by Claire Gray
‘We have to do it this way. We must surprise her. I have to think about my baby.’
‘Please don’t let her kill me.’ I’m remembering my parents, their sweetness, and how they will change if they hear that their daughter is lost after all, after surviving the bomb.
‘You have to run,’ Maliwan says.
‘Can you give me your knife?’
But Maliwan doesn’t hear this because the dirt bike has drawn alongside us and the woman, Pamela Shuttleworth, is shouting something. Maliwan slams on the brakes and I roll off the seat so that I’m trapped on the floor, my face against the dirty carpet. I spy a chocolate wrapper under the driver’s seat. Steve’s favourite kind. I wish he was here.
‘Shit,’ Maliwan says, scrambling to get out of the car. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stop like that. I never learnt to drive.’
I’m struggling to get up, writhing like a worm. The door beside me opens and Maliwan is there.
‘Leave her,’ Pamela barks. ‘She’ll only try talking to you.’
I’m able to see outside by craning my neck, although it causes the blood to pound in my head until it feels like my eyes might burst. The older woman darts forward to grab the car door. Her face is pinched and wet with sweat. I’ve never seen anger like this; it makes me stay quiet.
‘I know you told the police to come for me,’ Pamela hisses. ‘Did you hatch a plan to trap me while you were stinking up the back of my car? When I was kind enough to drive you home? You understand nothing about this situation. Do you not suppose this island has enough death on its plate, without you feeding it more?’
Pamela slams the door and something falls onto the carpet. Maliwan’s knife. Sticking out my tongue, I manage to touch the blade and taste the metal. The others are talking together, but they must have stepped away because their voices are too muffled to be understood. It’s mainly Dolph shrieking and Pamela speaking low and hard.
‘You’re not really going to kill me, are you? I don’t know what you mean about the police. I’m looking for the terrorists, that’s all.’ There’s something funny about my voice. I clear my throat but it turns to retching. By the time I’ve controlled this and spat out a horrible pool of saliva, the car has started to roll forwards and I realise that they really are pushing me towards the cliff. I can hear their feet moving, and the tyres crunching over loose rocks. Nothing else. No talking. I feel like the rest of my life never happened. All there has ever been is this moment, and although it will be over soon and I’ll probably be dead, I think this fear will exist forever in some form. This must be how ghosts are made.
‘Hey,’ I shout in that strange voice. ‘Please, don’t do this! Please!’
There’s arguing outside.
‘We can’t,’ Dolph and Maliwan say.
The car stops.
I sob in a way that I have never heard myself sob before. It scares me back into silence.
‘You’re choosing a stranger over your own child. I can’t say I understand that, but then I’ve never been a parent, have I?’ Pamela Shuttleworth, or someone else, hits the side of the car, hard.
The door opens beside my head and Maliwan gets in, fumbling on the floor for the knife.
‘Yes, that’s right,’ Pamela is saying, ‘you may as well cut her free. It doesn’t matter now.’
Maliwan lets out a little cry as the door slams shut and hits her elbow. But then she begins sawing at the knots around my wrists.
Someone gets into the front of the car and begins rifling through the glove compartment, which I know is full of Steve’s snacks, books and spare batteries. The rope snaps from around my wrists and I spring up, knocking against Maliwan. It’s Dolph in the passenger seat, his hands full of junk which he is flinging all over the car as he searches for something, panting hard.
‘Thank you,’ I whisper, as Maliwan begins cutting my ankles free too. I can barely breathe in this hot, dirty car.
The door beside Dolph swings shut. He looks through the window in surprise, to where Pamela is standing, her hand on the door. She’s so small, but looks like she could kill us all with just her fingers.
‘Find it,’ Pamela says through the half open window, ‘otherwise we’ll have to rethink the situation.’
‘What are you looking for?’ I ask, much more loudly than I mean to. I have the knife now, although I don’t remember taking it from Maliwan, and I’m hacking at the rope around my ankles.
‘Your Dictaphone. Where is it?’ Dolph says, peering over the top of the seat. He looks like a gargoyle.
‘I don’t use one.’
‘She says you have one and there’s stuff on it can incriminate us all.’
I shake my head, and that’s when the car begins to move again. Turning, I see Pamela looking at us, partly blocked by Steve’s animal charity stickers in the back window. Her jaw is taut as she pushes, but her eyes are light, moving up to the sky. Dolph and Maliwan go to open their doors but they’re too slow, and the car begins to fall with the doors flapping like broken wings. My terror is interrupted by a clear memory of being at the summit of a rollercoaster with my dad when I was about seven years old, his hand on my arm, and my big blue duffel coat rising up around my throat as we began to fall. And now I’m hitting my head against the roof of the car, and the vehicle is diving. The water looks hard like crystal. I’m aware of the air screaming past my head, and of Maliwan screaming too. She has a baby inside her.
‘Jump out!’ Dolph shouts.
But there isn’t time. The water’s here.
Chapter Thirty
When I open my eyes, everything is grey. Thrashing about, I hit metal and what might be someone’s flesh. My legs are still strapped together like a mermaid’s tail. I kick and kick until something breaks and I’m free. There’s a crushing pressure all around me. The car moves, getting sucked down to where the octopus lives. Where are the others? I flip as if an electric current is going through me. I should take off my duffel coat, it’s weighing me down. Reaching, I realise that there’s nothing around me anymore; no cage of a car. I swim towards where the faintest of lights is rippling.
And then, suddenly, I’m on the rocks, washed up like a piece of rubbish brought in by the tide. I lie on my side for the longest of times, feeling heat from the sun-baked rocks and hearing water drip from my body.
I become aware of someone shouting nearby. At first the sound is neither male nor female. It is nonsense in my ears, but then it takes shape. A man’s voice: ‘Maliwan, Maliwan!’ He screams over and over.
I turn my head slowly, frightened that it will just fall right off my neck. Now I’m able to look out at the water, and can see more than just the grey rocks, and the lines on them like lines on an old man’s hand. Dolph breaks from the surface of the lake.
‘Maliwan, Maliwan!’ he screams, and then he’s gone again, back beneath the water.
This scene loops and plays out for a while. I watch him surface, scream, and go under. Each time he disappears I feel certain that he won’t come up again, but then he does.
I push with my hands and knees until I can sit awkwardly on the rocks. My mind is clearing and a fresh, uneasy feeling washes over me. I beckon Dolph over, waving my arms, but he goes under once again.
‘She’s dead,’ I whisper, clenching my fists.
Ripples fade and the water is still. I remain motionless while the mosquitoes circle me. I hear them whining but there’s a noise in my head too, a hissing like water through a pipe. When Dolph’s dark head appears once more, a little closer to shore this time, I struggle to stand, pain shooting through my limbs.
‘Come here! Over here!’ I shout, and then fall, legs everywhere, back onto the rocks. Fresh pain hits me. Something might be broken somewhere; it’s hard to tell where each stab is coming from.
He climbs out of the lake, water dripping from his body and turning the stones black. He doesn’t look at me. He puts his hands up to shield his eyes and scan the opposite shore.
‘Maliwan!
’ His voice is a scratchy gasp. Blood trails from gashes on his face and arms and then drips toward the ground. Drops bead on his fingertips. His hair is hanging around his face like tentacles. His skin is a pale shade of blue.
‘We need to go,’ I say, slowly and carefully forming each word through lips that are suddenly shaking. ‘What if she comes back? What if she tries to kill us again?’
I look at the cliffs and at the dense trees all around. Pamela could be anywhere. She could be on her way down to us right now. I feel so weak; she could tip me off these rocks and I would drown slowly in the shallows, looking up at her through the water and the searing sunlight.
‘We need to go,’ I say again, over the sound of his breathing. I hate looking at the lake.
‘No, we can’t. She’s still out there. We’ve got to find her.’
‘Maliwan? But…’ I feel sick, hearing how his words catch in his throat. Doesn’t he realise that his girlfriend must be dead? And the baby too.
‘Why couldn’t you have just given her the Dictaphone?’ Dolph still doesn’t look at me.
‘There is no Dictaphone. She made that up to get you into the car.’
He shakes his head. ‘She was trying to help us.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘No,’ Dolph moans. He scrambles back into the lake, the water seeming to reach up for him. ‘Maliwan! Maliwan!’
‘Don’t!’ If he goes back in now, he’ll never set foot on land again. I’m sure of it. I grab for him but miss completely. And then I slip; my legs go into the water, where pebbles move beneath my feet. Clawing at the rocks, I press my face against them, certain that I’m going to drown after all. All of this happens slowly, like in the cruellest of nightmares.
‘I have to keep looking,’ Dolph says, his back to me. Either his voice is slurred or my ears are not working properly.
I watch him wade away. Grit is caught in my mouth and eyes. The water is just lapping at my shoulders, but still I feel like it’s in my throat, moving towards my lungs. I can’t breathe.
‘We need to run,’ I whisper, the words barely coming out. I look over my shoulder, certain that Pamela Shuttleworth will be here by now, crossing the rocks with a shovel to smash my head, or a knife to pierce my skin.
Dolph stops. He’s unsteady, thrashing like he’s in a strong current, although there is barely any current at all.
‘Hide. We have to hide,’ I manage to say, and he comes to me, sinking beneath the surface a couple of heart-stopping times. Together we manage to inch out of the water and back onto the rocks. We keep going, crawling on our hands and knees, and make it to the dusty ground at the edge of the lake, where tourists used to have picnics in happier times.
I know it must be hot here because insects are buzzing and the light makes me half blind, but I’m shivering all the same. Dolph is shaking too. We stare at each other and I watch tears and lake water peel down his face.
‘We’ve got to run,’ I say.
‘Run.’ He nods. ‘Now.’
He grabs my hand and we go.
Chapter Thirty-One
‘She was pregnant,’ Dolph says, filling the silence that’s been hanging between us. He’s ahead of me, scrabbling over rocks like he has no feeling in the soles of his feet. His shoes are at the bottom of the lake. His clothes are drying in stiff folds, his hair in spikes. He won’t stop moving. He doesn’t look at me as he speaks.
‘I know.’ I struggle to talk, can’t catch my breath. I don’t trust Dolph, but I feel like we’ve been bound together, and even if he does turn out to be a murderer or terrorist we will always be the twin survivors of this horrible thing. I need to stay with him for now but I don’t want to get too close, so I hang back, feeling like a half tamed animal or neglected child.
‘You know? How can you know?’ Dolph does look at me now, the question written all over his face; open mouth, wide eyes. If I saw this in a still photograph I’d think that he was screaming.
‘She told me. We talked, remember?’
‘What else did she tell you?’
‘That she killed him.’ This is like being drunk; I don’t care what I say. Not too much.
‘Oh, that.’ Dolph stumbles and slides towards the turquoise water. He manages to right himself and continues on, even faster than before. I stay with him. He says: ‘I suppose it doesn’t matter now, if you know about that.’
‘I don’t know why she did it though,’ I say, but he doesn’t reply.
We’re following a path around the lake, well-worn by tourists, which dips and rises, sometimes taking us along lips of cliff twenty-feet above the water. We’re doing this because Dolph insists Maliwan must be here somewhere. This is our third time circling the lake. I’m hot, heavy and have been stooping to drink from rock-pools. I keep getting this feeling that a third person is with us, and I look over my shoulder expecting to see Maliwan, Steve or, for some reason, my own father. Every time we hear a noise from the bushes we crouch down, put our hands over our mouths and stare at each other, waiting to see if Pamela Shuttleworth is going to reappear and try to hurt us.
Suddenly Dolph stops and squints at the lake, his hands clutching the top of his head, fingers grinding. I wait beside him, breathing hard. This walk has become a sort of hell; eternal and painful. And this is the worst place I have ever been. I feel like the moist trees, the rocks, the water, are hiding a million vicious creatures; fairies with sharp teeth, watching and laughing. It feels worse here than it does at the bomb site. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s because this place is nature, and nature is what we are, the blood inside us, and the things that come out of us when we’re torn apart.
‘She’s not here,’ I say, because this is it; I can’t go on. ‘We’re not going to find her. And probably not Steve either. I know something horrible’s happened to him. It must have done or he’d be here.’
‘What? What did you say about Maliwan?’
‘You know she’s still in the car.’
His eyes twitch and he rubs at his neck, where dirt is caught in creases of skin, and I see that he does know. Tears pool in my eyes; hot enough to burn their lids.
‘But what else is there to do?’ he says, raising his arms and then dropping them again. ‘I don’t know what to do, except look for her. She’s all I’ve got. There’s nothing else.’
I sit down on a rock, feeling blood rush through my body in a wave, leaving sickness behind it. A bright green bird lands on a branch above my head, and I watch it preen itself, little bits of dust floating from its body towards the ground. Dolph comes to sit beside me. I can smell him; roasted skin, sweat and blood.
‘I could be wrong,’ I say, although I know I’m not.
Dolph shakes his head and then spits at the ground. ‘Sorry,’ he says, wiping blood from his lip.
‘It’s okay.’
‘Fuck Pamela,’ he says.
‘What were you doing out here with her? If Maliwan killed her husband, why were the three of you even together?’
‘She said she wanted to help us. But she must have been planning to kill us the whole time. I never wanted to be around her. I knew it was a bad idea but Maliwan trusted her. More than she trusted me. I mean, she trusts me but she thinks I’m an idiot. I wanted to leave the island and never come back. That would have been the right thing to do, wouldn’t it?’
‘That would probably have worked out better for you,’ I agree. ‘Did this all happen because he thought you bombed Main Street?’
‘No. I never even realised he thought that. It happened because Maliwan was trying to quit her job. Because of the way he was treating her. She told me about it and I persuaded her to leave. We had a whole speech planned. But then he laughed at her and she hit him. I can’t talk about it. Oh, God. She can’t be dead. She was just here. I can still hear her voice.’ He stares hard at the ground.
‘I’m sorry.’ I mean it, but the words sound like nothing.
‘Where do you think she is?’ Dolph says after a pau
se.
‘Maliwan? Well, I’m not really sure I believe in heaven, but...’
‘No,’ Dolph scowls, ‘I mean Pamela.’
I’m finding it very difficult to think; my brain wants to shut down. Sleep is on my mind, mainly. And sweet drinks, something with lemon in it, and lots of fizz. Trying to focus, I say: ‘Maybe she thinks we’re dead. Maybe she’s on her way home now.’
‘I want to find her. I need to.’
I say: ‘If I saw her right now, I think I could kill her.’ This is true. Above all the other muddled thoughts and pictures, I see my own hands around that old woman’s neck, squeezing and pressing. My vision becomes clear for a moment, and the trees, rocks and water jump out to me, crisp and real.
Dolph says: ‘I could definitely kill her. I want to, in fact. That’s what I’m going to do. I don’t care what happens afterwards.’
The bird flies away and I struggle to breathe for a long moment, willing my throat to open. Dolph doesn’t notice. I whisper: ‘Shall we try and make it back to town?’
‘I guess. I guess it’s time. But let’s follow the river, okay? Maybe Mal got washed downstream somewhere. I bet that could have happened. We have to keep looking. She would never abandon me. Never ever.’
‘Okay.’ I’m not sure we’ll reach town. I don’t know exactly how it’ll happen, but I’m going to die soon. I’ll help Dolph first though, if I can. And I need to make sure the bomber’s caught. The bomber is the most important thing. But if that’s really the case, why do I only see Pamela Shuttleworth’s face each time I blink?
‘Watch out for green. The colour. Remember, Maliwan’s top was green?’ Dolph says.
‘Okay, sure.’ I glance around at the greenery we’re surrounded by; leaves and tree trunks, lizards and birds. I try to get up but find that I can’t. My legs are useless. Accepting this, I prepare to lie down, but Dolph grabs my arm and pulls me to my toes. And then we stumble away, towards where the river falls from the lake in a rush of vapour and miniature rainbows.
Chapter Thirty-Two