respond if she truly had been? Be vacant, Tess. She moaned slightly the next time he kicked her, opening her eyes to half mast, maintaining an unfocused stare in front of her. She let her mouth relax and breathed through it.
Again, Loren kicked her, and she let out a small oof!, but kept her breathing slow and steady. Loren bent down, angling his face towards her, and she fought the urge to look at him. Don’t acknowledge him. If you look, you’ll give yourself away.
She let gravity take her head, rolling it back until she gazed towards the ceiling.
Loren watched her for a moment longer before pulling his head back, convinced.
“Can I have her now, then?” Bram said. Tess fought the urge to recoil.
“What’s the point?” Loren said. “She won’t feel any pain you inflict upon her. There’s no revenge to be had here. It’s already happened.”
“Still-”
“There’s no ‘still’. Don’t be ruled by your ego- you’ll get sloppy and the boss’ll notice. He won’t take kindly to it, trust me.”
Bram huffed. “What do we do with her, then?”
“Wait until we pull anchor and head back out to the dimple. We’ll drop her along the way.”
Their footsteps drifted away, and the door was pulled. Tess turned her head slowly, sensing a trap, but they were gone, the door left slightly ajar.
They were going to weigh her down and drop her overboard. That’s what Winslow had told Loren to do with her, and he would follow it to the letter. Blurred or not, she couldn’t see a way to escape the fate. She was bound as tightly as ever- her head still ached, her ribs throbbed. Her body was a theremin, tuned only to the sounds of her own physical pain. She couldn’t imagine doing anything with it that would enable escape.
And yet, Maggie had told her she had to come back. That she had to help them still. How? Maggie, how?
But… what if. She’d done it once. It’s what landed her here, in Wharfton, so many weeks ago. But how had she done it? Could she replicate it? She wasn’t certain at all, still barely believing it had happened in the first place.
She had to try.
She remembered the pain of that night, in the detention center, the bleakness of reality crushing in on her, her
scrambling, desperate need for Maggie. Could she conjure that again? She didn’t think so. She’d healed since then, though not fully, but the wounds were not gaping, scary things anymore. She didn’t think she could pull from that well of raw pain again. But maybe she could substitute another fear- the fear of dying, or of letting the others down, perhaps, as her conduit.
She closed her eyes, bringing the others to mind. Ashe, Emmie, Fish, Rosie, Russ, Dray, and dear Gowan. Would they think she’d run, deserted them, deceived them? Could she really leave them like that?
Then, she imagined what it would feel like to drown. Lungs on fire, screaming for oxygen, as she sank, further and further into the deep blue, the pressure pushing her lungs to bursting. She could imagine no worse way to die in the present moment.
She melded the two fears in her mind, letting them compound one another, until she had worked herself up to a lovely level of agony. Then, she pulled a picture into her mind- the spot under the pier that she’d arrived at that first day. She tried to imagine the sound of the water, the height of the pier rising above her, the cries of the gulls, the rocks beneath her feet. Come to me, she called in her mind.
She varied her mental picture, pulled and prodded at her emotional pain. She wasn’t sure how long she lay there. Minutes- an hour?
Nothing.
Her breaths became ragged in frustration. What am I doing wrong? I need this to work! Please.
She saw a shadow pass across the door just in time to revert to her blank stare before Bram swayed into the room, his footsteps slightly unsteady. Had he been drinking since he was last here? Or perhaps he had been working his way to drunk even then- she wouldn’t have noticed.
He kneeled, pulling her up towards him by the scruff of her shirt. She resisted the urge to pull free, to scream, to kick at him. He leaned forward, his breath hot and rancid on her face. “Just us now, eh, little hellion. And I’ll be paying you back for that bloody lip you gave me, if you don’t mind.”
He traced something hard and cold along the length of her stomach. A knife, and a sharp one. It cut through the flimsy fabric near her navel, slicing a bit of her skin in the process. She sucked in her breath.
Bram chuckled. “So, not entirely unable to feel pain then, eh? Loren doesn’t know everything. This might be fun.”
Tess could now correct her idea of worst death. It wasn’t drowning. It was being tortured, then drowning.
How long could she keep up this comatose act while he was cutting into her? And was there even a point? If it all ended in the same place, surely it was better to go down swinging. She squeezed her eyes tight, frustrated at her childish need for Maggie in this moment. To fix all this, somehow. Maggie would know what to do.
Then, Maggie’s voice, as if in answer, sounded clear as a bell all around her. Do not go gentle into that good night, darling.
In another place, another time, the disembodied voice might have frightened her. Not now. Not here.
She knew the verse- Dylan Thomas, another favorite of Maggie’s. Of course. Do not go gentle into that good night. She whispered the words along with Maggie, too softly for Bram to notice, open, this time, to the message. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
She raged.
Bram was too close for his own good. Her knees, brought up swiftly, connected satisfyingly with his nose, and the crack that followed was wet and sickening. He reeled back, eyes filled with both confusion and rage, and lunged for her. She rolled towards him, and he tripped over her, smacking his head against the hard wood of the desk and falling prone beside her. She rolled onto her back, wedging her foot underneath his leg and pulling herself to a sitting position.
She scanned frantically for his knife. It was no longer in his hands, so it must have dropped somewhere. Where? Rot! There- the handle stuck a mere inch out from under his back, wedged between his body and the floor. She turned, scooting backward until the tips of her fingers found it. She grasped it and pulled, but the friction caused it to slip from her fingers. She tried again, and then again, fighting against the panic that had begun to rise in her chest. I’m running out of time. C’mon. Come on, already!
She had it again- she pulled, and it slid free. She tried to angle it- she needed to cut through the twine binding her hands. She was so intent on the task that she nearly dropped the knife again at the sound of Bram, moaning, beginning to come back to consciousness.
She wouldn’t make it in time. She tried to lean back on her butt and pivot towards him- if she could kick him in the head, maybe it would buy her a few more minutes. But before she could rotate, his hand grabbed hers and pulled, wrenching the knife free. Her fingers twisted unnaturally, and she fought the urge to scream. Screaming would bring more people. The only silver lining was that Bram was also intent on remaining quiet- he wasn’t supposed to be here, either.
She flopped onto her side as Bram stumbled to his feet. She kicked out again, blindly. Her feet, meant to connect with his shin, missed the mark and skimmed the meat of his leg instead. He laughed. “So, Loren was right to question. You aren’t blurred after all.”
He pushed her face down against the carpet, kneeling so that his knee pushed into the small of her back, pinning her. He stroked the side of her face, a twisted portrait of concern. “You’re a fighter. I like that. I reckon we’ve another hour or so before we pull anchor, which gives us some time, you and I. And I don’t think Loren ever needs to know, do you? We’ll just make sure you stay nice and quiet.”
Understanding his intent, Tess drew in a breath to scream, but was rewarded with a gag to the mouth. From the taste, it was the same one that had been thrown on top of her bile earlier. “There now, that’s better already.” He squeezed her butt, snickering as she jumped.
“Now, I think we’ll- hey!”
His knee pressed down harder onto Tess, and she hissed against the cloth as her breath was forced. There was some sort of commotion happening above her, but she couldn’t see from her angle. Had someone discovered him? She’d heard no other voices or footsteps.
It was over quickly. Bram dropped like a stone, his knee sliding painfully along her spine as he did. He landed hard, next to her, and she found herself inches from his face. His mouth hung ajar, and his eyes stared unseeing at some point beyond her. His aura had gone.
Only then did she see the knife protruding hilt-deep from his neck. Not his knife, but a larger one. As she stared, her eyes becoming saucers, a hand reached down from above her and withdrew the knife, an ugly sucking sound emanating from Bram’s neck as it left him.
She was staring at a dead man. Not a vacant one, like Tom, or Russ, but someone who had taken his last breath in this world. For all that she had walked beside death, this was the first dead person she’d seen. Maggie had not wanted that image in Tess’s head, and had not allowed her to be there at the end, something Tess both hated her for and was supremely grateful for. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the sight, not even as her brain began to ask the question she knew she too should be answering- what happened?
She didn’t have to consider the question before it was answered. The gag was pulled free and she was pulled gently to a sitting position. Only then could she wrench her eyes from the sight of Bram.
“Miss me?” said a familiar voice, accompanying a familiar face.
Tess collapsed from the sheer weight of her relief, falling against Dray as if he were the only port in the storm. Dray wrapped a strong arm around her, dropping his head to her shoulder and breathing deeply. She sobbed angrily against him, breathing in the solid presence of him, ignoring all the questions that demanded answering.
He had come for her. Nothing else mattered in this moment.
He pulled away too soon, holding her at arm’s length. “Is anything broken? Can you move?”
“I… uh, I think they cracked some ribs- it hurts to breath on my left side. And I might have a concussion. But otherwise, I’m fine. I can do what you need me to do.”
“Goo
d. Let’s cut you free.” He grabbed his knife, still bloody from Bram, and Tess shook her head.
“He had one- it’s smaller. It will be easier to use.” The truth, but only a part- she couldn’t stomach the idea of the other one touching her skin.
Dray found it, making quick work of the knots around her feet and hands. He helped her stand, held her as the room swayed. She nodded when she felt she could walk on her own. “What now?”
He gestured towards the window. “Now we leave.”
Tess paused. “You’re serious?”
“As death. Come on.” He pulled her with him around the desk, casting it a sad, desperate look as they went. He pushed at the window. “We can’t go together. There isn’t enough room. One at a time, right after each other.” As he spoke, he bent down to pull off Tess’s shoes. He was barefoot as well, she noticed.
“Now,” he said, straightening. “First or second?”
“Um.”
He nodded, as if she’d responded. “First then.” He drew her to the window, picking her up until her feet rested on the sill. “Hold your breath. You’ll hit the water in a moment or two. I’ll be right behind you. The most important thing, and I mean this Tess, is not to scream.”
Before she could mount a defense, he pushed her and she tumbled into the dark night.
Chapter Twelve
A dark blue wall of the ocean rushed up to meet her, and in the freefall Tess twisted her body as a cat would and hit the water feet first. Her body exploded, and a thousand tiny knives stabbed her as the frigid water enveloped her and tugged, pulling her downward. It was pitch-black beneath the waves, and she floundered, directionless in the void. She kicked, then stopped, willing herself to stay still until she could feel, through the tug of gravity, which way was up.
Easier said than done. The waves had picked up, the movement of them constantly pushing, rolling her. The terror overtook her and she kicked, pushing towards the current that felt the strongest, hoping it signaled the surface. Her muscles had begun to seize from the shock and she fought her own body to move. Come on, Tess. You’ve come too far to drown now.
