A Place for Sinners

by Aaron Dries

Amity’s outline was imprinted in the muddy bank. Next to it was the stream, which logic implied would lead her to the ocean, back to the boat where Caleb, Tobias and all of the other passengers were waiting for her.

  Go. Go now! Don’t waste a second.

  She couldn’t help but wonder where this burst of determination had come from. Had the dream, only the flavor of which she could recall, left something in her, something as real and firmly embedded in her as the splinters in her palm?

  Maybe. But what, Amity Collins had no idea.

  Another surge of pain knocked her knees out from under her. Stinking mud squished against her weight. Gagging, she dunked her hands in the water, the frigid bite chewing through her. Tears twinkled through the air and plopped into the pink cloud below.

  Make it stop. Now. Make the pain invisible.

  Wishing didn’t make the RED go away, so she yanked her hands back, stood, and stumbled across sand and slate to the wall of trees and rock where the water trickled, where the rainbow mocked. Broken fingernails gripped a flaking shred of bark, and with a grunt, stripped it from its slimy girth. It dangled in her hands, limp and waterlogged.

  It was perfect. She couldn’t believe it. Another win.

  I’m beating you.

  This revelation etched a smile on her face, despite another one of those agony-waves dumping down on her. She wrapped the elastic bark around her right palm. Despite the difficulty, her movements were controlled and even.

  Was Caleb there with her, swatting away the pain and threading the bark into a makeshift knot?

  No.

  It was just she, Amity Collins. Alone. For the first time since the night she’d wandered. Alone.

  There wasn’t enough bark.

  I need more. More.

  Adrenaline said “fuck you” to sense and worked its magic. It was alive inside her. Was she screaming as she yanked the leaves from one of the palm trees? Maybe. And if Amity was screaming, they were screams that defied the island’s mistrust in her.

  I played by your rules. I came here with kindness. I fed your children; I appreciated your goddamned beauty. And what did you do in return? Huh? You turned on me, you bitch.

  She wanted to hear the island cry as the leaves tore away in her hands. She left blood smears across the bark. A graffitist’s tag. This made her feel euphoric.

  THE FREAK WAS ’ERE. Deal with it.

  Amity wrapped the fronds around the bark, adding an additional layer of reinforcement to her bandage. She didn’t know how effective it would prove, but for now it would have to do. Gasping, she stepped back from the pool of water and glared up at the sky. The storm clouds were clearing and she could see the blue beneath.

  Caleb, Caleb. Where are you? I need you.

  (I don’t need you).

  I do.

  (You don’t. He’s your drug.)

  He’s not.

  (This had to happen.)

  Amity trudged alongside the stream, following its glimmering path. Stopped. Amity had no idea how she could have possibly forgotten. Her left hand fingers inched toward her pocket with tenacious, fearful thrusts.

  She felt it, just as she had thousands of times before when she wanted to take a photo, or needed to log into that other world and vanish in that other life.

  Like. Favorite. Retweet… Take me back.

  (You are.)

  Her iPhone was shattered into pieces. Amity was surprised by how little she felt; the absence was its own kind of silence. The screen was webbed with cracks, and in its blank, dead pieces she could make out a jigsaw reflection staring back. It looked a little like someone that she used to know, and that person dropped the machine and descended into the jungle.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Shark

  1

  The shark trolled as she had never trolled before. It was paying off. There was a scent in the air, and it made something stir within her, as though it were offspring in her belly turning their jaws upon each other, biting in the fury of hunger. The hunt was now. Soon, her prey’s light would be deep inside her; the offspring would still.

  She’d swum through the jungle alleys. There was no direction, for she was being led. She was not lost, for she had found her newest victim. The shark had seen it moving between the trees—just a quick flash of sunlight reflecting off flesh.

  Her feet weren’t moving, not really. Her gate was a glide; arms moved through the humid air, brushing aside stray leaves. Her snout pushed forward, antsy to put her new teeth to good use. If she could have opened her mouth wide enough to swallow the world, she would, and still it wouldn’t be enough.

  But it was important not to rush it. It paid to make it last reaaaalllll gooooooood.

  “Gah-heee-grhu.”

  (“I see you.”)

  It was a child.

  She would have smiled, but her mouth was already stretched to the limits of its elasticity. Her skin was taut and deformed now. The shark couldn’t wait for her prey to see her bearing down on it, to feel her power. The fear she invoked would shake the meat from its little bones. Fear was golden, as would be its light.

  The shark saw undersides of its small feet running, saw its back as it wormed between two fallen trees. So close. This fleeing thing fueled her on, through fatigue and pain.

  You’ve got to go faster. The whisper of the ocean. The tide’s on her side. Overcome it. Speed.

  It was lithe and quick on its feet. The distance between them was growing, though not for much longer. The shark’s determination made the machine of her body spin every cog. It was brutal and efficient. Her legs strode wider. Her breath rasped. It forced her into layers of black and green. Pure energy. Beautiful. Admirable.

  There! She could see the little one again. It turned its head and locked eyes with her.

  It was Susan Sycamore’s eldest daughter, only she wasn’t a teenager anymore. Something had peeled her back to childhood, back when pigtails were in and boys didn’t matter, when there was nothing but love.

  The shark didn’t falter, despite the shock. She knew it couldn’t be the same little girl ahead of her. No. Little Samantha Sycamore was back in London with her father and two younger sisters. Samantha would be lying in her bed, thinking of new ways to rebel against them.

  It was pathetic.

  If only Samantha knew how close she had come to dying, over and over, at the hands of her mother. If only they all knew. There had been so many times when Sycamore had woken in the middle of the night and stood over their beds and watched them sleep with the dirty hypodermic needle held tight in her hands.

  She didn’t know why she hated them. She didn’t know why the very sight of them made her skin crawl. They brought an angry throbbing to her chest with their stupid comments, by leaving something out that she had told them to put away. Her anger was a jug poured to its limit, overspilling.

  The needle hovered. It never plunged into flesh and eyes. Some morality had been at play. And Sycamore had resented that mercy. But whatever barrier had existed was no more, which was why chasing her daughter through the jungle with the intention of ripping her to fucking shreds felt right.

  Boiling.

  Boiling.

  Plotting.

  It had not just been the needle. Sycamore had come close to ending them many times, and never closer than the letters. Her failure to send them was what had led her to travel. However, there were no regrets. Had she gone through with it, she never would have killed all of these people. That was okay. Deep down, Sycamore felt that her family would not have been worthy of the shark’s jaws.

  How still she wanted them to be. Their mouths open and yet quiet. Eyes wide and yet not seeing. Gravestone victories.

  The letters.

  They were typed up on A4 sheets of paper and slipped inside plain envelopes she’d stolen from the work stationery cupboard. None of the content was dated and they held little continuity. This way she could send them whenever she wanted to. There were seven of them in total, each addr
essed to her husband and herself.

  Stop the lies or you and your family will be punished.

  If you continue to live this way, I will find you and you all will suffer.

  You haven’t listened to me. Continue and I’ll find a way into your house.

  My patience is ending. End the lies or I’ll come for you in the night.

  You, your wife and your children will die. Time is running out.

  I’ve already been in your house. Stop or I will come again.

  You didn’t listen. You deserve this. Good-bye.

  It had been Sycamore’s belief that she would not be suspected of the crime because the letters were addressed to herself. The plan was to break a window from the outside of their apartment, which was on the bottom floor of their building and faced the side fence. It was important that the glass land on the right side of the wall, solidifying in the detective’s mind that the intruder had not come from within the building.

  She would murder them close to dawn with all of the knives in the kitchen. How the needle would fit in, she wasn’t sure. But it would. She would write messages on the walls in their blood that echoed the letters. Her husband would be the first to die, followed by the girls. There would be no fingerprints because she had gloves; the bloodied footprints would match the pair of oversize, secondhand men’s boots she’d bought for the event a year before. She would then take them with her once the deed was done, after showering. Sycamore would then go to the gym for an early morning balance class, as she often did before work. The river would claim the boots. Upon returning from class, she would check the bodies, scream loud enough for the neighbors to hear and then call the police.

  None of this happened.

  She knew it wouldn’t the night she visited her husband as he slept in his chair in front of the television set. There were two empty beer bottles on the coffee table. No coasters. Sycamore had watched him breathing, had seen how his face was furrowed by nightmares. He moaned.

  And just like that the spell was broken.

  I don’t think I can do this.

  There had been evangelical nonsense screaming from the television set. The hallway clock chimed. All was still in the witches’ hour, still except for her hands, which shook.

  I can’t.

  To make sure, she’d walked into her daughters’ rooms and spied on their sleeping. They were ugly and hurtful and made the pain so bright, as bright as the light that escaped from between their lips. Despite this, she couldn’t muster what was inside her.

  My hatred for you all is my everything. But I can’t do this. I’m—

  (say it)

  I’m…

  (own it)

  …not brave enough.

  And so the shark had turned its tail on her. She walked away from them and slipped under the covers of her bed. She did not sleep and called in sick to work as the day’s first sun crept in through the window to light up the family photos on the wall. Her husband—who never used to drink that heavily—had been curt with her as he shuffled off to the primary school where he taught fourth grade, his hangover having trimmed him of his otherwise finer finishings. The “get better soons” and “I wuv yous” were always the first to go.

  Susan Sycamore would not miss them.

  That final day in her apartment had been a daze. She took the letters, which she’d kept hidden in a shoebox stuffed under the bed, and slid them inside an old handbag that smelled of mothballs and dry makeup. She put the imitation Jimmy Choo to her nose and inhaled. Thoughts of her mother, who had been dead and buried for seven years now, were evoked but didn’t linger. She put the handbag behind the crawlspace in their bedroom wall, which could only be accessed from within their closet. Sycamore didn’t know why she didn’t just burn them. Deep down, she wondered if she liked the idea of her husband finding them while she was away, days or even months from now, and learning of how close they had all come to being ripped open.

  There’s something not right with you.

  I’m fine. It’s them who are all wrong and backward.

  No, it’s you. Mothers, wives, they aren’t supposed to think like this. Act like this. They don’t dream what you dream and they certainly don’t drop everything and leave. What excuse are you going to give them, huh? You went out for a pack of cigarettes? You don’t even smoke, you nitwit.

  I’m fine.

  After booking her around-the-world ticket online, paying from her personal Visa and not the account she shared with her husband, Susan Sycamore walked through their apartment, soaking up the silence. It was like being underwater, and that felt right to her.

  She went into the downstairs bathroom, and instead of seeing her face in the mirror, she saw the shark. On some level, she’d known that it had been with her, growing in size and drawing nearer and nearer, for a long time. Its great gray dorsal fin had long ago slit open the surface of her life and chased after her, always with the sun at its back and casting a long shadow over her life.

  And it had been right there staring back at her, as close as it had ever been.

  When she turned her head to the right, the shark echoed the movement. When she nodded, it nodded. Its nose was a swirl of melted ice-cream colors, charcoal and vanilla cream and unnatural pink. The rough skin was threaded with scars and pockmarks. But it was its eyes that impressed her the most—the way they were dead and yet so alive, rolling from black to white.

  Sycamore wanted to reach out and touch the mirror but didn’t. Not yet. It wasn’t time. She still had so much further to go, so much more to do. If it wasn’t going to be the light of her family that she was to consume, then it would be those of strangers.

  A coward’s compromise.

  She opened her mouth and the shark did the same. Its throat was dark and bottomless, lined with black gills and strands of half-devoured flesh. The gums were speckled with bloodied diseases, speared by rows and rows of triangular teeth.

  They closed their mouths. A link formed. The circle closed.

  Bright. I want my bright.

  With a single sweep of the shark’s tail, it propelled forward, the tip of its nose striking the underside of the mirror and shattering it. Sycamore screamed as a torrent of icy cold saltwater gushed into the room. She stumbled backward and tripped.

  “Help!”

  It kept coming and coming, forcing her against the wall. The door that led to the hallway outside was closed; no water escaped. Pillowcases floated on the rising tide. Sycamore paddled to stay afloat, gasping for air as she was pushed closer to the ceiling, the room filling to its capacity.

  “Help me! I’m drowning! Somebody, please!”

  But nobody answered her calls. Nobody could hear. She was submerged. Her long hair floated about her face like seaweed in an ocean’s ebb. Fingernails scrabbled at the walls and tore back and cracked. Flakes of paint twirled before her eyes.

  I’m going to die.

  She couldn’t hold her breath any longer; the pain was too incredible. And so she caved. Her locked lips undid in a soundless yawn and the ocean filled her lungs, weighing her down. She began to descend, passing a towel, a compact case, a paperback book with the pages turning to mush and falling out. Everything was blue and soundless.

  I’m not dead. I can breathe!

  Her feet touched the carpet next to the upended mattress, which was turning on a corner like some giant, spinning domino. The blankets waved, billowed. Panic faded away.

  Warmth on her back. Sycamore swished around to face the window. The curtains were partially drawn. Golden luminescence cut through the haze, illuminating tiny dust, sand and ocean particles.

  There. Go there now.

  She swam toward it, a smile on her face. Sycamore was hopeful, though for what she did not know. The window loomed, warmth strong against her face. There was something on the other side. Her hands moved with nightmarish lethargy, reached up to grasp the curtains and drew them aside.

  On the opposite side of the glass there was an atrium of peop
le staring back at her.

  They pointed and giggled and looked up with awe. Sycamore knew then that she was more beautiful now than she had ever been before.

  There was a little girl, somewhat familiar, standing close to the glass. Sycamore pushed herself flush against the window. It was so cold in the water.

  Sycamore didn’t know how she could hear what the little girl was saying, but she could. She watched, helpless and unable to answer, as the child turned to the tall man beside her. His giant hand was resting on her left shoulder in some grand gesture of comfort and protection. His face was a bowl of blowing blood that did not spill or overflow, and when he spoke, scarlet bubbles frothed the surface.

  “What is it, Daddy?”

  “It’s a great white shark, Susan. The greatest creature that ever lived. We’re lucky, so lucky, to have ever seen one. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

  Sycamore allowed the tide to sweep her up and usher her away from the window, away from the warmth, until the people on the other side were just blemishes against the flailing light. The ocean grew dark and her hunger flared stronger than ever before.

  “Gah-heee-grhu.”

  The jungle screeched and shook as she trolled. Fronds and barbed plants whipped her, dragging strips from her flesh. She didn’t care. Monkeys called and laughed above, and birds of all sizes and colors flapped and squawked with fear, rising on blind wings and crashing into trees. Even the ground beneath her bruised feet seemed to shake. And why shouldn’t it tremble? The shark was coming. It was proud.

  The child was there.

  It was her daughter after all, dressed in periwinkle blue. She could smell her shampoo.

  The shark reached out her hand. Stretched.

  I can see your light. Right. There.

  Her fingers latched around the running child’s hair and squeezed tight. The shark dug her feet into the earth, roared and pulled her arm back with great power. There was a distinct ripping sound as a tuft of hair was scalped from the child, who now fell to the ground in a flailing heap.

  The shark moaned through its Coke-bottle teeth as her shadow fell over the upturned face. Her daughter’s eyes were twin mirrors reflecting her jaws. There was no thought. No remorse. The shark leaned further and bit away its face, swallowing its incomprehensible pleas.