Darkheart

The Past: His & Hers

One lone seagull perched on the upper railing around the lighthouse's lantern. Heather, in spite of or perhaps in order to detract from her nakedness, watched it with suspicion. Seagulls weren't out and about this time of night, typically. She was cold, and she was mortified, and she was weeping silently, but the seagull somehow helped, reminded her that the world was larger than this moment, and she'd had practice, hadn't she? In dissociating herself from what was going on.

She should've told Danny where she was going so that maybe he could've followed her here, could save her, now. He was good at that--stepping in at the right moment. But he wasn't going to show up, this time; in fact, she'd sneaked out her window in order to avoid his prying. Who would know she was out at the lighthouse?

Heather hadn't thought it'd go this way. She'd driven to the marina in the hope of retrieving whatever images they'd said they had of her. She'd come to the conclusion, after days of cowering at home, that maybe they'd just ask her to do a favor of some kind, like what she'd done for Danny, and while she definitely didn't want to do things like that to any of those people, the girl was desperate enough that she might have, if it were something she already knew how to do. When they'd grabbed her and pulled her onto a boat, Heather had even offered, and although they'd ignored her at first, she'd thought they'd changed their minds when they'd at length told her to take off her clothes. As she'd begun removing her sundress, slipping out of her underwear, though, the reality of doing any sexual favors had caused her to lean over the side of the boat and puke into the churning lake.

As some small mercy, they hadn't wanted anything intimate from her; she had no idea what they wanted, only that she stood at the lighthouse now, looking out over the water through the eyehole of a black ski mask, her bare skin pimpling like raw chicken. She'd known the moment they'd forced that balaclava over her head that something far worse than she'd anticipated was in store, and she despised herself for being foolish.

She'd been third to arrive. As the boat had docked and she'd been yanked from it, she'd seen a nude girl with a devil's mask, standing subdued with her back against one of the posts holding the thick metal chain. There'd been a scuffle taking place, as well--a shirtless boy was being held by two men while another beat him, quickly subdued him, and removed the rest of his clothing. They then tied his hands behind him and covered his face with a mask, as well--a horse, she thought it was--before leaving him prone on the concrete. Ascending the stairs, the metal lattice biting into her bare soles, Heather recognized the hair behind each of those masks--the whitish blond wild of Crystal and the long dark shag of Kevin. And she'd known, then, how stupid they all were. How they should've understood they'd been defeated from the moment they'd seen Igancio's death.

All was end, now.

Heather was directed to stand on the platform at some distance from the others, a trio of women watching her, making sure she didn't attempt to run, and it wasn't long before she heard the sound of another boat engine approaching. It had to be Jeremiah.

She was going to die. She was sure of it. They all were going to die. This was payback, probably--the resort were angry they'd found out its wicked secrets. Whatever had happened to Ryan's body and to Ignacio's body, it was going to happen to her. She'd be stabbed in the throat or eaten up by fish or cut into pieces or strangled, and why she was wearing the mask--she couldn't say. None of it made sense, and at the same time all of it made sense. She should never have listened to Danny about working at the resort; she should've lifeguarded at the pool, just like the other teens who enjoyed showing themselves off in a swimsuit. And the more she regretted, the more liquid ran from her eyes and nose, and the more the mask became damp and difficult to breathe in. Heather began to shiver so much that one of the women almost offered her a jacket, but another disallowed it.