Malorie(74)
“It’s going to be okay,” Malorie says again. It’s all she can say. For all the preparations and hard work, for all the surviving she’s done, she has no better words for her daughter at this time.
She’s shaking.
But she tries. Because when they get to this crowd of people, when they finally reach the heart of Indian River, she’s going to need her wits.
They’re here for Tom.
“Up again,” Olympia says. “Onto the sidewalk.”
Her daughter guides her serpentine, and Malorie knows it’s because they’re avoiding the dead. How many have scissors in their chests? How many are surrounded by puddles of blood?
The crowd is more emphatic now. The woman’s voice through the megaphone. They sound hungry for whatever’s about to happen.
What’s about to happen?
Malorie can’t make out the words. Her mind is barely able to keep these elements together: the dead, a crowd, Gary, this town, her son.
Indian River is everything she is not and has never been.
People laugh. An eruption of genuine laughter. People jeer…a joke? The voice again. Riling up the crowd. Do the people wear folds?
Is everyone in Indian River out of their fucking minds?
“Stop,” Olympia says.
She pulls Malorie to the side of a building.
“What is it?” Malorie asks, shocked by the calm in her own voice. A calm she does not feel.
“So…Okay. So…”
“What is it?”
“It’s a park in the center of town. And a lot of people are in the park. Blindfolded.”
“Calm down, Olympia. We’re going to get your brother. We can do this.”
“Okay. And…and there’s a stage. Flags. Banners.”
Malorie’s heart breaks before Olympia says the words.
“And Tom’s on the stage,” Olympia says. “He’s standing next to…a mirror.”
The words feel plucked from Malorie’s personal darkness. As if they are made of the dark itself.
“Is he blindfolded?”
She didn’t mean to yell it.
“I can’t tell.”
“You what?”
“Mom, I can’t tell…”
“Okay we need to—”
“There’s a creature on the lawn in front of the stage. I don’t know how to explain this, Mom. Like it’s…waiting to see what happens.”
Malorie is already moving before Olympia finishes.
She doesn’t grab her daughter by the wrist, doesn’t want her to follow. She doesn’t attempt to look strong, to appear dangerous, to threaten. She only walks, arms out, stabilizing herself, readying herself for a curb, a gradation, a hill, a body.
People clap around her. People call out. Someone yells something about breaking through. Someone praises God. So many voices. Hysterical, absurd, convinced.
“TOM!”
Malorie yells his name but others are doing it, too.
Calling for Tom.
Tom on a stage, a creature in the crowd.
“TOM!”
She knows he can hear her. She knows he could’ve heard them at the gates of town if he’d wanted to listen that far.
So many people. Infinite voices.
“TOM!”
She trips on what feels like a curb, almost falls, rights herself.
Someone says something about freedom.
“TOM!”
Like she’s calling out to Tom the man, telling him to get up into the attic, don’t stay downstairs where Gary…Gary…Gary…
“Malorie.”
A voice, at her side. At her ear.
“Get away from me!”
She shoves him. Kicks the open air.
Then, a sea of people. Chants. Cheers.
“Malorie,” Gary says (she knows it’s him, it’s always been him, behind the fold with her, always, forever), “Tom doesn’t want you here. Tom is growing up now. Right now.”
“TOM!”
She shoves but can’t find him. She kicks but he’s not there.
“He’s looking at one right now,” Gary says. “It’s incredible, Malorie. Looking through a device of his own making.”
Malorie moves fast, too fast, swings at Gary, misses, as the voice of the one she believes to be Athena Hantz speaks through the megaphone, tells the people of Indian River that Tom is looking at the creature, that he and the creature look at each other right now.
“TOM!”
But Malorie is falling. As Gary’s laughter is swallowed by a burst of unbridled cheer from the people around her.
And from the stage…suddenly, softly, somehow heard by Malorie as she hits the ground.
“Mom?”
Tom.
He’s heard her.
And he sounds…
“Sane,” she says, planting her palms on the grass, getting to her knees. Her elbows shake, her wrists shake, her entire body rumbles with the horror of her son gone mad and the unfathomable possibility that he hasn’t.
“Mom?” he says. Then, “Malorie!”
Malorie is up. But the crowd is too loud. She’s losing track of him in a wash of lazy, dangerous strangers.
Someone is at her by the elbow, forcing her back the way she came.