Page 35 of The Square

And then he looked up at me, smiled, and said, “The only thing what’s ever scared me is this thing I heard once… ‘The last man on earth sits alone in a room. Suddenly… there’s a knock on the door.’” His smile widened and he continued, “Just hope, bru, that—one day—when the knock comes, you ain’t the one sitting in the chair.”

It was such a curious thing for him to say in that moment that I laughed slightly.

And then I choked him to death.

It’s an odd thing to be remembering now. Except maybe it’s not. Because here, in the middle of this isolated estate, miles from nowhere, alone with Eliza in this place that no one knows about…

Suddenly, there’s a knock on the door.

CHAPTER ELEVEN - DANNY

I wait, standing behind Christine, as the sound of footsteps approach the door from the other side. She’s nervous. Been nervous this whole car trip. And I have a million questions, all of which I’m holding inside. But they are about to explode because I have a very bad feeling about what’s happening right now.

The locks disengage.

Christine sucks in a breath of air.

The door opens inward.

Christine exhales.

And the woman on the other side is someone I know. Someone I was just asking about back in Hilo, in fact.

“Well, look at this,” Eliza Watson says with a smirk. “I’ve been wondering you would find us.”

CHAPTER TWELVE - ALEC

“Expecting someone?”Eliza asks, with a wry smile.

“Fok are you smiling at? What’s going on?”

“Honestly, I smile when I’m nervous, and right now things feel like they could go any number of terrible ways, don’t they?”

I stare at the main entry door all the way across the other room. It sounds like someone is pounding on it violently. And while that’s likely just an illusion created by the reverberating bounce of sound in the wide-open space, it’s also just as likely that there is some kind of violence fueling the knock. Violence fuels every moment that exists in my life.

No one knows I’m here. The only person who even knows about this place is Lars. But there’s no way my brother has come.

Unless…

I snap out of my momentary stupor, realizing that whoever is here, if they wanted to do harm, they wouldn’t be knocking. So they’re probably not here to kill me.

Probably.

But before I can step to greet the arrival of this unexpected guest, Eliza is breezing across the floor and has her hand on the great, primeval doorknob.

Time slows. I can hear my breathing filling my lungs. Eliza’s hand goes to turn the knob and she looks back at me over her shoulder with a shrug in her smile and a raise of her eyebrows. And when she opens the door…

There is Christine.

If you had asked me to lay odds on who it might be, I honestly would have wagered at about a million to one against it being Christine. After everything. After… all of it. She’s possibly the last person I would have said would come looking.

And yet, for whatever reason, I am not surprised at all.

She looks a bit like a drowned rat. Her white sneakers are all muddy from having trekked up to the door in the rain. Her tight blue jeans look as though they’re being shrink wrapped to her body. She has on a yellowish windbreaker that calls to mind the dress she used to wear every day. The dress that would allow her to pretend that no matter what was happening it would always be sunny.

Fokken irony, that.

Her wet hair is matted to her cheeks and the rain on her face makes it impossible to tell whether or not she’s been crying. Neither that she has or hasn’t would shock me at this point.

And now something that confuses me happens.

The knocking continues.

The door is open, Christine is standing here in the rain, and yet I can still hear the knocking. A bang, bang, banging that causes me to look around and see from where it’s coming.

Christine and Eliza don’t acknowledge it. Through the open passage to the kitchen, far across the great entry hall, they are just… talking. I can’t hear what they’re saying. I can’t make out what’s going on.

And quite without warning, I cannot see them as well as a moment before either.

I can’t hear them. I can’t see them. I only know that they are close.

And from somewhere I can’t understand, the knocking continues.