The Dark Beneath the Ice

by Amelinda Bérubé

  And when I open my eyes, there it is, stepping into the circle of fish-cold light, its face—my face—a narrow, shadowed moon emerging from the shifting cloud of its hair. I’d hardly know my own form, draped in Ron’s too-big clothes, if it wasn’t for the hair coiling languidly around its head as if it’s drifting in some underwater current. I shrink back from it, but it ignores me; its attention is fixed on something in the playground. I watch it reach out to touch one of the slides, running a hand over the bright red plastic.

  And behind it, crouched at a wary distance next to one of the trees, is Ron. She’s clearly visible in the darkness, still shining, a scrap of cheerful sunlight gleaming on water fathoms deep.

  She came. Just like she came for Niobe. She followed me.

  Like it’s heard the thought, the ghost looks up, looks right at me, stopping my breath in my throat. And then it turns to see Ron, who freezes in place, wincing.

  Wearing my face, the ghost smiles.

  It’s you. Of course it’s you.

  It’s hard to look straight at it; it looks like me, but somehow it doesn’t inhabit my features the same way I do, and a shadow of malice shimmers from it like heat from pavement. Ron shrinks back a few steps, splashing ankle-deep into the wide pool that surrounds the tree, but then holds her ground. Not-Marianne takes a step toward her, another.

  You found me. You came looking for me. That’s so sweet.

  Ron’s hands fly up, her lips move. Her voice doesn’t carry through the underwater silence like Niobe’s did, but I remember it on the tape. Stay away from me! Stay back!

  You still think you can tell me what to do? Its smile widens. Another step, and another. Another. Ron falters, falls back a little further. I’m stronger than you.

  Run, I yell at her, soundless. Don’t be stupid! Run! But she stands fast, fists clenched, watching Not-Marianne stalk closer. Its hands close on her arms. I watch helplessly as it forces her to her knees in the water, leans over her as she struggles to break its grip.

  Mine, the ghost croons with its face inches from Ron’s. Hungry. Closing in. Mine.

  Not-Marianne’s long black Medusa hair eclipses them both for a moment. And then, abruptly, the ghost withdraws.

  Why should you care? It sounds…hurt? Is that possible?

  Ron closes her eyes, says something through clenched teeth.

  Why are you still talking to her? I’m the one who’s here with you. The words are tender, almost pleading, but its fingers tighten around Ron’s arms. Ron turns her head, leaning as far away from it as she can as it bends toward her. I’m the one who wants you.

  Ron twists in its grip.

  Don’t say that, it moans. Don’t you see? You saved me. You’re the only one I want.

  She’s speaking again, fists clenched, but before she’s finished it’s already shaking its head, its hair lashing.

  No. No no no. The air seems to crackle as its voice rises. Why would you say that? You don’t know her. Not like I do. She’s nothing. She’s useless! This is all wasted on her! She doesn’t deserve it! It’s mine!

  The ghost gives Ron a shake, shoves her away. She tumbles backward into the water, pushes herself up far enough to flounder back a few more splashing paces, falls again.

  She’s not coming back! The shadow around it deepens, congeals, lifting it into the air. Ron cringes away from it. I won’t let her! Are you going to run from me? Go on, run! I can tell you want to. See how far you get!

  She doesn’t run. She huddles in place and doesn’t move.

  Isn’t that cute, the ghost snarls. Isn’t that adorable. You don’t even know her. If you did, you’d run. Go! Do you want me to hurt you?

  Ron lifts her head, seems to steel herself. I see my name on her lips. Come back.

  But the ghost’s rage twists my face into a mask I barely recognize, and though it’s nowhere near her, I know it’s what knocks Ron sprawling. She’s trying to get to her feet as I run toward her, but invisible blows rain down on her; she staggers under each one, reeling. I try to grab her arm, to help her up, but it’s like there’s a glass wall between us, fitting close to her as a second skin, and though my hand seems to close on her shoulder, I know I can’t touch her, some distance will always remain. I try to stand between her and the ghost, flinging my arms wide to block its attack somehow, but it kicks Ron’s feet out from under her without my feeling so much as a whisper.

  You’re in over your head, it says softly, stepping slowly, deliberately toward us. Aren’t you. Stupid. Naive. You think she’d come back for you? You think she’d even try? She’s right here, you know. I go where she goes. She’s been here this whole time. She’s standing right here doing nothing. She’s too afraid to stop me. Too weak to stop me. She can’t stop me from taking. What’s. MINE!

  Leave her alone, I wail. Ron is on her hands and knees in the water, and her expression crumples, her shoulders shake as she starts to cry. But she doesn’t move. Ron! No sound, I have no voice. Rhiannon! What are you doing? Run!

  I can’t look straight at it, but I know it’s turned to look at me again. I heard somewhere that people used to think there were actual rays that come out of your eyes, unseen particles with an impact you can feel.

  I know you can hear me, the ghost says.

  Leave her alone! I scream.

  Make me, the ghost replies coldly. Beside me Ron curls up small in the water, trying to shield herself from another onslaught, rocking under impacts I can’t shield her from. She pitches to one side, barely catches herself with an elbow.

  Give it to me! the ghost rages. You will give it to me, or I will make it not worth having!

  Desperately, I turn away and throw myself across the distance between me and the ghost—a vast gulf, a few steps—reaching out to seize hold of it. To my astonishment, it shrinks away from me.

  And then the world whirls around me, and I hear the splash of my hands connecting with the marshy ground before I feel it. I’m panting like I’ve run a race, and I huddle there for a long moment, listening to my breath, to the rustle of the leaves, to the sifting drizzle of the rain.

  To someone crying.

  When I look up, Ron is still kneeling in the water a few meters away. Her hair trails into it, hiding her face.

  “Are you okay?” I croak.

  She nods jerkily.

  “Ron—”

  “I’m fine. I’m fine, I’m okay.”

  I lever myself to my feet—my bare feet, numb with cold—and splash toward her, but she puts a hand out to stop me and starts to wobble upright herself. She half laughs, then sniffles and lurches a bit as she stands, wincing. “Shit. I’m soaked.”

  “Oh my god, Ron. Why didn’t you run? Were you following it?”

  “I didn’t know what to do, okay? When I caught up with you your hair was floating again. And it didn’t see me, it just went on up the street, so I thought maybe I ought to…I don’t know. I don’t know what I was thinking.” Her voice thins into silence. She presses a hand to her side, lets her breath out slow and trembling.

  “Ron—”

  She dismisses the horror in my voice with a shaky wave of her hand. I swallow the hundred apologies I want to blurt out.

  “Here,” she says. “You’ll need your shoes. It left them on the sidewalk a while back.”

  They’re stuffed in her coat pockets; she pulls them out and shoves them at me as she splashes past, limping a little.

  “C’mon,” she mutters. “Let’s walk. I’m freezing.”

  19

  We come out onto the sidewalk, under the glow of the streetlights again. I drink in the sounds of distant traffic, our hurried footsteps, the mutter of the wind. Ron has become smaller somehow, folded into herself. She doesn’t look behind us, but her eyes flick back and forth across the road, and she jumps when a car turns onto the street just behind us. I don’t know
what to say. I want to tell her to go home, I want to tell her she doesn’t have to stay, but it seems cheap, ungrateful. I want to tell her how amazing she was, facing it down. I can’t believe she did it. I can’t figure out why.

  “Is your mom okay?” is what I eventually come out with.

  “She’s just got a headache,” Ron mutters. “That happens when she overdoes it.”

  “She was trying to teach me a thing about white light,” I stammer, though she probably heard that. “I tried. I really did. That other place just…dragged me in.”

  “Figures. Well, so much for visualizations.”

  “Ron. Listen, I tried to stop it, I couldn’t touch you, it—”

  “Fine, yeah,” she interrupts, her voice pained. “I get it.”

  “I’m not like you,” I say tightly. She has to know this about me. I can’t face her disappointment when she finds out. “I would have run. The ghost was right. I’m too scared. Maybe I shouldn’t even have—”

  “Just. Just don’t,” Ron says sharply, silencing me. It’s a long minute before she sighs and speaks again. “Look, don’t listen to it. Okay? That’s what it wants. You can’t believe the shit those kinds of things say about you.”

  I nod, digging my fingernails into my palms.

  “Seriously,” she says, putting a hand on my arm to pull me to a stop. “I get it. You tried. Look, I’m here, right? I’m fine.”

  God, it just beat her up and she’s trying to reassure me. I nod again, looking away down the street, trying to keep my mouth an iron line. I wish she’d stop looking at me so I could get my face back under control.

  “Let’s keep moving, okay?” I whisper.

  We walk in silence for a while. I have to keep hitching up the borrowed skirt; it’s heavy with water, slapping and clinging icily against my legs. We could be ghosts ourselves, hurrying past hedges and fences covered in trailing grapevines, the warm glow of kitchen and living room windows, the occasional car splashing past. I cling to the little sounds around us, holding them close, hoping they might be an anchor, a lifeline to the real world. The chirp of a car alarm, jingling keys. A muffled bass beat drifting from someone’s window.

  “That place I was in,” I start, too quietly, and have to repeat it before Ron looks around at me. “I think that’s where it comes from.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “I just have a feeling. I don’t know.”

  Ron’s lips quirk.

  “Now you sound like my mom.” She gives me a searching look. “Was it the same as last time? The other place?”

  “Yeah. It was a little different at your house. Maybe because your mom’s psychic. She was all…I don’t know, lit up. I could hear her. And you, a little bit. But out here…it’s kind of a mirror of the world. Everything’s the same. The road, the streetlights, all the buildings. Or even inside. But you can’t hear anything, and there’s no one else around. Just the river. Or something like the river.” I fumble for words to describe it, clench my teeth to keep them from chattering. “Being there is like… It’s like you’re treading water. All the time. And if you stop you’ll go under. And I think that’s where the ghost is, usually, when I’m here. When it says I drowned it… I don’t know if this makes sense. I think it means I trapped it there.”

  “How is that even possible?”

  I shake my head. I don’t want to think about it.

  “Right.” It’s heartening to see her eyes narrow thoughtfully, a shade of the detective returning. “I guess it doesn’t matter. It thinks you trapped it there. And it wants to be here instead, all the time. So it hates you. And when it says ‘this is mine’—”

  “It means my life,” I whisper. “It wants me to let it live my life. While I stay there, in the dark.”

  The thought has that same unquestionable weight, like swallowing a stone.

  “Well,” Ron says, “on the bright side, it said you have to give it. That means it can’t take it from you. Right? It can’t keep you there forever.”

  I nod, because I want there to be a bright side, but the ghost’s last threat hangs over me, and even if Ron is right, I’m not sure it matters. How long before it comes back?

  “Maybe we can find somewhere to hide from it, at least,” she mutters. “There has to be someplace it can’t go. Or something that’ll ward it off. Salt didn’t work… What about iron?”

  “Knives,” I sigh. Ron looks at me, frowning. “It was throwing knives. Don’t those have iron in them?”

  “I guess so. I don’t know, does steel count?” She shoves her wet hair back from her face. “Maybe if we lit a fire, since it’s all about the water? Or is that too obvious? Dammit, we need to figure out what it is.”

  “Your mom said ‘poltergeist’ is more of a set of symptoms than a real thing.”

  “Mm,” Ron says, maybe conceding the point. “Well, there was this one famous case in Nova Scotia, from the 1800s. It’s all over the internet. This girl had, like, lit matches dropping out of thin air around her, that kind of thing. I guess there were six ghosts after her all at once.”

  What a horrible thought. “It’s definitely only one that’s after me. I just don’t know why.”

  “I don’t know if there was ever really a reason for the poltergeists in the stuff I read. With this girl in Nova Scotia, they thought maybe it started because her fiancé tried to rape her.” She stops in the middle of the sidewalk and looks at me, suddenly diffident. “Um…listen. This is a really personal question, but…I mean, did anything ever—”

  “What?” I blink in surprise as I sort out what she’s getting at. “No! No, nothing like that. This ghost is…pretty much the only bad thing that’s ever happened to me.”

  “Well, good. Okay.” She frowns, though, like she’s trying to place a puzzle piece. “Anyway, it sounded like they came and went on their own. Pretty much out of nowhere.”

  “After how long?”

  “I don’t know. A couple of years, I think.”

  I turn blindly away from the thought. Ron catches up with me in a few long strides, and we walk in silence for a few moments while I find my voice.

  “I kind of wish you hadn’t told me that.”

  Ron winces. “Sorry. Full disclosure, right? I don’t know if it even means anything.”

  Years. It already feels like years, and it’s been how many days now? There has to be something I can do to stop it. Doesn’t there?

  “I don’t see how it helps,” I admit, my voice small. “That doesn’t tell us anything about what it is, or how it got there, or how to make it go away.”

  Ron shivers and looks away. All I can see of her face is a pale crescent.

  “Yeah. I know.” She sounds beaten, bewildered. Lost. “I’m out of ideas.”

  “I’m glad you’re here,” I whisper. “I wish I could go home.”

  Ron says nothing, but she slips an arm through mine, offering half a hug. I lean into her a little, grateful for her solid warmth, inhaling flowers and cigarette smoke.

  “I wish I could at least call, you know? To explain. To tell Mom I’m okay.”

  Ron digs into her pocket, offers me her phone, but I shake my head.

  “It won’t work.”

  Frowning, Ron pushes a button, holds it down. “Right. Fuck. Do you figure it does that on purpose?”

  “I don’t know. Probably.”

  “Well, maybe we can find a pay phone. It should be harder for it to mess with an analog connection, right? I mean, the tape recorder worked.”

  “I guess?”

  “Come on,” she says, new purpose filling her voice, and pulls me forward. “They can’t have gotten rid of all of them.”

  Arm in arm, we scuttle past stately apartment buildings, their stone facades topped with crenellations, stained glass windows glowing and through strings of little midcentury
houses interspersed with slick, skinny infill buildings, all angles and demurely dramatic lighting. Images wheel through my head: Mom’s face as she looked up at the knives suspended in the air. The glittering shards of glass whistling past us. God, it can’t have hurt her, can it? It’s followed me everywhere so far. It can’t have stayed behind. I gather the hem of the skirt in my fist so I can walk faster.

  The street runs underneath the highway. A sound barrier muffling the noise makes a high, blank wall looming over us. We hurry through a broad, echoing concrete tunnel; the spiderwebs strung from the orange lights on the walls billow and tremble. The rain has thinned to a fine mist, and our passage is visible in the saturated air, leaving a faint, spiraling tracery. All around, blending into the constant far-off roar of traffic, there’s the sound of water running, running, running downhill past us toward the river.

  “I thought maybe I could stop it,” Ron says eventually, keeping her eyes on the sidewalk. “That’s why I followed you. I thought I could make it go away.”

  “It could have killed you. You know that, right? It seriously could have killed you.”

  Ron puts up a hand to deflect this. “I know, I know. I guess it’s just…” She sighs, taps her temple with one finger. “Cement bunker, remember? Mom used to have these…panic attacks, or something. After my dad left. When I was little I could stop them. I could make it go away. It was like my superpower. I’d wake up and find her curled up next to me in my skinny little twin bed.” She laughs a little as she says it, but with her arm in mine I can feel her going drawn and tense. “This isn’t that simple, obviously. I don’t know. I had to try.”

  “Did it stop working? Your superpower?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I just…grew out of it.” Her lips go thin. “I didn’t turn out the way she thought I would. No psychic gene. And I got tired of her hauling me around all the time. I’d get stuck handing out her cards at the psychic fairs and everything. And then I’d get bitched at for ruining her vibe. For pushing customers away with my negative energy.” She grimaces. “Well, I guess she might have had a point. A kid sulking over a phone in your booth isn’t exactly great marketing.”