NINETEEN
“I’m sorry?” Rachel said. She had thought she had heard Mary say something from behind her. The doctor had been at the door, earwigging at what the others were doing in the next room. She had been prompted to do so when she had heard a shriek which she took as coming from Pete, but when she listened at the door (she was for some reason fearful to go through) she had been relieved to hear both Williams and Suzy in there to and no sound of a rampaging axe wielding killer hacking up the poor lifeboat volunteer.
“Sorry Mary, did you say something?” Rachel said and came away from the door.
The woman didn’t acknowledge the question for a moment she just continuing staring outside. “He didn’t recognise me,” she finally said to her reflection in the glass.
“Who?” Rachel asked.
“Can’t believe he didn’t recognise my face.”
Rachel caught an edge of anger in her voice. “Mary? What happened out there?” This time there was no reaction as she seemed to recall the incident in her head. She turned slowly and fixed Rachel with a mournful expression. It almost broke the doctor’s heart.
“None of this,” she gestured around the room, to Patten then finally to herself. “None of this is what I expected. Didn’t even notice it was raining out there.” She shook her head and smiled. “It’s all like a dream. It’s like remembering what it’s like to feel rain on your face but that memory is off somehow. It’s like you can’t quite remember the sensation clearly enough. Just doesn’t feel right. The way it smells, sounds. All just off slightly.” She looked down at herself as if seeing her body for the first time. “Strangest thing.” She added.
“It’s the shock,” Rachel said but knew it was much, much more than that. And she was vaguely aware of hammering on the door behind her and muffled shouts from the other side.
“Strangest thing,” Mary repeated. “This illusion of life.”
This illusion of life? Rachel turned to the door, she could see the handle turning madly but it didn’t open. She knew there was no lock. “Door’s stuck,” she said matter of fact but somehow it didn’t really register.
She moved away and over to where Mary was standing. Rachel felt like she too was in some kind of dream. From a million miles away she thought he heard a familiar voice. “Rach! Rach, open the door. It’s jammed I can’t get it open!”
It sounded like it should be important but the panic in Suzy’s voice barely registered even when the police woman began hammering on the door again. Rachel stood transfixed by the strange melancholy young woman in front of her.
“He didn’t remember me,” Mary said, her voice ether.
“Who?”
“There was fear,” Mary continued her eyes flashed at the word fear. “Of course there was fear. But he had no idea who I was.”
“Who killed that man, Mary?” Rachel said. “You know, don’t you?”
This won a smile from the girl. “It was almost beautiful in a horrific kind of way.”
As she spoke, a breath of wind rippled through Mary’s blouse and hair, she closed her eyes and a look of serenity came over her face. Then Rachel felt a drop of water hit her face, followed by another. She looked up half expecting to see a hole in the roof caused no doubt by the storm, but it was perfectly intact.
The breeze that had brushed Mary’s clothes caressed Rachel’s face followed by a gentle spay of water. She could hear the distant sound of the storm outside as the wind and rain increased in ferocity moment by moment. Mary was by her side now as the prefabricated room seemed to dissipate around them like it had walls made of smoke. Then the storm hit them with a vengeance.
Rachel cried out as the world became a blur around her, the only constant was her own form and that of Mary standing close to her eyes tight shut. She struggled to see through the maelstrom but the stinging rain blinded her. She felt a hand take hers and Mary pulled her close.
Voices close by; a woman’s she recognised and that of a man screeching words she couldn’t quite catch above the raging wind battering her. She thought at first it was Ian, Suzy and Pete, they had been in the next room when the storm tore the room apart. She caught herself a split second later. No the room hadn’t been torn apart, not in the conventional sense anyway. This was something else, something Mary had conjured up for her to see, she didn’t know why she had come to that conclusion but she knew, felt it was true.
As if by her acknowledging she was a part of something supernatural the storm around Rachel and Mary eased somewhat. She could still feel it and it seemed to still have all its power but they were partially protected from its might. And as a scene half played out already began to appear before her, she knew why.
Firstly she was hit by the smell of static and burning. Then came the sound of the sea close by. She turned to her right and looked past Mary to see the sea battering a small boat jetty which stretched out from the bay area of the island. They were at the docks.
Two figures began to fade out of the gloom ahead of her. They were Mary who had her back to them and a man who Rachel instantly recognised as the victim. He was in extremis, laid awkwardly on his side cowering by a pile of old ropes and dis-guarded lobster cops which were on fire. His clothes were half burnt away and smoldering despite the torrent raining down on the scene, his skin was red raw. It looked like the aftermath of a napalm attack yet Mary was untouched.
The frail young woman that Rachel knew from the lifeguard station was but a shadow of this figure before her now. She seemed nearly twice the size her hands twisted into near claws as she loomed over the prone man. Although the storm was pulling and twisting her hair and clothing she seemed to be moving in slow motion almost as if she were under water. There was a terrible majestic beauty to it. She was like some great projection of the inner rage she felt, a rage Rachel instinctively knew she had harbored for half a dozen years or more. A seething goddess of vengeance. And the focus of all this anger and rage cowered before her.
“Look at me!!” She screamed and Rachel felt the words resonate in her chest they had such power.
The man seemed to be dragged to his knees by something unseen. He screamed in pain and did his feeble best to cover his battered face with his hands. He gave her a faltering look through his burnt fingers.
“Look at my face!!”
Rachel could see his eyes, clear as day. There was no recognition in them, just utter fear. ‘He didn’t recognise me.’ Mary had said back at the lifeboat station.
Rachel could somehow feel the rage building in the woman like a physical energy edging towards critical mass. Mary’s feet lifted inches off the ground and she seemed to be glowing with the power which was ready to be released. Rachel somehow could see the faint outline of angel wings calved into the flesh of Mary’s back despite her heavy coat. “He did that to all of us,” Rachel heard in her head. She remembered Mary hadn’t had the wounds when she had briefly examined her earlier, yet the victim had. But that detailed scarcely seemed to matter now, faced as she was with such a sight of retribution.
Then Mary screamed.
A burst of blinding light and energy seemed to burst from every pore in the woman’s body in an explosion of murderous power. This was outrage and pain made physical and its effect was devastating.
The prone man took the full brunt of the onslaught and was sent spinning into a nearby wall as the remains of his tattered clothes were burnt from his body as he fell in a crumpled bloody mess amongst a pile of smoldering old ropes and dis-guarded fishing paraphernalia that had been dumped at the back of the docks some time before.
Rachel gasped out loud as she was hit by a blast of suffocating heat which dried everything within thirty feet in an instant. Such was the residual power from the brief but devastating attack that the rain pouring down hissed like water hitting a hot plate and the whole area began to fill with a thick plume of steam so dense that after a few moments the doctor couldn’t see a foot in front of her.
She felt Mary next to her squeeze her hand and a moment later they were back in the prefabricated back room of the lifeguard station. Rachel staggered away from the young woman, she reeled in shock at what she had felt and seen. She tried to clear her addled mind of the images still seared into her mind’s eye but they refused to shift. She half sat half fell into the chair gasping for air.
“That should have been an end to it,” Mary said and turned to move over to the window once more. “I thought it would all be over, but I’m still here. Why?”
All Rachel could do was stare dumbstruck at the apparition before her. The ghost, for want of a better word who had come to Widow’s Bay somehow to seek vengeance on the man who had killed her. Panic began to twist at her guts, she instinctively knew Mary meant her no harm but that didn’t alter the cold fact she was in a room with a dead woman. And one who was somehow still talking and breathing. Who still had a pulse Rachel herself had taken, slow but regular.
“Why am I still here?” Mary asked her reflection in the window. She strained to see outside but shook her head. At her own question or at seeing nothing of help outside Rachel didn’t know.
Someone was slamming hard against the door to the office and Rachel suddenly remembered the door was stuck. She was about to speak when she noticed the slight darkening of the material on the back of Mary’s blouse. She young woman winced slightly and rolled her shoulder at the irritation.
“Oh Christ,” Rachel uttered as blood began to bloom across the back of Mary’s blouse now and she was put in mind of the faint markings on the other Mary’s back and of course of the hideous angel wings carved deep into the victim’s/killer’s back.
A look of terrified realisation came over Mary’s face and she turned to Rachel. “Something is very wrong,” she said in horror.