The Wicked We Have Done

8

At first, it’s hard to distinguish if this is an act of another inmate or of the Compass Room itself, until I remember that the only other person out there is Gordon. While he’s insane, he’s small—certainly incapable of doing this in the span of time that we were gone.

No, this had to be a mechanical decision the Compass Room made. Stella was right—we’d been pretending to be safe and sound with our provisions. It kept the fact that we were stranded within the wilderness at bay. I sift through shreds of tent fabric, of blankets and spare T-shirts.

Valerie kicks an empty can into the stream and curses.

“We were expecting this to happen sooner or later—run out of food,” Casey plops down on a stump and massages his temples. “We’re fine. We just have to think this through.”

“Welcome back to the land of the living, Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky,” Valerie snaps.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Like I didn’t notice that for more than a day you’ve been moping around. Now suddenly you fake optimism because all of us are miserable.”

Casey jumps to his feet. “You want to know why I was so miserable? I can tell you right now that your little illusion was nothing compared to the bullshit I had to go through yesterday.”

Valerie’s voice rises. “Oh yeah? Well, I’m glad your pain makes you feel so entitled.”

“Stop yelling, please,” Jace asks, inappropriately polite. Surprisingly, it gets both Casey and Valerie to shut up, but not before Valerie groans and rubs at the bruises on her neck.

This place isn’t afraid to beat us up a little, that’s for sure. I guess the same kind of threat exists in the prisons, but that’s because of other volatile inmates. This time, it’s the actual place we’re trapped that’s causing injury.

We don’t deserve any less.

Most of the world would think we deserve to die long and painful deaths. Casey’s and Jace’s bruises, Stella’s escalating insanity—maybe this is only the beginning.

Stella.

“Where’s Stella?” I ask.

Even Tanner, who’s kept his distance from the rest of the party, scouting out the edges of camp to see if there’s anything useful left in the remains, shrugs. “I don’t think she ever made it. Last place I saw her was in the woods before we walked back.”

“Good riddance,” Valerie says. “Bitch was nothing more than a headache.”

I have to agree with her, especially after all of the crazy speak about how Valerie shouldn’t have been able to walk away from her test. Something is wrong with Stella, and I don’t think any of us have the ability to help her.

Suddenly Tanner asks, “What did you say before, Casey?”

“When?” Casey responds.

“You called the tests something. You called them illusions. What made you say that? They aren’t phantoms. If it weren’t for the fact that we know your father is dead, you would think that he was alive. Tangible.”

Casey flushes.

“What do you mean? What about his father?” Jace asks.

Casey tells them everything. Not spitefully, but almost like he’s using it as a peace offering. All cards on the table so we can figure this shit out together.

“He wasn’t real. Logically we know this,” Tanner says, sitting near the fire pit.

“Unless the government reanimated him for the sake of torturing Casey,” Valerie suggests.

Casey ponders this for a moment. “I’m not above considering zombies.”

Tanner rolls his eyes. “But for purpose of realistic circumstances, I think Casey’s term is the closest to what these things truly are. Illusions.”

“Well, virtual simulations were never out of the question,” I say.

“But how they become tangible, how they feel real . . .” Casey says.

Tanner scratches his head. “Technology. Has to be.”

But how is that technology even possible? I felt Meghan in my arms. She was there, dying. Casey’s illusion, so Tanner says, could pick up a shovel and leave real—very real—bruises on Casey.

“My uneducated guess is that these illusions are supposed to put us under enough stress to the point where our thoughts and actions become volatile and exposed,” Tanner says. “That’s when we die.”

I think of Stella. Her state of mind is that of someone who’s been tortured over and over. Maybe the Compass Room can’t get an accurate reading of her moral arrow. Maybe they must drive her insane in order to make her crack, to see the evil within her.

“What now?” Jace asks.

We enjoy a bonfire of the desecration of camp. Everything goes in the pit. The shreds of fabric, the last of the wood from the shed. The five of us huddle next to each other and watch it burn.

In the early afternoon, when our camp is nothing more than a pile of ash, we leave with the clothes on our back.

Valerie is amazing at imagining the geography of the area. In her mind she can picture exactly how far away the lake is, as well as the burned-up lodge in the other direction. We don’t want to go back to either of those places because we know what’s there. If we’re lucky, we might be able to find another pocket of supplies.

Or we might run into another test.

But it doesn’t really matter, because wherever we are, we aren’t going to be safe.

So we head west.

Our path slopes downward into a shallow valley. At the top, I make out a black line cutting through the trees, curving around and back to the lake.

“The boundary,” Tanner huffs. “Should we go back?”

Valerie’s too curious. “If we follow the boundary for a little while and figure out the angle it’s curving at, we can tell how big this place is.”

“Geometry was never my strong suit,” Tanner says. “Now, calculus . . . Ask me to graph something and I got it covered.”

Valerie slaps his shoulder. “Don’t worry, kid. I got your back.”

We follow an eager Valerie down into the valley, to a black wall. The material is metallic—titanium-like—it would be impossible to climb over. Pines nestle against it as if they always have, as if the wall has been here forever. The sun streaks through the branches in tiny fingers of light, not enough for me to feel safe.

We walk and walk until I can’t peel my tongue away from the roof of my mouth. Nothing changes other than the inclining ground as we follow the wall toward the direction of the lake. We must be trudging along for an hour before we come across a small outlet. All of us crouch together and gulp down as much water as we can.

In the middle of splashing my face, Jace releases a strangled cry. She coughs. I wipe my cheeks as Valerie says, “Oh God. Oh God, that’s—that’s fucked up.”

Both of the girls have a hand covering their mouths, Valerie’s arm flung around Jace’s shoulder, like she’s protecting her. Their attention is veered toward the bank to the left of us.

I stand, walking to the grassy patch they’re fixated on. Right as Casey says, “Evalyn, don’t,” my eyes fall upon the mutilation.

Bile rises in my throat. I cover my nose but the stench has already filled me. I dry heave once. The next time my stomach gives in, I spit a mouthful of yellow acid on the grass.

A hand rests on my shoulder. “You all right?” Casey asks. When I don’t respond, he says, “Here, let’s get you away from that thing.”

That thing. I can get as far away from it as possible in this damn place, but the image will still be burned into my brain. What was it—a raccoon? I couldn’t even tell the species of the creature with the way its brains were ripped through its mouth, eyes dangling from its sockets, intestines tied around the carcass like a fucking Christmas present. A chain wraps around its neck, like it was restrained for the mutilation.

I gag, and Casey guides me downstream. The others follow. As I plop down in the grass, Tanner says in a small voice, “That’s the only animal we’ve seen so far.”

He’s right. There aren’t even birds here. No skittish deer or the chattering of tree rodents. This is the first. A dead, tortured raccoon.

Tortured.

Tanner and I seem to come to the realization simultaneously.

“You think it’s him?” I say.

“Who else would it be?” he responds.

“Who?” Casey asks, understanding a moment later. “Gordon.”

“How the hell is he still alive?” Valerie begins to pace.

Jace’s attention refuses to leave the raccoon’s grave—she’s entranced, wringing her hands in front of her.

“We don’t know that he is,” Tanner says. “Especially if he really did dismember that animal.”

“What do you mean, if he really did?” Valerie snaps. “Of course he did. I don’t care what kind of crime any of you committed. Not one of you is a sick enough son of a bitch to do something like that.”

“There’s Stella,” says Jace.

Valerie halts, deep in thought.

“No,” I say. “Something happened to Stella that screwed her up in the head, but—” I think of the raccoon and lose my train of thought.

“She’s not capable of that. Evalyn’s right,” Tanner finishes.

Arms crossed, Casey says, “We need to get out of here. I have a bad feeling about screwing around in a place where something—no matter what it was—did that to that animal.”

None of us disagree.

We get up and continue on the same path we were on before the diversion. My legs threaten to give out on me any moment, and it takes every bit of concentration I have to keep moving, using the wall for balance when I have to.

No one speaks for a long, hard while, until Valerie says, “At the speed the wall curves, if the prison is somewhat circular, I’d guess a diameter of eight miles.”

“But you can’t be sure,” I say.

“Not without a map. But even if I’m wrong, it’s obvious this place is damn big. Which means a lot of undiscovered territory for our little party right here.”

Which means a lot of secrets that could either help us or hurt us.

“I say we walk straight across, see if we actually do have an eight-mile diameter,” I suggest.

Everyone else groans. “I’m all for discovery,” Valerie says. “But I wouldn’t go that far. I’m wiped. And starved. And grossed out.”

Grossed out doesn’t even begin to cover how I feel. Violated is more of the correct term, and there’s no way in hell I’m sticking around this part of the Compass Room for longer than I have to. “You see any food around here? There isn’t, unless you include that torn-up raccoon.”

“She’s right,” Casey says.

“Of course I’m right.”

We fill up on water at an outlet. I drink from the stream until another drop would make me sick. When we set out, we stray from the border perpendicularly. Valerie says that we’ll cut right between our camp and the burned down lodge and travel east—the place where Stella came from, but we’ve never been.

I lead the pack, determined to keep moving solely because of the fevered chill aching in my spine. Everyone’s quiet.

Even though we hike uphill, back out of the valley, the sky remains an underwater blue. The sun hasn’t fully shown today. Tension rests beneath my neck and no matter how I stretch my back, it refuses to disappear. Growth is so thick that I have to kick through the brush as it claws at my pants and boots.

Valerie huffs behind me. “Slow down, Ev. I’m not made for this shit.”

“I don’t . . . want to be caught . . . with nothing . . . in the dark,” I wheeze, smacking brush away. “Gordon might be dead but—but we don’t know for sure. He might be close.”

“A five-minute break . . . won’t kill us. . . . You know what, fuck you. I’m stopping.”

Valerie sinks to her knees and rubs her blotched neck. Jace takes the opportunity to stop too. Tanner’s so far behind, he’s like a figurine trekking over the trail we made.

“Fuck me? You’re the one who wanted to walk all of the way down to the wall. If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t have to hike back out of the valley.”

“I thought everyone wanted to know how big this place was. Wasn’t that the whole point?”

“I don’t know what else to do, Valerie. You want to be stuck here in the middle of the night without protection?”

“You don’t know that we’ll find anything. You don’t know that our demise won’t be starving to death. Maybe that’s why they destroyed our camp. Because we’re all guilty.”

“So you’re going to give up?” I glance at Casey, but he’s as indifferent as Jace. Have they all given up?

Valerie answers my silent question. “This morning, a noose crawled its way into camp and dragged me through the forest. And then the Compass Room took everything I worked to find. You think that we have any sort of say in what this place gives us? If it wants us to starve, we’ll starve. End of story.”

Dammit, she’s so right that I hate her for it. And no one’s arguing, no one, because everyone is thinking the exact same thing she is.

Tanner reaches us and plops down near Jace, falling forward on his stomach. His back rises and falls.

I can’t stop the swell of disappointment in me, the bubbles of resentment toward all of them. I’m tired. I’m hungry. And the last thing I want to do is really admit that she’s right.

“Fine. You can stay right here and freeze tonight.”

“And you’ll do what, cut through that?” She nods ahead, where the ground levels. I nearly fall over when I see what she’s referring to.

Vines have threaded into a rounded wall, filtered light casting dark shapes onto the grass. Tall trees bend toward us like a cresting wave. A pathetic whimper escapes my lips.

“It. Doesn’t. Want. Us. To. Move. Forward,” she spits.

She’s wrong. It wants us to move forward, but in a very specific direction. At the corner of the wall is a hole—a tunnel, more like—at its mouth a pale pink mailbox with five curly address numbers and a gardenia painted across the aluminum.

The stump on which it sits is charred, but the box is so friendly, so unbelonging, that on instinct I wonder if I’ve stumbled into a Lewis Carroll novel.

An object in the middle of this forest prison. This isn’t a random placement. This is someone’s test.

I turn back to my party, to check if anyone sees what I do. “What’s that?” Jace asks, and as if on cue, they all turn. There is no recognition from anyone, because the object isn’t from one of their pasts.

Which means that one of the other two could have already seen it, could be going through their test right now.

Or could be dead.

I bolt to the tunnel. Casey calls my name, but I don’t turn back around. I reach out and press my palm to the pink paint, the very real metal, and the numbers that read 12830.

I slip through the tunnel of curled saplings. The path slopes downward.

Past the dense, dew-laden trees rests a wrought-iron gate. I open it, the noise of the hinge ripping through the quiet air. Hedges line the way.

A petite, boot-covered foot disappears behind the first corner of the maze. I scream Stella’s name.

The hedges are a one-way labyrinth. The sky darkens, not from the setting sun, but from ash—a paralyzed cloud blanketing the air above me.

Hedges shift to oak. The coal-black sky trickles downward like shredded lace. Before me, embedded into the side of the mountain, is a polished wooden door. The circular window mimics a crystal sundial. Vines creep over the wood like parasites, and the crack beneath the door coughs soot.

Heart racing, I grasp the handle and turn.

The door opens to an empty room. Wilted sunlight trickles through the dusty window, across the beams on which Stella stands. Before her is a fireplace set in stone, with a mantel hosting five frames. Pictures of people. A family, perhaps.

“You know I love you,” Stella says. “You know I’ll do anything to fix this. I’ve dreamt about you every night. All I want is for things to be like they used to.”

She speaks to a boy. He’s gaunt but handsome. Taking Stella’s face, he says, “Things will never be how they used to. It’s your fault. And you have to accept that.”

“No, Finn. You need to believe me. It wasn’t me. I’d never do anything to hurt you.” Her sob cracks through the empty air. “How could you even think that?” She’s angry now. “You know me. You know I’d never hurt you or your family!”

I take a step closer, and another. The floor turns to ash like a burned sheet of paper, gray petals curling away from each other. They rise from the ground and remain stagnant, as if they’re floating in water. I reach out and touch one. It disintegrates.

When Stella sees me, her eyebrows furrow together. “What are you doing here?” There is a clarity to her. She’s no longer chained by mania and fear.

“I’m getting you out of here. You don’t need to see him again.” I hold my hand out to her.

Bury it, burn it, break it into pieces. It always comes back.

The mailbox. She was talking about the mailbox.

“You don’t owe him an explanation, Stella. He isn’t real.”

She wrings her hands in front of her and studies Finn. He seems as real as Casey’s father did. As Meghan. Stella reaches out and touches his chest.

“I know he feels real, but he isn’t. I promise you.”

“Don’t listen to her,” Finn says.

“I know, Evalyn.” A tear trickles down her cheek. “I know he’s full of lies. I know. He comes to me spouting these horrible things and it isn’t true. He isn’t true. But I make myself believe he is.”

The floating embers around us burn hotter. “Stella, we need to go now.”

“I wish he’d believe me.”

A green flash fills the room, and Finn is gone.

Stella screams and falls to her knees. At first I think the mania is back. But then she raises her hands. They’re charred black.

I race to her and drop down, grasping her wrists to hold her still. Her flesh is searing hot.

She shrieks.

“What’s burning you, Stella? Talk to me!”

The smoldering spreads, eating up the flesh on her forearms and elbows. She falls to her back, writhing in agony. I search for water, for anything that will staunch the burning, but there’s only one empty room.

The bottom of her shirt turns to ash. Her arms aren’t the only part of her that’s charring. The skin on her stomach peels and blisters and boils.

She’s dying.

“What is doing this to you? Stella! Let me help you!”

Her shrieks turn to ragged, choked gasps, and her eyes roll to the back of her head. She claws at my shirt with her marred, twisted hands, but I can do nothing. The smell of cooked meat fills the room.

She blinks and finds me, and I know she no longer feels the pain. Her blonde curls fan from her head like a halo.

I see Meghan, dying alone. Dying with no one to help her.

The invisible fire has burned a crater beneath the cove of her rib cage. Any deeper and she’ll no longer be able to breathe. I speak while I still have her.

“I’m so sorry.” I doubted her. I never took her seriously, not even when she stumbled into camp looking like the devil had his way with her.

“Why?” The word leaves her mouth quiet and garbled.

I can’t answer her. All I can say is, “It’s okay. Everything is okay.”

Her body trembles as she tries to breathe, and her lungs refuse. Before my eyes she suffocates, and I keep lying to her. I keep telling her that everything is okay.

Everything is okay.

It’s okay.

She’s gone.

I force down her eyelids with my fingers and wipe the sweat beneath my nose, contaminating my upper lip with the smell of her burned flesh.

My entire being down to my soul begins to shake. I shut my eyes and wait it out, wait for it to wash over me, rattling me until I’m flushed and dizzy.

When I open my eyes, the house and the ashes are gone. I kneel in a meadow, Stella lying before me. Sun streaks through the trees. A gust of wind cools the sweat on my forehead.

I think of Stella floating in the clearest water I can imagine.

A hand rests on my shoulder. “I’m not giving up either,” Casey says.

My Sentence Was Old News Now.

I could tell when I started getting smacked around less than the day before.

Valerie was much more fun for the others to torment. Every time I saw her, her face was different phases of healing and broken, black and blue and crusted yellow. I had sympathy for her, but at the same time, she really needed to keep her hands to herself.

I watched the rallies on TV in the back of the packed rec room. There were mobs of people in DC, Los Angeles, and New York City protesting the Compass Rooms that would launch in less than a month.

They were a new wave of soldiers who disregarded science as truth. Even though the ability to measure morality had been proven, painted signs flashed within the crowds that said we are not gods and your scientific method proves we are murderers and protect our children.

“There’s still hope,” a girl next to me whispered. She had a kind face. I was taken aback but I didn’t want to show it, so instead I nodded and said, “Thanks.”

I knew hope was futile, though. Hope for what? That before I leave, the government would decide to listen to the hippies and this would all disappear? When had the government ever listened to the hippies?

But in truth, it wasn’t just the hippies who were protesting. It was pacifist Christians, Buddists, humanitarians, and libertarians who didn’t want to front the money to build the Compass Rooms in the first place. It was those who doubted the accuracy of scientists to be able to determine a moral compass. That would have never been conceivable twenty years ago, so it must not be true.

I closed my eyes, drowning in the heat of a stress fever that had come on a few days prior.

Someone turned up the volume. Maybe a guard, to torture me.

“Compass Rooms have caused outrage among several human rights groups. Scientists argue that the genes composing us aren’t malleable. Genes for unforgivable crimes such as murdering and raping exist from birth . . .

“. . . exterminating them early would mean less crime in the future.

“. . . what Compass Rooms attempt to uncover is whether these criminals have these genes or their crimes were one-time flukes.”

That night, I dreamt of suffocating darkness. I knew it was death. I lied on my back, my arms and legs splayed as though I were creating snow angels in the thick, tangible black. I allowed the screams of my victims to wash over me, blanket me. I would soon join them.

And then all dues would be paid.