by Edward Hogan
“I’ll have to stay out of the water for a while,” she said. “While these set.”
“Why do you have to keep going into the lake?”
“It keeps me fresh. If my hair dries out, everything goes bad. My skin starts to turn blue; my organs start to collapse. I don’t know why. It’s just the way it is.”
“Right. That’s why you ran away on the night we went fence jumping.”
“Correct.”
“And that’s why you don’t smell weird and have rigor mortis.”
“Why, Daniel! Such kind words.”
I smiled. “Sorry.”
She spread her fingers and looked at her nails. “You are in credit, Daniel. Definitely in the black.” She looked out on the lake. “It’s so cold at the moment. Difficult to swim in there.”
“I need to talk to you about tomorrow night,” I said.
She let out a long, shaky sigh. “I’d rather not,” she said. “Can’t we just enjoy the time we’ve got left?”
“Knowing what’s going to happen to you, I don’t think I could enjoy it.”
“I’m bloody freezing,” she said.
I gave her my sweatshirt, and she sat up, put it on, and then wrapped the red coat around her shoulders. The sweatshirt was far too big, and her body seemed minuscule inside it, only the red beacons of her fingernails sticking out of the cuffs. “Did you speak to your mum?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. “And when I got back to the cabin, Dad had called her.”
“Score!” Lexi said.
“I told Mum about you,” I said quietly.
“How much detail did you go into?” Lexi asked.
“Only the major things.”
“What, like, ‘Tall, thin, smashed-up face, dead . . .’?”
“I told her you liked history.”
Lexi laughed. “Yes. I used to like history. But now I’m starting to find it a bit repetitive.”
“Well, then, let’s do something about it.”
Lexi raised her arms in protest. “What the hell can we do about it?”
“I spoke to this woman, called Chrissy. She’s some kind of psychologist or mystic or something. She reckons if you talk about a traumatic event, you can stop it repeating.”
“You think I need therapy, young man?” she said. “You think talking about it is going to make these wounds go away?” Lexi pointed to her face.
“Well, you haven’t come up with any better ideas, and I won’t just accept it. I can’t. Will you at least try?”
She put her hands over her face and coughed. “What do you want to know?” she said.
“Whatever you can remember,” I said. But I had other motives.
She let out a long shivering breath. “I remember his car, just as I got into it.”
“Do you know car makes? What kind of car was it?”
“It was a Lotus Elise 111R. Yes, I know car makes.”
“Right. He was rich,” I said.
“Maybe.” She closed her eyes. “Although he had to scrape a load of coins together to pay for the drinks.”
“What else do you remember about the car?”
“Not much, before he hit me.”
“Think.”
“In the footwell, there was —”
“What’s a footwell?”
“It’s the bit where you put your feet,” she said.
“What was there?”
“Lots of stuff. Some rubbish. Some tools. A screwdriver. It was one of those ones with the pointy end.”
“A Phillips-head screwdriver,” I said.
“That’s it. It was the last thing I saw before I blacked out.”
“What about the seats?”
“Leather. What does it matter?”
“I’m trying to help you. You remember the feel of the leather? The smell of it?”
“Not the smell. He had one of those air fresheners. It was pine scented. Like the . . .”
I felt a stab of pain in my side. The gash on my leg throbbed, too.
“Like the what?” I said.
“Nothing.”
“Lexi, if you don’t tell me, we can’t —”
“I remember hearing music. He played music in the car. I was pretty much out cold, but I could still hear it. It was swing. Frank Sinatra. “Under My Skin.” That kind of thing.”
I could see that Lexi was struggling now. Her shoulders had dropped, and her breathing was heavy and uneven. I was in pain, too. Each word she said, each detail she remembered, seemed to open cuts on my body. But I pressed on.
“Then what happened?” I said.
“I . . . I don’t remember much about the end. He must have chewed gum, because his breath smells of fresh mint when I expected it to smell of whiskey. Once he hits my nose, my eyes start to water, and I can’t see much. I . . .”
“What can you see?”
She had skipped the moment when (and where) she came round — the only thing I needed her to remember.
“His eyes. The blood on his lip. I try to scratch him, but . . .”
“What’s around you?”
“There are trees,” she said. I could see she was sinking deeper into the memory.
“Trees? What kind of trees?” The pain in my side deepened. I could taste blood in my mouth.
“I don’t know.”
“What is the ground like?”
“It is cold. Frosty.”
“Can you hear the leaves crackling? Can you feel them?”
“No. There aren’t any leaves.”
“It was October. There would’ve been fallen leaves.”
“There are no leaves.”
“It’s a pine wood.”
“Yes. There was a moment when I got away. I kicked him and he fell. I ran off into the woods, but he was too quick for me.”
“What could you see when you were running?” I said.
“Stop,” she said. She was sweating now; her head was twitching.
“No,” I said. The wound in my stomach throbbed, and so I knew I was getting closer to the truth, finding the right path. “The first time we talked, you said that he dragged you into the forest.”
“Yes.”
“So when you woke that first night, and the second time it happened, you weren’t in the woods.”
“No.”
“So where were you? Where are you?” I could hardly speak now, the pain was so bad.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“You do,” I said. “What can you hear?”
“I don’t . . .”
“Rubbish. Where are you?”
She shuddered and then opened her eyes. She looked at my stomach. “Daniel, you’re bleeding,” she said. I looked down at my T-shirt, which was soaked and stuck to my skin.
“It’s nothing,” I said.
“You’re trying to find out where I wake up because you’re going to try and go there,” she said. “And look. It’s killing you.”
I turned away.
“You have to stay out of this, Daniel. I can’t take responsibility for you,” she said. She was well and truly out of her trance.
“You’re being ridiculous,” I said. “Tell me where you wake up!”
“No! I don’t want you involved.”
“That’s so selfish, Lexi,” I said.
“Selfish?”
“Yes. You have an opportunity that people never get. You’ve got the chance — we’ve got the chance — to go back in time and change things. Do you know what I’d give for that sort of opportunity? Do you know how much I would change?” I was furious now. “I’d, I’d . . . I’d stop my mum from falling over. I’d make sure she never went to that doctor. I’d make my dad better. . . . I could . . .”
“If you changed all that, we’d never have met.”
I held my head in my hands for a moment. Lexi continued.
“Daniel, you’ve got your whole life in front of you to make changes. You’ve got the future. I’ve got one little hour of the past.”
>
“I can break this loop if you tell me where you wake up. I can get you out of this.”
“I don’t want you involved.”
“I’m already involved. Can’t you see? Look at my body.”
I pulled up my T-shirt. A brief smile passed across Lexi’s face. I looked down. My T-shirt was still bloodied, but the gouge in my stomach was gone. The pressure in my head had lightened, and I didn’t need to look at my leg. I could feel that it was healed again. “What’s happening?” I said.
“Thank God,” she said quietly.
She had won. “Lexi,” I said. “Please let me in.”
“I’m sorry, Daniel. No, I’m not sorry. I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I’ll never tell you. You have to go on living, and I have to do this on my own.”
We sat for a while in silence. I had come so close to solving the mystery, but Lexi had turned me away. I was angry with her, but there was nowhere else in the world I wanted to be. Lexi had fallen asleep, and she moaned now from beneath the red coat.
“Lexi?” I said. “What’s wrong?”
She didn’t answer. I shuffled over to where she lay against the tree and took a strand of her hair between my fingers. It was drying out. “We have to get you in the water,” I said.
“It’s too cold,” she said. “Too cold for me now.”
I looked around her little campsite. There was a bowl she used for eating, and I took it to the edge of the lake and filled it with the silty water. Under the soil, the stones of her cooking pit still held some heat, and I put the bowl between a couple of the larger rocks. Soon it was warm.
“Stay still,” I said.
I knelt behind her and reached out to stroke her hair. She flinched. I waited for her to relax. “Slowly,” she said.
I moved toward her, and she flinched again. It was no surprise that she was terrified of physical contact. Very slowly, I ran my hand through her hair, and after a moment, I felt the tension leave her. I poured the water over her head, smoothed her hair back like they do at the hairdresser’s. I repeated the action until the water was gone, making sure that the ends were wet. I could see the welts on her scalp and had to imagine what he had done to her. I thought about the screwdriver in his car. Sickening.
“Lexi,” I said.
“Yes,” she said.
“Can I have your permission?”
She laughed. “Granted,” she said.
I kissed the top of her head.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m afraid I can’t seem to get myself warm these days. I need to be in the water, but the water’s too cold. Catch-twenty-two.”
“I’ve got an idea about that,” I said. “But I’ll need your help.”
“Well, how can I be of assistance?”
“You remember when you held on to me on the bike? I disappeared, didn’t I?”
“Yes.”
“Well. That’s given me an idea.” I said.
I looked at Lexi’s watch — the unstoppable countdown of it. My own watch said quarter to five.
“Let’s go for a little walk,” I said. “There’s someone I’ve been meaning to have a word with.”
It was pretty dark when we got to the bike path, but not as dark as it would be at the same time on Sunday. Auntie Jen — the aunt my mum was staying with — got depressed every year when the clocks went back. She couldn’t stand the short days and had to have a special light in her bedroom. She spent hours on a tanning bed in the winter. There’s nothing like a moody, suntanned face.
Lexi was smiling sadly down at her nails and swaying on her feet. She could barely hold herself upright. “So, what’s the plan, young man?” she said.
“This surfer dude is going to come cycling down here any minute now,” I said.
“Ah. Your best friend, Ryan.”
“You’ve got a good memory.”
“I don’t meet many people.”
“Anyway, he’s not my best friend. He gave me up to the authorities,” I said.
Lexi pretended to look shocked. “The authorities, Danny boy? You mean the FBI? What for?”
“Bleeding in the pool.”
“Ah. That old doozy. So what do we do when Ryan the Snitch comes cycling down here?”
“You put your arms around me,” I said.
“Just because I gave you permission once doesn’t mean you’ve got a free pass to feel me up.”
“It’s not like that!” I said. “It’s part of the plan.”
We were both silent for a moment. Lexi’s hair fell over her face, and I couldn’t see her expression. “Lexi?” I said.
She looked up. She was smiling. “Here he comes,” she said.
Ryan’s dynamo light flickered in the blue dusk as he came over the brow of the hill. He was wearing a thick sweater, and his dyed hair looked green and sad in the cold of the true outdoors. “Let’s make sure he sees me first,” I said. “And then we embrace.”
“Embrace? Goodness me! You just be chivalrous, Daniel, because I’m very fragile. Keep your hands above the waistline,” Lexi said.
I smiled and we walked into the middle of the path. I waited until Ryan was within ten meters of us. “Hello, Ryan,” I said.
He narrowed his eyes. “Oh, hey, Dan,” he said. I could hear the guilt in his voice. “How’s it going, man?”
“Up and down, you know,” I said. Ryan slowed his bike but kept cycling. Obviously he had good reason not to want to stop and chat. “I’ve been feeling a bit weird lately,” I said.
“Yeah?” he said, changing gear. “I’m sure it’ll pass.”
Lexi threw her arms around me, pulled me close, and kissed me.
“Whoa, what the —” Ryan said as he saw me vanish.
With the shock of the kiss, I hardly noticed Ryan lose control of his bike and hit the low fence, falling onto the tarmac of the bike path. “Jesus, man!” I heard him shout. “Daniel? Where’d you go, dude? Stop screwing around. Serious.”
Lexi pulled away and smiled at me, keeping her hand on my arm. I gasped. “I wanted to make sure he really couldn’t see you,” she said.
It was tough to turn my attention back to the matter at hand. “Can he still hear me, like this?” I whispered.
Ryan flinched. “Dude?”
“Looks like it,” Lexi said. “Can’t hear me, though.”
“Ryan,” I said.
He made a groaning noise. “I’ve got to get out of here,” he said to himself.
I continued to hold on to Lexi. “Ryan,” I said.
“Y-yeah?”
“Looks like you’ve cut yourself there.”
He wiped some blood from his elbow. “Yeah. I’m . . . I’m OK, though. Where are you?”
“I hope you’re not going to swim in the pool with those cuts.”
Ryan looked up suddenly, trying to see where the voice was coming from. He was staring about two feet above my head and to the left. “I’m sorry about what happened, man. Listen —”
“That wouldn’t be very hygienic, would it? To swim with cuts. And I might have to basically report you to some idiot who’s going to come to your house and treat you like a psycho.”
“It wasn’t my fault. Listen, man, where are you? This is scary as hell.”
Lexi said, “It is getting a bit mean, Daniel.”
“I don’t think so,” I whispered back.
“That’s because you’re drunk with power. Didn’t this guy help you when your dad was going crazy?” Lexi said.
“Yes, but —”
Lexi let go of me and took a step back. I felt the power drain away as I reappeared to Ryan.
“Oh. There you are, man. Thank Christ,” said Ryan. “That was spinning me out. How did you do that?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said.
Ryan reached down and squeezed his ankle.
“I’m sorry about your leg,” I said.
“And his arm!” Lexi shouted.
“And your arm,” I said.
“It’s O
K. That’s a crazy trick you’ve got there. Hey, I’m sorry that I gave you up to the management, man,” Ryan said.
“Why did you do it?” I said.
“They said they had video evidence that you were a wacko — I mean, a danger to yourself and, you know, others. I knew that was rubbish, but they said they’d sack me if I lied. This job’s all I’ve got, man. I get to live here. If I got sacked, I’d have to go home. Home’s not somewhere I need to be.”
I sighed. It only took a few days at Leisure World to realize that everybody had their own story to tell, and they were all just about as important as each other.
“Can you do me a favor?”
“Yeah, anything, man.”
I turned around to look at Lexi, and then I leaned in close to Ryan. “I need a little quiet time after hours in the pool.”
Ryan nodded. “I get you. Is it a girl?”
I shrugged.
“There’s this fake coconut tree by the entrance,” Ryan said.
“I know it,” I said.
“I’ll leave a set of keys behind there, and I’ll disable the alarm.”
“Thank you,” I said. I helped him to his feet. “And, Ryan.”
“Yeah?”
“Before you leave the Dome, could you turn up the heat?” I asked.
“Whatever you say, dude.”
Lexi called over. “What are you whispering about, Daniel?”
I didn’t reply. Ryan got back on his bike and tested his limbs.
“See you around, Ryan,” I said.
“Yeah, see you, Daniel,” he said. “Hey, man?” he said as he began to cycle away.
“Yes.”
“Who you taking to the pool?” he asked, grinning.
“My imaginary friend,” I said.
He hesitated for a moment and then seemed to decide that he’d had enough weirdness for one night. “That’s cool,” he said.
Lexi laughed loudly, but God knows who heard.
Lexi was tired and very cold. Despite her protests, I took her down to the Pancake House with her blanket, my sweatshirt, and the red coat, and I set up a makeshift bed beneath one of the outdoor heaters. We arranged to meet in the woods at ten o’clock. “Where are we going?” she asked.
“It’s a surprise,” I said.
“Wonderful, young man. Surprises are few and far between for me, as you can imagine.” She yawned, and I could see a film of blood on her teeth.