But then she gets a flash of tickling Evie’s toes to wake her up in the morning. Sunlight streaming in through the tall windows. A memory that nearly crushes her now, a deep-sea pressure.
If only she could think clearly, she could figure this out. Her mind is fuzzy, hard to focus. And she gets a fragment of a strange sensation, like someone struck a tuning fork, a reverberation in her bones, a word just beyond her comprehension, foreign, from a land or a time before this one. She doesn’t know what the word is, or what it means—she just knows it’s out there. Floating.
There are sounds outside . . . like the sound of doors opening, doors shutting. Was the conch shell signaling them for dinner? In this weather? Noah and Julia look at each other for a long moment. A silent dare. It’s Noah who moves first, walking to the window overlooking the lanai. He clicks the lamp off, picks up the flashlight, clicks it off too. Tries to stay in the shadow, peers outside.
She sees lights reflected in the glass, bobbing through the dark. What are they? The thing is, she knows what they are—it’s there, hovering just under the surface of her consciousness. She gets the sense that if she just presses her fingers to it, she’ll fall into this other consciousness, like Alice stepping through the looking glass.
But what will she find on the other side? It’s a thought that terrifies her.
“Julia,” Noah whispers. “You have to see . . .”
She does. Her feet seem to move of their own accord, they register the cool floor, the grit of the mud that’s dried. Already the bandage itches. She wants to peel it up, scratch.
Scratch, hatch, match.
She reaches Noah, stands right beside him, the skin of her arm close to the skin of his arm, but not touching. Looks outside.
Roger and Lois walk along the pier, an even foot of space between them. They appear to be oblivious to the wind, the rain, the bright flashes of lightning that hit the horizon. Lois wears a soggy halter top, a pair of sweats. Roger wears a white T-shirt and boxer shorts that are so drenched they cling like a second skin. Something forlorn about Lois’s bare shoulders, her normally curled hair flattened against her scalp. They don’t speak a word. They don’t look at each other. They simply continue a steady march along the pier toward the shore, matching each other stride for stride. No shoes. It’s bizarre, strange, and eerie in equal measure.
She feels a pull. A longing. A feeling that stretches from her to them, that quivers like a string.
And then others come into view, all walking silently, all barefoot as far as she can tell. The two women whose names she can’t remember, in yoga pants and slim-fitting T-shirts. Their friend, completely naked, emerges from another cabin on the pier along with one of the college boys, also naked. Then the other college boy, in sweats and a hoodie, follows behind them. All of them walk in unison—right, left, right, left. No jokes now. No laughter. No surreptitious, flirty glances.
Their rote movements are unnerving. A ritual she can’t fathom the meaning of. She feels Noah struggling to find the words, to say . . . something, but it’s not possible; she can’t speak herself, or tear her eyes away from the scene playing out in front of her. And there’s Heather and Fred, coming out from one of the bungalows on land. They all head for the beach, where they assemble in a line with an even foot between them, facing the ocean, the breaking waves. Holding their flashlights, lamps. Arms jittering like they just received an electric shock.
And then nothing happens. They just stand there. She watches the waves break, registers the sound of the rain—but the people, dear God the people are as absent and empty as death. Walking husks.
Nightmarchers.
“Noah, what—”
She turns and finds Noah standing stock-still, swaying slightly like a stalk of grass in the wind. Mouth agape, eyes vacant. Right arm trembling. She should scream, but the sound dissolves in her throat before she can open her mouth.
“Clunk, bunk, skunk,” says Noah. His eyes are glazed. Focused on nothing in particular.
“Noah?”
His mouth slowly opens, but no word comes out, and his jaw just hangs there, slack, his eyes vacant.
“Noah!”
Slowly, ever so slowly, his head drifts to the left, like the weight is too much for his neck, like he’s falling asleep or having a stroke. His right arm jerks.
Julia grabs him by the shoulder. “NOAH!”
His tongue falls out of his mouth, and his eyes roll backward. A seizure? Christ, what are you supposed to do for a seizure? Something about keeping them from biting their tongue, she remembers that much. She tries to push it back in his mouth, but his jaw is rigid, immobile.
It’s not a seizure, though. This is definitely not a seizure.
“Oh fuck. Oh fuck, Noah.”
White foam gathers at the corners of his mouth, drips down his chin. She grips his shoulder tighter.
“I’m here, I’m here, Noah. I’m here.”
Then she remembers—she had a package of pills in her hand when Isaac knocked on the door. And she put the package in her jeans pocket. And her jeans are hanging in the armoire.
Hang, slang, bang. She lets go of Noah, turns toward the armoire, but it’s so hard, moving away from the window, like it has a gravitational pull. She forces one foot forward, and then another, each step jerky, uncertain. She’s halfway there when she stops. She has to rest for a moment.
Because they’re so heavy, her eyes. So hard to keep open. And it’s been so long since she had a deep, real sleep. Before arriving on Kapu. Before leaving for Maui. Before Ethan left, taking Evie with him. Before that even, waking to hear the soft murmur of Ethan talking to someone on his cell phone in the hallway, hushed laughter, all the while she pretended to be asleep.
She tries to take another step, but can’t.
Her eyelids float. They close. Fear presses her heart—it’s almost impossible to breathe—but a strange sense of déjà vu strikes her, like she has been here before, he has been here before, and everything, everything is happening exactly as it is destined to be.
A cave. A cave with cool air that smells of iron, and minerals; a dark, wide lake as smooth as a mirror. A foreign world. Utterly silent. Pockmarked lava rock all around her, veins of that white fungus creeping across the cave walls, down to the water’s edge, even underneath it. Floating on the lake are huge red corpse flowers, three feet wide, with fleshy petals that spread out across the surface.
I can see. Why can I see? No source of light, but she can, perfectly well.
She walks to the lake, crouches down. Creatures swim in the lake. No color, they’re completely white. White fish, tiny white crabs, white eels, translucent white jellyfish swimming up out of the depths, tentacles trailing. White, blight, sight.
And there’s her reflection, staring back at her, so perfectly clear that it is like staring into a mirror, or at a picture of herself snapped in another time, because the funny thing is, she wears jodhpurs, a fitted riding jacket.
Irene. She’s wearing the same thing Irene was, in the picture Aunt Liddy showed her.
And there’s something else in the water, suspended there. An article of clothing. Her arm seems to reach out without her even thinking, her fingers touching the lake’s surface. For a moment—just a moment—she almost feels the pads of her reflection’s fingers, like there’s an actual Julia under the water, staring up at her with her own secret, internal thoughts.
But then her hand breaks the surface of the water, and the ripples distort her reflection, scatter it in all directions. The water closes in around her hand, frigid, instantly bracing, and then she has it, the clothing, and she pulls it up and out of the water.
A nightgown. The nightgown from her dream on the plane, some anonymous woman had been wearing it—pale white skin with roots growing from her neck into the ground. The realization brings her into lucidity—I’m dreaming, I’m dreaming right now.
When she’d tuck Evie into bed at night, Julia would tell her she would see Evie in her drea
ms, a way to entice her to actually close her eyes. Even as a baby, Evie had hated going to sleep, and as she got older, nightmares were common.
“Where do you want to meet tonight?” Julia would ask, running a hand over Evie’s forehead.
At the ice cream store. At the playground. At Disneyland (even though they’d never been there—too middle-class for Ethan’s taste).
“That sounds like fun,” Julia would say, kissing Evie’s cheek. “I’ll see you soon then.”
It almost breaks her, thinking about that again. There had been a final night where Julia had tucked Evie into bed, but she hadn’t known it then. It had been in a hotel room that Ethan had paid for while the trial was going on—whether to ease Evie’s mind that Mommy was okay, or to make sure Evie wasn’t in a dangerous area of town (i.e., an area that Julia could afford), she never knew. He’d gone radio silent by then.
But if she’s lucid dreaming, she has power here, now, in this realm.
“Evie!”
Her voice echoes back to her. No return call, no shout of Mommy!, no small figure running toward her, clasping her around the waist.
Chirp.
A white gecko on the cave wall. Chirp, chirp.
“EVIE!”
And then she hears it—a peal of unmistakable laughter, not close, more like an echo, but still.
“EVIE!”
She can’t see whether there’s an entrance or exit to this underground cavern; beyond the water, all is cloaked in impregnable shadow.
“EVIE!”
A splash, and when Julia looks at the lake, it’s churning, bubbling like hot water on the stove. Sometimes an article of clothing appears—pants, a dress, a shirt—and then something reaches up and out of the water, tries to grab hold of one of the flower’s petals.
A hand. A small, pale, child’s hand.
Evie?
Julia steps into the lake—so cold it makes her gasp—walking, stumbling, her boots slipping on the lava rock. Up to her waist, water filling her boots—another small hand reaches out of the water by the flower—Julia rips her jacket off and dives in, swimming as hard as she can, but there are strong currents pulling against her, trying to suck her down into the black water, her boots deadweight, so she kicks them off just before a current pulls her down and spins her like she’s in a washing machine. She struggles to get her head above water, and catches a glimpse of the lakeshore, the nightgown standing upright, worn by an invisible ghost. It moves toward the water, invisible legs taking invisible steps.
I spy with my little eye.
It takes all of Julia’s strength to fight the current and turn back to the flower. The hands are gone.
Gone. No.
Julia takes a big gulp of air and drops underwater, kicking as hard as she can, her desperate heart pounding. It’s dark, it’s all so very dark. An albino fish with a massive lower jaw drifts by, some kind of illuminated lure protruding from its forehead, ferocious-looking teeth.
Something that begins with the letter e.
But then there’s a small, naked form in front of her, glowing faintly, drifting in a fetal position, blond hair floating like seaweed. Eyes closed. Peaceful. Evie. She’d know her anywhere.
I’m coming. I’m coming, Evie.
So close now. Her lungs are on fire, her wet clothes a burden she has to fight against, too, but she uses fury, and rage, and all the months of misery to power herself through the current’s pull, reach a hand out to grasp Evie’s slim arm. What if I’m too late? She pushes that thought out of her head.
She feels cold flesh under her hand. There. Got you.
Evie’s skin, so thin as to be nearly translucent—Julia can see the dark lines of her veins running underneath—and her eyes, large and dark, staring at nothing. But her legs twitch—a sign of life—and joy, real joy, the kind Julia hasn’t experienced since Evie was born, threatens to burst from her heart.
I’ve got you. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.
Julia slips an arm around Evie’s waist, preparing for the final push back to shore, and that’s when she notices it.
A vine reaches out from Evie’s belly, up through the water, to the red flower floating over their heads, like an umbilical cord.
Something grips Julia’s own arm, and she finds Evie staring at her with the bulbous eyes of a gecko, her hand clenching Julia’s arm. Webbing between the fingers.
“I’ve got you too, Mommy.” Each word a floating bubble.
Julia gasps, inhaling water, but it feels good in her lungs, the water, like fresh air on a cool day. She’d heard that there’s a high that comes with drowning, a moment of peace before everything ends.
Yes, Julia thinks. Whatever the price, even death itself, it’s one she’s willing to pay.
Anything to be with Evie again. Images flash in her mind—Evie just after she was born, wrapped in the standard white blanket with red and blue stripes; Evie at two years old, picking a daisy; Evie on her fourth birthday, hiding in the closet because she didn’t want a party, she just wanted the presents and cake. And then other images flash in her mind—a toddler boy with black hair picking up a pink seashell from the beach, running toward her, proud of his find; a woman’s smiling face illuminated by the setting sun, running a hand through tousled red hair; a man in black pants, white shirt, painting the exterior of one of the church cottages, bare arms tanned by the sun.
Four tiny white fish gather, so fat they look like pebbles. They swim around her head, grazing her cheek, her lips.
Evie blinks with her large, strange eyes, grips her arm tighter. “Don’t leave me, Mommy. Please don’t leave me.”
I won’t, Julia tries to say, her mouth opening in the water, the words choking in her throat. I would never . . .
And the fish swim in; they wriggle past her tongue, down her esophagus. She tries to cough them out, but that only lodges them deeper.
Julia!
A voice she doesn’t recognize, a voice from another time, another place, one she doesn’t want to go back to. She wants to stay in this world, with Evie. I’ll never leave, I’ll never leave, I’ll never leave.
“JULIA!”
There’s a sharp pain in her head, a fierce throbbing. She closes her eyes, and when she opens them again she finds she’s back in the bungalow, pressed forcefully up against the wall by someone with a remarkably wiry strength for her size.
It’s Athletic Woman. It’s Beth.
#NDC DEV ORG HUB
19:10:22
where the hell have you been? status?
19:10:32
status is fuck you.
19:10:37
not funny.
19:10:40
hello?
19:10:42
this is red.
19:10:47
where’s your
19:10:50
he’s with them now. he’s one of them now. he got the meds, but wouldn’t take them. worried you wouldn’t come through.
19:11:19
okay. okay. we can fix this.
19:11:26
no. i can fix this.
19:11:31
red, you need to think about
19:11:38
i have. experiment is over. somebody has to put an end to it.
19:11:58
red.
19:11:59
i took enough so that i could be coherent enough to start destroying the data.
19:12:19
red they’re going to bomb the island. if you don’t
19:12:32
good. i saw the reels. i saw what you sick fucks did to her. a part of me, a huge part of m
e, would help her if it didn’t fuck up the rest of the world. let the bombs come.
19:13:13
red. she is not a person, she was never a
19:13:23
sorry, time for the hammer.
19:13:30
red, call the
19:13:33
- - > isir528 has quit
CHAPTER 19
NO, NOT HERE, JULIA DOESN’T want to be here, she wants to be back in the dream with Evie, she wants to be anywhere but this goddamn tropical purgatory.
Beth holds her firmly, but Julia puts up a fight, tries to push her away.
“No,” Julia whispers. “No, no, no, no.” Tears bead in her eyes, she can still feel Evie nearby. She doesn’t want to lose that feeling.
“Julia . . .” Beth whispers.
“No, no, no, no, no, no!” Julia rips one of Beth’s arms away. She’s still in the damn bungalow, the only difference is the rain and the storm must have finally abated, because the stillness . . .
Noah, where’s Noah? Nowhere to be found, and the door to the bungalow is wide open. She stumbles toward it, her balance uneven—she almost falls, but Beth catches her, holding her back.
“Julia,” she says, her tone firmer.
Julia struggles, frees an arm, which she uses to land a punch straight across Beth’s jaw. Beth lets go—Julia makes it to the doorway, out onto the lanai. . . .
No one is outside. No one standing by the ocean’s edge—just sand, and waves, and a moon in a night sky, wisps of clouds illuminated by moonlight. Moonlight? How many hours has she lost? Storm debris littered across the resort, fallen palms, branches, leaves. The drip, drip, drip of raindrops that fall from the waving palm trees onto the roof.
The Nightmarchers Page 21