The Breathless

by Tara Goedjen

  She touched her dad’s elbow and his face flashed with surprise. She caught the scent of whiskey, it was coming off him in waves.

  “May I keep it instead?” she asked, loud enough that he wouldn’t be able to ignore her. She could see Elle tense up beside Childers, probably worried Sonny would lose his temper, but she had to know for sure if this was the Bible her granddad meant. “To remember him by,” she added. She couldn’t think of the last time she’d asked her dad for anything, and she had no idea what he’d do.

  For a long moment it seemed like everyone was holding their breath. Her dad was looking at her with confusion in his eyes, Elle’s mouth was open just a little, and Childers had his head down, embarrassed for the both of them. The pastor stared at the casket politely, a peaceful expression on his face.

  Mae could hardly swallow she was so nervous. She needed that Bible. If her dad refused her, then she’d never know for sure. The answers might be buried with her granddad.

  “Well…” Sonny cleared his throat. “You always did take care of him, Mae.” Her heart lifted, but he set the King James in the drawer and pushed it shut. “I just think it belongs here.”

  And then the words were out of her mouth and she didn’t want to stop them. “I told you I’d like it,” she said firmly. “It’s important to me.”

  Before he could protest, she reached into the drawer and pulled out the Bible. Pressing it to her chest, she turned, expecting her dad to yell as she stepped back from the casket. But Sonny only looked at her with raised eyebrows and nodded. “All right,” he said. There was a hint of a smile on his face. “He’d like that.”

  Mae felt a swell of gratitude, her eyes flooding as the coffin lurched again and began to lower. This time there were no protests and no one called out, even though she wanted to with all her heart. She imagined her granddad squeezing her hand, imagined hearing his cane through the hallways when they got home: tap tap, tap tap. Her eyes felt hot, and when she opened them again the pastor was walking away.

  Childers grimaced as he set some flowers by the grave. After he stepped back, Mae heard him whispering into the two-way radio he wore at his hip. There was the sound of a car door slamming, an engine firing up. The burial was over.

  “Almost ready,” Sonny said to Childers. He lit a cigarette. “You girls doing okay?” His speech slurred, running together, and he swayed closer to them, reeking of smoke. “Let’s say our goodbyes and go.”

  Elle nodded, and Mae remembered the bundle of pink lantanas she’d brought. She took them out of her bag and bent down next to her granddad’s grave. When she looked up, she glimpsed movement at the edge of the trees.

  A shadow. Someone was crouched behind a nearby bush.

  She waited, holding still. It was Cage, it had to be. He’d finally come to say goodbye. She stayed kneeling, her legs going watery. Her granddad’s Bible was still in her hand, but she couldn’t look at it yet, not here. Her palms felt sweaty and cold at the same time.

  Sonny nodded toward the grave and then walked a few paces away, stopping next to Childers. “Find out who it was last night?” she heard him ask. “And Fern,” he said, stomping out his cigarette and lighting up another one, “what was that all about?”

  Mae scrambled to her feet, didn’t risk glancing toward the trees again.

  “Just crying wolf.” Childers let out a sigh as the radio on his belt crackled. “If it was him last night like Lance thought, we’ll get him.”

  Mae’s stomach tensed. If Cage had almost been caught by Childers and Lance, then—

  “Get who?” Elle asked, lowering the phone she’d been using as a mirror.

  Both men turned to her. The knot in Mae’s stomach twisted tighter. Fern had said she knew secrets, so maybe she knew about Cage too. And now she wasn’t here, and neither was Lance.

  Sonny shook his head. “Don’t worry about it,” he said gruffly. “You two ride with us to the house.”

  “But I’ve got my car here.” Elle gave him a pointed look. “Are you going to tell us what’s going on?”

  “Later, if there’s something worth telling.” He ground out his cigarette slowly, like he was thinking. “Drive back with Mae, but go straight home.”

  Elle was already heading toward the parking lot. “Fine,” she huffed. Mae had no choice but to follow her. It had to be Cage she’d seen in the woods, watching them. Surely he knew to keep his distance right now. Her granddad’s Bible nearly slipped from her hands and she wiped her palms on her shirt and then got into the car.

  It was warm inside, the air thick, pooling like stagnant water. Mae rolled down the window, took in a breath. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Elle fiddling with her phone. “I’ve got a bar,” she said, staring at the screen. “Give me a minute.”

  Ahead, their dad’s truck shot off down the road, fishtailing and sending up dust, Childers’s dog tied up in the back. Mae turned away from Elle and opened the Bible. Genesis stared back at her. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.

  No, no, no. She needed it to be something more. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but it wasn’t this. She slammed the book shut and then stifled a gasp. Just past the opening section were a series of yellowed pages, the gilding on the edge stripped away. Her pulse quickened as she flipped to that section. Instead of print, there was handwriting.

  She stared at the pages, her heart skidding in her chest. It was the missing part of the green book. Her granddad had sewn it into the spine of his King James.

  She glanced over at Elle. Her phone was pressed to her ear, her fingers drumming against the steering wheel as a number rang. Mae looked back at the hidden section in the Bible. January 1860 was written on the page she’d turned to. It seemed like a journal; each entry was dated. She scanned the writing, faster now, but there were only the entries—no rituals—so she turned all the way back to the beginning. To the page she’d missed a moment ago. The page directly after Genesis.

  Chana 4 chana, it said at the top. Her heart leaped into her throat. Chana. The word she’d seen everywhere—in the house, on the ring, in the ritual, and now in this hidden part of the book.

  Right below the phrase was a sketch she recognized. It resembled the one in the attic tunnel, only it was slightly different this time. A transparent woman in a dress was rising toward the moon. She was hovering over the ground where another figure stood, this one darker, more solid, alive. And next to this figure was someone else, someone who hadn’t been part of the drawing in the tunnel. It was a third woman, only she was lying on the ground, like she was sleeping or—

  The car engine revved up, startling Mae. Hot air blew out of the vents and she coughed and slid the Bible to her side so her sister wouldn’t see it.

  “I know what you’re doing,” Elle said as she pulled away. Mae eyed her warily; she didn’t know what to say. “You’re never around anymore,” her sister accused, glaring out the windshield. The iron gate was behind them, the dirt road winding into the trees ahead. “You’re keeping things from me.”

  Mae didn’t want to lie, but she couldn’t tell the truth either. “Is that why you’ve been distant lately?” she asked, stalling.

  “I’ve been distant?” Elle asked. “I’ve been distant? I don’t believe this.” She shook her head. “No, I’ve been mad. Because you’ve been distant.”

  Mae knew she should explain, but now wasn’t the time. “It’s going to rain,” she said instead. “Looks like a sto—”

  A shadow leaped in front of the car and Elle shrieked, swerving and hitting the brakes all at once. There was a loud crack and the sound of metal crumpling as something dark swung up onto the hood with a force. Mae pitched forward, the belt searing her waist as the windshield smashed in, spraying glass. A black hoof came right at her face, barely missing her head.

  The car rocked to a stop and the deer fell forward, sliding off the hood to the ground. For a moment there was silence, both of them staring in shock, and then Mae’s breath was bac
k and she could move—her hands were fumbling with her seat belt.

  “Is it? Did I…?” Elle started. She was rigid in her seat, looking at the broken windshield and the smear of blood. There were small scratches across her cheeks and forehead, but otherwise she seemed fine.

  Mae threw open the door and ran around the car. She knelt down beside the deer, taking its head in her hands, watching its lungs going fast as it panted, a shard of glass in its neck. Its heartbeat thudded against her, echoed inside her, fainter and fainter.

  “Mae?” It was Elle, her hand was on Mae’s shoulder. “Is it dead?”

  The deer was warm and heavy and trembling, and Mae couldn’t move. Part of her wanted to shut everything away behind the black door in her mind, keep the pain at bay, but that wouldn’t stop the deer from dying. The clouds threw shadows over the blood on the ground and she felt a thrumming in her body, a tingling down her neck that told her to look closer. She remembered touching Ro’s body when Lance had carried her to the house. That brief moment of hope when she thought she was only asleep in his arms. But Ro’s hair had been wet, the water running in rivulets—in blood-red ribbons down her back. And now this animal was bleeding, the life seeping out of it. It looked like the deer in the cemetery last night, the one that had appeared after the ritual. The same deer she’d almost thought was Ro…

  “Did I kill it?” Elle asked.

  Mae didn’t answer. This was the deer that she’d thought was Ro—she’d mistaken it for her sister, raised from the dead. Somehow, that was important. She thought of the shrine with the four animals in the pantry, that phrase scrawled on the floor. Chana 4 Chana. The same phrase had been written in the book, next to a row of equivalents. RC = AC, J = E, H = GCI.

  Her mind was racing. They were initials, maybe? RC could stand for Rose Cole, except she didn’t know who AC was. But GCI, that could be Grady Cole I, and H could stand for Hanna. Grady Cole I equals Hanna? The answer evaded her, swirling in her head like smoke and dissipating, and she thought of the engraving on the ring. Your chana is my life. Her heart was going fast now, she felt like she might faint. She heard Elle calling her name, but she sounded far away.

  Mae looked into the deer’s dark eye and thought of the sketch in King James. The ghost rising up toward the moon, and the two women below it. One of them standing, one of them lying on the ground. Her arms tightened around the deer. When she’d first seen the charcoal sketch in the tunnel, she’d thought the figure that was floating was the one being raised, but maybe the ghostly woman was coming down, entering a body again. The answers you seek can be found in King James. The ghost was forming into flesh, while another body bled out on the ground.

  Mae sucked in a breath. That was why the ritual hadn’t worked last night. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to remember everything Cage had recited. Then save the most brutal for last: chana for a life, since all should be equal.

  She hadn’t known what it meant. That word—chana—that was the missing piece. Chana 4 chana. A woman alive, a woman dead and bleeding. Human life for human life.

  The deer’s blood was slick in her hands and she stared at the shard of glass in its neck. That was why her granddad had split the green book in two. He knew, when Ro inherited the book, that she’d be suspicious if the raising ritual wasn’t in it. He knew she’d remember it from when she’d stolen the book as a child. He hadn’t wanted her to try it again, not in its entirety—so he’d halved the book and halved the ritual, rendering it harmless. Except Ro and Lance had remembered it anyway, her sister hiding a copy under the gift cherub. Mae could see it all unfolding, all of the grisly colors interweaving, all of the things her granddad had been afraid of.

  She gently set the deer’s head on the ground as Elle hovered, her phone out. “Why won’t you get up, Mae? What should we do with it?” Her sister crouched down and grabbed her shoulders. “You’re in shock, aren’t you? You’re all covered in blood.” And then Mae thought of Lance, how Ro had initiated him. He’d always followed Ro around, did everything she did, hung on her every word. He’d do anything to have her back, but he’d need a human life. He’d need—

  Fern.

  Fern had said that Lance’s secret would come true today on the beach. The day of Ro’s anniversary. The last day to bring her back.

  Mae’s heart seized. If Lance knew the ritual, he wouldn’t give up. He’d tried it before, she was certain now. But his earlier rituals had been powerless because he hadn’t known what chana meant. Maybe he’d finally figured it out, just like she had. Lance, the initiate. Lance, who was in love with Ro—who’d do anything for her. He’d said so himself.

  And then Mae could move and she scrambled to her feet, wiping her palms on her jeans. “Elle, hand me that.” Her sister glanced down at the deer, and when she did Mae tugged away the phone. “I’ll meet you back at the house,” she said, and then turned and started sprinting.

  “Hey!” Elle called out. “Where are you going? Dad wants us home; we’ve got to—”

  But there wasn’t time to fill her in, not now, so Mae kept running into the woods, heading toward the beach. Her ears were ringing, and all around her the leaves seemed to flutter in the wind so that everything had a green shine to it, a blurry green shine as she ran. The back of her neck was tingling and she felt cold, a chill was all through her, and she knew she had to hurry. Fern was in danger.

  Then, just ahead, there he was—stepping out from behind a tree.

  THE WIND FLOGGED CAGE’S EARS as he sprinted through the woods with Mae. As soon as she’d told him about Fern and Lance, he’d known where to go. The dock. The dock. Lance would take the girl to the place on the beach where Ro died, he was sure of it. Adrenaline spurred him forward and he heard Mae right behind him, trying to keep up.

  It’ll be okay, that was what he wanted to tell her, but how did you ever know? He hadn’t known he’d be too scared to meet her this morning after almost getting caught last night. But he hadn’t been able to leave Blue Gate without seeing her either, so he’d watched the burial from a distance. And when he saw her running his way, he knew he’d stayed for a reason.

  He picked up speed, heading toward the dock. The wind funneled through the trees with a moan, a drawn-out cry. A gust swirled around them, thrashing them, and he pushed himself harder. Christ, what was Lance going to do?

  One, two, three, Cage chanted as he ran, four, five, almost there, six, seven, almost there—and just as he made it to the beach, cold pellets of rain began to fall. The bay was choppier than he’d ever seen it. No seagulls, no boats, no people, no girl.

  He ran out onto the sand, launched himself over the dunes, Mae right behind him. The summer storm was in full force now, the rain pouring down on them, onto the waves—pockmarking the water and swirling it into whitewash. Where were they, where?

  Then, ahead, something hunched on the dock. Something dark. Mae saw it too and gasped, and then they were both sprinting faster, running out onto the planks, and the dark hunch was Lance. He was twisting, looking over his shoulder, and in his arms was something limp—Fern?

  Mae yelled, and he threw the girl over the edge as Cage lunged forward, his fist already rearing back on instinct. It slammed into Lance’s head and down he went, crumpling to the dock.

  “There she is!” Mae shouted.

  He turned, scanned the waves, only whitewash and dark water and rain. She’d drown if they didn’t find her, it could already be too late, and then he saw something gold—there!—and he dived in. The water was a shock, and he kicked out hard. When he broke the surface, there was something ahead.

  It was her.

  He swam as fast as he could, swallowed a mouthful of ocean, and spit it out and kept going. There she was again, her blond hair in the choppy water, sinking down, down. He sped up his stroke and his shoulders burned and the rain stung and just as he almost reached her, her body jerked away. His first thought was current—she’d gotten caught in a current.

  Cage took a huge breath and
went under, looking for her, reaching for her, but the water was dark and churning. Then, just ahead, another glint of gold hair and he grabbed it and felt nothing but water. He kicked forward and reached out again and suddenly remembered Ro, the blood he hadn’t wanted to see, and then his screaming lungs drew him out of the memory, his ribs about to burst, his legs kicking up just as something fleshy moved past him—the girl! It was her, Fern, and her eyes were closed and he needed to breathe. He reached out with the last of his strength, flinging his hand toward her in one desperate grasp, everything inside him needing air, and then his fingers tangled in hair and he grabbed hold and kicked.

  He broke the surface and gasped in a deep breath, yanking her up. He had her now, but her eyes were still shut and her lips had gone blue and he hurried to lift her against his side. With his arm tucked underneath her, he craned his neck, tried to gauge how far he was from shore. Mae was still standing on the dock, Lance lying beside her. Cage kicked harder, faster, choking in the whitewash, the swell from the storm lifting him up and spitting him out. His ribs smacked hard against the pilings as he grabbed the edge of a plank with his free hand and hoisted the girl up. He went under and then managed to grab the dock again and pull himself after her.

  His knees hit the planks and a cough racked his body and then he turned. Mae was bent over Fern, rolling her onto her back and starting chest compressions—one two three four—and next to them was Lance, still passed out, one of his arms hanging over the edge of the dock. Cage felt like kicking him into the water, but first there was Fern.

  Mae worked fast, pinching the girl’s nose, breathing into her mouth, and then waiting. Live, Cage thought, desperate to see her chest rise. There was nothing, and he knew they were too late, but he didn’t want to believe it.

  “Live!” he shouted as Mae leaned down to breathe into the girl’s mouth again, and suddenly Fern began to cough. Now her chest was rising and falling on its own, but her eyes stayed shut—something else was wrong.