What Happened In Paradise?

Second Visit: Strange Shadows

Maxwell's eyes fly open; someone is in the room with him. He tries to separate the dark into shadows, note what’s moving and what’s still. Fear glues him to the too-soft mattress. He tries to move but it’s as if his body is sinking into the bed, trying to get to the other side. His heart pounds an angry rhythm as he struggles to breathe. The darkness in the room intensifies, consumes him, becomes him. Then he’s in a room with Stephanie, rather than what used-to-be-Stephanie. Her body is lying limp on a chair; her hands dangling off the side, her legs stretched out in front. And her eyes. Where her eyes used to be, are two hollows. Maxwell takes in the body; the state of it doesn’t anger or upset him. He’s pleased. Stephanie has given him something that he needed. He doesn’t know what, but he’s content as he examines the shell of her.

***

Maxwell is shivering the next morning. The dream he’s had makes him confident that he’s responsible for the disappearance of his friends. If not all of them, he’s at least responsible for whatever happened to Stephane. Even though he doesn’t remember, he theorized that he was a murderer the moment he found the ring. And was almost certain of the fact that he didn’t try to call his friends. Not once. He knows they’re dead. He’s known that they are dead since the moment he woke up in his apartment with no memory of their trip. Perhaps he had snapped and his mind is giving him a way out. He’s not a monster if he can’t remember.

He rolls out of bed, accepting his nightmare as punishment for the torture he has inflicted upon his friends. Even if he has murdered them with a single, efficient gunshot, knowing the bullet came from him, would be torture of the worst kind. To come to their end at his hands...their friend. That would be a betrayal, even to Brian.

He ambles out of the room in search of food he won’t be able to keep down. He senses that presence from his dream again. It wasn’t a nightmare. He’s haunted by the ghost of Stephanie. Not just Stephanie. He’s haunted by the ghosts of all of them. The presence feels too overwhelming to be one. It’s behind him, creeping up on his heels. It’s next to him, pushing him closer to the wall. It’s in front of him, like a wall blocking his flow of oxygen. It’s on him, raking sharp nails down his chest. Maxwell stops, grabs his chest, reminds himself how to breathe. He’s a man of science. There’s no such thing as ghosts. Why has he begun to believe in his mother’s stories? If he’s been haunted, it’s by his guilty conscience. His friend’s collective hearts are pounding beneath the floor of his mind.

Maxwell topples to the side and onto the wall. The wall opens...not the wall; a door, polished mahogany like all the others. He falls to the floor, still struggling to breathe. Darkness swallows him again.

One minute? Five? How long was he out? His palms are wet; his throat tight. He knows this room. He steadies himself by holding on to a nearby chair; he knows this chair. This is Stephanie’s chair; the chair where her body was sprawled. He screams, let’s go of it, and crashes to the floor. On the ceiling, over the chair, is a goat’s head, its mouth frozen, a strange rictus.

“Are you okay?” A soldier is hovering over him; a different one.

“I...I can’t stay here.”