Halcyon

by Rio Youers

  This is YOUR moment. NO ONE will shine brighter.

  Shirley nudged her way toward the checkout lanes. They were plugged with people, herded by line barriers that snaked this way and that. Numbers flashed across cash registers. Scanners beeped continuously. The tall windows beyond looked out on another part of the mall, the stores there equally busy. Huge signs read 50% OFF and WHY PAY MORE?

  Another person bumped into Shirley—a thirty-something lady with a kind face and a daughter Edith’s age. She apologized and joined one of the lines. Shirley closed her eyes and tried bringing her own mom to mind. She saw her hair, hands, and body, but the face belonged to Mother Moon.

  The Glam is waiting, sweet girl. We’re ALL waiting.

  Shirley looked at the watch again.

  1:23.

  She clasped the zipper and this time kept her hand there.

  * * *

  Snow billowed around Nolan. Blood ran from his wounds. All Martin saw was the tip of the suppressor—a tiny black hole that looked capable of swallowing everything.

  Edith groaned behind him.

  “Daddy,” she said.

  Nolan grinned. Martin waited. He stared at the suppressor and wondered if he’d see the bullet come out—the first millisecond of combustion and then nothing ever again.

  “She says I can have everything,” Nolan said, spitting blood through the gaps where his teeth used to be. “I think I’ve earned it.”

  Martin realized these were supposed to be the last words he heard, some fucked up sendoff from a man who’d completely lost his mind. It didn’t work out that way, though. Nolan’s eyes suddenly shot wide and his arms flew open. The gun spun out of his hand. It landed in the ferns a short distance from Martin. “Fuckamanfuck,” Nolan squealed nonsensically. His legs weakened but he didn’t go down. When he turned, Martin saw the axe buried between his shoulder blades.

  Alyssa came into view; she’d been standing behind Nolan. Her fists were bunched and her face was a storm. Nolan wheeled toward her, taking a couple of looping swipes with his damaged arms. She sidestepped them easily and kicked him flush in the balls.

  Down he went.

  “Fuckaman.”

  Martin lunged for the gun, digging through the ferns, coming up with it quickly and aiming at Nolan.

  “Kill him,” Alyssa shrieked.

  Nolan lurched toward him, still on his knees. One hand made limp grabbing motions at the axe in his back. He looked from the gun to Martin and shook his head.

  “You don’t have the—”

  Martin shot him between the eyes.

  44

  Edith’s world had shrunk to the size of a keyhole. She saw Alyssa through it, her face beautiful but troubled, and then she saw her daddy. He looked very concerned, too. Frightened, even. She didn’t really know why.

  “You’re here,” she mumbled. It seemed a silly thing to say.

  “Shhh,” he replied. “Don’t speak, baby.” And that seemed silly, too.

  But maybe not; Edith moved to hug him—a dad-hug was exactly what she needed at that moment—but a white-hot pain flared through her left side, unlike any pain she’d ever experienced. She screamed and trembled. Her back arched.

  “The clinic,” her dad said. “Dr. Lythe—”

  “She needs a hospital. And I don’t know if Dr. Lythe … if he…” Alyssa trailed off. Edith felt a hand on her forehead. It was warm but it felt good. “But yes, the clinic first. We need clean bandages, gauzes, blankets—anything we can use to put pressure on the wound, stop the bleeding. And we’ll need Nolan’s boat key so we can get her to the mainland.”

  “The boat that brought me here is still at the dock.”

  “Let’s not take any chances,” Alyssa said. Edith looked at her through the keyhole, searching Nolan’s pockets. Nolan lay in a bed of ferns and didn’t move. He was covered in blood. Alyssa held up a set of keys a moment later. “Got ’em. Let’s go.”

  “I don’t think I can carry her quickly,” her dad said.

  “I can,” Alyssa said.

  Edith felt herself being lifted. More pain knifed through her stomach and ribs and all the way down her left leg. She tensed, crying out. “Okay, baby, everything’s going to be okay.” She couldn’t tell if this was her dad or Alyssa, and it didn’t matter; it was a soothing, floating voice that she held on to. Her eyelids fluttered. The keyhole—narrower now—showed snow falling through interlaced branches.

  “Okay, baby, it’s okay…”

  Everything faded, then gradually came back. She heard someone crying. Her dad. The sound broke her heart and she tried reaching for him but didn’t have the strength.

  “Shirley?” he said a moment later.

  “I don’t know,” Alyssa replied. She was short of breath but her arms remained strong. “I haven’t seen her.”

  “Not here,” Edith managed. “Gone … mainland.” They had stepped out of the woods and into a storm that scraped and howled. It was nothing next to the pain. And the pain was nothing next to her fear. Mention of Shirley had brought everything bubbling to the surface. She relived her confrontation with Mother Moon—the crazy talk of Einstein portals and Shirley being immortalized. But I have to wait for the price to be paid, Mother Moon had said. For the bomb to go off.

  The bomb.

  “Shirley,” Edith moaned.

  The keyhole closed completely, peeped open, then closed again. Lying in the darkness, listening to Alyssa puff and pant, and to her father cry, Edith realized she had just enough energy to do one of two things: she could fight for her life, or she could try to reach her sister.

  * * *

  It was an easy decision.

  Shirley … Shirley, where are—

  Edith stopped. This wouldn’t work. She wasn’t reaching, she was thinking. The only way she could connect with Shirley was to rewire that old muscle. She had to start over.

  Her hypnotherapist, Rafe Caine, drifted into her mind, with his mad beard and Star Wars toys. She heard his big brotherly voice at once, as if she was back in his office—which was how hypnosis worked; it was designed to be preloaded and recalled as needed. The suggestion was so strong that she even felt the soft couch beneath her, and saw the tranquil light floating in the darkness.

  You are in control of your journey, he said to her. You are aware of your surroundings.

  The storm raged. Alyssa walked stooped, curled protectively around her. Edith knew this even though her eyes were closed. Her father walked—no, limped—just behind.

  “Hold on, baby,” he said.

  Edith positioned herself above these things. She saw the deep space of everything below her, and everything between. The strange machinery inside her brain whirred. She took a fathomless step. Then another.

  When the threat is near—when you feel it within your airspace—you will visualize your alliance.

  Shirley.

  Edith brought her face to mind. She didn’t simply visualize it. She built it, just like she’d built her garden and the Crossover she’d whipped from beneath Mother Moon’s feet.

  See her hair and eyes, and the way she smiles.

  Yes, every detail. Edith saw and recreated it all. She made it real—something she could reach out and touch.

  Freckles like mine, she thought.

  The wound in her back (or maybe it was in her stomach, or both) flared intensely. She screamed, faded, but held on. The pain sent a jolt to her brain. Edith felt that disorienting connect or disconnect sensation, then Shirley was there. Her sister. Her alliance.

  Shirley …

  Edith took another step across that deep space and reached with both hands.

  * * *

  Alyssa placed Edith on the cot in Dr. Lythe’s clinic. She unzipped her jacket and removed it as quickly and gently as possible. The fabric surrounding the bullet hole was heavy with blood.

  “We need to stop the bleeding,” Alyssa said. “But we’ll lose too much time trying to do it here, so we’ll do it on the boat. Find me bl
ankets, towels, gauze, anything that can be used as a compress. Also…” Alyssa grabbed two latex gloves and tossed them at Martin. “Fill them with snow. Tie a knot in the ends. They’ll serve as icepacks.”

  Edith moaned. Her skin was pale, mottled with sweat.

  “Okay, hon,” Alyssa said, tilting Edith’s head to keep her airway open. “You’re going to be fine.”

  But she wasn’t so sure; Edith was unresponsive. Her pulse was weak. While waiting for Martin, Alyssa found scissors and cut Edith’s sweater and T-shirt down one side, exposing the wound. It was positioned on her lower back, a couple of inches to the left of her spine. She cut off Edith’s jeans and found the exit wound in the top of her left thigh.

  “The bullet came out,” Alyssa said to Martin when he limped back into the clinic, both latex gloves packed with snow. “And it went down toward her leg, instead of up toward the major organs. That’s good. But it traveled a long way, and that’s not good.”

  “Is she going to make it?” Martin looked like he was going to pass out.

  “I don’t know, but we need to get her on that boat. Right now.”

  Alyssa wrapped Edith in a blanket and lifted her again, trying to keep the wounds elevated above her heart. She stepped into the storm and walked blindly south. Martin was right behind her with the gauzes, bandages—everything Alyssa had asked for—gathered in a sheet and bundled over one shoulder.

  * * *

  He scooped a handful of Advil on his way out the door, tore into the packets with his teeth, crunched four of them dry and shoved the rest into his pocket. A great grief had clambered onto his shoulders in place of the timber wolf. It was a familiar grief—an all-too-recent companion—and he hated it to the core. Questions and regrets raced through his mind but he had no time for them.

  The wind rocked him. The snow crusted his face. Walking was difficult anyway, but his injured knee made it torturous. Martin gritted his teeth, put his head down, and hobbled on. His leg occasionally buckled but he didn’t fall. By sheer will, he’d caught up to Alyssa by the time they reached the orchard, then pushed ahead.

  “I’ll tell Sharky to get the boat untied and started,” he said. “That’ll save us some time.”

  “Every second counts,” Alyssa said. Edith, wrapped in a blanket, appeared very still in her arms.

  Martin pushed on, fighting to hold it together. Later, he thought. You can scream later. You can collapse and rage. He wondered if Alyssa was carrying a corpse.

  * * *

  There was fading, then there was falling. The distance to her wounded body lengthened—she couldn’t make a fist or lick her lips—but that didn’t matter; Edith had sacrificed the physical to enhance the spiritual, to find her sister.

  She saw Shirley’s hair and eyes, the way she smiled, her freckles so like Edith’s own. She saw her at once in a thousand ways, through the years. It was like riffling through a photo book. Most importantly, she saw Shirley now, with her shorter black hair and an equally black puffer jacket that Edith had never seen her wearing before. The connection was strong. Dying amped the psychic soul, apparently.

  Shirley was in a department store. Surrounded by people. She was pallid and afraid, fingers clasping the zipper of her jacket. The combination of finding her in this environment, and the dreadful words Mother Moon had let slip about the bomb, recalled everything that Edith had seen through the window. For the first time ever, she remembered the bad things. She saw the bodies, the fire, the countless broken pieces. She heard the sirens and screams.

  Her instinct was to run, find shelter. But that wouldn’t stop the bad things from happening, and it wouldn’t save Shirley.

  There was no turning away. Not this time.

  Edith opened her arms.

  She was the shelter.

  * * *

  1:30.

  Shirley lowered her head.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She pulled the zipper down. Its teeth buzzed, a sound she likened to the hiss of a burning fuse. The jacket was three-quarters open when a voice bloomed inside her head. Not Mother Moon’s. This was beautiful, full of love and power. It drowned Mother Moon’s entirely. Shirley’s breath caught in her throat and her teary eyes filled with light. She pulled her hand away from the jacket with less than two inches of closed zipper remaining.

  “Edith,” she said.

  She didn’t just hear her, she felt her. It was like her little sister had walked into the department store, burrowed her way through the crowd, and wrapped her arms around Shirley from behind. “Edith,” she said again, warm tears spilling onto her cheeks. And then, in her mind: You found me.

  Of course I did. I love you.

  Oh, my goodness. I love you, too. Shirley smiled and ran the heel of her hand across her cheeks. You feel so close.

  I am so close.

  Shirley’s joy was replaced by deep remorse. She looked around, at the packed aisles and checkout lanes, at the mothers and daughters, the brothers, sons, sisters, friends, lovers … all these people she was willing to—

  She shook her head and looked at the zipper. Two inches away. That was all.

  My God.

  That wasn’t you, Ede said, tuned in to her heart as well as her mind. That was Mother Moon. She was using you. But she’s not a problem anymore.

  Shirley pulled the zipper all the way up and stepped away from the checkout lanes. Her back throbbed under the weight of the jacket, but her mind, she realized, had lost its burden. She listened, but there was no whisper of Mother Moon. She’d fallen silent.

  There was only Edith now.

  You have to come with me, Shirl. Right now.

  Where? I’m just … I’m so scared.

  I know. But you held my hand for all those years. Now I’m going to hold yours.

  No sooner had Edith said this than Shirley felt a small hand curl into hers. It tugged gently, led her back along the main aisle, through the cloud of Black Friday shoppers, into the mall proper. She walked in a daze past stores and kiosks, beneath the sale signs and bright lights, through waves of jolly Christmas music. When she stepped outside, the fresh, wintry air knocked her back on her heels. The world was startlingly white and wondrous, which only emphasized the terrible weight of what she carried.

  The jacket … the bomb, Shirley screwed her eyes shut. It hurt to even think the word. I don’t know what to do.

  It’s okay. Edith said. I do.

  * * *

  “Start the boat,” Martin screamed, faltering along the dock. He had wondered if Sharky would still be there—if perhaps he’d decided that tackling a snowstorm was less perilous than docking on an island with a gunman on the loose. The idea of hauling ass had to have entered his mind, but he hadn’t acted on it. And thank Christ.

  “What the hell?” Sharky emerged from his cabin, flare gun in hand, clearly not taking any chances.

  “Start the boat.” Martin tossed the bundle he’d been lugging onto the trawler’s snow-covered deck. “We have to go, Sharky.”

  “We’re not going anywhere in this, mister.”

  “Yes, we are.”

  Martin looked over his shoulder as Alyssa emerged out of the snowy air. She shuffled carefully along the pathway and down the steps to the dock. The blanket covering Edith flapped around Alyssa’s knees. As she got closer, Martin saw it was daubed with blood.

  “Well, shit,” Sharky said.

  “It’s my daughter,” Martin said. “She’s been shot. She needs—”

  “Christ, man, get her in here.”

  Martin and Sharky helped Alyssa onto the boat. She went through to the cabin and lay Edith on one of the bench seats. Martin untied the mooring lines while Sharky started the engine. It rumbled faithfully.

  “Did you radio the police?” Martin shouted. He freed the last line, then threw it and himself on board. His knee sang its misery, but the Advil had already taken the edge off the pain.

  “I did. The coast guard, too. But it’s like I said—they ain’t comi
ng out in this.” Sharky hooked a thumb toward the other side of the dock, where Jake Door bobbed on the waves with snow in his eyes. “Not for one corpse floating belly-up in the water.”

  “Radio again. Tell them there are more on the island.” Martin went to Alyssa. She’d taken the blanket off Edith, who lay with one arm hanging. Blood oozed from the wound in her thigh. She was still alive, but only just. “And tell them we need an ambulance waiting for us at the marina in Fisherman’s Point.”

  Sharky turned the trawler around, already fighting the wheel. Heavy waves boomed against the hull. “You’re assuming we’ll make it to the marina at Fisherman’s Point.”

  Martin looked at Edith again and said, “We have to.”

  * * *

  Snow blew sideways across the parking lot. The traffic crawled, headlights blazing. Shirley walked with her hand out to the side, feeling Edith there. She passed a line of taxis and a longer line of people, and came soon after to a sign that read SHUTTLE. Two nearby shelters were crammed with shoppers. Shirley waited in the snow.

  “I messed up,” she whispered. “I’m such a bad person.”

  Don’t say that, Shirl. You’re beautiful.

  “I need help.”

  The Syracuse shuttle pulled up. Its door yawned open. Most of the shoppers filed out of the shelters and onto the bus. It rolled away a moment later, throwing sleet from beneath its tires. Edith led Shirley into the nearest shelter. A small screen flashed ads for stores in the mall and a ticker along the bottom announced that the local shuttle was six minutes away. Shirley stood with her head low, trying not to cry.

  I’m here, Shirl. I’m with you.

  It took closer to fifteen minutes but the local shuttle finally arrived. Shirley asked the driver if he was going to Flint Wood.

  “Second stop,” he said. “Get on if you’re gettin’; this’ll be the last run until the storm’s blown through.”

  Shirley boarded and took a seat toward the back. She smeared her hand across the fogged window so she could see out, get her bearings. They joined I-81 for one exit. It was a string of taillights. Shirley counted three cars in the ditch.