CHAPTER TWENTY
My mind reeled awake like the slow wind of undeveloped film. Everything was black. Very black. A shade of coal darker than anything behind closed eyes. And then I realized my eyes weren’t closed at all. They were open, squinting against a light mist that burned them like salt.
Where was I?
I couldn’t bring my mind around fast enough to remember anything concrete. But there were thoughtless flashes. The reel in my head spun wildly, more shady images skittering past the spokes. There was a forest. I was running. I was hunted down by hounds. Or humans on four legs. Their grotesque, disfigured shapes flicked flickered in the woods like a pilot light. Then nothing.
My watery grave. The phrase floated around in my head for no reason.
I lay still. I was on my back, on top of something awkward and bony. I told my limbs to move but nothing happened. I concentrated, desperately finding some light my retinas could latch o to, to give some meaning to where I was and what was happening.
There were sounds, suddenly, like ear plugs were plucked out of my head. I heard muffled cries, like someone was yelling very far away and the sloshing sounds of water encompassing the space around me. The distinct feeling that I was floating was apparent and my inner ear rolled and swayed back and forth inside my heavy head.
All my senses were coming to me now. I could smell seawater and a putrid, decaying smell like rotted fruit and mold. I felt dampness at my back and bit by bit, the sensation that my hands were emerged in ice–cold water.
I moved my arms and this time they responded sluggishly. They had been in water, though the rest of me was dry. I moved them out to the sides and they struck hard barriers with a force I barely felt through my numbed nerves. The sound of the impact echoed around me. It told me I was in some sort of box or…or…
Panic began to sweep through me. I moved again, feeling like I was balanced precipitously on top of something very peculiar yet very familiar. Whatever it was, it was smaller than the length of my body and I noticed my legs dropped off below at an angle. I kicked them up. A spray of ice water fell up on top of my shins and my waterlogged boots met with the bottom of something.
I felt all around me, wildly placing my hands and feet on whichever surface they could reach. I was in a box after all. The space above my head was only about half a foot before a damp wooden ceiling cut me off from the rest of the world.
I tried to catch my breath but the fright inside my chest was overpowering it. I was trapped, trapped in a box. A mime’s worst nightmare.
Not only that, but the box was filling with water. I could feel the liquid fingers crawling up my legs and arms and saturating my back.
I started writhing and fighting. I couldn’t keep it together any longer. I was in a box and I was going to drown in here.
I started pounding my hands against the top, hoping to break through. They were tired and without much feeling and soon I felt a gush of warmth flowing from them. My blood. More blood. It seemed oozed freely from the wounds at my wrist. I didn’t care. I had to get out. If I didn’t I was certain I would die.
The water came faster now and it wasn’t long before I was floating slightly above whatever had been below me. In seconds it would come over the tops of my pants. My pants, where my front pocket felt tighter than usual.
I quickly slipped my hand into my front pocket on a hunch. There was the lighter in my pocket from earlier.
I pulled it out and started to flicker flick it. My fingers were cold and clumsy and I almost dropped it but after a few awkward attempts, the flame came alive, the spark catching hold. I held it up and away from me. The weak, orange light illuminated the space around me.
I was right. I was in a box. It wasn’t just a box though. No, it wasn’t. I knew with sick, absolute certainty what it was.
My watery grave.
I swallowed hard, feeling my world jar wildly with the incoming waves. I was in a coffin, set adrift in the sea.
“Your ship has come in.” A man’s voice echoed inside my head.
Amidst all the commotion in my head, among all the confusion over what had happened – I knew where I was and why I was here. I wished I was alone. But I knew that wasn’t true either. I knew that awkward, protruding, lumpy shape beneath me spared me of that luxury.
I felt my left hand slip into the water and gingerly feel felt for the bottom of the casket. Maybe the only way out was through. It met with the ragged wood bottom and felt around. I was careful to avoid what was directly beneath me.
The water was up to my chest now, heaving and wet. I was running out of time and fast.
I placed my hand on the bottom and tried to stabilize one part of me while I prepared to kick out with my legs, hoping that the splintery walls would give way.
Tiny, slimy fingers made their way around my submerged wrist.
I screamed but it escaped through my lips like a wordless gasp. The fingers tightened like a tiny clamp and held my wrist down, drowning it.
Something shot out from the water beside me and knocked the lighter out of my hands, enveloping the casket in darkness again. My arm was seized by another miniature grasp. It pulled it roughly down into the water.
I tried to move, to yell, to fight but the water’s chill seized me like poison. I was being held down, the water was rising and almost to my face.
Something moved beneath my head. It came close to my submerged ear. Someone whispered into it.
The voice was distorted and muffled underwater. But it was unmistakable.
“Mother!” it cried out, cold, child lips brushing my earlobe.
I opened my mouth to scream again but only found water. I took it in instead of air and let the liquid saturate the life out of me.
“Mother” it said again and again until we were floating together and the world closed its eyes.
I felt my body losing consciousness. I had been captured just like Mary had, on my 23rd birthday, and set off to sea with the remains of Madeleine. I was going to drown with her. I was going to drown. Drown.
Drown.
Nothing.
A flash of celestial light.
A brightness coming from inside my head.
Nerves misfiring.
Water.
Peace.
“Breathe, baby, breathe.”
I was cold. The light began to retreat and everything was black again. Multicolored planets twirled in my head.
“Please, baby. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me.”
A rush of air entered my lungs. It met at the bottom, creating a whirlpool in my chest. The water was rising.
It rushed out of me in one monstrous convulsion. I turned over and let the water flow out of my lungs and stomach and onto the space beside me. I gasped wildly for air. My eyes flew open to see black sky and waving tree tops.
I felt a hand at my face, gently resting on my cheek. After my lungs were clear enough and I felt icy air replacing them, I gingerly moved my head up and looked.
Dex was kneeling over me, soaking wet from head to toe, water dripping off of his hair. He was holding one of my hands very tightly, the other hand on my face. He was smiling painfully through tears, or maybe it was just salt water.
He stroked my head and brought my hand up to his chest, holding it there tightly.
“I thought I lost you,” he croaked. “I thought I lost you.”
It all came rushing back to me, the feelings of guilt flooding my head.
“I’m sorry,” I said weakly. The words pushed me into a coughing fit.
“No,” he said, cradling the back of my head with his hand and propping me up, helping me get it all out. “Don’t say anything. I’m sorry. I am so sorry. I should have believed you.”
I slowly eased myself up to a sitting position. We were on the beach, just a few feet from the waves that overturned the stones with each passing. We were both soaking wet. I knew the intense cold would set in at any minute but for now I was numb. It was pitch black outside, nighttime already.
“What happened?” I managed to say. I remembered John coming at me with the rope, the lepers and that was it.
He shook his head. “I was at the beach. Waiting for you. I was worried sick. I started heading back into the woods to get you when I heard this ripping sound. I saw…I saw a small woman. I thought she was a child at first. She had the hunting knife. She cut open the Zodiac.”
“Mary,” I whispered.
“Yes. It was her, all right. I knew it. And then suddenly…it all made sense. And I knew you were right. I didn’t say anything to her, I didn’t need to. The damage was done. I ran off into the woods to find you. I guess I tripped up on a log and knocked myself out. When I came to it was dark. I went to the campsite and saw…I saw the lepers. They were standing right here. Pushing the coffin out to sea. I don’t know how, but I knew you were in it.”
“What did you do?” Feeling was coming back into my hands and feet like pins and needles. Or maybe that was the fear.
“I just…ignored them. I ran out past them and into the water to get you. I almost couldn’t; the lid was too strong and the water too deep. But something gave. And I saw you in there, blue, floating. And I…I really thought you were dead.”