“We’ve got now,” Gudmund said again. “And I’ve got you. And that’s all I want.”
Their hands still clasped, they watched the sun set –
“Can you tell me anything else?” Officer Rashadi asked, gently but seriously, in that way she spoke to him that was so unlike all the other officers.
“He was short?” Seth volunteered, but he knew he’d already said that. He just didn’t want Officer Rashadi to leave, didn’t want this conversation to finish, as this was the most anyone had talked to him in days.
She grinned at him. “That’s what everyone says. But according to the records we have, I’m two inches shorter, and no one ever says that about me.”
“You don’t seem short, though,” Seth said, twisting his fingers together.
“I’ll take that as a compliment. But don’t you worry. That doesn’t mean he’ll be harder to find, Seth. Even short people can’t hide forever.”
“Will he hurt Owen?” Seth blurted out, also not for the first time.
Officer Rashadi closed her notebook and folded her hands together over its cover. “We think he’s using your brother to guarantee his safety,” she said. “And so he knows that if he does hurt your brother, then there’s no chance of any safety at all.”
“So why would he hurt him?”
“Exactly.”
They sat quietly for a moment, before Officer Rashadi said, “Thank you, Seth. You’ve been very, very helpful. Now I’m going to see how your parents are –”
They both turned at the sharp thump of the front door slamming open. Officer Rashadi got to her feet as another officer rushed into the sitting room.
“What is it?” Seth could hear his mum calling from upstairs. She rarely left the attic these days, wanting to be near Owen’s things. “What’s happened? Have you –”
But the new officer was speaking only to Officer Rashadi.
“They’ve found him,” he said to her. “They’ve found Valentine –”
Gudmund’s phone rang and rang and rang. On the second try, it went straight to voice mail.
Seth grabbed his coat. After what Monica had just told him on his doorstep, he had to see Gudmund. There was nothing else that had to happen in the whole wide world. He had to find him. Now. He took the stairs back down to the sitting room two at a time and was at the front door when his father called from the still-in-progress kitchen.
“Seth?”
Seth ignored him and opened the door, but then his father called in a way that brooked no argument. “Seth!”
“Dad, I have to go,” Seth said as he turned, but he stopped when he saw his father standing there. He was covered in fine sawdust from the kitchen work, but he held his cell phone in his hand, staring at it in an odd way, as if he’d just hung up.
“That was your principal,” his father said, sounding baffled. “Calling me on a Saturday afternoon.”
“I really, really need to go, Dad –”
“Said his daughter had been sent a photo of you.” His father looked down at his phone. “This photo,” he said, holding it up so Seth could see.
A silence fell. Seth couldn’t move. Neither, it seemed, could his father. He just held up the picture and looked at Seth questioningly.
“He wasn’t mad or anything,” his father said, slowly turning the phone back and looking down at the photo himself. “Said you were a good kid. Said someone was clearly out to cause you trouble, and he was worried that things might be hard for you come Monday. That he thought we should know. So we could help.”
He stopped, but still stood there, quietly.
To his great irritation, Seth felt his eyes fill with tears. He tried to blink them away, but a few escaped down his cheeks anyway. “Dad, please. I need to go. I need to –”
“Find Gudmund,” his father finished for him.
Not asking it, just saying it.
Seth felt caught, more caught than he could ever remember, more caught than on the day the man knocked on the window of the kitchen in the house in England. The world had stopped then, and it had stopped right now. Seth had no idea how it would ever start again.
“I’m sorry, son,” his father said, and for a heart-sinking second, Seth thought he was saying he was sorry because he wasn’t going to let Seth leave but –
“I’m sorry you felt you couldn’t tell us,” his father continued, looking down at his phone again, at the picture of Seth and Gudmund, just there together, but in a way serious and real and undeniable to anyone who might look. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about that.”
And to Seth’s astonishment, his father’s voice broke as he said it.
“We haven’t been great to you,” his father said. He looked back up. “I’m so sorry.”
Seth swallowed away the thickness in his throat. “Dad –”
“I know,” his father said. “Go. Find him. We’ll talk later. Your mum won’t be very happy but –”
Seth waited a moment, not quite believing what he was hearing, but there was no time to waste. He opened the front door and raced out into the cold air, on his way to find Gudmund –
And it was summer again, it was months before, and Gudmund smiled at him on the cliff’s edge, the sunset casting his face in gold.
“There’s always beauty,” he said. “If you know where to look.”
Before the world was swallowed by a bright, white light –
Fiery pain grips Seth’s head like a burning fist, blocking out everything else. It seems impossible to be able to live with pain this bad, impossible to think there isn’t irreparable damage being done. He can hear a distant screaming before he realizes it’s coming from his own mouth –
“I don’t know what else to do!” a voice says.
“Just turn it off!” shouts another voice. “Turn the whole thing off!”
“HOW?”
Hands that Seth didn’t know were holding him lower him to the floor, but there’s pain occupying every free space, every free thought, and he can’t stop screaming –
“That sound he’s making! I think it’s killing him –”
“There! Press that! Press anything!”
With such suddenness it feels like he’s fallen off a cliff, the pain ceases. Seth vomits across the smoothness of the concrete floor and lies there helpless, his eyes running with water, his throat raw, gasping for air.
A pair of hands grabs him again.
Small hands. And he hears a worried prayer in what can only be Polish.
“Tomasz?” he grunts, and he feels two stubby arms grip him tightly in a hug. He’s finding it difficult to focus his eyes, and it takes several blinks to see Regine’s face leaning down toward him, too.
She looks ashen, and even in his confusion, he can see that she’s terrified. “Can you get up?” she asks, urgency thrilling her voice.
“You must get up, Mr. Seth,” Tomasz says, and they try to get him to his feet. Seth’s legs won’t support his weight, and they have to almost drag him across the floor.
“We must go,” Tomasz says. “We must.”
“How –?” Seth whispers as they get him up the platform and into the corridor, but he can’t say anymore. His mind is racing away from itself, filled with images, crashing together in a torrent, a tidal wave come to drown him. He can see Tomasz and Regine, but he also sees Gudmund on the clifftop, sees his father, sees himself as a young boy when Owen was taken, all swirling together, and he can’t look away, even when he closes his eyes.
“I guessed that you told an untruth,” Tomasz says, starting to pull him up the main stairs. “An untruth Regine tried to conceal.”
“We came back for him, didn’t we?” she snaps.
“And only found him just in time!”
“Again,” Seth finds himself mumbling, though his mind still thrums so fast, he’s not even sure if he’s spoken aloud.
He has. “That’s right,” Regine says, manhandling him past the turn in the stairwell, pushing both him and Tomasz up to
ward the inner door. “We’re not actually here. None of us are. This is all just something you’re imagining.”
“Less of the arguing!” Tomasz says. “More of the hurrying!”
They reach the top and guide Seth outside. Every time he blinks, he sees his memories before him, so clear and vivid it’s as if he’s switching back and forth between this world and that one. Owen and Gudmund and Monica and H and the ocean and the house in England and the house in America. All twisting and shifting so fast, the nausea rises, and as they get him down the front steps of the prison, he vomits again.
“What’s . . . happening?” he gasps. “I can’t . . . The world is collapsing . . .”
In the spinning of his vision, he sees them exchange a worried look –
Then he sees Tomasz look up in panic. “Regine?”
Seth sees a look of horror cross Regine’s face –
But he blinks again, and once more, overwhelmingly, the memories come, him sitting at the table with Officer Rashadi, another officer rushing in and saying they’d found him, they’d found Valentine –
Seth’s eyes snap open.
There, right there, something he’d missed. Something he can hold on to. He feels the rush of memories ebb for the briefest of moments –
He looks up. He’s in Regine’s arms. She and Tomasz are trying to get him standing again, but the thing, the important thing, it’s right on the tip of his tongue, it’s –
“Valentine,” he says.
Regine and Tomasz stop for an instant to look at him.
“What?” Regine says.
“Valentine,” he says, gripping her arms more tightly. “His name was Valentine! The man who took Owen! The man who –!”
“Seth, can’t you hear that?” Regine yells.
Seth stops. And listens.
The engine of the van.
Close, and growing louder, faster than they’re ever going to be able to outrun.
Tomasz darts away from them across the square over to where two bikes are piled together. In a panic, Seth moves to follow him, but he struggles to even stay upright and Regine has to grab him to keep him from falling. “We won’t make it with you like this,” she says. She turns to the other buildings, looking for a place to hide.
“But Tomasz –” Seth says. He sees that Tomasz isn’t picking up a bike. He’s picking up a satchel tied to the back of one of them, frantically unwrapping something.
“Come on!” Regine says, pulling Seth toward the middle building of the ones that surround the square. The roar of the engine is nearly on them, and Seth can see lights growing in the darkness beyond the building they just left –
“Regine!” he cries.
“I see it!” she says.
Tomasz is running across the square toward them now, carrying something long and metallic, something Seth can’t quite make out in the moonlight and shadows. He blinks, trying to adjust his eyes to the darkness –
– and he’s lying with Gudmund on the bed, Gudmund’s arm reaching up with the phone, taking the photograph, the one of just the two of them together, the private moment caught forever –
“Regine?” he says. “Regine, I think –”
“No, Tommy!” Regine yells.
Seth looks, his vision whirling. Tomasz is still crossing the square, running but not fast enough, fussing with the thing in his hands –
And Seth suddenly sees what it is, so unlikely as to be almost literally unbelievable –
Tomasz is carrying a shotgun.
It’s almost as long as he is.
“Tomasz, look out!” Seth yells –
Because behind Tomasz, the black van sails around the corner of the building, roaring into the square –
Bearing down on Tomasz as he runs –
“No!” both Seth and Regine shout –
“Run!” Tomasz cries to them –
The van cuts between them, its wheels screeching to a halt on the concrete, and before it’s even fully stopped, the door is opening –
The Driver is getting out –
And hurtling toward Tomasz with unthinkable speed –
“Tommy!” Seth hears Regine scream –
And she’s trying to run for him –
But there’s no way she’ll get there in time –
The Driver holds out its baton, sparks crackling from it, ready to strike –
Tomasz awkwardly points the shotgun –
“NO!” Regine shouts –
And Tomasz pulls the trigger.
The bang is much bigger than Seth expects and indeed, there are two flashes, one from the end of the gun fired into the chest of the Driver –
And another as the gun explodes in Tomasz’s hands.
Through white smoke, Seth sees the two bodies flying away in opposite directions, the spinning shadow of the Driver crashing into the van, nearly tearing off the open door in the impact, before slumping violently to the ground –
But also Tomasz, crying out as he sails back, bits of the gun splintering into the air, smoke trailing from him as he tumbles down onto the hard concrete of the square.
“TOMMY!” Regine yells, bolting toward him. Seth tries to keep up, but he’s still unsteady on his feet. He follows her around the front of the van, catching a glimpse of the shadowy figure on the ground, also unmoving. Ahead of him, Regine slides down to the ground next to Tomasz –
No, Seth thinks. Please, no –
But then he hears a small coughing.
“Thank God,” Regine says as he kneels down roughly next to her. “Thank God.”
“Moje ręce,” Tomasz says, sitting up, his voice pitifully small. “Moje ręce są całe zakrwawione.”
He holds out his hands. Even in the shadows from the doorway light, they can see how burnt they are, strips of torn flesh and blood dripping down his wrists.
“Oh, Tommy,” Regine says furiously, gripping him in an embrace so tight Tomasz actually calls out. She lets go of him and starts shouting. “YOU IDIOT! I TOLD YOU IT WAS TOO DANGEROUS!”
“It was for last chance only,” Tomasz moans. “And we were on last chance.”
Seth looks behind them. The barrels of the shotgun are lying in two separate places among the weeds, the wooden stock now just smoldering embers across a wide area –
– And the officer has come into their sitting room and he’s saying, “They’ve found Valentine –”
With a grunt, Seth forces it away, turning back to Regine and Tomasz. She’s taken off her coat and is ripping a sleeve, tying it around one of Tomasz’s hands.
“Where did you get a shotgun?” Seth asks, garbling the words a little. Now that things have slowed down, his head has started to spin again.
“In an attic in a neighboring house,” Regine says, tying Tomasz’s other hand, ignoring his tuts of pain. “But it was clearly broken and dangerous and not something we could ever use.”
“I tell you this again,” Tomasz grunts. “A last chance. When there is no hope.”
“You could have died, you little . . .” But Regine can’t finish, and her eyes are wet with furious tears. She glares back at Seth, daring him to say something. Then her face changes. “Are you okay?”
Seth winces, still feeling the memories crowding in, still feeling them whirling through his head.
“It was ready to kill me,” Tomasz says, looking at the van. “To kill little Tomasz. But I kill him first, no?”
They all look back at the Driver. They can see a deep hole in the chest of the uniform where it took the full blast of the gun.
“Valentine,” Seth whispers, holding on to the name again.
“Why do you keep saying that?” Regine says.
He looks at her, his face pained.
“Seriously,” she says, “are you okay?”
“I don’t know,” Seth says, struggling to stand again.
“You said it was the name of a man,” Tomasz says, standing awkwardly too, not using his injured hands. “He took someone called Ow
en?”
“Owen is my brother,” Seth says.
Tomasz makes an ahhhh sound of understanding.
Seth can feel all the memories there in his mind, spinning around him like he’s in the eye of a hurricane that’s pressing in, surging toward him, wanting something from him. “Valentine,” he whispers again.
“Yeah, okay,” Regine says gently. “Valentine. Gotcha.” She turns back to Tomasz. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”
“My chest, little bit,” he answers, gesturing with his bandaged hands where the gun hit him, “but not so bad.”
“He won’t be able to ride,” Regine says to Seth. “You’ll have to help him. Are you up to that?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Seth says, still distracted. That name, Valentine, it most definitely is the name of the prisoner who took Owen, the name that for the life of him he’d been unable to remember back at the house, no matter how hard he tried.
Until whatever happened down there with the coffins.
But there’s more to it. . . .
The memories grow louder in his head again, surrounding him on all sides.
“Valentine,” he whispers again.
“We can lie you down in the house,” Regine says. “Both of you.” She turns toward the van. “But first . . .”
She starts walking toward where the Driver still lies.
“What are you doing?” Tomasz calls out in alarm.
“Making sure it’s dead,” Regine says, moving slowly, carefully, ready to run again.
Seth watches her go but hardly sees her, his mind filling again with the beach, the sea, the coldness –
With the police and Owen and Valentine –
With Monica and Gudmund and H –
The tidal wave is coming again, breaking over him, drowning him once more –
“I do not think this is a good idea,” Tomasz calls to Regine, shifting nervously from foot to foot –
Something’s there, right there, as the memories keep flooding in –
“I’m willing to risk it for one less bad thing in the world,” Regine says.
“Seth?” Tomasz asks. “Regine, something is very wrong with Seth.”
Regine turns at the worry in Tomasz’s voice. Seth presses his hands to the sides of his head, as if to keep it from exploding.