legs, my arms. He yelped with pain, more than once. You know, I don’t think his heart was in it; he grew weak quickly.
When I finally got my hand around the hammer I took from the basement, I raised it up high. Then I brought it down hard so that it connected with his skull. That was an ugly sound, metal on bone. I think he was glad. He shuddered with relief as life left him, and then his big body sagged on top of mine, both of us bloody and spent.
I felt the second he stopped breathing. I think I freed him from a life of suffering. Silence. I shoved his body off mine and pulled myself up—which, looking back, was a small miracle. I must have been running on adrenaline and pure mortal terror—the breakfast of champions. I reached for the front door and twisted the knob.
Can you believe it? It was open, unlocked. I swung it wide, blinded by the white of the shining sun, by the wide expanse of green that lay out before me.
This is what I think.
Within us, there are layers of self. If things go well, the whole and healthy self, the flawed but basically decent self emerges, grows, is nurtured and heads out into the world. If things go badly, other selves, the shadow selves that might have remained dormant, emerge instead. Sometimes we need them, those dark ones within. We can’t survive certain circumstances without them. It’s just that once they’re out, you can’t always get them to retreat.
I could have run in that moment. I should have. Looking back, that would have been the right thing—to go for help. I think Tess might be alive if I had. Instead. Instead—I turned around, that hammer still in my hand and I went back to try to save Tess. I wasn’t going to leave her there. Not the way you left us. I see that as the last moment I might have survived undamaged. Injured, traumatized, changed even, yes. But not split.
From somewhere above I heard a rhythmic banging.
I climbed the stairs and moved toward the sound, which I soon discovered was coming from behind a closed door at the end of the hallway. I still dream about that hallway sometimes, the filthy floor, grit crunching beneath my sneakers, the dingy walls. I put my hand on the knob, my breathing ragged, my whole body shaking with fear, pain, exhaustion.
When I look back, I remember as I pulled the door open a bright light pouring out of the room. A liquid gold. There is some type of sound—a siren. But there’s nothing else there. What I saw, what followed in the hours before the police finally found us. It’s not accessible as a linear memory. Sometimes there are flashes—in that hypnagogic space right before I fall asleep. I see a floor covered with blood. I hear my own terrified screams. I have scars. I know you do, too. Sometimes my hand finds them—on my arms, my neck, my legs. It’s a blessing, that blank place. I tell my patients who don’t remember the details of their trauma that they are the lucky ones. As a doctor, I do not push into memory, or recommend hypnosis. If your mind has created a blank space for you, it’s because you can’t handle what’s there. Be grateful. I’m sure he remembers, but I don’t.
The next thing I recall is the police breaking down the door.
Kreskey’s face was a bloody mask when the police took him out.
“You fought him, son,” someone said—maybe it was the EMT. “Good for you.”
You never go home. Not after something like that. That cop, he told us, never, ever let them take you. I understand now what he meant. If they take you, you never come back, whether you survive or not.
“You’re over the line,” says Tess from the back seat.
“Is there a line?”
That thoughtful pause. Remember how she used to do that. Kind of cock her head to the side, push up her glasses. “Isn’t there?”
I leave her there, shut the door and step out into the night.
I shoulder my pack. Pull up my hood.
She’s right. This one’s a little different. There has been no lengthy trial, no obvious travesty of justice. There’s no mountain of irrefutable evidence. There’s just one child’s suffering, her not-quite-reliable claims, the lingering suspicion that there might be something not quite right happening on this isolated property.