Page 17 of Dearly Departed

It’s not enough. Whatever it was—something metal—smashes into my forehead and bounces off. I can’t hear where it lands. I only know that it doesn’t come down on us again. My teeth click together as the plane hurtles over uneven ground. Did he put the landing gear down? Does landing gear matter when you’re flying into a forest?

Whatever we’re hitting moves us in a sharp zig-zag, or else the plane has come alive and is pursuing prey through a thickly forested area. Both options seem equally plausible. Logical. I wouldn’t be surprised to glance out the window and find my father sitting at a card table, though, so that’s probably a clue to my general state of mind.

A hot, tickling sensation slides down one of my eyebrows. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, that’s irritating. I can’t wipe it away without letting go of Catherine, so I do my best to guide whatever it is away from my eyeball by blinking.

Something scrapes against the bottom of the plane. I imagine aluminum peeling off in a jagged curl of metal to expose a fleshy heart pumping jet fuel through smooth-muscle valves.

The front of the plane bumps anticlimactically against one last thing, and then it lists to the left, and lists, and lists, and it occurs to me that we could be on the side of a cliff. We could be about to plummet upside-down to our rocky, waterlogged deaths.

But then the plane gives a final metallic creak and rocks to a halt.

It takes a second or two to understand that the plane has stopped. Catherine shivers in my arms, her teeth chattering, her head pressed tight to my best.

“Are you—” The plane makes a creaking whine. “Are you all right, kitten?”

“Did we stop?” she asks, her voice muffled in my sweatshirt and her oxygen mask.

“Yes.” The noise isn’t coming from the plane anymore, and it seems both deathly quiet and deafeningly loud at the same time.I find the strap of her mask and pull it off her head, then pull mine off. A humid breeze that smells like wet dirt and growing things is seeping into what’s left of the filtered air.

Okay. Controlled breathing. I can’t hear a damn thing over that pounding heartbeat, and I need to be able to hear, because we’re on a plane lit only by the emergency lights and the moon outside, and so is Raymond Harris. The other oxygen masks have bloomed out of their compartments and list in the direction of the left wing.

It’s creepy.

I rub Catherine’s back, her racing pulse fluttering through her skin. “Are you hurt?”

“My neck is sore, but I don’t think it’s, like, an actual injury.” Catherine pushes herself bravely upright, turning her head from side to side. “I think it’ll be okay. What about you?”

Now that we’re on the ground, I now realize that the inhuman calm I felt when we started plummeting out of the sky was probably from an unbelievable surge of adrenaline.

I’m fine, I plan to tell Catherine. I’ll be fine.

Instead, my head throbs like the plane is belatedly collapsing, crushing my skull in the process. My temples scream. I can’t see out of my right eye. It’s completely black and burns. Everything out of my left eye blurs. Jesus—why is my head so heavy? I lean against the headrest and breathe, though breathing makes my stomach turn.

Who says?

The whisper comes from directly behind me, but I don’t move. If I’m in bed, I won’t move until the sun comes up. I’ll let the nightmare stand over me and watch me pretend to sleep, but I won’t give it the satisfaction of scaring me off.

It’s not my bed. I don’t sleep on leather pillowcases. When I force my eyes open, the stinging ratchets up.

“Fuck.” I swipe at my right eye with my sleeve. Even in this light, I can see the fabric’s come away dark. “Joseph and Jesus. I don’t have time for this. I need to get to Raymond Harris’s house before it’s too late.”

“Jacob?” Catherine’s voice is soft and distant. Maybe she’s waiting for me on the steps of the plane.

“Coming.”

“Jacob, you have to wake up. You’re bleeding.” Her hand is on my arm, then my knee, and then all I can see is her hair at a strange angle. Catherine comes up with a flash of white in her hands. A first-aid kit. She pops it open and pulls out a smaller white square. Gauze. It floats unsteadily over to my forehead, and Catherine presses it to the cut. The torn skin beats along with my heart. “Sorry! Sorry. But you’re still bleeding, and we⁠—”

“Have to go.”

“Yes, but not to Raymond Harris’s house. We’re not in New York. Come on, Jacob. You can’t pass out right now. I don’t think I can carry you.”

I blink again, and the plane’s cabin slides begrudgingly into focus. All the cream-colored leather gives a ghostly impression in the semi-darkness. More blood gets in my eye.

“How did that happen?” Charlotte’s not pleased, and she’s doing her best to keep her voice pitched low.

“Head wounds bleed a lot.”

“How did you get a head wound?”