A Place for Sinners

by Aaron Dries

  There was movement among the trees at the end of the downward slope: a thin figure, hazed by layers of velveteen fog. The shark watched it walk, unaware that it had been seen. Her heart hammered, sending every scar and scrape across her body into weeping cries for food.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The Last Day (Continued)

  1

  Amity had been trekking toward the dawn; if she kept on walking into the shafts of light haloing through the trees, then she would eventually come to the eastern side of the island. That, at least, was the plan.

  Her legs stopped moving. She brought her bloodied hand to her brow, shielding the glare.

  Amity couldn’t believe what she was seeing at first.

  The shape had bled out of the white, millions of vapor drops coalescing midair in the shape of a human being. It came without warning, and there was no ceremony to its arrival. She wondered if it was a mirage.

  If it’s not, then it’s a miracle.

  It was real.

  Amity waved her arms, the bamboo spear slicing through fog. It was impossible not to smile, let alone break down. But she would not do that. Not yet. Sure, she wanted this newcomer to be her brother, or Tobias, or any one of the other tourists from the boat, but at this point any sign of life was welcome. Even if it was her mysterious savior from the cave, the man with the Medusa dreadlocks and sandman dust, it was something.

  The visitor just stood there.

  Her arms fell by her side. There was a distant ping of alarm in her head, though it was not yet loud enough to make her fear or to make her smile any less wide.

  “Help me,” Amity called out. She could only hope that her words made sense. “I’m deaf and I’m lost. Help me.”

  The silhouette advanced.

  Despite a tortured limp that looked to have skewed the very architecture of the stranger’s bones, Amity knew from the curve of the hips and the swish of the legs that it was a woman. And now this woman was not just advancing, she was breaking into a run.

  Amity clenched the bamboo spear, an unconscious tensing that didn’t stop at the wrist. Her entire body was knotting itself into painful locks. Soon she was as immobile as stone, a forgotten statue in an endless green garden.

  Something’s not right here.

  You need to turn around now.

  Despite this caution, nothing responded. Nothing except her knees, which rattled and shook with such violence they threatened to topple her.

  Oh, my God. I’m going to die. This person is going to kill me.

  This final thought materialized just as the stranger had materialized from the fog. One moment there had been nothing and then the next—pop—there it was. It was simple, really, like any one of the hundreds of thousands of facts and rules that kept the world spinning on its axis.

  The opposite of up is down. Day follows night. Boys like girls. Dads don’t cry. The world protects its children. If you’re good, you go to heaven. If you sin, you go to hell…

  These were just some of the many things that had knit her universe together, back in her early years before she wandered from the tent, leaving her Raggedy Ann doll and her sleeping family behind, the night of the lead bitch and the gunshot. But unlike these facts, the realization that she was going to die—that this stranger was running at her with the pure intent of ripping her to fucking shreds—seemed impervious to critique.

  I’m going to die and it’s going to hurt.

  The woman ran in great, unbalanced leaps, her breasts swinging from side to side. Her head was shaved and her mouth was a pit of RED and giant teeth. She was covered in cracked white mud from head to toe. The island parted before her, trees and vines pulling aside to let her through. Flocks of insects shot from their hiding spots among the knee-high bushes and blinded themselves in the sun.

  She was as unstoppable as lightning crashing down from the sky to strike you down, boiling blood and melting your brains. She was cancer, the kind that came on quick and took you without remorse. She was deafness that no doctor could cure. She was a great white shark swimming up from the cold waters, making jelly of your flesh and swallowing you alive.

  The woman was all this and more. And she was coming at Amity. Only death would stop it.

  Hold on to the rope, whispered a voice in her ear. A man’s voice. A strong voice.

  Pa?

  Things have gotten slippery again, little girl. Hold on to the rope.

  The woman was right there. Her teeth were not teeth at all but jagged shards of broken glass stabbed into the gums.

  All Amity could hear now were the roars of wild dogs layered on top of one another. A chorus of rabid screams building bright and blinding.

  Hold tight.

  Amity listened. Without even really thinking, she stuck the end of her bamboo stick into the earth between her feet and let it drop a little. It now pointed outward at a forty-five degree angle in front of her.

  There was nothing in Amity. No fight. No defeat. Just a moment of empty waiting, in which she had enough time to fill the time with the faces of the people she loved and wanted to see again. Her eyes widened, a hastily drawn breath. Amity watched the woman rushing at her. Watched her trip at the final moment. Watched her begin to tumble.

  Inertia.

  The end of the bamboo spear punched in to her attacker’s left shoulder. The wood buckled and bent, but it did not break. It jolted under her grip, vibrating like a guitar string.

  Amity exhaled, stumbled back a few steps. The moment had passed.

  The woman fell to her knees. It was awful to watch. Amity covered her mouth with her hands, as though attempting to catch her gag. There was nothing to do but watch in shock as her attacker writhed against the spear.

  Their eyes locked together. Amity saw herself reflected against the black.

  A mangled red mouth opened wide to reveal those long glass teeth again. Her silent cry thrummed the air and made butterfly vibrations against Amity’s face. It was a melancholic sensation, and one that wasn’t alien to her. She was frightened to think of what they shared.

  Whatever it is, I want no part of it. Not now and not FUCKING EVER!

  It was Amity who was screaming now. She couldn’t help it. Of all the things she’d expected the island to throw at her, this certainly wasn’t at the top of the list. It was impossible to her that she’d first plucked the bamboo stick from the ground with the purpose of protecting her from animals and sticky webs. It was almost funny.

  Amity stood there long enough for the familiarity of the insane woman’s face to form, but she didn’t hang around to put two and two together. Just the sense that she’d seen those black eyes before was enough to crush her a little, the fact that she’d once looked upon that very same face and not feared for her life was disturbing enough.

  Horror.

  The world was full of deceit and lies. Amity had known this for a long time, though it hadn’t felt real until now.

  She ran.

  2

  The shark howled human cries and human words. “Agh! Fuck. Fuck. Hurts. Fuck. Fuck! Christ!” It spilled out of her, as fluid and raw as the blood running down her breasts, threading through the veinlike arteries of cracked mud.

  Breathing was a struggle. Tears burst from her. She glanced down at her left shoulder and saw the bamboo stick embedded not just in but through her flesh. Retching a little, her head continued to stretch, over her shoulder, until she saw the rest of the stick poking out of her back.

  Breath. Choke. Breath.

  Her twitching hands rose to her chest, as though she were going to pray. Instead they came together and curled around the bamboo, as close to the base as she could manage. It felt strong and brittle at the same time.

  This isn’t how it was meant to go.

  I need the light. I’ve got to have it. She’s getting away.

  “Come back, you—” Again, another one of those body-wracking coughs, followed by a deep and raspy breath. “—CUNT!”

  The jungle
screamed insults back at her. Those birds that never seemed to stop; the distant cries of monkeys. Beneath it all there was the snakelike hiss of the wind and that long, drawn-out musical note—a hollow tooting sound that she’d heard so many times on the island.

  Just fucking shut up. All of you. All of you.

  “Oh, oh—please, hurts.”

  She knew what she needed to do, and was afraid.

  The shark studied the ground where the end of the stick was staked. The earth did not bleed as she did, even though she understood it lived. A strong image whacked at her senses: Paralyzed people lying down, end to end, across an empty field. Huddled over their chests were men and women just like herself, who stabbed them all with junkie needles. Over and over again.

  Her bloodied smile was short-lived. Agony stripped it away.

  She looked up. The girl with the blond hair and so very, very bright light was running away.

  “I’ll. Get—” The last word didn’t form in her mouth. It survived in her mind, as she knew it always would. Even if someone cut off her arms and legs, or poked out her eyes, or pulled the teeth from her mouth. Because some kinds of determination had no end. This was one of them.

  —You.

  And with each of these words, both spoken and unheard, the shark forced her shoulders against the bamboo, away from the earth. Knuckles splashed with blood. Each wooden rim, a ring of fire. Everything around her exploded into fragments of luminescence and then contracted back in on itself, like an underwater explosion. Her thoughts began to bleed.

  3

  The wind was a knife slitting the fog’s throat, but instead of blood spilling out there was just Amity Collins. Her face was a manic portrait smeared with brushstrokes of emotion and fresh cuts. She’d plowed through trees that had clung at her hair, yanked it out by the roots, branches that hardly seemed like branches at all, but daggers.

  Her left eye was a pool of blood from where a twig had torn the lid.

  Wet leaves stuck to her skin.

  Each step was a brutality she endured it. She survived. There was no more screaming out for help—Amity was convinced she was far beyond finding it. It had even gotten to the point where she was questioning if the man with the mushroom dust had not been an elaborate dream, like the crab-man, too.

  There was only one reality.

  This.

  She was being chased by something that was more monster than woman—and for whatever reason, perhaps simply because Amity still breathed, the woman wanted her dead. It was as simple as that.

  I won’t let that happen. I swear to you now. I’d kill myself first.

  The ground’s surface changed beneath her feet. Grass and moss gave way to rocks. She felt them shift under her weight, almost tripping her over. She skidded to a stop, hair flailing around her face and slipping into her mouth—it tasted of copper and mildew. Her hands scrambled to find the perfect weapons. They didn’t come away disappointed. She heaved two fist-size rocks into the air.

  They fit perfectly in her grip. They felt right.

  Again, it was as though they had been put there with the deliberate intention of her finding them. She was positive now that the island was conspiring against her, and for the first time since leaving the beach, she truly feared that such tests were not being cast against her alone. Amity wondered what her brother and Tobias had had to do in order to survive while she’d been lost out here.

  What had they been chased down by?

  What weapons did they find and have to defend themselves with?

  I didn’t deserve this, she told herself. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to fight you to the bloody end. Even if the rules keep changing on me. Even if Koh Mai Phaaw insists on cheating.

  She was from Australia, a country full of creatures great and small that lived with the purpose of harming those they crossed. Spiders, snakes, centipedes, scorpions, sharks. The list went on. Not to mention the climate, which could chill your bones or burn you alive, given Mother Nature’s mood. And yet all of this paled in comparison to the island. Australia’s tendency to want to murder you was strangely inconsequential; you knew these dangers were there, lurking below the surface, and you either got out of their way or you suffered the consequences. That wasn’t the case here. Things didn’t lurk; they crawled out from their hiding places to get you. A creature under the bed that had plotted to have its victim within its reach.

  It was hell, only with a surprising tropical twist.

  Amity persisted. Every face in every tree was laughing at her pitiful attempts to outplay the game. She could almost hear them and hated them for it—perhaps even more than she hated the crazy woman with the glass teeth.

  I don’t even think I hated anything or anyone before coming here. I was different. You’ve changed me, you fucker. You’ve whipped me into something that I don’t want to be.

  I despise you, truly. It’s pure. What you’ve done to me is unforgivable.

  I’m not myself because of you. I’ve been reduced to a character in some sick horror survival flick. So fire the director. Call cut. I’m not going to let you take me.

  Amity twirled on the spot—jagged rocks in hand—and faced the direction she’d come from. Her mouth opened and vibrations shot out; her war cry did not go unheard.

  The woman with the glass teeth was in pursuit—

  (holy shit, doesn’t she even feel pain? Anyone else would’ve been crippled by now!)

  —and drawing closer. The fact that one entire side of her body was covered in blood had not slowed her in the slightest. And worse: the woman was not alone.

  It wasn’t just doubt Amity was feeling. No; it was worse than that. It was panic. It undid her, fraying the rope she’d been trying so damn hard to hold on to.

  Wild dogs bounded through the trees, through the whitewashed fog. There must have been over a hundred of them, thundering like a tsunami of fur and teeth and dribbling jowls and fleas. Amity could hear their barks and growls.

  They were the madwoman’s army.

  Amity tensed; there was nothing to do but cling to those two rocks even tighter. She wouldn’t let them…grow slippery and escape her.

  Teeth clenched, catching silent curses. Beyond crying. Amity blinked. A moment cut in two. Everything changed.

  The dogs were gone. There was just the woman closing in on her with jaws so wide her grimace stretched off her face. Raggedy Ann doll eyes burned just for her.

  Amity didn’t turn, didn’t run. She held her ground, her stance wide.

  I’m ready. COME AT ME.

  The woman stopped five yards short. Blood pulsed from the wound in her shoulder, a ruby river that slithered over her panting chest, all the way down her leg. Each of her gasps for air fluttered her ripped lips.

  Recognition hit Amity like a thunderbolt.

  This wasn’t some stranger from the island, like the man who might or might not have saved her, or the cripple who might or might not have lived in the cave… No, the woman was one of them. Sure, it looked as though she’d been dragged through Hades with every demon along the way stopping to whisper in her ear, but there was no mistaking the shape of her skull, the contour of her cheekbones. This was the woman who’d been sitting across from them on the boat ride to the island.

  It was the woman who’d probed Amity’s skin with greasy looks.

  What happened to you? What has this island done to change you like this?

  Am I at risk of going the same way?

  Oh, Christ.

  Is it already happening?

  Amity had no answers to any of these questions. She had nothing, nothing except the rocks, chippings from the island’s shark teeth.

  That’s not true. These are knives. They’re bazookas. They’re AK-47s. They’re weapons of fucking mass destruction, you crazy scrag. They’re everything you hoped I would never find, ’cause you know as well as I do that I’ve got the fire in me to use them right.

  I’ll do it. Trust me. Take one more step and prove me
wrong.

  I dare you. I double-dare you.

  As though the crazy woman had been listening to Amity’s thoughts, she took more than a step. She leaped through the misty air, arms outstretched. Amity saw her open mouth, watched the tendons and veins rising up through the mud covering her body.

  She didn’t need to feel the vibrations to know that this was what screams looked like, and that such screams had a color, and that color was RED.

  Amity matched her note for note, leap for leap. The rocks were high above her, swinging down in an arc that connected with the woman’s injured shoulder. As soon as their jagged edges snapped through the skin and shattered the bone beneath, Amity was repulsed by her actions.

  This isn’t like putting some poor animal out of its misery. This is murder.

  Amity gave the woman exactly what she needed: a moment’s worth of hesitation.

  The same injured arm swung wide, bringing all of its dead weight with it.

  Wrist hit face.

  Fireworks in the sky outside of their hostel window. Dog’s teeth chomping down on her thigh. A firing gun in the dimness of the cave. Caleb shaking her. A storm emptying itself over her. Stars, so many stars.

  Hot blood squirted through her nasal cavity and into her throat. Eyes frosted with water. Amity flailed, squealed and almost lost her footing. Almost, but not quite. The rocks tumbled through the air and vanished among a thicket of thorny branches.

  The woman dived again; Amity assumed she must feel no pain at all. A blow like that didn’t go unfelt. It shredded ligaments and dislocated shoulders. Pretty agonies wrapped up in a bow.

  Nothing.

  The woman’s jaws widened.

  Amity watched, appalled, as the skin on either side of that mangled mouth gave in to the bits and pieces of broken glass and burst like a child’s birthday balloon.

  Pop.

  Of course, Amity couldn’t hear the sound, assuming there was any noise at all. But her mind drove a road of memory linking the now to her past. The destination: a single remembered noise.

  Pop.