AUGUST 14, 2003, TIME UNKNOWN
Sophia—which one is, at this point, unclear—slips from her Novak’s hold and walks toward the kneeling figures. Joy grabs for her but doesn’t seem willing to move closer to her double. Sophia reaches out and presses her hands against the kneeling Joy’s cheeks.
SOPHIA: Mama? Wake up. Mama, talk.
She looks back.
SOPHIA: Why she doesn’t talk?
HARDCASTLE: They’re doubles. Those are our doubles; they’re not real.
KAPOOR: Don’t be obtuse, Will. This explains everything quite neatly, doesn’t it? Vanya and William did go down toward the beach. We’re the ones that came back. Carolyn—
NOVAK: She must have been replaced before we even got to the church. When we were separated in the mist.
KAPOOR: They tried to bring the real one here, but she got away somehow. And we found her. We killed her.
Her voice is almost clinical—almost. An edge of disgust seeps through.
NOVAK: No, you didn’t. I did.
KAPOOR: You didn’t know.
HARDCASTLE: I am William Hardcastle. I’m me. I’m not some . . . doppelganger.
KAPOOR: That’s exactly what you are, Will.
NOVAK: How could we not know? I feel like Joy Novak. I don’t remember being anyone else.
Carreau giggles. They look at him sharply. He spreads his hands.
CARREAU: You should see your faces.
He laughs—laughs until he wheezes, bending over at the waist.
CARREAU: Caro arrow row oh, such a lovely echo we made of her, and then you put a bullet in its brain. But you were just the same!
HARDCASTLE: Jesus, Martin.
CARREAU: No, neither, I’m afraid.
He stops laughing abruptly and stands up straight. His head gives an avian tilt, and he clicks his teeth together three times rapidly.
CARREAU: We eat their memories, and for a time they seem like truth. But it doesn’t last, doesn’t last. We can’t hold on in the face of the song. And it’s so, so nice to surrender.
KAPOOR: Then you know what you are.
CARREAU: Oh, oh. Yes. You’ll know soon too. Now that you’ve done what was needed.
NOVAK: What was needed?
Carreau looks at the Sophias, his grin wide and fixed.
CARREAU: You brought them here. They wouldn’t have followed if you didn’t believe.
Novak moves now, grabbing both Sophias and pulling them away from Carreau.
NOVAK: What do you want with them?
CARREAU: We need them to open the gate. We’ve searched so long for the right child. There’s something special about little Sophie and her shadow, don’t you think?
At the edge of the room, the strange children move among the stones, their eyes gleaming with reflected light.
NOVAK: Stay away from them.
CARREAU: Listen, Joy. Listen to the song. Let go of her.
He jerks his head toward Novak’s kneeling double. The echo-Novak’s throat bobs in a convulsive swallow.
HARDCASTLE: I’m not surrendering to any song. Come on. Let’s get out of here.
NOVAK: We can’t leave them.
She gestures to the kneeling doubles.
HARDCASTLE: Screw them. I’m not sticking around.
KAPOOR: There must be a way to wake them up.
HARDCASTLE: You’re kidding, right? We wake them up and they’re going to panic. Attack us. They won’t let us exist.
NOVAK: We aren’t real.
HARDCASTLE: Speak for yourself.
He looks down at the camera, grunts, and drops it. It hits the ground and rolls, the image going momentarily blank, but the drop doesn’t seem to have done too much damage.
KAPOOR: Will, get back here!
NOVAK: Let him go. We need to— Martin, how do we wake them up?
CARREAU: He’s right, you know. They’d kill you. And I wouldn’t want that, Joy. Oh, how he longs for you, how he loves you. You know, don’t you? And you ignore it.
NOVAK: That’s not true.
CARREAU: You string him along. You take what you need from him. From everyone. You take and you twist and you watch them dance and it makes you feel so good, so very good, that they love you so, but you love no one but yourself.
NOVAK: Stop it. Martin—whatever you are, you’re a copy of him, and there’s too much good in that man to be gone completely. Not if you were a good enough copy to fool us. Tell us how to wake them up, Martin.
CARREAU: I—
His hands clench, release, clench, release, a rhythm like the beating of birds’ wings.
CARREAU: We’re still connected. But it’s like a dream. Like a memory. I—
He jerks his head to the side.
CARREAU: Here, let me show you.
He steps toward the kneeling Carreau. He reaches for his waistband. Novak notices the knife a moment too late—a folding utility knife, just a common-sense bit of gear Carreau has probably used a dozen times in front of her, too small and practical to be remembered as anything but a tool.
NOVAK: No!
She’s too far away. She knows it; she makes no attempt to stop Carreau, instead turning the girls toward her, pressing their faces against her legs so they can’t see as Carreau grabs his double by the hair, pulling his head back, and slashes with the knife.
Blood spatters into the shallow bowl. The real Carreau topples, limbs twitching as he bleeds out without ever regaining true consciousness. The echo steps toward the next person in line—Vanya Kapoor.
CARREAU: This will simplify things.
He reaches for Dr. Kapoor. Her echo shouts.
KAPOOR [echo]:* Vanya Ellora Kapoor, wake the fuck up.
The real Kapoor’s head whips up. She sees the knife and, too fast to be anything but raw instinct, throws herself up and forward, inside Martin’s reach. Her elbow connects with his stomach and sends him sprawling onto the ground.
Her echo steps forward into view. She holds one arm out, blood dripping from the cut along the side of her arm. Her other hand grips a shard of one of the shallow bowls, broken to create a sharp edge.
KAPOOR [echo]: Pinch me, I’m dreaming.
KAPOOR: What the hell is—
NOVAK: Joy Serenity Novak, you aren’t dreaming. This is real. Sophie is in danger. Wake up.
She strides forward and slaps her double across the face. Novak—the real Novak—half topples backward, but catches herself, blinking rapidly and gaping at her echo.
KAPOOR [echo]: Look out!
Carreau’s echo springs to his feet and charges at the newly awakened woman, brandishing the knife. The echo Novak throws herself in the way. Between the light and the poor angle, the fight is a confusion of shadows. Kapoor’s echo darts across the room. She bends down beside a soldier, one of those fully dressed, and straightens up, holding a pistol.
She levels it. Waits. Carreau throws Novak’s echo off, looms over her. Kapoor squeezes the trigger.
The bullet passes through Carreau’s left eye and exits out the back of his skull. The damage is contained, orderly. A brief puff of blood. He collapses.
Novak’s echo lies on the ground, blood soaking her sweater. The real Novak steps toward her.
NOVAK [echo]: No, take care of—take care of the girls.
KAPOOR [echo]: You’re going to be all right.
Joy, looking stunned and a bit sick, turns to the two Sophias. She gathers them up in her arms and whispers to them, pressing her lips against their hair. Vanya’s echo looks up from where she kneels beside Joy’s echo.
KAPOOR [echo]: What do you know?
KAPOOR: Bits and pieces. I saw—sometimes I thought I was you. Awake. And sometimes I was here.
KAPOOR [echo]: But you know the gist of it.
KAPOOR: I think I can put it together.
NOVAK: We need to get out of here.
KAPOOR [echo]: You do. We aren’t going anywhere.
NOVAK: It’s not safe here. We all have to—
KAPOOR [echo]: I don’t know if you heard what Martin—the fake Martin—said. But what happened to him and to Carolyn is going to happen to us too. I don’t know if that means in minutes or years or what, but I’m not taking that chance. My son needs his mother to come home. And I’m not the one he’s waiting for.
KAPOOR: What about . . .
She looks over at the Sophias, both in Novak’s arms.
NOVAK: They’re kids.
NOVAK [echo]: She’s different. Even Martin said so. She’s not like the rest of us. You have to take her with you. Take care of her. I—I’m starting to understand the singing. You need to get them away from me. But I think—when I listen to the song, I know things. And I think I can open a way back out of the mist for you. Just get to the boat. I’ll hold on as long as I can, if you just promise to get them home.
NOVAK: I promise. Of course I promise.
KAPOOR: What about William?
KAPOOR [echo]: Try slapping him. I mean, something positive ought to come out of this.
Kapoor snorts. She crouches down and looks into William Hardcastle’s slack face.
And then she leans forward, and whispers in his ear. He shivers. The bowl slips from his fingers, clattering to the floor. Kapoor stands up and holds out her hand.
HARDCASTLE: What . . . ?
KAPOOR: Questions later. How do we do this, echo girl?
She looks at Novak’s echo, who still has one hand against the oozing wound in her belly.
NOVAK [echo]: Just get me . . . bring me to the pool.
Kapoor and her echo are the ones that help her, Hardcastle still too disoriented to help, Novak holding the crying, confused girls. They bring the echo to the edge of the black pool beneath the glass shard, and she steps in. She staggers free of them. With each step she sinks lower in the liquid. When her fingertips brush the surface, it begins to crawl up her arms. It flows in rivulets along her clavicle, up her throat. It slips between her lips. It trickles over her eyelids, and her eyes fill with that shadowless void.
SOPHIA: Mama . . .
NOVAK [echo]: I love you, little bird. Now go.