Our Last Echoes

by Kate Alice Marshall

  I straightened up. Salt water dripped from my fingertips, and I felt nothing. All my fear and anger and grief were on some other shore. Maybe I wasn’t human. But maybe it was better not to be.

  “I know what we need to do next,” I said, and started back toward the road.

  VIDEO EVIDENCE

  Recorded by Joy Novak

  AUGUST 14, 2003, TIME UNKNOWN

  The camera turns on in night mode. The exterior light is not on, but a flashlight lying on the floor provides some minimal illumination. The camera rests at floor level as well, underneath the wire frame of a bed. It shifts slightly, scraping against the concrete floor.

  SOPHIA: Shh.*

  Someone enters the room. A man’s boots pass in front of the camera. One foot drags slightly.

  CARREAU: Sophie? It’s okay. You know me. I’m your friend. I want to help. Please.

  The camera turns, shifting so that both girls are visible. Sophia and her echo—whichever is which—lie on their stomachs beneath the bed, holding each other’s hands tightly. The Sophia who was holding the camera puts a finger to her lips and shakes her head. The Sophia farther from the camera bites her lip and presses a hand over her mouth, as if trying not to whimper.

  CARREAU: Sophie. Sophie. Sososososososo—

  His foot taps rapidly, the nervous drumming of a rabbit against the dusty ground.

  CARREAU: Sloppy work.

  He walks out of the room. In the distance, muffled, come three rapid gunshots and screaming.

  Approximately five minutes pass with the camera on the ground beneath the bed, the two girls, holding each other’s hands, breathing in ragged, staggered rhythm. The shouting has stopped. Footsteps sound in the hall outside; Joy enters, recognizable by the bright blue laces on her boots.

  NOVAK: Sophie?

  The girls clamber out, one after the other.

  SOPHIA: We got scared.

  SOPHIA [2]: We hided.

  NOVAK: It’s okay now.

  The lie is a flimsy one, and even the girls seem to know it.

  SOPHIA: What happened?

  NOVAK: Um. Carolyn, she was . . . sick. She had to go away.

  SOPHIA: She tried to hurt me. I have a ouch.

  She holds out her arm for the requisite kiss. Novak rolls up the girl’s sleeve. The imprint of fingers is visible on Sophia’s skin. Novak, struggling to maintain an unworried smile, plants a kiss on the girl’s arm.

  NOVAK: Okay, kiddos. Come with me. Everything’s going to be okay.

  She puts force behind the words, as if her determination will make it true. Together, each girl holding one of Novak’s hands, they walk through the hallway and into the control room. The camera dangles by its strap from Sophia’s hand. It captures a few frames of the door, closed, and of the wide pool of blood on the concrete floor in the hallway.

  In the control room, Hardcastle and Kapoor sit in dilapidated chairs. Martin leans against a table. He smiles at the Sophias and taps a finger to his lips; no one else appears to notice.

  HARDCASTLE: You found them. Good.

  NOVAK: If anyone tries to touch either one of them—

  HARDCASTLE: You’ve made yourself clear.

  KAPOOR: No one’s doing anything until we figure out which one of them is which.

  Novak looks down and notices the camera. She takes it from Sophia and positions it.

  KAPOOR: Carolyn seemed to, I don’t know, glitch out or something.

  NOVAK: What about the other one?

  She sounds queasy.

  KAPOOR: The other . . . the one outside.

  NOVAK: If this was the copy, the one out there was the real Carolyn. But you said that she attacked you.

  KAPOOR: She did. She came out of nowhere, screaming at us.

  NOVAK: What was she screaming?

  KAPOOR: She . . . I don’t remember. She was asking something. Where something was.

  HARDCASTLE: Where did you take them.

  His voice is monotone, his gaze distant. He shakes his head a little, eyes focusing.

  HARDCASTLE: That was it, wasn’t it? She was asking where we took them. Took who, though? And how did she end up near here?

  KAPOOR: We were heading for the beach. I remember that. And we weren’t gone that long.

  NOVAK: We don’t know how long you were gone. None of our watches work here.

  KAPOOR: The camera . . . ?

  NOVAK: I checked the display. It’s stuck on 12:47, and the recording light flickers on and off. There’s no way to be sure how much of an interval might be missing. I thought you were gone about fifteen minutes, but it might have been longer.

  KAPOOR: It would be easier to think if it weren’t for that damn singing.

  NOVAK: Where is that coming from, anyway? Is it even singing? I can’t quite make it out.

  Carreau hums, as if to match something he hears. The microphone picks up no such music.

  SOPHIA [2]: Oh! I like the singing. I heared it before. But then I got lost.

  Novak has gone very still.

  NOVAK: Sophie? Sweetie?

  She limps over to the left-hand Sophia and takes her by the shoulders.

  NOVAK: When did you get lost, Sophie?

  SOPHIA [2]: I know I’m not supposed to.

  NOVAK: Not supposed to what?

  SOPHIA [2]: Not supposed to go out when it’s misty. But I wanted to see the beach. And then whoosh!

  She waves her hands in front of her eyes.

  SOPHIA [2]: Can’t see anything! Aaahh! Sploosh, fall in the water. And then I’m cold.

  SOPHIA: But then there’s a shadow. It’s standing up, not on the ground. I not seen a shadow stand up before. So cool.

  The adults gape as the two girls trade off seamlessly.

  SOPHIA [2]: So I touch it! And then I sleep. And I wake up a differenter place.

  SOPHIA: And I look and I look and I look for you but I not find you.

  NOVAK: You— The day you got lost. But you came back. Mikhail brought you back.

  SOPHIA [2]: Mikhail! The big man. I like him.

  SOPHIA: He carry me back.

  SOPHIA [2]: Mor-arty come too.

  NOVAK: Which one of you . . . Who came back? Did you? Did Mikhail carry you?

  She looks at the left-hand Sophia, who looks confused.

  SOPHIA [2]: Why you sad, Mama?

  KAPOOR: Their clothes.

  Novak understands. The girls are wearing matching sneakers, mud-stained, and jeans close enough not to be easily distinguished. Their jackets, too, are identical, but Novak carefully unzips each one and looks at the shirts beneath. One girl wears a black T-shirt with a cartoon dog printed on the chest; the other’s shirt is gray and striped, long-sleeved. One of those sleeves is still slightly rucked up where Novak moved it to examine her bruises.

  KAPOOR: Which one was she wearing today?

  Novak’s eyes flicker over the girls. She wets her lips.

  NOVAK: I—I’m not sure.

  HARDCASTLE: Wait. Let’s be clear here. You’re saying that Sophie was copied—swapped—days ago? Back when she went missing?

  NOVAK: We don’t know that. You heard them. It’s like they’re sharing memories.

  HARDCASTLE: It sure as hell sounded like that was what happened. So which one did we bring over with us? Because that’s the double.

  NOVAK: I don’t know, Will. I can’t be sure.

  She keeps her back to him and her head down. She zips the girls’ jackets back up, adjusts their collars. Tugs Sophia [2]’s sleeve down more firmly toward her wrist.

  Carreau has been humming softly. Kapoor glares at him.

  HARDCASTLE: It’s bad enough having to listen to it. Do you have to sing along?

&nbs
p; SOPHIA: It’s coming from down.

  KAPOOR: She’s right. It’s coming from below us. I’m going to check it out.

  HARDCASTLE: No one goes off alone.

  KAPOOR: Then come with me.

  NOVAK: No. If we go anywhere, we all go together. No more being out of each other’s sight. Period.

  Hardcastle nods.

  HARDCASTLE: Bring the camera. Our memories aren’t reliable. Maybe it can help.

  24

  WE WALKED TO Mikhail’s house. We weren’t his only visitors, it turned out. Mrs. Popova’s truck was out front. They know each other, I thought, and then realized how ridiculous that was.

  They were arguing inside, but I didn’t understand the language—Russian, I assumed. When the front step creaked beneath me, the voices ceased. Instead of knocking, I cleared my throat. “Mikhail?” I called.

  Clomping footsteps, and then the door opened. “You should not be here,” he said. Mrs. Popova stood behind him, face pinched in a displeased expression and sweater wrapped tight around herself.

  “You didn’t tell us everything,” I said.

  “Yes. Because I want you to leave. Go away and be safe,” Mikhail said, scowling at us.

  “Let them in, Misha,” Mrs. Popova said. “They aren’t going to let go of this, and the girl deserves the truth. Don’t you think?”

  “Truth is overrated,” Mikhail muttered, but he waved us in. I stopped in the middle of the room and stared down the two adults.

  “You knew about her. Both of you. She has one of Mikhail’s carvings. You gave it to her, didn’t you?” I held out my own carving, the little tern with its upward-swept wings. Mikhail took it from me gingerly, turning it over in his hands. “You gave this one to my mother. You gave others to the echo.”

  “Sophie,” he said.

  “What?”

  “That’s what she calls herself,” Mrs. Popova said. “Not Sophia, Sophie. You left. She didn’t. Of course we know about her.” She waved at the table. “Sit down.”

  I glanced at Liam, but he seemed to be happy letting me take the lead. I had imagined this as more of an interrogation, but I took the offered chair and Mrs. Popova folded her hands on the tabletop.

  “Ask what you need to ask,” she said.

  “What is Sophie?” I asked. “Is she like the other echoes?”

  “No. She’s different, but we don’t know why.”

  “We take care of her,” Mikhail added.

  “Who’s we?” I asked. “Dr. Hardcastle too?”

  He shook his head sharply. “No. He does not know she is here. Maria and Vanya and I, we watch over her.”

  “He did something,” I said. “I can almost remember, but . . .” I shook my head.

  “It seems so,” Mrs. Popova said. “We don’t know what it is, but Vanya does. She’s the one that told us we had to be careful to hide her from Dr. Hardcastle.”

  “That’s why he didn’t know me,” I said. “But you did. Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “We weren’t certain what you wanted,” Mrs. Popova said. “Or what would happen when you came.”

  “What is this place?” I demanded.

  “A barren hunk of rock where a few fools tried to turn desolation into abundance and failed,” Mrs. Popova said. “This place had always been empty, because there was nothing here. No food, no warmth, no hope. Only evil.”

  “The evil in this place wasn’t here until we brought it,” Mikhail rumbled.

  “Who’s ‘we’?” I asked.

  “The Krachka,” he said. “A fishing ship. There were seven of us. One day the nets dragged something up from the ocean that we didn’t understand. It was like a piece of broken glass the size of a man’s chest. From every angle, it looked different. Like it was flat, but you could never find the edge. It was held in a box covered in strange writing, wrapped with chains.”

  “The Krachka crashed like a hundred and fifty years ago,” Liam said. Mikhail fixed him with a look.

  “Hush. I am not finished. We started to hear things. Singing. When we looked at the glass, we saw the Six-Wing, the angel. I knew it was something wicked. Something that should be destroyed. But others seemed to worship it. They wanted to free it. I tried to stop them, so they tied me up in the hold, but I broke free. Ran the ship onto the rocks. That was when I lost my eye.” He took a shuddering breath, as if the pain still lived in him.

  “Things got a bit chaotic after that,” Mrs. Popova said dryly. “The ship crashed against the rocks. Most of the sailors wouldn’t say anything or accept any help. But they let my brother bring Misha over to this side of the island, where our doctor lived,” Mrs. Popova said. “We tended to him. We didn’t realize until the next day that everyone else was gone. They’d vanished.”

  “But that was not the worst of it,” Mikhail said. “The worst was when they came back.”

  Mrs. Popova looked down at her hands. “The last time I told anyone about all of this was when your Dr. Kapoor came back from—from that other place. It’s strange to say it out loud.”

  “All this time, we have kept silence,” Mikhail said, turning to Mrs. Popova. “What has it given us? Long life and little joy.”

  Mrs. Popova sighed. “Very well. As you’ve probably gathered, my family was among the first to settle Bitter Rock. My father was Russian, my mother was Unangan. She converted to Russian Orthodox when she married him. She died of a sudden illness the winter before the Krachka came—and sometimes I thank God for that. She didn’t have to see what happened.

  “In any case, the day after the crash, we found Belaya Skala empty. We searched, of course, the sea and the land. Looking for bodies or for some explanation. We found nothing except a hole in the hillside. Wide enough for a man to fall in. Deep. Too deep to climb down. The edges were . . . It’s hard to describe. It was like a wound. I was there with my father, helping. I was a young woman at the time. Nineteen.”

  “It is hard to remember we were ever so young,” Mikhail said. A slight smile played over Mrs. Popova’s lips, but she kept up the tale.

  “We searched the whole island. And then the mist came. We were there—my father, my sister, and me. My sister’s husband had been on Belaya Skala. He was among the vanished. When we heard his voice calling her name, we were overjoyed. She ran out into the mist to meet him. I was right behind her. I saw her run into his arms. I watched him snap her neck with a twist of his hands. Like it was nothing.” She shut her eyes and shuddered.

  “My father had his gun. My sister’s husband died smiling. And then we heard screaming. He was not the only one that had returned. We fled across the water, but not all of us made it.”

  Mikhail nodded. “After that, no one went to Belaya Skala. But sometimes the mist would come and cover the island, and you could hear them calling in it.”

  “Most of the others left,” Mrs. Popova said. “Many right away. Others within a few years, when they realized it wouldn’t stop.”

  “Wait,” I said. “If you were nineteen in the 1880s . . .”

  “Time doesn’t pass here properly,” Mrs. Popova said. “At first the effect didn’t reach past the headland. But it spread. Sometimes I wish it had bothered to get this far before I was quite so gray in the hair.” Her lips twisted at the feeble joke.

  “But why would you stay?” I asked. “If it was so dangerous—”

  “My daughter is still there,” Mikhail said. “And so I could not leave.”

  “And someone had to be here to warn people,” Mrs. Popova added. “To tell them about the mist.”

  “Your daughter,” I said. “You mean her echo?”

  Mrs. Popova looked over at Mikhail. He was silent. She put her hand over his. “At first the children seemed to grow up normally, but then . . .”

  “They would walk out into the mist,” Mikhail said, staring at the wall.
“We tried to stop them. We locked them in their rooms. Tied them up. They fought. Broke their bones to escape the ropes. Clawed the walls until their fingernails tore. And even if we stopped them, they died. And so we stopped trying to keep them. We let them go.”

  “Whatever the Six-Wing is looking for, I have always thought it requires a child,” Mrs. Popova said. “A very particular child.” The look she gave me was sharp-edged.

  “And now you know the truth,” Mikhail said. “You know, and so you can leave.”

  “No, we can’t,” I said. “I still don’t know what happened to my mother.”

  “She’s gone, Sophia,” Mrs. Popova said. “Let her go, and leave. While you still can.”

  But I couldn’t. I had to know what happened. I had to know who I was. What I was.

  Even if it killed me.

  VIDEO EVIDENCE

  Recorded by Joy Novak

  AUGUST 14, 2003, TIME UNKNOWN

  The group descends deeper into the bunker. The stairs creak and groan beneath them, and Novak has a particularly hard time navigating them. When Carreau offers the girls his hands to help them down, they shy away from him, sticking to Novak’s side. Hardcastle hangs behind briefly to wrangle the camera settings, and then edges past the rest of the queue to take the lead. The stairs lead down and down and farther still.

  KAPOOR: I think I can almost make out the words. We must be getting closer.

  NOVAK: It’s not really that I can make them out, it’s more like I’m starting to understand them.

  Hardcastle reaches the bottom of the stairs. He looks in on the round room. It is similar to the chamber in which Sophia will find Liam, over a decade from now, but its walls are not adorned in paint.

  They cross the room cautiously, and the tunnel leading out comes into sight. In this video it is wider, and arched smoothly, crafted with intention and skill. The tunnel beyond seems manmade, wide enough for two people to walk side by side, if a bit uncomfortably.

  HARDCASTLE: Only one way forward.

  They proceed into the tunnel. No one speaks. No one questions the decision to press onward—and downward, as the tunnel slopes, curves, spirals slowly in on itself. As it has before, the camera cuts out now and again. It is especially difficult to guess how long these intervals might be as there is no difference between one section of video and the next. A slightly different wrinkle in the rock around them, a crack in the floor, a discolored bit of stone—nothing substantial. The video comprises at least fifteen minutes, but they may have been walking for many more by the time they come to the door.