Cracked Lenses

by L J McIntyre

  And if at any point tonight I understand this town, its secrets, then I suspect I will have crossed the event horizon and be lost forever.

  Escaping Nesgrove is my main priority, survival at all costs, but my feelings toward this place have shifted from simple dislike, to fear, to absolute terror, and now I’m resting somewhere between the three with a smattering of growing curiosity. Like a black hole, I would fight for my life not to be swallowed up, and yet my mind is yearning for a deeper knowledge about what lies beyond the event horizon, what waits in the darkness behind the cabin door.

  “What are you thinking about?” Annie asks.

  “I’m trying to figure out why I’m not afraid. We should be shitting our pants right now.”

  “It’s because we’re together. Or maybe our lives we’re shitty enough that we don’t have that much to lose.”

  “Speak for yourself.” I glance a smile at her.

  “You don’t fool me, Jack.”

  “You think so?”

  “I know so. Don’t get me wrong, we’re not ready to end it all, but you seem as lost as me in this world. Maybe that’s why we’ve connected the way we have.”

  “Who said we’ve connected?” I do my best to flirt.

  She hits me on the shoulder and smiles. Then she leans in and kisses me, on the lips this time. I kiss her back, passionately. More passionately than I’ve ever kissed anyone, and it feels like an emotional punch to the gut. I’m realising how much I’ve missed this sort of human connection, this type of intimacy. I’ve been so alone for years now. Annie is making me feel whole, or as close to whole as I can be.

  Chapter Forty Eight

  After kissing, we lie in each other’s warmth for a while and doze. Each time I wake up from a sleep I didn’t know I was having, I’m surprised by how absurd it is that sleep is even an option. And yet, I nod off once again into a bottomless nap. It feels like a slow Sunday morning where real life is put on hold, Netflix and the sofa are the only places Annie and I need to go, and any thought of Monday is shut away, lock and key.

  What I wouldn’t give for a Sunday like that, both with our comfy clothes on, two steaming mugs of hot chocolate on the coffee table.

  “Annie, you awake?”

  Annie turns around, looks at me. “No.” She smirks.

  “What was your friend like?”

  “Claire, her name was Claire.” Annie shifts onto her back and looks up at the ceiling. “She was the kindest person you could ever meet. The only person she wasn’t kind to, and I mean the only person, was herself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  A tear rolls down her cheek and onto the pillow. Her voice cracks as she speaks. “Her suicide note: almost every sentence was her apologising to the people she would hurt by killing herself. That’s what she was like. Everyone else came first. She had no coping mechanism for herself. No way to feel good about herself, so she took drugs to avoid it all.”

  Annie sits up against the wall, wipes her eyes with her hands, realises the tears keep coming, and pulls the quilt up to her face, keeps it there. She starts sobbing.

  I sit up next to her, put my hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  She cries quietly into the blanket for a while, her knees pulled up to her chest. When she emerges from the quilt, her face is a picture of pure grief, eyes deep red, cheeks pale.

  I hug her.

  “Sorry, I just…I haven’t really mourned her death properly, you know. I’ve been avoiding it and all the shit that comes with it.”

  I look at Annie and try to see the deeper person. If she’s a Nesgrovian, and her best friend truly did die days ago, then what emotional toll has it taken for her to pull off this act? Perhaps she’s doing this for Sally, in her memory, which is a thought so terrifying that I try not to entertain it. Perhaps she’s hypnotised.

  Or perhaps she really is Annie the backpacker from New Plymouth who was on a journey of self-discovery, who had put off grieving for her friend before our paths crossed. New Zealand does have a tragically high suicide rate, I learned when I was researching the country months ago.

  The only thing I know for sure is that I feel strongly for Annie. I want to be around her, and I sense that she feels the same about me. If I ask her for the truth, and she is a Nesgrovian, what will happen? She can simply lie and deny it. What evidence will I have to the contrary? Why would she admit it? She wouldn’t. Basically, asking her now would mean I’m none the wiser.

  If she isn’t a Nesgrovian, she could be upset by the accusation, and it might lead to more paranoia on both sides. It might make escaping Nesgrove more difficult because we were less trusting of each other.

  This is a shitty situation but I can’t throw her outside. I couldn’t live with myself if she was as innocent as she’s making out, and if I just tossed her to the wolves. If ever there were a time to follow Dr Randel’s advice, it’s now, with Annie. I choose to trust her. I choose to trust the hooded man and Tamati.

  If that means I’ve been hallucinating, seeing ghosts, then I’ll have to deal with that issue later, or maybe it will deal with me in one big crashing breakdown.

  What I do know is that the only time I’ve been hurt was when I was alone. And in Tragedy House, I felt my mental state crumble very quickly. Annie, as strange as it may seem, is my crutch right now, and without her, the thought of confronting Nesgrove alone looms terrifyingly over me. I’m not an action hero. I’m not built to do this at all, and especially not equipped to do it alone.

  Annie and I look at each other. I search for something meaningful to say.

  “Why does every girl I lie in bed with end up crying?” I ask.

  Annie laughs. “Oh man, fuck, sorry, I guess I need to process it all still.” She rubs her face. “You want to see a photo of her?”

  “Who?”

  “Claire.”

  “Of course.” Annie climbs out of bed, goes to her bag, pulls out a small photo like the ones you get at photobooths and comes back to bed. “This is her.”

  The photo is of Annie, a teenage Annie with brown hair and a big smile, and she’s hugging another girl tightly around the shoulders. The girl is leaning forward and looks as if she’s pretending to break free from Annie’s grip. She’s also a brunette, taller and slightly wider than Annie. More importantly, she’s not the girl in the lake, Sally Adams.

  “You look happy there,” I say.

  “Yeah.” She smiles at the photo before placing it on the side of the bed.

  “Back in the mineshaft you said you two became part of a new friendship group.”

  “She basically dragged me away from my old flat that I shared with my ex, dragged me to freedom, convinced me to live with her instead. We moved to a different area of New Plymouth, somewhere no one knew us, kind of like a fresh start.”

  “And you made friends there?”

  “Yeah, it was nice, you know. We were accepted straight away. People watched out for each other on the street, helped their neighbours. Old fashioned sort of stuff. There was even this little fund that we paid into every month, just a few dollars and it was purely voluntary, but they used it when someone was desperate for cash, or had an emergency that they couldn’t pay to fix. And when a neighbour’s house set fire, we all came together after, worked on the house, clearing it, chipping in for repairs, painting walls. It was like we were part of something bigger than ourselves. I’ve never felt that before.”

  “Me neither. Sounds perfect.”

  “It was, but after Claire died, I had to leave. Too much stuff reminded me of her. But being there, you know, it really made me understand the importance of being part of a community, even if it’s just a group of friends or something. To be honest, the other reason I came travelling was to try and find something like that again.”

  “A nice community?”

  “A bit unrealistic, I know, but I reckon it’s out there somewhere. You’ve never experienced anything like that?”

&n
bsp; “Christ no. I’d love to, but I’ve barely said two words to any neighbour I’ve ever had.”

  Outside the room an engine revs and roars.

  I get out of the bed and look out the window. The sky is black, the sun long gone and I look down at my watch. Annie joins me and puts a hand on my shoulder.

  “We should get ready,” she says.

  I take my external hard drive and all my memory cards from my bag, including the one that was in the camera, and put them in my jacket pocket which is hanging over the back of the chair. Apart from a few torches, the rest of my gear is staying in Nesgrove. I feel inside the jacket pockets, make sure the matches and knife are still there.

  Annie walks up to me with my laptop in her hand. “Jack, this could be our last chance. Write something on Facebook about Nesgrove. Tell people what we’ve been through. Tell them everything.”

  She hands me the laptop and I sit on the end of the bed with it on my lap.

  “When Gerald said they would give me back my online life, I felt repulsed,” I say to her. “At first I thought it was because of the way my followers had turned on me so quickly, but I think that’s only a half-truth.”

  “What do you mean? This is your career.”

  “I know but maybe there’s a way to be a photographer without having an online presence. I mean, what the hell did people do before social media?”

  She rests a hand on my shoulder. “You’ve spent years getting all those followers. You can’t just throw it away.”

  “You know what? Ever since I started taking photography seriously, trying to make it into a career, I’ve measured my success in Likes, shares and comments. I travel thousands of miles to a location and sit for days for the perfect light in the hopes of capturing an image I love. But that journey and the pleasure I get from my image are stripped away and replaced by self-doubt in minutes if the photo doesn’t get enough Likes. I mean, what the hell is that?”

  “Like you said yesterday, that’s life now—”

  “But it shouldn’t be. One moment I’m looking at a photo I took, I’m enjoying it, proud of it, and ten minutes later I despise that same photo and feel like a pretender who doesn’t know shit about photography.”

  “You’ve been doing this for years, so what’s changed your opinion now?”

  “Nothing’s changed my opinion. I’ve known for a long time social media wasn’t good for me, for my mental health. I just felt like this was my only path to being a professional. You know, I originally started taking photos as a type of therapy. But when social media was added to the mix, photography became a competition against myself and other photographers. I lost the love of creativity and replaced it with an addiction to validation.”

  “So, what are you going to do?” She sits down next to me.

  “Strip away some of their leverage.”

  “How?”

  “Delete all my social media accounts.”

  “You can’t—”

  “Annie.” I turn my body towards her. Our knees touch. “If being in this town has taught me one thing, it’s that I don’t need other people’s validation to get through the day. One of my worst nightmares came true two days ago, my online reputation was ruined. And you know what? I’m fine. In fact, I’m more than fine. I’m not lying to people about how great my life is any more or posting stupid inspirational quotes. I’m not refreshing my screen in desperation for another little red notification. Right now, in amongst all this shit that’s happening, I’m just me, and I’m not pretending to be anyone else. That feels strangely fucking good.”

  Annie shakes her head. “But what about our safety?”

  “Safety? Nesgrove doesn’t give a toss about what we write on Facebook. If they did, the laptop and phone would have disappeared days ago. They know how to keep secrets. I mean, listen, if we go missing, who are the authorities going to pin it on? The whole town where the local police know how to clean a crime scene, and where literally everyone would have an alibi?”

  I open my laptop and try to bring up Facebook. The browser says there’s a problem with the internet connection. I check the motel Wi-Fi. There isn’t any.

  “Internet’s dead,” I say to Annie.

  I stand up and take my phone from the bedside table. “I’ll delete it from the app, instead, or just create my own hotspot.”

  Annie nears me, rests her hand on my arm, her blue eyes look pleadingly at me. “Jack, we need everything at our disposal. Anything that can help. And let’s look at it a different way: just by not caring about your online life you’ve already removed their leverage, haven’t you? Isn’t that just as good?”

  I think for a second, let both sides of the argument sit in my mind. “I suppose I can always delete everything later. ” I walk over to the chair, slip my phone in my jacket pocket, and look at the window. I go to my backpack, take out my passport and slip that into my internal jacket pocket.

  I check my watch and say, “It’s time to go.”

  Chapter Forty Nine

  While Annie populates a small shoulder bag with some essentials, including two torches, I dash into the bathroom, zip open my bathroom bag and fish out my pills, put them in my pocket. I reach down and lift the crowbar off the floor, cradle the handle in my hand. I throw the GPS sticker into the toilet and pull the flush.

  When I return to the room, Annie looks down at the crowbar. “What’s that for?”

  “I don’t know yet,” I say as I take Sally Adams’ bra and tuck it inside my jacket.

  “Do you think we’ll need it?”

  “I hope not.” I point to the window. “But we need some sort of protection against those lunatics, don’t we?”

  She nods slowly and looks down to her feet.

  I put my jacket on, hold the crowbar in one hand, and turn off all the lights in the room.

  “What’s the plan, Jack? Are we running straight to the factory?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You still got the keys to the factory cupboard?”

  I jangle the keys in my jean pocket. “We’re all set.”

  I know what happens now. If I think about anything too much, I’ll fall apart, crawl into bed, give up and let them drag me to the cabin and kill Annie. No, no time to think or have self-doubt. And seeing Gerald angry at Ben this morning means there’s discord among my captors, cracks in their ranks. Now could be the time to take advantage of that.

  I grab the door handle, yank it down and break free from the room, sprint along the corridor, down the steps, breathe in and out at the shock my legs feel toward the sudden exertion, and jump the last few steps.

  Out of the motel I propel myself left along the main road and see Annie running alongside me. The atmosphere is still, the night almost frozen in time. There’s not a soul around, not a light on in any house or building. The resistance must have done what they’d promised and created some sort of mysterious distraction.

  We bolt in the direction of the factory. When we get to the main entrance, Annie hands me a torch from the bag.

  “You ready?” I ask.

  “Yeah.”

  I push the metal door open, advance into the blackness with urgency and not an ounce of the hesitation I felt the night before when we entered the factory through the backdoor. Our torches feel through the large, black space. Betsy’s licence plate reflects, almost like she’s waving to us, telling us she still there.

  We run towards her, and the factory door crashes behind us when it closes. I reach into my inner jacket pocket, pull out my car keys and hand them to Annie.

  “We need the wrench and nuts to put the wheels back on. Should be in the back of the car. I’ll find the wheels,” I whisper.

  I shine my torch at the walls around Betsy. Tamati said it was the door closest to her, but the space is huge and no door seems closer than any other. The task of locating the correct one is made a lot easier by the fact that almost all of them are open apart from two.

  There’s a fifty-fifty chance of getting th
is right so I don’t put any thought into it. The quicker I move the better. I run to a door on my right, try the handle to confirm it’s locked, lean the crowbar against the wall, and fish out the three sets of keys. The lock of the door is big and old looking.

  I thumb through the keys, look for ones that match the lock—about six of them fit that bill—and try the first one. It slips too easily into the keyhole and there’s zero friction when I turn it. Too small. The second key is too long.

  The third key fits perfectly. My heart speeds up a few beats. I turn the key but there’s resistance so I put some weight into it, lever it into the lock but it doesn’t budge. I try to wiggle it out again but it’s jammed.

  I twist the key furiously, sweat from my fingers making it hard to get enough purchase on the metal. Eventually it comes loose and slips out. I look for another key that closely matches the previous one and find it.

  I slam the key into the lock, and the two fit together like a match made in locksmith heaven. An almost euphoric wave washes over me when I hear the click of the lock opening as I twist left. I throw the door open, and torch light reveals a truly beautiful scene: four car wheels neatly stacked on top of one another in the corner of the room.

  “You found them?” Annie hisses from the back of Betsy.

  “They’re here. Come and help me.”

  Standing either side of the pile of wheels, Annie and I reach up to the top one.

  “You got it?” I ask.

  “Yep.”

  “Okay, let’s lift it.”

  We manoeuvre it over the pile and place it on the floor where it bounces slightly, and that bounce releases building tension in me brought on by the fear that the tyres may have been deflated, and we have no way of blowing them up. At least this tyre is fine.

  Torch in mouth, I wheel it out of the room and lean it up against Betsy. While I’m doing that, Annie is sliding the second wheel off. I hear it crash to the floor followed by her saying, “Shit”.