Page 135 of Corpse Roads

Snow drifts.

Dark, thunderous clouds.

Reality ends as the blur of blood and brown hair plummets over the edge. I’m watching a movie, hammering my fists against the glass as characters take wrong turns and fall victim to the writer’s brutality.

She’s airborne.

I don’t think before throwing myself into the sea. When the water gets too high to wade through, I dive beneath the next wave. The current is violent, battering and bruising me with stormy fury.

I don’t know if Harlow can swim.

If she even survives the fall.

The world falls utterly silent as my hearing aid fails in the water. It doesn’t stop me from frantically slicing through the sea, my arms powered by a pleading mantra.

I can’t lose someone else.

I can’t lose someone else.

I can’t lose someone else.

In the icy darkness of the water, memories are painted in swirls of sediment. Past and present are entangled as that fateful day washes over me.

Alyssa is cradled in my arms, blood spilling from her mouth. Glassy eyes stare up at me. Her fingertips leave a red stain on my cheek as they fall away.

It’s happening again.

Coming up for air, I search the water. It’s so wild, I can’t see anything. The cliff is a few hundred metres ahead, but Harlow jumped far into the air.

She must be here unless she’s slipped beneath the water. Diving back in, I push my exhausted body to move. Each metre of progress takes great effort against the current.

More. More. More.

Lungs burning, my legs and arms beg for relief. Popping up for a breath, the silence is disconcerting in such a lawless place. She could be screaming, and I’d never hear it.

“Harlow! Harlow!”

There.

I squint through the burn of salt water. There’s a head bobbing in the relentless waves, being pushed underwater over and over again.

With renewed determination, I dive back down and manage to grab hold of her arm. Kicking hard to get above water, we break the surface together.

I cough and splutter, waiting for her lips to move. She’s barely clinging to consciousness, her lips blue and head hanging limp.

“Wake up, sweetheart.”

Nothing.

“Wake up!”

There are streaks of dissolving blood on her skin, and a necklace of dark bruising circles her throat. All of this blood is coming from somewhere, but I can’t find it in the choppy water.

Holding her afloat with all of the energy I have left, I bob in the water. Everything has drained out of me. I can’t get us back to shore.

The helicopter is back in the air, silently flying towards us. I can’t hear a single thing without my hearing aid. With rescue in sight, despair still swallows me whole.

Harlow is unresponsive, a dead weight in my arms. My vision is blurry from the salt water, morphing her familiar face into one I haven’t seen for nearly six years.

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