Daphne felt someone touching her, but she couldn’t open her eyes. She tried to speak, and in her mind, she was saying, “Brock?” but her lips did not move. The pain in her knee was no longer acute, but dull, and vague, like an old dream. A dream. She heard the thumping of Kara’s headboard. Should she get up? (What’s she doing, jumping on the bed? Sit-ups? Dancing?) But Daphne lay there, unable to move. Too tired. Knee hurts. Thirsty.
The thumping grew louder, like a bass drum, and she felt herself being rubbed down and then lifted. A smell of musk and peppermint and perspiration wafted near her face. Someone whispered at her ear. What? What did you say?
She heard singing above her. Not birds. People. Daphne tried to open her eyes but they felt weighted down. She could not move her lips.
“It’s okay, Daph.”
Who is that? Kara?
Now she was rising up. She blinked several times at the clear blue sky above her.
“Limuw has taken her life, and our prayers are to Hutash. Hutash agrees it is not yet time. She has given us a ritual to bring Limuw back to life.”
What? She blinked, again and again, the light bright above her.
Applause. She turned her head toward the sound of vigorous clapping.
“It’s okay, Daphne,” a whisper came near her ear. A hooded figure in white.
Oh no. Daphne sat up. Her hand rushed to her head. No! Her head was bald! Slick as a bowling ball. “My hair,” she whispered. Tears pricked her eyes.
Five hooded people in white knelt before her.
“Limuw was dead and now she is alive again. Welcome back to the land of the living.” It was Larry’s voice.
More applause.
Individual faces became recognizable to Daphne—Hortense Gray, Stan, Emma, Roger, Arturo Gomez, Lee Reynolds, Phillip, Mary Ellen, Kelly, and many others in the amphitheater, applauding her as she sat dumbfounded. Anger filled her heart. Where was Brock? What had they done with Brock?
Before she could demand an explanation, she was lifted in a stretcher from her perch on the altar by the five hooded people and carried into the canyon wall into a room alight with candles. “Dave? Vince? Let me go!” She tried to get free, but found her legs were bound. Somewhere stringed instruments played a slow lament.
“Stop!” she shouted. “Let me out of here!”
The five took her to the wall of the cavernous room and sat her on a bench of rock before stretching her arms out to either side and cuffing them into shackles. Draped with a white sheet, no clothes underneath, she screamed, “Oh, my crap! Why are you doing this?”
“It’s not why, but what,” Larry’s voice sounded, clear and low through the room.
“Please! Please let me go!”
The hooded people backed away and left her alone in the room. The music stopped. Only the candlelight remained.
“Please!” she screamed again. “Hello? Where’s Brock? Cam, I told you I didn’t want this! How can you let this happen! Anyone there? Please!”
A hooded person appeared before her carrying a bucket. The person lowered the hood to reveal her identity.
“Mother?” Daphne blinked her eyes, sure she was hallucinating. “Is that really you? Mom! Help me!”
Her mother stepped forward. “You should have gotten out of bed that night you heard Joey in Kara’s room.”
Before Daphne could respond, her mother lifted the bucket and threw cold water all over her, face and all.
Daphne sputtered, having no free hands to wipe the water from her mouth and eyes. She blinked rapidly several times, the cold water mixing with her hot tears. Her own mother had thrown water at her. Her own mother was part of the torment. When she opened her eyes, Brock stood before her, also carrying a bucket.
“Brock? You were in on it all along?” Her mouth gaped.
“You shouldn’t have hurt me.” He, too, splashed the water, with more force than her mother, all over her body.
She spat and cried, “How can you do this to me? I thought I could trust you! I thought you loved me? I’ll never trust you again!” This couldn’t be happening. It must be a nightmare.
Brock returned the hood to his head and turned and walked away.
Now her father appeared in a white robe with the hood down and with a bucket in one hand.
“Dad, help me!”
“This is for Joey.” He threw the water at her.
Even her father! The person who’d always loved her the most was willing to hurt her! So cruel! Tears fell down her cheeks.
One after another, she was assaulted with buckets of cold water, so frequently she had no time to clear her eyes to see who the offenders were.
“Please!” she cried again and again as more buckets of cold water deluged her.
After ten or more buckets of water had been thrown on her, Daphne heard the stringed instruments playing a ballad, and then a voice, Larry’s, rang out. “You’ve been purified, purged of all wrong-doing, and are clean, pure as a newborn infant.”
She sobbed, overcome with anger and shock and shame. She wanted to cover her face, but her hands were still stretched out like Jesus’s had been on the cross.
Larry continued to sing about her purification, but she did not feel clean; she felt angry and betrayed.
“Now it’s your turn, Limuw. It’s your turn to inflict the punishment and to purify others.”
The hooded people returned to unbind her wrists. Then she was led by the arms across the room where other people in white hoods sat on rock benches with their hands shackled. She fought to be free but was held in place. The hood on the first shackled person was lifted. It was her mother.
“Take this bucket of water,” Larry instructed. “Hit her with it.”
Daphne shook her head. “I can’t!”
“I blamed you, didn’t I?” her mother said, her brown eyes wide like they were that morning they had found Kara. “I made you feel Kara’s death was your fault. Please! I’m the one who was in denial about Joey! It was my fault, not yours!” Her mother’s lips trembled as tears slid down her cheeks. “Please! Do it!”
Daphne hesitated, but her mother’s pleading eyes made her take up the bucket and throw the water on her—not hard, just on her legs. Larry gave her another bucket and insisted she hit her mother from head to toe. She did, feeling a surprising lightness in her feet. Her mother sputtered, her dark brown hair flattened against her head, appearing both tragic and comic. The morning they found Kara, her mother had said, “What? You heard and did nothing?” She had immediately apologized, but the words had caged Daphne’s heart, and throwing the bucket of water into her mother’s face had loosened that cage, maybe even freed the heart.
The hood was lifted from the second person shackled beside her mother. It was her father.
“Hit me with it,” her father said. “I should have been there for you.”
Again, Daphne hesitated. Her father had said no damaging words to her, but he hadn’t comforted her either. He had checked out, become aloof, like a body without a soul.
“Do it, Daphne,” her father said.
Daphne took the bucket and threw it at her father. The expression on his soaked face made her giggle. She felt on the verge of hysterics and surprisingly…light.
Larry unhooded the third person seated and shackled after her father. It was Brock.
“I lied to you, Daphne. Punish me.”
Daphne felt no hesitation. “I trusted you!” She hurled the water at his face. Then she turned to Larry. “Can I do that again?”
He gave her a second bucket.
“Go for it,” Brock said. “I deserve it.”
Daphne threw the water on him before he had gotten his words out. “Yes you do!” But as he gagged and coughed up water and his contrite blue eyes sought her, she wanted to rush to him with a towel and clear the water from his face.
She was led to one more hooded person, and she could tell, even before Larry threw back the hood, that the now golden skin and wiry frame belonged to Cam.
“Some best friend!” she cried.
“I wanted to help you.”
She dumped the bucket on him as tears poured from her cheeks. She heard him sputtering as she was then taken out of the cave and onto the empty stage of the amphitheater. Hortense Gray marched down the stadium-style seats toward her and the stage.
“Survivor’s guilt is common, Daphne. Many people have taken their lives because they couldn’t live with it. We’ve created a place where people who suffer from it and other ailments can be cleansed of their guilt—whether guilt is warranted or not—so they can re-embrace life. We have dozens of patients here every month going through similar trials as you. A boy not much older than you arrived today who killed a two-year-old when he was driving under the influence of alcohol.
“You may be angry for a while about what we’ve done here. Most people are. They’re especially upset by the loss of their hair. But we have found this therapy provides the dramatic impetus necessary for recovery.”
“You’re full of it!” Daphne shouted, the anger back in her throat. “You should be arrested and thrown in prison for what you’ve put me through. You should be the one in shackles. Along with my parents! Where are they anyway? Let me pour buckets of cold water on you, Dr. Gray! You murderer! What about Pete?”
“Believe it or not, you’ll have your chance to judge me, but first, you have to go through the waiting period.”
“Do you deny Pete’s dead because of you?”
Just then another hooded person stepped forward and removed his hood. It was Pete. He was alive.
Daphne’s mouth gaped. “How can that be? I saw him with my own eyes.”
“Stan and I were hanging out at the pier waiting for you,” Pete said. “I was tethered to it, so I could float there long enough for you to see me. Then, when it was clear you recognized me, Stan, who was diving with an oxygen tank and everything, cut me loose. He met me in the sea cave where we hung out till we thought you were gone.”
“That’s so cruel! Why did you do it? What was the point?”
Hortense stepped closer. “We wanted you to fear for your life. We’ve had actors, many who have been through the program…”
“Like me,” Pete interrupted. “Everything I told you about my family was true. I tried to take my life. This place has changed me.”
“And me,” Stan said. “I really am an anthropologist. I do study the Chumash ruins and write papers. I was also married once, like I said. I hit the ground hard when my wife left. This place helped me see how much I want to live. So I live here now. I write my papers and help this place at the same time.”
“But what about that gash on your head, when we were on the haunted side of the island.”
“Self-inflicted.” Stan shrugged. “Not a big deal if it meant saving a life.”
Daphne jerked her head back. “Why your face? Now you’ll have a scar. If you were going to do something so stupid, you should have done it on your arm or leg where you could hide it.”
As Daphne spoke those last few words, she recalled the scars on Hortense Gray’s arm and gasped. She sought her eyes for confirmation, but the doctor briefly met her gaze and looked away.
Had Hortense Gray inflicted those scars on herself for the sake of her therapeutic exercises? And was it something she had learned from her father?
Hortense added, “We have many benefactors, in addition to Arturo Gomez, who help fund this program, many who suffer from depression and have gone through earlier programs not nearly as refined as what we have now. You met Mary Ellen Jones—she’s another one. Currently, our clients pay quite a sum of money. But one day we hope to make this program accessible to as many as possible.”
Daphne closed her eyes and sighed. “It’s a mean trick.” She fought back more tears. “I feel so betrayed, by all of you.”
“That’s why you must now go through the waiting period,” Hortense said.
“The what?”
“You and your parents will remain here for another week to enjoy the beauty of your surroundings. Think about you’re experience. Then, you’ll go home until one day, when you’re finally ready, when you’re hair has grown in, you’ll return to discuss your progress.”
“Yeah right! I’m never coming to this place again! Where are my parents? I want them to take me home now!”
“Keep in mind your parents and Brock and Cameron love you so much they put you through a rigorous program as a last resort to save you from yourself. No matter how angry you feel at the moment, you must see the good the program’s already done you.”
Tears fell down her cheeks and she could think of nothing to say, for she had worked through a lot of her feelings while on the island, and hadn’t she chosen to live? Cam had said it sometimes takes a dramatic and painful experience to help you let go of the past. Was she now free to let go of the past?
“That silver bracelet around your wrist is given to every participant,” Dr. Gray said. “The chain symbolizes the past that holds us back, what you need to break free from; but it also symbolizes the bonds that tie us all together. We try to help you transform the former into the latter.” Then she said, “Daphne, the past is immutable.”
“What does that mean?”
“Unchangeable. You can’t change the past. You can only learn to live with it.”
Daphne looked at the bracelet, and, although she thought it was pretty, she wanted to rip it from her wrist. She glared back at Hortense and said nothing, realizing she’d seen the same bracelet on Cam’s wrist.
Stan came closer, revealing something beneath his robe: the island fox. “Someone wants to say hi.” He walked up to Daphne and gingerly passed the fox over to her.
She couldn’t believe it. Relief swept over her. The fox had lived! It was warm and soft as it nestled its nose into the crook of her arm. “It’s not hurt?”
“Nope. Good as new, kiddo. His tail was bruised, but he’s fine now.”
Like a house cat, the fox rubbed his head against the underside of her palm. She stroked him and smiled.
“What’s his name?”
“Mini-me.”
“Mini-me,” she repeated. Peace washed over her as she cradled the fox and tears fled from her eyes. “I’m sorry I hurt you,” she said to Mini-me. “It wasn’t your fault.” As she hugged the fox, she felt like she was hugging herself.