The Night Mark(86)

“I got her,” he said as Dolly struggled, then went still, not out of surrender but in fear-filled paralysis.

“That’s one hundred and ten steps?” Faye asked. “That’s impossible.”

“Follow me close. Whatever you do, don’t let me drop her.”

Faye followed but she knew they’d never make it. Dolly wasn’t a child of six but a young woman of seventeen. While slender, she was tall and had to weigh at least a hundred pounds, especially in her wet clothes. Dolly let out a low moan of true terror. Faye took her hand. It was ice-cold. Faye locked eyes with her, smiled and squeezed her hand over and over as Carrick began the long, arduous journey up the lighthouse stairs.

Three sounds competed with one another for dominance in that tower as they wended their slow, torturous way up the lighthouse’s spiral staircase—the wind, Dolly’s moans and whimpers and Carrick’s labored breathing. Faye could barely breathe herself as she kept pace behind them, one hand on Carrick’s lower back for support and her other hand in Dolly’s iron grasp. Although Dolly couldn’t hear her, Faye whispered to her the entire way up, promising her they would be fine, it was okay, they were safe and they would be safe all night, they were almost there, getting closer, so close... She spoke as much for Carrick’s benefit as Dolly’s. She hoped to distract him, give him comfort, give him something. She wouldn’t be able to walk up these steps carrying a gallon of milk in her hands, and here he was, climbing them at a steady rate with the equivalent of twelve of them.

Two-thirds of the way up, Carrick stumbled. He leaned against the wall, straining to catch his breath.

“Put her over your shoulders,” Faye said. “Fireman carry.”

“She’s a girl,” he said between hard breaths, “not a bag of oats.”

“You can carry her easier.”

“I can’t put her down. She might bolt.”

He spoke slowly, gulping air between words. Faye wished she could help him, but she could do nothing but stay close. Dolly had stopped whimpering, but the fear was unmistakable in her eyes, which were as round as silver dollars and bright with tears. She’d dug her fingernails so tightly into the back of Carrick’s shirt she’d torn the fabric and cut the skin.

Faye looked up. “Maybe thirty steps to go,” she said.

Carrick started up again, and Faye stayed one step behind him. His shirt was drenched through with sweat. He must have done this in the other timeline when Faith had drowned and died in the storm, and Dolly had had to drag him to the lighthouse. He would’ve had to carry Dolly up the steps—a double weight, for he’d borne the weight of the living girl in his arms and the weight of the drowned girl on his heart.

One painfully slow step at a time, Carrick ascended the stairs. He had to stop for breath after each step, and soon he wasn’t breathing but wheezing. Finally, after what seemed like an hour, they reached the watch room. Carrick set Dolly on her feet inside the door, and Faye pulled her in and dragged her to the opposite wall. She grabbed a blanket out of Carrick’s supply trunk, laid it on the floor and drew Dolly down to it. Dolly pulled herself into the fetal position, facing the wall, hiding from doors and windows. Carrick let out a groan and bent double, still standing but resting his full weight back against the wall.

“Carrick?”

His face was red, and he was gasping like he’d just run a marathon or ten.

“I’m...” He gulped a breath and collapsed onto the floor.

“Carrick!” Faye ran to Carrick and dropped to his side. His heart beat so hard she could see it punching against the inner wall of his chest like a fist. He was breathing in short, shallow breaths that scared her. She could see the outline of the jagged scar on his rib cage through his shirt, which had gone transparent with sweat.

“Don’t die,” she begged, hating how white he’d turned, how cold. “Don’t you dare die after all I gave up to be here with you. Central air and the internet and Oreos and antibiotics and vaccines and Netflix. Don’t you dare...” Tears choked her throat. Did she do this by coming back? Maybe in the original timeline Carrick and Dolly had made it to the lighthouse after the wind had died down, and so the door hadn’t blown off its hinges, and they waited the storm out at the foot of the steps. Had she traded her life for his by coming back? She’d never forgive herself. Better to have never come back at all.

“Sweet girl.” Carrick breathed the words through chalky lips.

“Oh, God, are you all right?”

“I need—”

“Anything. Tell me.” She would run to the house for food. She’d run to the cistern for water. She’d run a billion stairs into the heavens and grab God by the throat if Carrick asked her to do it.

He rolled over, stuck his head out of the door hatch, and she heard the unmistakable thick liquid sound of heavy vomiting.

Faye winced. Poor Carrick.

“Need me to hold your hair?” she asked, although she knew he couldn’t hear her over the sound of his own retching.

She looked around, found his water canteen on his desk and brought it to the door.

He crawled back into the watch room, closed the hatch, and sat back against the curved stone wall.

“Feel better?” she asked.

He slowly nodded. “I think I vomited on Ozzie down there.”