There's been an incident.
There's been an incident.
That's what they told me.
An incident. An accident. Like it was some freak of nature thing that no one could have predicted. Prevented. Just destined to be.
An incident.
That was the same thing they told my sister when Steve finally put me in the hospital. Shattered collarbone, busted lip. Black and blue from tip to tail.
It was my fault he'd gotten out of it that time around. I'd taken off in his car and wrapped it around a tree about a block away from our house. No one believed me when I told them the injuries had happened first, all because of the five of glasses of wine he'd pressured me into drinking while he played nice for dinner.
It was when I turned down the sixth that he'd thrown his glass at my face.
An incident. Just destined to be.
My sister believed me, thankfully, even when the judges didn't and I was granted visitation rather than custody of our eight year old son. He'd always told me he had friends in high places. He'd always said that if I left that he'd destroy me.
Say what you want about Steve, but he's not a liar.
I existed in my sister's spare bedroom, while living for supervised visits with Bailey. It was impossible to explain to him what was happening, why mom couldn't come home. So I just held him, read to him, fought back the tears that burned my eyes every time I saw his round red cheeks and big blue eyes.
The nights were the worst. I couldn't sleep without seeing Steve's face, his fist, feeling every pinch and shove and blow I'd acquired over the years. During the day I job hunted, kept it together, but as soon as the sun set I started to shake as if something deep inside of me wanted out.
One night I grabbed my tennis shoes, and every evening since I did my best to find relief in the worn dirt paths of the park down the street. To outrun the sneered barbs and insults buried deep within my psyche.
My family hated it. They said it was dangerous. There was a small creek in the park leading off into the rain drainage tunnels under the city. Some ten years back a girl, Emma Wilson, had been found dead inside them. Her parents moved away shortly after and the neighborhood never really recovered.
How could I explain to them that that small rush of danger was the closest I felt to home since my face had hit the steering wheel?
Besides, I didn't have much of a say in it. My feet moved underneath me and I was helpless to follow. One second the scratchy fabric of my floral comforter was prickling at my arms, the next the wind was rushing past my ears. Trees and playground equipment darted by me in a blur and I didn't come to until I was huffing, hands on my knees, staring into the dry creek bed and the black abyss of a tunnel at its end.
Time moved slowly during those long, lonely nights. Sometimes I lost minutes, sometimes hours. Each night drew me closer in. Once I pulled out of my daze while teetering over the jagged rocks, nearly ready to dive in face first to the stones below.
It was a night like that when I got the call. My cell phone sprung to life in my pocket and consciousness crashed back into me. Mud squelched beneath my shoes, and the darkness was heavy, suffocating. I blinked and realized the tunnel was right in front of me. Somehow I'd ended up in the creek without realizing it.
Another ring sent me scrambling, raising the phone to my ear with trembling hands.
I'm sorry, ma'am. There's been an incident.
A new kind of numbness settled over me, into my bones. I was completely aware but frozen in place, gaze pulled into the tunnel as if it were a black hole as the police described what had happened to my son. My Bailey.
Eventually the line went dead, the phone dropped from my hand. Eventually I was shaken out of my stupor by a different police officer, one called by a neighbor awoken by the sound of screams echoing off the stone like a ping pong ball.
"I can't believe our boy is gone." That's what Steve said to me at the hospital, wrapping his heavy arms around me like a straight-jacket. Tears streaked his face, but his eyes were as empty as ever. I swore I could make out the hint of a smirk on his thin lips.
He'd been running around the pool late at night, that's what they told me. What Steve told them. Snuck out and slipped in. He was gone before the ambulance made it on the scene. Steve was a hero, apparently. Performed CPR until they pried him off of our son's cold body.
They didn't know that Bailey hated the pool. He was scared to death of the water ever since Steve pushed him in as a joke four years earlier.
The only ones that knew that were me and Steve.
Before we left the hospital he leaned down close to my ear and said, "If only his mother had been there to watch over him."
Already slow days moved even more sluggishly after that. Each movement was difficult, like crawling through molasses. I was trapped in a viscous grief that was determined to pull me under.
But at night, I still ran. I still ended up at the tunnel. Each day I drew closer to it, until I was at the mouth of the tunnel, and then several feet inside.
Just before the spell wore off and I found myself back inside my body, I swore I could hear the sound of Bailey laughing in the distance.
"I'm worried about you, Meg," my sister told me over lunch one day. It was actually breakfast for me, considering I couldn't drag myself out of bed until mid-afternoon, but Rae dutifully whipped up some eggs and sausage anyway. God bless her.
"Huh?" I mumbled between small bites, staring off out the window.
"Meg, look at me."
I blinked, rolled my head slowly to the side. Just that small movement felt nearly impossible, an uphill battle. I could see my sisters face, but it felt so far away, bathed in a strange sepia hue like I was looking out from an amber cage.
"You're streaking mud in every night. Staying out till dawn. I know you have so much on your mind right now. I can't imagine how difficult this must be. Maybe it's time you talk to someone."
Her words sounded like static feedback in my ears. I struggled to pull the bits and pieces I caught into something coherent.
"I'll clean up the mud," I said, before dropping my fork and retreating back to my bedroom.
I curled up in the rocking chair sitting just in front of the window, wincing against the bright daylight that rested outside of it. I could see the park in the distance, bright green and filled with life, children squealing in the play area. During the day it lost its pull on me.
My eyelids grew heavy. Just before they slipped close I caught sight of Steve's red Ford parked on the street a couple houses down.
My dreams were filled with Bailey’s laughter and a teenage girl standing at the mouth of a black hole, motioning me forward.
By the time my eyes fluttered back open the sun had dipped low in the sky and Steve’s truck was gone. Had I imagined it there in the first place? It was possible. Everything these days seemed to exist somewhere on the cusp of fantasy and reality, sleeping and awake.
I’d woken earlier than usual, of that much I was certain. I didn’t notice what had woken me until several seconds later when my ears caught my sister’s hushed whispers down the hall.
“It’s time for a restraining order, Dad. This is the third time I’ve caught him.”
I let her words fade back into oblivion and slipped on my running shoes. Her back was turned as I snuck past her open bedroom door, cellphone shoved against her ear. I crept down the stairs and out the door without a sound.
As soon as my feet hit the cement, my body kicked into action, knowing exactly what to do. Exactly where to take me. The last remaining tendrils of light cast gloomy shadows off the houses and trees and kept me in my body as it pushed forward. I sucked in the hot summer air, grateful to feel sticky droplets of sweat dripping from my forehead.
Even with a vague and unwanted level of consciousness, I was still drawn toward the tunnel, helpless to the gravitational pull that it had over me. I stood on the jagged rocks overlooking it and closed my eyes, taking in the peaceful, distant sound of laughter.
And then two strong hands planted themselves against my back, shoving me forward.
My heels dug down into the stones below me, but with nothing to find purchase in I jerked over off the side of the wall. A shocked squeal escaped my lips, only to be cut short as I hit the muck-covered cement that lay below. I threw my arms out to cushion the fall, and groaned, low and distant as my elbow took the brunt of the impact and snapped like a twig on the forest floor.
"Megan." Steve's voice floated in the air above me like a storm cloud, electric and ready to burst. "I think you and I need to have a conversation."
My groaning turned to whimpers in my throat. That sentence, so familiar, was like a blow on it's own. Be quiet, it told me, be small. If you do what you're told, it will be over soon. If not…
His loafers crunched against loose gravel as he started down the slope. They'll get dirty, the voice told me, and it's all your fault.
I pulled my feet underneath of me and pushed up with all my might. That voice, it wasn't mine. I used to think it was, but through the space, through the grief, I knew better now.
It was his.
I turned toward the dark of the tunnel, my only way forward. The last remnants of daylight refused to puncture the darkness but for a split second I swore I could see something poking out.
A stark white hand gesturing me onward.
I stumbled forward, bracing my broken elbow against my body as I went. Steve splashed down in the rancid water behind me just as I slipped through the opening, swallowed whole. Every time I'd ended up in the tunnel beforehand I'd done so in a near dream-state, wandered out with the flashlight on my cell phone and a tingling fear deep in my gut. This time I was running in blind.
But so was he. Blinded by the darkness and his own rage, I heard him thrashing behind me, cursing.
"Megan, get your ass back here."
But my body knew what to do. For real this time, not the false reaction he'd beaten into me.
I ran.
A blinding light tore through the tunnel from behind me. I ducked around an upcoming turn, sticking close to the wall, fingers brushing against it to keep myself steady. The walls were lined with layered, colorful graffiti.
R.I.P.
It all ends here.
Emma, can you hear me?
Can you hear me now?
I kept moving.
Steve rushed at me, gaining ground. I had practice and familiarity on my side, but his legs were longer, his rage cleaner. Soon I was farther in the tunnel than I'd ever been before.
Up ahead there was a sudden hole in the wall, a small hallway jutting off to the left. I took the turn so fast I bashed my right shoulder into the wall, making my elbow scream in protest.
There was no time to slow down.
Without the flashlight shining behind me I was blind again, shoving through the inky blackness like a linebacker until the floor gave out from underneath me and I found myself tumbling forward once more into a basin of stale water.
I sucked in a breath involuntarily, quickly sputtering and coughing to expel the liquid from my lungs. Light burst into my peripheral as I staggered to my feet. I spun in place, searching for another hallway to duck into. All I saw were grimy stone walls and more graffiti. My eyes caught on a stick figure in a dress, two large X's in place of its eyes.
Goodbye, Emma.
A splash from behind pulled attention away from the wall. Steve was in the water with me, knee deep and livid. The shadows cast from his flashlight made his eyes seem darker, rabid, like two more little dark tunnels running through the sockets. How had I ever looked at this man and thought he was handsome? Thought he was kind?
"I'm sick of this shit, Megan," he huffed, water rippling around his knees as he stepped forward. "You're coming home tonight. That's final."
"You killed Bailey!" I sobbed, sloshing backward. "You killed him, Steve!"
He scoffed. "I killed him? I killed him?! A boy needs his mother, Megan. You took that away from him."
My head bobbed violently back and forth. "No, no…" I hated how small I sounded, how quickly he shook my foundation.
I took another step backward only for my calf to catch on something thick under the murky surface of the water. I began to tilt backward just as he rushed me, burying his hand in the collar of my shirt and yanking me forward.
"You think I wanted this?" he sneered. "You think I like what you make me do?"
Whatever was behind my leg shifted, shuddered, rippled against me. The sensation sent a burst of bile rushing up my throat, before a slap across the face brought me back into the moment.
The thing jerked back behind me.
I started to tumble again. This time my husband followed the movement, letting me collapse to the ground. He fell with me, knees landing on either side of my body until he was straddling me in the water, fists still clenched against the side of my neck.
"He needed you, Meg. I needed you. You selfish fucking bitch."
He shoved me down, under the thick dark water. I gasped in a breath just before I went under, and it was as if it brought a small bit of fight back into me. I trashed wildly, kicking, clawing, bucking like a bull.
He stayed firmly planted on top of me, his distorted shouting bubbling just above the surface.
Pushing against him was like pushing against a brick wall, and so my hands flailed outward, searching through the muck for anything I could grab ahold of. When one landed in something solid I wrapped my hand around it and pulled with all my might.
My chest began to burn, lungs screaming for air. Just when I was sure they were about to explode he released me, falling backward away from my body. I rushed to the surface, gasping desperately. He was gasping too, I realized, sprawled out on his ass in front of me. A dark, mottled figure with blond matted hair and red marks around its neck sat kneeling between us, back turned to me. It, she, was naked, skin bloated and greying, raising one arm in Steve's direction.
The other was still gripped tightly in my hand.
I dropped her arm, a deep tremor rumbling through my shoulders. Steve's black-hole eyes were wide as baseballs, fixed on her. There were four long gashes in his cheek, leaking crimson blood into the sludge below.
The figure rose to it's feet.
It was just a girl, I realized, thirteen at the oldest. Even with her back turned a wave of recognition washed through me. That blonde hair, those angry ligature marks. I'd seen her face countless times before, staring out from the missing person posters scattered around my sister's neighborhood even long after they'd discovered the body.
Emma.
I stood as well. All the fear and adrenaline that'd been rushing through me cooled to a distant whisper through my veins. I heard Bailey's laugher echoing off the rounded walls, and I smiled. She'd been trying to bring me here all along.
We both stepped forward, Steve scrambling back. I wrapped my hand around hers, squeezing slightly, smiling down at her. Her face was only a shadow of the pretty girl she'd once been, her lips cracked and peeling, busted teeth poking out from behind them. But looking at her I couldn't help but think of my Bailey the first time I held him.
"Emma," I said softly. "I'm here now."
She let my hand fall, jerking forward in a burst of speed. I barely saw her move until she was on him, thin boney figures wrapping around his neck, broken teeth sinking into his cheek bones. His screams were as sweet as children's laughter, until she dunked him under and those screams became garbled white noise.
I knelt down beside the two of them, she pulled him up to look at me. It was like staring into my own eyes for so many years, scared and helpless and oh so confused. It made me smile. I reached out to brush a hand along his bloody cheek, and then leaned in close.
"Fuck you, Steve."
I jerked my hand back and let it crash back into him, reveling in the crunch I heard as his teeth broke loose and cut his lips.
And then I stood and let his whimpers fade into the distance as I made my way back out of the tunnel.
The sun had fully set by the time I made it out. A cool, lovely breeze blew through the trees, rustling my damp hair. Even with my clothes sticking against my skin, I felt lighter than ever before. Free.
I couldn't wait to come back the next day to thank Emma for everything she'd done for me.
My sister was waiting at the dining room table when I made my way back into the house. She gasped, taking in the blood and dirt soaking my clothes.
"Oh my god, Meg," she said, jumping to her feet. "What happened?"
I smiled.
"There's been an incident."