FROM AWAY ~ BOOK THREE Page 10

  SUBJECT TO OPEN INVESTIGATION

  BY THE MOSSLEY ISLAND POLICE DEPARTMENT.

  NO ADMITTANCE PERMITTED.

  Ren stands at the bottom of the steps as Netty unseals the portable. One of four temporary offices. Collected in a small bureaucratic village. Meant to contain management: Those responsible for overseeing the construction of the Cumberland Channel Bridge.

  Each currently empty.

  Like the rest of the work site. Deserted once again. Business interrupted by the investigation into the circumstances surrounding the suicides of twelve - now thirteen - protestors by self-immolation. They came to stop the build. Succeeded in their task.

  Tape split, Netty unlocks the door. Swings it wide. Moves to one side. “After you.” She flourishes grandly.

  Ren accepts the invitation. Climbs the steps. Enters the portable.

  ~

  A desk. Two chairs. Three file cabinets. All crammed into the far end of Paula’s office. The remainder of the room - three-quarters of the available space - is devoted to an enormous glass-surfaced table supporting a stark white architectural model of the Cumberland Channel Bridge. All eight miles of it.

  Ren leans over the table. “You know she built this?”

  Netty waits in the doorway. Shakes her head. “Impressive.”

  “Paula’s got some skills, all right.” He hovers peeling red fingers over the miniature roadway without making contact. Swoops them above the tiny traffic.

  Neither straight nor level. Wending a curving S-shaped path across the channel. Arcing up in the center. Space enough below for the passage of large ships. As demonstrated by a model freighter - eternally paused halfway through.

  Atop the highest peak, tiny model vehicles crest the rise. Travelers in either direction taking in the view: The distant shore of their destination awaiting them on the far edge of the table.

  Bridge pillars pass through the glass table-top. Plant themselves below in a topographic map of the channel bottom. Diving as deeply beneath the glass as the bridge rises above it. Even straddling an arc of sunken model ships midway across the channel.

  Ren sidles along the edge. Presses against the table to avoid butt-erasing the notes written on the whiteboard wall. Barely room enough to pass.

  Pinned to nearby cork-board: Maps. Blueprints. Artists’ renderings. A newspaper clipping with a photo of Paula smiling in a hard-hat under the headline: FEDS BREAK GROUND ON CONTROVERSIAL BRIDGE.

  “Fought it at every step, didn’t they?” Ren taps the newsprint.

  Netty shrugs. “What would you expect?”

  “Call me hopelessly naive, but even knowing what I know, I still expect... Progress.”

  “You’ve maybe come to the wrong island.”

  “Of that much I am certain.” Ren moves behind Paula’s desk. Ringed by knick-knacks. A collection of children’s toys. Mostly art-related. Spirograph. Etch-A-Sketch. Multi-packs of markers in all varieties: Fluorescent. Glow-in-the-dark. Scented.

  He places his injured hands onto the desk. One wrapped. One bare. He spreads them to either side of a green desk blotter. “You’ve got her computer?”

  “At the station. Seemed like she only used it for business. Not much on it you’d call personal. Nothing that provided us with any direction.”

  Ren lowers himself into Paula’s chair. A few loose markers are scattered around the desktop. Orphans. With tender fingertips, he picks one up. Reads its label: Electric Blue. “What about her sketchbooks?”

  Netty frowns. “We didn’t... As far as I know, there weren’t any. Should there have been?” She leaves the doorway. Enters the portable.

  Now it’s Ren’s turn to frown. “In all the time I’ve known her, Paula’s never been without a sketchbook. It’s what she does with all her fidgety energy. She’s almost constantly doodling.” Using the table edge, he pops the cap from the marker.

  Netty pulls a small spiral notebook from her back pocket. Stubby golf pencil jammed into its coils. Checks it. “I’ll have to call in to make sure, but I don’t remember anyone finding any.”

  Ren tests the nib on the edge of the blotter. Draws three loops. No mark is made. The marker dry. “There’s no chance she’s given up the habit. It was part of her DNA. If someone’s taken those sketchbooks, then maybe...” He sticks out his tongue. Dabs the felt-tip against it. Tries the marker on the blotter again. Still nothing comes. Dead. He tosses it into a mostly empty trashcan.

  “All right, that’s possibly a lead.” Netty slides along the edge of the table. Emerges on the desk end, where Ren is sitting. “But first let’s just ask her about them before jumping to conclusions, shall we?”

  Ren rotates the chair. Spins towards a file cabinet. Atop it, a framed photo: Paula posing with Ren’s family behind a birthday cake. Twelve candles lit. Dawn, smiling. Mouth closed. Hiding new braces.

  A simpler time. Paula just part of his family. Before leaving for the island. Ren wipes his cheek with the back of a gauze-wrapped hand. Netty notices. “It’s not your fault.”

  “No?” Ren scoffs. “Perhaps you didn’t hear: It’s all thanks to you, Ren. All thanks to me.”

  “What I heard was a groggy woman with a severe brain injury on some pretty heavy-duty pain meds. You can’t take any of that seriously.”

  “No? The bridge was my assignment, Antoinette.” He rotates the chair back towards the desk. “I pawned it off on Paula. Put her here, so I wouldn’t have to come back to the island myself.”

  Netty’s taken aback. Mystified by the depth of Ren’s need to separate himself from the island. From other Islanders.

  He sees the pain in her eyes. “Yeah, exactly. And everything that happened to her after that? I can safely consider it my fault.”

  “No, no. Stop.” Netty shakes off her own hurt feelings. “It’s not like you were sending her into a war-zone. You could never have guessed something like this would happen. It’s ridiculous to blame yourself.”

  “Makes no difference.” Ren picks up a miniature flashlight from Paula’s desk. Keychain size. “I shirked my duty. Blew it off, because I was uncomfortable about the idea of coming back here.” He clicks the flashlight on and off as he talks. “If I’d just taken the assignment, Paula would be safe and sound. On the mainland, where she belongs.”

  Netty looks at him strangely. “Your tongue. It’s blue.”

  “My...” He sticks out his tongue to one side. Looks down at it. It seems fine.

  “No, when you...” She plucks the flashlight from his fingers. Turns it on. Aims it at his mouth. “Go now.”

  He sticks out his tongue. Fluorescent in the flashlight beam. Electric blue where he’d tapped it with the marker. Not dried out after all. Simply invisible without the right light.

  “Blacklight.” Netty clicks it off. Hands it back to Ren. “Max had something like that when he was younger. Used it to write secret messages back and forth with Aaron.”

  Ren turns the blacklight back on. Aims it at the blotter. Where he’d tested the marker. Sure enough, there it is: An electric blue loop-de-loop. But it’s not alone. Sharing the space with hot pink. Day-Glo yellow. Piercing green. The blotter, covered in invisible scribbles. Diagrams. Drawings. Stick figures. Hieroglyphics. Primitive, but full of life and energy. Refusing to be contained, they continue past the blotter’s edge. Spill out over the desktop. Onto the filing cabinet. The arms of the chair. The wall.

  Netty leans in close. “Um... I think I know why we didn’t find any sketchbooks.”

  The beam flickers. Weak. Batteries on the edge of failure.

  Netty crosses to the window. Closes the blinds. Drops the room into darkness. “Do you remember? In the hospital? Something Paula said stuck out. Even in the middle of all that other weirdness.”

  “I remember. She said she’d show us everything. Light it all up in black, right?”

  “Not quite.” Netty once again produces her little notebook from her back pocket.

  “You wrote it down?”

 
“It was especially weird.” Netty flips back a page. Two. “Ah! Listen. She said: “I’ll show her my walls... My bridge. Light it all up in black. And then she’ll see it.”

  Netty turns towards the enormous model. Paula’s bridge.

  Ren comes out from behind the desk. Points the blacklight beam. The bridge gleams white wherever the tiny ultraviolet circle hits it. Blank. Unmarked.

  Netty is disappointed. “So much for that idea.”

  “No, hold on.” Ren runs the light back towards the mainland. Entirely blank until the beam nears the shore. There, it illuminates a thick red line. Cutting across the bridge entirely.

  “Is that...?”

  “It’s where construction ended. Almost exactly.” He crouches down. Finds the line continues beneath the bridge. Connects with itself. “But construction didn’t end until after Paula was assaulted.”

  “We secured this place less than an hour after Paula was dumped at the hospital. I taped it up myself. You saw it. It hadn’t been disturbed.”

  Ren rises. “I dunno. Are these things erasable? Maybe she changed it daily. To reflect progress.” Ren moves to the other end of the bridge. The Island end. As expected: Another red line. A clear demarcation of the point where work on the bridge ceased.

  Less expected: A scene has been drawn onto the bridge. Just below the red line. Where the bridge meets the land. Sixteen simple figures. Thirteen of them seated. Cross-legged. Evenly spaced across the four lanes. All but one surrounded by jagged orange flames.

  A woman stands next to the flameless thirteenth: Stick-figure Netty. Pointing a gun towards the remaining two figures, a short distance away. These two chained together by the wrists. One entirely on fire. The other, just his hands: Stick-figure Ren.

  A clear representation of the events of the night before.

  Netty shakes her head. “The person who drew this... They had to have been here in the last few hours. Since it happened.” She goes to the windows. Checks the latches. All firmly locked. “They must’ve come in through a window somehow, or--”

  “It was Paula.” Ren’s certain. “I don’t know how, but these... These are her drawings.”

  Netty looks at him in disbelief. “She’s been in a coma for weeks, Ren. Completely immobilized. Under supervision.” Ren shrugs. The hairs stand up on Netty’s arms. “You’re suggesting Paula somehow predicted the future? Drew it all out in invisible ink, weeks before it happened?”

  Ren’s stumped. Is he saying that? “I don’t know what to tell you, Antoinette. I’m not somebody who jumps to outlandish conclusions, but I’ve seen her drawings, and these look exactly... Okay, hold on. Just listen...” He arranges his thoughts. “What if this was somebody’s plan?”

  “Paula was drawing out a blueprint?”

  “Yeah, and it just happened to work out exactly as they’d wanted it to.”

  Netty thinks on it. “Well... I like that better than the psychic doodling theory.” She searches his face. Deformed by strange shadows. Lit from below by refracted blacklight. “But why would Paula draw it out? Was she involved? Trying to warn us?”

  “I don’t get the feeling she’ll likely be sharing more on the subject.”

  “In that case, there’s only one person left to ask.” Netty points at the bridge. Taps a finger on the lone flameless protestor. The one assigned to distract her. “Fortunately, she’s already in custody. And she’s just moved into a priority spot on my to-do list for the day.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “They were there... And then, and then... They were just... Gone.” Wanda listens to the voice. Awake. Eyes closed. Laying low. “I was just trying to, trying to help. That’s all I wanted. All I ever wanted...”

  The muttering woman is a few feet away at most. Her voice doesn’t move. The volume doesn’t change. Probably strapped down, too. On another bed nearby. Or a gurney. Or whatever it is Wanda herself has been tied to. Rough belts cut across her flesh in no fewer than five places. Tight. Almost no give. The first thing she became aware of on waking.

  First, after the achy craving for goo, obviously.

  Still beneath the barn. In Dr. Ramsey’s secret underground bunker. Of that much she’s almost certain. From the smell: Subterranean dampness mingling with hospital antiseptic.

  “It was in her throat. In the black. And I had to get it out, but then she, then she, then she... Brought it all up.”

  Playing possum has achieved nothing. Waiting for the woman to mumble something revelatory. Hearing instead an unending stream of apparent nonsense. Wanda gives up the ruse. Opens her eyes.

  “It exploded. All black and... So cold... And it got on my, on my, on my...”

  A proper hospital bed, if not a proper hospital room. Plastic sheeting for walls. Emptiness overhead. As expected. On the little end table between her bed and the next stands a lamp of particularly low wattage.

  “Melted away. Burned away. Fell away. And they tinkled when they hit the floor. Rain on a tin roof. Almost music. The music in my bones.”

  Too severe to be pretty, her roommate has short efficient hair and eyebrows that have been weeded once too often. She too is strapped down. Belts cross her calves. Thighs. Waist. Chest. Her arms are each bound separately: Padded cuffs. Lashed to metal bedrails on either side. Secured just above each elbow. Below where her hands should be.

  The thing they have in common - Wanda and the woman - Her arms each end abruptly at the wrist. Just lumpy stumps wrapped in gauze. If she wanted, she could probably pull free of the restraints. It wouldn’t net her anything, but Wanda probably would’ve tried it in her position.

  With a start, Wanda checks herself. Verifies her own hands remain where they ought to be. Her own right. Replacement left. Finds herself intact. As intact as when she was suffocated into unconsciousness, anyway.

  “But don’t, don’t worry... He can fix it. He will, he will.” The woman turns her crazy eyes on Wanda. “He is the best. Dr. Ramsey. Bar none.”

  “Yeah.” Wanda feels the burn of the woman’s gaze. Wishes she would turn her lasers elsewhere. “He’s a real miracle worker, all right.”

  “I’ve seen it myself.” The woman smiles proudly. “Many times.”

  “You’ve seen what he does down here?”

  “Down here?” She looks around the space as though noticing it for the first time. Her smile slips. “No... Not down here...”

  Wanda waits for more. Instead, the woman focuses her attention on the far wall. Through it. She whispers: “She’s not allowed to come in. She knows. She knows she’s not.”

  Behind the plastic, obscure blobs of color could be anything. Unidentifiable until: One shifts. A slight movement. Just enough to separate it from the background. Enough to identify the thing standing there. Proportions wrong. Arms inhumanly long.

  “GET OUT OF HERE!” Her roommate shouts. Frantic. Even more shocking in the relative quiet. “GO AWAY!”

  It runs off. The thing that grabbed Wanda through the wall. Squeezed the air out of her. What had Dr. Ramsey called it?

  “Simp is not allowed. Shouldn’t be looking in, even.” The woman abruptly turns towards Wanda. “Don’t worry, though. She’s gone now. We’re all alone.”

  As if timed to prove her wrong, another shape approaches. The wall ripples. Spreads apart. Dr. Ramsey enters. “What’s all the commotion regarding, Dr. Mendez?”

  “N-Nothing.” The woman goes pale. “It won’t happen again, Dr. Ramsey.”

  He squirts hand sanitizer from a little bottle attached to his belt. Rubs it into a froth. “Because... What should be presumed true of voices in any hospital setting?”

  The woman swallows. “Voices carry.”

  “And our assumption, when speaking, even when no patients are in sight?”

  “Anything said can be heard by anyone at any time.”

  Dr. Ramsey snags a tall stool from the end of Dr. Mendez’s bed. Drags it closer. “So, when might a raised voice be deemed appropriate?”

  “Neve
r. It’s never appropriate Dr. Ramsey. It only serves to agitate the patients.”

  “Correct.” He sits. Spins to face Wanda. “Wanda. Has Dr. Mendez agitated you?” A danger lurks beneath his congenial tone.

  “Um... No?”

  “Very good. I’ll be with you in just a moment, if you don’t mind.” Surprisingly, he waits for Wanda’s answer. Making solid eye contact. Unwavering. Deeply invested in her response.

  “Yeah, okay. Take all the time you need.”

  “Thank you for understanding.” He swivels back towards the other bed. “What say we take a look, Dr. Mendez? See how things are advancing?”

  The woman’s eyes dart to one side. “Are you certain that’s wise, Doctor?”

  “Well, admittedly, it’s a bit early. But I have to tell you: I have quite a positive feeling about your progress.” He lays hands on her bandaged stumps. Presses lightly. “Please just let me know if you experience any discomfort.”

  He looks off as he manipulates her injury. Eyes unfocusing. Seeing through his fingers. Visualizing what might be happening beneath the bandages. For her part, Dr. Mendez is clearly experiencing discomfort. Biting her lip. Refusing to admit it.

  Dr. Ramsey nods to himself. “No further irritation?”

  “Y-Yes, Doctor. That’s right.”

  “Mm. Healing is expedited when the affected area is undisturbed.” He pats the padded cuff locking Dr. Mendez to the bed rail. “Solid rationale for practicing restraint.” He gestures toward his other patient. “Wanda couldn’t help herself, Dr. Mendez. Incessantly scratching at her injury, despite my most earnest entreaties. Isn’t that right, Wanda?”

  “It was itchy.”

  “You were lucky. Your disobedience jeopardized all hope of success.” He reaches into the breast pocket of his lab coat. Removes blunt scissors. “I won’t be making that mistake again, I assure you.” He slides the lower blade beneath Mendez’s bandages. Cuts slowly. Splits a straight line up the back of her hand.

  A sour smell reaches Wanda: Sweat funk. Harsh. Acrid. Fermenting under the gauze. Now released. With arms bound, she crinkles her upper lip. Tries to cover her nostrils.