Tethered

by Amy MacKinnon

  Mike called to say Ryan is gone. It wasn’t Andrew’s fault, not really. He let Kate and Jorge know, just like Mike asked, but then Andrew thought he was being helpful when he called Ryan, too. Everyone knew how eager Ryan was to catch Trecie’s attacker. He had been a part of the investigative team after all. It never occurred to Andrew he was alerting the monster that the townspeople were on their way.

  Mike told me how Kate went to Trecie and Adalia’s mother, still in custody, but recovered from her high, and showed her Ryan’s picture. She agreed to make a positive identification if the DA would ask the judge for leniency on her behalf. She refused to say more.

  Mike’s voice may have cracked when he told me about his visit to Adalia. He didn’t want to show her the picture, he said. She finally had her siblings there, and her foster mother said she was starting to eat a bit. So I think it killed Mike a little more to have to do it. He got what he needed, though. As Ryan would say, victory.

  Ryan’s gone, so, really, he is the victor. There will be no punishment for him. He and Tom and Mr. Kelly and Mr. MacDonnell, they all wisely chose silent victims.

  Mike said they searched Ryan’s house and found a stash of movies hidden in the attic rafters. And meth. How his wife must have protested.

  He also said Ryan’s the prime suspect in Linus’s murder. The DNA is being processed now. Mike assured me there’s no evidence at this point that they were co-conspirators. He believes the motive for the killing was Ryan’s fear that Linus knew more from Trecie, not that Linus was somehow involved with Ryan. Mike didn’t say if that’s what the rest of the investigative team believes. He didn’t have to. They stopped by Alma’s last night with more questions for us. I never let on what Alma said, either. It’s over. Case closed.

  What’s pressing me forward, away from here, is what Mike left unsaid. That the police think Ryan probably killed Trecie, too. So I’ll leave now before I learn anything more about these lives. I’ll leave before Mike can drive here and tell me they’ve found another body in the woods, another little girl. If I’m not here when he comes, then he can’t tell me. She can still be alive. They’ll find Ryan or they won’t, it doesn’t matter now.

  There are hours left before Linus’s wake ends; no one will notice my absence. I can hear the back door opening and slamming shut every few minutes, voices calling out to one another. I should go upstairs, stand beside Alma one last time, but she has Matthew and I haven’t the stomach.

  My cell phone rings, hesitates, and then chirps again. The signal is weak in the basement beneath the layers of soil and concrete.

  “Cla—,” Mike says. “We’re—way—there—out—”

  Through the crackle of a bad connection I can sense his determination. No, I don’t want to hear any more. It’s time to move on. I turn the phone off and leave it on my worktable.

  Conversations float down the stairs, quiet laughter and a bronchial cough. And then there’s another sound. Footsteps. A gentle brush of shoe against grit against cement stairs. No wayward mourner has ever found himself here. But Trecie has.

  I forget my book and hurry over to the door. My feet move and I don’t know how I’ve crossed this dreary workroom so quickly, except I don’t want her to see any more horrors in her life. She doesn’t need to smell the formaldehyde, see the stainless-steel table at the back of the room angled above the sink, the scalpel and tubes on the utility cart, the trocar with its menacing spearlike tip hanging next to the sink. I crack the door and a part of me wants to pray, to believe, to hope for what I need most. A miracle, Trecie standing before me.

  But when I look out the narrow opening into the hallway, I see only darkness. The light is out, and when I flick the switch on the wall it refuses to go on. I begin to close the door when a hand, scabbed and ragged, shoves it open, throwing me backward onto the cement floor.

  Ryan is standing there, his outline framed by darkness. He glares at me before closing the door behind him. His movements are slow as his eyes hold mine—four, five seconds—and then he begins to sidle toward me. I scramble to my feet. It’s hard to tear my eyes away from his, the way his tongue glides over his lips as if he were a lion ready to pounce. When the fluorescent light catches something shiny in his left hand, I shift my gaze and become fixated by the knife there.

  It’s nearly the length of my forearm, curved with an ugly serrated edge. It appears to be smiling. The blade has a high sheen, mesmerizing, as it bobs in tempo with Ryan’s stealthy walk.

  I don’t move until he lunges.

  I lurch backward and fall against my utility cart, sending it crashing. My candles and tools scatter across the floor.

  Ryan’s laughter bounces around the room, as if he already surrounds me. “Who’s the cat and who’s the mouse now, Clara? You thought you and Linus could psych me out?”

  My hand feels behind me for something solid to push up on. I need to face him. Instead I touch something familiar, the cylindrical handle of my scalpel. Its blade is humbled by the hunting knife Ryan wields, but it’s sharp and it’s all I have.

  When he lunges again—he’s taunting me, he barely comes close—I reach out and slice his arm with the scalpel. He pulls back—not far—and scans his wound. He stops smiling, his jaw bulges, and his chest heaves a primal cry.

  It’s not much, but it gives me a chance to stand. I don’t want to be afraid of him, I don’t want to feel my bladder seize and throat close. I want to be fierce, to fight for Trecie and me, and in some way, Mike. But I can’t. Terror has drowned me.

  He knows it. His flash of anger has been replaced with that awful smile again.

  “So, how’d you know, anyways?”

  I’m distracted by his pupils, one fully dilated, the other a pinprick. His nostrils flex and contract, a thin rivulet of blood streaming from one. Meth high. He licks it away with his tongue.

  “Where’s Trecie?” Even to my own ears, my voice is tinny and weak. “What have you done with her?”

  “Fuck you!” He steps closer and I can smell his metallic breath. “I was like a father to her, I loved her for real.” He wipes at his nose. “Who told you? Linus?”

  I don’t answer, I’m blind with panic. He becomes a flash of blade and malevolence, his arm thrust high above his head and then slashing down. He’s too fast, too comfortable with confrontations, and it’s a moment before I feel the jagged burn within my shoulder. When I look there I grow dizzy at the sight of so much of my own blood. I watch in horror as the scalpel clatters to the floor.

  “Tell me,” he says.

  “Trecie,” I whisper. The sound of my voice startles me.

  “You know Trecie’s dead! Who else?”

  “No!” I cry at his words. My knees are too stiff to bend, but my feet continue to shuffle backward. Each movement presses my sopping shirt against my side. The sensation is somehow worse than the wail of pain emanating from my shoulder. Still, I’d rather listen to that than whatever else Ryan has to say. I won’t believe him.

  He continues toward me as he talks. “I started to give her little sister some attention and the brat threw a fit. That’s what’s wrong with kids today, disrespecting their elders. I didn’t mean to kill her. It was an accident.” He stops and then smiles again. “But Linus, yup, that I meant to do. Now you.”

  There’s no place left to go. Like all those afternoons in the library, my back is once more pushed against the wall. I can’t believe this is how I’ll die. That the last I’ll ever take in of this world will be the odor of formaldehyde, the sight of the worktable, and the man who killed Trecie and Linus.

  Each step Ryan takes toward me is slowed by my fear, every few inches of his approach seems to last for hours. I don’t mean to notice the drool that collects at the corners of his mouth, my blood blackening the shaft of his blade, dripping down his wrist; I think it’s odd that I can no longer hear or smell or taste anything, that my vision beyond Ryan is blurred.

  It isn’t until he’s within inches of me that I think—no, I
don’t think—I feel the hook of the trocar pressing into my back. My hands move, I don’t tell them to, they simply do, to reach behind me for the metal handle. It’s a primitive thing, like a spear with jagged teeth used for shredding flesh. The tip of my right middle finger scrapes the many needlelike teeth at the end of it, and for a moment I relish the sting.

  Then he’s upon me. He’s bent low over my face, too close, his hands on either side of me, pressing me against the wall. I can feel his thighs pinning my hips, his lips close to mine, parted as if for a kiss. I hate him.

  Ryan begins to giggle, soft and hollow. “Vic-tor-y.”

  He bends still more. His lips reach mine and I bite down hard on his tongue.

  Before I hear him wail, there’s a sense of movement, something I don’t see or hear, but know, his hand moving from its place on the wall beside my head, the knife scraping against the cinder blocks, a second, just a second, then a flash of something beside me.

  I move too. One hand, I don’t know which, swings the trocar around and the other hand meets it there, both grasping the handle. Like I’ve done hundreds, thousands of times before, I plunge it deep within the abdominal wall and up, higher and harder than I ever have, though never into a living person. There’s a sudden explosion of blood from his gut and mouth, his nose. In an instant his body grows limp and the weight of him hangs upon the trocar. It’s hard to let go of the handle, I don’t want to give him another chance to hurt me, but his mass at the end of it makes it heavy. When I do, he slumps to the floor with his legs at queer angles. I’m oddly thankful for the drains. I move along the wall, keeping my eyes on him as he writhes. He reaches for me, his hand flailing against my leg, but I edge faster away from him.

  Blood follows me. It smears itself along the path I make against the wall. I put more distance between Ryan and me: a foot, two, a yard. And then I feel it. Without looking, I know his knife is in me, deep within my side. There it is, the black plastic hilt of it all that’s visible now, the blade having disappeared, my white shirt (was it white?) now drenched, ruined.

  I slide down the wall, my knees bending before me. I know enough to fall on my right side, away from the knife. Beside me are the scattered remnants of my candles, tools, my flower book. It’s spine down, pages flung wide and fluttering each time I exhale against it. My nails scrape along the floor as I move my hand to still the flapping. The photograph it’s open to is of a meadow, a vast expanse of green scattered with white starlike flowers.

  No one knows I’m here.

  This room is colder than I’ve ever known it to be, even colder on the floor. Now that I know it’s there, I can feel the knife pushing inside of me with each breath (one-two-three). I try for small ones, they hurt less, but even that becomes too much. I hear Ryan moan from across the room. He’s still there.

  When I open my eyes (when did I close them, for how long?), I regard the painting, Linus’s painting of the shepherd, until the golden nimbus blurs. Now I know I’m truly alone.

  And cold. I’m so very, very cold.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  I open my eyes again (how long this time?) and a terrific shudder wrenches me full awake. Ryan is there and still, eerily quiet, until his chest rises slightly and there’s a bubbling from his gut. My tools are strewn about, the book too, its spine now cracked. I need to leave this place. His eyes are open, staring in my direction, a river of blood dripping into the floor drain. He blinks, his mouth moves, but there’s no sound.

  Given the chance, he will kill me. A jolt of adrenaline resolves the pain in my chest; it’s effortless to first sit, then stand. It needs to circulate through my bloodstream long enough for me to walk the short distance through the hallway and up one flight of stairs. My feet move one in front of the other, propelling me toward the door. I can’t hear my shoes drag along the tiles or the reluctant give of the door’s hinges; I’m listening only for Ryan’s movements, too afraid to check. I make my way toward the mourners at Linus’s wake, toward help and a quick visit to the emergency room. Really, there’s no pain to speak of; I suspect a few stitches is all I’ll need. In spite of what’s happened, for Alma’s sake, I hope she doesn’t see this. She’s been through enough.

  In the hallway it’s completely pitch, so black the light from the prep room can’t follow. I feel my way along the walls, careful to press hard against the concrete surface in case the adrenaline begins to wane. It’s too far to the door leading outside, and I’m certain I’ve passed the stairs already. Then my hand finds the knob and I push it open.

  The glare is blinding, purely white. The morning sun reflects off the snow, snow that covers the ground, the cars, everything. I continue walking, feeling my way. People will still be arriving, someone to catch me, because I’m certain to fall. There was so much blood. Another step and I’m there.

  But I’m not.

  I’m not in the parking lot of Bartholomew Funeral Home. There’s no cottage; my arch with its scraggle of hibernating wisteria is not beyond here. Surrounding me instead is a field thick with Kentucky bluegrass, patches of yellow starlike flowers growing in luxurious bouquets. Miles away are mountains tinged azure, rolling high into cadmium peaks, falling deep into valleys of goldenrod. And before them, a softly lapping ocean. Ships sail there, billowing dots of scarlet, emerald, amethyst canvases knotted to masts, set against an impossibly blue sky. A September blue sky. There aren’t enough words.

  Closer is a river with people strolling near its edge, while others sit watching it flow. The water itself isn’t clear or white or a translucent blue, no, it’s a constant flash of every color I’ve ever seen and some I haven’t. I can hear it gurgle against its banks. And music, too. Mozart? Something familiar. A willow tree, grander than any other, dips its roots into the water, its branches an explosion of reedy stems, the older sister to the one at Colebrook Cemetery. A trailing arbutus (faithful love) winds from the uppermost tip, circling down along to the tree’s exposed roots, its pink-and-white flowers dotted with the river’s spray. A boy, no more than seven, with a nest of auburn ringlets, stumbles and falls into the rush of foam. Before anyone can catch him, though no one tries, no one even startles, he’s whisked under and away. I race to the river’s bank, but it’s impossible to see much beneath the surface, only those curls, and then nothing.

  A young Asian woman wearing a white ao dai, an orange and black cat entwining itself around her legs, smiles and applauds and then turns to me after the child passes. “Hello, Clara.”

  Before I can think, ask how she knows my name, the words spill from my mouth. “That boy—”

  “Yes,” she says, her smile faltering, “it’s like that sometimes.”

  “No one tried to save him.”

  “He can save himself,” she says, and the cat’s suddenly within her arms. “Oh, Thuy, where are your manners! Clara, I am Thuy.”

  Thuy (I know her; how?) turns back to the others, who appear not to have noticed the loss of the child. Conversations I can’t hear swirl around us. Laughter tinkling from within a forest of dogwood and crabapple, a riot of pink and mottled green leaves, commands my attention. A man and woman run from there, my age I think, across a white paddle bridge to another cluster of trees, Japanese maple and cherry, followed by a Lab and a golden retriever both romping and barking; all gather under a shower of blossoms. Fields of wildflowers, a maze of hedge and burning bush, lie between here and there. Not far away, the sky ripples with snowflakes gliding in every direction, released by fantastic clouds. When I look closely, it’s as if there’s a kaleidoscope in each flake.

  I know what this is; I’ve read about such conditions. It’s a neurological phenomenon, oxygen deprivation from too much blood loss. A simple chemical reaction. I feel for the hilt of the knife in my side but find nothing. A dream, then, an artful hallucination. I need to get upstairs to Alma, to a hospital, though I’d rather rest here just a moment more. Yes, a dream, I know this. Still.

  “Clara,” says Thuy, the cat now gone.
“There isn’t much time.”

  I feel for a scab along my crown, a spot of comfort. There is none. But there’s hair, my own, only now it doesn’t feel at all coarse and ugly. All the wounds have been smoothed away, replaced with something luxurious. I try to settle my mind, make order of the incomprehensible. Thuy is all that appears clear now; the rest of this place begins to blur as if seen through a sheet of water.

  It’s then I realize I’m not breathing. There’s no ache in my side, no hunger or thirst, no desire to lay my head down, close my eyes, and drift away. What an effort it all was! Such a relief to be without the constant struggle to live, to forgo everything that accompanies life’s exertions. No more being trapped in a cycle of endless consumption—nourishment, air, space—yet never being filled.

  I want to tell her of my discovery, but there’s no time, none at all. Thuy reaches for my wrist but never quite touches. Instead, it’s as if her hand has blended within my own, blurring the boundaries of skin. We are the same, a flutter, and suddenly we cross the field, standing before an overgrown jungle dotted with bloodred flowers the size of watermelons, all lit from within. A path unfolds along the ocean of grass that grows in waves between here and there, flattened by invisible feet.

  “They’re coming,” Thuy says.

  I turn to ask Thuy who, but she’s gone. Just then a woman begins to appear in the field. I don’t recognize her at first. She’s young, younger than I, her hair long and brown, her lips a rich garnet. More beautiful than I remember. She’s holding a baby in her arms, the one from my dream, naked and plump.

  “Baby Doll,” the young woman says, extending her arm to me, stretching without reaching, the other hand still cupping the infant. I smell the woman now, her scent as recognizable as my own. She’s sunshine and milk, wool and comfort.