by Ren Richards
‘Bas.’ Nell drew back the shower curtain. The shower steam smelled like him, warm and heady with the scent of the green bar of soap he was rubbing over his chest.
He met her eyes with a sleepy, suggestive grin. ‘Hey. I didn’t think you were up.’
‘I have to go rescue Lindsay,’ Nell said, after breaking apart from his kiss. ‘She got herself into some bullshit with a date.’
‘She’s dating again?’ He smeared a blob of suds on Nell’s nose. ‘Good for her.’
‘Yeah, it’s fantastic,’ Nell said caustically. ‘I’ll be back in a couple of hours. Of course she had to pick a guy who lives out in the sticks.’
‘Want me to come with?’ Sebastian asked.
Nell leaned into the shower to kiss him again. Water soaked her hair and the sleeves of her sweatshirt. ‘No. Better if I deal with this myself.’
‘Be careful,’ was all he said before she pulled the shower curtain closed.
For an hour, Nell drove. She drove beyond the city, past the tidy suburban salad of manicured shrubs shaped like chess pawns and gargoyles. Nell knew West Lazarus Road. It was a serpent’s tail between marshlands. Follow it far enough and you’d find yourself on Industrial Highway 95, which would eventually take you to the Royal King’s State Penitentiary. It was an alternate route, which Nell and Lindsay sometimes took when visiting their mother on the holidays, to avoid the worst of the highway traffic.
How had Lindsay managed to find a guy all the way out here? There were only a few farmhouses set far back from the road, and more cows and horses than humans.
She slowed, inspecting the numbers on the sparse mailboxes beside dirt-beaten driveways.
Another car emerged from behind her, the high beams so bright their glare blinded her. She squinted. It had been at least twenty minutes since she’d seen another soul aside from a raccoon she’d braked to avoid hitting a mile back.
She pressed the gas, returning to the assumed speed limit of seventy miles per hour. The car kept pace.
In the dark, she couldn’t tell what model it was, but the roaring grind of the engine and the sulphurous smell suggested that it was old. Suddenly Nell thought of Nathan Stuart, whose last view of this world had been the inside of the Syracuse Strangler’s Cadillac Eldorado.
She pressed on the gas, her heart pounding so she could hear it in her ears, a wet, throbbing series of knocks. The car behind her was not being driven by the Syracuse Strangler. The Syracuse Strangler was dead; lung cancer while waiting on death row. And they’d had to treat him for it, because a state-sanctioned death had protocols. Taxpayers funded doctors to treat a man who would die the following January even if he managed to survive the stage four.
But the Syracuse Strangler was not the only monster on earth. She should have considered this. West Lazarus was a deserted road. A lone car passing through at night was like a fish in a barrel. Someone could have been waiting, headlights off.
It wouldn’t be a rapist. That’s what Nell was thinking as she pushed the accelerator to ninety and the car behind sped up. Any faster and she’d wear the engine out, but if she kept going, she would hit the interstate. There were gaps in the divider and she’d be able to hang a U-turn and switch directions. It was illegal but she didn’t care. Risking a car accident would be preferable to what awaited her if her pursuer caught up to her.
Because she was in a car in the dark, the pursuer would not have been able to identify her as a woman. Would not have seen the colour of her hair, or her shape, or her approximate age. And that was the worst kind of monster, Nell had learned: the kind that lacked any sort of preference or reason. The kind that delighted in killing all things equally. It wasn’t about attraction or domination but pure thrill.
If she were caught, she wouldn’t live to see the true hell of it. Surely she’d pass out from blood loss or from pain first. She would go limp, play dead if she regained consciousness. But she wouldn’t last long. Lindsay and Bas would bear the worst of it, finding her body splayed out like a broken marionette.
That’s if she were caught. She would die in a fiery wreck before she allowed that to happen. Let her pursuer drag her body from the flames, still smoking. A broken plaything lost all its appeal.
The car slammed into her bumper, jolting her so hard her face smashed into the steering wheel. She tasted blood, saw stars. She stomped the accelerator, engine be damned. Another crash. She heard something hit the asphalt with a metal clatter.
She fell forward again, and that was all it took for her to lose her grip on the wheel. The car spun in a dizzying, high-speed fury, and Nell saw the night go bright for an instant, as though someone had taken a photo with the flash on. She saw the colour in the trees and the pavement and the autumn sky full of clouds. The entire world was bright and clear and spinning.
Then it stopped. There was a hard slapping sound, and Nell thought the tires must have blown. The car felt weightless, as though it were flying.
No. Not flying. Nell smelled the marsh and heard the rush of water that had already submerged her legs as it filled the car.
17
THEN
When Reina was two and a half, she started walking. Prior to that, she would only sit upright and wait for things to be brought to her without her asking; she would have starved to death rather than let on she was hungry. She had never crawled, and Mrs Eddleton was growing concerned, even taking her to the doctor and researching physical therapists. Nell had known better, though nobody would have believed her if she tried to explain that Reina hadn’t walked because she hadn’t wanted to. That was the only reason. She could have been toilet trained by then too, but she garnered a smug satisfaction from making Nell and Ethan change her diapers. They were especially heinous, and Nell knew this because she had changed hundreds of diapers in foster care. Reina had learned to hold it in for hours, so that everything came out at once, bubbling down her legs and up her back. The smell lingered throughout the Eddletons’ million-dollar rooms, making everything rancid.
But only Nell saw it this way.
When Reina gripped the cushioned edge of the ottoman and pulled herself to her feet, Mrs Eddleton was relieved. Reina was not ill or broken; she was merely a delayed genius, who went from sitting idly to climbing a flight of stairs all in one day. She ordered a cake to celebrate the occasion, with buttercream frosting and real strawberry slices.
The child’s sudden mobility unnerved Nell, though she couldn’t place why. From that day forward, Reina never asked for things. Rather, she found ways to get them herself – pushing the chair over to the counter and climbing the cabinets like a ladder. At age three, she had worked out the child lock on the medicine cabinet and plucked the little plastic stoppers from the plug sockets. But she never tampered with the forbidden bottles or tried to stick objects in the electrical slots. She just wanted to prove that she could access them.
Nell saw this as a sort of warning, though she never said as much. She and Ethan had enough to argue about, and talking about the child made her feel unbearably alone. What was wrong with her? She had a perfectly healthy little girl who smelled of bath oils and spring wind. Everyone else saw some sort of pouting angel where she saw a little monster whose every move was a challenge meant just for her.
She had no way of explaining her fatigue. It wasn’t as though anyone needed her. She worked afternoons at the Eddletons’ country club, but it wasn’t taxing. Mrs Eddleton and Ethan shouldered the load with Reina. Lindsay, newly married, had forgotten how to answer a phone entirely.
But Nell was constantly exhausted. On that day in July, she slept late, wrapped in her down comforter under the blissfully cold air coming through the ceiling vent. Her own restfulness was what woke her. She opened her eyes and saw that the clock on her bedside table read two in the afternoon.
It was strange that no one had woken her. She made herself presentable and walked into the kitchen, where Mrs Eddleton sat reading one of her particularly thick novels. A love of literature was o
ne of the few things Nell had in common with Mrs Eddleton, and she had hoped, once, that they could bond over it. But she fast learned that they didn’t share the same tastes. Mrs Eddleton was a fan of comedies and romances – classic or contemporary would do – and movie tie-ins. She read to feel happy and to fall in love with strangers on a page.
Nell preferred the darkest reaches humanity had to offer. Tragedies, thrillers, biographies of serial killers. She liked the bravery that reading granted her. She liked that she was able to face anything so long as it had been printed.
‘Where’s the baby?’ she asked. Three was hardly a baby, but Reina was the youngest creature in the house and it was habit. Nell rarely said the child’s name, despite being the one who gave it to her; it always felt strange on her tongue.
‘Napping,’ Mrs Eddleton said, and raised her eyebrows without looking up from her book. ‘She’s due to wake soon. Why don’t you go and see about changing her? I’m sure she’s wondering where you’ve been all day.’
This sort of passive aggression made Nell often fantasise about moving, but even if she could afford it, it would mean choosing to take Reina with her or leaving her behind. She knew what she would choose and she hated herself for even entertaining it. So she stayed. She put up with Mrs Eddleton’s bullshit and she turned for the stairs.
She switched on the light in the nursery, which was darkened by the sun-blocking shades, and made her way to the crib. It was empty. That’s odd, Nell thought. Was Ethan home? She never knew where he was in a house this size. She lifted the blanket just to be sure.
She made her way down the hall, peering into empty rooms, and back to the kitchen. ‘Who else is home?’ she asked.
‘Just us,’ Mrs Eddleton said. She looked up. ‘Where’s the baby?’
‘She wasn’t in her crib,’ Nell said.
Mrs Eddleton’s face went white, and only then did Nell begin to feel uneasy. ‘She couldn’t have gotten out of her crib by herself,’ Nell said. ‘Could she?’
‘She’s very bright.’ Mrs Eddleton said it like an accusation. She dropped her book and stood. ‘I don’t know how on earth you can’t see that.’ She didn’t stay to finish the argument she’d started. She threw open the French double doors that led to the porch. Nell followed her outside.
Bright as she might be, Reina would lack the physical strength to open those French doors. But there were about a dozen other doors leading out of the house, and it was easy enough to stand on a chair and turn a lock.
‘Reina?’ Nell called, in that moment not thinking about how strange it felt to say the name.
The Eddletons had a massive lawn. Acres and acres of land. The grass was ribboned in strips of green and brighter green from a recent mowing. There was a tennis court on the other side of the house and a second patio for hosting outdoor parties. But Nell fixed her gaze on the lake on the horizon.
Only once she started running for it did she realise how far the lake actually was. Reina was ambitious enough to scale cabinets; the next reasonable step for a child like that would be to try walking on water. And the child would never ask for help. She hated help. She covered her ears and screeched if she saw someone opening their mouth to offer it. She threw her dish and refused to eat all day if someone tried to cut up her food.
She was bright. Despite Mrs Eddleton’s accusation, Nell had always seen that. But what she often forgot to see was that Reina was only a child. A ferocious thing, maybe, but also a small thing. Something in need of guidance. Nell had made the mistake of seeing her own daughter as a burden, rather than seeing the truth that everyone else saw: Reina needed her mother.
Nell imagined diving into the lake. She imagined feeling the sunken lump of her child’s body and pulling her up, white and cold. She imagined never seeing her lovely dark eyes again, with their mischievous tint of blue like a sky gone stormy.
Reina gone. Reina never coming back. Never growing up. It was all Nell’s fault. She had decided this even before she reached the water. Would it have killed her to try? Would it have been so awful to wait out her child’s tantrums so that she could feel the affection everyone else did? It was a child’s job to test her mother. It was a mother’s job to love her child regardless.
She reached the water’s edge and she froze. Tall grass snaked up her skirt, making her legs itch. The surface was placid, and suddenly Nell couldn’t move. She couldn’t bear for any of her fears to be true.
A loud crack caught her attention. She turned her head.
Reina was standing several yards away, nearly covered by the towering weeds.
‘Reina,’ Nell gasped, and ran to her.
The child didn’t move. She was staring down at something on the ground before her, and when Nell approached, she saw it too. A bird, a fledgling sparrow, too small to be full-grown, lay mutilated on the ground with a bloody rock beside it.
The mother bird was flitting anxiously several yards away, her surviving children chirping as they followed her about. Nell recognised the panic in the mother bird’s cry; a moment ago she had felt the same way. It was all too easy to lose your young in such an endless world.
The child sighed, her shoulders and chest heaving with the weight of it.
Nell looked at the rock. It wasn’t very big. A child could have lifted it if she used both hands.
‘You have lost your mind. Do you know that?’
That was Ethan’s reaction later that night when Nell told him about the bird. He closed the bedroom door behind them.
‘I know what I saw,’ Nell fired back. ‘She killed it, Ethan.’
‘She is just—’ He paused, rubbing his thumb and index finger against his brow. ‘She’s a little girl. A baby.’
‘Babies can kill things,’ Nell said. ‘Even foetuses can absorb their twins in the womb. It happens all the time.’
‘Christ, do you hear yourself?’
Nell did hear herself. Of course she did. She was the only one in this house who ever listened to what she had to say. Lindsay had been an ally when it came to Reina, but she hadn’t been by for weeks. She had disappeared into her marriage as though Matthew Cranlin’s house was a creature that had eaten them both.
‘You should be on my side,’ Nell fired off at Ethan. She knew it was a weak argument but it was true.
‘I am on your side.’ Ethan’s voice still had an edge, but he was softening. ‘It isn’t just about protecting Reina. I’m trying to protect you, too, Nell. Do you know what can happen to mothers who say these sorts of things? My parents would have you committed.’
Mrs Eddleton might, but Nell had noted Mr Eddleton’s scarceness when Reina was nearby. He didn’t try to play with her or teach her new words. He never said as much, but Nell liked to believe he saw what she did.
Tears burned in her eyes. She almost never cried, and when she did, it was always out of frustration.
Ethan threw down his arms and sighed. ‘Don’t do that,’ he said. ‘You’re going to make me feel like an asshole.’
‘I’m not crazy,’ Nell said, hating how simpering she sounded. ‘Your mother saw the rock too. It had blood and feathers on it. What do you suggest? That rocks have started falling from trees?’
‘How would Reina have caught a bird? Do you know how hard that would be? She’s smart, but she’s no aviatrix.’
‘Ornithologist,’ Nell corrected. ‘And it was a baby. There were a bunch of them. I think the mother was teaching them to fly.’
Ethan gave her a pitying look. Whenever they argued about their child, anger gave way to pity. ‘I really think you should speak to someone.’
‘Speak to someone,’ she echoed. And again, louder. ‘Speak to someone? Is that the way rich, civilised people handle things, Ethan? Will that make you more comfortable, having your child mothered by someone just like your own mommy and daddy?’
His glare turned vicious, and Nell saw so much of Reina in him that she took a step back.
He stormed past her, down the hall and into the nu
rsery where Reina was sleeping. The door slammed shut, and that was it. If this was going to be a war, then he had chosen his side.
18
NOW
The water was thick with mud, black in the darkness. It rushed in through the vents and the cracks in the doors. Panicked, Nell tried the handle, though she knew it would be useless. Water pressure welded the doors shut.
This was going to be worse than torture, worse than being strung up naked on a telephone line for police to find. It was going to be a silent death, and it would render her invisible. Nobody would ever think to look for a missing car in a nondescript swamp on the side of the road. Sebastian and Lindsay would never know what had happened to her. Where was Sebastian now? He would be leaving for work in a couple of hours. He wouldn’t even realise she was gone until hours later, and then he would call Lindsay and they would both go frantic. There would be posters, public appeals. They would search and search, never knowing that she had been dead even before they knew she was missing at all.
The only evidence she had even gone to this road would sink with her, in the text messages on her phone in her purse.
Her purse. She found it floating as the water reached her chest. She fumbled through the sodden contents until she found the hammer Lindsay had forced into her hands days earlier.
It slipped from her wet grasp and she fumbled in the murky black. The water rose and she drew in a gasp an instant before it filled the car completely.
Immediately the world disappeared. Nell knew that, logically, she was still in a car, in a swamp, off of West Lazarus Road. But in the dark, she was in a parallel universe. The hammer was gone, just as the steering wheel and the seats were gone. Just as Lindsay and Sebastian were gone. Even her drunk, ambling father, who had never been kind but was proud of his daughters in his own way. Even Bonnie, with her raspy smoker’s voice and her hardened eyes.