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Beside her, my brother holds her hand. He’s a child one moment, a man the next. In his other hand he, too, holds a length of those beads, from the end of which slip a countless, never-ending supply of them. Bouncing on wooden planks. Disappearing with the screaming man over the abyss.
I see the connection then. The beads they each hold come from one source. Bound together. Eternal.
Darkness surrounds them all.
And I stand on the top of the world watching.
Watching.
It’s as if it’s all on repeat.
Until a door opens, and out walks Madelena. She’s ghost-like here wearing a simple white gown of worn cotton. The wind whips the dress around her. Long hair tangles and knots like a noose circling her neck. Her feet are bare. She’s naked beneath the parchment-like dress.
I scream for her to stop, to not go out there, but she doesn’t hear me. I reach out and see my own hand too far to reach her. To touch her. To pull her back, away from the edge. Away from those people.
“Madelena!”
I scream and scream, my throat hoarse with the effort. And she just keeps walking toward them, entranced, the never-ending string of beads in her hand like that in my brother’s. The Commander’s son. My half-brother.
No one sees her though. No one turns when she passes. I breathe a sigh of relief.
But then there’s someone else. Another figure enters the scene. The man who is falling. Who has fallen. His head is caved in. His body is mangled. But he walks toward her around the other side of the catwalk.
“Madelena!” I call again and again but my voice is ripped from me, wind stealing it away, smashing it against those rocks as it does the ocean. I fight against the invisible bonds holding me in place. The words detailing the stabbing of Alexia swim before my eyes, blinding me momentarily. Thiago’s eyes take on that look they did before we did the worst of what we did. Before we hurt the innocents and left mangled bodies behind like the one he’s walking in now.
In time, we each get what we deserve.
“Madelena!”
But they keep doing what they’re doing.
The two praying.
The one staring into darkness with her bleeding lips.
My brother a child.
And then not.
And then looking up at me, a man, seeing me where I stand above the world. As Thiago reaches Madelena and Madelena reaches Thiago and the beads fall, fall, fall, and Caius tucks his hand into his pocket and cocks his head to the side the way the Commander always did and the easy smile turns into a grin that stretches from ear to ear, inhuman teeth gleaming before the sound of their screams. Before Madelena and Thiago are gone. Both tumbling over the edge, both reaching frantic arms, eyes wide with terror as they disappear into that abyss.
I gasp for breath as my eyelids fly open. Sweat drenches me, soaks the blankets, the sheets. I stare up at the ceiling, confused. Moonlight filters in, a cloud casting shadows along the wall. A murmur beside me has me turn to find Madelena asleep beside me, her sweet face relaxed, soft. Innocent. So innocent.
My throat closes.
I slide quietly out of the bed, and when I see the rosary I smashed against the wall, I turn away from it.
The floorboards creak as I pad barefoot across the room. I put on the clothes I’d packed, a pair of jeans, a sweater, and boots. Downstairs, I take the heavy coat Father Michael left for me. It was his. He gave it to me the night he found me out in the water, wading in chest-deep. Seeking out my own death. Stalking it. Daring it.
The antique grandfather clock tolls the half-hour mark. It’s four-thirty in the morning. I bundle myself in the old coat, the scent on it familiar, old, a strange comfort. I pull the door open and step out into the brisk night, closing it behind me and taking the familiar way around the house over the dune and to the beach.
Only a few clouds are in the sky tonight. From here, I can see a thousand stars. It’s so fucking beautiful it almost hurts. Even the cold, the constant wind, the vast ocean are too much. I begin my walk along the miles-long beach. I need to think. To clear my head and think.
Who contacted me from Thiago’s messaging app? Could it have been him warning me? Trying to clue me in? Could he have survived the fall? Why not come for revenge, then, against the man who pushed him? I am sure it was a man. Thiago is far too big, too strong for a woman to overpower him. Not to mention he is a trained fighter, an enforcer.
Unless he was caught by surprise.
If, like Madelena says, he had rescued her from falling over, he’d have been surprised by an attack before he was ready. The catwalk high on the lighthouse is the perfect place to ambush a man like him.
