The Last Witness

by Claire McFall

  “It is,” he disagreed. “Where’s my sweater?”

  Wordlessly, I handed it to him, then watched as he sat up and started wriggling his way inside it, his whole body shivering as it was momentarily exposed to the air.

  “Urgh.” He clutched his head, then flopped back down to the air mattress.

  “What is it?”

  “Dizzy,” he said, one hand still stretched across his forehead.

  “You’re sick,” I said. For some reason, I had to say it out loud.

  “I’m not,” Dougie told me. “I’m fine.” But even as he spoke, he was trying to retreat farther into the heat of his sleeping bag.

  “How’s your ankle?”

  Dougie made a speculative face, and I heard quiet rustling beside me as he experimented with his foot. After half a second, he stopped abruptly and his expression twisted.

  “Sore,” he admitted.

  “Let me see it,” I pressed.

  “In a minute,” Dougie said, pulling his covers up higher and looking at me defensively. He shivered again.

  I studied him closely. As the light slowly brightened, his skin was looking worse and worse. He was pale, slightly jaundiced. After another convulsive shudder, he swallowed and wrinkled his nose.

  “You all right?”

  He didn’t answer, but a moment later he was in motion. Despite having balked before at the idea of emerging from his cocoon, now he was fighting his way free, thrashing and pulling at the sleeping bag, rocketing upright, regardless of his damaged ankle. I watched, confused, as he tore out of the tent. Then just seconds later, I heard the sounds of retching and coughing. He was throwing up.

  I swallowed back my own nausea—nothing to do with Dougie’s illness—and followed him outside. I grabbed a bottle of water from the now-iceless cooler before I rounded the tent to where he was hunkered over in the grass.

  “Thanks,” he gasped as I twisted the top off and handed him the bottle. He took a deep swig, then spat a mouthful of water down on top of the contents of his stomach. “I’m fine,” he promised. “You don’t have to watch me.”

  The smell of his vomit was bitter and acidic, but I didn’t leave him. If he was running a fever, he might pass out. Instead, I waited while he took slow, measured sips of water, breathing shallowly and evenly, trying not to chuck it back up. Eventually he felt well enough to move, and I helped him to his feet, shoving my shoulder under his arm as a crutch as he limped back toward the blackened circle that was our firepit.

  Emma still hadn’t emerged. Through the hanging tent flap, I could just make out her huddled form. I wasn’t sure whether to wake her or not, unsure what kind of state she would be in. She’d been hysterical the night before, right up until the meds had kicked in.

  “Do you feel like eating anything?” I asked Dougie as he flopped into one of the chairs. He shook his head, looking green. Tugging the collar of his sweater up around his neck, he slumped down and continued to take tentative mouthfuls from the bottle of water.

  Just for something to do, I pulled out a rice cracker and started to nibble on the end. I wasn’t really hungry though, and before I’d eaten half of it, I threw it down into the firepit, thinking it’d be burned by the fire or eaten by a scavenging bird if we’d lit our last flame on the beach.

  “Do you think we should take Emma with us?” Dougie asked, pulling me out of my reverie.

  I blinked, stared at him as I considered his words.

  “We can’t leave her here on her own,” I said. Then I took a deep breath. “Are you going to be able to make it out of here?”

  “Yes.” Dougie responded at once, his tone decisive, his face set. I kept my skepticism firmly off my face. “As soon as Emma’s up. That’s when we’ll go.” He was looking at the waves as he said this, and I couldn’t help the feeling that he was trying to convince himself, not me.

  Emma didn’t show any sign of rising, and after watching Dougie spend twenty minutes almost getting a crick in his neck turning around every three seconds to stare at her, I took pity on him, curled myself out of my chair, and headed for the tent.

  “Emma,” I called. “Emma, are you awake?”

  She didn’t respond, but I didn’t believe she was still sleeping. She was too motionless, her position in the sleeping bag too tense. Just peeking out above the deep blue of the bag, her shoulders were hunched up, hiding her neck from view. I knelt down on the air mattress beside her. The transfer of air shifted her body, but she still didn’t move a muscle.

  “Emma,” I said again. I laid a hand on her shoulder. She twitched under my touch, lifted her shoulders even higher. “I know you’re awake.”

  She sighed and twisted around in slow motion. Her eyes gazed at me, huge glassy orbs. I knew she was thinking about yesterday, about Darren, but I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know whether to bring it up, to ask her about it. Would she just repeat her crazy story about the monster that lived under the waves?

  I tried to smile.

  “Come on, we’re going to get out of here. We’ll hike up to the main road, find a house or flag down a car. You need to get changed, grab something to eat. Then we’ll go.”

  Emma had gone to sleep in last night’s clothes, but I hoped something as routine as getting dressed would help snap her back to reality. She probably wouldn’t eat, but I thought I should suggest it. For some reason I felt like the adult, even though I was the youngest. But with Dougie ill and Emma gone la-la, I was somehow in charge. I didn’t like it, but there wasn’t much choice.

  Emma changed her clothes in slow motion, obediently putting on whatever I held out to her. She was like a zombie, her face completely inanimate. We didn’t speak. When she was fully dressed, I gestured that she should move outside and she did so, shuffling her feet like a ninety-year-old.

  Dougie wasn’t on the beach.

  For a moment, my heart froze and I was gripped by sudden panic, but then I heard coughing, spluttering. He was back in the long grass, hunched over, throwing up the water he’d drunk. Between him and the chair he’d been sitting in was a series of mismatched footprints, the tracks on the left dragging where he’d limped along. He was lopsided even as he vomited, holding his injured ankle gingerly just above the ground.

  I didn’t ask if he was okay when he came back. He clearly wasn’t. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but his color was even worse than before. His skin was sallow, his lips white where he had them pressed together. Wincing at every step, he slowly closed the distance between us.

  “Are you ready to go?” he asked in a dull voice.

  Surely he didn’t think he could manage to hike up to the road? It was at least two miles. It would have been an ordeal just taking into account his sprained ankle. With him retching and burning up with a fever, it would be torturous.

  “Dougie, I don’t think—”

  “I’m going,” he snapped, obviously anticipating what I was going to say.

  I didn’t want to argue with him. Instead, I watched silently as he stuffed several water bottles and a giant bag of potato chips into a backpack. Then he slung the straps over his shoulders. He already had his shoes back on, although the left was unlaced. It was obviously too painful to tighten.

  “Do you have your phone?” he said, addressing Emma for the first time.

  She hadn’t seemed bothered by being ignored. She’d just stood motionless, face blank, waiting.

  She blinked at the question. Then she frowned ever so slightly, as if she didn’t understand.

  “Your phone,” Dougie repeated impatiently. “Do you have it?”

  Emma made a small movement that might have been a shrug. Then she looked away, toward the cove.

  “I’ll check in the tent,” I offered, because I could see Dougie was getting ready to explode at Emma, and I wasn’t sure there would be any point. She seemed completely emp
ty, as though nobody was home behind those vacant blue eyes. It was hard to be worried for her, though, when I was so concerned about Dougie. And Martin. And Darren.

  Part of me was clinging desperately to the idea that Martin had just gone home. I wasn’t so sure about Darren. The suspicion that he was floating in the water refused to go away. I should have checked the cove more thoroughly. I knew that, but Emma had been so out of control that it’d been hard to even get close to the churning sea. And her vehement pleas that I not go in the water had scared me enough that I’d only dared search from the shore, the rocks.

  I should have gone in; I really should have. That guilt was hard to deal with on top of everything else. I tried to push it down, out of sight. It nagged at me, though, making my stomach churn.

  I found Emma’s phone easily. It sat on top of a pile of her clothes, pink, metallic cover bright in the dull gray of the tent. I pressed the buttons, hoping to see the screen light up. It didn’t. I repressed a sigh. I supposed it wasn’t surprising. We’d been at the beach several days, and Emma liked to keep her phone on, using it as an MP3 player and a camera. All the apps she ran ate up battery life, and the handset was dead.

  “Emma’s phone’s no good,” I said as I returned to Dougie and Emma. They didn’t seem to have moved an inch, although Dougie looked like it was costing him a lot of effort to stay standing. “Dead.”

  He made an agitated noise under his breath.

  “Guess we just walk until we find someone, then,” he said. He shifted on the sand, adjusting his weight. “Come on, I want to get started.”

  He started the slow, slow trudge toward the parking lot. “Emma.” I tugged gently on her elbow. “Emma, we’re going.”

  It was as if she hadn’t heard me, though I was standing right next to her. I pulled harder on her arm, and she let me drag her along. We shambled forward in tandem for several steps; then she stopped dead and refused to move, no matter how hard I hauled at her. I turned and stared at her.

  “What?”

  “I’m not leaving.”

  “Sorry?” I hadn’t misheard her; I just couldn’t believe what she was saying.

  “I’m not leaving. Not without Darren.”

  I expected her to burst into tears, but her pale face was calm and composed. Her jaw was set in determination.

  “Emma, that’s why we’re going. So we can get help for him. We need to get help.”

  But she shook her head at me, absolutely resolute.

  Eighteen

  It was going to be impossible for me to drag Emma and support Dougie on the climb up the hill. I stood between the two of them, helpless.

  “Emma, please—” I said, tightening my grip on her arm.

  But her face darkened. Taking a step back, she wrenched her arm free with surprising strength.

  “No,” she said, the loudest I’d heard her raise her voice since she stopped screaming.

  “Emma, Darren isn’t here!” I hissed.

  “I don’t care.” She glared at me, eyes finally full of life. “I’m not leaving without Darren.”

  “But—”

  “NO!”

  And before I could stop her, she turned and ran back down the beach. I saw her disappear into the tent. Angry, worried, and feeling completely helpless, I made to follow her.

  “Leave her,” Dougie said over my shoulder.

  Leave her? Here, by herself? I turned to stare at Dougie, only to see he’d dropped down to rest on the low stone wall. My immediate fears over Emma vanished as I took in the nauseated expression on his face, the way he was swaying slightly, mirroring the slow, undulating movement of the waves.

  “Dougie, are you sure about trying this?” I asked.

  He ignored my question, hoisted himself onto his one good foot.

  “Look, we need to get help. That’s it.”

  There wasn’t much to say to that.

  I held my hand out in case Dougie wanted me to support him, but he seemed to want to travel under his own steam. He hobbled awkwardly across the uneven packed dirt of the parking lot. I followed a half step behind, walking slower than a funeral march, watching his every movement, waiting for the inevitable.

  It didn’t take very long. One moment Dougie was scuffling determinedly along, shoulders rolling with each uneven step; the next he was leaning ominously. I caught him before he toppled, but only just.

  “Are you all right?” I gasped, hanging on to his sweater and trying to lower him gently to the ground. He was too heavy for me to hold up. “Did you trip?”

  “No,” Dougie mumbled. “Dizzy.” He groaned. I released him, sure he was going to throw up again. He didn’t, but rolled over and lay with his face inches from the mud, each breath sending up a little puff of dust that coated his sweat-covered skin. I hovered over him as he moaned and convulsed periodically. Nothing came out of his mouth, though. He must have already emptied his stomach. “Christ,” I heard him say.

  We stayed like that for a full minute, then another. Dougie stopped heaving, but he didn’t try to get up. Eventually I crouched down and tentatively rubbed his back.

  “Dougie, this is stupid. You can’t possibly go anywhere like this.” I said it as gently as possible, acutely aware of how he would react. He didn’t disappoint me.

  “No!” he growled. “We’ve got to get help. We’ve got to let someone know. Help me up!”

  I did as he asked, but as soon as he was upright, he staggered as if he were blind drunk, and I had to move quickly to support him, stuffing my shoulder under his arm and bracing him with a hand on his chest.

  “Dammit!” he cried.

  “Let’s go back to camp,” I suggested. “Just for now.” I had to add that quickly, because Dougie immediately opened his mouth to argue.

  But after a moment he nodded, and I started to slowly guide him back down the hill. I wanted to lead him to the tent but he resisted, pulling me toward the chairs.

  “I like the fresh air,” he said, even though he was shivering again. I dropped him down into a seat, got one of the water bottles out of the bag, and prepared to do battle. He was in no shape to go anywhere. I knew it, and he knew it. I also knew that probably wouldn’t stop him. There was only one way to keep him here. “Look,” I said, swallowing hard. “You stay and watch Emma, and I’ll hike up and find someone.”

  I didn’t want to. I really didn’t want to, but it was obvious Dougie couldn’t and Emma wasn’t going to leave. He was right too. We needed help. Now.

  I just… The thought of wandering about on my own, flagging down a stranger… Maybe getting lost, stuck in the dark… I took a deep breath to quell the panic. Thought about Martin and Darren; Emma, lost in her own head; Dougie, burning up in front of my eyes.

  Something gripped my fingers, and I looked up from the hole I’d been burning in the sand with my gaze to see Dougie staring at me. Slowly he shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “Nobody goes on their own.”

  I didn’t point out that he’d been willing to let Emma stay alone. I was too overwhelmed by a sudden rush of warmth that he wouldn’t let me go off by myself, that he wanted to protect me, keep me safe.

  But it was hard, sitting there. Dougie sank down so he was half-lying in the chair, his head resting on the back. He closed his eyes, and although I didn’t think he was sleeping—every so often he would sigh or groan, then his eyelids would flutter open—it was clear he didn’t want to talk. Emma had closed the tent flap, shutting herself in her own little world. That left me. Not on my own, yet very much alone. Well, I had my thoughts for company, and they were not pleasant.

  First, I tried to figure out how many hours Martin had been missing for. Thirty-six? Maybe longer? If he really had hitched a lift home, would he have forgiven us by now, be thinking about sending a reconciliatory text? One I might get tomorrow if Dougie was better and we h
iked back up, if I could get my phone to switch on?

  And if he hadn’t left, if he was stuck somewhere, injured or trapped, was thirty-six hours enough time for the cold to do damage? It was warm enough during the day, but night was a different matter, and then there was the rain that had fallen… How long did it take to get pneumonia?

  I didn’t know the answer to that. Same as I didn’t know how long a fever could rage before I should start to get worried. Or more worried. A day, maybe? A day was all I was going to give Dougie before I walked up by myself, no matter what he said. He wouldn’t be able to stop me; he could barely stand. And Emma. Lost-her-marbles Emma. I didn’t know what to do there, either. I couldn’t imagine what had made her snap so completely. Had she and Darren had a massive falling-out?

  Or had she really watched him sink under the waves?

  He was in the water. I was sure of it. There were so many simple things that could have gone wrong. He might have waded out too far, started swimming, and been caught in a current. He might have been prancing around on the rocks, showing off. One slip, and it would be easy to smack his head, knock himself out. Then the gentle current would just let him drift away. There were a lot of ways to get into trouble in the dark, frigid waters of the sea.

  But the waves pushed one way. If something had happened to Darren, there was a chance he would wash up on the beach, like all the flotsam and seaweed collected in the cove. After all, hadn’t that been why they’d gone there—because it was such a great place to collect driftwood?

  I was standing before I realized I’d made a decision. “I’m going to the cove,” I announced.

  Dougie opened one eye and gazed at me blearily. “What? Why?”

  “I just want to…check. Maybe I missed Darren. Maybe he fell, and he’s lying on the rocks, or maybe he was in the sea but he made it onto the beach and was too exhausted or hurt to get back here. Maybe…” I didn’t finish. Maybe he’d been washed back up, not under his own steam, but as a “gift” from the sea. “What harm could it do?” I asked, because Dougie was looking at me uncertainly.