Chapter 9 #2
I lay aside the theory. It will have to wait.
The phone has charge but if this fails, I guess I could steal another? I scrub the screen on his cleaner clothes. Try again. Finally, it unlocks.
No signal? Not a problem. It’ll be the depth.
Being fifty yards underground will cause interference.
I change the passcode and turn off facial recognition before towing the body back into the tunnel to conceal it.
Five minutes of climbing brings me to the surface.
Careful not to lose the phone, I haul myself out then arrange the rusty steel cap over the hole so that it covers the opening.
I palm my pocket, and the phone is still there, along with the wallet.
Having to climb down to retrieve the phone again would be ridiculous.
Yellow rays streak through gaps in the canopy, and leaves flutter to the ground like congratulatory confetti while I stand among the greenery, turning in a slow circle, offering the phone, like it’s a gift to the forest, like I’m a priest praying to the web gods for a signal.
I’m looking for a few bars, and I hold the phone higher.
Just one? No?
Nothing?
Maybe the blood is still messing up whatever internal aerial these things have. Rubbing it cleaner and picking something out of the charging port makes no difference.
Before I trek back to Revenant, I look through the phone’s apps and folders, the ones I can get open, and I note the date—February tenth.
In a document section, I hit gold. One file is called Simon Tarrant.
When I tap it open, the first part is simply a list of his attributes from birth and height to his current job at the Revenant Institute and his current address in Jordan Street.
Staring at the text doesn’t make it make more sense. Hailey said he is dead.
According to this, he is not. They even have the times he starts work each day for the next week, and one surveillance video shows him buying a coffee and walking across Main St, Revenant. The date stamp? Yesterday.
“Was she lying?” I ask the trees. No. Those tears, her accusation when she asked if I had anything to do with his murder. Underline that no in red.
He’s dead and has been for the past six months.
The video doesn’t lie either.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. I’ve a feeling I’m not in Kansas anymore. Who said that?
“Oh. Yeah. Her.”
More shocking is that this also says his daughter, Hailey, isn’t alive.
Did I remember the wrong woman? How could I have known her?
Are there two Simon Tarrants? Apparently, they were, or are, or whatever this is, living in the same house.
I am so very lost. It’s not simply my damaged brain messing with the facts, it’s the videos and files in the phone.
I tap the phone to my forehead. Think, think. A throat-catching, high-res memory churns in, rich with color and moans and the softness of her under me, as I smack into her ass and sink into the wet heat of her. This is an old memory, from long ago.
I grab the memory and taste it, swallow it down. Never forget this.
Once, she was mine.
But she died? It might be best that I forget that part. I crush my fist around the hard edges of the phone and stare at the blank screen. I am either hallucinating all of this or I am in a parallel world. This has to be a joke.
If it isn’t then here, in this world, I can keep her, claim her. I exhale, blowing out my cheeks. I don’t have any way to be absolutely sure of this wacky idea. Option one is I’m dreaming all of this and option two is what?
“A world where people who were dead are now alive,” I say the words as firmly as I can, as if by saying it I can make it true.
I choose option two. It’s the fun option. If I am wrong, at least I can enjoy this fantasy.
That weird oscillation in the forest when we walked through it, yesterday, was that when I crossed over to whenever, whatever this world is? It’s not fairyland, that’s for sure.
If I could click my pretty shoes, would I go back to a world where she doesn’t exist? Nope.
As in hell to the fucking no.
My heart is beating harder. This is a second chance. Even if I’m in this monstrous body and she hates me and sees me as something from a horror movie. Which…I am. Even with that, I’m staying.
And I’m thinking all this craziness as if it’s plain natural and obvious when I should be screaming and having a goddamned meltdown.
“This is your fault,” I tell the phone, frowning.
I was thinking that keeping the wallet might be a mistake but the guy I murdered doesn’t…probably, exist here. Or he does and still lives. There’s a tattered photo, some ID cards, but not much else in there. The wallet can stay in my pocket.
I listen to the rustle of leaves and the calls of small wildlife, birds, bugs, while I think.
I’m far beyond where any human noise will reach.
I could just disappear. If my fantasy is real, I am free, even more than I thought I was last night.
Nobody here knows I exist, excluding Hailey and her neighbors.
I could go away and make a life somewhere else.
Except I don’t want to. My stupid brain and body are both calling me to go find Hailey and do whatever I need to do to get back into her good graces.
This…despite now being kind of, almost, sure that where I stand is not the same world I walked in two days ago.
I push the phone into my back pocket and turn to face where Revenant lies.
If I help her find this murderer she seeks, that should do it.
Simple.
If I knew anything about investigating. Perhaps being good at making people bleed will do.