CHAPTER THIRTY

It came as a burst of light, an explosion of sudden discovery, an epiphany, as if she had awakened from a long slumber in the moist darkness of a tomb ... or a womb.

Her mind groped for words, a sentence to describe what was happening. This is the end of expectations. This is the death of all dreams. This is the end of the future. This is the murder of hope.

Before, when she had, in that moment of insanity, jumped on Darryl's hateful icon, bounced her foot on the ignition pedal, sped blindly away into the sanctuary of the mist, she had felt only the prospect of ending, of shutting down, of getting out.

All her faculties seemed acute. She felt no sense of hysteria or panic. After all, she had chosen to take this ride into the beyond. Beyond what? Beyond where?

Then suddenly, for no apparent reason, she had turned back, let the motor slow, then idle. In the rising mist, she saw the three figures emerging, heard voices whose words did not register except as blasts of anger, which she returned in kind, working the motor's growl in response.

Desperation, she decided, had given her permission to do this. Perched on the bike, she watched the three figures emerge more clearly, but still she couldn't hear their voices, only the anger. Then they were fully developed, visually whole. Her child devil, harvest of her bad seed, the beast of hatred with the twisted cross of hate glinting in the sunbeams and the man, that piece of flotsam, her last potential lifesaver, the ring-around-the-finger man.

All nails in her coffin, she saw, feeling her lips curl in what could pass for a smile, but which she knew was contrived as the last look people might see, a frozen death mask of a smile. Then she saw the beast rise, seize the child devil and, as she believed, slash the knife across her throat.

Well, then, she thought, here was the moment, the license she had been seeking to kill the beast with his own weapon of choice. Desperation had given her permission. Despair, after all, offered no options. She had lost all the battles. What was one more to lose?

Then she had moved the monster forward, took dead aim. Her first pass was a miss. Turning, she tried again, missed again. There were voices, shouts, but she heard nothing except the sound of her own purpose. It's all over; what does it matter?

Suddenly he was behind her. She felt his weight on the seat, and she was now aiming the monsters, both of them, directly into the sea. She felt the first cut as she crossed the mudflat along the edge, then another and another as she shot into the sea.

It toppled her swiftly and she was flopping in the angry water, swallowing the salt sea. She felt something move beside her, a hand grasping at her blouse, and when she opened her eyes she saw the metal-punched swastikas still shiny and luminous, like tiny tropical fish, in the sun-drenched silence of the water. She was moving downward, pulled by the weight of his hand.

Why downward? Then her mind interpreted the reality; the bike was sinking like a rock, settling in the mud of the ocean bottom. Above her, she could see the sunlight above the water's surface. His hand still grasped her blouse. She flailed at his closed fist, but the water inhibited any power. Then she noted that the bike held him, a metal protrusion caught on the buckle of his Nazi belt. He had grasped her to save himself.

She fought his grasp and tried to find the mystery of the buckle, the undoing of it. But it held fast. Her fingers seemed useless. As she worked, she could see his face, a desperate child's face now, his eyes pleading, a fountain of bubbles spewing from his lips, his fist still tight around her clothes.

Marshaling the last vestige of strength, she ripped apart the buttons and slid out of the blouse, floating upward with bursting lungs, punching into the sunlit air.

Sucking in air, she felt her chest lurch; then she gagged, vomiting water. Disoriented, she imagined she noted that for some reason she was floating in a pool of red. Sharp pains shot through her body as she forced her head to stay above the surface, her eyes unfocused. Nausea and dizziness assailed her, and soon she felt herself slipping, going down, then bobbing upward just barely.

"Easy," a voice said. She felt hands pillow her. "Relax, float. Let me...."

Her first thought was that someone was guiding her to oblivion, a watery grave.

"I tried..." she whispered, engulfed by a sudden blackness, a void.

"Just float," the voice said. "You're needed here." Suddenly she was trembling with cold.