The Darkhouse

by Barbara Radecki

  We’re already running toward the house before we can plan any strategy. Running the way you run when you face certain death. A vengeful bear in the woods.

  The curves of the road buy us time: Jonah has to drive it more slowly than he can any other road, which lets us lead the way to the house. But when we arrive at the end of the drive, the van rounds the corner. Now Jonah knows I’m alive and on the island.

  I stumble past the house, suddenly remembering that I cut the wire to the phone. Our only choice is to keep running and hope and wish for a path through the woods that will lead us to safety.

  Because it’s the first path we come to, we run down the path to the Rock Pit. I listen for the sounds behind us of Jonah running.

  I remember there’s an old overgrown path along the cliffs that eventually joins the Roberts’ field. If Jonah thinks we’ve hidden in the Rock Pit, inside a crevice or among the jumble of rocks, he might waste time searching it before he heads back to town. On this part of the island, he’ll be on foot, just like us. He knows the island well, but maybe not as well as I do.

  I grab Marlie’s hand and pull her into the woods. We push through the brush toward the coastline.

  We can hear the quick and violent snap of dead wood. The sound echoes and flourishes over our heads, confusing me. Jonah is somewhere behind us, but where exactly is a question. The sun has begun to favor the far side of the island, and a late afternoon gloom settles over the trees, trapping us in shadows.

  I push us deeper through the bramble, and we step carefully, aim-ing our feet for moss or knurled roots rising up from the ground. Footsteps so quiet they don’t signal where we are.

  We’re almost at the overgrown coastal path when we get hit by a swarm of flies. We start to run through them, but something about it makes me stop. I change course and and follow their trail, aiming for their source. Marlie waves flies away from her mouth and eyes and follows me. The smell hits us, at first masked but then sharpened by the ocean wind.

  Even though I have a bad feeling, I keep heading toward the smell. I don’t want to see it, but I do: a decomposing body lying in the mush of last year’s autumn leaves. Biscuit is dead.

  Shock and sadness knocks me over.

  Heavy black-red blood is congealed around him. Matted and fly-crusted, there’s a deep gash on the top of his head. My own wound throbs then and my hand, unbidden, jerks up to it: a hard, painful lump from the fall in Jonah’s van.

  I want to comfort Biscuit, to scratch his warm, burred belly, but Marlie, buckled over, pulls me up and urges me away. She swallows her shock and pushes us on through the woods. I let her take me.

  Panting in gasps, Marlie fumbles through her pocket and takes out her cellphone.

  “It won’t work,” I whisper. “We have to run.”

  But she ignores me and punches buttons and holds the phone to her ear. We plunge through branches, getting closer to the cliff’s edge, to the salted air. She hangs up and tries again. Then hangs up and tries again.

  We emerge on the coast. The lighthouse is behind us. I take over, leading us away from it, along the coast toward Keele’s Landing. Such a long way away.

  Marlie’s hand squeezes mine. “Oh my God, it’s ringing.” She stops, astounded. I stop too. She presses her phone to her ear, then shakes her head and hangs up. “It rang, Gemma, I swear. Must be a random signal. Try one of the islanders. Quick, before we lose it.” She shoves the phone in my hand.

  I take it, my heart crashing in waves. My fingers punch at numbers. Mr. O’Reardon. Scotty. And the phone rings. A trilling cry for help. For hope.

  A voice answers, “Hello.” A sweet voice, the best I’ve ever heard.

  “Scotty,” I say into the receiver: a deep, yearning whisper.

  The line cuts out. Pained, I punch in the numbers one more time. Again the line connects, and again Scotty picks up, this time calling into it, “Gemma!”

  I don’t waste a second. “We’re in trouble at the lighthouse!” And the line is dead. Did he hear me; does he know?

  Marlie shakes me and points into the woods. We can’t see any-thing through the dense growth, but there’s the unmistakable sound of something large crashing through. We have to keep going.

  Marlie and I struggle to push through the overgrown path along the coast, but the way is so choked that we get torn to shreds. Thin streaks of blood lace Marlie’s face; I wipe my cheeks and there are red smears on my fingers. Soon we can’t even call the path a path anymore, but only spaces between trees. And not enough spaces.

  I start to realize how useless it is, and can tell by her expression that Marlie thinks so too. We signal to each other. We can’t make any noise and risk Jonah tracking us, but we know we need another plan. Marlie is the first to react, grabbing my arm and pulling me toward the lighthouse.

  When we get there, I can see already how the fatigue is wearing us down. I can hardly move my arms and legs anymore, and Marlie stumbles every few steps. How can we fight Jonah?

  Marlie begins to give me cues through her eyes and sign language. She finds the wheelbarrow she stowed behind the lighthouse after she built her sitting circle. I don’t question it as she pushes the wheelbarrow to her circle of rocks, tips it to the ground, and pushes and pushes until one of the rocks starts to roll into it.

  I run to help her. First one rock, then all four are pushed and rolled into the wheelbarrow. Then we wheel it over to the trap door and behind the mound of dirt dug up to expose it. On the other side of the mound — the side facing the path to the house — the petrified door leans, perched over the entrance to the cave.

  There’s a gigantic crash deep in the woods. We startle and stop breathing.

  Jonah is coming.

  I start to tremble. Beside me, Marlie goes rigid.

  Then a dreamy, peaceful look comes over her, almost like in paintings of angels.

  She pulls me down behind the mound of dirt and shushes me. I meet her gaze and listen. “No matter what happens,” she whispers, “push the door closed after him. Understand?”

  I nod, under the spell of her serenity.

  “It’s only leaning, so if you push yourself against it with all your weight, it will fall. Okay?”

  I nod again.

  “You have to roll the wheelbarrow over it. The weight of the rocks will seal it shut. Then you go get your bike and you ride to town for help.”

  I close my eyes. There’s no more I can do. It’s time to give up.

  But Marlie takes my face between her hands and urges me fiercely enough to scare me, “No matter what happens.”

  And now he is here.

  From behind the shelter of the mounded dirt and through the dark of the setting sun, we see Jonah. I don’t know if it’s because of my fear and anger or his, but I don’t recognize his face at all.

  He marches down the path in our direction, a pitchfork held tightly in his right hand, his teeth bared and biting. The red wave is growing inside him, the rage he has to fight against, that makes him do things he can’t control.

  He doesn’t see us yet, but keeps charging. Then he notices the open door and the stairway going down into the ground and he freezes, his foot stilled in the air as if we’ve pushed a button to stop him. Now his face becomes the face I know, while slowly, slowly, he lowers his foot.

  Marlie pulls me close and holds me tightly for a few seconds. My heart and hers beat against the other. Then she pushes me down really hard and, at the same time, stands up, showing herself to him.

  “Jonah,” she says, her voice eerily calm. “I have to show you the most wonderful thing. Gemma found it.” She points through the opening.

  Because I’m hiding behind the mound of dirt, I don’t know what Jonah is doing. I listen for his movements, for the sound of him jumping in to attack, for the sound of the pitchfork slicing through the air. But it’s quiet for a long time. Until I hear him say a word: “Marlie.”

  “Come, Jonah,” Marlie says. “Let me show you.” Above me, Marlie
gives an innocent smile. She stretches her shoulders back and sticks out her chin. She takes a step, then another, until she’s leading the way down the stairs into the ground. I ready my body to push the door down.

  Jonah must hesitate on the path because I don’t hear him move. I’m so afraid that he’s coming for me that I can’t stop myself from peering around the side of the mound.

  Jonah is still there, his expression still confused. He stares down into the opening, his mouth working to say something. Marlie’s voice echoes from deep inside the cave, “Come, Jonah. It’s amazing.”

  And whether it’s Marlie’s strange way or her promise that he’ll be amazed or his own wrong hope, Jonah loosens his grip on the pitchfork and lets it dangle at his side as he follows her down the stairs into the dark.

  And because Marlie asked me to do it, I don’t think about what might happen when I throw all my weight against the petrified door and slam it shut over both of them. It makes a tremendous thud as it lands in the dirt. I push the wheelbarrow over the door, making sure it stays closed with him locked inside. I hang myself over the wheel-barrow for added insurance. A cloud of dust spins around me. Gravity rewinding.

  There’s a loud thump and crash of something trying to get out. Him on the other side.

  I throw myself down on the door, laying myself over him.

  His voice strains to reach me, “Gemma, let us out.” I can’t stop myself from listening. “Let us out now.” His voice rises higher, booming through the door. “This is very dangerous, Gemma. Open the door.”

  I press my mouth to the wood. “You took me.”

  “You don’t understand, Gemma. I’ll explain it. You’ll see, I promise. You’ll see.” He starts to yell. “Gemma!” His voice is bursting. “Gemma!”

  “I’m not Gemma,” I say, tears sliding into the dirt and curdling the mud. “And you are nobody.”

  On the other side of the door, everything goes quiet.

  Then I remember Marlie.

  Keele’s Landing is too far away. I can’t leave her behind again.

  The climbing gear is on the ground by the lighthouse where I left it. It’s secured around my body before I even notice I’ve picked it up. I snap hooks in place and attach the rappel device to the rope, memory working my fingers when all thinking is gone.

  I face the edge again, me beside the lighthouse, maybe holding its imaginary hand.

  I’m not courageous or fearless, but simply doing everything I know I have to do. Turning, bending, pressing, falling, holding.

  I’m almost at the window in the rock when I hear their voices. Jonah’s voice sounds very close.

  “I was going to destroy it all,” he says. “Only two days ago, I brought everything here so I could throw it in the ocean.”

  “But you couldn’t do it.” Marlie’s voice echoes from deeper within.

  “No.”

  “Because it’s too important.”

  “That’s right. It’s too important.”

  “It’s your legacy, Jonah.”

  “I was never going to hurt you.”

  “I know.”

  “I care about you. For the first time in years, I know what that means.”

  “I believe you.”

  “Everything can be different with you,” he says. “Better.”

  “A better experiment?”

  “I knew you’d understand.”

  “I do.”

  Does Jonah still have the pitchfork? Or did Marlie manage to grab it? I measure the distance into the window and calculate how quickly I’ll have to move to take him by surprise.

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “I know, Jonah.” Her voice sounds very sure. “Two babies are growing inside me, Jonah. I can feel them.”

  A pause so electric it burns me in the wind.

  “Two babies?” Jonah says, his voice expectant.

  “It worked. We can do this together.” Marlie’s voice is fading, as if she’s moving deeper inside the cave, maybe toward the cavern door.

  “We can do this together?” Jonah echoes her, his voice also receding into the cave.

  I take a chance and rappel through the window, dropping onto the solid floor and slipping out of the harness.

  The lantern is still glowing where Marlie left it, and it casts the room in its greenish half-light. The pitchfork is on the ground by my feet. Dropped by someone and not picked up.

  Down the tunnel, eyes catch light, almost like wild cats. Marlie is pressed against a wall. Jonah is very close to her, but he’s looking back at me. A scientist observing all the evidence. He measures me, measures her, measures the room. Graphs and charts probably order-ing themselves in his brain.

  “What happened to Adria, Jonah?” I keep my voice calm, but it echoes over the stone and tarp-covered walls. Still surprised to see me, Jonah tilts his head in a question. “How did she die?” I say with more conviction.

  Jonah takes a step toward me. He says, not understanding me, “What happened?”

  A question is a hook in my chest, tearing at it. “You said I killed her.” “You?” Jonah’s eyes shift focus, searching for a point to land on. “The experiment died. You were part of that.”

  A sob overtakes my heart, my breath. The ice in my chest threatens to melt and drown everything.

  “What happened, Jonah?” Marlie’s voice comes from another world. “Did you get angry?”

  Jonah’s brow furrows.

  An alien’s voice. A god’s. A goddess. “Did you punish Adria?”

  “No,” he says. “I went to her crib.” He lifts his hands. “She wouldn’t let me touch her.” His eyes go blank, as if mesh has been pulled down over them. His hands shake and he stares at them like they had motives of their own. “Screaming. That’s all she was.”

  “So you picked her up?”

  “She was nothing. Just a sound.”

  “Did you shake her? Was it an accident?”

  “When the sea destroys, we don’t call it wrong and punish it for its waves.”

  The sob clambers over everything inside me, pushing blood and organs out of the way. Dying to come out. “Why didn’t you kill me too?”

  Jonah looks at nothing. “Kill you?”

  “Why didn’t you? It would’ve been over then.”

  “I don’t kill.” His eyes find me and lock onto mine. He takes a step. “Don’t you see?” he says, “My work is for the betterment of humankind.”

  I gird myself, ready for anything. The pitchfork is at my feet. “But your science doesn’t work.”

  Jonah’s face contorts. “What?”

  “It will never work.”

  The center of Jonah’s eyes contract, then expand. “If it can’t work …” he says, black holes staring at me, “… why did I do it?”

  I shake my head.

  “Why did I do it?” he says, more insistently. Blood floods over his neck and face, and his jaw hardens into a vice. His muscles quiver and his hands clench. “Why?!”

  Before I can answer, he runs at me. He grabs my shoulders and fumbles for my throat. I imagine his fingers squeezing my breath out. Finally doing what he couldn’t do back then.

  I want to let him do it. I want to let him end it now.

  But my body won’t allow it. My legs root and bend and launch. My upturned hand drives with monumental force upwards. I push all my pain into him, using all the power and rage inside me. Behind us, Marlie screams and it fires off the walls and binds us together.

  Jonah is on the ground, disoriented, holding his face. I jerk my foot back and aim it at his stomach, then kick with all my strength. Jonah twists into himself and groans in agony. “Stop,” he says, sor-rowful. “Stop.”

  But I don’t want to stop. I keep kicking and hitting and clawing. I want him to lie in pieces at my feet.

  “It’s over, Gemma,” he groans.

  It’s not over and never will be. I want him to know that. I want him to feel it through the rage of my attack and in the bruise
s and cuts on his body. To feel it in his blood.

  Then I see him: a huddled man.

  The urge to finish him evaporates. I bend over, panting and crying and helpless. Jonah must sense I can’t do any more, and he rounds over and gets on his knees.

  All my anger and hate is gone. I am humiliated. Hurt by my own brutality. Jonah’s daughter after all.

  And that’s when we hear the deep rumble of something moving over the entrance door to the cavern. Voices drift through the opening as the door is moved out of place one last time.

  Scotty has found us. And he’s brought the islanders with him.

  Before I can stop him, Jonah bounds to the window. He wraps the climbing rope around one wrist and climbs onto the ledge, pushing himself outside. With a few strong pull-ups, he’ll be able to climb to the top and maybe escape.

  Marlie runs toward him. “Jonah,” she whispers, hardly able to speak. “Just stay here. Please. Stay here and we’ll figure out what to do.”

  Jonah is pitched over the water, hanging off the rope. He turns back and his eyes find mine. He stares down at me, and I stare back to challenge him.

  If I have to face what happened, so does he.

  Instead of letting out words, I hold my breath. My fist raises between us, but I’m not sure what to do with it.

  In his hands:

  A fossil

  A seedling

  An open page with his finger running along the words

  A femur bone of a fox

  A deck of cards

  A glass of milk

  A brand new stuffed mouse

  And once

  my hand.

  Only Jonah was real.

  Jonah was always there. He was the one I listened to, who I did my chores for, who I ate dinners with. Who I’d been a baby with, a young child with. Who had done mindful things for me. Who had taken care of me. Or else I would have died.

  Somehow, Jonah saved me.

  My fist opens and the fingers stretch out. Maybe: Come back. Maybe: Goodbye.

  But Jonah’s eyes don’t really look at me. They stare in concentration, like he’s reading a textbook. Yes, I’m sure he’s making something up to see.