Broken Angels

32

From her new world of total darkness, layers of sound and touch peeled away slowly-the echo of moving water, the feel of cold wood against her skin-but it was the sense of smell that beckoned first.

For Tara Lynn Greene, it had always been about smell. The scent of sweet basil, the redolence of diesel fumes, the aroma of a baking fruit pie in her grandmother's kitchen. All these things held the power to transport her to another place and time in her life. Coppertone was the shore.

This scent was familiar too. Decaying meat. Rotting wood.

Where was she?

Tara knew they had traveled, but she had no idea how far. Or how long it had been. She had dozed off, been rattled awake a few times. She felt wet and cold. She could hear wind whispering through stone. She was indoors, but that was about all she knew.

As her thoughts became clearer, her terror grew. The flat tire. The man with the flowers. The searing pain at the back of her neck.

Suddenly a light came on overhead. The low-watt bulb glowed through a layer of grime. She could now see that she was in a small room. To the right, a wrought-iron daybed. A dresser. A chair. All vintage, all very tidy, the room almost monastic in its precise order. Ahead was a passageway of some sort, an arched stone duct leading into blackness. Her eye was drawn back to the bed. There was something white on it. A dress? No. It looked like a winter coat.

It was her coat.

Tara looked down. She was now wearing a long dress. And she was in a boat, a small red boat in a canal that ran through this peculiar room. The boat was brightly colored with glossy enamel paint. Around her waist was a nylon seat belt, holding her snugly into a worn vinyl seat. Her hands were tied to the belt.

She felt something sour rise in her throat. She had read a newspaper story about the woman found murdered in Manayunk. The woman dressed in an old costume. She knew what this was all about. The knowledge squeezed the air from her lungs.

Sounds: metal on metal. Then a new sound. It sounded like… a bird? Yes, a bird was singing. The bird's song was beautiful, rich and melodic. Tara had never heard anything like it. Within moments she heard footsteps. Someone approached from behind, but Tara dared not try to turn around.

After a long silence, he spoke.

"Sing for me," he said.

Had she heard correctly? "I'm… I'm sorry?"

"Sing, nightingale."

Tara's throat was parched nearly shut. She tried to swallow. The only chance of getting out of this was with her wits. "What do you want me to sing?" she managed.

"A song about the moon."

The moon the moon the moon the moon. What does he mean? What is he talking about? "I don't think I know any songs about the moon," she said.

"Sure you do. Everybody knows a song about the moon. 'Fly Me to the Moon,' 'Paper Moon,' 'How High the Moon,' 'Blue Moon,' 'Moon River.' I especially like 'Moon River.' Do you know it?"

Tara knew that song. Everyone knew that song, right? But right then it would not come to her. "Yes," she said, buying time. "I know it."

He stepped in front of her.

Oh my God, she thought. She averted her eyes.

"Sing, nightingale," he said.

This time it was a command. She sang "Moon River." The lyrics came to her, if not the precise melody. Her theatrical training took over. She knew if she stopped, or even hesitated, something terrible would happen.

He sang with her as he untied the boat, walked to the rear, and gave it a shove. He turned off the light.

Tara moved through the darkness now. The small boat tapped and clacked against the sides of the narrow channel. She strained to see, but still her world was almost pitch-black. From time to time she noticed a glistening of icy moisture on shiny rock walls. The walls were closer now. The boat rocked. It was so cold.

She could no longer hear him, but Tara continued to sing, her voice rebounding off the walls and low ceiling. It sounded thin and shaky, but she couldn't stop.

Light ahead-consomme-thin daylight sneaking through cracks in what looked to be old wooden doors.

The boat hit the doors and they sprang open. She was outdoors. It looked to be just after dawn. A soft snow was falling. Above her, dead tree branches blackly fingered a mother-of-pearl sky. She tried to raise her arms, but could not.

The boat drifted into a clearing. Tara was floating down one of a series of narrow canals that snaked through the trees. The water was cluttered with leaves, branches, debris. On either side of the canals were tall, rotting structures, their supporting spines like diseased ribs in a decaying chest. One appeared to be a skewed and ramshackle gingerbread house. Another display looked like a castle. Yet another resembled a giant seashell.

The boat banged around a bend in the river and the view of the trees was now blocked out by a large display, perhaps twenty feet tall, fifteen feet wide. Tara tried to focus on what it might be. It looked like a child's storybook, open to the center, with a long-faded, paint-flaked red ribbon down the right side. Next to it sat a large rock, like something you might see in a breakwall. Something sat on top of the rock.

The wind kicked up at that moment, rocking the boat, stinging Tara's face, making her eyes water. The bitterly cold gust brought with it a fetid, animal smell that turned her stomach. A few moments later, when the motion settled and her vision cleared, Tara found herself directly in front of the huge storybook. She read a few words at the upper left.

Far out in the ocean, where the water is as blue as the prettiest cornflower…

Tara looked beyond the book. Her tormentor stood at the end of the canal, near a small building that looked like an old schoolhouse. He held a length of rope in his hands. He was waiting for her.

Her song became a scream.