Page 56 of Antihero
His lips tighten. Dr Goodry presses a pill bottle into my hand and instructs, “Take two each night and each morning. Start tonight. 7pm. We’ll start the treatment next week, okay?”
Very,verylow, I conclude to myself.
I say okay. I nod. But I don’t know if I mean any of it.
And that’s why. Why saying it back would’ve been crueler than not. Why I can never say it back. Because I’ll be gone, sooner rather than later.
But first. Just one left. One more who needs to pay.
And I’m not going to wait any longer.
***
“I’ve got a feeling I won’t be back after this.”
The grave doesn’t answer. Not even a conspicuously timed breeze for some reassurance. What would Molly want me to do? Live, and let live, probably.
Odd, I’d never considered that before.
“Well, there’s only one left now,” I say, almost arguing with words unsaid. “I’m dead anyway, so…” Maybe I’m mad, talking to a grave. Moreso than I’m mad for committing all these murders.
A bird tweets behind me. The sun is going down. I stopped at my house long enough to leave the pills, and something for Tristan. He wants me to live and let live, too. Would tell me to take the pills and justtryto fight this thing. I can’t face him.
He’s going to hate me after tonight anyway. Probably better that way.
I lean over my crossed legs—the quiet in my mind is so deep that the loneliness crushes down on me—and press my hand to the dry grass covering the mound. The grave I dug. “I’ll be seeing you soon, Mol—ah!” I snatch my hand away, finding a thorn buried deep in my palm; and glare over my hand at her resting place, setting my jaw. “There’s really no need to be like that.”
***
I didn’t really think she’d come. But here she is. She’s been here often enough to know her way around. I’ve watched from the dark as she stepped over these ashes, as she climbed that fallen beam that used to hold up the veranda and walked across the blackened pallet we used to make our beds on. The dining table still sits with its chairs, all black and filthy with ash. She’s sat there now, dirtying her neat clothes.
She’s so out-of-place now, just like she was then. Too pressed and put-together, with tailored feminine suits and her reassuring smile we all trusted too well. We handed our secrets over. Secrets she passed on. They became faults that were used to justify the need for ‘treatment’.
I see her face. Haunted. That fits here, at least. Dark clouds are rolling in, angry and black. The wind is coming ahead of it, gusting, hinting at the violence it precedes. Out towards Tregam, the lights of boats dwindle. The ferry is nearing the end of its three-hour route to our dock. The Bunker is open tonight. I won’t be going there. I won’t be going anywhere after this. There’s no future for me anymore. The storm can take me. I feel it pushing and pulling at my limbs, like it's impatient to get on with it. So am I.
Charlotte takes the stone steps down, blackened by the fire. People say the fire started in the basement, devouring upwards from there. Tristan thinks it was me. It wasn’t.
I step out from behind one of the pillars that still stands in the basement, stone columns reaching up to a roof, now nothing but three fire-eaten planks, open to the sky. Beyond the crumbling stone walls of the basement, the ruins of the orphanage tower like depressing sentinels. Rubble litters the space between us, with the remains of a couch off to one side. We girls used to come down here to watch movies on the projector, in a sea of cushions and blankets. The top and bottom of the image were always cut off because the basement was only five feet tall and not big enough for it.
I haven’t bothered to hide myself, my face, anything.
Charlotte stills, stares at me. She doesn’t seem surprised. I wonder if she ever suspected me.
“Paige,” she says, almost sounding relieved. But she must know I’m the Wraith. This makes her the lamb, come willingly to its own slaughter.
“Yes,” I say. My arms are bare, but I don’t feel the cold, don’t flinch at the first icy drops that hit my skin. I’ve felt nothing since the doctor’s office. Charlotte glances at the sky, the blackness deeper as the clouds close in on the island.
“I want you to know, I’m sorry,” she says. “For what I let happen… for what Ididto you.”
“I’m not going to let you live because you’resorry,” I bite out, my voice breaking on the last word.
A helicopter blazes overhead. I watch it with a spike of panic in my chest. We never get helicopters here. We’re not important enough. When I look back at Charlotte, she’s watching it pass, too. “Did you call the police?” I ask accusingly. She could have confessed to them, told them who she was. Is she bait? I glance around, but the tops of the basement walls remain empty, the ruin dead but for us.
“No!” She meets my eye. “But they could still be here for the Wraith. You need to get away. Now.”
“Uh-huh. Sure.” The helicopter has disappeared towards the other side of the island. Kidswal. It’s chopping echoes back to us. What’s it here for?
“I’m not asking you to let me live,” Charlotte returns so evenly that I believe her.
