Authors: Nick Lake
A hammer a knife a rope a gun a bat a chain a—
But in my imagination, the house was always vague, always diaphanous, a construct of clouds and smoke. And the actors on that stage, Paris and her dad, were not much more solid, their mass leached by the blurred background, the whole thing barely coalescing in my mind, before dissolving into nothing.
It was never very
real
, even though I tortured myself with it.
And if I went in there?
If I went in there, I wouldn’t find any clues. I was starting to realize that now. I was not Sherlock Holmes, as Dad had said. I wasn’t going to uncover some link to the killer that the crime-scene technicians had somehow missed; I mean, real life just doesn’t work like that.
I’d known one thing, had worked out one thing, which was that a car turned in front of Julie and so must have come from a drive on the street, and it turned out that, yes, it had, it had come from the neighbors, where an uptight gym-bunny wife whose husband was in Dubai had been driving out to the store or the yoga class or whatever.
It was
nothing
.
And if I went into that house, I would find nothing.
I would just know where she died; I would have a stage for my worst imaginings, a stage with depth and width and heft and presence. A stage that would make the scenes on it more real.
I remember being asked if I wanted to see my mom when she was dead. In the funeral home, I mean. And I said yes, because I thought that was what I was supposed to say; I thought I was supposed to say good-bye; I thought my dad would be hurt if I didn’t.
But she was a waxwork doll; she was empty; she was nothing but skin and makeup that she wouldn’t have chosen herself; and I wish, wish, wish that I had never seen her like that. I wish I had said no.
Standing outside the house where Paris died, I took a deep breath.
Then I turned, and walked away.
I wasn’t going to go in there.
It was as I neared the next house on the street that I saw it.
A narrow gap ran down the side of the house. There was a rusting old bike propped there, between the wall of the house and a wooden fence; a couple of trash cans, one fallen over.
And beyond, in the gray pre-storm light, a sliver of a pier, just a narrow one it seemed like, visible through the thin opening. A rickety old thing, collapsing at the end into the ocean, green with seaweed.
I didn’t think; I just turned and headed down, past the side of the house, and then I was on a path that ran the length of the backyard. Similar paths came from the other houses and it seemed like at some point the pier must have served the row, a shared resource, for people to moor their boats.
Now, it teetered into the ocean drunkenly, on sea-slimed pillars, many of its boards broken like smashed teeth. I gazed at it. The water was high; coming up almost to the backyard. Above and around me and out over the ocean, merging with it, indistinguishable from it at the horizon, the sky was a boiling mass of darkness now, tinged with white. To the south, I could see rain slanting down on the water, turning it from smooth glassy expanses and waves to a lo-res pattern of gray dots—blurred; pixelated.
And there was the old pier, jutting out into the water like a gesture, like an invitation.
Paris died here.
It wasn’t the voice. It was a conviction, deep inside me. I could see her, being dragged down the backyard from the house, then along the pier, screaming maybe, or maybe unconscious. Feet trailing. Hands under her arms. Pulled like a slack puppet down the length of the wooden jetty,
bump
,
bump
,
bump
, her feet over the joints, to the end. Weighed down with rocks. With chains. I don’t know.
And pushed into the ocean.
My body was moving now with no control, no input from me, and I was out over the churning water before I really did any thinking at all, over the chop and swell of it, the inky darkness.
The planks were slippery. I walked carefully, gingerly, finding what purchase I could among the seaweed, slicked by the water, which was rising up in a spray all around me, a rain that came from below.
And then the rain came from above.
Just like that:
No warning, no
boom
of thunder, just one moment no rain and the next the skies opened like the jaws of those grabbers you see in movies at garbage heaps, dumping the contents of all those roiling clouds on the ocean, on the pier, on me.
It was almost full dark, the sun gone; you would barely know it was day.
Instantly I was soaked to the skin. The rain was colossal, unbelievable, not single discrete points falling through the air but simply a wall of water, everywhere. Then there did come a flash, shocking white light, illuminating the world—I saw the pier in X-ray relief, the house to my right, a skeleton structure, pale in the darkness; even the grass behind me and the grains of the wood under my feet, the eyes, the whorls, all flooded with light, monochrome.
And—
Black again.
One,
Two,
Three,
Four—
Boom
.
The thunder didn’t roll over me, like people say, it detonated around me, seeming to come from just outside my ears, punching me, shivering my foot on the slippery pier, making me lunge forward to keep my balance, shaking now with cold too, the water plastering the clothes to my skin.
“Well, this was a smart move,” said the voice.
I ignored it. I kept on moving, slowly, treading oh so carefully, the soles of my Converses sliding on the treacherous surface. The ocean boiled beneath me, frothing, leaping, as if excited to finally let go of everything it was pretending to be. As if letting out the predator within.
One plank.
Two planks.
Three planks.
I did it like that, three at a time, counting again and again.
FLASH.
The whole world lit up, full black and white, contrast whacked up to maximum, and then went black again, and three seconds later, the explosion of thunder shook my eardrums again.
I kept going.
One plank.
Two planks.
Three and then I was there. Waves were crashing into the woodwork below me now.
I was at the end of the pier, or at least the end of the walkable pier, because the rest was in the ocean, bare struts, the walkway that was held up by them long since fallen into the water and washed away.
I looked down into the shifting murk. Water was still falling from the sky, baptismal, epic in its scale, the day pretty much midnight black now, lightning occasionally floodlighting everything, this whole stage for … what?
What was I doing here?
“A very good question,” said the voice.
And then I saw it.
I looked down, and there in the water was a white shape, and I leaned closer. My toes were over the edge of the wooden structure, and for a second I thought of Paris standing at the edge of the pier, just before your truck arrived below, and how she thought we were playing Dare, how she thought the game was to get close to the edge, to play with death, and I’m seeing Paris in my mind’s eye, losing her balance, nearly falling and then—
FLASH.
I was seeing Paris below me. Her face, looking up at me through the water, it was her body down there, floating, I knew it; her hair was billowing around her face, haloing it, her beautiful black hair framing her skin, the paleness of it, spreading around her, and her eyes were looking up at me but seeing nothing.
Boom
.
I was so startled—though not afraid, never afraid of Paris—that I took a step back, and the plank cracked beneath my foot, and then the whole thing must have been rotten because the next one along broke too, and then there was a creaking that I heard even over the thunder that was just echoing out of the sky, fading, and the pier fell away beneath me, and I was weightless, just for a moment.
Then
I
fell.
And as I fell, I twisted, or something, I had no sense of the orientation of my own body or what had collapsed, whether it was just part of the pier or all of it, or even if I was facing down or up, and anyway the important thing is my head smashed against some object, hard, I mean smashed hard and the thing was hard too, and stars burst out of the storm-curtained sky, where there was nothing but rain clouds, and I blacked out.
And then I was in the freezing water, plunging under, feeling it enveloping my body and head, my eyes half-open so the world was suddenly darkness and bubbles.
I tried to swim up to the surface, but I was too weak, and my head was nothing but agony now, a sensation in place of an object, a sensation of gripping, vice-like pain.
My eyes were still open though, so I could see up through the thin layer of water that was going to drown me—it doesn’t take much water to drown you—and I could see that the clouds had tattered, just for a second, the wind whipping open a vortex in the sky, exposing for a moment the glow of the half moon and the icy sparkle of the stars.
I looked around me. Half the pier was gone, and I was in deep water. I turned toward the beach. But it wasn’t a beach.
Why didn’t I check when I started?
Behind me, the ocean smashed into a tumble of rocks, which lay between me and the yards of the houses, a barrier of rubble.
I dived down, looking for Paris, eyes open and searching through the murk, but I couldn’t see her, and I couldn’t hold my breath either, and I had to push myself back up to the surface.
How was I going to climb out over those rocks?
I had no idea. But I had to try.
I kicked toward them and my head ripped open and light flooded in, or lightning flashed, or both, I don’t know, and for a second I may have blacked out again; my mouth and nose were underwater, breathing in water, then I lifted myself up, coughing, spluttering. My arms were lead; my legs were marble.
I felt stickiness, a sting, on my forehead, and I raised my hand and touched it to my head—big mistake, I went under, a wave hitting me, and for a moment was in the blackness again before I desperately trod water, got my head above water.
And big mistake too, because I realized I was wounded. Whatever had struck my head, whatever I had struck my head on, had hurt me badly.
I managed a couple more strokes, but I saw straightaway, even from this distance, the steepness, the angle and smoothness of the rocks between me and the shore; there was no way I was climbing them.
“Swim south,” said the voice. “To the main beach.”
Four blocks
, I thought. I couldn’t even talk out loud, I was so cold, and my head was a bass drum going
bang
,
bang
,
bang
; what an irony, when your voice can speak and you can’t.
I can’t make four blocks.
“The rocks might end before that,” said the voice.
Can’t do it
, I thought.
And then, cold as the ocean surrounding me, I realized something.
I was going to die.
I was going to die right here.
It had always been waiting for me, this time this place, and now it was here.
I tried, Paris
, I thought.
I was so very cold. My whole body was shaking.
For a moment I thought about your swim training, about how you had been trying out for Nationals, and I imagined you surging strongly through the water toward me, knifing through it, swimming the crawl, to take me under the arms and hold me up. Or my dad, I mean he was a Navy SEAL, maybe he would be there suddenly in the water, maybe he had followed me in some way and he would—
But this is not that kind of story, and this is not a movie, and you weren’t there.
My dad wasn’t there.
“It’s okay,” said a voice in my ear, a quiet voice, thrumming muted through viscous water.
But not
the
voice.
No.
Paris’s voice.
“It’s okay,” said Paris again. “It’s okay; you did try—you did.”
I looked for her, treading water, turning to see her in the pale light, but I couldn’t. Even now there was a cold, rational part of me that thought she had never been there, that I had imagined her face in the water, the hair framing it.
“You did try. You did.”
At first it sounded like an echo, Paris’s voice repeating itself, but then I heard it, a soft burr, a hitch, in the throat of the speaker, a sound I knew so well. It was a different voice.
Mom?
“Yes, honey, I’m here. Oh honey, I’m so sorry.”
For what?
“Dying. Leaving you.”
Not your fault. Those men. Just wish … just wish we could find them … wish we could make them pay.
“Oh baby. Don’t you know? Don’t you know by now? Haven’t you learned anything?”
Her voice getting quieter; departing. Leaving me.
What? What? What should I have learned?
“It’s not for us to find people. Or to make them pay. You take revenge, all you do is throw away your soul. Sometimes things happen that you can’t control. Sometimes we lose things we can’t get back. And there are some things we just can’t ever know.”
But—
A whisper now, nothing more:
“I’m sorry, Cass.”
Then gone.
Nothing but cold, blank water, all around me, and I saw that I had sunk under it, had gone below the surface, and I hadn’t even registered. The water was dark around me; I wasn’t even sure which way was up.
Then the clouds parted, and I realized I was looking right at the surface, was seeing the storm-lit sky through maybe a foot of seawater. There was a break in the darkness, and the stars were shining through, thousands of them, millions.
I fixed on the stars.
Eternity, and a couple of minutes, passed.
Pressure tightened around my head; my chest was burning. And I kept on looking up through the water, as slowly, slowly, the stars began to go out, one by one. And then my heart did what it had been practicing for in the moment between every one of its millions of beats and, at last, stopped.
I died.