by Ren Richards
Everything was gone.
Nell’s fingers snared something and she grasped at it. She thought it might be the latch of some secret door that she could open, and her entire life would go flooding out of this world and into the next along with the swamp water.
The shape of the object woke her from her trance. The hammer. She spun, weightless in the water. Everything moved slowly, and she couldn’t see the window in the darkness, but she felt it. She drew back the hammer and hit the glass. Again, again. The glass didn’t shatter as she had somehow expected. Rather, it cracked. She felt the jagged lines forming when she touched its surface.
She drew back and kicked at the prone glass with the heel of her boot.
Her body floated, light and useless. As the water rushed through her ears, she heard Lindsay screaming at the hospital doctors. They were in the delivery room, the baby tumbling in Nell’s womb, and the doctors had anesthetised her so they could cut her open and tear the baby out. Lindsay was saying words that Nell couldn’t hear, but what she did hear was how afraid Lindsay was. She didn’t trust Nell’s life in their gloved hands. She didn’t trust that this would all be over soon.
Nell felt something break, just like the skin of her engorged stomach. A piece of glass bit at her ankle.
She forced herself back awake. She forced herself to squeeze through the narrow window frame and then swim. She didn’t know what direction was up, but she moved anyway. Her delirium had shattered like the window, and now she felt the burning of her lungs. The desperation came back so that she was full with it. The thought of dying, which had moments ago seemed bearable, was now unthinkable. She would live. She would.
She broke the surface of the water with a painful gasp. Time returned, all its little pieces back above the surface where Nell had left them.
She’d been certain that hours had passed under water, but logic told her it had only been a few seconds. Still gasping, she swam for the road. Without the car headlights, only the stars lit the way, offering her the faint outline of gravel.
Even as she fought to steady her breathing, she tried to be quiet. She listened for the hum of an engine, footsteps, or any sign of whoever had been chasing her.
There was no one.
Slowly, she crawled onto the wet earth and ambled back up to the road. She looked down it in either direction. Her fists clenched, and she reminded herself to keep a clear head. Panic was useless. Panic made people do stupid things.
She looked down and saw that she was still clutching the hammer. She didn’t remember swimming with it. But there it was, slick and wet, still splattered with old paint.
Nell held it up and laughed. It was a desperate, hysterical laugh. No doubt the sort of laugh Bonnie had given before she fired the shot that would land her in prison forever.
Nell’s phone was in the swamp, along with her car and all the identification and money she’d been carrying. It was nearly dawn by the time she reached a gas station; she could hear birds awakening in the shifting darkness. Before that, she’d gone up and down West Lazarus Road, shivering in her wet clothes, looking for number 2, only to discover that the numbers began in the double digits. From there, she had tried all variations of 2. 12. 20. 21. But the address Lindsay gave her didn’t exist. She might have been drunk when she texted; whatever the reason, Nell planned to lay a massive guilt trip on her sister when she saw her next.
The gas station was closed. A sign on the window announced that it would be open at 8 AM. Nell cursed the rural outskirts; had this happened within Rockhollow’s city limits, there would have been a dozen twenty-four-hour gas stations to choose from.
But of course, something like this would only happen in a place that slept between the hours of 8 PM and 8 AM. And now that she had reached a destination, Nell realised that she was not only shivering from the cold. She was trembling. Blood had crusted on her arms and cheek where the shattered window had sliced her.
She rooted around in her jeans pockets for change. The only good thing about an antiquated gas station in a nowhere town was that they always had a payphone.
The call to Lindsay went straight to voicemail.
‘Jesus, Lindsay, where the hell are you?’ Of all the nights for her sister to pull this shit. She dialled Bas’s number but it also went to voicemail. Nell slammed the phone back into the cradle without leaving a message. Of course, Bas always turned his phone off at bedtime, rarely turning it back on until he was halfway through his commute.
She picked up the phone again to dial 911, but hesitated. Burying her head under the damp hood of her sweatshirt, shivering in the middle of nowhere and operating on almost no sleep, her thoughts turned paranoid. She thought of the mannequin smouldering on the street beside Lindsay’s car, and the other hanging from a noose in a tree.
Nell had forced herself to be reassured by Lindsay’s insistence that the mannequins had been a prank, but now she sensed there was a pattern to this. Or rather there was a puzzle, and the pieces were scattered everywhere.
She dropped a quarter into the payphone and dialled a number she had come to know by heart. It was the number written on a Post-it note stuck to the wall by her desk, along with all the other notes she kept nearby for reference in the Hamblin case. Oleg’s cell phone.
He answered on the first ring. She imagined him in bed, his pristine hair tousled, his congenial smile replaced by raw exhaustion. She imagined him without pretence, the way he must be when he was alone.
‘Oleg? It’s Nell Way. I-I know it’s late – or early—’ Too late, she realised she hadn’t rehearsed this call, and after the night she’d endured, she couldn’t think straight.
He interrupted her. ‘What’s the matter? Has something happened?’
All Nell could think in that moment was that she had never heard worry in his voice before. She knew he’d been through hell thanks to Easter. But she had never pictured it until now. How had he sounded when he took the call that Autumn was dead? When he first picked up the phone and stared down his sister through the prison glass?
‘I’m sorry to call you like this but it is important,’ Nell said. ‘Can you meet me?’
He was there in twenty minutes, which Nell presumed to be some sort of record. It had taken her at least twice as long to make it this far when she was speeding her way to Lindsay. She recognised his gold Buick Century, which was the first car she’d seen since she’d been run off of the road. They stopped making this model fifteen years ago, but he kept it in remarkably pristine shape. He applied this sort of care to everything. Even during their interviews, he had laid his straw wrapper on the table, pressing it at the crease and then folding it into perfect squares as he spoke. He didn’t even seem aware that he was doing it.
He leaned across the passenger seat to open the door for her, and she leapt gratefully inside. The heat was blasting, and it thawed the frozen chunks of hair in her ponytail.
She closed her eyes. For the first time all morning, she allowed herself to believe that she was safe.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘What are you doing out here in the freezing cold?’ Oleg asked. ‘Why are you soaked?’
He hadn’t started driving yet, and Nell realised that she hadn’t told him where to take her. She didn’t know where she was heading. She hadn’t thought beyond getting him here, so that she could ask him her next question.
She leaned forward and cupped her hands over one of the vents, and then she turned to him. His hair was neatly combed, although his eyes were weary.
‘Oleg,’ Nell said. ‘I want you to know that I’ve always been honest in our conversations. That’s important, because when people entrust their stories to me, I want to give full transparency about how I’m going to use them.’
‘Yes,’ Oleg replied slowly. ‘I know that.’
‘So I need to ask you something about your sisters. Take your time before you answer.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Nell, what is this about?’
‘I
s there any possible way,’ Nell said, ‘that Autumn is still alive?’
19
NOW
They drove in silence. For the first several miles there was only the sound of the engine.
Oleg gripped the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles had turned white. His jaw was set in a way that added a sharp angle to his usually boyish features.
Nell didn’t say anything, not even to ask where they were headed. He was driving in the direction of Rockhollow, so they’d be back to civilisation soon, at least.
The sun had come up by now, though the clouds were so dark and pregnant with their next rain that it still felt earlier than it was.
Finally, Oleg said, ‘I know the sort of things Easter says about Autumn. I’m not stupid.’
Nell had never thought Oleg was stupid, but she knew better than to speak.
‘I didn’t mind Easter asking you to tell their story because you have … intuition,’ Oleg went on, hesitating as though he’d needed to find the right word. His grasp of English was impeccable, but it wasn’t the language he used to form his thoughts. ‘How could you ask me if Autumn is still alive? Did Easter fool you so easily?’
Nell stared at the road ahead. Suddenly she couldn’t look at him.
‘This is my third book,’ she answered softly. ‘But Easter isn’t the third murderer I’ve interviewed. I’ve interviewed dozens, and I’ve researched dozens more. But do you know what all of those murderers had in common? Their stories were trapped in their cells with them. They could tell me whatever they wanted – that they were innocent, or that their victims had it coming – but at the end of the day, those words meant nothing because they were still behind bars.’
‘I don’t understand your point,’ Oleg said.
Nell turned in her seat. She wanted to put her hand over his knuckles on the steering wheel. She wanted him to feel her, so that he would know that she was being sincere. But it probably would have made matters worse. In a moment, he was going to think she was as delusional as Easter. But she had to tell him the truth.
‘Since the day I met Easter, things have started happening to my family,’ she said. ‘Someone has been leaving threats for me and my sister. And someone tried to kill me tonight.’
‘Threats?’ Oleg asked, hesitant. ‘Letters? Calls?’
‘No,’ Nell said. And then she told him about Lindsay’s car, and the mannequins. As they wove through the twisty desolate outskirts of Rockhollow, she told him about the text she’d received in the middle of the night. The address that didn’t exist. The car that ran her straight into the swamp and left her there to drown.
He listened in silence, but his brows were drawn together by the time she’d finished. He couldn’t accuse her of exaggerating when she was sitting right there in his car, damp and filthy with swamp water.
‘You rang the police?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Nell said. Her voice was high and hysterical now. In speaking her fears out loud, she had invited them into her mind, and now they ran rampant. ‘Lindsay – that’s my sister – she convinced me that the mannequins were a neighbourhood prank. She’s – well she’s good at pissing people off, let’s just put it like that. Nothing like this has ever happened before, but it seemed like the only explanation. And things were starting to calm down until tonight.’
Oleg opened his mouth to speak, but stopped. He was so careful with words. He was like Easter in that sense. He knew how to wear a mask.
When he did speak, it was with measured patience, and Nell imagined this was how he had sounded when he first learned English. ‘Are you trying to tell me that Autumn isn’t really dead, and that she is somehow behind this?’
That was exactly what Nell was trying to tell him. But as crazy as it had sounded in her head, it sounded even crazier when he said it out loud.
‘Listen,’ Nell said. ‘When cases don’t add up, I like to list all of the facts until they make sense and form a picture. Here are the facts: a skeleton was found by the river. The skin had been picked away by animals. Even the hair was gone. The only identifying remains were two teeth, which were used to match DNA, but they were found near the skull. The rest had been removed. It’s all there in the police report.’
Oleg’s arms were shaking now. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes glassy. Nell felt the vibration under her seat as he accelerated too much at once.
‘It would be easy enough to remove two of your teeth,’ Nell said. ‘Isn’t it at all possible that the victim by the river wasn’t Autumn? Isn’t it possible that the victim—’
‘Don’t call her that!’ Oleg burst out. He spoke with so much force that spittle flew across the steering wheel. ‘She wasn’t “the victim”. She was my sister. She was my little sister. She was the good one.’
Nell went silent. She waited for him to pull over and let her out, but he didn’t. His foot eased up on the accelerator and he returned to the speed limit. Forty-five on the dot.
‘You say that your sister pisses off a lot of people,’ he said, in a calmer tone now. ‘But what about you? You go nosing around these cases, looking for your next story. Maybe there’s someone who doesn’t like what you have to say.’
Nell nodded. ‘I’ve considered that. And I shouldn’t have said that about Autumn. I’m sorry.’
He didn’t look at her. The flush was still on his cheeks, but he didn’t look angry anymore. Tears were suspended in his eyelashes like raindrops in a web.
‘Let me tell you what it was like to get a phone call that my sister was dead,’ he said. ‘My first thought was that there was some mistake. Easter had told me that Autumn had taken off for a while; she often did. And of course she was pretending to be Autumn to everyone else so no one raised the alarm. So when I got that call, it wasn’t enough that the police told me her body had been found. I had to see it. They rolled her out of the drawer in the coroner’s office. There was no muscle or tissue left. There was nothing to hold her together. All of her bones were laid out in their proper places, but not touching each other. I didn’t think it was possible that this could be all that was left, and for a long time I didn’t believe it. But in the end that’s all any of us are – just bones.’
He shook his head. ‘Autumn is not alive,’ he said. ‘Believe me before you believe Easter. I’m the one who wishes she were still out there somewhere.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Nell said. ‘I’m so used to looking at things analytically, I forget that I’m talking about real people.’
‘No you don’t,’ Oleg said. ‘I’ve read your words. You know that they’re real people.’ He frowned, glanced at her for a second before looking back to the road. They were in Rockhollow’s surrounding suburbs now. A school bus stopped beside them at the red light, its brakes squealing and its engine letting out a loud huff, as though indignant with its purpose in life.
‘You’ve only just finished your last book, isn’t that right?’ Oleg went on. ‘And without taking time to breathe, you’ve been thrust into Easter’s world. She isn’t easy to take. I know that. Maybe you should give yourself more time. Be patient with yourself.’
Nell felt sick with guilt. He was being so kind to her, after she’d woken him from his sleep and unearthed such ugly things for him.
‘My motel is just on this block,’ he said. ‘Why don’t we stop there so you can take a hot shower. Warm up. I’ll buy you some breakfast. And then we’re reporting everything you told me to the police.’
The motel was a small, single-storey building wedged between two high-rise apartments. There was a flickering neon sign advertising vacancies, and the air smelled like bacon from a diner across the street.
Nell had suspected Oleg had no desire to move to America permanently. He would leave when his travel visa expired. Still, she was taken aback by his dedication. He cared so much about his sisters and their story that he had uprooted his life to stay here.
His car must have been a rental too. The upholstery was so clean that Nell was self-conscious
about soiling it with swamp water.
Once she was in the motel room, Nell tried Lindsay’s cell again. It went straight to voicemail. If Lindsay had managed to find her own way home, why hadn’t she rung Nell in the car to let her know, to tell her to turn around?
Nell was afforded a startling glimpse into what today would have been like if she’d drowned on that empty road. Lindsay was probably sleeping off her hangover somewhere and Sebastian was busy at work. She could be bloated and floating in her car and they would have no reason yet to worry.
She showered and then stood under the hot water until it began to turn cold. She’d left her clothes hanging on a towel rack above the heating vent. They were stiff and mostly dry, though they stank. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing, she reasoned. It meant the police would be more likely to believe her story, unbelievable as it was.
Oleg knocked gently on the door. ‘I’m leaving a jumper for you,’ he said.
After he’d gone, Nell opened the door just enough to see the blue sweater he’d left folded on the floor.
It was soft when she put it on – cashmere. Her jeans were rough and uncomfortable by contrast, but Nell didn’t mind. On some distant level, she recognised that she must be traumatised. She kept imagining the moment Lindsay and Sebastian would have realised she was missing.
When she emerged from the bathroom, Oleg was seated at the tiny desk in the corner. He was reading a well-worn paperback of Nell’s first book. From where she stood, she could see Nathan Stuart’s picture on the cover, the child victim of the Syracuse Strangler. He was staring wide-eyed, his finger pressed pensively to his lip, which was stained cherry red from the candy he’d been eating. It had been taken on the morning he’d lost his first tooth. His mother had requested that photo be used for the cover; it was her favourite.