Twisted Heart

  The wind blasted us. It howled through the trees, cold as death.

  Aaron reached us first, but not in time to take a hold of Holly and drag her back to safety. Channing bounded the last few metres up the rocks, almost as if he was flying, or as if the wind had lifted him off his feet and propelled him on to the ridge. He landed between us and Holly, threw his arms wide. A strong gust tore the hood from his face and we stared into his amber eyes.

  ‘Back off, don’t touch her!’ Aaron launched himself at Channing, shoulder-charged him and aimed to knock him off the ridge. He hit solid muscle; Channing didn’t move. So Aaron locked arms with his enemy, wrestled him and tried to unbalance him. Channing resisted easily. He flung Aaron to one side, fixed me with wolf-like eyes.

  His eyes blazed, the pupils were narrow. Shadows fell across his lean face.

  Aaron came back at him from behind. He charged a second time. Channing felt his full weight but was able to flip him aside with one arm. And this is Aaron we’re talking about – a mountain climber who tackled fourteeners, who was tall and strong as anyone in our high-school year, totally fired up, ready to kill to save the girl he loved.

  Aaron and Channing were locked together on the dark ridge, wrestling, punching, dragging each other to the ground, rolling against a boulder. We heard the thud of fist against flesh, the stamp and scuffle of boots, the exhalation of breath. Channing was up on his feet, unharmed. Aaron lay groaning on the ground. I ran to try and help him, felt myself cast aside, slammed against a boulder close to where Aaron lay.

  Holly stood fixed to the spot, her wild hair flying in the wind.

  Aaron groaned and Channing wrenched him upright, stood back and thudded his fist into Aaron’s jaw. Aaron staggered then toppled backwards. He slid down the rocks. Stones broke loose and rattled downwards into the darkness; Aaron fell for what seemed like eternity.

  I heard the splash as the body hit the water. I ran after him – not fast enough. By the time I reached the inlet, Aaron’s body had disappeared below the surface. Moonlit ripples closed over him. I threw back my head and screamed.

  16

  Black water rises.

  It laps against the walls of the houses on Main Street, reaches the doors, the windows. It reaches the roofs. Everything is swept away. There is water everywhere.

  Pale flotsam bobs on the dark surface – chairs, tables, trees with their roots ripped out of the ground. A mighty current carries them.

  Down in the depths, two-headed serpents writhe at the mouths of black caves.

  I drift amongst them with sightless eyes.

  I screamed for help and no one came. Holly stood like a block of white stone on the rock overlooking the water. Channing turned his back.

  ‘Do something!’ I yelled. ‘Don’t let him die!’

  The ripples spread in ever widening circles. I searched for Aaron, prayed that he would return to the surface and strike out towards the shore.

  Nothing. No sign of life. I kicked off my shoes, prepared to dive in. I threw myself from the rock, hit the water, felt its icy grip. I plunged down, groped blindly, swam underwater until I thought my lungs would burst. Then I kicked for the surface.

  Nothing.

  Holly and Channing had climbed down to the water’s edge. There was no expression on their faces as I gasped for air.

  ‘Get some help!’ I yelled before I kicked and dived down again.

  The lake embraces me. I am in its arms, caressed, rocked this way and that. A hundred other lovers stretch out cold arms to greet me. They emerge from silent, windowless houses of West Point as if they’ve been waiting for years to welcome me home. They drift towards me with dead eyes, hair like weeds billowing in the cold current. They reach out. One is a boy my own age, more eager than the others. He takes me by the hand.

  I recognize him, recoil and kick away. I am not Conner’s friend. I am here to find Aaron.

  ‘Come back!’ Conner pleads. His face is white, his eyes dark as death. He catches me, clutches me to him.

  Around us, the water writhes with green and black snakes.

  ‘I will tell you all you need to know,’ the dead boy says.

  The promise is false. I resist, pull away and swim with all my might.

  I swam in total darkness, searching for Aaron. The ache in my lungs grew unbearable; there was pressure behind my eyeballs, I longed to gulp in air. Pain forced me back to the surface.

  I saw fire move across the rock, flames dipping and bobbing towards me – Orlando, Grace and Jude carrying firebrands.

  Frozen to my core, I raised both arms and yelled for them to join in the search. ‘It’s Aaron. He went under. Help!’

  Orlando was the first to throw down his torch and dive fully clothed from the rock. The splash rose high into the night air. Within seconds Grace and Jude had joined us. So now we were four, diving down with fear in our hearts, plunging and kicking, reaching out with our fingertips to touch only rock and weeds, rising to the surface to suck in air and dive again.

  After my fourth dive, Orlando caught hold of me and dragged me towards the shore. ‘Enough,’ he gasped. Other figures were running to the scene carrying flash lights, blankets and ropes. I staggered out of the water with Orlando, who handed me over to Aurelie. ‘Don’t let her come back into the water,’ he told her as she wrapped blankets around my shoulders and he waded in.

  I struggled to rejoin him but others came and held me – Jean-Luc and Marta. Out in the lake, Jude and Grace broke surface. Grace swam exhausted for the shore. There were more blankets, and from the next cove the sound of a rescue boat starting up.

  Too late. Way too late. I knew in my quivering, faltering heart.

  The boat appeared round the headland as first Grace then Jude and finally Orlando crawled out of the water. They’d found no sign of Aaron; had been forced to give up as the icy cold invaded their bones.

  ‘It’s no good – he’s dead,’ Grace whispered through chattering teeth.

  The rescue boat cast a searchlight into the dark water. The beam raked the rocks where we stood huddled and hopeless.

  For a second Holly was caught in a blaze of light. She was standing with Channing, staring at the water, unmoved and still as a marble statue in her white costume – no flicker of emotion, no grief-stricken gesture for her dead boyfriend as the searchlight moved on.

  Ziegler and his boat crew promised to carry on searching the lake until dawn. Aurelie put Marta and Blake on all-night standby on the shore. Meanwhile, Jean-Luc led us back to the social centre to organize dry clothes for Orlando, Grace, Jude and me.

  We sat stunned and swathed in blankets by the log fire with the party lights still flickering and the big screen playing music videos to an empty room. In the last two weeks the water had claimed Conner and now Aaron. Two kids – one a total stranger, the other our good friend.

  ‘I can’t believe he’s gone.’ Grace was the first to speak in a slow, halting voice. Someone killed the lights and video. ‘I can picture him right here and now, walking into this room the same as always.’ Silence.

  It broke our hearts to lose Aaron – I had memories of him wearing his Never-trust-anyone T-shirt, striding along the lakeside trail in his hiking boots, of him refusing to have his hair cut when Holly asked him to, saying he preferred the wild, heavy metal look. And I remembered him laughing and wrestling with Holly as she came up from behind with a pair of scissors. Samson and Delilah. Mainly laughing – that’s how I pictured Aaron.

  ‘There was a fight – Aaron and Channing.’ My chest hurt, I shivered all over as I tried to explain to the others how it had happened.

  Jean-Luc interrupted to tell us Aaron’s parents had been informed and were on their way. Then he sat on the arm of the couch and invited us to confide in him. ‘How much alcohol had Aaron drunk?’ he asked.

  The question sent a shock wave around our grieving group. ‘What kind of question is that?’ Orlando wanted to know.

  ‘Blake says she saw him earlier th
is evening with a six-pack of Budweiser,’ Jean-Luc explained.

  I shook my head. ‘She’s wrong. Aaron doesn’t drink.’ Plus, he was fixated on getting Holly out of here – no time for even a sip of alcohol.

  ‘I’m sorry, Tania, but I felt I had to check it out.’ Jean-Luc sounded sincerely apologetic. ‘So why did Aaron and Channing fight?’

  ‘Over Holly.’ It was so obvious I wondered why he needed to ask. Then I realized that he was leaving tomorrow and had already mentally logged off, so maybe didn’t know the full story. ‘Holly’s decided she wants to stay at New Dawn.’

  ‘Yes, my stepfather has offered her a job.’ He put me straight on the being out of the loop theory. ‘Aurelie will train Holly to take over from me, liaising with Explorers’ families, doing administrative work.’

  Yet again it seemed we were caught on the wrong foot. ‘Aaron doesn’t – didn’t know that. He thought Holly’s decision was down to Channing, period.’

  Jean-Luc sighed. ‘None of that matters now, I guess.’ Seeing Aurelie beckon him from the doorway, he walked swiftly across the room, spoke with his sister then turned and called to us. ‘Still no news,’ he reported, before going off with her.

  Jude turned straight to me. ‘So?’ he urged.

  ‘You want the whole story?’

  Grace and Jude nodded, while Orlando took Jean-Luc’s place on the arm of the couch.

  ‘No way was Aaron going to win that fight. Sure, it was one on one, but Channing had phenomenal strength. It wasn’t natural.’

  ‘And what about Holly?’ Orlando asked.

  ‘Nothing. No reaction. Zilch.’ I turned to Grace. ‘You remember what happens when the dark angels take over your mind?’

  She nodded. ‘It felt like I had no free will. I believed everything Ezra told me about the whole universe – the way the planets orbit their suns and how the dark angels have the power to change their course, make meteors crash into them, send stars shooting through outer space, lots of cosmic crap. I was under his spell and I couldn’t put one step in front of another without his permission, couldn’t think, couldn’t react, would have walked through fire if Ezra told me to.’

  ‘That’s the way it is now with Holly,’ I confirmed. ‘And the way I see it, Channing used a lot of force to seduce her out there in the wilderness. She’s smart and she’s strong – she would have been on her guard. Remember, no one saw what happened and when we finally got to her on the island, her jacket and T-shirt were torn. That wasn’t no hypothermic reaction, the way the paramedic described it. That was Channing!’

  ‘OK, wait!’ Jude put up his hand to slow me down. ‘Let me get this right. Tania, when you say “seduce”, do you mean what I think you mean?’

  ‘We’re talking rape,’ I confirmed. ‘These dark angels – they have to go the whole way, make actual love to you. Some of them don’t care about consent. They just need to do it and that’s the point of no return.’

  Still remembering Ezra, Grace retreated inside herself. She hung her head while Jude stood up and paced between the bear rug and the fire. Orlando didn’t shift from his place by my side.

  ‘So that was it, out on the wilderness walk Channing did what he had to do. He brings Holly back to New Dawn and prepares for the final ritual – the ceremony where she officially steps over on to the dark side, which is going to happen any time soon. Then tonight, when we show up with Aaron, Channing recognizes him as the only possible threat still standing in his way because not many days ago Holly’s heart belonged to Aaron. They were in love and it was the real deal. Maybe she’ll set eyes on him and remember her old life. In Channing’s place, what would you do?’

  ‘I’d get rid of Aaron,’ Orlando said. ‘Obviously the guy has no conscience. Stealing souls and killing people is what he does.’

  I nodded. ‘What happened tonight – Channing was in charge of the whole thing. First, he let Aaron see him and Holly by the lake. He waits for Aaron to run and fetch me, he listens to my pathetic decoy excuse.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘I said Ziegler needed him,’ I sighed. ‘I told him Jarrold had escaped again.’

  Jarrold! I glanced up to see him right there, glaring in at us through the floor-to-ceiling window, his palms pressed against the glass, his eyes gleaming.

  Unnerved, I went back to my story. ‘Channing went along with it – he faked going off to search for the runaway but only so that he could lure Aaron further away from the party towards the lake. Once he isolated him, he picked him off the way a farmer shoots vermin – pow, into the lake!’

  Jarrold didn’t move from the window. His eyes gleamed and there was a weird smile on his face. Maybe he was lip-reading every word I said.

  Grace looked up with tears in her eyes. Jude sat quietly. I leaned my head against Orlando.

  Jarrold stared in at us. Behind him, out of the night sky, snowflakes started to fall.

  ‘Stay home, stay warm.’

  Dad’s advice was easy to follow. Next morning I drew back my curtains on fifteen centimetres of fresh snow and a leaden grey sky. Bad weather was forecast to last at least forty-eight hours, through to Monday.

  ‘And you, Orlando, please stay with Tania.’

  So Orlando called home while Dad slogged into Denver to the hospital.

  ‘Stuck in traffic,’ he texted two hours later. And again, after another two hours: ‘Will visit Mom then find motel in city. Interstate closed – no way back home.’

  I went out on to the porch and gazed across the valley towards Carlsbad. Snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even, like in the Wenceslas song.

  ‘I feel so helpless,’ I told Orlando when I went back inside. My totally undomesticated guy was trying to keep it together by doing normal stuff like cooking breakfast even though he knew neither of us could eat a thing.

  ‘Can you even imagine how Aaron’s parents are taking this?’ he reminded me.

  We knew Mr and Mrs Baker had reached New Dawn at midnight to hear the latest update from Antony Amos himself. We’d seen them talking in the entrance to the social centre, had heard phrases like ‘The search party is still out there … We haven’t given up.’

  The look on Aaron’s mom’s face showed that she was hanging on to every thread of hope, but Michael Baker was hollow-eyed and haggard. His strong, handsome features had disintegrated the way Conner’s parents’ did when I came across them at the hospital. After all, he was part of the national park rescue team – he knew exactly what happens to the human body submerged under water in sub-zero temperatures, and how quickly.

  So I partly stayed home on Saturday morning out of exhaustion and cowardice, knowing that I couldn’t face their grief.

  ‘Try to eat,’ Orlando told me as I let the white world close me in.

  I pushed away the plate. For the hundredth time I wished I’d done something different. ‘I should have come to find you. I shouldn’t have let Aaron face Channing alone.’

  Orlando pulled me out of the guilt trap as only he knew how. ‘Tania, let it go. What happened happened.’

  ‘We were crazy even to think we could get Holly out of there just by talking. I should have known.’

  ‘Let it go,’ he repeated. ‘You know what this guilt trip of yours is? It’s a way of pulling attention in, grabbing sympathy. Well, I do – I sympathize, honestly and with all my heart. Now move on.’

  See what I mean – Orlando doesn’t bend my way and let us both sink under a mountain of helpless, hopeless emotion. Like me, he was sick with grief over Aaron but he didn’t go under. In that way he’s stronger than me.

  In any case the grief came knocking.

  At eleven a.m. the door bell rang and Orlando opened it to Michael Baker. He came alone, desperate to squeeze every drop of information out of the witnesses who had been there when his son died.

  When? How? Why? He looked like a dead man walking.

  With Orlando holding my hand, I held myself together and gave him the bare facts as I’d wit
nessed them. He told us he and his wife, Tracey, knew Aaron was in bad shape after the break-up with Holly but they’d thought he’d get over it. They hadn’t realized how deep it went.

  ‘He genuinely loved her.’ Orlando kept it simple. Both he and I steered away from good versus evil, from fallen angels and twisted hearts.

  ‘They suspect he’d been drinking,’ Michael said with an angry shake of his head. ‘I told Amos that was so untypical. I taught my son to steer clear of alcohol.’

  ‘We didn’t see him with a drink in his hands,’ Orlando insisted. ‘We told the New Dawn guys the same thing – in our view, Aaron was sober.’

  Aaron’s dad seemed to be on automatic pilot, reciting over and over again the few facts he already knew. So he didn’t react to Orlando’s news. ‘They said the alcohol tipped him over the edge, that he lost control and challenged the guy he suspected of stealing Holly from him. Then there was a scuffle and he lost his balance. Afterwards all hell broke loose – people shouting and screaming diving in to save him, a rescue boat, teams of people out there searching.’

  I was still hung up on the question of alcohol. ‘It’s not true,’ I insisted, waiting until Michael came out of his manic-recollection phase. I grabbed his hand and made him look at me. ‘Believe me, Aaron was stone cold sober. He knew Holly was in terrible danger so he tried to save her.’

  Aaron’s father met my gaze with haunted eyes from his prison of loss. ‘It would have been quick,’ he said quietly. ‘In those temperatures, with those underwater currents and with alcohol involved, it would have been over in less than five minutes.’

  After he left the house and stood talking with Orlando on the drive, I put on my jacket and walked out into the garden. I had to breathe cold, clean air, stand and gaze at the mountains and the lake.

  ‘I will tell you all you need to know,’ the body of Conner Steben whispers from the bottom of Turner Lake. ‘They say it was my weak heart but I can tell you different.’

  I listened intently, feeling something shift in my brain – a door opening to allow in a new idea. Conner is an angel of light. My mourning dove is absent from the aspens, but she can speak through a drowned corpse.