I spent the next five days watching Rachel die.
From the outside, just watching the monitor, it didn’t seem that different than what I had been watching for the past three years. Rachel slept, she watched T.V., she read, and she painted. But there were signs if you were looking for them. She seemed tired and tense, and she had taken to sleeping more. And occasionally, just every once in a while, she would glance up at the camera—at me. It was then that I could see the fear and sadness in her eyes.
Inside…well, inside I felt like a burned out house collapsing in on itself. At first I refused to watch, to do anything they wanted me to do. Solomon didn’t get mad at me, but just shrugged. He said while cooperation was preferred and could go a long way toward making my stay with them more comfortable, it wasn’t required.
If he was right, Solomon said with a thin smile, things would play out as they were meant to, regardless of what I wanted or thought I chose. Either way, he added, the video was about to start back playing and would not stop for another five days. Whether I wanted to spend that time getting to see her again was entirely up to me.
I tried to not watch, but a part of me knew from the start I was going to. Maybe I would find some clue that they were lying about her being dead. Or Rachel could give me some advice or warning about what I needed to do next. I didn’t know. What I did know is that I couldn’t miss the chance to see her again. And despite knowing in my heart that she was dead and everything on the video had happened a long time ago, I still felt that by watching I was with her somehow.
She had been taken away from everything she knew when she was barely grown, trapped for years just for being special. Experimented on. Treated like property. Kept from ever having friends or family or a life. And yet through all that, she was still beautiful. Not just on the outside, but on the inside too. I had spent years watching her, getting to know her in a thousand tiny ways that so few people ever truly know each other. I had seen her kindness and grace in her actions, even when she was fighting against the people holding her. I had watched her strength when she woke up day after day in her prison and never gave up. And I saw the beauty of her soul in her paintings, full of swirling colors and…what was the word…wonder. She was able to paint these things she saw with such care and love, despite living in a world that had abandoned her so completely.
Well I wasn’t abandoning her. I would watch every bit of the video I could manage. Try to burn into my memory every frame of her I saw. Not for them and their stupid project. But for me. And for her. I may not have much left to do in my life before they lock me away somewhere or kill me, but I could do this one last thing.
Rachel wouldn’t die alone.
I watched nearly all of it, stopping only to eat quickly and use the bathroom until the last two days. I would ask the guards to pause it, but they would only shake their heads and say Solomon said it had to play normally until it was finished. By the fourth day, I was in a stupor. I had already dozed some the first three days, but when I woke up on the fourth day, I could tell a few hours had passed. There were two trays of food on the bed, one breakfast and another lunch. I looked back at the screen in a panic, worrying I had missed something, but Rachel seemed to be just waking up too. I noticed her putting her hand to her stomach as she got out of bed and felt my own stomach twist. She was already hurting. Rachel glanced at the camera and tried to smile before moving to set up a new canvas for painting.
This was the second of three paintings she did in those last days. The first had been the inside of an old-fashioned movie theater from the viewpoint of someone sitting in a back row. On the movie screen was just the image of a sledgehammer propped against a brick wall. I didn’t understand what it meant, and I found myself scanning the picture for some message or other clue. Eventually I found what might be one, though I didn’t understand it either.
Rachel must have come to understand they knew what she was doing with the paintings and didn’t want to stop her, because these last three she set up much closer to the camera. I was still squinting and studying the painting closely when I realized the flipped up seats in the next row up had brass number plates along the front edge of the seats. Though they were upside down from the viewpoint of the painting, the angle was good enough that once I noticed them I was able to read them.
2…43…26…89
I didn’t understand any of it, but I committed it all to memory, focusing all my attention on the painting until she finally took it away. Even that early on I could tell painting was taking a lot out of her now, and like I had for so long, I found myself talking to her, telling her to go rest before I remembered her body in the next room. I almost stopped then, but no. Maybe she couldn’t tell I was talking to her, or maybe she could. Either way, me talking to her couldn’t hurt, and it made me feel a little less lonely and sad as I watched her.
The second painting, the one she started after I woke up from falling asleep for a few hours, was stranger than the rest. It looked like it was in a room with curved walls made of tree roots, and in the center of the room was a little table made out of the same stuff. Some of the roots around the room were a deep red, but other parts, including the table thing, looked burned and black. I looked closer and saw that I could see a person’s shadow over the table—hands holding some long oval-shaped bundle.
I studied it for a long time, going over it again and again in my mind after she took it away. I couldn’t make sense of it. Of any of it. I wasn’t smart enough, and I was failing her.
Rachel slept for a long time after that painting. Then she got up on the fifth day, her last day, and immediately started working again. This time she was painting faster, and while I saw her wince occasionally, she never lost her look of determination as she slashed lines and colors across the canvas. When she was done, Rachel picked up the painting and turned it toward the camera, giving me a small, tired smile as she was blocked from view.
It was looking out from the front porch of a house somewhere. It was out in the country, and the morning view of the yard and the land beyond were wonderful, but closer-up the painting was of two hands. Holding onto each other tightly, their interlocked fingers seemed to glow red and orange in the light of the rising sun. I found myself crying as I looked at it.
Part of it was because I didn’t know what it meant, and I felt a growing sense of desperation at the thought that Rachel’s last works might be wasted on me. Part was because I knew it had been five days, and I could sense I was close to the end. To her end.
But there was something more to it than all that too. The last painting…even with everything else in my head and my heart pulling me down…gave me hope. Hope of what, I didn’t know. But I started to think that maybe the only message Rachel had for me in that last painting was that somehow, somewhere, everything would be okay.
Outside the edge of the painting I could see motion in the room. People hurriedly coming in with some kind of medical equipment. And then the monitor went black.
“You’ve done well, Thomas. Very, very well. For the last five days of video, we had charted one thousand and forty-seven microvariations in Rachel’s behavior that we believed might correspond to your behavior, your reactions, and your emotional states while watching the video. Like before, the two of you remained in sync as though you were in the same room. It really is remarkable.”
I sat staring at Solomon. I listened to what he said, but I didn’t care. I just wanted it over. Whatever this was, I just wanted it over.
Clearing his throat, he went on. “That’s why we’ve decided to move the implant from Rachel’s body to your own. That’s one of the many reasons we’ve preserved her so. The foreign body was still showing signs of life all this time, but just barely, and we were afraid to attempt removal. Our hope is that, given your connection to Rachel, it will accept you. Perhaps even thrive in you more than it ever did our girl.”
I was suddenly on my feet, and it was only the raising of Solomon’s gun that stopped me from attacking him. “Don’t you fucking talk about her like that. Like any of you gave a shit about her. I’ll fucking kill you.”
Solomon’s face darkened slightly as his lips thinned. “No, you won’t. But if idle threats make you feel better, go ahead. It will only make things harder, not easier.”
Feeling a stab of panicked fear, I sat back down. “What is this thing you’re going to put in me?”
The man looked at me for several seconds before responding. “I’m tempted not to tell you after your stupid—and frankly, hurtful—outburst. But I’ll be the bigger person.” Letting out a small sigh, he went on. “Thomas, somewhere there is a tree. A very special tree. We suspect it is the same tree that Rachel painted for you that time, though we cannot say for sure, as we have never been able to find it. It is either hidden away very well or it is able to hide itself from those it wishes.”
I just looked at him, trying to kill him by just wanting it to be so. “In any case, we have the next best thing. An ancient clipping from the tree. Secured at great cost and sacrifice, and studied for a long time without much success. We have, however, in recent years been given…advice, that this clipping could be grown in the right soil. We thought that soil was Rachel, but while it did develop further inside of her, she died before the necessary growth was finished.”
Leaning forward, he smiled at me. “We have it on fairly good authority, however, that you might succeed where she failed.”
I fought them when they came, but it didn’t matter. I woke up some time later with a dull ache in my chest and a small, already healing scar on my upper stomach. I didn’t really feel that different other than the little bit of pain, but I knew that would change with time. Maybe I had more time than Rachel, or maybe I had less. It didn’t matter. I just…
Wait, what was that?
There was some kind of soft voice…coming from where? It wasn’t in the room. It was in my head. I felt a thrill of excitement. Maybe this was Rachel’s voice. She had somehow stayed in the tree thing they had put inside me?
But no. I had never heard Rachel’s voice, but I sensed this wasn’t it. This voice was too delicate to really be heard or understood, and it reminded me of music coming from a distant room that you felt in the back of your mind without realizing it. It was a…a melody, a kind of song. But it wasn’t Rachel’s song. I realized with a shiver that it was the song of the thing inside of me.
At first I was afraid, but that didn’t last long. It wasn’t trying to hurt me. It was trapped here just like I was. But, it started to sing, it was time for us to be free.
I stood up and walked to the door, and as I did so, the lights went out. The door in front of me clicked, and when I reached out and turned the knob in the dark, it opened easily. How was this possible? And if it could do this, why hadn’t it helped Rachel get out? There was no answer, but there was also no time. I could already hear boots around the corner as the glow from flashlights began to light up the far end of the hall.
They would drag me back in there. Chain me up or take this thing back out of me before we could get away. If I was ever going to get out, it had to be now. The voice was singing again, pushing me to go further into the dark, to run until we were safe.
So I listened and I ran.
Every door unlocked for me, every turn kept me barely out of sight. The people looking for me were barking orders over a radio, asking someone what was the hold up on the generator kicking on. Whatever the response, the hallways stayed dark as I drifted through them blind but not falling, lost but not being found.
When I reached the final door, I opened it into a bright afternoon. My lungs burned a little at the first fresh, unrecycled air I had breathed in a week. Blinking, I waited for the voice to tell me where to go, but it had fallen silent. I closed the door as panic began to rise in my chest. All this and I would get caught because I didn’t know where to go. I was outside a plain brown building in the middle of nowhere. There was a road going off to the right, and to the left there was…
Rachel’s forest, from her first painting to me.
I knew it was the same forest immediately, and not just because of it matching the painting so closely. I had some strange sense that felt like a kind of magnetism, or how birds know which way to fly. Looking around for a second, I felt like I was being pulled when I looked again at those woods. This was right. Somehow, I knew this was the way I needed to go.
So I went.
I had made it to the edge of the forest when I heard the noise of men coming outside the building. I thought about hiding, but I knew it was a bad idea. They would just catch me, and I felt a drive to go deeper into the woods. I plunged ahead, running at close to a reckless speed but never tripping or stumbling as I went. I would occasionally hear a noise behind me as they spread out to search, but the sounds grew fainter as I ran. I almost thought I had lost them for good when I heard a short cough that was quickly muffled off to my left. Someone had gotten close without me knowing it.
Panicking, I looked for any places I could hide. There were only bushes and trees and…over there. A well. Not just a well, but Rachel’s well, with the same worn, grey stone walls capped with a weathered wooden lid. I felt a moment of happy recognition, but then it faded away. How did that help? They’d check the well if they found it, and I didn’t have any way to get down in it without getting hurt or stuck. Then an idea stuck me.
Crouching low and staying to the brush, I moved to the well and gingerly pushed on the lid. At first it resisted, but when I pushed a bit harder, the wooden circle slid aside enough that you could clearly see someone moved it. Glancing around, I eased back into the bushes as I heard soft footfalls approaching.
“We need to check this out.”
“You think he went down the well? Better hope not. He probably broke his neck if he did, and then its our asses.”
I could see the two men approaching. Both of them were wearing dark body armor and carried assault rifles. The older of the two shrugged back at the other one. “Better that than he was hiding in there and we didn’t check.”
Looking irritated, the younger man nodded. “I’ll look.” He went over to the well and shoved the wooden lid aside, causing it to clatter to the ground. Hitting a button on his rifle, a flashlight sprang to life on the barrel. He started to shine it down into the well as the other continued to look in every direction. I was worried he would see me if I moved, but I couldn’t wait. I just had to stay calm. Think slow and move fast.
I kept expecting to hear them yell, or feel something or someone strike me in the back, but nothing came. As the afternoon light began to dim, I saw the trees thinning ahead. I was approaching a road. It looked like a normal, public road too, with several cars passing one way or the other as I walked out of the forest and up the hill to the asphalt.
The idea of hitchhiking, especially this close to where they held me, was frightening, but I saw little choice. I was wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt they had given me and my own shoes, but I had no money or ID or phone. My only chance was to get far enough away that I could try and get help.
I jumped slightly at the hiss of hydraulic brakes as a large semi rolled to a stop next to me. The passenger window rolled down and an older man with white hair and a greying mustache leaned over and peered down at me.
“You look lost, son. You need a ride?”
I looked down at the door of the truck. It had a logo that said “Martinez and Sons Construction and Hauling” Below it was a cartoon man hitting a wall with a sledgehammer. Looking back up, I smiled at him.
“Yes sir, I do.”
I woke up five hours later as we pulled into a truck stop somewhere in Nevada. I had planned on staying awake the entire trip, but that had only lasted a few minutes before exhaustion overtook me. I glanced over at Oliver Martinez and he gave me a toothy grin.
“I’m tired, but you were plumb tuckered out. I’ve got to fuel up, shower and get some grub. I’m going on to California after that. If you want to ride further, just be back here in an hour. Sound good?”
I nodded and thanked him again for the ride as I got out. I felt groggy from sleeping, but otherwise okay. I just needed to decide whether this was a good spot to ask for help or if I should ride with Martinez further. He seemed like a very nice guy, and he would probably try to help if he could, but I wanted to avoid putting more people in danger if I could help it. Looking around, I saw we were in a fairly nice little town. I decided I would go look around for a few minutes and then decide what to do.
I was only three blocks down the street when I saw the flickering lights in the distance. It was a movie theater. As I got closer, I felt my chest tightening. It was the one from Rachel’s painting.
“Hey there. Welcome to the Phoenix.”
The guy standing at the candy counter of the theater looked a little younger than me, and while he seemed friendly enough, he also looked slightly concerned.
“If you’re here for the horror double-feature, I’m afraid the second movie is about thirty minutes in. I can give you a half-rate if you want to see it though.”
I shook my head and tried to not look as strange and crazy as I felt. “No, that’s okay. I…well, I recognized this place from a picture a friend of mine painted. So I came in to ask if you knew anything about her.”
He raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “Okay, weird.” He smiled and added, “Weird but interesting. Who is she?”
I swallowed. “Her name is…well, it was, Rachel Donovan.”
I expected him to look surprised or excited or angry, but I could see right away the name meant nothing to him. Shaking his head, he shrugged again. “Sorry, that doesn’t ring a bell. I’d say you could ask the owner, but he’s on vacation this week.”
Nodding, I searched my mind for something else to ask, some way to make this place matter the way her other paintings had. “Is there anything unique about this place then? Its history or something?”
The man grinned. “Buddy, you’re clearly not from here. This place is super boring. Not just the theater, but the whole town.” Frowning in thought, he added. “The only thing I know about the history of this place is that there used to be a house here that burned down. This was like in the 1920s or 30s when this wasn’t even a part of town. Couldn’t tell you the first thing about it beyond that, but I still bet it’s the most interesting thing that’s ever happened here.”
I let out a disappointed sigh. “Okay. Well, thanks.” I turned to leave when the guy called out again.
“Hey man, sorry I couldn’t help more. If you come back, I’ll get you a discount on a movie. Half-off. If I’m not working, tell them Marshall said it was okay.”
I waved and tried to smile as I headed for the door with a heavy heart. Why did you lead me here, Rachel? What’s here that will help?
I was outside again, staring up at the theater’s bright blinking signs as though they were going to give me some kind of secret signal, when I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye. There was an alley that ran along side the theater and went behind it to…something. Whatever was back there, the light of a distant security lamp cast shadows along the wall of the alley, and those shadows were moving.
Instead of feeling afraid, I felt excited as I started down the alley. Rachel had led me here, and I just had to trust that there was a reason for it. Keep looking until I…
The shadows were made by leaves blowing in some wind I couldn’t feel. As I got to the far end of the alley, I saw there was a small back yard behind the theater surrounded by a chain link fence, and on the other side of that fence was the tree from Rachel’s painting, with its deep red twisting bark and foam of green leaves waving to and fro in the night air.
I felt a surge of warmth in my chest as the distant singing began again. This was the place. The special tree that could not be found unless it wanted you to find it. It sat at the edge of a small overgrown lot surrounded on all sides by buildings and yards, somehow forgotten when whatever this land had once been was divided up, and despite its location, I had a strong sense that I was the first to see it in a very long time.
Climbing the fence, I felt a jagged wire dig into my leg and rip my pants as I fell over the top. I was bleeding a little, but I hardly noticed. I could smell the tree now, and it was a rich, good smell unlike any I had smelled before. Reaching out to it, I felt the singing grow louder as I touched it. I felt stronger and less afraid then, and when I saw the light opening up at its roots, I didn’t tremble, I smiled.
There was a hidden tunnel under the tree. A tunnel filled with sweet-smelling air that was like the tree smell but also different. And the tunnel wasn’t dark—no, not at all. It glowed with its own golden light that called to me, urged me forward. Rain was beginning to fall as I looked around the dark lot. I had the thought that I was leaving this world behind.
And I found I didn’t mind that much at all.
The tunnel had continued to grow, slanting down gently and tall enough that I walked in without stooping. The roots of the tree went on and on, woven through the dirt walls as I went deeper. I looked back and saw the tunnel had closed behind me, but I wasn’t surprised. The way forward was the only way that mattered.
I walked for what might have been hours, but I never felt tired or hungry. And I never worried I was lost, though I had no idea where I was or where I was going. Still, I felt a surge of happiness and excitement when I turned a corner and saw something in the tunnel ahead. As I got closer I realized it was a brick wall, but just as I began to think I had found a dead end, the wall faded away, revealing a dark room.
I paused at the edge of the tunnel, looking out at the floor of what looked like a basement. It was empty, but in the light from the tree I could make out something scratched into the floor. It was the number two. I felt my pulse quicken as I thought back to Rachel’s painting with the theater seats, and then I stepped out into the room.
It was the empty basement of a house, and as I went up the stairs and opened the door, I saw that the rest of the house was empty as well. No lights were on, but bright sunlight poured in through every window and in the distance I could hear what sounded like small waves crashing on a beach. I wanted to go out and see where I was, but I forced myself to check the house first for any people or clues. But there were none. The house was utterly bare of any sign of people other than the number scratched into the floor below.
My nose tingled with salty air as I stepped outside. The house was near the beach on what I soon figured out was a small, deserted island, and I realized with little surprise that I recognized the house from Rachel’s painting. As I stepped off the porch, I saw no signs of people, but I wasn’t entirely alone. Because sitting some distance from the house, was the tree.
I knew it couldn’t be the same tree as in the abandoned lot, but at the same time I knew that it was. Or at least a different part of the same tree that made the tunnels and appeared in my old world and whatever place this was.
Because I had started having that thought as soon as I stepped out of the house. I didn’t think this was my world. Not exactly. I could see a larger island some distance away, and it might have people on it. Hotels and cars and planes. Or it might not, as those things might not exist here. Either way, my newfound intuition was growing stronger, and I could tell that the…what was it called? The con…no, the texture of things was different somehow, if only a little. Not bad or scary, just different.
Still, after a couple of hours exploring the island and checking the house, I began to feel terribly lonely, even with the tree nearby. I decided to go back into the tunnel and keep going. The basement wall faded away as I walked up to it, and I entered the tunnels again.
It was only a short time later that I found my second version of the house. Much like the first, the wall faded away into a basement, but this one was far from empty. It was a workshop of some kind, full of tools I wasn’t familiar with. I glanced down and saw “43” scratched onto the floor. Who was doing that? And why?
I was going to explore the house, more carefully this time, as it looked like there were people here, but then I froze. Propped against the brick wall, next to a small stack of boards, was a sledgehammer. Trying to be quiet, I crept over and picked it up before heading back into the tunnel.
When I was little, before Daddy died, he had loved to hunt. I never went with him and didn’t remember much of what he hunted, but I do know he had an old hound he’d had since before I was born. The dog had only loved him—well, him and being on the trail of something. When Rocker (his name was Rockerfeller) got a scent, it was like he was in a trance. He would go and go, this way and that, and to look at him, it looked like he was having a fit—both lost and certain at the same time. But whatever Rocker knew or didn’t know, he always found what he was looking for.
I felt like Rocker now. I was moving faster and faster as I went down this turn and that. I felt like I was on the trail of something or traveling on memories I didn’t have. Gripping the sledgehammer tightly, I could hear the rising hum of the distant music in my head as I turned the last corner, and then it fell silent.
There was another brick wall, and as I approached, it fell away.
It was another basement room, but this one was much smaller. It contained a table, a clothes chest, and an old metal bed that had been broken apart. At the far brick wall, a woman was using one of the metal legs from the bed to attack the wall and whatever lay behind it. I felt my head began to swim as I looked at her from behind, and as she turned to look at me, eyes wide with surprise and fear, I felt the sledgehammer slip from my grip as I stumbled back against the now solid wall. I could barely breathe at all, but I managed to get out a single word.
“Rachel?”
The woman looked at me, her expression less fearful but still guarded. She had the bed leg partially raised in warning. “Yeah? Do I know you?”
It was her, but it wasn’t, much like the tree on the island. This Rachel looked a few years older, and while she looked stressed and confused at the moment, her eyes didn’t seem weighted down by the same quiet sadness I had come to recognize watching the other Rachel for all that time. Still, I didn’t know how to answer her question and not sound creepy or crazy. I stared at her for a second, floundering, when she asked another.
“You came out of the tree tunnel, right?”
I nodded, grateful for something I could answer easily.
Studying me, she said. “Where did you come from? Before the tunnel I mean.”
I flushed as I tried to think of the right words. “Um, well, I came from Texas. Originally I mean.”
She grinned at me for a second before catching herself and trying to look serious again. “Yeah, okay. But like…do you know how the tree works? How did you find out about the tunnel? How did you get here?”
Sighing, I rubbed my head and just started into it.
“Look, I know this will sound crazy, but I had a job watching a woman trapped in a room, and that woman was you, or another version of you, and she asked me for help, and I couldn’t help her and then they took me, and I found out she had been dead for a long time but could see me in the future and then they put something from the tree in me that had been in her that killed her and then I escaped and then I figured out where to go to find the tree from things she had painted and I somehow knew how to go in the tunnels to find different spots, and I’m pretty sure the tunnels lead to different worlds and I got this sledgehammer and then I…”
“Hold up. God damn. Take a breath. You’re going to pass out.” She was smiling again, and this time she didn’t try to hide it. She looked over what was left of the bed to where the sledgehammer was laying on the floor. “And did you say sledgehammer?”
Whack
“So yeah, I believe you.”
Whack
“I’ve been in those tunnels too. My ex-boyfriend tricked me into moving here so he could tie me to the tree in his place.”
Whack
“Well, not tie me to the tree literally. Take his place as…what? The tree’s buddy or something? I don’t really know. It’s all pretty fucked up and I don’t understand all of it.” Whack
“But what I do understand is that the fucker walled me up in here. At first, I thought I could just pry loose some bricks over time, but nope. He put a layer of concrete on the outside this time. Good ol’ Phil. Or Justin. Or whatever. I mainly think of him as Fuckface now.”
Whack
“This is taking forever.”
I stepped up and put my hand on the sledgehammer. “Let me do it for a bit. We can take turns.” We had cleared away even more brick than she had already managed, but the concrete wall was only starting to show small cracks. I wanted to just keep looking at her, have her talk to me, but I knew she was tired. She nodded reluctantly and let go of the hammer. Before I swung, I looked back at her. “How long have you been in here like this?”
Whack
Rachel scowled. “It’s hard to say for sure, but I think about eight months.”
I let the hammer drop down again as my eyes widened. “How did you survive all that time?”
Her scowl deepened. “It’s the tree. It won’t let me die. I just dip into the tunnel every day for a bit and I never get that hungry or thirsty.”
A thought occurred to me then. “Why didn’t you just escape through the tunnels?”
She quickly shook her head. “No, thank you. I’ve had enough of seeing other worlds. Some of them aren’t so nice. And I don’t want to be more tied to the tree than I already am. I just want out of here, into my own world, and then I can try and figure out how to get free of my connection to the tree for good.” Rachel shrugged. “I would have done it eventually with the stupid bed parts, but who knows how long it would have taken?” She smiled again. “I’m very happy you came to help and brought a sledgehammer with you.”
Returning her smile, I nodded as I lifted the hammer again. “Me too.”
Whack
We were both wringing with sweat when we crawled through the hole we’d made in the outer wall. Rachel told me that she thought her ex-boyfriend was long gone, but she couldn’t be sure, so we had to be careful. Grabbing the sledgehammer from inside the room, we made our way toward the stairs.
The house was decorated but quiet, and we saw no sign of anyone as we walked to the front door and opened it. Outside, the sun was coming up on a new day, and as we walked out onto the porch, I jumped a little as Rachel took my hand and gave it a squeeze. I looked over at her.
I hadn’t been able to help the other Rachel, but maybe that had never been the point at all. Because I thought now she had been able to see more than just other places or the future. She had been able to see into other worlds and possibilities.
Like this one, where another version of her was trapped and needed help. A place where I wouldn’t be hunted and she could be free. In the end, even when she knew she was dying, Rachel had been determined to help us be together and happy.
The morning sun painted beautiful colors on Rachel’s face, and looking into her eyes I saw how much she was like the woman I had watched and cared about and tried to save. The woman who, in the end, had saved me instead. I wanted to tell Rachel so many things, ask her so many questions, but all that could come later. Squeezing her hand back, I walked with her away from the house.
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Credits
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