Monsters Among Us

by Monica Rodden

  He sighed, as though her silence was an answer he had long expected. “When you left for college, I did something stupid. But I regretted it. Absolutely and totally regretted it. I…I went out alone. In the woods. I wanted to lose myself in the trees the way we used to do. I thought I wouldn’t mind if I died there. And then I did mind. Because I was alone. Fading. And all I could think about was you. I realized then I couldn’t go without you coming with me. I didn’t want their ending. I won’t let it happen that way. I won’t let you leave. I can’t let you leave. Because I know what it’s like living without you, Catherine. I’ve done it for four years and I can’t do it anymore. I can’t live without my life. I can’t live without my soul.”

  He looked away from her then, out the windshield. The night was black and endless, the outline of the mountains drawn in faint gray. She waited for him to say something. This whole night was a question, a looming blank she had to fill, like children creating the monsters that would haunt their closets, and poets building hell like a house. Because nothing was as bad as not knowing.

  When she looked at him, his face was in profile, the lamppost haloing him from behind, lighting the edges of his face, the snow caught in his hair.

  Demons were angels once, she thought. Then they fell. Fell into hell and reigned there. Wasn’t that how it worked?

  He put the car into drive, put one hand on the wheel, kept the other on her. He smiled with kindness, a look she remembered, and as the car crept forward, she realized he had given her as good an answer as any.

  She screamed.

  They both heard it.

  Andrew turned to Bob, about to yell at him that they had to do something, do something now, but Bob had already slammed his foot on the gas, Andrew’s seat belt snapping against his chest at the sudden acceleration. Bob was speaking rapid-fire on the radio, codes Andrew didn’t understand and barely heard. His heart was beating in his ears, everything else strangely muted.

  “You’re staying in the car,” Bob said to him again as they sped up the road, lurching on the uneven gravel. “You don’t fucking move a muscle, got it? You stay in the car.”

  They came out of the trees to the clifftop, which was like a negative image: white snow and black night, a single car at the guardrail, so close to the edge it seemed to bleed into the sky.

  It was the headlights that did it.

  That arc of color across Henry’s car, the backseat, the windshield—he couldn’t help but turn in surprise, his mouth half open, his foot easing off the gas.

  Catherine dived for the purse between her feet. She’d just gotten one hand inside it when she heard Henry say something, and by the time her hand—scrabbling, frantic—felt the sheath of the knife, he’d grabbed her by the hair and yanked her back with such force she felt some of it rip from her scalp. But she didn’t care. It meant she was free for one more second, her other hand wrenching off the sheath, and then she was turning too quickly to even see, lunging blind until she felt the sudden pressure against her hand as it sank into him.

  Into his stomach. She’d wanted higher—his chest or throat—but missed. Still, she felt the blood well up under her hand and jerked back, against the passenger door, her wet hands sliding across the buttons, unlocking the handle, and then she was out—falling to the ground—and when she used her hands to push herself up, they left red prints in the snow-dusted grass.

  “Help!” she screamed, at the car, at the headlights that had just pulled up. She gave a little cry of relief as she stumbled forward, trying to run. “HELP!”

  She was down before she knew what had happened, Henry’s breath at her ear, calling her a fucking bitch, panting, his hands on her as she fought, kicking, still screaming. For a moment he let her go and she thought it had worked, but then she felt his hands on her legs, her ankles, dragging her backward.

  She couldn’t fight. He was holding her legs up as he pulled, her shoulders and head against the snow, her face to the sky. Almost upside down. She tried to kick but nothing happened and her arms couldn’t reach him. She began to claw at the ground, trying to grab at something, but everything was snow, the grit below it driven so far under her fingernails it hurt.

  Someone was yelling, but she couldn’t see. Then Henry was over her, dropping her legs and pulling her upright, against him, her back against his chest, and as the world righted itself, she realized he had dragged her to the guardrail. They were only feet from the edge.

  “Henry,” a voice called from across the clearing. Catherine squinted into the darkness. There was someone there. But she could barely see them; the world was a wash of black and red.

  She felt something at her throat. Something thin and wet. Her father’s knife. Henry was holding it to her neck, pulling her harder against him. She could feel the place where she’d stabbed him; his blood getting onto her, soaking through her light jacket, onto her skin.

  “Come any closer and I’ll kill her!” Henry said, and it was like a slow drip of poison, knowing this was real.

  The person across the clearing was saying something, but Catherine couldn’t hear what it was. They seemed very far away to her, so far away she knew the exact distance didn’t matter. They were out of reach. No help at all.

  “Henry,” she said. Her voice was hoarse. “Henry.”

  But he wasn’t listening. He was trying to step backward, over the guardrail. The knife trembled at her throat. His left arm was across her stomach, locking her arms to her sides. She felt the metal of the guardrail through her jeans, on the backs of her legs. He was panting, trying to pull her over after him, his arm lifting under her ribs, and she felt a sudden heat at her back as more of his blood seeped onto her.

  I’m so sorry.

  I didn’t mean to do that.

  “Henry,” she said again.

  He was pulling her harder now, up and back. She could feel the press of the guardrail against the backs of her knees, her calves, her boots barely brushing the snow, and she knew there wasn’t time.

  She thrust her neck forward, into the blade of the knife.

  She felt it slice into her skin, parting it, and the pain was like a sudden line of fire at the side of her throat. Blood fell to her shirt collar, but she didn’t care.

  What she cared about was Henry’s sharp intake of breath, his hand dropping the knife, his arm loosening around her for a fraction of a second, and that was all she needed.

  She jerked herself away, forward and down. The moment her face and palms hit the ground she heard the explosion of a gunshot cut through the night, felt it move the air just above her.

  Another shot, then two more. The air on fire. The taste of ashes in her mouth.

  One second.

  Two.

  Or maybe more. Maybe infinitely more. Her ears ringing, her whole body frozen in the snow, feeling it seep into her coat at the elbows while a gritty warmth flowed down her throat to her chest.

  At some point, she started to move. Not up, but forward. Crawling on her elbows like a soldier. Someone tried to grab her arm. She screamed and clawed at them. They said something she couldn’t hear and then someone else was there, a low, kind voice that seemed to reach her through the blood and the pain.

  Fingers against her neck, then something heavy. It fell over her face for a moment, then was pulled away. Something was at her throat, a pressure that made the pain there spike. More voices. She blinked the blood out of her eyes, sat up despite the hands on her shoulders, and looked.

  She saw him as though through a telescope the wrong way, stretched out and distant. He seemed very small to her against the sky, his front half slumped forward over the guardrail, unmoving, his hair and hands in the grass.

  He hadn’t even made it over the edge.

  And with that thought came blackness, swift, like a curtain pulled at a window.

  Time will change it…as winter
changes the trees.

  —EMILY BRONTË, WUTHERING HEIGHTS

  What came next was fragmented, as though someone had taken a sledgehammer to each hour, each minute, and it was up to her to make sense of it.

  White walls and white sheets. A bed they could move up and down. Taking more blood after they finally got the blood to stop coming out of her. There was a needle, then more. Talk of surgery. Talk of no surgery. Maybe a different surgery. Asking her to stand up. A blood pressure cuff like a python at her upper arm. Sit down. Pressure, a hissing-snake release. A nurse’s eyes flicking between the numbers. Look here. A face unblinking an inch from hers. At the light. Left. Right. Are you thirsty? Police officers marching in and out. Telling her story, over and over and over again. Her mother crying. Her dad white as the hospital sheets. When she told the officer about the knife, her dad ran his hand over his face and then reached for her, his shaking hand on her shoulder, and it was the first time he’d touched her since she’d come home.

  “That probably saved you,” one officer said, a short, broad man with red hair. “He lost a lot of blood from that wound, from what I saw. You weakened him. Made it harder for him to pull you over the guardrail. Gave you the chance to get away.”

  Eventually, they left her to sleep. Rest, they called it, as though that were possible. As though ghosts could rest. Her mother sat in a chair by her bed. Her father had gone to talk to the doctors yet again.

  “What time is it?” she asked her mother.

  “Four.”

  “In the morning?”

  “Yes.”

  Catherine blinked up at the ceiling. The room was bright. Her mother kept asking if she wanted her to turn off the light. She didn’t. She remembered, as though from a different life, asking her mother not to turn off the light in her bedroom the first night after she came home, not to draw the curtains.

  “Catherine?”

  She turned. Her mother looked sick in the hospital light, lines of exhaustion around her eyes and mouth. Catherine knew she couldn’t look much better, with that massive bandage around her neck and blood still in her hair. A plastic surgeon was coming to look at her tomorrow—today—which she found hard to believe. Like she was getting a nose job. But it was standard practice, they said, for wounds like hers. To cut them open again and stitch them thin and neat and clean.

  “What can I do?” her mother asked.

  “Just stay.”

  Minutes passed. Neither of them talked. Catherine propped herself up in bed, her shoulders and spine hard against the plastic headboard behind her. She didn’t want open air at her back. Her fingers danced around the blanket, seizing it in her fists until her knuckles turned white before letting go. Her mind kept flashing back, sending out half-second bursts of terror that were like little electric shocks. She kept letting out these stupid small cries in her throat that made her mother flinch and reach for her.

  She wanted to explain something to her mother. It was very important: the night of the rape. Why she had called her.

  I wanted to hear your voice. No, not want. Need. Like I was lost in the dark looking for something safe and I knew it had to be your voice and nothing else.

  She opened her mouth, but the words didn’t come. Her eyes were closing, the lids heavy. She felt herself sinking down, her hands fisting in the sheets again, her body tensing for a moment before collapsing into sleep that was broken into a million tiny pieces, each sliver a different nightmare.

  * * *

  —

  She was awakened after a few hours to meet with the plastic surgeon and two more police officers. Tired and shaky, she found herself getting things mixed up. She talked to one officer like he was Bob and had been there and heard herself tell the plastic surgeon examining her wound that Henry hadn’t stabbed her.

  She shook her head to clear it and the plastic surgeon pulled back from her. “Wait, sorry. I stabbed me. Myself. After stabbing him. But I don’t think I did it that well. Stabbing him, I mean.”

  More tests. Thin needles. Pressure cuffs. Look here. Move this. Lie still. She was glass splintering under the weight of all they were doing to her, all that had happened. She could feel her brain struggling to right itself like a newborn foal lunging and trembling on too-long legs, thin as spindles.

  The surgery didn’t take too long, her parents told her. The stitches itched like crazy. She asked when she’d get out of there. Soon, they said. Her mind jumped from subject to subject, her hands always moving like insects across the hospital blankets. Her mother brought her clothes—sweats mostly—but anything at her neck was unbearable. The skin there felt like a rash, like it would be red if she could take off the bandage. But she wasn’t allowed to.

  At some point a different doctor came in and asked her if she wanted to kill herself. She was very proud of her response: “You know, I did try to get away from the edge. Want to see the scar? They’re trying so hard to make it pretty.” Trying to take off the bandage, hands on her, pushing down, her own half-hysterical laughter. She felt like a shallow pool of fizzing, hissing water, a geyser about to erupt, everyone just waiting for it to happen so they could smother her back down again.

  The doctor gave her pills. They blurred time, made her sleep almost whole. She slept for a long time, stirred briefly to gulp down some water, then slept again. When she woke up, she stretched, blinked, ran her hand over the bandage along her neck, felt the panic that came with waking. She took a breath. Another. Her room was empty, but the door was open, a spill of light across the floor. Darkness outside the window. She stood up, walked to the sink by the wall. Her mother had brought her stuff from home, a stiff plastic toiletry bag it took her three tries to open.

  Slowly, she brushed her teeth. The mirror was slightly clouded, as though polished with a thin film of water that had long since dried. She found a hair tie and pulled back her hair, mindful of the left temple that was still crusted with blood from when he’d hit her, a bruise spreading purple down to her eyebrow.

  She turned her head to look at the bandage at her throat: wide and white, about six inches long, it ran from the right side of her neck, below her ear, to almost the center of her throat, secured with a line of Band-Aids like ladder rungs across it. She touched it lightly with one finger.

  Henry.

  Henry.

  Had they buried him yet? Where were his parents? What would happen to Molly?

  Slowly, knowing she wasn’t supposed to, waiting for someone to yell at her from behind, she slid her finger under the Band-Aids one at a time, peeling them off her skin and letting the bandage fall into the sink. There was something underneath, a thin, glossy material that reminded her of cling wrap. She pulled that off too and made herself look.

  The skin around her cut was rash-red and swollen, the wound slightly raised, as long as a finger: a thin purple line secured with a smile of black stitches, slathered in some kind of clear ointment. She could see the knots in the stitches like thin barbed wire.

  She looked at it for what felt like a long time, wondering what she should feel. Upset about the wound or proud she’d been able to save herself. Mad she’d been in that situation at all or thankful she’d survived it. She had a map of roads inside her that ran every which way but they all seemed to stop in the middle, so she hitchhiked across her own mind, looking in whatever direction seemed promising at the moment.

  Finally she walked away, feeling the air move across her neck. She called out into the light of the hallway, to the nurse standing outside her room as though waiting for her.

  “I want to shower,” Catherine said. “Do you need to rebandage it first, or after?”

  The nurse beamed at her.

  * * *

  —

  The girl came into Catherine’s hospital room slowly, as though expecting to be doused in hot oil at any moment.

  It was Sunday morni
ng. Catherine was being discharged that afternoon, but right now she was sitting in her hospital bed, clothed in sweats, her hair clean and almost completely dry now, all the blood scrubbed away by careful hands. A small bag sat to the side of her bed, holding the few things her parents had brought from home. Packed and ready.

  But there was one more thing she wanted to do, before she left.

  The girl didn’t sit. Instead she stood just a few feet inside the room, the door still wide behind her.

  “Hi,” Catherine said.

  “Hey,” the girl said. Her blond hair was down and ridiculously shiny. She had long eyelashes and winged liner and was wearing jeans and a black sweater. Catherine found she missed this: looking at a girl her age and noticing her makeup, what she was wearing. Not quite judgment. Just observation, as natural as a greeting you said without thinking.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”

  “Yeah, well.” The girl shrugged. “I got your message. I heard what happened. I wasn’t going to not show.”

  Her name was Leyna Wollard. She was eighteen. She went to Falls and had a white cat named Sir Coconut and nearly nine hundred Instagram followers and had responded to Catherine’s message with just three words: tell me when.

  Her eyes flicked to Catherine and then away. “They said he tried to kill you and throw you off the cliff.”

  “Actually, he was going to kill me by throwing me off the cliff. With him.”

  Slowly, Leyna nodded. “So you killed him.”

  “The cops killed him. Cop.” She hadn’t seen Bob since it happened. Or Andrew. She was trying not to think about what that might mean. “Is it on the news?”

  Another nod. “Yeah. People keep texting me. People who know I knew him. Asking me stuff. Stuff I can’t answer.” She looked at Catherine again. “Someone was saying he cut your face. But you look okay.”

  “My neck.” She turned her head. After her shower, the nurse had put on that plastic material again and another bandage held in place with Band-Aids. “I wanted to talk to you.”