Shadow Child

by Rahna Reiko Rizzuto

But now, Missy sets her gaze beyond me. Her face is as blank as a doll’s.

  “Where is Hana?” I keep saying it. If I say it over and over, someone will have to respond.

  “How should we know?” In all the time I spent with Eddie, I’ve never seen him come to his sister’s defense quite so strongly. “It was dark in there. She’ll be out soon.”

  “Give me the flashlight.”

  “No way. Get off me. Don’t be a baby. She’s probably right there inside, listening to everything we say.”

  My former boyfriend is smirking at me and suddenly I can’t take it anymore. “What a jerk you are, Eddie. If you were so pissed I dumped you, why didn’t you take it out on me? Huh? Why turn on some poor girl who can’t defend herself? Didn’t have the guts to face me, did you? You’ve never had the guts.”

  He’s in my face again. He grabs my hair and yanks my head back. I’m sure he’s about to hit me. I want him to try it. If he has hurt my sister, I will kill him myself.

  Russell steps in. “The flashlights don’t work, Kei.”

  My head immobile under Eddie’s fist, I shift my eyes to Russell in disbelief.

  “The flashlights…I mean, that’s what you said, right?” Russell is looking from person to person, at the flashlights in their hands, the truth slowly coming to him. “Eddie’s died and then there was only the one that we had to shake in order to get a connection. That’s what you said, right? That’s why we had to come out in the dark?” He’s so pathetic. All of them.

  Eddie has released my hair. “Let’s go,” he says. “We can’t wait around all night.”

  “What do you mean, let’s go? I can’t just leave my sister.”

  “Your choice. Cars are leaving. Ray, you give Charlene a piggyback to the car.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Eddie. At least leave me a flashlight!”

  “They don’t work, Keiko.” He says it with a laugh as Charlene climbs onto the back of her latest savior.

  Russell stands beside me, watching them go. “She should be out soon. Don’t you think? We could just wait for her here. She should be okay. I mean—”

  “You’re the one who switched her. You tell me.”

  “She’ll come out. In a minute. Don’t you think? I mean, we were all together, weren’t we? We must have been.”

  I can’t believe I’m stuck here with this loser. I can’t believe I relied on him to protect you. I shouldn’t have relied on anyone but myself.

  “Hana!” I start yelling into the cave. “Hana! Where you stay?”

  Water dripping. My own voice sinking into the rock, but no answer.

  “You’re going to get in trouble,” Russell says, worried. “It’s late. You should go with them. I can—”

  “What are you, nuts? No one knows she’s even missing but us, and all we know is she’s somewhere in there!”

  The rest of the group has reached the top. “Cars are leaving!” Eddie calls again.

  Russell takes a step in their direction. “Maybe…”

  “What is your problem? You’re going to run away, too?”

  He’s protesting, but I’m not listening. Charlene is calling, trying to keep Eddie’s friend from carrying her away. “Kei, please. Come with us. We’ll get help. You don’t want to be left here.”

  Yes, I do. I’m tired of them. They can all leave.

  “Hana! Godfunnit!”

  Answer me. Please answer. I am coming to save you.

  I am yelling your name in the entrance to the cave over and over. Telling you I am here. Hoping you are right there, that any minute you’ll step out of the shadows. Maybe all of this is a joke on me. Maybe this is your joke, wouldn’t that be a turnaround? I would laugh along at my own expense, I would laugh with you, anything, as long as it meant you were okay.

  Scare me, Hana. Make me pay. Just come out.

  Above us, I can hear one of the cars start up. Russell hears it, too.

  “Wait for me!” He makes up his mind and takes off, running. “Wait for me!”

  I am in the cave, searching for my sister. I can’t see anything. You can’t be too far.

  “Hana! Please! I’m here! Where are you?”

  No answer.

  “Call back, eh, Hana? I know you can hear. I’m sorry, Hana!”

  I am counting my steps. I have counted to fifty. It’s so dark. Did the clouds pass over the moon? I know how to walk now—one hand against the wall, one out in front, feet shuffling forward slowly, right foot first to protect my left toe. I can get down the tongue like this, and around the first corner, to where the rock pile begins.

  It takes a while, but I have made my way back to where I was when I found Charlene. I can’t go any farther. I have no way of knowing what’s ahead, no way of getting out if I get lost. The cave could fork. I could fall through a hole in the ground, and then there’d be no one to save Hana, no one who would know either of us was still in here. It’s so dark, so stubbornly, utterly dark that I can barely breathe.

  “Hana!” Why won’t you answer? How far away can you be? “Oh God, please. Just please be okay.”

  Mama said, Call her. Bring her out. Was it Mama who said it? But how can I save my sister if I don’t know where I am?

  Arnie will come. Even if it takes all night. Even if it’s tomorrow before anyone tells him where we are. He will have lights and blankets. He will have a first aid kit. Maybe he’ll have food this time, especially if he doesn’t leave until daylight. People have survived on deserted islands for weeks, Arnie told me. We can survive here until the morning.

  How long before he comes?

  This is a joke. Sometimes I think so. Someone’s going to turn on the light switch and I’m going to see that I could throw a stone and reach the opening of the cave. If I could throw a sidearm slider, maybe. If I could skip it along the wall. This is your joke, isn’t it, Hana? What else could it be? How does one lose one’s boyfriend? How does one just sit silently and not follow when everyone walks away? If there’s one thing I can count on you for, it’s not to trust anyone. If they told you to do something stupid, you wouldn’t have listened.

  But what if you are still walking, deeper into the cave? I smashed my fingers and my toes. You could have done the same. You could be injured, unable to move. What if you hit your head and knocked yourself out? Or, my God, what if they did something worse to you? What was Eddie—or Ray, his hulking friend—capable of? Or what if it is a joke and you are hiding near the front and let me pass you? I could be the only one in the cave. No, you wouldn’t do that to me. Would you?

  “Can you hear me, Hana? Jus’ one joke?”

  I am coming for you.

  Hana

  It’s dark in here. Where is Russell? He promised not to let go of my hand. But his hand is gone, and in his place Kei’s boyfriend, Eddie, has moved in like a magic trick. He’s behind me, his head slinking forward before his body. Then, when his face is inches from my own, he flips his flashlight on high and yells, “Boo!”

  Eddie’s face flashes green—his skull explodes on my retina. I am blinded in his laughter when his arm wraps around my neck. His lips brush my ear. Will he bite me, or kiss me? But he only whispers: “You thought you’d get away with it, didn’t you? Kei was right. We’re not your friends. Unless you want to join your freaky ghosts in the river, you better do what I tell you. When everything goes quiet, don’t move.”

  I do what he says—I don’t move—and now, the gang is gone. Is it a joke? What does Eddie think I tried to get away with? I am alone, underground, breathing air so old no one has ever breathed it before. I trusted my sister. I trusted Russell. But they left me. How did this happen? I am alone in the cave.

  Kei? Can she hear my thoughts? Where are you, Kei?

  Where am I?

  I am, I must be, very deep inside this cave. The darkness is so complete that there are no shadows, no gradations; it doesn’t lift or part or thin. It is so dark, in fact, that I have lost track of my actual body. I can’t see my hand; I can’
t feel it. When I bring it toward my face, I don’t know where it is until it hits my nose. If I walk my fingers down my legs to my toes, I can feel that, but just for an instant. Then the sensation fades and my legs disappear.

  How can it fade so fast? How can I fade?

  There is nothing I can use to get my bearings—to say, This is where I am, or even, This is who I am. I have become my own shadow, and in the darkness—how could this be possible?—I have lost my body.

  I have disappeared.

  It’s time to join your freaky ghosts.

  Don’t scream. Don’t cry. He said not to move. They must be hiding around a corner. Surely? Ready to laugh at me if I scream. They will return.

  Kei will return.

  Count to one hundred, I tell myself, but I can’t. My breath catches. The darkness bulges in my throat. There’s no telling how much time has passed. I know it isn’t hours, or days, but it might as well be. I am disintegrating. I am alone, buried alive, disappearing into the dark.

  And then it comes to me that no one is coming back. I should have seen the signs. I watched Kei strolling with Russell, her arm in his and Missy with them after school when they thought I couldn’t see them. I should have known at the beach, when Kei sat down in the sand, glaring at me. With the sudden clarity of a punch line, I understand exactly how each one of these events, even in this past week, have led us to this moment.

  I stick my arms out in the dark and feel nothing. Where is the wall of the cave? I extend my hands, first with caution, but I cannot find anything to ground me or help me get my bearings. Soon, caution is gone and I am stabbing my arms into the darkness, but there is still nothing there. I slide one foot forward, waving my hands now, but there is no wall, no direction, no exit. Only the blackest of blackness.

  Only nothingness—everywhere. And I am nothing, too.

  My chest is crushed, pulling, but I can’t get air. I throw myself forward, but I’ve lost any sense of balance. My body is disconnected, and my feet roll in loose rock. They shoot out from under me and the cave comes up so fast. My head snaps back and I can hear the thud before I feel it when my skulls hits the ground.

  And then, the pain. Sharp first where the lava smashed it, then getting duller, stronger, thumping in my ears with every heartbeat as it curls around to my forehead. I know I’m bleeding, though I can barely feel the sticky warmth on my hands. I dig my fingers into my scalp, imagining I could split my skin open if I pulled on my hair. I can feel my head—all of it—beating with every heartbeat. The throbbing pain is a sound, is a feeling: I am here, I am here, I am here.

  The gash behind my ear beats in my pressing palm; yes, it hurts, but I can feel it. I can feel myself, and the pain is not going away. I can feel the backs of my calves, too, which must have scraped along the cave floor when I fell. I push them harder into the rock, scrubbing them, forcing hot, tiny shards of lava into them. My skin responds. I am no longer missing. It screams at me: I am here.

  I crawled on my knees, pulling my shins and the tops of my feet across the ground so they, too, would be lit up by the lava. I remember it now. I dropped forward, flat on my forearms and, one by one, I welcomed them, too, banging one elbow into a rock and wallowing in the hot shot of life through my arm. The tops of my feet lit up, stinging; my toes danced around them. I lay down on my back and swept my arms and legs wide, making broad, luxurious strokes, swimming to reach every inch of my skin. I gave in to the urge to move—not to escape, but to retrieve myself, through the pain, with each motion. Was I trying to get out? At that point, did I even think it was possible? Or was I just trying to find a way to feel the limits and movements of my body in that terrible dark?

  Finally, after I’d awakened every part of me, I hit the wall, and even though I was no longer looking for it, I pressed the length of my back against the side of the cave, content to feel the barbed lava caress me as the front of my body glowed. After a while, there was a glow in the cave, too, in the distance, a congratulatory glimmer in the tunnel of my mind.

  I could hear my breath for the first time since Kei left me. I had saved myself, and in that blessed moment of discovering that I was alive, I could hear the lava, too. Reverberating at first, and then, very faintly, speaking.

  Where you stay, where you stay, where you stay, Godfunnit, Hana?

  Whispering my name.

  Kei

  Kei-girl! Hana!”

  Were my eyes closed, or were they open? How long have I been here in the cave? Have I been asleep? I feel like I am floating, shapeless, adrift in the dark.

  There is a voice, and an edge in front of me, glowing. The beginnings of the wall. This is more than the dark shimmer of the night at the end of the tunnel.

  “Kei! Hana! Girls, are you there?”

  Girls. The cave knows us. It is speaking in Arnie’s voice. Arnie?

  What’s wrong with my brain that I can’t think? Maybe that’s why you never answered, Hana. In all this darkness, you fell asleep. Arnie is here. How much time has passed?

  “Arnie! Dad! Here I am, over here!”

  I stand up, sliding and tripping down the rocks I managed to climb, then fall into Arnie’s arms. He’s hugging me and I’m trying to tell him that I searched this far at least. I covered this ground. I am sobbing and I can barely see the others with him. I can barely hear Russell telling me something about jumping out at the stoplight, how I warned him to protect Hana and he was only leaving to get help. But his voice is unimportant next to Arnie’s arms around me.

  He is here.

  Your mother and I love you. That’s what he told me once.

  “Are you okay, Kei?”

  I am nodding. So many voices mumbling now, I can’t always hear. Arnie puts his hand on my shoulder, as if he’s guiding me through a crowded room. But we’re walking in the wrong direction, turning toward the entrance. There are several men with him and at least three spotlights. “Chuck, can you take her out of here?”

  “No! We can’t leave! Hana’s lost in here.”

  “You’re bleeding, sweetheart. We need to get you out.”

  “It’s only my toe. It’s only—” I can see blood on my hands and I drop them quickly. “It’s just a scratch. Please.”

  I want to find you. I can’t have saved so many other people—the little girl in the wave, Charlene—and not save you. Arnie doesn’t press. Maybe he understands. He takes my bicep and hooks it firmly into his. “Can you walk?”

  Charlene’s father, Chuck, is leading the way with one of the searchlights, and we are in the middle, fully lit. The light is so bright. I can see the scrabble of rocks I was trying to climb. It seems so much smaller in the light, so much easier to manage. Beyond it, a ways in the distance, I can see a small opening, where another chamber of the cave begins.

  To get through it, we have to duck, making ourselves as small as possible. A couple of the bigger men can’t fold themselves so small and need to lie flat and pull themselves through, over the jagged rocks. On the other side, the cave opens up into a long tunnel, the walls almost pinkish and rounded. It looks like we’re in the belly of a dragon. The cave is narrow compared to the first chamber and bends around a corner, but the ceiling is high and the center of the path surprisingly smooth.

  We can move so fast when we can see where we’re going. Arnie’s almost lifting me off the ground to keep me up.

  Call your Keiko. She’s in there. She’s fighting to get out.

  “Oh my God, is that blood?”

  You have gone deeper in than anyone expected, Hana. You are leaning against the wall of the cave. You look like a doll someone left propped on a pillow, like someone painted you in red mud. Petals from your corsage are scattered around you. Your face is the only part of you that’s clean. Your eyes are open, but blank; you are facing toward us, but you don’t respond to the lights or to your name pulled, ragged, from deep inside my belly. Arnie lets go of me, and we are all converging, trying to get to you first.

  My god, Hana—Koko—wh
at have they done to you? You look like Eddie bounced you off the walls. Tossed in a washing machine: that’s the image that comes to me. Your new dress is hiked up, or ripped off, and you are bleeding everywhere except your face. How could they do this and come out without more than a scratch or two on them? You must have fought. You must have begged for Russell’s help. How is any of this possible? How could he look me in the eye and pretend he didn’t know? And how could I, your twin, have been so near and yet not have heard you screaming?

  I am the first one to try to touch you. My hands slip in your blood and you scream. It’s like you are waking from a nightmare—you stiffen at my touch, arching yourself and thrashing away from me. Your screams are surging through the cave, echoing. They’re wheeling like a trapped bird, beating itself against the window glass. The cave is full of you. My breath is full of you. I have your blood all over my hands.

  “Don’t let her move.”

  “Here, take my sweater. Wrap her up. Careful!”

  The lights have been set down as we hover around you, trying to figure out what to do. They cast prolonged shadows off our bodies. Our spirits, black spirits, recoiling and trying to leave.

  “Don’t just stand there. Lift her head. I’ve got her. Someone help her hold her head.”

  It still feels so wrong. The lights bouncing off the walls, off the blood on the ground, off your body. Your screams, and even when you pause in your screaming, your moaning and writhing in Arnie’s arms. The lights waver toward you every time you make a sound; they dip with your every movement. At first, we try not to jostle you, we try only to touch the parts that aren’t raw—the backs of your knees, your neck, the small of your back—but every step jars. At last, Arnie gives up, lengthening his stride to get you out as quickly as he can without the bounce of an actual run. We have to pass you through the narrow opening, but I am small enough that I climb in along with you and try to hold you off the rock. I can’t tell what’s worse for you, our hands or the ground. You are screaming, you keep screaming, and then suddenly we have you through. Arnie lays you on top of his own body as he slides himself down the rock pile. One of the lights has jumped ahead of us, and one is trained on your body. The lights are rolling, jumbling everything, making it impossible to imagine how something like this could have happened.