Read Last Exit in New Jersey Online
Authors: C.E. Grundler
Hammon passed the day sweltering aboard Annabel’s so-called boat, fans running, lying on the bunk and sweating, trapped by the sun beating down on the decks above. Much as he hated to admit it, he was grateful for the place to hide, and impressed by the surprisingly sturdy little bath toy.
“Told you so,” Annabel said. “It’s a Flicka. These things can cross oceans.”
“So can plastic soda bottles. And they’re about the same size.”
And yet the boat contained all the necessary comforts in a neat little package, as well as privacy Gary’s couch lacked. Tucked up forward were V bunks. To port stretched six feet of stove/sink/chart table, with ample storage and standing headroom to spare. Starboard, a short settee and the world’s smallest enclosed head/shower. Wedged beneath the cockpit was a miniature diesel. All in all, just enough space for one person. Barely.
“One?” Annabel said.
“So much for privacy.”
“You could lock yourself in the head,” she teased.
Hammon didn’t reply. It was pointless arguing with himself and he was exhausted. He’d improvised curtains over the ports using a cut-up old sail bag and duct tape and made extra space earlier in the day by moving the spare sails into the Fairmont. The boat came from an estate sale, fully provisioned with everything from charts to cutlery, pots, pans, plates, life vests, and expired flares. Sometimes he wondered what he’d do without Annabel.
“I shudder to imagine.”
Still, it freaked him out that she’d bought the boat without his knowledge or consent, and it left him to wonder how much control he truly had over his own actions.
“Don’t concern yourself, dear. It’s only in your best interests.”
Tired as she was, Hazel couldn’t sleep. Yet another day had come and gone, with them no closer to any answers. A storm was approaching, she was sure of it. The question was, when would it hit and what damage would it leave behind?
She sighed, watching Micah contentedly sprawled across the port bunk. She sighed even louder; still he didn’t move.
“Micah?”
Nothing. Not a flicker of consciousness. He’d always been a deep sleeper, able to doze through the roughest weather. She fought the urge to smack him with a pillow.
“Fine. You sleep. I’m going for a nice, long walk. Alone.”
It just wasn’t fair that he could sleep so sound. She was too restless. Hazel slid off the bunk, dressed in the dark, then lit the hurricane lamp in the galley, lowering the wick until only a sliver of blue flame remained.
The yard was silent and empty beneath a clear night sky. The moon was approaching last quarter and random fireflies blinked over the Phragmites reeds. The space where the Fairmont usually parked was vacant, and Hazel wasn’t sure whether she was relieved or annoyed, or why it even mattered.
A flash of light shot across the sky, then another, reminding her of the note she’d found earlier. This was a perfect excuse to wake Micah. More meteors followed, nearly one a minute, and she was halfway back to the shed when an approaching rumble broke the stillness and headlights rounded the boatyard entrance. Hazel flattened herself behind a blocked-up boat, her adrenaline rising as the Fairmont rolled past. The car braked, backed into the far corner, and shut down. No interior lights came on, the door just opened and a shadow emerged. It might have been the boy from Piermont; it was too dark to be sure. He stood, back to her, staring upward. Then, rather than heading to the docks, he wandered through the brush and out to the riverbank.
Hazel waited, frozen. She could get Micah, but by time they returned her target might be gone. And it wasn’t like she was going to do anything; she simply wanted to see who it was while she had the chance. What harm was there in that? If he was, as Tony said,
Nepenthe
’s owner, that pretty much ruled out the possibility that he was any danger to her. All the same she opened her knife, slipped her hand into the ribbon loop, and tucked the blade against her arm. Ahead, a faint outline marked the boundary between land and water, with a figure sitting slump-shouldered at the edge. Hazel watched, waiting, but he did nothing.
It was time for a closer look.
Hammon stared up as streaks of light cut the darkness: pieces of the universe crashing and burning. It was beautiful in a depressing way, and he was compelled to watch, empathizing with those bits of cosmos. Did they realize they were getting too close to the gravity that would pull them in and destroy them? Did they deliberately hurl themselves into the irresistible force of a spinning planet like moths to a flame, bent on their own destruction? Or were they innocent bystanders, merely passing through the galaxy, only to be drawn into inevitable doom? Whatever the case, it verified one of Hammon’s theories: gravity was a myth; the earth sucked.
He shouldn’t have snapped at Annabel. She’d only been trying to help, but he’d lashed out at her in frustration, reminding her that she really didn’t exist and her opinions didn’t count for much, being they were actually his. And, considering he was out of his freakin’ mind, arguing with his hallucination, his opinions were utterly worthless. Finally she’d disappeared, leaving him to contemplate how lonely existence was without the voice in his head for company. Was he being drawn toward his own destruction or initiating it?
“I’m sorry,” he apologized to the darkness. “I really am. I know you’re there and I know you can hear me. It’s just easier to talk when I can see you.”
Nothing. Only blackness around him and self-destructive stars overhead.
She was giving him the silent treatment. It served him right.
But then a faint glow appeared, brightening to the warm flame of a hurricane lantern. Annabel stood motionless before him, her expression wary. He offered a weak smile.
“Please stay,” he said, his voice breaking. “I don’t want to be alone.”
He watched, transfixed, as the breeze played through her curls. The lantern she carried was a nice touch, casting a soft circle of light. She wore a loose pair of cargo pants and his favorite old sweatshirt. The details were amazing, so vivid and convincing. Another symptom of his eroding grasp on reality. She stood, not speaking, only waiting.
“You win,” he conceded. “If reality means you don’t exist and madness means you do, then I surrender to insanity.”
Still she said nothing, only studied him, looking uncertain.
Hammon sighed, blinking his left eye. “I really am sorry,” he said plaintively, blinking his right eye. “I know you’re not really here, but I don’t care. I just don’t want to be alone anymore.”
She moved back the slightest bit then paused. “I’m not here?”
“No. You, sweet angel, are no more than a delightful hallucination. Exhibit A in the gallery of how scrambled my gray matter is. I looked it up: auditory and visual hallucinations are ‘particularly associated with psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia.’ They tried putting everything back, but they didn’t get all the mercury. Wires got crossed, brain cells got lost.” He rubbed his head, sighing wistfully. “Brain cells…too many gone. Miss ’em sometimes.”
Hazel stood motionless, uncertain how to proceed. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but it certainly wasn’t this. He was indeed the same boy she’d seen in Piermont. Glasses, baseball cap, straight, mousy brown hair falling across his eyes, skin so fair it seemed almost translucent. Her age, maybe a bit older. In the dim light she could see faint scars covered the right side of his face, partially concealed by his hair. Hazel knew she shouldn’t have been there to begin with, and maybe it was time to just leave. He’d already admitted he wasn’t right in the head. But the defeat in his eyes held her. He seemed utterly harmless, more than that, wounded. And if he owned
Nepenthe,
then his presence in Piermont, one tide’s sail away, was most likely simple coincidence.
He gazed up with haunting eyes and smiled sadly, sharp fangs gleaming in the lamplight. That caught her off guard, yet she found herself more intrigued than alarmed.
“It’s all gone,” he said. “My life, my mind.” Desperation filled his face, and he winked his left eye. “You’re not gonna disappear again, are you? I’m afraid to blink, but my eyeballs are getting dry.”
“No.” But she remained beyond reach, the reassuring shape of her knife in hand. “I won’t disappear.”
Blinking, he smiled an innocent, childlike smile…with fangs.
“Why do you think I’m a hallucination?”
“I said I was sorry,” he insisted, looking even more hurt. “And I am. Really.”
“I know. All the same, how do you know I’m not real?”
He giggled and her fingers tightened around the knife.
“That’s funny?”
He nodded, hair falling in his eyes. “Hysterical. Terrifying. Okay; now you ask why. All right. I’ll play along, even though I’m really just talking to myself. How do I know? Simple: if you were real, there’s no way in hell you’d talk to a messed-up, burned-up little freak like me.”
The night was cooler than usual, and Hazel crossed her arms, fighting not to shiver. Keeping space between them and the knife concealed, she knelt down, set the lantern aside, and scraped a small pit with a clamshell. She placed some dry seaweed and driftwood in a pile then struck a match. The flame caught, growing, while her companion looked on uneasily. She added more wood, and the fire crackled, radiating warmth.
“So you have some scars. Big deal. Actually, I think you’re kind of cute.”
“More proof you don’t exist. You see past the damage; it doesn’t matter to you. That’s what makes you beautiful, most of all. But no real girl—especially one that happens to look exactly like my fantasies, and what’s the odds of that—would stay and talk to a burned-up, screwed-up, delusional, certifiably imbalanced…”
“Dangerous?”
“Huh?”
“Unbalanced I get. Personally I think sanity is a relative thing.” She knew only too well what it was like having others analyze her mental state, and how easy it was to start to believe them. “Look close enough, deep down most people are all a little crazy. Some just hide it better. But are you dangerous? Could you hurt me?”
The horror in his eyes was unmistakable. “I’d never…you know I couldn’t…” He actually looked ill. “It’d be impossible, there’s no way…I swear, I’d die for you before I ever…I love you.”
“Love?”
He nodded, smiling with a gentle intensity that held her locked in his gaze. It was that same look that had been haunting her since Piermont, as unnerving as it was sincere.
“Of course. It makes sense; I imagined you. You’re my idea of perfect, and not just physically, which you definitely are. It’s who you are and how you are. From the start you saw me, not this mess of scars and loose screws. Then again, it’s easier to be in love with something you created in your head. Reality can’t screw it up.”
Hazel sat back, considering. Any reasonable person would have been long gone; though she’d never been what most people consider reasonable, and somehow his words made perfect sense to her. It seemed a bit of a stretch to think that he was following her and this was some elaborate, convincing act. The more logical explanation was that he’d seen her that night in the Viper and decided he’d only imagined it. It was sweet in a strange way.
She picked up a pebble, tossing it idly toward the creek. There was a soft
plunk
in the darkness. The fire hissed and snapped, spreading a circle of heat. Hazel studied the boy, blinking back at her through thick glasses. “Maybe I’ve been real all along and you only imagined you imagined me.”
“Right. You’re real set on this existence thing today, which means I am, which means I’m right back where I started, sick of being alone. Life sucks. You want a reality check? You’re as real as that.” He pointed at the crackling fire, casting dancing shadows around them. “I can touch it, and I won’t feel a thing.” Then, to prove his point, he reached his hand straight into the flames, deliberately holding it there.
“No!” Hazel jumped toward him, grabbing his arm, pulling it back.
He gazed at his hand in pain and wonderment. “That HURT,” he mumbled, genuinely confused.
“Of course it did.” She turned his sweaty hand over, inspecting the scarred skin. Two fingers had no nails and his pinky was partially amputated, but those were old injuries. His sleeve was singed, but he seemed otherwise unharmed. “What’d you expect?”
“You…you’re…you’re…”
The space between them and the reassuring safety it had provided were gone. Holding his trembling hand in hers, she realized she’d moved dangerously close. She still had her knife, lethally sharp and ready, tucked in her other hand, while he gazed at her, eyes wide. She smiled hesitantly. “Real.”
Hammon couldn’t speak. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. His skin stung from the flames, and he could feel the soft warmth of her fingers against his.
It was impossible.
“Why’d you do that?” She looked down at their hands, seemingly as amazed as him that they were touching.
He stared back at her, paralyzed, while his heart tore at his ribs. She held her right hand, encircled in ribbon, in an odd way as she cautiously lifted his chin. Her left hand released his; she pushed his hair back from his eyes, exposing more damage, and he flinched as her fingers brushed across his cheek.
“You were hurt terribly,” she said, her voice gentle. “You must be used to pain.”
He blinked, his brain searing as the mercury shifted. “You never get used to pain,” he choked.
“You’re shaking.”
Annabel was
real
, there beside him in the damp sand,
touching
him! This wasn’t actually happening; it couldn’t be. It was impossible. It made no sense. Not that he was complaining. He was thrilled. And terrified. And confused. Very confused. “Am I dead?”
She paused, looking puzzled. “No.”
“You’re…
REAL
.”
“I think we’ve established that.”
“You’re real and you didn’t leave.”
“Should I?”
“No! Please…stay…” he said. “Forever.”
Annabel was real. How was that even possible? It didn’t make sense. She turned, looking up as a meteor cut across the sky.
“This
is
pretty weird,” Annabel said. “Even for you. And it’s about to get a whole lot weirder.”
“What?” he mumbled.
She looked back at him. “What, what?”
A second Annabel strolled from the darkness behind him, curiously studying the one beside the fire. The standing Annabel turned to Hammon. “Steady,” she said.
Hammon looked from the real Annabel sitting beside him to the other…the one standing…the…
“Annabel, version one,” she said, her satiny voice sliding through his skull. It was like seeing double, except this Annabel wore low jeans and her “I quit the band, now I just play with myself” T-shirt. She looked the other Annabel over. “Despite the resemblance, she’s not me, and I have no idea who she is.”
Hammon stared from one to the other. Why didn’t either of them say something sooner?
“She has no idea, dear, and I didn’t want to spoil the fun.” Annabel grinned. “This was way more amusing. I figured I’d keep quiet and see where it went. So, it appears I exist.”
No, the girl beside him existed. Annabel was still…
“Same thing,” Annabel replied.
“I’m not so sure…” he said.
“Not sure about what?” the girl asked tentatively.
“Talk to her, not me,” Annabel said. “Tell her you’re not sure what to say.”
Hammon nodded, hiccupping. “What to say. Who are you? Where did you come from? What are you doing out here alone? Will you stay with me forever?”
Annabel said, “I think that last part was pushing it a bit.”
The girl studied him, uncertain. “I couldn’t sleep. I was watching the meteor showers.” She glanced up at the sky as a streak of light appeared and faded. “And you?”
Hammon hiccupped. “Same thing. Insomnia. Watching stars crash into the sea.”
“Listen carefully and don’t say a word,” Annabel said. “She’s the girl we saw in the Viper leaving Stevenson’s. She’s wearing the sweatshirt you left on
Revenge
. Odds are she knows what happened to Stevenson and where
Revenge
is. But here’s the thing: if only you can see me, how is it we look identical?”
There was only one possibility: Stevenson had microchips inside his head and stole his thoughts.
Annabel giggled. “Or maybe he saw your porn and found a good match.”
Okay. That worked too. Either way, the resemblance was undeniable. Which meant Stevenson was using this girl to get to him. Hammon watched her watching the stars and wondered if she knew who he was.
Annabel said, “I don’t think so. And I wouldn’t say anything or you might scare her away. I’m amazed you haven’t already.”
She had a point. This girl was like Gary’s feral cats, curious but wary. If he sat still, did nothing threatening, and made no sudden moves, they might approach, ever ready to bolt. Hammon rubbed his burned hand. “Not that I’m complaining, but do you always talk to strange weirdos, alone, at two in the morning?”
She gave a hesitant smile. “Most times I don’t talk to anyone, weird or otherwise.”
“You talked to me, even though I’m messed up, and I got these.” He curled his lips, trying to look fearsome.
She laughed. “I’m sorry. Should I be afraid?”
“You’re not?”
“You don’t strike me as dangerous. A little unbalanced, perhaps, but not terribly scary.”
Maybe. But if Stevenson was using her to get to him, she was in danger whether she knew it or not. He had to protect her, whatever it took. Suddenly it was blindingly clear what he had to do.
“Your intentions are good,” Annabel said, “but that’s a terrible idea.”
It was for her own good. If she’d talk to him, God only knew who else she’d trust. She didn’t see the danger in that, and that in itself was dangerous. He’d be breaking his promise, but he had to; it was the only way to be sure she’d be safe.
Annabel’s features tightened, and she tucked her hair back. “I said NO.”
There was no one around. No one to see. He’d have to move quick, catch her by surprise. She’d probably struggle, and he didn’t want to hurt her. He’d have to restrain her and keep her from screaming. Once they were aboard
Nepenthe
, far from shore, then he’d explain.
“I’m warning you. Don’t.” Annabel stepped between him and the girl. Like that could stop him. She was starting to be a real pain in the brain.
Annabel’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t test me, or I’ll show you pain.”
He shifted slowly, calculating the distance between them, when the mercury inside his head turned molten. The world tilted, everything blurred, and a vortex of nausea rose within him. He collapsed to the ground; eyes squeezed shut, damp palms pressed to his forehead.
“Are you okay?” his tangible companion asked.
“I warned you,” said the intangible one. “Remember, inside your skull I call the shots. Stay still, you’ll be fine. Make one move toward her, you’ll see double for a week.”
Hammon looked through tearing eyes from Annabel to her concerned twin. He was already seeing double.
“Headache,” he gasped, sinking into the cool sand.