Oblivion (33 page)

T
he water can be a cruel and unpredictable lover. Sedate on the surface, but with an undercurrent, raging when we least expect it. I’ve lived here my entire life, and I’ve always found serenity in the wandering waterways of northern Illinois. The water is passionate, and I’m fervent when I’m near it.

It’s almost midnight.

John’s watch is in my hand. I’m going to give it back to him tonight. Not because I don’t love him, not because I don’t want to try to make things work, but because I want to know I’m deciding to be with him not because of some crazy memories about a guitar, or because he dug up a rosary, or because my mom remembers his watch,
but because I feel connected to him now. I want to make choices for a change, instead of taking chances.

I lean on the rickety rails of the pier and gaze again over the dark waves. With only a sliver of moon in the sky, I won’t enjoy the view tonight, but I can conjure the image with my eyes closed. That’s the way it is, when you belong somewhere.

Sounds of a gypsy guitar and whispered murmurs filter through the dirty windows of the Vagabond, and drift to my ears on misty fingers. This is home. This is where I want to stay.

From behind, a hand winds around me, rests on my belly.

Johnny.

I smile and spin to face him, but halfway there, a musty glove covers my mouth.

My eyes widen when I meet the gaze of Reverend Palmer Prescott. I scream, but his hand muffles the sound. I struggle to get away, but lose my footing. I’m falling into an abyss of starry night and …

I hear the splash in distant hallways of my mind, as if this isn’t happening to me, as if I’m watching it happen on television, despite the chill of cold, cold water seeping through my clothing, dripping down my face, drenching my hair and flesh. I grasp for the edge of the pier, but he’s shoving down hard on my head.

Another attempt at a scream awards me only a mouthful of Lake Nippersink.

He’s too strong. No sooner do I surface than he shoves me back under. I take in another mouthful of lake.

Everything fades to nothingness.

I can’t move my feet, can’t move my arms, but they ache and burn with fatigue. My eyes itch, sting, and render only a blurry halo of light, when I try to open them.

Must be another dream, another torment of my memory … another sleight of consciousness—or lack thereof. I wait for the words to bounce inside my brain. Wait.

Listen.

Listen.

Listen. To the buzz of proverbial crickets in my mind. Silence.

Feel the rise and fall of the waves.

I’m on a boat. I must be.

The words are gone.

Johnny?

My tongue forms his name, but I can’t take breath enough to voice it. I know he isn’t here. I don’t feel him near me.

But I feel a presence hovering … like a demon.

When the scent of anointing oil registers in my nostrils, I beg myself to scream, but still no sound comes. My ears fill with the sound of my rapidly beating heart, and no matter how I try to wiggle life into my hands and feet, they prickle, as if they’re still asleep.

Oil. That’s why it’s hard to see.

An image emerges before me, all bulk and few details. It’s the scent of the oil on his fingers that identifies him, more than his shape:

Palmer.

I jolt, but still can’t move, and something pinches my forehead at the temples.

I concentrate on minuscule muscles, twitch my toes.

“Father,” I manage.

I feel the pad of his thumb on my forehead, marking me with the sign of the cross, the way he did when I was twelve and I’d chosen, before the entire congregation, Jesus Christ as my Savior.

No matter how I thrash, no matter how my limbs break out of their numbness, I’m immobile, bound on a bed, tied with strips of sheets. My legs are crossed, the right over the left, with one foot atop the other. However desperately I need to rub the oil from my eyes, my attempts are futile, as my wrists are tethered to the corners of the bed frame.

When I blink, and a few details come into focus, I wonder if it would’ve been better not to see anything at all:

I can tell by the way the room moves to the whims of the water, by the scent of the buoys and old wood, by the slush of waves against the hull that I’m definitely aboard a boat.

I’m freezing, and my clothes stick to my flesh like a wet blanket. My teeth chatter, but not only with the cold. I know what’s about to happen.

Across the room, a match strikes. In the glow of the flame, I see the man with whom the state placed me, the man who—if my dreams and nightmares are real—kidnaps and rapes girls … and swears God tells him to do it. His hair, usually meticulously groomed, has grown wild and scraggly, and his beard, longer, like Jesus Christ’s.

“It’s time for you”—the flame ignites a pillar candle—“to honor thy father.”

There’s a rubbing noise on the right side of the hull where the vessel bumps against the buoy. I turn my head to see if I can tell which boats are docked near, but the stabbing sensation at my temples halts the movement. I feel a trickle. Smell blood. I’m dizzy. I think there’s something surrounding the crown of my head, stopping me from moving.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a staircase. At the foot of it is a box, and peeking from the corrugated cardboard is a leg of torn denim.

I listen harder, but can’t hear the guitar usually emanating from within the Vagabond. I must be in a remote slip at the harbor.

“Are you a good girl?”

I’m trying to be.

“Or are you the work of the devil? Put on this earth to tempt me, and you’re good at what you do. But there’s still a chance for you. If you pay penance for all those before you, God will save you in the end. After all, we’re all forgiven, thanks to Jesus Christ.”

I recognize the symbolism of my position. I’m bound to the bed, much in the same way Jesus was bound to His cross.

I pinch my eyes shut and pretend I’m at home, in bed. I wiggle my feet to emulate the sound of Lindsey’s swishing. Maybe it’ll bring me back to reality. Maybe I’ll be able to wake up from this horrible nightmare, if I concentrate, if I listen for the
swish, swish, swish
of my sister’s feet down the hall.

“God gave the ultimate sacrifice for His people,” Palmer says. “It’s time I do the same.”

The flame of the candle glints off the blur of an object in his hand—the knife my mother once used to stab him.

“Honor thy father?” he asks.

My tears mix with the blood dripping from my forehead, and wash a measure of chrism from my eyes. I wiggle my feet faster, but to no avail.

“Honor thy father?”

A sniffle escapes me.

“Honor thy father!”

“Yes! Yes, I do!”

The pain at my temples intensifies. The blade of the knife skates over my abdomen in a laceration.

The flame of the candle bursts into a white light, and warm, coppery blood trickles over my hip. The raw sting and burn of the wound threatens to overtake my consciousness, but I can’t let go. I won’t.

Distant whimpers dance in my ears. In my mind, I’m running through the labyrinth behind Holy Promise, searching for a lost girl.

Hannah? Are you here? Hannah, answer me!

Hannah?

“Help me.”

My breath catches in my throat when a girl’s voice reaches my ears. But is it my voice, a voice of the past, or is someone else on this boat?

“May the Lord accept the sacrifice at His hands,” Palmer says.

“Reverend.” The pain in my abdomen compromises my ability to speak, but I articulate to the best of my ability, all the while wiggling my feet and hands, praying my tethers will fall free.

Palmer’s eyes widen, and his voice loses its conviction: “For our good and for all His church.”

My father roughly presses his hand to my abdomen. The salt of his fingers burns, as he presses into the open wound.

I flinch with the pain, but muster strength enough to say the words I know he needs to hear: “I love you, father.” One of my feet slips from its post. “I honor you.”

The whimpering sounds again.

Palmer leans in closer. “You … you honor the devil.” Putting all his weight into his hand, he shoves down on my abdomen. I feel my flesh tearing with his weight. More
blood gushing from where he cut me. Hard.

I yelp with the pain and pressure, which is so great I have to fight to stay alert. The periphery is closing in on me like a dark halo.

“You consort with the devil”—he jabs at me again, as if I’m a ball of dough requiring kneading—“tempt good men to the dark side. Turn holy men into sinners.”

Howling now, I writhe on the bed. He’s crushing me, washing his hands with my blood. “Johnny! Help me!”

“Calliope!”

At the yelled interjection, which comes from outside, Palmer startles.

For only a split second, he turns away, but it’s long enough for me to yank my feet free and tuck my legs.

I hear John outside: “Calliope! Ca-lie-uh-pee!”

With all my might, I channel my energy into my thighs and land a kick against Palmer’s chest.

“Nymph! Servant of Satan!” Saliva sprays from my father’s lips, as he comes at me again with the knife. “The Good Book is the key to salvation. Sift through it as the hours pass.”

I gasp when I recognize his words. I’m kicking like mad for freedom, for my sister, for my mother, for Hannah, and in the chaos, he fumbles the weapon.

“Help!” I scream. “Someone, help!” My wrists ache, my abdomen sears, something continues to pinch and draw blood at my temples. But I kick and tear and gnash. I fight the way Hannah couldn’t, the way my mother never did.

I yank free from the tie at my left wrist and swipe at the chrism in my eyes.

The boat rocks, the room spins. My fingers close around an ivory handle just in time.

He’s coming at me again, and I know he won’t stop, no matter how many times I kick him.

I slash at the linen binding my right wrist, and I tumble off the bed, as if through a kaleidoscopic tube. I’m numb. Everywhere. Cold. So cold.

“Calliope!” John screams from the maze of piers.

“I’m here!” I scream. “I’m here.” But I’m fading away. Running through the labyrinth in my mind.

Palmer’s so close that his breath rumples my hair.

“Calliope Knowles! Calliope!” The voice morphs to many and seems to be fading into the great beyond. I imagine the boat riding the waves out from the pier, but I know we’re still docked, as the buoys still rub against the starboard side.

The grating sound becomes the swish of Lindsey’s feet.

Dig. Chink. Sift.

Uncontrollable tears stream down my cheeks. I concentrate on the image of John’s watch. I feel it in my hands, my fingers tracing the words on the back: Only you. Only you. Only you.

Imprisoned obsession, she can’t escape. Amber ashes in her hourglass
.

Dig. Chink. Sift.

A
gunshot deafens the harbor and rings madly in my ears, along with a scream I don’t remember releasing.

I scramble to my numb feet.

At the foot of the stairs, next to the box, stands a man in navy blue, a police officer, with smoking weapon poised. Slowly, he lowers his gun.

Palmer slumps against the bed.

I can’t catch my breath, face-to-face with Hannah Rynes, who’s hanging nude on the wall as if on a crucifix. She’s whimpering. Her fingers are blue from constriction. She’s bleeding from a gash in her abdomen, and from her temples, where a crown of thorns encircles her head. I fling its twin from my head and fall to my knees in dizziness.

My blood is on my hands, and Palmer’s is splattered on the wall next to Hannah.

“Do you know where you are?” an officer asks me.

I close my eyes and call to mind the details. I remember all the nights I spent in borrowed spaces with Elijah, and think of the rub of the buoys. I think of the words I’ve written:

Fluttershy

abiding like the tide

Stripped linens dried in the breeze

I concentrate, rubbing my temples until I see it in my mind. “I’m at the harbor.” I remember everything I’ve written, everything I haven’t understood until this very moment. Every word was a clue. “I’m on a boat.”

He nods—“Do you know your name?”—while another officer cuts Hannah’s tethers.

“Calliope Knowles.”

I hear a radio call for backup: “We’re on board a cruiser called
As the Hours Pass
. Slip sixty-two. North Point Marina. Suspect down. Two victims. Need two ambulances. Fast.”

Hannah meets my gaze while officers carry us across piers to the ambulances waiting on the shore. She’s wrapped in an LCPD-issued blanket similar to the one pulled around my shoulders, and I suspect she’s still nude beneath it. A tiny patch of red is bleeding through the fibers of the fleece,
and scratches mar her forehead. Crown of thorns. Cut in the abdomen. Tied in a cross formation, and anointed for last rights. I know what was about to happen next:
bleed her and feed, burn her in an urn, crucify, quarter, and stone her. Buried alive, she’ll claw at the case. Smile, when you condone her …

“Do you know your name?” an officer asks Hannah.