Halcyon

by Rio Youers

  Not far now, Edith said.

  First stop was Briarville, just off the Interstate, where four passengers got off and six got on. One of them sat next to Shirley, where she’d “felt” Edith sitting. She was about to say that the seat was occupied when Edith crawled into her lap, curled both arms around her neck.

  I’m right here.

  Good … that’s good.

  They passed another car ass-up in the ditch and the driver had a flare burning. It set the daylight an unholy pink and the snow looked more like ash. The sign for Flint Wood was just beyond this, then Judd’s Gas Stop. Shirley wiped the window again, peering hard through the snow until she saw what she was looking for. She stood up and tugged the cord. The driver pulled over. Shirley stepped down the aisle, Edith one pace ahead.

  “You sure ’bout this, girly?” the driver asked. “I can let you out, but there’s nothin’ here.”

  Shirley looked through the windshield, at the rusty gate collapsed on its hinges, the snow-covered driveway and derelict farmhouse beyond.

  “Nothing good, anyway,” she said.

  * * *

  Alyssa knelt beside Edith with a folded towel pressed to the entry wound in her lower back, and a gauze pad pressed to the exit wound in her thigh. When she looked and saw no red spots seeping through the material, she blew over her top lip and nodded at Martin.

  “The bleeding has stopped, or at least slowed all the way down. Those icepacks helped.” Both temporary “packs” had split under the pressure, but Sharky had a beer cooler with a couple of Freez Paks in that he willingly donated to the cause. “I don’t think there’s any damage to the major organs, based on the bullet’s trajectory, but I can’t account for shrapnel. I am certain it didn’t hit the femoral artery on the way out, though. We’d know if it did.”

  “Right … thank you.” Martin wiped his eyes with trembling hands and said it again. “Thank you, Alyssa.”

  “We’re not out of the woods. Besides the blood she’s already lost, there’s risk of shock, sepsis, infection.” A large wave hoisted the prow skyward and it came down with a thump. Alyssa rocked on her knees, maintaining pressure on Edith’s wounds. “I’ve done all I can. Now we just hope.”

  Martin took a blanket, wrapped it around Alyssa, and kissed her cheek.

  “You’re amazing.” He cupped her face in both hands. “I can’t begin to … I mean, how do you even know this stuff? Are you a nurse? I thought you were a music teacher.”

  “I am,” she replied, smiling sadly. “I learned about it after Jackie was killed. I think everybody in America should know how to treat gunshot wounds.”

  Another steep wave struck the hull. The trawler yawed alarmingly. Alyssa held Edith. Martin held Alyssa. Sharky worked the wheel and swore. He had to wait for the wind to dip to get them pointed in the right direction. A moment’s calm followed. The GPS directed them to the next waypoint. Sharky radioed ahead and gave their ETA as approximately twenty minutes.

  “We’re over halfway,” he shouted. “How’s she doing?”

  “Not good,” Martin shouted back. “If you can go any faster…”

  The lightest breaths escaped Edith’s lips. Her eyelids fluttered but didn’t open. Martin took her hand. It was cold and small.

  “I love you, baby,” he whispered into her ear, certain that, even through the storm, and over whatever distance separated them, she could hear him. “Daddy loves you so much.”

  The wind rose again. Leaden waves, some ten feet tall, surged and bullied.

  Edith curled her fingers around Martin’s thumb and squeezed.

  * * *

  The barn appeared through the snow like some ghost ship out of the fog. Looking through Shirley’s eyes, Edith experienced a familiar dread. Her recurring nightmare probed the edges of her mind. She saw the dead foal spilling from the well and hobbling after her on its moldering hooves. And Shirley—a horror-movie rendition of Shirley, at least—chasing her through the forest with splintered goat’s horns curving from her forehead.

  I’m coming for your sooooooooul, she creaked.

  Edith flinched. The connection to her sister weakened and she fought to hold on.

  Shirley, I’m … I’m …

  She felt pain again. Deep, unwavering pain. Her father’s voice came to her from some faraway place.

  I’m right here, baby. Daddy’s here. Daddy loves you.

  Shirley crossed the yard between the barn and farmhouse, stumbling under the weight of the jacket. Her hair flapped around her head, white with snow. Edith was now a step behind.

  You can take my soul, she thought. Just let me see this through.

  She was cold, though. So very cold.

  Shirley stepped around the overgrown water trough. Edith looked but couldn’t see the dead foal. It was there, though, covered by snow. A white hump like a small, newly filled grave.

  * * *

  Edith, are you still there?

  The tall grass wasn’t so tall; it was limp and brown, weighed down by snow. If not for the storm, she would have seen the old well long before she reached the clearing. As it was, she shambled to within inches of the crumbling brickwork before stopping. She threw her hands out, caught the edge. Had the cover not been in place, she might have fallen in.

  Edith?

  I’m here, Edith replied. I’m … with you.

  Shirley was tired and cold. The muscles in her shoulders and back had knotted and her legs trembled. It was with considerable effort that she pushed the cover off the well. The exposed hole looked deeper and darker than it ever had. The pull was just the same.

  My special place, she thought, and recalled what she’d told Edith on the day she brought her out here: It’s like extreme therapy, I guess. Unload your crap and go home.

  “Unload,” Shirley mumbled, and screamed into the well until tiny dark spots buzzed in front of her eyes. She groaned, caught her breath, then screamed again. The anger was not new. Nor was the grief and self-doubt. The other feelings—regret, dismay, betrayal—were more recent additions to her complicated psyche. They worked like accelerants, she thought. They could be handled individually, but were volatile when mixed with others.

  Her throat burned. The exertion had started her nose bleeding.

  She remembered the last time she came here, just after her mom had died, a period of such unutterable despair that she couldn’t see a way through. She’d told herself she was there to unload, but couldn’t deny that her intention may have been darker. Her dad had found her, so full of love and concern, but confused—broken—in his own way. I think it’s feeding on me, she’d said to him, looking at the well. Like a vampire. It won’t be happy until I throw myself in.

  Blood dripped from her left nostril, swallowed by the well. It wanted more, she knew. She felt it pulling her, willing her. It was similar to Mother Moon, in many ways, offering itself as salvation, but really just a black, soulless hole.

  “I have so much darkness to give,” Shirley whispered. She’d said that to Dad, too, and it had scared him. It may have been the one thing she said that made him decide to take them to Halcyon.

  Shirley …

  Small arms looped around her middle. Edith. She didn’t feel as real, or as strong, as she had at the mall, or even on the bus, but she was there, and Shirley was thankful.

  You know what to do.

  Shirley nodded. She unzipped the puffer jacket halfway and pulled it over her head, hefting and wriggling like an escapologist freeing herself from handcuffs and chains. The storm lashed her body. She gritted her teeth and looked down the well.

  “Bad things belong in bad places,” she said, and dropped the jacket into the darkness. She saw the flash of its lethal zipper, then it was gone. Three seconds later, it hit the water at the bottom with a heavy splash.

  She would make her way to the barn soon and huddle there, wait for the storm to pass. There might be some dry hay in the loft or an old blanket she could wrap herself in. But first she needed to adjust
to the feeling that had washed over her. It was sudden, uplifting, and powerful.

  “Free,” she said. And maybe she was. At the very least, she believed she was free enough to become a young woman who—one day—would have some light to give.

  Shirley wiped the blood from her nose, the tears from her eyes. She dropped to her knees and cried.

  “Thank you, Ede,” she whispered. “I love you.”

  No response from Edith, only the wind purring across the mouth of the well.

  “Ede?”

  Her little sister was gone.

  Shirley wiped her eyes again and remembered something her dad had said when he found her out here, and despite his brokenness his words had rung true then, and they rang true again now: that it wasn’t the end of everything, and it was the beginning of something, and whatever that something was … that was up to them.

  Shirley braced herself against the cold. She walked away.

  * * *

  The emotions pressed like unwanted guests against a door. Martin would open it soon enough, and they would pour in, smother him. Most would take up permanent residence. He would live alongside fear, share a bed with grief, clean up after anger. There’d be no escape.

  That was to come, but for now he kept the door bolted.

  His focus was Edith. She was pale and still. Every now and then a vein in her eyelid twitched or her tongue pressed against her upper lip. She was slipping, though … slipping away from him.

  “Stay with me, baby.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it.

  Like a dimly chiming bell, or some thin light glimpsed through the mist, Martin became aware that they were moving faster across the water. His gaze flicked away from Edith for a second. The waves still chopped and foamed, but not as severely, and he saw more of them; visibility had improved. The storm was passing.

  “I see the mainland,” Sharky heralded a moment later. “They’re waiting for us.”

  “Ambulances?” Alyssa asked.

  “Yup. Three or four, by the looks.”

  The trawler jounced and rumbled onward. Alyssa squeezed Martin’s shoulder and whispered that they were nearly there.

  Martin kissed Edith’s hand again. Such small fingers. So delicate. He waited to see her eyelid twitch or her tongue touch her upper lip again but it didn’t happen.

  “Stay with me, baby.”

  Red and blue lights flashed on the mainland. They colored the falling snow.

  “Stay with me.”

  45

  She opened her eyes.

  Nothing.

  There would usually be something, she thought—a disparity in the darkness, a suggestion of texture or shape. She waited several minutes for her eyes to adjust, but they didn’t.

  The girl’s voice puffed through her mind like smoke from a spent match. Two words, painfully accurate: Lights out.

  Valerie made a discordant sound in her throat, somewhere between a groan and a cough. She pushed herself to her knees and started crawling. The floor beneath her was hard and cold, damp in places. She bumped into a wall, got to her feet, and felt her way along it. Its surface was nicked and scratched.

  “Please,” Valerie said, hating the vulnerability in her voice. She reached a corner and assessed the adjoining wall, then the wall after that. Around and around she went, until finally her fingers happened upon a switch. She flicked it with an excited gasp.

  A light hanging from the ceiling buzzed and flickered.

  Not a light. A lantern.

  She saw her environment in ugly snapshots. No door, no windows, but four walls, familiar even without the hanging scrolls and discolored paintings of lotus blossoms. In their place was the same unsettling phrase scratched over and over, tattooing the walls from floor to ceiling.

  DEREVAUN SERAUN.

  The lantern sputtered, went out.

  * * *

  She smelled cologne a short time later—something sour and expensive. The lantern flashed once like the bulb on an old camera.

  The rooster stood in the corner. He carried a long pipe with a piece of chain dangling from the end. His hands were larger than she remembered.

  “You,” Valerie mewled. Whatever strength she had in her legs drained quickly away. She spilled to her knees, and had barely caught her breath when, in the next brief burst of light, she saw the dog. His scissors made a terrible snick-snick sound.

  The goat appeared next, armed with a suture needle and thread. “This will go on and on,” he assured her, echoing words he’d spoken before.

  “And on,” the pig concurred. He’d brought the picana. It was wired to a car battery at his feet.

  “And on,” the snake said, sharpening his knives.

  They surrounded her one by one.

  * * *

  He was the last to arrive, of course, and he came impeccably dressed, his stripes shimmering.

  “Hey, sugargirl.”

  Valerie looked at him. Her scars itched. He dropped to his haunches in front of her and ran his powerful tiger hands through her hair.

  “It’s like I said … you can’t get rid of us.” The other animals snarled and grunted behind him. Their tools clanked heavily. “We’ll always be with you.”

  The lantern flickered, then went out, and that was fine.

  Valerie found she preferred the darkness.

  EIGHT MONTHS LATER

  GETTING CLOSER

  Martin had watched Smokey and the Bandit four times and had paused the video throughout, but failed to recognize his therapist in any of the stunt scenes. It didn’t help that the stuntwoman wore a Sally Fields wig, or that the video had that grainy, late seventies quality. The movie being forty-two years old was obviously a factor, but his therapist—comfortably into her sixties—had a clear, vibrant countenance. She had aged in the years since, of course, but kindly.

  “The first thing I saw when you walked in,” she said to Martin, “was your smile. Worth noting.”

  She would have noted this in her mind, Martin thought, because she never wrote anything down. She used to make notes, apparently, but found her patients became variations of scribbles (doodles was the word she used), rather than … well, people.

  Martin nodded. “It happens. Usually when Saturn is in … I don’t know, Aquarius, or something. I thought for sure you’d notice I’m not limping anymore.”

  “I did. The physical therapy is clearly paying off.”

  “It’s going well. I finished at the clinic. Now it’s just light stretching and reps at home.” Martin touched his knee, but cautiously, the way he might touch a dog that had once bitten him. “I’m glad I got the surgery done. And I’ll indulge in the metaphor, too: Something about moving forward. Blah-blah-blah.”

  “Most metaphors”—she smiled wonderfully—“are blah-blah-blah.”

  Her name was Daisy Drinkwater, a delicious name, worthy of everything from a Mark Twain novel to a Burt Reynolds movie. She was graceful and always calm, and her eyes … Martin would never forget Laura’s flashlight expression, but Daisy had what he called a swimming pool expression. She could lift one eyebrow or wrinkle her nose and he’d be drawn in, and sometimes he’d doggy-paddle with his head above the water, and sometimes he’d dive deep.

  As he did now:

  “I am moving forward, but I have my moments, usually at night, lying in bed and staring into the darkness, thinking I should feel guilt, or forgiveness, but feeling nothing at all. I killed a man. Shot him through the brain. Snuffed him out like a candle. His thoughts, his joys, his dreams—however fucked up they may have been … I put an end to them all. And I feel no guilt. I keep thinking about what he did, not just to Edith but to everybody. The acts of terror, the victims, and for what? The whim of one crazy woman and her idea of salvation.”

  Martin looked at Daisy with a blank but honest expression. She returned his gaze, inviting him to keep swimming. He nodded, then glanced around her office, which was as methodized and comforting as Daisy herself. A window looked out on tal
l pines that swayed toward one another as if sharing secrets—not dissimilar to the view from his cabin window on Halcyon.

  “I should feel something…” A bitter expression touched his face. “Right?”

  “Because you haven’t, doesn’t mean you won’t. You’ve been healing, in one form or another, since your wife died. It’s not that you’re not ready to deal with this. More a matter of priority.”

  The story broke, then escalated. What started out as a mass shooting on Gray Peaks Island developed into a cult saga with echoes of Heaven’s Gate and Jonestown, but with its own demented ideology. It didn’t take long for the surviving islanders to share their experiences, and when certain names came up (Garrett Riley, Glenn Burdock, etc.), the authorities put the pieces together with ease. Shirley’s statement—procured over several careful sessions with FBI agents and psychologists—filled in numerous blanks, and suggested Jim Jones levels of manipulation and brainwashing.

  In an interview with Anderson Cooper, forensic psychiatrist (and CNN go-to) Dr. Clyde Brisk said, “These people had already demonstrated a desire for utopia by abandoning everything they knew and beginning a new life on the island. Valerie Kemp—a pathological narcissist as well as a master manipulator—was able to use their disillusionment against them. Vulnerability, in the wrong hands, is a dangerous weapon.”

  Valerie had been rushed from the island to St. Joseph’s in Syracuse, where she lay in a coma for eighteen days. She emerged, but barely. Her brain damage, doctors said, was likely due to severe hypothermia. By this time the story had exploded internationally and Valerie had achieved a level of fame reserved for movie stars and presidents. She became the new FACE OF EVIL, everyone’s favorite boogeywoman.

  Two books were already in the works. There was talk of a movie and an HBO special.

  The press called her the Mind Witch.

  She was moved from St. Joseph’s to a secure psychiatric institution in Vermont. Much of her time was spent cowering in the corner, flinching at nothing. She frequently became “unreasonable” and on these occasions was placed—for her own safety, of course—in four-point restraints.