by Lily Levi
“Put what?” she asked. It was like she’d stepped right into the middle of someone else’s life. It was surreal and forced meaning onto everything; every movement, every word; she read more into the scene she found herself in than she ever felt she could’ve before, but nothing she read made any sense.
His face reddened, almost comically and she noted handle of gun in his pocket.
“I’m sorry,” she added, quickly and quietly. “Something happened, you see, I had an accident. I don’t remember much of anything.”
She examined his heavy frame again; his red skin and redder eyes; his porous nose and thin lips; his dirty clothes. “And the thing is,” she added very, very slowly. She didn’t want to upset him, but it seemed that he already was. “I don’t remember you.”
She hadn’t wanted to tell him that. If he were her brother or a close friend of some kind, she imagined how it would crush him. More so, she wanted to remember him on her own. The vacant space where her memories used to be made her feel vulnerable, like a child lost in the night.
What are you afraid of?
“You don’t remember me?” he asked.
She wrapped her hands around the glossed wooden arms of the chair and shook her head.
“How nice for you.” He stepped closer and she could smell the stink of fermented beer in his stained clothing. He breathed down on her.
“Who are you?” she asked. She tried to stand.
He pushed her back down into the chair. “Where is it, Jolene?”
She tried to claw his heavy hand from her shoulder, but he was far stronger than she was. “Please,” she said. “I don’t know. I don’t remember anything.” She’d made a grave mistake following him into the room, she knew that now.
He moved his hand from her shoulder and placed it around her neck. “Oh no?”
Panicked fear welled up inside of her. She struggled to break free, but he held her still.
“Please stop,” she begged. Black memories flashed like dark fireworks.
“If you don’t remember me, then I guess you won’t remember this then, huh?”
But she did, in a way. A million fragments of a memory swirled behind her eyes like a glittering, terrible dust.
Had it been him?
He squeezed his hand around her throat and sneered down at her. “Why the fuck are you playing little games with me, huh? You think that’s a good idea?” He laughed at her and she could smell the hot liquor on his breath. “Huh, Jo-Jo? You think that’s a good idea?”
Benny.
His name was Benny.
“I’m sorry,” she choked, sweating.
Strangled. She recalled the horrible word in Laurie’s handwriting.
He tightened his grip and laughed at her. “I missed you, you know that? I thought seeing you out there on the street, you know, that maybe you learned your lesson. Maybe you wanted to apologize. But now, the longer I look at you, the less I think that would change anything. You did some fucked up shit, Jolene.”
She scratched at his meaty hand. “Benny,” she breathed.
“Oh,” he sneered down at her, “now you remember me, how weird. Do you remember where you put it, too?”
He loosened his grip to let her speak.
“I’ll show you,” she whispered. “I’ll show you where I put it.” But she didn’t remember what it was, only that lying was the only chance she had.
He let her go.
She stared up at him. Her heart constricted and she blinked back fear.
Benny stood back from her. “Show me, go on.”
“Okay,” she said, shaking. There was nothing else to say. Nothing made any sense, only that she knew him, that he knew her, and that she’d hidden something of his. And, more than anything, that if she didn’t find whatever it was, there would be no happy ending.
She led him out from the room.
“If you scream,” he said behind her, “I’ll kill you so fast. If you think I care, you’re wrong. I’ll kill you.”
Together, they walked silently through the dark parking lot. They stepped over the low wooden fence.
He followed close behind with one rough hand around her wrist. The faded yellow lines in the road passed beneath their feet.
She took her time lowering herself down into the ditch, filled with pine needles on the other side of the road. She would buy herself as much time as she possibly could, but then what?
Benny took one stride over the ditch and pulled her up by the arm.
She winced at the pain in her shoulder. He lifted her and set her down on the other side.
They looked together up through the dark pines.
“That way,” she said.
Grunting, he pulled her roughly up behind him. “I know.”
They passed up through the dark trees and over pointed rocks. When she fell to her knees, he dragged her, panting, through the brush and up to the flat ridge at the top of the hill.
“You scared me back there, Jo,” he huffed, pulling her forward. “You really scared me.”
Jolene said nothing. She waited for him to give her some new memory to hold onto, whatever it would be.
“I came back for you, you know.” His boots crunched through the dry grass and bushes, wilted by the summer heat. “But you weren’t there. So I waited, and I waited, and I thought maybe some cop found you, maybe some dog sniffed you out, and they were going to find my fingerprints all over you. But you know, I didn’t leave like I coulda. No, I stayed and I waited for you, because guess what, Jolene?”
“What?” she whispered.
It had been him. He’d strangled her and Laurie had only found her, just as he’d said. He’d told her the truth.
“Turns out I love you more than you love me.” He laughed. “Kinda already knew that, though. You can’t stand me, can you, huh? Oh, I know. I know.”
Her mind raced and she let herself be taken further and further between the trees.
An angry, wild sense of déjà vu flamed up inside of her, but there was nowhere to direct it. It seemed to burn her from the inside out and she wanted to scream, but something told her that no one would hear her, and if she didn’t cooperate with him – with Benny – that no one would hear her ever again.
So she held her tongue and stumbled forward behind him.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The moon and the stars dappled the ground with their cold glow. They climbed together in silence. The only sound was their shoes, crunching through the brush.
She squinted into the dark. She should’ve stayed where it was safe, with Laurie in all of his strange madness. If he suffered from any insanity at all, he’d saved her and she wished she could’ve lived forever in the dim white noise of her amnesia, not caring who he was or who she was, either. She wished she’d never found his journal or seen her own grisly portrait in the gallery. She wished she’d never seen the old woman, but perhaps she’d misunderstood who she was. A mad, old grandmother, hidden away?
It didn’t matter anymore.
“There’s the boulder where you threw it,” said Benny. He jerked her forward and broke her from her thoughts. “So where the fuck is it?”
“We’re close,” she lied. She wanted to cry, but she wouldn’t let herself give him the satisfaction of hearing her do it.
They moved forward again. The ground crunched differently beneath their feet and Jolene saw that there’d been a fire.
“Where is it?” he asked her again.
“We’re close,” she repeated.
He stopped walking and whipped her around in front of him by her wrist. He let go and she fell back against the rocks.
She scrambled backwards, but he was faster.
He pushed his boot into her stomach and pressed her back into the ground.
She clawed at his leg, but he only laughed at her.
“Where is it?” he said. He ground the heel of his boot down into her stomach. “You dropped it around here. You had it and then you didn’t. So where is it?”
She struggled to breathe. “What is it?” she cried out. She still couldn’t remember what he was looking for and as hard as she forced her mind to search for the thing he wanted, it simply wasn’t there.
“The bag, Jolene, Jesus Christ, where’s my fucking bag?”
She turned her face away from him. Her hair swept the pine needles beneath her head and she stared down the broken line of ashen dirt at her cheek.
“Where the fuck is it, Jolene?”
She blinked back hot tears and tried to focus her eyes in the dark. She thought she could see the prickled tops of yellow star nettles sitting undisturbed in the distance.
“There,” she said, struggling. She pointed with her arm against the ground. “It’s over there.”
He lifted his boot from her and kicked her onto her side. “Get up.”
She struggled to her feet and turned in time to see him pull the silver pistol from his front pocket.
“Please don’t,” she whispered, grabbing her side where he’d kicked her. Her head spun.
He waved the gun at her. “Go get it,” he said. “C’mon, walk, go get it.”
Jolene’s heart burned with fear. She turned towards the bushes and closed her eyes. She stepped forward and Benny followed her.
“Stop,” he said.
She stopped.
“You’re not runnin’ this time. I want to see you crawl over there like the worthless piece of shit you are. Go on, get on your hands and knees and crawl.”
She lowered herself slowly to the ground.
He laughed. “You’re just a stupid, brainless animal, you know that? I should’ve gotten rid of you a long time ago, but I felt bad for you. You can’t survive on your own. You’re that stupid.”
She crawled slowly towards the huge nest of star nettles. If she stood up to run, she didn’t remember him well enough to know if he’d shoot at her, but she thought that he might.
“Faster,” he said. “Go on.”
Her skin pulsed with hot fear. She crawled faster, but not too fast. She needed to think, but her mind was heavy and clouded. It was the feeling of having already given up before she was ready to surrender. She just needed more time, that was all.
Twigs broke beneath her knees and splinters stuck into her open palms. She grit her teeth at the sharp pain, but she wouldn’t cry.
When she reached the edge of the thorny bushes, she stopped.
“What are you waiting for?” he asked.
She stared down at her own dirty hands and the dark earth beneath them. “You won’t shoot me,” she said slowly, calmly.
“Is that what you think?”
“Yes,” she said with as much false confidence as she could muster. He wouldn’t shoot her and she wanted to make sure he knew it. Benny liked to kill with his hands, that much she felt sure of. It was coupled with a fragment of a feeling, not even a memory of him, but something so close to it that it might as well have been. Guns were for weak men and he didn’t think of himself as one. He would stomp on her, he would strangle her, but he wouldn’t shoot her. He kept it for looks. He kept it because he was vain.
At least that was what she told herself was true.
“You really wanna bet I won’t shoot your shitty brains out, huh? That a bet you wanna make? You remember Washington?”
She didn’t, but she remembered the obituary in her pocket. Willapa Bay, Washington.
Her heart sank. He’d killed the woman, Jean. She remembered it, not the killing, but the feeling of knowing it.
“Okay,” she said. She lowered her belly closer to the ground and crawled beneath the needled bushes.
The long thorns threaded through her shirt and scratched into her skin.
“Hurry it up!” he yelled.
She crawled further in until she could turn her eyes upwards and barely make out the shapes of boughs and the twinkling of stars. The bushes went further and deeper than she could’ve hoped for. Her veins filled with so much adrenaline that she could no longer feel the sharp spines piercing into her. Maybe it was going to be okay.
She crawled a little further. If she could find the other side before he found her, she would be able to run away, or at least she could try. She would find Laurie.
The back of her hand knocked into a rough piece of fabric. Her body pulsed with excitement and she grabbed at it without thinking. She didn’t have to look to know what it was. She didn’t even have to try to remember.
The sun.
She’d found the sun.
“Jolene!” he yelled.
She silently turned her course to crawl in the opposite direction of his voice, dragging the orange duffel bag beside her.
A gunshot rang out overhead.
Her heart froze, but she would not stop. Instead, she moved as fast as she dared, using her legs to propel her forward, clawing into the dry dirt with her curled fingers.
“Jolene!” He sounded as though he was further away, but she couldn’t afford any chances.
She pulled herself forward, careful not to disturb the canopy of thorny spines above her, behind her, and all around her.
The star thistles bullied up against a hanging ledge and she crawled into the hidden space. Dirt clods broke away above her and hot blood from the pricks of needles warmed her skin. She held her breath to wait and listen.
“Come out, you better fuckin’ come out!”
He was going the wrong way.
Hours passed, but it could only have been a matter of minutes. From what she could see of the sky, the morning was too far off to hope for.
She clutched the canvas bag against her chest and closed her eyes.
“Jolene!” But he was too far away. His voice echoed off the trees and against the hills.
Despite his distance, she unzipped the backpack as silently and as slowly as she could manage.
She reached her hand inside and fingered the splayed bristles of a toothbrush. She felt the rough hem of a pair of jeans. She dug deeper. There had to be something she could use as a weapon. There was a reason she’d hidden the backpack from him, and it wasn’t for a toothbrush.
Her fingers touched at a small flap and without needing to think, she lifted it up. Underneath, she touched the edges of crisp paper.
So that was it. She’d stolen money from him and she didn’t need to remember why. It was clear that she’d wanted to run away from him, except he’d caught her.
It wasn’t hard to piece together what had happened after that.
She wouldn’t let it happen again.
Taking a deep breath, she crawled out from beneath the ledge in the earth and followed it all the way to the end of the bushes.
There, she waited and forced herself to count to one hundred before she crawled out from beneath the nettles.
He was gone.
She slipped the orange duffel bag over her shoulder and ran.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The trees passed quickly.
Her frantic walk gave way rapidly to a panicked run. She jumped over rocks and avoided ferns, bursting out from the ground like dark claws.
Several times, she stopped. She wondered if she was going the right way.
She walked. She readjusted her view of the constellations and questioned the alignment of the stars. She squatted into the soft floor of fallen needles.
She was lost.
Her stomach turned. Of course she was lost.
She looked off between the trees and waited for the shadow of Benny to appear as it had in her dreams. But nothing moved. She looked back up into the black sky obscured by long branches and the ghosts of shifting clouds. She scanned the stars for the one that would take her back to the only home she could remember.
“Capricornus, Capricorn” she mouthed silently, frantically. “Where are you? Come on, where are you?”
She closed her eyes to help reorient herself. If only the morning would come, she could follow the rising sun and find her way back to the shoreline without any problem at all, bu
t time was too slow and she had too little.
“Where are you, Jolene?”
She crouched low to the ground.
By the booming echo of his voice, he was still a ways off from her, but not by much.
She brought her eyes back up to the sky and strained to hear Laurie’s voice in the closing dark, to feel something other than lost and alone.
Follow fast the second star to the right,
The sunrise star will guide you through the night.
Follow the sunset star, the one below,
And you’ll find yourself lost in ice and snow,
Where red-maned beasts devour heads of goats,
And even the strongest men are lost.
She closed her eyes and reopened them. They locked with an automatic sureness onto the tail of what she thought must be Capricorn. It had to be.
Follow fast the second star to the right. She forced her scratched knees to bend and her legs to move. She wanted to keep herself quiet and hidden, but she couldn’t help it. She needed to find the house. She needed to find Laurie.
She ran and her head set into a sudden spin.
The trees shifted around her. She swallowed back the pinching taste of bile.
Something was wrong.
Hot and dizzy, she stumbled forward. Her legs caught against one another and she fell.
She lay on the ground and listened.
The August air darkened around her. The hot taste of rising vomit mingled with her own saliva. She lifted herself back up to her feet and spat.
Her head throbbed and she pressed her hand against a shredded trunk to steady herself against a second fall.
A sick wave swam through her and she felt just as she had on the dock that morning not so long ago, but how long ago it felt.
She stepped forward again. There was no time. Her vision took on a shadowy filter and the trees swam in front of her and all around her.
“Jolene!”
He was closer now, but how close? Her heart threw itself into wild palpitations and she forced her legs to take another step and then another until she was walking instead of stumbling.
The imagined sound of water played in her ear. If it was a trick, she didn’t care.