The Shining Girls

Kirby and Dan ^{13 JUNE 1993}

She is tense in the car. She keeps playing with the lighter. Flick. Flick-flick-flick. He doesn’t blame her. The pressure is unbearable. Flick. Catapulting towards something that can be averted. A car crash in slow motion. Not just an ordinary fender-bender either. This is like your ten-car pile-up halfway across the freeway with helicopters and firetrucks and people weeping in shock on the side of the road. Flick. Flick. Flick.

‘Can you stop that? Or at least stick a cigarette in the hot end? I could use one.’ He tries not to feel guilty about Rachel. About driving her daughter into danger.

‘Do you have one?’ she says eagerly.

‘Check the glove compartment.’

She pops the latch and the cubby dumps a bunch of crap in her lap. Assorted pens, condiments from Al’s Beef, a squashed soda cup. She crumples the empty packet of Marlboro Lights.

‘Nope. Sorry.’

‘Shit.’

‘You know there’s still as much cancer-causing stuff in the light versions?’

‘Never figured cancer would be the thing to kill me.’

‘Where’s your gun?’

‘Under the seat.’

‘How do you know you’re not going to hit a bump and blow your ankle off?’

‘I don’t normally carry it around.’

‘I guess these are special circumstances.’

‘You freaked out?’

‘Out of my mind. I’m so scared, Dan. But this is it. My whole life. There’s no choice.’

‘We getting into free will now?’

‘I have to go back is all there is to it. If the police won’t.’

‘I think you’ll find that’s ‘we’, pal-face. You’re dragging me with you.’

‘Dragging is a strong word.’

‘So is “vigilantism”.’

‘You gonna be my Robin? You’d look good in yellow tights.’

‘Hold on there. I am definitely Batman. Which makes you Robin.’

‘I always liked the Joker more.’

‘It’s because you relate. You both have bad hair.’

‘Dan?’ she says, looking out the window at dusk creeping in over the empty lots and boarded-up houses and the rat-traps falling apart. Her face is reflected in the car window with the flame as she clicks the lighter again.

‘Yeah, kiddo?’ he says tenderly.

‘You’re Robin.’

Kirby directs him down an alleyway, desolate even by this neighborhood’s standards, and Dan suddenly has a lot of sympathy for Detective Amato.

‘Stop here,’ she says. He switches off the ignition and lets the car roll to a stop behind an old wooden fence that leans out like a drunk.

‘That one?’ Dan says, peering at the abandoned rowhouses with the windows boarded up and weeds that have sprung up jungle-thick and blooming with flowers of trash. Clearly no one has been in here for a very long time, let alone set up a hidden den of yesteryear opulence. He tries not to let the doubt show.

‘Come on.’ Kirby unlocks the door and climbs out the car.

‘Hang on a sec.’ He bends down next to the open door of the driver’s side, pretending to tie his shoelace while digging under the seat to retrieve his revolver. A Dan Wesson. The name amused him at the time. Beatriz hated it. And the thought they might actually need it.

As he straightens, he’s blinded by the flare of light catching in the rear windshield from the sun, which is definitely on the way out. ‘We couldn’t have done this 11 a.m. on a sunny day?’

‘Come on.’ Kirby picks her way through the weeds to the rickety Z of wooden steps running up the back of the house. He holds the gun at his hip, out of sight of the casual observer. He’d settle for any observer. He’s unnerved by how quiet it is.

She shrugs out of his jacket and drops it onto the barbed wire blocking off the stairway.

‘Let me,’ he says. He shoves the heel of his shoe on the jacket, pushing down the razor-sharp coils, and extends his hand to help her over. He scrambles after her and as soon as the pressure’s off, the wire recoils like it’s spring-loaded, tearing into the fabric.

‘Never mind. I got it on sale. Bought the first one that fit me.’ He realizes he’s shooting his mouth off. Never figured himself for a talker. Never figured he’d be breaking into abandoned houses.

They’re standing on the back porch. The view through the window is as foreboding as fuck; dim light that casts everything in shades of green, and detritus everywhere. It looks like the walls have been peeled and spread like confetti all over the floor.

He shrugs the jacket back on as Kirby puts one foot on the windowsill. ‘Don’t be freaked out.’ Then she hauls herself through and disappears. Literally. One second she’s there, framed in the window, next she’s gone.

‘Kirby!’ He lunges for the window, putting his hand down straight onto a jagged slice of glass that’s still miraculously intact. ‘Jesusfuckingshit!’ She reappears and grabs hold of his arm. He half tumbles inside after her. Everything changes.

He stands there, stunned, in the dining room. Disbelief like a concussion. She knows the feeling. ‘Come on,’ she whispers.

‘You keep saying that,’ he says, but his voice is thick and far away. He blinks hard. Blood runs from his palm and patters on the floor in thick drops. He doesn’t notice. The fireplace casts an unsteady orange glow over the floorboards in the dark corridor. There is no sign of the dead man she said she’d had to step over in the hallway when she made her escape before.

‘Snap out of it, Dan. I need you.’

‘What is this?’ he says, low.

‘I don’t know. I know it’s real.’ That’s not true. She’s been doubting herself the whole way here. Thinking maybe everyone is right and she’s the delusional freak and what she really needs is anti-psychotic meds and a hospital bed with a view of the gardens through the bars. It’s such a terrible relief that he sees it too. ‘And I know you’re bleeding. You should give me the gun.’

‘No way, you’re unstable.’ He says it teasingly, but he’s not looking at her. He’s running his hand over the patterned wallpaper. Testing to see if it’s real. ‘You said he’s upstairs?’

‘He was. Three hours ago. Wait. Dan.’

‘What?’ He turns at the foot of the stairs.

She falters. ‘I can’t go up there again.’

‘Okay,’ he says. More decisively: ‘Okay.’ He goes into the parlor and her ribs squeeze tight. Oh God, if he’s in there, sitting in the chair, waiting. But Dan emerges, holding a heavy black poker from the fireplace. He holds the gun out to her. ‘Stay here. If he comes through the door, shoot him.’

‘Let’s just go,’ she says, as if that’s an option any more. He jabs the revolver at her. It’s heavier than she would have thought. Her hands are shaking badly.

‘Cover all the entrances. Use both hands. There’s no safety. You point and shoot. Just don’t shoot me, okay?’

‘Deal,’ she says, her voice shaky.

He starts up the stairs, the poker raised like a baseball bat. She presses her shoulder blades up against the wall. It’s like playing pool. You have to breathe out as you take aim and release. No problem, she thinks with a flash of hate.

The key scratches in the lock.

She jerks on the trigger the moment the door swings open.

The fucker ducks as the shot nicks the edge of the doorframe, splintering the wood. (It cuts through 1980 and bores through the window of the house across the road, embedding itself in the wall next to a picture of the Virgin Mary.)

He is unfazed at being shot at. ‘Sweetheart,’ he says. ‘I was looking for you.’ He reaches for his knife. ‘And here you are.’

She glances down at the revolver, a millisecond is all, to see if she needs to reload or click the chamber. Six rounds. Five left. Dan is already halfway across the room when she looks up. Right in her line of fire.

‘Get out of the way!’

Dan brings the poker swinging down with force, but Harper, who is more experienced with violence, intercepts it with his forearm. It still cracks bone. He howls in pain and punches the knife into Dan’s chest. There is a bright spray of red. The momentum carries both men up against the door. It’s only on the catch. Not locked. They fall together, smashing through the boards nailed across the door, into another time. The door swings shuts behind them.

‘Dan!’ It’s only a few yards, but it feels like forever. It might as well be. When she opens the door, it’s on to the summer’s evening she came from. There is no sign of them.