Deeper into Darkness

by Maria Ann Green

I slow down, dragging my cold toes against the shag of the carpet, trying to push down the sinking feeling and push off what I fear is inevitable. I don’t want to see an empty backyard. I don’t want to realize he left again.

  But when I look up, through the glass doors, to the patio…instead of empty space I see his solid frame from behind. And even from the back he looks pensive, distracted. I don’t care, I’ll take him in any form right now.

  I just want him here.

  Tenderly opening the door, slowly slowly slowly, I cringe as the rubber of the seal squeaks. Aidan’s shoulders tense just a little, but he still turns around to face me.

  In the tension on his face, in the hardness of his eyes—normally a pool, but only a puddle of depth right now—in the flexing of his jaw and the clenching of his fists, I can see he’s still upset. But there’s also a gentleness to it, somehow, a baseline of calm throughout. He’s somewhere in the middle, bobbing in a sea of upset. I’ll take it.

  I watch his eyes roam over my face, over the discoloration I feel so much more this morning than I did last night. I can’t imagine how I look, and I avoided the mirror for a reason. But he doesn’t ask how I feel, he doesn’t say anything about it.

  “Hold that thought,” I say, raising my finger to illustrate what I’ve already said, and I turn on my heel. I don’t close the door behind me in my quick change of pace, but I’m already to the kitchen counter when I realize.

  After a couple minutes I return to the backyard, to Aidan, trying to hold a smile on my shaking lips. It’s not very big, and I worry it looks worse than a blank face, but I’m trying. I’m doing my best, and I think he is too when he mirrors the same hesitant look back. I hand him a steaming mug of coffee, just the way he likes it, and he smells it before taking a long sip.

  It seems to shake something lose in him, melting a bit of the frost in the air around us. My smile widens just a fraction, feeling a little more genuine. I take my now-free hand and wrap it around my own mug, holding onto it with both hands now, letting it steal some of my own worry.

  We can get through this, together.

  Aidan points to the chairs, and I nod. He leads the way, and I so badly want to sit in his lap instead of in my own cold chair. But I don’t. I can’t chance pushing the envelope too far, too fast.

  Another quiet moment goes by, and a thousand words flash through my mind at once. It feels like this standoff has already lasted forever. The silence is roaring, screaming at me to just say something. Anything. The conversation can’t happen, we can’t get to the other side, until it starts.

  I open my mouth, turning to him, and watch as Aidan opens his as well. We both reseal our lips, simultaneously, preferring the other to start, and ending back where we were before. Stalemate.

  “Are you scared of me? Now that you know who I’ve killed before, I mean, who I killed and then ran from, with a new name?” I finally let the words sneak from my mouth in a whisper. I almost hope he doesn’t hear me, wishing we could skip over the hard part but knowing we can’t.

  Looking into my cup, I wait for the answer.

  It comes in a rush of laughter from Aidan, thick and contagious. He shakes his head, and when it’s quiet again, after he settles, he wipes moisture from his lashes.

  “So, that’s a no.”

  “You should know me better than that,” he says. And he’s right, I should. But the last forty-eight hours have thrown me, and I barely know myself. “Neither of us ever has to be scared of the other.” He stresses the word, the most important one, with a flicker in his eyes and a deeper tone. “We’re in this together, whatever that entails. Forever.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “Do you?” he asks.

  My head snaps back up, after a brief consultation of the mystic powers of my caffeine, to look into his eyes, and I see hope, stymied hope.

  “Of course I do. I know that. The only thing I’ve ever questioned, the only thing I haven’t always been sure of, is myself. But us? I’ve never questioned us, never questioned you.”

  The words come out stronger than I expected. They ring into the gray sky, past the trees, and into whatever lies beyond. I knew they were true; I knew I believed them. But I didn’t know the strength throbbing inside them. They push us both forward, giving life to the connection between our hearts that I’d previously worried might break.

  “All in,” he says.

  “Completely.”

  “Last night.” I cringe, but I try to hide it. I know he notices, because there’s the slightest pause, but he pushes through to what I hope is better. “I was thinking. And, you know what, of course there are things that go unshared, between anyone. No one is one-hundred-percent transparent of every thought, every experience. Otherwise it would be like living two lives—or two people living the same life. Or,” he pauses, starting to confuse himself. “Well, you know what I mean.”

  I can see Aidan getting lost inside his head, in the words he’s trying to piece together, so I step in. “Exactly. It’s impossible unless we could live in each other, reach each other’s minds and memories.”

  “Yeah. And even if we would, we can’t.” I’m glad we can’t; I’d never wish that. But I don’t say it. “But, we do need to do better. We can’t know it all, but we need to share more. We need to stop keeping secrets.”

  My mouth gets tighter, my lips pressing harder together until I can feel all the blood gone from them. My hands press down until my knuckles hurt and I have to peel my fingers free from my cup.

  He’s right.

  So I open my mouth, taking a deep breath, preparing myself to let the last bits free.

  “What is it?” Aidan interrupts before I get a word out.

  Closing my eyes, I sigh, annoyed with being interrupted, feeling the need to make him wait. But then I tell him, keeping my eyes closed the whole time. I can’t look at his face, don’t want to see the hurt or the angry accusations there. I share about everything from last night, all about it—about kissing strangers, and who knows what else with them, about the attack, about the surely dead monster, about my panic, about the police. I let it all out, placing it at his feet in tribute and hoping for acceptance.

  When I open my eyes, he’s still there. “Is that all?” Aidan asks, reaching for my hand. I take it, intertwining our fingers, and start to nod. But then I stop myself.

  “Well,” I remember one last thing.

  “Shit,” he mumbles.

  “No. Nothing else I did. No secrets.”

  “Then what?”

  “Hold on,” I say, dropping his hand. I see the momentary hurt flash in Aidan’s eyes, but he covers it up quickly. “I’ll be right back.” Heading into the bedroom, I grab what I need and rush back. It feels colder outside when I get back to him. “I almost forgot.”

  Giving my phone to Aidan, I blow out a frustrated breath. One thing after another.

  “Jason?” he asks.

  “Read it.” The email.

  “What’s so bad? Why does it have you so pale, really—” and then he stops. “No.”

  “Yeah. The new email address.” Then I run out of words, not sure what else to say because nothing sounds good, nothing gets us out of what’s happening, what’s falling down, around us. “I read it last night,” I finally say. “But with everything else that happened afterward…”

  “Fuck,” Aidan says, standing up.

  He reaches down and grabs my hand then pulls me inside after him. He walks us to his computer so we can read it all again on a bigger screen, looking for something new to save us. Looking for something I’m sure isn’t there.

  My eyes bulge.

  A new email comes in while we’re still examining the last.

  Aidan’s muscles coil in on themselves, tightening like a screw digging in too far.

  Then I read it out loud, because I’m not sure Aidan can calm down enough to see the words on the screen.

  From: Jason Moore

  To: Aidan Sheppard

  Sub
ject: You need to know

  Aid,

  I miss you. And even though I don’t want to believe it, I…I think you’re both alive.

  I don’t want to believe it. I mean I do, of course, but after everything this is too much. After thinking you were dead, after going through the grief, the depression, I’m finally onto anger now. I can’t believe you, either of you, would do this to me. To everyone.

  If my suspicious are true, you’re not the same person I’ve known all these years. And I don’t know when that changed. It’s horrible, what you’ve done. If you’ve done it. And I’m really still hoping it’s wrong. But I don’t know.

  To be honest, I’m afraid for it to be true, because then I don’t know what else could be lies. So many fears are swirling around my head, and I can’t stop thinking about it all, about you. Amelia practically had to carry me upstairs last night, I got so drunk trying to drown out the what-ifs. What if you’re alive? What if you’re running from someone, from something? What if I could have helped and missed something? What if it’s worse?

  I can’t take it. And honestly, if you’re reading this, if you’re alive—don’t come home. If you’re not dead I never want to speak to you, to either of you, again.

  Cheers for the last time,

  Jase

  P.S. It’s important you read what’s below.

  I pause. Aidan’s looking at the wall, or maybe through it. His eyes are unfocused and glassy. I think I see him letting go, and it absolutely smashes my heart. But I know I have to continue; I have a feeling that the rest of the message, whatever’s below Jason’s ranting, is more devastating.

  FWD:

  From: Detective Harwell

  To: Jason Moore

  Subject: You should know

  I know you don’t want to hear it, but it’s official. Every single missing person is accounted for. There isn’t a single body unidentified. And Aidan and Beatrice aren’t among them—dead or alive.

  Isn’t that a bit suspicious?

  I need to speak to you again—about the boat, about a gift you gave Aidan, and a few other concerning things. Come to the station tomorrow at 1 PM, and bring your other car. This isn’t an option.

  Thanks,

  Harwell

  A ping rings throughout the room just seconds after I finish reading the forwarded email. I don’t want Aidan to open the new one. I can see the sender, the subject, and I don’t want to acknowledge it. I want to bury my head in the sand. I want to ignore everything.

  But I don’t say any of this, and then it’s too late, because he’s clicking on it.

  From: Jason Moore

  To: Aidan Sheppard

  Subject:

  I hope you read all the way to the bottom.

  What a great invention, the read receipt.

  “Fuck,” Aidan says. “Fuuuuuuuuck.”

  He knows.

  They both know.

  ***

  “Hurry,” I say, throwing a pile of underwear at Aidan.

  It should be funny, in another situation it might be, my panties landing smack in the middle of Aidan’s face, one hanging from his Ethan beard. While looking at his scruff, as he shoves everything into the duffle, I move my hands to my short hair. Although it’s different than it was as Bee, I should probably change it again now.

  Everything is spinning, whirling around me in a storm of alarm. There’s background noise in my ears that I’m pretty sure I’m imagining, but it won’t go away. So I put it behind everything else until it’s a soft buzz under the constant words falling from Aidan’s mouth in squished-together syllables, mumbled and half-chewed.

  “We have to ditch everything,” he says.

  I nod.

  We pack.

  “Again,” he says.

  I nod.

  We pack.

  “We have to start over,” he says.

  I nod.

  We pack like Eva and Harwell are chasing us, as fast as we can. Because honestly, they pretty much are. And we continue like this until we have all the essentials, everything identifiable, until we’re ready to run. Again. I go through the list as Aidan double-checks that it’s all there. New phones? Packed. Anything with DNA on it—like our brushes, our clothes—packed.

  The house is cleaned, our emails are all shut down. Every one of them. Anything electronic unplugged. Everything we can think of. Samantha and Ethan are ashes now, the papers all burned in the backyard.

  “This time—this time we’ll do it better. No mistakes.”

  “Everything new, and nothing left behind,” he adds.

  We load all of our belongings, though we’ll have to get a new car along the way—pay cash, from an individual, not a dealer. We have to be smarter this time.

  “Ready?” Aidan asks once it’s all in the trunk and the back seat, pressing into both of our chairs—like the anxiety pressing into my chest.

  “As ready as we can be.”

  He starts the car, presses onto the brake, but then Aidan pauses before putting the car into reverse. “Where should we go?”

  “I hadn’t thought that far ahead,” I admit. “Does it matter?”

  Shaking his head, Aidan shrugs. “I guess not.”

  And then we’re on the road, to somewhere new, heading south. Somewhere far from Maine and Eva’s rotting body, probably not buried deep enough. Far from the cruise ship and the bodies we didn’t blend enough into. Far from here and a traceable IP address, our wi-fi, our technology, and every mistake we’ve let slip through our fingers so far.

  Far away, and right now.

  I flick on the radio, but I don’t have the stomach for music. I can’t sink into it like I normally would, I can’t fly away on lyrics and rhythms. The best I can stomach is the news turned low.

  Then we’re moving, heading down the highway, my socked feet on the dash like Aidan hates. He’s always warning me that I’ll break my legs if we get into an accident that way. But he doesn’t say anything about it, he doesn’t even notice.

  There is something he does notice as we drive, something I latch onto as well.

  “In the early morning hours a still unidentified man was brought to the hospital after an apparent femme fatal attack last night. There aren’t many details yet, as the police report it’s an active investigation, but hopefully more to come. Make sure you stay safe, men of the city.”

  I freeze, my eyes on the little green pixels of the radio. But I do see Aidan’s eyes slide over to me before returning to the windshield. He turns it down as a speed limit sign passes by, letting him know he can hit the pedal harder. The wind whistles through the window, despite it being closed, and drowns out the next news story.

  “We can’t stop,” he says to the painted lines on the road.

  “I know.”

  “Now more than ever, we need to get the fuck out of here.”

  “I know,” I say again.

  My eyes are unfocused, and all I see are shapes passing the windows. Colors whiz by as Aidan doubles his speed. I don’t see anything, but I can feel the rush in the air, the frenzied need to move, to get away.

  “Slow down,” I mutter.

  He doesn’t answer, but he complies. We can’t afford to be pulled over, for any reason, right now.

  I try listening to the words uttered about weather and current events, occasionally counting my own breaths. He reaches over, leaving only one hand on the wheel, and grabs my hand. It’s too tight, but I don’t protest. I let Aidan hold onto me like the lifeline he is for me too.

  It gets warmer the farther we drive; every couple hours, I take off a layer of clothing until I can’t strip anymore without risking unwanted attention.

  And we are trying to blend in.

  “Hi ho, hi ho, down to the south we go,” Aidan sings as he drives, annoying me.

  We decided on somewhere warm, somewhere blistering. Somewhere completely unlike where we’ve been so far. Somewhere without snow that reminds us Eva, or constant rain to bring thoughts of Parker to
mind, or mountains that only leave thoughts of the monster bleeding into the deep darkness.

  So the only option left was south.

  Arizona? Texas? Nevada?—Aidan asked me.

  I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t care—I answered, not too helpfully.

  All I could give him was—something different. Somewhere new.

  In the end we decide on New Mexico, for now. Texas isn’t out of the question either, though. One day at a time, that’s what Aidan keeps reminding me. As some new thought starts niggling at me, poking me over and over until I turn to face it head on with panic, Aidan continues to reassure me with his mantra.

  “That’s all we can do,” he keeps saying. “Take it one day at a time, and we’ll be fine.”

  I rolled my eyes the first ten times, then sighed for the next few, but now I just agree. If it makes him feel better, then there’s no use in taking that brief security away from him.

  All the gas stations have started to blend together, the fast food too. We haven’t been sitting very long, and I haven’t been stretching enough, but we’re moving, and that feels right.

  “Listen to this one,” I say to Aidan now, my phone in my hands. My new phone—a burner, god that sounds stupid. But that’s what it is. Pay as you go, bought with cash, the sketchiest of all clichés. And I’ve been glued to this new phone the last few hours, after I realized I could search for headlines, for news relating to us and the wake of bodies we’re running from.

  I’ve looked for updates on Eva.

  I’ve read Aidan everything I could find about the cruise ship “accident” and continuing investigation.

  He drives and I read to him, his face looking grimmer with every word I let tumble out.

  He’s heard about the man attacked and left for dead. There’s only mention of the woman attacking him, not of how he started it, dragging me into the darkest part of the night he could find. There wouldn’t be, though, would there?