by Abe Moss
“That road should be the least of your concerns,” the assistant snapped, suddenly quite stern. Bud shrank into himself in an instant. Seeing this, the assistant did her best to regain her composure, and offered an apologetic smile. “What’s important is what we’ve got right here, all right? Let’s focus on that…”
The breezes came in odd handfuls, stirring and then settling, stirring and settling, bringing the fragrance of pine needles and dewy grass. The moon was at their backs, a pasty spotlight in an otherwise empty backdrop, and Addie, now outside her cramped little room with the whole of the horizon in view, noticed the startling absence of stars in the sky. Unpolluted by earthly light, and still black. Just black…
“Let’s have a seat together at the fire pit,” the assistant suggested. “It’s nice enough tonight for that, I think.”
They returned to the guesthouse, where the assistant motioned for them to take a seat on the dirt. “Get comfortable.”
Joanna sat with a tired sigh. Addie, considering carefully, made sure to leave Joanna between Bud and herself. He sat last, and each of them were evenly spaced. No one got too close.
The assistant fetched some cut logs piled next to the guesthouse with some starter fluid and a butane lighter. In no time at all, they had a small fire going. She sat opposite the three of them, smoothed her bleach-white sundress under her on the dirt. Her doll-like skin caught the orange flame’s twisting reflection like a mirror.
She shimmied up straight, grinning brightly.
“Let’s introduce ourselves, shall we? We’ll go in a circle. I’ll start.” She cleared her throat. “I’m Nuala. I’m Dr. Lull’s assistant. Outside of your regular visits with the doctor, I’ll be available to help with whatever you need on a daily basis. Even more than that, I also hope to be a friend when you need one, someone you can talk to, complain to—anything at all. Never hesitate to come to me, whatever the reason.”
Addie had half a mind to ask her who she really was, why she followed her those nights. Give her the chance to really share a thing or two about herself. However, sitting amongst the others she was overcome with stage fright.
“So, without wasting another precious second, let’s start getting to know each other. Bud, how about you next? Tell us all something about yourself. Start with the basics and go from there.”
They each focused on him, and he looked between them with a scattered sweeping of his eyes before staring into his lap. His pretty face was sharpened in the fire’s glow, contemplative and withdrawn.
“I’m Bud…” He looked to Nuala, perhaps for reassurance, and she nodded encouragingly. “I’m nineteen. And…” He hesitated. “I don’t want to say anything else right now, if that’s okay.” He scratched at the dirt with his fingernail and said nothing more, looked at no one.
“That’s fine. We don’t have to get too personal yet. Joanna, how about you? If you have anything more to say, feel free.”
Joanna sighed again, really driving home how bored she was.
“Obviously you already know my name. If he doesn’t have to say anything else, then I won’t either. Oh, and I’m sixteen, if that matters…”
“Thank you, Joanna. Addie—”
“I guess I don’t know what I’m doing here,” Joanna interrupted, deciding she wasn’t finished after all. She leaned forward, stared at the assistant through the licking flames. “You say you want to help me, but… I think you’re full of shit. None of us are here to be helped. It’s a game to you, I can tell. You smile like a crazy bitch, acting like we’re all getting to know each other, but you already know who we are. You followed us.”
“I understand why you likely feel—”
“You could have killed me in there if you wanted to. And I think you did. Which is weird, because I could have done that myself just fine. That’s what I wanted to do, before you came along and dragged me into this fucked-up game you’re playing.”
“Hurting you is the last thing I want,” Nuala said, and while her smile vanished, there was still sincerity in her eyes. “I will do everything in my power to keep you from harm, even from yourself. You can test that promise all you’d like.”
Addie, listening intently, quickly gathered the similarity between the three of them—and likely Lyle as well. Realizing this, she gazed upon Bud, who appeared too afraid to look any of them in the eye, and suddenly her conflicted feelings toward him became even more confusing.
“Whether you believe me now or later, the truth is you’re here to be helped. You don’t want help, and that’s perfectly predictable.” Joanna scoffed at this. “It’s why you made the rash decision you did, and it’s why we intervened. Want it or not, you’ll be helped by the end of your stay. Don’t forget—”
Glass shattered in the distance, a sharp, short-lived chime. The four of them startled like frightened prairie dogs, the heated tension sucked immediately from their small circle, and the assistant directed her attention toward the guesthouse where the sound presumably came from.
“I thought he might…” she whispered, and rose to her feet. “I’ll be back. Everyone stay put, please.”
She loped away then, like a silent apparition in the night, and disappeared around the guesthouse.
The three of them exchanged glances, speechless, although each of their faces told the same story. A temptation. It was Joanna who acted first. She jumped up, turned in a circle, looked toward the narrow dirt road heading to the forest.
“Where will you go?” Addie asked, wishing to do just as Joanna planned, if not for the nagging doubt. “What if she’s right and there’s nothing out there?”
Joanna, looking down on them, said sharply between her clenched teeth, “I’d rather die out there than here with the rest of you.”
She didn’t flee to the road as Addie thought she might. Instead, she crossed the clearing toward the main house and beyond it into the fields, out of sight.
Addie looked at Bud, who stared after Joanna, horrified. Then his eyes met hers, wide and clueless. Without a word Addie got to her feet, checked the guesthouse one last time, and then chased in Joanna’s footsteps.
She dashed barefoot across the hard dirt, hands locked behind her back. She skirted the edge of the main house, into the waist-high grass, until it was finally behind her. Joanna was ahead, bounding through the grass like the giant she was, illuminated clearly under the moonlight. Addie pumped her legs faster, wishing to catch up. She wanted to yell after her, to call “JOANNA! WAIT FOR ME! JOANNA!” but thought it best not to give herself away. The forest’s edge was far enough, she’d need to be quick to get there before the assistant returned, before they could be spotted in the open. She supposed if she had to, she could drop down into the grass and lay low for a while…
She’d never been very active. Being made to run the mile in high school had been just short of attempted homicide. But the air here, light and sweet, felt something akin to magic inside her expanding lungs. Aside from the occasional divot in the uneven ground, she ran as well as any natural-born athlete. In fact, Joanna slowly grew larger and larger before her as she closed the distance between them, and before long she could hear her heavy breathing.
“Joanna,” she gasped.
Joanna didn’t hear her.
Addie looked over her shoulder and saw the property shrunken behind them, a sad and lonely place in the middle of nothing. Her fast-searching eyes saw no sign of the assistant, or even Bud for that matter. He’d stayed.
No loss to me, she thought.
She slowed to Joanna’s pace, not wishing to outrun her or separate, and felt the first sore burning in her calves. How much farther, she wondered, until they truly escaped? If that was even possible? She peered up at the sky, took a great bellyful of air, let it out.
There are no stars here…
“WAH!” Joanna screamed out.
Skidding to a halt, Addie collided into her. Arms trapped, they both crumbled onto the dirt. Addie wheezed. She tried to roll to the side an
d couldn’t free herself. She glanced up, eyes squinted in pain, and glimpsed before them a body of shimmering black water, hidden low in the grass. A pond. Joanna had nearly gone straight in. As they were now, sitting atop each other, Joanna’s feet wet in the pond’s edge, Addie was grateful to have her as a personal barrier despite the ache in her shoulder where she’d fallen.
Something else happened then, something Addie would think back on later that night with a profound disturbance. Joanna erupted into a bout of terrible shrieking. She backpedaled on the dirt, still crushing Addie underneath herself, howling as though she’d been bitten by something terrible, and Addie had to muster all her strength to scramble out from her squirming weight.
“What!? What is it!?” Addie asked, getting to her knees, catching her breath. Joanna paid her no attention. Her screaming stopped and she rolled a short ways back into the grass where she fell flat on her stomach and lay there shuddering. “Joanna, what’s wrong?”
She glanced back at the pond, still as ice, and saw nothing. She looked beyond the pond, toward the other side. It was a medium size pond, small enough not to be seen running through the grass as they were, but large enough to avoid if you were paying attention.
Catching her breath, she sat and rested more comfortably. Joanna remained flat on the ground on her stomach, arms locked behind her round waist.
“Are you okay?” Addie asked. But Joanna didn’t answer. She breathed heavily.
Addie sat up a little, enough to spy on the property they’d left behind, and still saw no one in pursuit. The moon was high and round like a wheel of cheese above them.
She passed her eyes along the pond’s edge again, curiously taking in their surroundings, and noticed something peculiar she hadn’t before. Indeed, there was something on the opposite shore…
“What…”
She saw it clearly now. Long and motionless in the grass, glossy and bright and porcelain, there sat a claw-foot bathtub. Abandoned. Why it was out here, so far from the property, Addie couldn’t know. There was something about it, though. Something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Nestled halfway in the grass, halfway in the dirt by the pond’s shore, sparkling in the night, she’d been shocked to see it at first, as though she’d spotted a prowling animal, stopping at the pond for a sip. It was only a tub, of course. Surely Joanna hadn’t screamed at that…
“There you are.”
Both Addie and Joanna yelped. Addie spun on her knees to face the voice and fell onto her side. The assistant, Nuala, loomed over her, silhouetted against the moon. Her hands were on her hips. Joanna rolled over at last, and her face was wet with tears.
“I’m sorry!” she cried. “I’m sorry! It was her idea!”
“I highly doubt that,” Nuala answered, amused. “Get up, both of you.”
They did as they were told. Nuala looked at them briefly, disappointed, then started back to the property. Addie and Joanna watched her go, unmoving, until finally she said to them, “I won’t drag you back if that’s what you’re waiting for.”
Addie turned to Joanna, who sniffled and wiped tears from under her eyes. She almost felt sorry for her.
“So much for wanting to die,” she said, and started back as well.
She jogged a little to catch up with Nuala, who looked back as she approached.
“Are you for real?” Addie asked. Nuala smiled. “I mean… you really mean to help us?”
“I don’t only mean to help you. I will. We will. The doctor and I.”
Addie walked a little faster until they were side by side.
“How?”
Nuala walked in silence for a time, thinking. “The doctor’s methods are unconventional, but… he has a way of finding the things which make a person who they are. Then it’s just a matter of… facing those things…”
Addie felt a pang of anxiety. “And what do you mean by that?”
“Well, that’s a tricky question. As similar as two people might seem in passing, they’re really not. You’re all different. So many variables. Innumerable experiences, all reacting to one another to form a whole… I won’t bore you with my fascination, but it’s something that must be considered in order to understand.”
“Aren’t you upset with us?”
It took Nuala a moment to follow. She smiled as she realized what Addie meant. “As angry as I could be with Joanna and yourself, there would be no purpose. You both have your reasons for running. I believe the choices we make come from those experiences I mentioned. Our pasts. It takes a certain level of awareness to even attempt confronting who we are. Most people need a little help finding it.”
“You sound like a therapist.”
Nuala perked up. “Have you been to one before?”
Addie shook her head.
“It’s what most therapy boils down to, I find.” She paused as they reentered the yard. It was empty now, Bud included. Addie wondered where he’d gone. “How are you feeling about all this now, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“I don’t know,” Addie said. “Overwhelmed, I guess.” Those images flashed again in her mind—her dead mother, the pills and the vodka… that thing which had come for her… “I know I have nowhere else to be. If I wasn’t here, I’d be dead. So I guess this is better than being hopeless.”
Nuala smiled again as they stopped short of the entrance to the guesthouse. The fire pit was out.
“You were never hopeless,” she said. “You’re more intelligent than you give yourself credit for.” Addie chewed her lip uncomfortably, looked up to the starless sky, anywhere to avoid meeting Nuala’s face. “I’m glad you feel comfortable being this open with me, at least, even as confused as you might be.”
There was a metallic jangle, and when Addie brought her attention back to the assistant, she was stepping behind her and manipulating the cuffs on her wrists. They fell away with a click.
“You may not fully trust me yet, and that’s fine. But I trust you, and you’ve earned a little more freedom in that.”
“What about mine?”
They turned to see Joanna standing in the center of the yard, scowling.
“I’d love to remove yours,” Nuala said. “If only I knew you’d stay.”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
Turning to Addie, Nuala said, “Why don’t you head inside? We’ll be in shortly.”
The guesthouse was dark, save the fireplace in the living area which was now lit. Bud was seated on one of the rocking chairs, and he turned to look as she entered, his face half lit by the fire, and once he made her out in the dark he looked away. The house was quiet and calm. The fire crackled. The other boy, who supposedly escaped through his bedroom window, was nowhere in sight. Addie moved toward the fireplace, toward Bud. Ignoring the disdain she felt, she asked, “What happened? Did you see?”
Bud spoke to the fire. “She brought him back. Had him thrown over her shoulder. He’s back in his room.”
Curious, Addie crept into the hallway, each of their bedrooms in a row, and she went to his door on the left. It was open. She peeked in. The window was broken out clean. Under it was a bed just like hers, and a body lay facing the wall. Did Nuala not worry he’d escape again, Addie wondered? She returned to the fireplace.
“Is he okay?”
Bud regarded her plainly, saying nothing. Maybe he hadn’t heard her properly. Either way she didn’t ask a second time, and started back toward the hallway, to return to her own bedroom.
“I’m sorry,” he said as she went. She turned back. He was staring deeply into the fire, massaging his hands on the arms of his chair. “I didn’t know who he was, or that you… well…”
It took her a moment to realize he wasn’t talking about Lyle.
“It doesn’t matter,” she answered. “Carter wasn’t anyone special to me anyway. We don’t need to talk about it.”
Bud wiped at his face, what Addie guessed must have been tears. She briefly considered sitting with him, speaking with him, and then the
front door opened. Joanna came inside, freed of her restraints, followed closely by Nuala. She shut the door behind them.
“That’s all for tonight, I’m afraid,” Nuala said. “So this is how things are going to go from now on. Your bedroom doors will remain unlocked. This front door will remain unlocked. You’re free to use the toilet outside as needed. I trust none of you will try running again, but just in case let me remind you… you’re safer here. There’s nothing out there for you, and I mean that quite literally. Just relax. Get comfortable. Get some rest tonight. I’ll be here in the morning with breakfast when you wake up. Sound good?”
“How long do you figure you’ll keep us here?” Joanna asked. Apparently whatever they’d discussed in private outside hadn’t changed her attitude too much.
“That depends on you. But in general, I would plan on being here a while. Healing takes time. Real healing. Simple compliance and a good smile won’t be enough to convince the doctor. He sees through that.”
“I can’t speak for everyone, but there’ll be people looking for me,” Joanna said. “I’m a missing person already, I know it.”
“You told me you’d try, Joanna,” Nuala said.
Joanna, shaking her head, gave up and started for the hallway. “Fine. Fuck it. Nobody gives a shit, and I have nowhere better to be.”
She shoved past Addie and left to her room, leaving a tense, quiet void in her wake.
“What about the other boy?” Addie asked.
“Lyle is fine. Unconscious, but fine.”
“You don’t think he’ll run again when he wakes up?”
“No, actually, I don’t.” Nuala took a deep breath. “Let’s save any other questions for tomorrow, all right? You should both get some sleep.”
Nuala departed for the night, leaving them on their own.
Addie stood in the middle of the room, fixated on the front door, thoughts whirling. A few minutes passed like that, and it was Bud who finally brought her back. His voice frightened her, as he was suddenly behind her, making his way to the hallway.
“I can’t tell if I want this to be a dream or not,” he said, and when Addie looked over her shoulder he was already gone.