Patchwork

by Karsten Knight

  Tantalus shakes his head. “Only once.”

  Burning. In my throat. I raise my hand. Touch the sword point protruding from the opposite side. I feel my own warm blood pour down my neck as the blade’s owner rips it free. Then I feel nothing at all.

  I collapse. My last image, through the smoky haze, is a cloaked figure, baptized completely in tar. His howling sun mask is the final thing I see before he raises his blade and rams it down through my eye.

  When I wake from the nightmarish ancient memory, the car is still moving. That’s a good sign, unless Osiris somehow carjacked us. Although, if that were the case, I’d already be dead.

  I blink, dazed by the sudden light. I must have been out for a while, because it’s definitely no longer dawn. In the horrible vision, it hadn’t felt like more than five or ten minutes had past, at most.

  I peel my forehead off the chill glass of the window, and stretch out the crick in my neck. Even though I just relived Ignatius getting a sword through his brain, I’ve woken up feeling renewed. After all, it was my first non-poison-induced sleep in thirty-six hours. My body seems to have cycled out the remnants of the sedative while I slept.

  Next I notice the blizzard.

  The skies had looked volatile when we were leaving Reverie, but this …

  The snow falls in a thick treacherous curtain. Even though the roads are almost completely barren of traffic, Troy has slowed the truck down to a crawl. At least maybe the blanket of white outside will camouflage us from Osiris.

  Maybe.

  Troy looks grim, his hands tight on the steering wheel. At first I think it’s because of the extreme weather conditions, until he says, “I have some bad news, Renata.”

  “What’s wrong? What’s the matter?” I peer around frantically. Are we being followed? Did something bad happen while I let down my guard to sleep? Was the dream of Tantalus’s treachery and Osiris’s summoning more real than I thought?

  “I don’t know how to tell you this, but … you were doing something really strange in your sleep.” He takes a deep breath. “You were snoring. Loudly.”

  I stare blankly at him.

  He shakes his head. “And when I say loudly, I mean you probably set off a few earthquake detectors in upstate New York.”

  “That’s not funny.” I check the clock—3:17pm. I’ve been out for almost six hours. I have to give Troy credit for obediently driving in silence this whole time. Now that’s loyalty. It’s hard to believe that a half a day ago he was confessing about cheating on me with Marcie Graham.

  “It’s not funny at all,” he agrees, with a straight face. “I think the snoring might be a deal breaker for me. Not to mention the drooling.” He wags a finger at me over the gear shift. “Don’t try to pretend like that wet spot on the door is condensation.”

  I let myself laugh, although my heart is still palpitating. “Considering that your girlfriend made you drive into a blizzard with no destination and no explanation, you’re in a curiously good mood.”

  He smiles. “I’m stuck in a snow globe with a beautiful girl on Christmas Eve. What’s not to be thankful for?” He flicks the pine tree air freshener dangling from his rearview mirror. “It even smells like Christmas.”

  This is the Troy that I remember. Always joking. Always smiling. Always elevating my spirits when I was down. With the pressures of college applications and the uncertainty of the future, it was like that Troy, the one I fell for, got buried somewhere along the way. Replaced by someone more stoic, more serious. After that, I feel like our roles slowly reversed. Instead of Troy being the one to distract me from the death of my father, I became the one comforting Troy while he slowly lost faith in his own future.

  Given all that we’ve been through, it’s hard to imagine a time when we’d strictly been friends. Yet we’d spent an entire year together without so much as a kiss before that fateful night on the Nantucket beach.

  There’s something that’s been in the back of my mind since that day we crossed the boundary of friendship, and now seems like the perfect time to bring it up. What does it matter if Troy gets upset or angry about it, when he won’t remember anyway? The only consequences will be in my own head, right?

  “Why did I have to be the first one to kiss you?” I blurt out. “Why didn’t you kiss me?”

  “I hate to break it to you, cupcake, but there have been a lot of kisses in the last few months,” he says. “You’re going to have to narrow it down. At least for today, the score is Troy: 1, Renata: 0.”

  “I’m talking about the original one. On the beach. Why did I have to be the one to catapult us out of the friend zone?”

  The squeak-squeak, squeak-squeak of the windshield wipers against the glass accentuates the awkward pause. “Is this like one of those scenes on a television show,” Troy asks, “where no matter how I answer the question, I’ll dig myself into a deeper hole? Or does the fact that you’re asking mean that I’m already in the hole?”

  I crank up the heat and let the warm air blast me through the vent. “Never mind. It was a stupid question.”

  “What is this about anyway?” Troy lets one hand off the steering wheel and blindly gropes around for mine. “I don’t know how I can possibly make it any more obvious that I am completely and hopelessly into you.”

  I wipe away some of the condensation on my window so I can peer out. A tow truck has come to the aid of a car stuck in a snowy ditch beside the highway. “I’m just having a girl moment. Wondering if there was always a spark there, or if I somehow conned you into falling for me.”

  Troy bursts out laughing. “Conned me into … Are you kidding me?” The look he gives me toes the line between “you’re being ridiculous” and tender patience. “Nata, there was probably a part of me that wanted to jump your bones the day that you started at Daedalus. It might not have been the cinematic ‘new girl walking into first period with the wind blowing through her hair’ moment, but it was at least a ‘damn, look at the new girl, I should ask her out for tacos’ moment. I’m glad we waited. I’m glad we had a friendship already in place. So you can conjecture all you want about who kissed who, but even if you hadn’t been the first one to lean in, I would have eventually run out of willpower and kissed you myself. Satisfied?”

  “A little,” I grumble, but he’s broken my will. Still, the image of him with Marcie is fresh in mind, whether I caused it or not.

  “I still maintain that we met halfway,” he says. “Lady in the Tramp style, minus the spaghetti. 50/50.”

  “It was 90/10 at best,” I say. “But I still love you.”

  There it is again, that elusive L word that keeps slipping out of one of us. It’s like a firefly that we never can cup in our palms for long.

  “I love you, too,” Troy replies. “And let’s compromise on 70/30.”

  The surface of my skin flushes, and it has nothing to do with the heat pouring out of the air vents.

  Troy starts cracking up, dispelling any tension. “First the impulsive getaway. Then a high-maintenance interrogation. Now the L word. Did we just burn through three different relationship steps in a few hours?”

  Just trying to catch you up on the next five months that you missed. I check my phone. “No missed calls?” Even with all our extended family rolling in, Mom surely must have noticed our disappearance by now.

  “Don’t worry, I handled your Mom when she called. I told her we were out doing last-minute Christmas shopping and that we’d be home late. That doesn’t have to be a lie, you know,” Troy adds hopefully. “If we turn around now, we could make it back before midnight.”

  But there’s no turning back now.

  The snowstorm outside intensifies. Some reckless daredevils fly past us. If we stay on the highway any longer, the other motorists could prove every bit as deadly as Osiris. To Troy’s immediate relief, I give him the go-ahead to pull off at the next exit. We’re deep into upstate New York by now, several hundred miles from home. I hope that the random getaway and the ongoing s
nowstorm are enough to throw Osiris off our scent.

  Eventually the boring, snow-covered plains bring us to a quaint steel bridge. A green sign, powdered white, welcomes us to Algonquin Falls. On the other side of the canal, we emerge into a cozy downtown, lined with brick shops and restaurants. I’ve seen old mill towns like this before.

  Troy pulls into a spot across from a large park that stretches along the lake. There’s a towering fir tree in the middle of the park, wrapped in a thousand lights of blue, red, and gold. A children’s choir stands on a platform beneath it, where a large throng of townspeople have gathered to watch.

  I can hear the singing even before I open my door.

  Together, Troy and I lean against the truck and listen as the choir proceeds through “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.” The crowd sings along with them. I’ve always found the door-to-door carolers in our neighborhood a little hokey, but this is one of the most soothing moments I’ve experienced since this ordeal began aboard the Harbor Ghost.

  Troy says out of the corner of his mouth, “You know in The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, when the Grinch comes down from his mountain and the Whos in Whoville are all singing? That’s what I feel like I’ve stumbled into.” I start to laugh, but Troy tugs on my arm. “Come on, I think I see a hot chocolate machine out on the quad.”

  I follow initially, but when we hit the edge of the field, I slow down. Troy waits to see what my holdup is.

  I can’t do this. Even so far from home, Osiris could be out there lurking. I can’t stand around a group of innocent men, women, and especially children, just to selfishly distract myself from the sorry state of my life. The only noble thing to do is to take Troy and get as far away from these people as we can until we wait out the storm.

  I’m starting to even wonder if I was being greedy taking Troy along. Maybe I’m the one who should disappear off the map. Maybe he’d be safer on his own.

  Troy waves a hand in front of my face. “Hey, space cadet—are we going to join the rest of Whoville?”

  “I can’t go in there,” I whisper.

  “They won’t bite.” Troy glances over his shoulder. “Unless I’ve misread the situation and these people are all zombies. Honestly, I don’t think undead choirs are capable of singing in tune like that.”

  “Let’s go some place. Just the two of us.” Maybe if I appeal to his desire to be alone with me, he won’t ask questions.

  We wander away from Main Street, off into a residential neighborhood. The singing follows us until even that’s lost beneath the blustery sigh of the wind.

  I don’t know what I’m looking for until I see it. It’s a big tree house, an impressive one in the yard of one of the cookie-cutter homes. As if Troy already didn’t think I’d completely lost it, he’s forced to follow me as I set a course through the snowdrifts. “So you don’t want to sing with the children back in the square,” he says, “but you do want to trespass in their tree houses?”

  At the base of the tree, I tug on one of the rungs nailed into the trunk to test it out. “I told you I wanted to go someplace no one would find us,” I say. “And a random tree house in a random backyard of a random home in the Finger Lakes region of New York is about as good as it gets.”

  “I’m sure that a secluded IHOP would have been just as effective, and it would have had pancakes too.” He peers up at the structure “… which I’m guessing this tree fort does not.”

  I run my finger along an insulated wire stapled to the trunk. “You never know. Maybe this connects to a pancake griddle.” I start to climb the wooden rungs, but pause partway to the top and glance down. “No looking up my skirt,” I scold Troy, even though I’m wearing jeans.

  “If only your Levi’s weren’t tucked into your boots.”

  There’s scarcely room to stand inside the tree house, at least for Troy—with thicker shoes his hair would brush the rafters. A couple of beanbag chairs rest against one wall. From the amount of silver tape patching them up, I’d say the local squirrels have been confusing them for an acorn buffet.

  Whoever engineered the tree house actually built a makeshift electrical outlet into the wall. Troy kneels and holds up the small appliance beside it. “A space heater in a plywood tree house? I hope the Whoville Fire Department has a good response time.” He shrugs and plugs it in anyway.

  I walk over to the solitary window and peer out. The blizzard has finally downgraded to a flurry. I reach out with my mind, half-expecting to feel Osiris out there, anywhere. All I feel is cold.

  What am I really doing here? I wonder. This isn’t some twisted version of Cinderella. We don’t survive until midnight and suddenly the madness stops. It ends when either I die, or Osiris dies. But with these murders perpetually happening in reality, and Patchwork endlessly collapsing, what I need is time. Time to think, time to plan.

  The opening chord of a jazz piano song twinkles into the upper register somewhere behind me. I spin around. Troy places his iPhone down on the warped nightstand and holds his hand out to me.

  “You’re serious?” I say.

  “Don’t make me use the ‘May I have this dance?’ line.”

  I glide over and delicately enlace my fingers on the back of his neck. I can spend the next few hours staring out the window, waiting to be attacked in the blizzard, or I can enjoy the company of my boyfriend.

  Even if it’s for the last time.

  The trumpet and trombone sections play lazily, before I hear the haunting voice of Billie Holliday singing “The Very Thought of You,” one of my favorite songs.

  We rock back and forth in a languid circle to the music. I cock my head to the side. “Troy Bridges, do you keep a slow dance playlist just in case you have the opportunity to seduce a girl in a snowy tree house?”

  Troy does the close-lipped laugh I’ve come to love. “This playlist is actually titled Make-Out Mix #3.”

  “Dare I ask what happened to Make-Out Mixes #1 and 2?” I know it’s probably too soon to venture into infidelity jokes, but he doesn’t know that.

  “Clearly the first two were unsuccessful during my previous romantic tree house encounters.” He takes one of my hands from around his neck and holds it out as he picks up the tempo of our dancing.

  As the dance grows more intimate, I press my temple against his chin. “That clause you gave me this morning about not asking questions,” Troy says into my hair. “There’s a time limitation on it that’s quickly running out.”

  “I know,” I whisper and pull him closer until my face rests flat against his collarbone. “I’ll tell you everything … after this song.” I close my eyes and listen to his heartbeat through his hooded sweatshirt.

  Outside, I hear the sound of snow crunching.

  I lift my face from Troy’s shoulder.

  Another crunch in the snow below. The wind picks up and roars through the opening over the ladder.

  I spin Troy around and shove him to the far side of the tree house.

  The music continues, and Troy asks what’s wrong, but all I can hear is myself repeating over and over again for him to stay back, stay back, stay alive. With my eyes never leaving the tree house entrance, I move stealthily across the wooden floor. I yank the space heater’s cord from the wall and pick up the unit with both hands.

  I will drop this on your head, and then we’ll see who’s immortal, I silently threaten Osiris. Go ahead. Climb up the ladder. See how it feels when a forty-pound space heater smashes into that awful little mask of yours. See if you feel anything when it snaps your neck and sends your cloaked, cowardly body falling to the snow.

  The bloodlust rises in me. If Osiris can find me here, he can find me anywhere. Nowhere is safe. Nowhere is safe. Nowhere.

  I won’t stop until I christen the snow with his blood.

  At the edge of the platform, I pause. I may only get one shot at surprising him. I cautiously lean out.

  There’s no one on the ladder. There’s no one in the snow at the base of the tree. There’s no more crunch
of fresh boot prints.

  I sigh. “False alarm,” I apologize. “You must think I’m totally—”

  There’s a choked-out sound behind me.

  A wet sound, like someone’s wringing a soggy dishtowel.

  When I turn around, Troy wobbles on his feet. The tip of a long blade protrudes from his heart. The blood pumps through his sweatshirt.

  Osiris stands behind him, holding the handle of the blade. His howling mask peers hollowly at me over Troy’s shoulder.

  My mouth contorts into a shape that should be impossible. I’m frozen, trapped in a box with four walls, where one wall is lunging for Osiris,

  and one wall is saving Troy,

  and one wall is knowing that my boyfriend is already gone,

  and the other is running, because staying alive is the only way to really bring him back.

  Osiris twists the blade and a high-pitched whine whistles out of Troy’s mouth. Then his eyes grow distant, like they’re falling down a well, like they’re falling into the oblivion around Patchwork, like they’re falling away from me. The energy leaks out of him.

  Before his legs can buckle under his weight, Osiris seizes him by the hoodie and rips him backward. Troy flies back into the knee-high window. His body folds through it and now he really falls, out into the night. A heavy crunch in the snow follows.

  My heart is a car engine that won’t start. I’ve had to witness my friends die before, but this is the first time I’ve seen Troy die firsthand, I mean really die, right in front of me. As catastrophic as the other death scenarios had been, this one is far more personal. The tree house spins around me.

  Now Osiris and I are alone, face to face. Osiris hasn’t made any move to come for me, but he crouches low. He tosses the long knife back and forth between his gloved hands. With Troy dead, I’m caged between rationally fleeing out of the tree house until I can exit to Patchwork or irrationally lunging for the man who murdered my boyfriend. If I don’t run soon, Osiris will plant that knife in my heart, too.