The Last Girl: A gripping psychological thriller with a killer twist Page 9

  Though it’s dark, I try to twist my neck to look around. The needling pain stops. I’m such a mess. What the hell is this?

  I squint against the darkness, hoping I’ll recognize this place I am in, but nothing explains this opening at top or the sound of water. I form a theory: that the plane broke in two, and I’m at the bottom of its tail, sinking into the abyss.

  “Help!” I shout. My voice is feeble, and I’m afraid if I talk louder, more blood will seep into my throat and choke me.

  But if I’m in the plane’s tail, there should be other passengers. Me and my daughter couldn’t possibly be the only ones alive.

  “H-hang on,” I say, but she doesn’t reply.

  Is she all right?

  “Hey!” I realize I don’t remember her name. “Where are you, baby?”

  The place sinks into pitch-black darkness. The looming silhouette from before blocks the light.

  I can smell it. That terrible scent. It smells of oil, the kind used in cars. I’m sure of it now. Where have I smelled this before?

  “Who are you?” I try to wriggle my right arm free.

  No one responds, but I’m sure someone’s there. I also realize that my arm is squeezed under something heavy, but also something fleshy. God, it’s under a corpse.

  I try to pull away with all my might, but it hurts so much that I’m afraid I could break my only functioning arm.

  “Baby?” I call again. “Wh-where a-a-are you?”

  The silhouette looms closer. It makes a sniffing sound. “She’s gone,” it gruffly whispers to me.

  “Who are you?” I squint again, trying to make out its face.

  “You will never have her. You fucked up.”

  “Who are you?” I demand, still trying to free my arm.

  “You know who I am.”

  I arch my body upward, trying to reach for it, but my body punishes me with a dose of pain in my bones. “Who the hell are you?”

  “I am…” it says, but then the blaring sound escalates to deafening levels again.

  42

  “June?”

  Ashlyn’s voice brings me back to life.

  “Why are you crying?” she says.

  I’m panting, unable to talk.

  “We did it,” she announces. “I jumped.”

  “But I didn’t count.” I prop myself up on my elbows. Looking at her, I feel like I’m looking into sunshine. I long to touch her face and be sure this isn’t part of my dream.

  “It’s okay. You fucked up.” She chuckles. “We all do. Don’t we?”

  “I am so glad you’re alive.” I say.

  “I know.” She smiles, rubbing her cheek against my palm. “I’ve never met anyone so happy to see me.”

  “I’m sure you have,” I say. “You just don’t remember.”

  “Maybe I’m an amnesiac too. Though I wouldn’t mind starting all over again.”

  “Why do you say that, Ash? You’re young and have your whole life ahead of you.”

  “You think so?” She looks around. “Even if we find your daughter, I don’t think we’ll make it off the island. Not alive.”

  “Don’t do this. We’re going to be fine. I promise you. Once we find my daughter, and remember things, I’m sure we will get help. Maybe Dr. Suffolk will be on our side. Just don’t worry about it.”

  “If you say so.” She stands up. “First, we need to find the Furnace.”

  I stand up as well and laugh. “You’re right. Let’s go.”

  “I don’t think we need to search.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She points behind me. “Look.”

  I turn, almost in slow motion. She’s pointing at an abandoned gas station. It could easily be a set from a post-apocalyptic zombie movie: burned, old, and creepily abandoned.

  A couple of old Jeeps are parked on one side. One has two flat tires. The other has been stripped and is now a skeleton of what it once was. There is a third one, flipped on its side and burned to the bone. The station is a horror house I don’t want to enter at all. One weird thing sticks out and doesn’t fit, though. The fuel dispensers. They still look old, but not dead.

  “Come on,” Ashlyn says. “We’ve found the Furnace.”

  “Careful,” I whisper. “We’re not sure if someone’s watching.”

  “Doesn’t look like it,” Ashlyn says. “It may have significance for people on this island but doesn’t look usable at all.”

  “The fuel dispensers look intact.”

  “I noticed. Maybe they still use it? Just to fill up their Jeeps in the middle of the island?”

  “That doesn’t add up.” I walk with her. “Just be careful.”

  As we take slow steps forward, details come into focus. Everything seems to have been built years and years ago. It’s hard to explain how I know, but it doesn’t take a genius to know a building isn’t from this era.

  “It’s old,” Ashlyn says, reading my mind.

  “As old as Ward Four?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ward Four was built in the 1940s, and so was this station, is my guess.”

  “There is no shop anywhere, like in modern gas stations,” she remarks, then points upward. “And look at this, June.”

  I crane my neck, staring at an old sign hanging over the building’s ramshackle door. An old rectangle of wood, burned to black on the edges and skewed to one side. The sign reads: 1001.

  43

  My hands are loosely hanging at my sides. I don’t think I can explain my feelings, if I do feel a precise emotion. It’s not just that I’ve finally realized “Toot” is just a number. It’s also not the fact that I’ve arrived at the place written on my gun, my Kindle, and on the notes. It’s the way 1001 is written on the sign.

  “It’s almost the same handwriting.” Ashlyn looks between the sign and the note she took out of her pocket.

  “So odd,” I mumble, not taking my eyes off it.

  “This sign looks old,” Ashlyn says. “Not necessarily as old as the building, but it wasn’t carved yesterday.”

  I have nothing to say. How can you say something when your brain has ceased to think? I feel like I’m lost in time and space.

  “Are you sure you’ve never been here before?” Ashlyn says.

  “You mean on the island?” My neck is still craned up. “Why are you asking?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just thinking out loud.”

  “Wouldn’t Meredith have remembered me?”

  “She neither confirmed nor denied it. She only urged you to leave as soon as you can.”

  “The only way I see it is that someone on this island kidnapped my daughter, maybe?” I look at Ashlyn. “And I came to save her?”

  “Sounds like a movie,” she says. “Still possible, though.”

  My head is still in a daze. I’m looking at Ashlyn, but I don’t quite see her. My eyes are looking at nothingness. A blank vision of emptiness, like white pages of a novel that need a writer’s imagination to fill them up.

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Ashlyn says. “Let’s focus on what we know.”

  “Like what?” I’m slowly snapping back into reality.

  “This place is called the Furnace, which is also an old gas station called the One Thousand and One—for whatever reason.”

  “Okay?”

  “We could assume the Furnace is an appropriate name for a gas station. Gas and fire and stuff, you know. Also, the notes were written in oil.”

  “Oil, gas station, Furnace. Yeah, I can see a connection, but nothing clear enough to know what’s going on.” I tell her this without mentioning my dream and the smell of oil in it. I pretend the daydreams are nothing but hallucinations for now.

  “You’re actually right.” She lets out a long sigh. “What is this place? What are we even doing here? This so strange.”

  "I think we should take a look. It’s what we came for.”

  Ashlyn gives me the eye. “Mindy said Hecker feared
this place.”

  I shrug. This place is so unsettling from outside. A spiraling breeze sends chills down my back. It reminds me of when I first arrived on the island.

  “The shore is just a few feet away,” Ashlyn says. “I can hear the crashing waves.”

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “Nothing.” She looks away.

  “Do you want to leave?”

  “I said it’s nothing, June.”

  “Do you know a way to leave the island, from the shore, maybe?” I point behind me. “Listen, you don’t have to stay with me. If you know a way out, just go.”

  “I won’t leave you.”

  “No, you’re not listening. I’m here for my daughter. I’m not leaving before I find her. You should go and save your ass. What is it? A boat? Somewhere nearby?”

  Ashlyn fidgets, looking downward. “We’ve heard rumors that there is a submarine somewhere by the shore,” she says shyly. “Another nurse once managed to escape with it.”

  “And the soldiers?”

  “I don’t know. It’s a mystery. The older nurses say that whoever operates it could be bribed.”

  “That’s hard to believe, not on this island with all the soldiers.”

  “I know,” she says. “They’ve always said it’s at the end of the pines parallel to the beach. But you have to cross the forest first.”

  “Okay.” I nod. “That’s why you kinda knew where to go, and I had to follow you.”

  “I didn’t know. I just imagined the path from the rumors we’ve heard," She looks into my eyes. “It’s not necessarily true.”

  “Do you want to go?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just the situation we’re in, and—”

  “And?”

  “I mean, I thought something significant would happen once we found the Furnace, but—”

  “I understand. The situation suggests the soldiers will eventually catch us now.”

  “I don’t mean to be rude, but we don’t even know where to look next,” she says. “I don’t want to die, June. I mean, I really like you, but now that I feel that breeze from the sea, I’d like to have a chance at staying alive.”

  “That’s totally okay, Ashlyn. Go. I understand. It’s just that I don’t see how easy it will be to leave.”

  “I don’t see it either, but I need to try,” she says with moist eyes. “I’m afraid to ask you to leave with me, because I know you will not leave your daughter behind.”

  “That’s true. I’m not leaving without her.”

  “I can get help,” she offers. “Once I leave, I can report everything to the authorities.”

  “I don’t think that will work. Listen, I want you to do what you feel like. And I am so sorry I dragged you into this. But my hunch is that this submarine is a myth. Even if it exists and you can actually leave in it—which is just unbelievable—how can you leave in this weather?”

  “Okay.” She walks away.

  “Okay?”

  Ashlyn surprises me by walking in the opposite direction of the Suffolk. She is actually walking right into the horror house.

  “Ashlyn!” I dart after her.

  “Let’s be done with this,” she says, pushing the door open.

  “Ashlyn. Wait!”

  She disappears inside, and I follow her. Her sudden change of mind surprises me, and I am a few steps behind her now. I reach for the door, ready to open it, when I hear her shout from inside.

  “June! You have to see this!”

  44

  I enter but stop in my tracks right away. There is no office or a counter inside. It’s more like a junkyard full of tires and tools. Seems like it’s been used as a garage or something. It baffles me how a car got in here. A double sliding door up front explains it. Ashlyn hurries to it and pulls the lever.

  “Stop,” I reach out. “We don’t know what’s behind it—”

  Too late, confusingly enthusiastic Ashlyn has opened it already.

  Nothing dangerous so far. Only strange, like everything else on the island.

  We’re staring at some garden.

  It’s dirty and looks like it’s been a perpetual autumn in here. The plants are brown and yellowish, not to mention everything seems dry and dead in spite of the continuous rain. But that’s just part of the picture.

  Ashlyn walks farther into the garden. In front of her, there is an old wall. Brick and mortar. It’s abandoned but doesn’t look as old as everything else. Most of it is covered in crawling vines and bushes.

  “What do you think this is?” I say.

  “Looks recent.”

  “Built clumsily and uneven.”

  “Probably in a hurry.”

  “To stop someone from leaving or to separate something behind it?”

  “I can peek through a few brick holes here and there,” she peeks through the bushes and vines.

  “What do you see?”

  “Haven’t looked, but we don’t need to.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She points at the far left of the wall.

  “A door?” I squint.

  “A rusty iron door.” She approaches it. “The plot thickens.”

  I’m not sure why Ashly would use a phrase like the plot thickens, but I assume she’s manipulating herself into thinking this is an adventure not a nightmare so she can handle the pressure.

  I say, “Do you want me to go through first?”

  It amazes me how she thinks part of this is a game sometimes. “Nah, I can do it.” She says.

  I doubt it but admire her challenging herself. I watch her pull on the door with all her might. It squeaks. I immediately look around, afraid this will grab someone’s attention. She pulls on the door again to fully open it. I don’t know why, but I stand cemented in place. Something about seeing her open it freezes me. I don’t even approach. Something tells me I don’t want to see what’s behind the wall.

  Ashlyn steps inside. I am expecting her to take her time and tell me what’s there. My expectations are wrong. She screams as soon as she enters.

  I watch her jump back. She bends over, resting a hand on the wall as she begins to vomit.

  Still paralyzed, I ask her, “What is it, Ash?”

  She continues puking her guts out, then raises her eyes to meet mine. “I think we found the Crib.”

  45

  I try to unchain myself from my fears and slowly trudge toward the door. A rotten smell attacks me. It intensifies the closer I get.

  “What’s inside, Ashlyn?” I ask, ashamed at my cowardice.

  She vomits again. Her small frame is in pain. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand then signals for me to look for myself.

  My breathing gets heavier as I walk through the door. My stomach churns. The mist thickens inside this walled place. All kinds of scenarios run through my head. I wonder if we’re on the west side of the island now. It occurs to me that the soldiers weren’t trying to catch us, but instead stop us from seeing the Crib for ourselves.

  The mist clears a bit. My eyes widen, and now I see.

  Everywhere I tread, corpses are piled up in front of me. This place, though vast, isn’t big enough for them all. Skeletons are almost knotted into each other. Pyramids of macabre bones show up every few steps. The smell is overwhelming. Most skeletons are incomplete. They look like they have been burned.

  “I think that’s why they call it the Furnace.” Ashlyn coughs, standing by the door behind me. I don’t think she can force herself inside again.

  As for me, it’s as if my legs can’t walk me back anymore. Once you’re in hell, there is no way back. I keep looking, trying to understand. Is this a cemetery? Who are these dead people? Who burned them?

  All of a sudden, I stop and balance myself on the edge of a hole dug in the ground. Then I realize the carnage that happened in this place. Those bones forming pyramids aren’t set on the ground but piled up from large holes in the earth. Whoever killed these people hadn’t planned to kill as man
y. I feel like I’m back in time, witnessing the aftermath of the Black Death in Europe.

  I walk around the hole. Endless cans of gas are scattered on the sides. Some empty, some not. That’s what the gas station is for. This place really is a furnace.

  “I think you should get out of there, June,” Ashlyn says.

  I keep going. Further ahead, I begin to see clumps of burned flesh. They smell the worst. Those victims are recent. Whatever this is, it’s not a shameful genocide from the past. It’s an ongoing crime.

  I change direction, still advancing. I don’t know what I am looking for, but I need a clue. I need a reason for this darkness. Not a reason. Nothing will ever justify this. I need an explanation. A motive. How is it possible someone could do this?

  Something greenish shows in the dark. It sticks out like a flower in a pile of ashes. It gives me a little hope. I realize it’s the first real color I’ve seen inside this place. The rest is every different shade of ash. I rush toward the green, accidentally stepping on something fleshy. I don’t look down, and cup my hand over my mouth and force myself to inhale ashy air as I walk toward the green.

  It’s clothing. I can see clearer now. But it’s not just one set. There is another. And another. So many. The same green gown, over and over again. They’re hospital gowns, but not the same as the one I wore on my first day on the island. Similar, but darker green.

  What does it mean? They burn patients on this island, here in the Furnace. Why?

  Accidentally, I kick something. It’s also something green, but small, and it’s not clothes. I kneel down and pick it up. It’s a wristband. It’s metal and has a number carved on the side. Ten. And a name. A woman’s name: Janice.

  A terrible premonition occurs to me as I come across more wristbands all over the ground.

  I bend down and scoop up as many wristbands I can. The hair prickles on the back of my neck as I read the names:

  Joan Murray, number 28, Ready.

  I pick up another.

  Juliane Koepcke, number 345, Ready.