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What she sees is horrifying.
III
The witch can’t start the engine, but shecanrelease the handbrake.
Sluggish at first, the van rolls forwards. Quickly, it gathers speed, bouncing over rocks and tussocks, rattling like a box of sharp tools.
Already, Annie’s halved the distance between them. It’s clear from the sheer recklessness of her pursuit that she cares about only one thing: putting Elissa under the wheels.
In the distance, the lead police car swerves off the coastal road and bounces on to the gravel track that serves the peninsula, tyres kicking up mud. It may as well be on a different planet.
Abandoning all caution, Elissa slip-slides down the slope. The van bears down on her, unstoppable, a cacophony of screaming metal. There’s simply no way of avoiding it. She thinks of her mum, her grandparents, of all the things she wanted to say. She thinks of the agony her death will cause them, and how fiercely she tried to prevent it.
Far below, one of the helicopter doors swings open. A woman jumps from the cockpit. Four police cars slide to a stop near by.
The woman beside the helicopter waves frantically. Uniformed police officers pour from the parked patrol cars. They wave their arms too.
Behind her, Elissa hears the van. It’s shaking so violently it sounds like it’s breaking apart. Below, the officers start yelling. She can’t hear their words. There’s nothing they can say to help.
Elissa skids down a hillock, nearly trips over a rock. She can’t outrun what’s coming. She hopes her death will be quick, that it won’t hurt too much.
As the van’s shadow overtakes her, she tries to fill her head with something good, a memory of better times. She doesn’t want to face her fate, but in the end she can’t resist. Twisting around, she sees the van’s front grille filling her vision.
‘No!’ she screams, her legs giving out beneath her. ‘NO!’
Here it comes.
Here it comes.
Oh Jesus please let there be something after please let this not be it please forgive me Lord please be with me right now right now RIGHT—
She stares through the windscreen.
Her eyes flare.
It’s been such a crazy life. So startling and bittersweet.
Kyle
I
Wind on my face. Wind in my hair. A quiet intensity in my heart.
Outside the tool shed, with nothing to protect me from the wind rolling in off the sea, my blood-drenched clothes ripple against my skin.
Above me, grey clouds heavy with rain haul themselves east. Further west, I spot a narrow strip of blue. I’d like to die with a clear sky overhead, but we don’t choose how we go – I know I won’t get my wish, and that’s OK.
Further down the slope, I see Elissa, struggling to get away. She looks so lost and afraid. It feels important, suddenly, to use her real name.
Watching her, I think back to the first time we met. Injured, shackled to the iron ring, her spirit nevertheless blazed with fire. In just over a week, it’s been cruelly whittled away.
I think of my own family: Mama, my sweet brother. Like most of God’s gentler creatures, we lived in joyful denial of the wolves that prowled among us. Because of our innocence, we were smashed. If I have anything in common with Elissa Mirzoyan, perhaps it’s that.
The sound of Papa’s van brings me back; its engine turning over and over. Looking around, the first thing I see is the trilby-wearing skull smoking a cigarette.
I found that sticker in a custom-car magazine Papa brought home once. When I stuck it on the van’s back bumper, nobody seemed to care. It scared me, that skull, so badly I could barely look at it. If it scared me, I reasoned it might scare other kids too. Maybe, when they saw Papa parked up, they’d see that sticker and run. I don’t know if my plan ever worked, but I know exactly how many times it failed, because every time the van delivered a new resident to the Memory Wood I’d load up my .22 and put a round through the bumper.
I’m having difficulty breathing – I can only manage short sips of air. At least the pain of my injuries has dulled. Maybe that’s a benefit of bleeding out.