The Ferryman Institute (35 page)

“We dated three and a half years . . . and his name was Marc . . .” Alice let the rest—
Other than that, you pretty much nailed it
—go unsaid.

The chunk of mirror felt gross and clumsy in her hands now, like a prince who'd morphed into a frog. The voice in her head that had whispered so seductively for months—the one that promised it would all be over as soon as she pulled the trigger, easy as you like—clamored to be heard now, but she ignored it. Yes, that voice would still be there, she didn't doubt that, and maybe after this was all over, she'd hear those honeyed words again and listen. But for now, Alice wanted to see where this all ended. Charlie had earned that much.

She stared down at her hands, the piece of glass still clutched in the right.

No. Forget Charlie.
She
had earned that much.

Before another thought could enter into her head, she heard the piercing scream from the floor below them.

CHARLIE'S HANDS
shot to the ground, ready to propel himself to his feet from his sitting position. A woman's voice, clearly coming from the apartment directly underneath, sounded with such primal, crazed intensity that he almost fell over in surprise. His eyes immediately turned to the door. Sure enough, the bolt was undone.

Not good.

He scrambled over with four long strides, pounced on the lock, slamming it closed. Next order of business: protection. There must be something he could use if they needed it, a knife maybe, or really anything sharp—

“Oohhh, Boris! Booorrrris! Da, daa, daaa, daaaaaaaaa!”

A final loud
thump
followed, then silence.

Charlie leaned his back against the wooden door. For a moment, his mind sat in a state of blank bewilderment. Slowly, he put two and two together—or, in this case, one and one—and burst
out laughing. It came in long rolling waves, crashing again and again. For a full minute, try as he might, Charlie couldn't stop. Here he was, thinking that the Institute had finally found them, that their last stand would be in this shitty little apartment in this shitty old building. Instead, they'd just been treated to some rollicking late-night, or perhaps morning glory, action in the sack.

Only after his laughter subsided did Charlie realize what he'd been ready to do. Despite his logical reservations about saving Alice, his heart had staked out its own territory and was more than willing to defend it. And there, it seemed, was his answer. He couldn't possibly know what the right thing to do was. There was no right or wrong choice here, only the choice he'd made, and come what may, he was prepared to fight for it.

He found he was proud of that.

Unfortunately, he was only allowed to bask in the moment for a few seconds before a distinct
crash
echoed from the bathroom. It was the type of sound that almost always earns a follow-up along the lines of
Is everything all right in there?

“Everything all right in there?” Charlie called as he started walking toward the bathroom. No doubt the noises downstairs had taken Alice by surprise, too. About halfway across the room, however, he swore he heard a muffled yelp from behind the door. “Alice?”

Her response was immediate. “D-don't come in here! Everything's fine!” Her words were one thing. The undercurrent of panic flowing in her voice was another.

“Okay, no problem. I just heard something, wanted to make sure everything was cool.” He stopped a step away from the door. A bubbling sense of unease simmered just beneath his skin.
No reason to jump to conclusions.
All the same, Charlie couldn't shake the hunch that something was off here.

“Yup, totally cool. No worries,” she said, but the quiver in her voice suggested otherwise.

Should he open the door? He didn't want her to consider him more of a creep than she already did. What if she was on the toilet? He cringed at the thought, knowing full well he'd never live that one down. Still . . .

His hand reached for the knob.

“Charlie?”

He stopped, fingers inches away from the dull brass handle. “Yeah?”

“I need you to promise me something. Quickly.”

That earned a raised eyebrow from the Ferryman. “I mean, I don't—”

“Please. Just listen.” A spike of desperation punctured the pronouncement. Her voice made it sound like she was holding her collective shit together with duct tape.

“Sure,” he said straightaway, “I'm all ears.”

He could hear the shaky inhale of breath through the door. “I need you to promise that you won't judge me for what you're about to see. Please.”

Now Alice had his full, undivided attention. The feeling of unease had changed into one of inevitable dread. Charlie steeled himself to not react, no matter what happened to be on the other side of the door. “Of course. I promise. No judging.”

As he said the last words, the door swung inward, pulling away from his hand before he had the chance to push.

Charlie noticed three things in relatively quick succession. The first was Alice's face. Her bottom lip trembled, and shortly after, the first tear caressed her left cheek. The second thing he noticed was how she was standing. It was a strange pose, her right hand on the doorknob while she stood with her body twisted away from
the door. She held her left arm away from her body awkwardly, like she was carrying something she didn't want to touch her clothes. Then she turned her body to face him, and he noticed the third thing.

“Jesus . . . ,” he whispered.

A deep gash ran diagonally up her left arm, from the fleshy part of her palm to about two inches above her wrist. She'd positioned her arm palm-up so that the wound pointed toward the ceiling, but the blood was already flowing, dripping in angry streams over the sides of her forearm. Tiny puddles formed on the floor, little lakes of fire scattered among the tiles.

His eyes rose to meet hers. She stared back, eyes wide with an expression equal parts pleading and scared shitless.

“It's not what you think,” she said, except with her encroaching sobs it came out,
Ib's nob whab you fink.

To Charlie's credit, he put his composure back on like a suit of armor. “Shhh . . . ,” he said as he shrugged off his jacket. “I know, I know.” Thankfully, his mind shut off any conclusions it would otherwise have made and set to work addressing the bleeding issue in front of his face. The location of the cut brought to mind many things, but medically speaking, he'd met the souls of enough suicidal bleed-outs to know that the artery was the main issue at play.

He stepped into the bathroom and gently took her arm, gingerly wiping away the pool of blood sitting on top of it. She winced and whimpered slightly, but otherwise said nothing. Of course there weren't any towels in the room Charlie could use—clearly that was too much to ask for. He made a mental note to have a stern word with Cartwright about that.

“Just hold this against your arm for one second and keep breathing for me, all right?” he said to Alice softly. She absently nodded and pressed the balled-up jacket against the cut. With the
jacket out of his hands, Charlie quickly worked his favorite silver tie off, then proceeded to rip his button-down off, Superman-style. Shirt in hand, he tore the left sleeve off and ran it under the sink. After it was suitably damp, he signaled for her to move his jacket. When he dabbed the wound lightly, she recoiled in pain.

“Fuck, that hurts.” Her nose was dripping with snot, but she didn't seem to care. “It was an accident, Charlie. I swear.”

“I know,” he said, eyes only on her arm, “I believe you.” He used the rest of his button-down to carefully dry off her arm. This would be the real test.

Charlie had invisibly sat in on enough med-speak to know that a cut along the artery in that area could lead to quick and significant blood loss. However, it wasn't a terribly easy thing to hit, probably by evolutionary design. That being said, the slice in Alice's arm ran on a fierce diagonal—if blood spurted out of the wound now that he'd just cleaned it, it meant the cut could be more than just superficial and things could get bad fast. Otherwise, there was a good chance it would clot on its own.

“Please . . . please don't judge me,” she said, and he saw the fresh splash of tears landing farther up her arm. He glanced up at her face, a look of infinite sadness contorting it. “I thought about it, but I wasn't going to. I promise you I wasn't. There was that scream and I had the glass in my hand and I jumped and—” Her sentence devolved into a long groan of pain as she winced at the pressure he was applying.

“Hey, hey, it's all right. It's okay. You're going to be okay.”

Or so he hoped.

Moment of truth.
Charlie removed the pressure he was applying and peeked at the wound. It was bleeding still, but the tide had already slowed. He breathed an inward sigh of relief. “See? You missed all the important stuff down here. In the grand scheme of
things, you made a pretty shallow cut. It's going to hurt like hell, but you're going to be fine. No worries, all right?” Two more wrenching sobs burst out of Alice's chest before she nodded vigorously.

The minutes rolled away in silence, occasionally punctuated with Alice gasping softly in pain. Charlie had taken to wrapping her arm with makeshift bandage strips he'd made from his now torn-up shirt. The final piece was his tie, which he wrapped tightly around the assemblage. All things considered, it didn't look half bad, at least as far as field dressings went.

“How's that feel?” Charlie asked while he rinsed his hands off in the sink. Thankfully, he'd managed to keep the blood off of his white undershirt.

“You were right—hurts like hell,” Alice replied, her voice steadying again, “but good overall.” She looked at the floor. “Thank you.”

He gave her a small smile. “Don't mention it.”

They stood in awkward silence again, each no doubt wondering what the other was thinking. Granted, he wasn't entirely sure what to make of her story, but she'd willingly asked for his help. That wasn't nothing.

Alice forced a long breath out, wiping away the streaks of tears from her face. “Jeez. I go years without anybody seeing me cry, and now you've seen me do it twice in as many hours. What is wrong with me?”

“It's not your fault,” Charlie said. “Apparently I just have that effect on people. I'm like an onion.”

She replied with a loud
hmph
, delicately flexing her wrist as she did. “All this because of those two fucking Russians downstairs.”

It was a throwaway remark that initially didn't earn a reply
from Charlie, until he let out a long
pfffftttt
that tumbled into solid laughter. Alice looked at him, obviously confused.

“What?” she said, clearly worried that she was missing something.

Charlie shook his head, debating whether he should even point out the pun that clearly had escaped her. Her answering groan suggested that yes, she'd gotten it, but also that he should get a life and stop being an immature man-child.

“Come on,” Charlie said, “let's get out of this room. It's stuffy in here.”

Alice took his cue, stepping over the blood on her way out. Charlie followed her, taking one last look over his shoulder at the mess before closing the door.

“WHOA!”

The first two steps Alice had taken were fine. So were the third and the fourth. For the fifth, however, the room had mysteriously tilted thirty degrees to the left. She stopped moving, swaying unsteadily in the middle of the floor like a drunk in a hurricane. She was practically falling when she felt Charlie's hands on her shoulders, holding her up.

“Easy does it there, sailor. Looks like you might have lost a bit more blood than I thought.” He guided her the few remaining steps and set her down on the bed. Thirty degrees to the left had now swung to fifteen degrees to the right. She sat on the edge of the bed, head swimming, hoping against hope that each passing second would be the second the spinning stopped. The sound of running water played at the edge of her awareness, which eventually made sense when Charlie came back holding a glass of water.

“Here,” he said, giving her the cup. Of course, she was already
drinking in gulps when he added, “I'm relatively sure it's a clean glass.” She stopped chugging long enough to glare at him. After she finished, Alice collapsed backward onto the bed. It was surprisingly comfortable and crisply made, thank the sweet Lord Jesus. The sensation of spinning began to fade bit by bit until, several minutes later, Alice's world had once again reached equilibrium.

Alice wiggled her way onto her elbows in a half-sitting position (though, given her wounded left arm, she leaned heavily on her right) to find Charlie sitting nearby. He'd moved one of the empty chairs closer to the bed but off to the side, so that he wasn't sitting directly across from her. An old magazine was open in his hands.

“Feeling any better?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said, and surprisingly she did. There was a persistent, dull ache in her left arm, but that was to be expected, really. That Russian woman had scared her half to death.
Who the hell screams like that during sex?
she wondered, but to each their own, she supposed. In the ensuing reaction, her arms had whipped around, only she'd been holding her improvised knife too close to her arm and . . . well, the rest was history.

The pain—a searing, biting pain that burned relentlessly in those ensuing seconds—was agonizing. Yet it placed a distant second to the look on Charlie's face when she'd finally opened the door for him. He'd covered it up quickly enough, but Alice would never be able to unsee it. It hit him like a physical blow, a betrayal of everything he stood for, an admission that she didn't give two licks about how hard he was trying to keep one more person out of the morgue.