by Edward Hogan
Riding home, I felt the bittersweet freedom of my body without the wounds. I could breathe easily, and my ankle felt loose and strong. I thought of Ryan’s ankle, and how pumped up I’d felt when he came off his bike. It wasn’t the kind of behavior of which Lexi approved. I’d have to keep an eye on those tendencies.
I thought of Dad, too, on the phone to Mum. His low voice. I remembered how they used to talk all night when I was a kid. How I would hear them from my bedroom upstairs. The rumble of his laughter and the glassy tinkle of Mum’s. Sometimes, if they’d hired a decent film from Blockbuster, they would come in and wake me up, and I’d sit between them and watch it. Mainly I’d just fall asleep. That was kid stuff, but I wondered what I was missing out on now that they were living apart. Maybe there was hope.
Mostly, though, I thought of Lexi and the moment she would wake, tomorrow night, with her watch ticking forward again for that one hour and all the horrors it contained. We had worked out that he drove a sports car and that he attacked her in a part of the woods that was mainly evergreen. But it wasn’t enough for me to find her. It hurt me that she wouldn’t reveal where she had woken up and that she didn’t think I was capable of helping her. But perhaps I would have done the same had the roles been reversed. There was a cowardly part of me, too, that was relieved.
When I arrived at the cabin, at around seven p.m., I could hear music coming out the window. It was Phil Collins. I shuddered, as usual, and went inside. The stereo in the living area was turned up loud, but there was nobody in there. Two wine bottles had been emptied, but there was only one glass on the table. For a moment, I panicked. My mouth went dry. Maybe the phone call I had been so pleased to hear had turned nasty when I left. Maybe Mum and Dad had argued, and Dad had hit the bottle in a big way. It looked like he’d hit two bottles. The cushions had been thrown off the sofa.
I went toward the bathroom. I’d imagined this moment before, the thought of finding him limp in his car or floating in a bath of blood. I opened the door, but there was no sign of him. “Take a Look at Me Now” bellowed from the stereo.
Maybe he’s gone out, I thought. Perhaps he’s stumbled into the forest, drunk and dangerous. As I walked past the bedroom door, I heard a groan. “Dad!” I shouted, and shouldered open the door.
The room was dimly lit by a bedside lamp. It was like a cave. But there was enough light to see that Dad was on top of Tash, and in the twist of sheets I could see her legs behind his back. I couldn’t move. To be fair to Tash, she tried to push him away when she saw me. “Ricky,” she hissed. “It’s Daniel.”
But Dad didn’t move. He didn’t turn around, either. He just waited there, the muscles in his shoulders shaking slightly with his own weight. The other glass of wine was half empty on the bedside table.
“D-Daniel, I —” Tash stuttered as she pulled a pillow over her chest.
“I don’t want to hear it,” I said to her.
“Daniel, you shouldn’t speak to Tash like that,” Dad said solemnly, still not turning around.
“You can piss off,” I said. “I thought you were sorting yourself out, but you’re just weak. You’re a . . . you’re a typical man.”
I stormed down the hall. I heard movement from the bedroom, and soon Dad was out in one of the ridiculous towel robes. “You come back here, lad,” he said.
I turned to face him. “What?”
“A typical man?” he said. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“What do you think?” I said, pointing to the bedroom.
“Tash and I are free, consenting adults.”
“You’re drunk adults,” I said.
“We’ve had a couple of . . . hang on. I don’t have to explain myself to you, Daniel. I can do what I like.”
“And you do,” I said. “Five minutes ago you were telling me women were sent from the devil.”
“I never said that. Per se. They’re not.”
“I know! I know they’re not! I came back here this afternoon, and you were talking to Mum.”
His face changed. He blinked a couple of times, and his shoulders dropped, but he didn’t say anything.
“Do you know how that made me feel?” I said. “I was . . . happy. I thought you might . . .”
He laughed. “You thought we might what? Get back together? Are you mad?”
That hurt. It hurt because in my heart I knew they wouldn’t get back together, and I had always known that they wouldn’t. It’s painful to see your illusions of hope for what they really are. Painful and maddening. “You stink of booze,” I hissed. “This whole place reeks.”
“Bloody hell. Sometimes you talk to me like you’re my father.”
“Sometimes it bloody feels like it,” I said.
He stopped for a moment, as though my remark had sobered him up a little. But then he went back on the attack. Down the same old obvious roads. “I notice you never reacted this way when you caught your mother playing around. And she was married. I’m perfectly free to do whatever I —”
“Stop blaming me!” I screamed. “Stop blaming me for that. I didn’t do anything wrong.” I got right up in his face now, and I noticed that he backed off a step. “Do you really think I wanted to see them together? Do you really think I was happy about it? I didn’t want to split you up from Mum. You forced me to tell you. Think about how that feels. Think about somebody else for a bloody change.”
I grabbed my swim trunks from the radiator and a couple of sweaters. I turned, ran out of the cabin door, picked up my bike, and rode away. A few hundred yards down the path, I turned to look back, still furious, and I thought I saw the flash of a red coat moving toward our cabin. I blinked, and it was gone. I wondered, again, if I was finally losing it.
The forest felt calm to me. Maybe it was the release of having shouted at Dad, or maybe it was the time of year: the bluster of autumn almost over, a final intake of breath before the long descent into winter. I was here for two more nights, and while I didn’t know exactly what the next forty-eight hours held, I knew it wouldn’t be calm.
The lamp of my bicycle spread that submarine green light across the trees, which seemed to part for me. I could feel the dark wake of my path falling heavily behind.
Lexi was late. I sat down and waited, staring out on the black lake. After a while, I noticed something red floating on the water over to my right. Her coat. I feared the worst, and ran out toward the edge of the lake. I was about to wade out into the water when I heard her voice.
“Hello, Daniel,” she said.
It was as if she had appeared from nowhere. She was a few meters away, kneeling before the lake, cupping her hands to wet her hair. She was shivering.
“Where have you been? Where did you come from?” I said. I pointed out to the coat. “I thought something terrible had happened. I thought you were . . .”
“I’m fine,” she said. “Just a bit cold — that’s all.”
“That’s hardly surprising, is it? How did your coat get out there?”
She shrugged.
“You must be freezing,” I said, wrapping one of the sweaters I had brought around her shoulders.
“Why, thank you, Daniel,” she said. “Will you bring my blanket?”
“Oh, you don’t need that. I’ve got more warm clothes.”
“I’m getting rid of it,” she said. I retrieved the blanket from where it lay beneath the outdoor heater. Lexi took it from me, folded it, and tossed it into the lake.
“What did you do that for?”
“I think it’s a good idea to do a spring cleaning each time I go. That blanket was covered in blood and all sorts of nasty things. Not very hygienic.”
“But what about tonight and tomorrow?” I said.
She looked at the ground. “When I go tonight, that’s it. The next time I wake up, I’ll be . . . Well, it’ll be one o’clock, and he’ll be there.”
I put my hands on my head. “So that’s the end? Can I see you on Sunday before I go? When do you wake up agai
n?”
“Sunday night.”
“Sunday night? I’ll be gone!”
“I’m sorry.”
I kicked at the sand and walked away a few paces. “This is a disaster,” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
Lexi stood up slowly. “Forgive me if I can’t raise too much sympathy for you, Daniel. I’d rather it wasn’t like this myself.”
I stopped. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“Well. We should make the most of the rest of it,” she said. “Or we can always spend our last night together with you moping around like a two-year-old who’s had his pacifier taken away.”
I looked out on the lake. “Yeah. I’ve had a bit of a bad night so far, that’s all.”
“What happened?” Lexi said.
“I caught my dad in bed with the woman next door.”
“Your mystic?”
“No. The mystic’s sister. Just when I thought there was some hope, he goes and gets drunk and does something stupid.”
“Stupid?”
“Yes.”
“But it’s not stupid. By the sounds of it, a couple of weeks ago, he couldn’t have even talked to a woman without getting his face slapped.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you’ve built him up. You got him to play volleyball with the neighbors; you got him to meet people. . . .”
“Are you blaming me?” I said.
“Not blaming. I’m giving you the credit. You’re making him better.”
“I don’t get it.”
“He’s behaving more like a normal person again.”
“He’s still drinking,” I said.
“One step at a time,” she said.
She reached out and scratched the back of my hand gently with her long fake nails. She was so cold. “It’s about time you cheered up, Daniel,” she said.
I managed a watery smile. “Let’s go,” I said.
I biked slowly, to lessen the windchill. Lexi lay her head on my shoulder. It was the weight of a bird. We passed the all-weather fields and the tennis courts and the climbing wall and the assault course. Workmen were setting up the stage for the Turn Back Time festival. Eventually, the Dome rose on the horizon, like the cool blue heart of the forest.
I left the bicycle outside and retrieved the key from behind the fake coconut tree.
“You didn’t!” Lexi said, as she had said before. But her voice was reedy and weak now. “This time you’ve outdone yourself.”
We walked through the darkened reception and into the changing rooms. I switched on the light and took off my T-shirt without even thinking.
“You’re the model of body confidence these days, aren’t you?” Lexi said.
I smiled. “Your turn,” I said.
“Not on your life,” she said, and went into a stall to change.
We walked through the disinfectant pool and emerged into the empty Dome. The lights were dimmed and came mostly from under the water. The elevator music had been turned off, the food and drink stalls were closed, and the only sound was that of the waterfalls and rapids. The real palms and the fake trees dripped with condensation.
“What do you think? You need to swim, but you need to keep warm, too. So I thought this was a nice compromise.”
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
“Well. It’s not beautiful. It’s a bit fake.”
“Fake can be beautiful. Like these fingernails,” she said. “I absolutely love it here, Daniel. How did you get the keys?”
“My best friend, Ryan, left them for me,” I said.
She laughed. We walked around to the deep end of the pool. The blue tiles shimmered on the pool floor, and the lights glowed softly on the walls beneath the water. Steam rose up into our faces. Lexi took my hand, and we fell forward into the silence and brilliance of the water.
We went deeper and deeper. I opened my eyes, and beyond the white fuzz of bubbles I was making, I could see Lexi, one arm out in front of her, long and still. In spite of the injuries and weakness, in the water, all her grace and beauty remained intact.
She took hold of my hand and pulled me down. For a moment, I thought she might never let me rise, but then I decided that I didn’t care. There were worse ways to go. Eventually, as I was running out of air, she wrapped her body around mine and we arced upward together, twining our limbs as we burst through the surface and into the muggy air. I was dizzy with the lack of oxygen. It felt good.
“I can hardly . . . breathe,” I said.
“But you can certainly swim,” she said.
She arrowed back under and headed for the rapids. I followed her and caught the tail of her slipstream, which pulled me along. I began to move my arms and legs to her perfect rhythm. Soon I could feel my heart tune in to the beat of her strokes. And then I was back in that silent space, my body weightless and free. I closed my eyes and imagined the blackish-green water of the lake, with the slinky bodies of the reeds dancing around me. I pictured the dull metal gray of the fish down there, the grainy silt like TV static, and Lexi up ahead. She pointed down, and I could see something glinting red. It was the glass in the door of her old home: the red galleon riding the bright blue waves. The colors reflected on her face.
I opened my eyes and woke from the vision. I surfaced and the moving water of the rapids carried me through a dark tunnel of thick vegetation, which cast a strange green light. Lexi was behind me, holding on.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hi,” I said.
“I feel much better.”
“Good. You look better.”
“You’re lying, but thank you,” she said. She was right. The water had diluted the blood, which ran across her face in rusty streaks. “Do you mind? About these wounds? Do they make me look horrible?”
“No,” I said. I thought of the picture of her face in the newspaper, before she died. Her fleshy cheeks and her head thrown back. Her eyes were still shining, but that was about it.
“But you don’t just like me because I’m battered and bruised? You’re not some kind of weirdo?”
“No. I can see past the scars, that’s all.”
She nodded and we kissed as the current dragged us through the dark tunnel of green light. “I’m going to miss you,” she said.
I realized then that it was me who would leave. On Sunday morning, I would go home to our house. I would live with my dad and eventually see my mum. I would go back to my average school, my average life, while Lexi was stuck here in this murderous loop.
Lexi seemed to read what I was thinking. “It’s OK,” she said. She smiled. I didn’t know if the smile was fake, but it was certainly beautiful.
When we got out of the pool, Lexi’s temperature began to drop rapidly. We were by the shell of the Dome. I looked over Lexi’s shoulder, but the night outside was so dark and misty that I could only see our reflections in the plastic glass. Then my eyes refocused and I saw him. The man. He was wearing his half-soaked coat now and smiling. The wound in his neck was spilling purple blood. Lexi had her back to him, and I tried to keep my expression neutral.
“What’s wrong?” she said.
“Nothing,” I said. “But you’re freezing. I’ve got an idea. Come on, let’s go.”
I dragged her away from the shell and down the side of the pool. Past the food shack, there was an adults-only area with a hot steam room. The door was made from frosted glass, and inside, beyond the heavy eucalyptus steam clouds, there was a tiled bench to sit on. “Perfect,” Lexi said, resting in the corner.
I closed the door and sat beside her, the heat opening my pores. I could feel the sweat running down my chest. Lexi stroked back her hair. She was veiled in steam beside me.
“This is a treat,” she said. Her voice echoed in the chamber of blue and white tiles.
“Down in the water,” I said, “I felt like I was having a vision. Does that sound stupid?”
“No. What did you see?”
“I saw your front do
or. With the Armada ship. It was like we were in the lake.”
“You have excellent mindsight,” Lexi said.
I laughed.
“You know, the Crow used to send young men your age out into remote places, so they could have visions,” she said.
“Just the boys?”
“Yes. They wanted the males to get in touch with the spiritual world.”
“They didn’t think the women were capable?” I said.
Lexi laughed. “They believed women were already in touch with the spirit world, because they could give birth to children.”
Sometimes, when Lexi talked, I could feel the life she would never have unraveling.
“Anyway,” she said, “the boy would go out into the wilderness, without food and water, and wait for his spirit guide to come and tell him words of wisdom, or even tell him about the future.”
“Are you my spirit guide?” I asked.
She laughed again. “I’m not the person to ask about the future,” she said.
“But you are,” I said. “You know what’s going to happen tomorrow night.”
“Stop it, Daniel.”
“I don’t see the harm in telling me where you’re going to be. I could help you. I could do something.”
“He’s too strong. I thought about telling you, but when I saw that stab wound in your stomach, I knew he was too strong.”
“You don’t know how strong I am,” I said. “You’ve no idea. I can match him.”
“I don’t want you to match him. I don’t want you to be anything like him. It’s not brave to be like him. All that physical nonsense. It takes guts to be gentle, Daniel. That’s what you’ve got.”
I turned on her. “I don’t need to know where you wake up. I can just go and find him. I can do it now or tomorrow. He was out there a minute ago. I saw him. He can’t have got far,” I said. I stood up, but she pulled gently on my arm.
“Sit down,” she said.
“I can find him, and I can smash him.”
“Smash him?”
“I’ll confront him. I’ll get Ryan to help.”