The Girl in the Maze (24 page)

Vince rested against the hard plastic seatback, drying his face and hair with a towel Morris had given him. A dim green light cast a sallow glow in the compartment. The windows were steamy and he could see very little outside. He could still hear the steady drum of the rain on the roof, the ripping sound of water spewing along the undercarriage. At least they were safe now.

Martha was quiet, very still, possibly catatonic, her wrists bound with the plastic restraints. To Vince's relief, Morris hadn't seemed to recognize her, at least not yet. She was slumped against her door, soaking wet, staring at him with an expression Vince couldn't quite fathom. Fear? Anger? Accusation?

Vince reached over with the towel to dry Martha's cheeks and arms. She tightened, pressing herself against the door frame, resisting his ministrations. “I'm sorry, Martha. I'm so sorry that it has to be this way.” She stared at him, then looked pointedly toward Morris. The folds on the back of the officer's neck were visible through the Lucite-and-mesh barrier.

“Doin' all right back there?” Morris's voice issued from a small speaker.

Vince nodded. “I didn't know we could talk to you.”

“Yep. Two-way system. We got these fancy cruisers about a year ago. I really had to twist the arm of the commissioners on the requisition.” Morris's voice sounded metallic.

Vince noticed a small red light on the steel seatback, and below it an engraved label:
CABIN UNDER SURVEILLANCE.

“My name's Vince Trauger.”

“Where from?”

“Atlanta.”

“You picked a hell of a night to visit the coast.”

“I'm afraid so. I want to thank you. You saved our lives tonight.”

“Just dumb luck. I was about to clear out of town myself. I decided to make one last patrol of the causeway to make sure no one was stranded out here. Intuition, I reckon.”

“Very fortunate for us.”

“Yep. Very fortunate.”

Vince wondered about the burly man in the front seat. Their rescuer seemed affable enough, and intelligent. Hardly the stereotypical bully of many a Deep South drama on late-night TV.

He glanced at Martha. She glared back intensely. She nodded emphatically toward Morris. Her behavior put him on edge, caused questions to bob to the surface of his mind like swamp gas. Why did Morris make Vince ride in the back with a potentially violent patient? Regulations forbade that Vince ride in the front, that's what Morris had said. But in a case like this…And why didn't Morris recognize Martha? Her picture had been in all the papers. And if he didn't, why wasn't he asking more questions about her?

“Where are we going?” Vince asked.

“Back to Amberleen,” Morris said. “There's a weather monitoring station up on Abbott Hill. Not much of a hill, actually, but it's the closest thing we've got around here. Low country, you know. It's made out of cinder-block walls, built like a bunker. I'll make us some coffee, and we can wait out the storm.”

Vince nodded and sat back in the hard seat. He didn't want to distract the man with too many questions. There would be plenty of time for that later.

Vince ran his fingers through his wet hair. Relax, relax. Everything was back under control. He glanced at Martha. She was doing something with the window, holding up her bound hands and using an extended forefinger to trace shapes in the fogged glass. Vince was relieved. She was no longer focused on him, but instead had wandered off on some new psychotic tangent. Maybe, once she was back on medications, she wouldn't remember any of this.

Vince felt the vehicle change direction. A salmon-colored lozenge of light slid across the interior. A streetlight. They were no longer on the causeway. He looked through the rear window and could make out vague, dark shapes along the roadside. Buildings.

He glanced at Martha again. She was focused on her task, which seemed to be writing characters in the fog on the window glass. She had exhibited this compulsion before, drawing magic figures to protect herself. Martha paused, stared at him.

Her eyes were sharp as razors in the dim light of the coach. They bespoke focus, not delusional preoccupation. They passed under another streetlamp, which illuminated her words in the fogged glass—
NO RADIO
.

Vince wondered what might be going through her disordered mind, what meaning that cryptic message might have, understood only by her. Martha pinned him with the directness of her gaze. She pointed with her bound hands in her lap, index finger extended, toward Morris. She looked at her message, then back at Morris again.

Her movements had a clarity of purpose that was atypical of the psychotic state. An unsettling sense that something was amiss tickled at the fringes of Vince's consciousness.

He looked through the barrier at the front console, the large black block, a coiled umbilical leading to a microphone attached to the dashboard. The console was dark. And even though they could hear sounds from the front through the intercom, there was nothing to hear. No squawks, no static. Indeed, the radio was apparently turned off. Is that what Martha wanted him to notice?

Vince thought about it. Here was an officer in uniform, performing a rescue operation. There was a hurricane. Shouldn't he be in communication with headquarters? Why hadn't he radioed for medical assistance for Martha? Why hadn't he reported this incident?

“Not a good night to be out at all,” Morris said, turning onto another boulevard. Lightning flashed, and Vince glimpsed a field of gravestones. Where the hell were they going?

Vince was aware of the hardness of the seat under his butt, the impermeable solidity of the barrier between them and the front seat. This wasn't really the backseat of a car, he thought. Not at all. This was a cage. Martha's earlier words flashed through his mind:
He'll kill us both.

Vince leaned forward in his seat. “Problem with the radio?”

“How's that?”

“I just noticed your dispatch is off.”

Morris chuckled. “No one else in the area. Our whole unit had to clear out for the storm. I'm the last one out here in this cell.”

All at once, Vince grasped the psychology of what was happening. There was a clinical term for it—paranoiac contagion. Martha was terrified, and her fear was infecting him with cascading thoughts of doom.

Vince sat back in his seat, letting out a sigh of relief.
Take it easy, Trauger.
Somebody has to be sane around here, and it better be you. Haven't you made enough mistakes already?

They passed under another streetlight. The halogen rectangle swept through the car. The glow slipped across Martha's face, illuminating the remnants of her scrawled message, which was already fading. Her eyes shone like gray marbles, burning into him with recrimination, and Vince wondered if he had lost her forever.

Mud fizzed in front of his face. A collection of dun-colored bubbles, frothing and piping from his halting breaths. And water everywhere, flowing alongside him, streaming over his skin in countless rivulets. He was floating, disembodied, boneless, his existence defined by a geography of pain.

Jarrell tried to lift his head out of the mud. His muscles tightened, but his broken bone surfaces shifted and ground. His vision went midnight blue.
One more move like that and you will pass out.

He sucked in air mixed with mud and water, coughed. Another spasm of pain.
You are broken. You are drowning.
What the fuck—

Something massive nearby. Something vibrating, growling. He rolled his eyes up, trying to see it. He twisted his neck a fraction of an inch, setting off more waves of pain and nausea. In his peripheral vision, a dark shape towered over him. Some building. What building? The lighthouse. The base. And the moments that brought him here drifted back in fragments….The sheriff. The stairs. The fight. Then—

He coughed mud out of his throat. He felt like he was lying in a bin full of broken glass, with every muscle contraction causing the shards to impale him more deeply. He was lying at the base of the lighthouse, on his side, in heavy rain, in mud so saturated that it was near liquid.
But why does your body feel like it's been run over by a truck? Because you fell, that's why. Fat-ass heaved you off the lighthouse balcony like a sack of garbage and you fell—what?—six stories, maybe. But you couldn't just die, could you? No, that would be too fucking easy. You had to survive, just enough so you could lie here and drown.

Jarrell's diaphragm lifted, and he sucked more watery mud into his lungs and nostrils and coughed. More seizures of pain, and a thousand sparklers ignited behind his retinas.
Fuck this. You were born in the water. You're not going to lie here and just drown. No goddamn way.

Jarrell explored the wreck of his body with his mind, like a tourist. His thoughts roamed from one limb to another, checking things out. His legs were useless, really messed up. Back might be broken, too, he couldn't be sure. Maybe even his neck.
Are you paralyzed?
He was on his side in the muck, one arm sunk deep in the mud. But the other one…he moved his fingers, then his hand. No, not paralyzed. Not completely. He raised the arm slowly, careful not to engage any other muscles. And it moved normally, like the freak survivor of a plane crash. He inched his hand toward his face, then sank his fingers into the muck and scooped it away. He sucked in a quick breath before the soupy muck rushed back.

You've got to get out of this. Get out of this now, or you'll drown.

He tried to focus his entire consciousness into the muscles of that arm. He eased his hand outward to explore the rain-filled air, reached out as far as he could without moving his torso, seeking, probing. But his hand found nothing.

He reached behind his head, toward the groaning, vibrating shadow, and this caused his body to shift again, caused grinding agony. He lowered his arm, scooped mud away from his face, took a breath, and rested.

He wondered for a moment if he was truly alive, or just a corpse, imagining that he still had a chance. He'd read a story like that once in English class. What was it? “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.”

What a stupid fucking thing to remember when you're half-dead and drowning in shit. And what a stupid thing—to drown after surviving a fall from an eighty-foot tower.
Fuck it
.
Fuck it all.

Jarrell reached out again toward the vibrating wall, stretched his arm, winced at the agony it caused. This time, his fingers brushed something—a rough texture. A curved cement surface. His fingers slid back and forth against it. Useless. Nothing to get hold of. He swung his hand back and forth, and his fingers grazed against something else, cold and smooth. A narrow pipe. A conduit.

That's all she wrote. He'd have to try to grab the fucker. He might kill himself with the effort, the pain alone might render him unconscious.
Fuck, you already died, anyway.

He scooped the mud away from his face, took a deep breath, and extended his arm again toward the pipe, wrenching his shattered body to reach just a little farther. He felt as though razor wire were uncoiling under his skin, but his fingers got hold of the pipe, locked on. He focused every ounce of remaining willpower into a tight ball, pulled hard.

The mud protested, tried to hold on to him, sucked at him like candy, but his good arm was a powerful, defiant instrument—and he screamed in agony as his arm did what he told it to do, separated him from his adhesive grave. The mud let go and his body skidded forward and his head slammed into the cement.

And he lay there in deepening misery, head cocked against the wall, the rain trickling over his face.

And then, he was no longer there. Not exactly. He was floating somewhere a few feet above, looking down on his own body. It looked like a waterlogged scarecrow, something somebody had dropped from an airplane. And a half-assed scarecrow, at that. The right foot was all wrong…pointed backward. But the chest was moving. Breathing. It was the last thing he noticed because he was floating farther away now, merging with the canopy overhead, the borderless continuum of rain, sea, and clouds.

Seeing his face was the worst. The sheer nightmarish horror of it had jolted Martha—worse the weapon he used against her, the electrical thing that drove the wind out of her lungs, that caused her to bite hard on her tongue and turned her legs to jelly. She could taste the blood on her tongue, but showed no reaction. She would reveal nothing she didn't choose to.

Martha struggled to pull together the fluttering ribbons of her thoughts. Yes, Morris had control. Even the storm was on his side. People disappeared in hurricanes.
Death to come death to come death to come

His face—and in the rain, the searing white-hot pain—had jolted her to a place that was sharp and clear, cleared the voices out of her head like a sudden winter wind blasting through cobwebs
.
Morris had them captured. Bugs in a jar. They were going to die
die die die
the child is going to die

Now, after days of silence, Martha wanted to scream, rip, claw, fly. Do everything in her power. Vaporize. Disappear like mist through the car vents. But she was silent, mute, her wrists bound tightly by the nylon restraints. The microphones, recorders, the man in the front seat—agent of those who wanted to destroy her—would hear every word she spoke. So, messages…the one on the glass still there, flashing as they passed under each streetlight, the letters fading—
NC PADIO
. Martha swabbed the glass with the side of her head.
Erase the evidence let no one—

As Martha moved, her cheek flattened, slid across the cold window glass. It was a cold, fast jerk, and she was pushed against the seat belt, her head tossing forward, the straps gripping her, clutching like fingers, pinning her against the hard plastic seat as a wing of water rose up outside her window. The tires squealed wetly, the cage fishtailed.

“Goddamn,” she heard Morris say, and another change of direction. Martha saw a chaos of wet leaves and branches slide along the side of the car, and she heard Vince's head thump against the window glass—a thousand spiders scrabbled below the floor—
scritch, scritch
—and then the cage was still, the wipers continuing to swish, the rain drumming on the roof, voices gibbering. Groaning.
To hell to hell to hell to hell…

“Son of a bitch.” She heard the words through the speakers. The seat belts relaxed. Vince leaning, groaning, rubbing his head. Leaning, straining. In front, the headlights, shivering leaves, pale branches.
To die to die to die…

“What happened?” and there was no answer. Then the front door opening, the click of the emergency flashers. “Are you all right?” Vince turned toward her, a glistening dark trickle on his chin. “There's a tree down—” He yanked at his passenger-side door handle, banged his knuckles against the glass. “Let me help you—let me—” He knocked furiously.

The man in front said, “Son of a bitch.” He got out and closed his door. And they were alone, Martha and Vince, alone with the dull green light and his glistening chin and the wiper squeak and the machine-gun rattle of the rain. Lightning flickered. A tangle of leafy limbs in the windshield, a squeak of wood against metal, and she could see the hulking shape of Morris, struggling to move the foliage that blocked the road.

Then nothing, silence. Vince, bleeding, the blood making lines on his face, lightning streaks. Then the snap of a door lock, and the terrible face is there again, hovering in front of the sizzle of the rain, the chanting.
Now Martha…now now now…

“C'mon out here!” Morris shouted. “Got the whole goddamn road blocked, but I think we can move this thing. Watch the girl—”

Now Martha…now now now now…

Then Vince was sliding out, into the howling voices, into the rain.

Now Martha…now…

She reached toward the middle of the seat bench with her bound hands and grasped the folds of the damp towel. Vince stepped out onto the wet fury, slipped, righted himself. Martha slid the towel across the seat and tucked a corner into the doorjamb.

“Close that goddamn door!” Morris shouted. “Close it, goddammit! She'll—”

The door closed, and she was alone in the vehicle, enshrouded by cloudy windows.
To hell to hell to hell…

Then Martha could see two shapes in the headlights, wrestling with the leafy branches. She unsnapped her seat belt and slid across the hard plastic bench, inched toward the door, hands bound in front of her.
Fly to die fly to die
fly to die.
Her shoulder touched the door. She leaned and it gave, opened just a crack to admit the rain. Cold, sharp droplets. She slipped one foot out through the opening, into the dark and wet, into rushing water, then the other, and slid out into the raw force of the storm, and once she was out of the car, the wind pushed the door closed again.
Quiet, shhh, quiet.
Voices in the rain, shouting.
This way to the dying, now, there she is to die, the dying—
She bent over, crouched in the dark, feeling her way along the cold wet steel panels of the SUV, around to the side of the cruiser, and she found the corner of the fender, and she went behind it. A thousand demons chanted—
HAAAAA hide to die you hide to die to hell…

Martha looked up, blinking against the sobbing sky, tears that kept filling her eyes, pattering on her head endlessly. Streetlights here, salmon-colored blobs suspended in the curtain of rain, and beyond them, vague, shadowy shapes. The rain swung sideways, pushed by a gust of wind. Then sudden daylight—a strobe of lightning, and Martha could see what lay ahead of her—sidewalk, window, wall, awning. With the afterimage locked in her mind, she bolted, sloshed up to her ankles in the rushing street water and got onto the sidewalk. Her hands met brickwork, and she held on to it, and turned back again toward the street. The lightning flickered and she glimpsed the cruiser, diagonal in the street, nosed into the leafy jumble of fallen limbs. And two figures struggling—with the tree—or with each other?
He fights to die He fights to die….

Oh no Vince oh my God Vince he'll kill Vince….Help Vince. Get help….Martha was paralyzed for a moment, then tried to remember. Where was she? The sidewalk. The view she'd had in the lightning, the street.
You know this place, Martha. You know this place.
She heard a rushing torrent of water nearby, a moving river, contained, and that meant something. She knew she would be seen, and she made a dash, a bolt into the unknown darkness.
You shouldn't leave Vince alone
.

She could see the twin cones of headlights, penetrating the leafy branches, and in the fragmented light two figures—Morris, holding something—a stick? a tire jack?
a rifle
—and Vince, hands up, backing away slowly—

Martha wanted to run toward him, to warn him, but before she could move, a crack penetrated the hiss of the rain, a contained thunderclap, and in that instant Martha saw half of Vince's head vaporize into the wet darkness, vanish like a magic trick, his body toppling backward—

No no no no no no no—

Then a splitting peal of thunder—Martha took a wild step into the blackness, then another, and she was running, blind, unable to stop
no no no no no no
and she vaulted ahead, smashed into a low cement wall, nearly pitched over it, nearly fell into a river of rushing water she could hear but couldn't see, a murmuring undertone below the howls of wind and rain.

She groped along the cracked cement with her bound hands, touching wild snakes of wet and twisted rebar, looking for the opening. She found the cold, iron pipe of the bridge railing with her hands and used it as a guide, followed it onto the footbridge. She could hear the sound of rain hammering against sheet iron, the rushing torrent of the canal below, and then she reached the other side of the bridge and felt her way down a steep stone stairway and descended into even deeper darkness.

She reached the bottom step and groped along the palisade wall, blind. Rain gushed from downspouts and rattled like falling marbles onto the metal overhangs.
Why are you here, Martha?

She paused. Another flash of lightning, followed by a long concussion of thunder, like a vast canvas ripping in two. She glimpsed the hulking shapes of the old cotton warehouses, strafed by curtains of rain, and now she knew
why
she was here, she knew where she was headed. She continued along the broken cobblestones, buffeted by wind-driven rain.
Vaporized in the rain. His head. Vince. Gone. It didn't happen. It wasn't real. You didn't see it. You have to go.

Martha could hear a loud, incessant creak of sheet metal above the whirring howls of wind. Too dark to see, only the crumbling face of the warehouse wall to guide her, by touch—
the face
—

The lightning flickered and Martha saw that the wall was a pattern, a mosaic, like a quilt. It was made of faces. Hundreds of them. Swollen lips, gashed, ravaged, blackened, faces of despair, every pair of eyes bloated, watching her, imploring her—

She staggered back from the wall and stepped off the curb, into the street. Hands reached out of the rain, calloused fingers brushed her skin, clawed at her with broken and bloody nails—

Martha bolted forward, her screams silent against the howling of the night. There was a faint glow ahead, just a brushstroke in the darkness, wavering through rivulets of water. She pushed her palms out into the darkness, staggering toward it. The glow was square, smeared, with water streaming down the surface. A glass pane. Her fingers traced the wall next to it and found the grooved edge of a door frame. She found the handle, pressed the thumb latch, pushed. A heavy door swung forward and she ducked through the opening.

The door closed behind, sucked outward by the wind, muting the clamor of the storm. She scooped the water out of her face with her knuckles and blinked at the wavering light. She stood at the end of the narrow corridor, a familiar, jumbled corridor. She was panting and shivering, dripping onto the floorboards. Groups of squat yellow candles gleamed off glass jars and clay pots. The honeyed scent of the candles mingled with other smells—tobacco and soil, herbs and roots. Next to her, a fat candle flickered on a low wooden shelf, the melted wax forming voluptuous globules. Below the shelf, a wooden chair with a thick towel, neatly folded in the seat. Martha reached for it, using her bound hands like a pincer.

The candle, Martha. Use the candle
.

She let go of the towel and turned and held the center of the wrist strap over the flame. The moisture on the band sizzled, and in a few seconds, the pale nylon blackened, releasing acrid smoke. Martha applied pressure, pulling outward with her wrists. The strap separated into stringy threads. Martha shook off the coils.

She massaged her wrists, then picked up the towel and buried her face in it, luxuriating in its softness. She rubbed the thick pile over her hair, neck, and body and paused for a moment, embracing the towel, grateful for the touch of dry fabric. Then she wrapped it around her shoulders, still shivering, and stepped forward, limping through the light of dozens of candles, past jumbles of strange shadows cast by roots and husks hanging from the rafters. Behind her, the rain lashed against the windows. The voices growled and grumbled, frustrated, unable to follow. Martha paused, held on to a shelf for support. She allowed one desperate sob to escape.

After a few more steps, she passed the counter with its large antique cash register and reached the sitting area with the settee, the small table made from a wooden barrel sawed in half, the cast-iron stove. A pair of eyes glinted in the shadows, like liquid glass.

“Them voices in a high state of commotion tonight, ain't they?” Lady Albertha said.

Martha nodded. “Yes, they are.”

The old woman rocked slightly in her chair. “You've been hurt. I can smell the fever.”

“I'm all right—” Martha said. “It's Vince, oh God, Vince—”

“Calm yourself, you must. You've seen the child.”

“How did you know?”

“Because that's why you come.”

The wind picked up, lashing the side of the building. Albertha leaned forward and slid a long twig through the grate in the stove. She withdrew it, the end aflame, and lowered it into the bowl of her pipe.

Martha tightened the towel around her shoulders. “Y-you were expecting me?”

“For true. I knew all this was comin'. Since Tuesday week, when I last threw bones. I've seen that child, too. My mother saw it before me. Now it's your turn. You'll be the new one.”

“Who is it?” Martha gripped the back of the settee with her wrinkled fingertips.

“That's what I aim to tell you. Now you're ready to know. But first, go ahead and get yourself comfortable. There's a nice robe hangin' up in the washroom. Get yourself cleaned up and dried off. Go on and get changed, then let's have a sit-down. Just don't take too long, 'cause we don't have much time left.”

“Time for what?”

“For the truth,” Albertha said. “It's time for you to know the real story of Amberleen.”