Carl’s weight pressed into Etta’s shins and then he shot up and lunged forward. “Don’t lay a hand on her,” Etta thought he said, but his voice sounded garbled and far away. For what felt like hours, Etta hunched, paralyzed, watching the hulking figures above her. Then she realized that Carl was giving her an opportunity—to move, to get away. She crumpled the poem, shoved it into her coat pocket, and twisted around, inching toward the end of the bed. Her bag was lying on the floor several feet in front of her. If she could make it there, she could . . .
“Would you like a shower in your boyfriend’s gray matter?”
Etta froze. The major’s voice still had the same breezy quality, but his tone was patronizing, like he was talking to a naughty child. Etta’s body began to pulse, to vibrate.
“Stand up.”
She didn’t move.
“Stand,” the major barked again. “Or I’ll treat you to a show of carnage the mobs at the Globe Theater would have salivated over. It’s a shame they didn’t have firearms back then. Imagine the dramatic effect. Scarlet explosions raining across the London stage.”
Etta pushed herself up, surprised she was able to stand on her trembling legs. She turned slowly. Then a high-pitched sound burst from her throat, which seemed to surprise the major as much as it did Etta. Carl and the major were inches from her. Etta could smell the onions on the major’s breath. The gun was jammed into Carl’s jaw.
“Just like they teach you in SERE training: threatening to execute a prisoner’s loved one gets better results than threatening to kill the prisoner himself. And they say humans aren’t altruistic.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Etta and Carl followed the major’s orders. They left Galen in the shadows of his sweltering room, and moved down the walkway single file. The staircase rattled beneath their weight. The rain had given way to mist, and at the bottom of the stairs, Etta raised her face into the spray of moisture. Swirls of clouds blotted out the stars. She trudged through the puddles toward the black Ford Taurus parked sideways next to the truck. She opened the back door on the driver side, as the major instructed, ducked her head, and eased herself inside.
“We’ve got lakes smaller ‘an this in Texas,” she heard Carl say as she pulled the door shut. Darkness descended over her and a calmness washed through her. It was like leaning back in the dentist’s chair. There was nothing she could do about anything now. Everything was out of her hands. She almost felt like she was floating. Did Matthew Lowther feel so at peace near the end?
The driver-side door buzzed, bathing Etta in the dome light. Then Carl climbed into the driver seat in front of her. “Etta, listen, the story, that story.”
The passenger door swung open and Carl’s voice died in the whirring buzz. Carl’s panic was palpable, but sound itself seemed to dance away from Etta. Listen. The word was weird. Hissing. She wanted to feel it on her tongue. The major climbed into the passenger seat, again jamming the gun into Carl’s temple. Then the major slammed his door. Blackness enveloped the interior of the car again.
“Take forty-eight west,” the major barked.
Carl slid his seat back, slamming it into Etta’s knees. She winced.
The car hummed to life. It rocked through the parking lot, over pot holes, through puddles. The glowing red vacancy sign was blurry through the condensation on the windows. The blinker clicked and they turned right onto the two-lane highway. Back toward the lodge?
The major laughed. Etta blinked, trying to make his shadow out of the darkness. He’d lowered the gun from Carl’s temple. Had he spun around in his seat? Was he staring at her? A shiver crept through her. “I wrote your final scene that day you came with all of your curious questions. Tell me what you think. There’s a clearing past the swimming hole, a grove of cedars, where the light slants through the branches in the morning like spotlights on a stage. That’s where the secret lovers die, naked, twisted in each other’s arms. The audience stumbles upon them, a student first, perhaps Morinsky. Then the others. They shudder. They stare, in that way you must when something is both gruesome and beautiful. Didn’t the careless lovers know that there are wild carnivores in the woods? Lions who strike without warning, tearing into that bundle of nerves at the base of the neck, stripping the flesh from human bones?
“One second, the lovers themselves are animals. Moans and growls escape their lips. Then they are prey, and their screams slice the autumn air. Blood pools across their pale flesh into the crisp red leaves beneath them. Ecstasy and death entwined. Art. The French call the orgasm ‘La petite mort,’ the little death. The Bard, too, equated the act of orgasm to the moment of death.
“It will be my most impressive scene yet.” The major laughed again, a thin, wiry sound. “The last one was just as masterfully plotted. But disappearances are anticlimactic. The county sheriff ambled up to the lodge seven months later and asked a couple of bored questions. Then nothing. Two decades of silence. His classmates were comatose. Never underestimate the apathy of the young .”
Etta’s legs, jammed against Carl’s seat, were going numb.
“Then you walk into my office and I hear his name again for the first time in twenty years. And as you sniffle and quiver in the doorway, your last scene forms in my mind. So I set it into action. I plant the dissertation for your pathetic friend Morinsky to find, thinking then that it might be him who breathed his last breaths tangled in your arms. It’s better this way. Perishing in the arms of the hired help.”
The car jerked, and Etta brought her hand up to clutch the seat in front of her. The major must have sensed her movement. He swung the gun around and aimed it at her. Etta’s torso began to pulse. Finally the major slipped the gun into his lap again. His voice was taunting: “Do you think Shakespeare’s characters ever surprised him? Mine never do. Morinsky brought that dissertation right to you, didn’t he? You two led me right to Galen’s door.” The major cackled.
“If you were so hell-bent on finding Galen, why’d you leave him there?” Carl drawled.
The major’s gaze left Etta, and a knot of tension released from her spine. “I keep my eye on that boy for my own entertainment more than anything else. Talk about a living catastrophe. He’s tried every felo-de-se except a pistol—razor blades, poison, pills, carbon monoxide. The boy roped a noose up in his closet, but all he did was bruise his elbow when the pole crashed to the floorboards. If he’s too big a coward to use a gun, I’m sure as hell not going to stand in as his courage.” The major laughed again. “Next time I want to bask in his self-destructive decline, he’ll be right there in that putrid room failing at everything he tries. I don’t waste my time with characters like him or that crybaby daughter of Lowther’s. I don’t need to turn their lives into tragedies. They’ve done it all on their own.”
A sound escaped from Etta’s throat, something between a gasp and a scream. The car seemed to be accelerating. Rapidly. Etta’s pulse thudded in her wrists. She grasped for the seat in front of her, her gaze flying to the front windshield. The yellow line blurred in the headlights.
Matthew Lowther’s name brought her attention back to the major. “Shakespeare would have appreciated my dramatic choices. Sending an egomaniac to a nameless grave. A loud mouthed know-it-all buried alive, with no one in fifty miles to hear his complaints. I’d do some revisions if I were to undertake the project today, of course . . .”
“Carl,” Etta choked. She leaned forward, trying to get a glimpse of the speedometer. The major spun around, jerking the gun up again.
“Get down.” Carl’s voice echoed through the car. “Now. Etta. On the floor. Now.”
Etta hurled herself to the floor, tucking herself between the seats. Her knees smashed to her chest, her cheek ground against the carpet. A sharp chemically smell filled all of her senses. Then the world began to spin. Around and around.
She thought she heard the major yelling although she couldn’t focus on his words. All she could hear was the words that were slipping from her lips: “
Our Father, Who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy Name. Thy Kingdom come. Thy Will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven . . .”
* * *
Etta’s eardrums burned. Pain shot through her temples. Then her phone rang, a shrill high-pitched ring tone that Etta didn’t remember picking. It went on and on, whiney and whirring. Whoever was calling must be in terrible trouble, Etta thought.
Then she realized that it wasn’t her phone at all, but her eardrums that were ringing, aching and pulsing. The ringing was accompanied by a low hiss, like a slow leak from a tire. Then the smell of sulfur hit her, and she remembered. The major. Carl. The car. Spinning and spinning and spinning.
The car was no longer moving, Etta realized. Everything was still.
Etta’s body was coiled up, tingling from head to toe, pains shooting through her shins. She wrenched her chest up, squeezing her shoulders between the leather covering the two seats. The strap of her bag sliced into her shoulder.
She blinked, staring up. The car was awash in the dome light, and someone had strewn silver glitter through the air. It shimmered and danced in the light. Etta blinked again, though, and it wasn’t glitter at all, but a fine white dust.
Oversized trash bags billowed from the dash. Not trash bags. Airbags. That’s when it struck Etta that the front car doors were wide open. Carl and the major were gone.
A hand clutched Etta’s shoulder and the warmth of someone’s breath raced across her neck. She yanked her body around, pain tearing through her back and neck as she tried to kick away from the person, propelling herself across the backseat. Her feet struck something hard.
Carl’s face was framed in the door frame. Relief washed through Etta, but only for a moment. Then it occurred to her that his mouth was opening and closing. He was speaking. And Etta couldn’t hear a word. Crimson gushed across his cheek. Blood, Etta realized. A lot of it. She squeezed her eyes shut. “You’re hurt.” Either the words didn’t come out or she just couldn’t hear them.
Carl reached for her arm and pulled her from the car. She stumbled along beside him. Then he tightened his grip on her hand and broke into a run. Her bag slammed into her hip. She glanced over her shoulder at the car. But all she glimpsed was the giant tree trunks rising up in circles of white light. She snapped her gaze back to the front, blinking at the wall of blackness in front of them.
Carl’s grip tightened again, and Etta’s fingers felt as though they might crumble. Her body hurt everywhere—her knees, her back, her head.
Then Etta remembered standing with Carl in the library, his shadow long against the window. He wore running shoes. It felt like a lifetime ago.
Are you a runner?
Only if something’s chasing me, Carl had replied
Etta glanced behind them. Everywhere she looked, there was darkness. And then her body remembered how to run, her lungs filling with the chill of air, her brain rushing with familiar waves of endorphins.
* * *
They ran for what felt like hours, but might have been fifteen minutes. Etta realized two things: Carl was in good shape, and he knew where they were going. They were on a road; Etta recognized the sensation of gravel crunching beneath the soles of her running shoes. Occasionally she stepped in a puddle, water seeping into her shoe.
The ringing hiss buzzed on and on, and the exhaustion that had eased around the corners of her mind over the past few weeks threatened to overtake her.
Then a glimmer appeared in the darkness, a light. Carl seemed to be steering them toward it, leaving the road they were on and turning onto another one. A tiny cottage rose out of the darkness, its porch light a luminous window into the night. The house was blue and yellow. A row of garden lights lined a narrow stone walkway.
Carl slowed his pace from a sprint to a jog, pushed the gate open, and climbed onto the porch, still clutching Etta’s hand.
The door swung open. A tall brunette with flushed skin stood framed in the doorway. An overweight tuxedo-colored cat spilled out of her arms. The woman’s lips spread into a wide smile as she reached up and unlatched the screen door. Then her face fell, and she dropped the cat to the floor, clutching Carl’s arm, peering at his face. Etta followed the woman’s gaze to Carl’s face. Dizziness seized her. The world flashed red. Carl’s hair and collar were soaked with blood.
The woman pulled Carl inside, leaving Etta on the porch. The screen door flipped back and forth. The cat stared at her with round eyes. The woman led Carl into the blue bathroom. She helped him sit on the edge of the bathtub and then rushed around the house grabbing things. Then she went in the bathroom and closed the door behind her.
The house burst with color. Etta could see into every room, all of them painted a different soft shade—lemon, peach, sage, sky blue, and lavender. Her eyes were drawn to the lit fireplace in the living room. A painting hung above it. Reds and oranges. A desertscape. One of Carl’s.
Something made Etta turn her gaze back to the cat. He was still staring at her, cocking his head, his mouth open. Was he meowing? “I can’t hear you,” Etta whispered.
Then terror gripped her. Like breath rippling across her flesh, Etta was sure she’d heard the major’s cackling laugh weaving through the darkness behind her. She grabbed for the screen door, pushed her way inside, and slammed the door shut behind her, fumbling to engage the old brass lock. Her chest heaved as she leaned on the door, alone except for the fat black-and-white cat, who didn’t seem pleased to see her.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
It took awhile for the room to come into focus—the hand stitched quilt and floor-to-ceiling bookcase, the easel in the corner lurking like a leggy insect in the shadows. Light crept in under the curtains, the flush of early dawn. Slowly it all came back to Etta: the woman named Violet, with the dewy face and brunette hair streaked with gray. She’d scrawled her name for Etta in swirling cursive, made her chamomile tea, and drawn a hot bath for her. She’d peered inside Etta’s ears with a flashlight and dripped some herbal oil in them, and then rubbed circles on Etta’s temples with her finger tips. Etta was dressed in Violet’s clothes, cotton that smelled as though it had been dried in the sun, even though the sun hadn’t shone for weeks.
She rubbed her eyes, pulled her damp hair into a ponytail then released it, letting her damp curls tumble across her shoulders. She switched the lamp on next to her bed, blinking into the circle of light. She moved her arm and an ache shot through her chest and biceps. Images of the night before flooded to her: Galen’s face seizing up on one side, the major jerking the gun from his lap.
Etta cleared her throat and started at the guttural sound of her vocal cords constricting.
“I can hear,” she said aloud. Tears burned at the corners of her eyes when she heard her voice.
“You’re awake.” A creak echoed through the house. Etta slid down, wiping the tears from her cheeks.
Heat swelled into her chest.
“I saw your light.” Carl stepped into the doorway and then crossed the room, a lumbering shadow in the low light, and sat on the edge of the bed. Etta pushed herself up and winced at the soreness in her muscles. Carl pushed a piece of her hair behind one of her ears. “Are you okay?” His voice was a whisper.
Etta looked down.
“Damn it, I should have told you to cover your ears. Airbags are damn loud.” Carl dropped his hand, but Etta could feel him staring at her. Finally she looked up. His shirt was freshly-laundered. Portland Culinary Academy Open Chef’s Night. The bandage taped to his cheek was stained with old blood.
“It’s just a cut. Mills looks worse, trust me.” Carl touched the bandage and flinched. “They used to think airbags could replace seat belts, you know, but if you’re in the front seat without a belt on, you’ll just fly right over the damn bag, right through the windshield. When I realized we’d be heading toward Violet’s . . .”
Etta squeezed her eyes shut. “Is he alive?”
“He was bleeding pretty bad.”
Carl adjusted his weight and h
is hand brushed Etta’s. A prickle raced through Etta’s body. She crossed her arms in front of her, and stared at the light easing its way through the cotton curtains. “What about the gun?”
“It was dark. The undergrowth was thick.”
“What if he followed us . . .”
Carl shook his head. “He didn’t.”
Etta could tell there was something more Carl wanted to say, but they sat there for a long time, both of them staring at the bed. “You still have that poem Galen gave you?”
Etta stiffened.
“All I could think of on that ride last night was that poem.” Carl looked at the door “Member how I told you my girlfriend Brooke wrote her thesis on ‘The Garden of My Summer?’”
Etta nodded.
“She was right, wasn’t she? It’s about grief.”
Etta wasn’t sure what to say. She vaguely remembered reading “The Garden of My Summer” in high school, but remembered nothing about it.
“Guess I didn’t think much of her thesis. Brooke thought everything was about grief. Her aunt and uncle owned a morgue up in the Hill Country. So she spent her summers watching funerals while the rest of us watched Dukes of Hazards. Let’s just say, she was more occupied with the dark things in life than most. We’d go out for dinner with friends, and she’d start talking about all the dismal, macabre things people spend their whole lives trying to avoid thinking about. I’d shift in my seat while the other couple’s faces went white. Brooke didn’t even notice. I think she was amused that other people carried around too much baggage about death.
“Her theory was compelling enough. She thought the main character, Payne Morris, wasn’t planting a garden at all, but was building a sepulcher for his lover, that everything in the story, including the name Payne, was a symbol for loss. She thought it was autobiographical, that Buchanan must have lost someone close to him around the time he wrote it. She originally thought it must be about his wife, except the story was published before Winona passed. Brooke wanted to do some biographical research to find out.
The Garden of Dead Dreams Page 20