Beautiful Dead 3: Summer

  The wings darkened the blue sky, closed in on us, and I felt myself writhe in terrible pain and fall to the ground as they pressed in on me, beating and beating until they forced entry into my head and my body, with Hunter standing unmoved beside me.

  As I raised my arms to cover my head, I felt the stirring of my own angel wings at my shoulders. I crouched. There was a dark tunnel ahead. We were spinning and weightless like astronauts, dragged into the dark. Not like astronauts – we were divers deep in a black sea, arms flailing, flung about by the cold current, out of oxygen. We were rising to the surface too fast; our bodies couldn’t take the pressure. Every muscle, every sinew was shot through with pain. We could not breathe. And then there was a light. Hunter took my hand and pulled me towards it, his own wings beating, an iron look on his face that said he would not be beaten.

  The black, whirling force of time resisted him – Go back! Go back! He fought on, kept hold of my hand, took me with him.

  I wanted to scream – at the power of the black vortex, the agony of the journey, and now at the death heads, the skulls clattering against each other, cracking and splitting, falling away in fragments, while the dark holes of their eye sockets surrounded us. Death was there in that space, driving down on us, trying to claim us.

  No breath. No air in my lungs. I was suffocating and the distant light was too far away. For an instant I knew I would die.

  It wasn’t so bad – after all, I wasn’t afraid. Death could have me, I wouldn’t fight it. Then maybe Phoenix and I would be together.

  A hurricane of skulls and wings, Hunter dragging me on towards the light, the whole world spinning, me tumbling and beginning to spread my own angel wings, leaving Death behind.

  A surprise – I fought against the dark at last. Together Hunter and I flew towards the light.

  It grew bigger, brighter. It surrounded us and overcame the darkness. Bright white light, shining, cold. Hunter and I left the darkness behind and welcomed the stillness, the silence of that light. I thought I heard Phoenix’s soft voice saying, ‘You’re safe, my love.’ And when I looked around again, I saw a shiny glass-and-metal escalator silently ascending into a huge atrium and beneath it, an expanse of white marble floor.

  There was I, sitting reading a book in Starbucks. I wore my short plaid skirt and black, cropped jacket, my hair a little shorter than I wear it now.

  Shoppers came and went across the mall floor, ascended the escalator, disappeared into the atrium.

  Angel-me saw that I was restless, turning the pages of the book without really reading, looking at my watch, and angel-me remembered that I was due to meet Phoenix later that day when Summer was shot. I was killing time in Starbucks, waiting, longing to be with him.

  There was hardly anyone else in the coffee shop, I noticed. A woman with a small kid – a boy maybe three years old, a man with a newspaper at the counter ordering skinny latte.

  Invisible with Hunter at the base of the escalator, angel-me scanned the shops opposite Starbucks. There was a high-end shoe store, another coffee place and the music shop. Sinuous guitars gleamed in the window, automatic doors slid open and Summer walked out. ‘Stop!’ I wanted to yell. ‘Don’t move. Stay right where you are!’

  She was carrying a small yellow bag containing CDs. She turned to say something to someone inside the store. Then she waved and walked towards coffee-shop-me.

  Angel-me turned to Hunter. ‘Please!’ I begged. I don’t know what I meant.

  He got inside my panicking head and redirected my gaze back to Summer.

  She was walking towards me in Starbucks, smiling. ‘Hi, Darina!’ she called. She wore a long, dark-green skirt with a sheen like a raven’s wing. Her golden hair tumbled over her shoulders. My angel-pity for her overwhelmed me.

  A guy came out of the music store after her. He was calling her name. Still smiling, she turned to speak with him.

  The shots sounded like they were fake – a high cracking sound, not a boom. I heard three shots in quick succession, maybe four.

  Summer stood until he fired the third bullet. At the fourth, she fell to her knees. She looked up towards the light shed by the glass roof of the tall atrium. The fifth shot, the fatal one, hit her in the heart.

  I saw Summer’s look of bewilderment, imagined but could not hear her gasp as people began to scream and run. Then she was lying on the floor in a pool of her own blood.

  More screams. Coffee-shop-me sat where I was, shock delaying my gut reaction, which was to run to where Summer lay. Angel-me saw the mother grab her three-year-old and the man with the newspaper beat a retreat behind the counter. Out in the mall, the crowd split and fled, the reverse of iron filings to a magnet. The gunman in the black T-shirt and white cap still aimed his gun directly at Summer.

  Why was the sun shining down through the roof? Why didn’t God or someone, something strike the guy dead where he stood?

  I got up from my Starbucks chair and ran towards Summer. She was still alive, her breathing shallow, looking up at me with what I can only call wonderment.

  ‘You’ll be OK,’ I promised, cradling her head, watching her eyelids flutter closed. I so longed for her to be, pressing my hand against her chest to stem the flow of blood because I knew that’s what you had to do.

  The look of wonder passed. She didn’t open her eyes again.

  A uniformed security guard ran the wrong way down the up-escalator. The gunman saw him and re-aimed his weapon. He missed the guard but the guy lost his balance and rolled down the moving steps, giving the killer time to choose which way to run.

  ‘Summer, it’s going to be OK,’ I whispered, until Hunter bent over us, his wings spread wide like a shelter, and made me release her.

  ‘You have to follow him!’ he urged. ‘Go, Darina!’

  Angel-me eased Summer on to the floor, took a second to lift her hair clear of her shoulders so as not to get it bloody, and to smooth her skirt. Then I was up and running after the killer, who sprinted past the music store towards the exit, past dozens of cowering shoppers. I saw his back view – the slight frame, the dark clothes, and one time a glimpse of his thin face with the aviator shades when he glanced over his shoulder to check if he was being followed.

  This time he was, though he didn’t know it.

  I flew after him down the marble slope, out through the main exit.

  He was on the street, sprinting towards the car park next to a gas station, looking over his shoulder. I was faster, gaining on him though he couldn’t see me. I could hear the soft thud of his sneakers on the sidewalk, his dry, grating breaths.

  People took one look at the gun in his hand and pressed themselves to the wall, and this was when Hunter stepped in. I felt him overtake me in a rush of beating wings – they were more powerful than the killer’s fastest sprint. Soon Hunter was ahead, blocking his way. He put out one hand to stop him in his tracks.

  The gunman ran smack into the invisible barrier and went reeling backwards. He lost his gun as he sprawled on the ground, then rolled and tried to get up.

  Hunter stood back and left the rest to me.

  I grabbed the gun from the sidewalk. I stamped hard on the killer’s wrist, pinned him down and heard him yelp. Then I fell to my knees and ripped off that white cap, took off the shades and flung them aside.

  His hair was the colour of straw. There was a bruise-coloured birthmark under the left eye.

  JakB had hung himself in the janitor’s storeroom. He left a note, which I found folded neatly and propped against the seat of the grass-cutter.

  Not so much a note – more a picture of a heart with an arrow through and initials at either end: SM and JB. The drawing was intricate, in the style of a tattoo artist, so that the heart looked 3-D, with a velvety sheen. Underneath the drawing he had scrawled a spidery, almost illegible message, as if all his attention had gone into making the drawing and now he was out of time. Reunited, it read. Then something that sounded biblical: In their deaths they were not divided.

>   My hand was shaking, I was ready to throw up as I backed out of the store.

  The memory of JakB’s dead face, mottled and distorted, will stay with me for ever.

  ‘Darina?’ Ezra’s voice was growing louder. Three figures came running – Ezra, Parker and the janitor.

  From outside the storeroom the janitor saw the bottom half of JakB’s hanging corpse. He reached for his cell phone and called nine-one-one. Parker turned away, he bent forward and threw up on the grass. Ezra let out a gasp, like someone had punched him in the stomach.

  Hunter had dragged angel-me back here from my time travel. It felt like I had a hand around my throat, choking me. I struggled for breath, my head was still in that dark tunnel, my body was still on the rack. The last thing I remembered clearly was staring down at Summer’s killer’s face and seeing the purple birthmark behind the aviator shades.

  ‘We need paramedics, we need the cops,’ the janitor jabbered into his phone.

  Parker was still retching loudly.

  The swinging rope rasped against the metal bar from which the noose was suspended. JakB’s feet were splayed out like a fish tail.

  As Ezra lifted his hand to tip his glasses further up the bridge of his nose, I reached out and took them clean away.

  ‘What …?’ He tried to grab them back.

  I hid them behind my back, twisted them and snapped them in two.

  Ezra’s eyes widened as they met mine. What did he see there? Did he know right then that I knew?

  ‘Sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking,’ I gasped, showing him the broken shades. Events were racing on – the paramedics and the cops were on their way, Parker had finished retching and the janitor was saying for us not to touch a thing. ‘I have a spare pair of shades. They’re in my bag. I left it in the theatre.’

  He took his wrecked pair from me, looking like he might cry. You never saw Ezra without his shades, never saw that disfiguring mark – that Rorschach blotch that, to me, had a weird, angel-wing similarity.

  ‘I can get them for you,’ I volunteered. ‘I’ll show you.’

  ‘Don’t go anywhere,’ the janitor warned me. ‘You’re the main witness.’

  ‘I’ll be five minutes,’ I promised. ‘Come on, Ezra.’

  He followed me across the car park, in through the main door of the theatre. I reckoned correctly that, to him, covering his birthmark mattered more than anything.

  We were in the empty auditorium, minus daylight, feeling our way down the broad central aisle and up the steps on to the stage. Dimly lit signs above the doors showed the side exits.

  ‘I guess it was the shock,’ I explained. ‘Maybe I was trying to grab your hand for something to hold on to.’

  ‘Whatever,’ Ezra mumbled. He seemed calm and in his element, up on the stage with me, surrounded by snaking cables, microphones and lights. With the toe of his sneaker he clicked a switch on the floor which brought on a solitary overhead spot.

  ‘My bag is in a locker next to the girls’ dressing-room.’ Keep a grip, don’t look scared. I faked a smile – I actually managed to do that. ‘Honestly, Ezra, I like you better without your glasses.’

  His hand went up to the purple mark.

  ‘You don’t even notice,’ I assured him. ‘Believe me.’

  ‘You say that,’ he muttered. ‘But people stare.’

  ‘Not in a bad way.’

  ‘Yes, in a bad way. Kids in kindergarten used to point or sometimes they totally freaked out.’

  ‘Not now we’re older.’ Dipping into my pockets, I acted out a search for the locker key. Failing to find it, I stopped by the water fountain to fill a plastic cup. ‘Everyone has something they’re ashamed of. Take Logan – he hated that he had curly hair.’

  Mention of Logan’s name made Ezra put his hand up to cover the mark – he really couldn’t stop himself.

  I took a sip of water, inched forward with the pressure. Don’t freak him out, push him slowly, slowly …

  ‘And Logan hated that he was jealous.’

  ‘What about?’ The hand dropped from the mark. Ezra looked hungry for more.

  ‘About everything.’ I shrugged. I was doing it – putting on the act, hiding my terror. ‘I’ll tell you something – Logan had a huge crush on me. He was jealous of everything and everyone who came within half a mile.’

  ‘Do you miss him?’

  ‘Some.’ Forgive me, Logan. I hope you understand. ‘He was jealous of you, Ezra. Did you know that? Yeah, course you did – you two had that fight.’

  We stood under the spotlight, Ezra and me. I carried on fly-fishing, casting my line to hook him.

  ‘Logan said for me to back off,’ Ezra admitted. ‘He said no way would you notice me.’

  ‘Like I said – he could get crazy with jealousy. But honestly, I never felt that way about him.’

  ‘So he was wrong? Should I have let you know the way I felt?’

  Look Ezra in the eye. Light-brown, honey-coloured eyes set shallow in their sockets with drooping upper lids, the dead-straw hair spiking straight up from his forehead, thin cheeks, a heavy underlip mis-matching the thin, wide upper one. His bottom lip was pulpy and moist.

  ‘Yeah, ’cos what am I – a mind-reader?’ I actually joked. ‘But then again, I guess I picked up the signals. So there was totally no need for you two guys to fight.’

  ‘Logan acted like he was Mr Big and he made me mad.’ Suddenly Ezra was feeling safer with me, walking across the stage to tidy some cable into a neat coil, then coming back under the light. ‘He said I should back off, you were too good for me. Why did he need to say that?’

  ‘Exactly. But it worked.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘You did back off. In fact, I heard you called me some mean names.’ Another sip of water, another step towards gaining Ezra’s trust.

  ‘Sure – that was because I didn’t get you like I’d planned. But I got him.’

  ‘You got him?’ I know, I absolutely know what you’re about to tell me!

  The light was hot and intense. It narrowed the pupils in Ezra’s staring eyes until they were all honey-coloured iris. ‘They told me there would be payback time with Logan, even if it took a while. They said it doesn’t matter how long you have to wait – there will come a time.’

  His soft red lip shone with spittle; beads of sweat appeared on his forehead and cheeks. I listened without even asking what he meant by ‘they’.

  ‘They’re always right. I mean – they see things from the outside, they employ a perfect rationality, which a guy like me appreciates. They figured sooner or later Logan would put himself in a position where he was vulnerable, where I wouldn’t have to do hardly anything.’

  I had stopped breathing. I struggled to suppress a scream rising up into my throat.

  ‘It happened. The night of the storm out at Foxton. Logan said something else that made me mad – like, I had to quit even thinking about you, Darina.’

  ‘Oh!’ I sighed. Ezra misinterpreted it as a signal to move in close. He put his arm around my waist and stepped me back out of the circle of light like two dancers about to waltz.

  ‘Logan had no right,’ he whispered in my ear. ‘That’s when I made my plan to get out of that cabin and lie in wait. Sure, it was dark, but that was good. Plus the rain and the wind – all good.’

  ‘You waited for Logan to leave the cabin?’

  Ezra put his cheek against mine. He gripped me tighter around the waist so that I lost hold of the cup and water spilled down the front of Ezra’s T-shirt. ‘It was more than luck that he came out and drove off in his car – it was meant to be.’

  ‘They told you that?’ He stepped me across the stage in the dance-hold, breathed me in, swung me round.

  ‘Fate, they said. I followed him as far as the track went. Logan didn’t even see me, something crazy was happening to him out there in that storm.’

  He was taking care of me. He gave his life. My legs went weak. I relied on Ezra to hold me up.
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  ‘All good, all good,’ he chanted, his lips on my cheek. ‘Wind and rain. No moon or stars. Christ knows what he was searching for.’

  Me! Me!

  ‘So easy,’ Ezra breathed, relaxing his hold. ‘Logan reached a ledge, the edge of the world. “Push!” they told me. And I did.’

  I needed to sit down. My legs collapsed under me and I dropped to the floor. I was in an empty theatre with a double killer. The guy followed voices inside his head.

  ‘It’s OK, Darina,’ Ezra soothed. He sat beside me, knees crooked under his chin. ‘This doesn’t need to go any further, it stays between you and me.’

  ‘I hear you, Ezra.’

  ‘I mean, I shouldn’t even have told you. I may get into trouble for that.’

  ‘I hope not.’

  ‘I’ll tell them you’re to blame. You made me talk. That’s what you do.’

  ‘What do I do?’

  ‘You look at me a certain way. All girls do that.’

  ‘But it’s a secret. I won’t tell anyone.’

  ‘Because you love me?’

  The stage tilted, the whole place shook – we were on a geological fault line, an emotional earthquake was taking place inside me. ‘Because I love you,’ I confirmed with what felt like the last breath in my body as the familiar framework of my inner world collapsed.

  Ezra sprang on to his haunches and spun me round to face him. ‘Say that again.’

  My voice was lost in the after-shock. I shook my head.

  ‘You love me!’ he echoed. Then he gripped both my wrists. ‘But they said you didn’t. Even after Logan died, they said you still couldn’t love me.’

  ‘Let me find those shades.’ I made an enormous effort to speak and make him let go.

  ‘I don’t care about the shades,’ he argued. ‘Be quiet – they’re helping me to figure something out. Yes – Darina, I think you’re lying to me.’

  ‘No, really—’

  ‘You are. That’s another thing you do. I’m learning all the time about how you use guys. You never say what you truly mean.’ His face changed, setting into firmer lines. The fleshy lids almost closed.