Page 97 of The Whispering Night
“Grayson was on his second trial,” she says to herself, exactly as she said while she gripped her green sweater and stared at the same waters ahead. “When he stole a Tuesday Hummer and drove it off the dam.”
Ms. Morgan doesn’t answer. Presumably because she can’t hear, and anyway, what is she going to say?
Jenna Thursday created the Whisperer, and it killed her. Grayson was either with her on the trial or else nearby, and the Whisperer tried to kill him too. So he ran. Heranand took whatever vehicle he found first: a Tuesday Hummer just like this one.
No, Winnie doesn’t have all the gaps filled in yet, such as why Jenna cast such a monstrous spell, why she did so on the night of her second trial, or what the Crow has to do with any of it, but Winnie knows, deep in the beating ventricles of her heart, that this is why Grayson drove a Hummer off the bridge.
And that she is about to follow the exact same path.
A speed bump launches the Hummer skyward. They are almost to the dam. “You’re a Diana, aren’t you?” Winnie has to shriek to be heard.
And Ms. Morgan’s eyes find Winnie’s in the rearview. “Defected!” she answers. “Winnie, do you trust me?”
Yes,Winnie thinks, and she nods to prove it. Because even if her brain can’t arrange all these puzzle pieces, she can’t deny that Ms. Morgan really has always been on her side.
“Good.” Ms. Morgan’s eyes latch onto the road again—onto the dam bridge straight ahead. “Because I meant what I said before: this is about tosuck.” She cudgels her heel to the gas. They reach the dam. They career fifteen feet onto the bridge.
And Ms. Morgan wrenches the steering wheel left.
Time slows like an action sequence in a movie, except every sensory organ is engaged—organs Winnie never knew she had because they’re not on human anatomical diagrams. Like the ability to sense inertia, tugging her backward while gravity and gasoline rip her forward. Or the sense that space and time reallyareconnected, meaning Winnie is not a three-dimensional being so much as a four-dimensional one wound tightly inside the confines of gravity.
Her eyes, despite the crack in her glasses, are suddenly aware of all sorts of details she has never registered before on the dam: how the railing on either side is rusted iron with rivets as large as her fist. How the concrete curb is painted yellow, or how signs every ten feet proclaim:Warning, Dam Outflow. Water level change when alarm sounds.
Winnie has never actually heard that alarm, has she?
The Hummer hits the railing. It is a sound louder than any alarm. Andalthough the irontriesto hold back this charging bull, it is no match for five thousand pounds of SUV. It crunches through the iron as easily as the Whisperer did through the maze.
The Little Lake shines, beautiful with the round-the-clock lights from the Floating Carnival to dance and scatter on the waves.
RIP, fishes,Winnie thinks as the four dimensions of the universe tip her downward. As the lights and waves vanish and all Winnie sees is the darkness of water ready to feast.
CHAPTER
40
Distantly, Winnie knows that bracing is bad. That if she can stay relaxed she’s more likely to reduce injury upon impact. Butsure.Relax muscles when a hungry lake closes in.
Then the Hummer completes its high dive, and the front bumper slams so hard against the water that Winnie’s head snaps backward with a vicious, audible popping. The seat belt sucks in tight.
And the slowness of time somehow stretchesmore. Winnie has enough space to think,I was just here a few days ago, floating on this lake like a swan. Now I am sinking, like a whale carcass into that lightless bathypelagic.
I wonder if I’ll see any candy bars.
Chassis groans. Glass creaks. The water is rising so fast, and holyshit,why is Ms. Morgan rolling down the passenger window? She’s screaming too, over and over:“Get your seat belt off, Winnie! Get your seat belt off!”
Winnie’s fingers are smarter than her mind. They obey, releasing the buckle in a sharp click that will vibrate in her body for the rest of her life. A cosmic microwave background caused by a new Big Bang that will change the trajectory of her future forever.
Water gushes like a waterfall into the passenger window. Ms. Morgan is crawling toward it, her hands and lower legs already submerged. She screams new words that sound like,“Follow me! We have to swim!”But might also be,“This way to your death, Winnie!”
And itisdeath that way. The water is toppling onto Winnie, and it’s sofucking cold. There’s no melusine to save her. No Jay to haul her toshore and keep her warm. There is only hypothermia and darkness and silence.
Ms. Morgan’s hand lands on Winnie’s leg. She has crawled backward and is grabbing Winnie just as Jay grabbed Winnie in the conservatory. Just as Winnie grabbed Erica in the maze.
“EAT THE PIZZA!”she hears, although that voice must be in her head. A command summoned by a soul not ready to die. Because Winnieisn’tready to die, and the ghosts of dead fishes and dead Hummers, of past trials and past pain cannot have her.
Winnie moves.
The water is to her waist now, icy and heavy and unwilling to let her go. But if the ghosts can’t have her, then the watersureas hell can’t either.
