Mayhem

by Estelle Laure

  Of course, it is a little mysterious. I don’t understand it when I put my logic brain on, like Father tells me to when he says I’m being irrational and sighs to the sky.

  Sighed to the sky.

  I sit on the shore and I can see the big wheel they’re building across the bay. I can see everything from here, and I like it that they can’t see me back. I pretend that this place exists for me alone, that no one else can get here, even if they try. It is mine.

  It seems like my body is awake, my mind sharp and deadly. It seems like maybe this is the start of a whole new Billie Brayburn.

  TWENTY-TWO

  MAYHEM BRAYBURN DAUGHTER OF ROXY BRAYBURN MINE

  1987

  “I mean, it’s a fucking gold mine,” Neve says. “A veritable treasure trove of information. I can’t believe it was just sitting up here this whole time and I didn’t ever even see it.”

  I remember back to that first day up here, not so long ago and yet forever ago, the way I was pulled to the trunk right away, how I had to see what was inside. Like the women who lived in this house were all steering me there, like that journal was calling to me.

  “I mean, isn’t it fabulous that Elle is so monumentally rad that she took the time to think ahead, to gather information and put this together so it would just be sitting here, to pass on, so everything’s in one place?” She flips through again, scanning the pages. “Your mom even wrote stuff in here.” She holds it up so I can see Roxy’s scrawl across the page. “Everyone relevant. This is a historical document!”

  My face reddens. I reach for it and Neve tucks it under her arm.

  “Can I have it?” I say.

  “Why?” she says. “Why can’t we read it together?”

  Because it’s mine.

  “Because I haven’t even gotten the chance to read it by myself yet and I…”

  I want to discover it. I want to be with the women in my family without anyone watching me. I want to take my time. More stupidly, I want to be alone in the dark with it, to hold it close if I want, to understand the mysterious pieces of myself. “Can I just see it by myself first?” I try to keep my voice calm.

  “I mean,” she says, slinging her legs over mine, “not really.” She opens it and begins to read out loud again.

  “Holy shit, give it to her, Neve,” Jason says. “It’s her family. It’s hers.”

  Kidd looks back and forth between them, nervously.

  “I don’t know what the big deal is. We found the cave on our own,” Neve says, closing the book. “That’s why Elle took us in. It was a sign. And we’re being adopted in. We’re family, too. The book is just as much ours as hers.”

  “It was a sign we were hers,” Kidd tells me. “We found the cave and then she found us. We’re special.”

  “Of course you are,” I say.

  Jason sits on his mattress in the corner of the room, flipping through a magazine. “It’s because you weren’t here yet, Mayhem. If you had been, we never would have found it.”

  “What?” Neve looks incredulous. “That’s so stupid. What does Mayhem have to do with what happened to us?”

  “She’s a Brayburn,” he says simply. “She wasn’t here. Now she is. You know whatever’s in that cave likes them best.”

  “Like it’s a person,” Neve scoffs.

  “Whatever it is.” Jason pauses. “It’s something alive.”

  I picture the water rolling down the wall into the spring, feeding itself.

  What if it’s waiting?

  “What, it likes our blood or something?” I mean for it to sound like a joke, but it comes out panicky.

  Jason shrugs. “We know we all carry our past around with us. If we can see that, what can it see?”

  “I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” Neve says. “Anyway, the point is, if the cave wants you to find it, you’ll find it. We found it, it found us, and here we all are. And they all lived happily forever after in love and glory.” She tosses the book, more at me than to me, so I have to catch it before it slams into my nose. “But take it. What the fuck do I care?”

  As soon as it’s in my hands, I calm. Just having its edges against my palm is soothing. I smooth it down, make sure it’s safe.

  Neve lies on her bed and rests her legs against the wall so she’s watching me, upside down. “So anyway,” she says, “more importantly, this Sand Snatcher piece of fuck is wrecking this town, and Elle has decided we have to handle it.”

  I nearly laugh, but Neve’s thoughts are shifting, ungrounded, and now she’s onto this. She’s not smiling, she’s concentrating. I flicker to Kidd, as does Jason, and our eyes meet on the way back. He shakes his head almost imperceptibly, that helpless drowning look I’m beginning to recognize. Kidd seems oblivious for the moment, sifting through a box in the corner. She pulls out a top hat and puts it on so her frizz sticks out the bottom, then continues to search the box, neatly placing each item beside her. An old corduroy jacket. A silver flask. She runs her hand over each thing after she puts it on the ground, like she’s petting it, taking care of it.

  “We?” I say, bringing my attention back to the conversation. “What can we do about a kidnapper?”

  “You haven’t put it together yet, even after reading that journal?”

  “I haven’t read it all the way through.”

  “Well, you should. Because we have to handle this. Just imagine what it must be like to be them.”

  Them. The poster girls. We are sitting on the beach. We see someone approaching. And then we’re taken. We’re in the trunk of a car. We’re tied up. We’re strangled or stabbed. We’re helpless. When I look up again, Neve is giving me that look, like she knows so much more than me and I am a little slow.

  “What do you think we do around here?” she says. “Sit on our asses and watch the beach go by? We earn our keep, chickadee.”

  Jason flips a page in his magazine noisily.

  “So first we have to find this asshole, and then we have to see if we can find the girls he’s been stealing, and then we have to take him out.”

  The world wobbles as I contemplate what that means.

  Neve perks up with interest. “Looking a little swoony there, my fine friend.” Her eyes glimmer as she smiles. “Going to pass out or barf or something?”

  “When you say ‘take him out—’”

  She swipes across her neck with her index finger and lets her tongue loll from her mouth. “End his ass.”

  Jason slaps his magazine shut and sits up. “Just be straight with her, Neve. Quit playing games. This could not be more serious.” He turns to me. “We’re supposed to train you so you know what you’re doing, but Elle wants us to find this dude and end the threat.” He hesitates, then motions to the book in my lap. “That’s what you guys … what we do. As long as all of you … us … are here, fucked-up people are going to come and do fucked-up things. This whole place is a trap, and we’re the monsters.”

  “But why doesn’t Elle just do it herself, then?”

  “Because she can’t.” Neve bounces up and down. “Because apparently when the cave gets new people, the older generation starts to lose it. It’s a matter of resources.”

  “I’m not going to hurt anyone,” I say.

  “You should. You should want to kick some major ass after what your stepdad did to you. And if he comes back, you should be ready to make sure he isn’t allowed to be a bully anymore.” Neve hops up. “Anyway, you’re thinking about it wrong. If the Sand Snatcher is allowed to run around doing whatever he wants, Santa Maria is going to be his hunting ground forever. Just plucking those beach wildflowers.”

  Kidd looks up, and I think I see her shaking a little.

  Neve doesn’t notice. She’s pacing. “The cops have their detectives or whatever, and that might work, might. But we have something else.” A tunnel is forming around her. It’s opening and swirling, gawping. “We can see people’s secrets. Which means we have a responsibility. We’ll be able to find him
so much faster than them and take care of it.”

  “You haven’t seen him yet?”

  Neve shakes her head. “Sometimes when people believe their own stories, it’s harder to see. But he’s here. He’s close, I know it.”

  I think about Julianna’s story, about how she said she had had to kill so many. She was talking about murder.

  Oh hey, nice to see you. I just found out I come from a long line of supernatural homicidal maniacs. How’s your day going?

  Jason comes over to where I’m sitting on the floor. “You’re not looking so good.”

  Neve motions to Kidd, who goes over to the glass jars in the corner, fills a cup, and brings it to me. After taking a few sips, I look up.

  “Why didn’t Elle just tell me all this herself?”

  “You know how doctors make their nurses give the shots so the kids won’t associate the pain with them?” Jason says.

  I smile.

  “Yeah, I think it’s something like that.” He puts an arm around me. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

  “No, no, of course not,” Neve says. “Let’s just let this predator have his way. Wouldn’t want to upset anyone’s conscience.” Neve squats down in front of me and lifts my chin. “The truth of the matter is that there really isn’t a choice here. You drank the water, you owe the cave. You owe the women in your family, and you owe the people of Santa Maria. They’re our flock, and we are their protectors. They deserve to go to the beach and be young and beautiful and careless without having to think about some psycho violating them. Maybe you didn’t ask for this, but you have it now.”

  “You’re okay with this?” I ask Jason.

  “Yes … and no.”

  “We get to be strong,” Neve says. “Nobody anywhere can fuck with us. Ever.”

  “You can still say no,” Jason says.

  “Say no? No, she cannot say no. The clock is ticking. I was up all night looking for the guy. Nothing. But I know he’s near,” Neve spits. “He has to be.”

  “Mayhem can’t go anywhere for two more days,” Jason says. “That’s what Elle told us. You going against her? Again?”

  Neve flops to the floor. “No. I guess not. But that doesn’t mean we can’t do something while we wait.”

  Even with the water, my lids want to close. What I need is for time to stop so I can adjust. Time doesn’t stop. I don’t adjust.

  None of this should be real, yet it is.

  Again I think of the boy, Jake, at the Ferris wheel, the ice forming around him. I close my eyes, struggle to remember what was in the little compartments. Honeycombs, Elle said. I slow it down, breathe in deeply, ask the water to show me. And then I see. Girls, naked, running away from him while he chases. They are fantasies, but he could be dangerous if those thoughts were set loose on the world. The images fade and my eyelids snap open.

  Neve is still standing over me, while Kidd and Jason are on either side.

  “Be one of us,” Neve says. “Save your town. Live your destiny.”

  “A little dramatic,” Jason says.

  Kidd settles her head in my lap. She looks up at me. “Do you have any candy?”

  “I don’t,” I say.

  “Here you go, Kidd.” Neve tosses her a lollipop she pulls from her pocket, then puts her hands on her hips and looks at me expectantly. “At least let us show you how it works. Let me show you what you’re made of.” She throws out her arms. “Because it is incredible!”

  I think of the poster girls. Karen, Jessie, Kimberly, Benita, Tina. The probably dead girls. Girls like me with shiny hair and hopes and pain. “Okay. Teach me.”

  They make a bed for me in the corner of the room, next to Jason’s, out of sleeping bags and a green plastic camping mat. They offer me pillows they pull from boxes in the corner. They burn incense and play soft music, and fans whir. I fall asleep almost immediately and dream of swarming birds. I hear the flapping of wings and nattering caws. Black shapes push at me. When I wake up, Neve and Jason are gone and my whole body is filled with anxiety. The feathers and the busy beaks are still pecking at me. I can’t calm down until they come back in, until I hear material rubbing together and zippers coming apart and stitching back together again, and Jason has gone to his bed while Neve has gone to hers. I lie there, my body charged, mind unloading thoughts like a rushing river.

  “You okay?” Jason whispers. He is only a foot away. He is so close.

  “I think so,” I say. “You?”

  It’s absolutely silent for a moment, the kind that rings in your ears where all the usual sounds should be. Then his hand snakes from his blanket and lingers in the space between us.

  I don’t know if the hand is meant for me, but I take it anyway, and I hear a little exhale from him. Surprise, maybe, or maybe it’s relief like it is for me, like I’m exhaling after holding my breath for always. At first our palms are only close to each other, but slowly he pries my fingers apart and wedges in his own, so our palms kiss. When I wake, many hours later, we are still holding hands.

  TWENTY-THREE

  SLUAGH

  The sun is already more than halfway across the sky when I sit up, and the day is scorching. When I try to stand, my legs wobble. Jason brings me water and then gives some to Neve and Kidd.

  “Bottoms up,” Neve says, makeup smudged around her eyes. “Always first thing. Night takes it out of you, so you have to put it back.”

  When I get downstairs, I check the bed for Roxy, a little on edge about what she might have to say to me, and there’s only a note:

  Gone to Marcy’s.

  —R

  Yup, she’s still pissed. Well, so am I. Every time I think about Lyle’s caramel voice saying things to her, I want to hurl.

  The table downstairs is laid with green juices and fruit. Usually, the sight of that much produce would send me into a panic, but I gulp it down and eat a warm, fuzzy peach. Slowly, my depleted cells fill up. Every time I meet Jason’s eyes across the table, or we accidentally touch, I heat up, but he always either looks away or holds my gaze for too long. Finally, I can’t take it anymore, so I go outside to find Elle.

  “Hi, love,” she says, and holds her arms open to me. I fall in, then out, suddenly shy.

  She is in the tomatoes in jean shorts and a top, wearing brown canvas gloves, and though I can still see little strands of light around her, when I focus I can also make them go away so she looks pretty normal. Normal for a super-beautiful person, anyway.

  “The tomatoes are still green,” Elle says, wiping at her forehead, “but this heat is going to make them so sweet you’ll be eating them whole off the vine before too long. You have to water them, then you have to starve them. It’s their fight for survival that gives them the special flavor.” She looks up, maybe noticing I’m not saying anything. “You all right?”

  “Fine,” I say.

  “Why don’t you go get some gloves and we’ll work on this together?”

  We get baskets and a wheelbarrow and go to the fruit trees. The peaches are perfect, so we start collecting. I take a ladder and follow behind Elle while she talks about the farm and what amounts to a small family business. She survives on the farmer’s market and the things the town leaves at the gate as payment for the favors she does them. She doesn’t need much sleep anymore, now that the water isn’t calling her to action.

  She climbs the ladder, swiping away a crow that’s snacking on a peach, then pauses to wipe the sweat from her brow as the crow flies up, then back down and lands on her shoulder.

  “Of course I got curious at some point,” she says, as though we were in the middle of talking about something completely different, “tried to find some sort of source for what was happening to me, what had happened to our entire lineage. I went looking for the details of every kind of mythical creature, every old wives’ tale, every fairy tale, searching for something, anything, that would explain the Brayburns and the water to me in a way I could understand. It was like we’d been giv
en this mission to keep Santa Maria safe, because it’s the kind of place that needs it. I could accept that, but I needed more. Roxy was never like that. She loved every bit of it. Even before we got the water she picked every fight she could and lived to take down anyone who ever even thought about being a bully. Everyone loved her.” She sighs. “I was different, more introspective, I suppose. I wanted information so we would know what we were dealing with. Bits of our history were scattered everywhere, in drawers and the backs of books and in musty boxes. All the Brayburn women have been diligent record-keepers, fans of the epistolary relationship, and I was able to pull from each ancestor’s journals and compile them into a history that has taken on some sort of shape. I needed to make some sense of it.”

  I redden. That book is under my mattress now.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” she says. “Much as I wanted to respect Roxy’s wishes, I’m so glad you found it. You should have it, get to know it since you’ll never know them directly. I wish I had had a book like that when I was younger. Of course I’ve read through it so much it’s practically falling to pieces, and I still haven’t found all the answers. One of the mistakes I think we’ve made over time is not telling each other about what’s to come the way we should. Each woman passed along a bit of something to her child, but not enough, nothing comprehensive. Maybe if we had all talked about what was happening instead of hiding it, it wouldn’t have been such a disaster.”

  She climbs down and pulls a jar of mint iced tea from the garden bag on her wheelbarrow.

  “Anyway, the water can’t speak, though it does have its ways of communicating. I think of it as a sort of guardian of Santa Maria.” I wait while she strokes the bird, who is still sitting on her shoulder watching everything carefully. “Handsome, isn’t he?”

  I nod.

  “He’s our resident king.”

  The one with the brown on his beak.