Brian Freeman - In the Dark aka The Watcher

Donna was still dressed for the office. She worked as a legal secretary in a small Wisconsin law firm, where they insisted she wear business suits and keep her sandy hair fashionably styled. The salary and benefits were good, though, and the firm gave her flexibility when Mary needed special care. She had worked there for five years, ever since she and Clark split up. Security was a trade-off for the long hours and loneliness in her life.

“Did you see that?” Donna asked, pointing at a splash in the water and the widening ripples. “That was a fish.”

“Fish!” Mary said.

“Would you like to be a fish?” Donna asked. “You could swim underwater and make friends with turtles. Maybe you could even be a mermaid with a big fish tail. Wouldn’t that be funny?”

“Fish!” Mary said again.

Donna smiled. She held Mary’s hand, and they sat watching the hawks circle above them and the boats come and go lazily on the river. They counted birds in the trees. Donna picked a wildflower and let Mary pluck the petals. Half an hour passed as easily as the water at their feet, and the sun eased below the trees. Golden sparkles on the water became shadows.

It was time to go. Clark was waiting, and it wasn’t fair to be so late. He missed Mary.

Donna missed Clark, too. She kept waiting for her love for him to die out completely, but instead, it was the bitterness of their breakup that had begun to seem distant and unimportant. They had both been desperate, unable to cope with Mary together. When she saw him now, she found herself drawn all over again to his courage and his solemn manner. She had even allowed herself to stay over a few weeks ago, to climb back into their bed. They hadn’t talked about it. She had slipped away in the morning before Clark awoke, not because it felt like a mistake, but because she was scared that Clark didn’t feel the same way.

“Hey! Mary!”

Someone shouted a faraway greeting from the highway behind her. Donna looked back and saw a teenage boy about Mary’s age, hurtling down the sharp hill on a bicycle. He waved madly at them, his face cracked into a grin, his black hair twisting in the currents of air. She recognized him, a neighbor boy from her years in Gary, who lived two blocks away from their old house. He was an adopted Korean child, squat and strong. He loved Mary and had played with her growing up. As they got older, he was one of the few boys who didn’t make fun of her retardation.

Mary saw him, too. “Charlie! Charlie!”

Charlie veered across the highway. His wide backside hung over the bike’s banana seat. He yanked back on the handlebars, hiking the front wheel off the road, showing off the way boys do. Mary squealed with delight. Donna heard the skid of rubber as Charlie braked hard. The bike slowed, and tread burned off onto the highway in a black streak.

Through the screech of the tire, she also heard rocks scraping on the ground. Loose gravel.

Her breath caught in her chest before she could shout a warning. The bike’s front tire rose higher, like a whale breaching, and the back tire spilled out underneath it. In the next instant, it was airborne. Charlie flew, too. The bike bounced, clanged, and made circles as it crashed on the pavement, its spokes spinning like tops. Charlie’s hands and legs stretched out in an X in midair. He soared and snapped down headfirst, bone on asphalt, and even fifty yards away, the sound popped through the brittle air like a firecracker.

He lay still in the middle of the highway.

“Charlie!” Mary wailed.

Donna bolted upright. She stood, paralyzed, her face swinging back and forth between Charlie and Mary. Her instinct was to run and help, but her instinct was also never to leave her daughter alone. She bent down and grabbed Mary’s face between her hands and spoke softly but firmly. “Mary, you sit right here. Do not move, okay? Do not move. Sit right here. Please, baby, I need you to understand. Show me you understand.”

Mary’s eyes were filled with confusion and glassy tears. She didn’t move.

“That’s good, baby, you sit right there, you don’t move.”

Donna sprinted for the highway, fumbling with her cell phone and punching the numbers 911 as she ran. Her work clothes felt clumsy. Her blouse came untucked from her skirt. She lost her balance as her high heels tripped her up, and she swore and kicked them off. Rocks chewed at her nylons and cut her feet. When she reached Charlie, she murmured a prayer as she watched the bloodstain spreading like a cancer under the boy’s head. She craned her neck to stare up and down the highway, which was dark now in the deepening twilight. There were no cars approaching from either direction. She spotted a silver RAV4 parked on the shoulder a quarter mile to the north, but she didn’t see anyone inside. She was alone.

Donna saw Mary. Still on the bench. Her thumb in her mouth.

She heard the 911 operator in her ear and was relieved to hear another person’s voice. She took a breath and swallowed down her panic. She tried to remember exactly where she was, but the names of the streets and towns didn’t come. For an instant, she could have been anywhere on earth. Then the location burbled out of her brain, and she stuttered, trying to relay it. The operator was annoyingly calm, asking her the same questions over and over, making Donna repeat herself.

“I need help!” she insisted. “Get me some help!”

The operator finally told her what she wanted to hear. The police were on their way. An ambulance was on its way. Everyone was coming. Stay with him.

Donna heard moaning at her feet. Charlie was waking up, trying to move his limbs.

“No, no, stay still,” she murmured. She didn’t know if he heard her. She got on her knees on the highway and took his hand. It was limp. He didn’t squeeze back. “Stay still.”

His eyes were closed. He tried to turn his head, and she put her lips next to his ear. Her hand was in his blood. “Don’t move. Stay right there, Charlie. Help’s coming.”

She listened for the sirens. Where were they? She took another glance up and down the highway, looking for headlights, afraid that the cars wouldn’t see her and Charlie in the gloom until it was too late to steer around them.

Her cell phone rang. She answered it with sticky fingers and heard Clark’s voice.

“Where the hell are you? This is so damn unfair, Donna.”

Words spilled out of her mouth. She couldn’t slow them down. “Clark, get down here, get down here now!”

“What’s going on? Is it Mary?”

“Just come now, I’m on the highway south of town. Come right now!”

God bless him, he didn’t ask any more questions. The phone was dead. He was already gone and on his way. When you needed him, Clark always came through. That was why she had loved him for so long.

All she had to do was wait. Wait for the sirens. Wait for Clark.

Donna turned over. Crouching on the ground, she couldn’t see the bench by the river where Mary was sitting. She didn’t want to call Mary’s name and risk her wandering into the road. She laid Charlie’s hand on the pavement. “I’m still here,” she told him.

Donna stood up.

“Oh, my God!” she screamed.

The wooden bench was empty in the shadows. She didn’t see Mary anywhere. Donna tore at her hair. Blood smeared on her face. She looked everywhere, at her car, at the trees, at the path that disappeared up the river bank. “Mary! Mary!”

She screamed over and over, but she didn’t see her beautiful girl.

“Oh, God, someone help me! Help! Mary!”

A baby rabbit no bigger than Mary’s fist poked its nose out of the goldenrod and hopped into the middle of the dirt trail. Mary wanted to hold it so she could feel better. She had held a rabbit before, and its fur was soft on her fingers and its warm little body made her happy. She got up and crept toward the path, laying each foot down softly and quietly. The rabbit watched her come. Its big dark eyes blinked at her. Its nose smelled her. The animal took two more hops, turning its white puffball tail toward Mary. They began a little dance, Mary taking a step, the rabbit taking a hop, as if they were playing with each other.