The Night Strangers - Chris Bohjalian [161]
The seat beside you is empty, but you are absolutely certain that your daughter—the blond girl—was there just a moment ago. She was in that window seat. Her Dora the Explorer backpack is still nearby, one of its straps and a nylon handle peering out from underneath the seat ahead of you. But that little girl? Gone. You scan the rows of people in the seats before you, but there is absolutely no sign of her. There is absolutely no sign of any children at all.
At the very least, you must find the child with the blond hair before the plane belly flops into the lake and—as somehow you know it will—breaks apart. You must, because you love her and she needs you and there is no more powerful, more poignant cord. But then the plane is down and for the barest of seconds seems to be skimming along the surface of the lake. This may, in the end, turn out all right. Suddenly, however, the aircraft plows into a surface as solid as a medieval castle wall and is stood upright on its nose, and your head is whipped into the seat before you and then, as the fuselage crashes back into the water, into the collapsing ceiling. Or is it the floor? You have no idea. You know only that the cabin has come alive with the sounds of screaming and ripping metal, and already you can smell the lake water that is rolling like a tsunami down the aisle, and—this doesn’t seem possible, this can’t possibly have happened—a metal pike has pierced your skull like an arrow. You run the fingers of your right hand over the shard, and they come away bloodied. And then you try to take a breath, but already the water is over your mouth and nose and you start to gag.
So you struggle, you thrash, even as you grow weak, even as the water is flooding your nose and you are aware that you will never survive your head wound. You try to rip the seat belt in half because something has dented the metal buckle and now it won’t open. And somewhere very far away someone is calling your name. Someone closer is, too.
But, still, you have no idea what happened to your daughter. Or those other girls. Twins? Yes, twins. You know for sure only one thing: Your daughter didn’t deserve this, and the realization has you enraged. She didn’t deserve to die this way. She deserved more than eight years. She deserved a lifetime. She deserved friends.
And so, once again, you lash out, even though it is futile, even though there is absolutely nothing that can be done.
But the anger is all and so you fight.
Holly tried holding down the captain’s left arm and shoulder and Reseda his right, but he was thrashing violently—great, convulsive heaves—and the greenhouse was filled with Ethan Stearns’s rage as he died once more in the warm August water of Lake Champlain.
“Go, you have people waiting for you!” Reseda tried to reassure him, the words rushed and, she knew, slightly fearful. He would have none of it. “She’s gone. Your daughter is gone. You can’t stay. You shouldn’t stay, your daughter is waiting—” she said, and she would have continued, Your daughter has gone home, she has gone to her grandmother, she has gone where she belongs and is happy, but she never got to finish the sentence. He broke free and slammed the back of his hand hard into the side of her face and her ears registered the hollow bang of his knuckles on the bones in her cheek, and she was reeling, falling into a table beside her, toppling the plants, one of the clay pots shattering and another spilling its dirt and the small, pink hysterium that was just starting to bloom. From the floor she saw him sitting up and Holly desperately trying to push him back down, but her ears were ringing from the blow and it was as if she were suddenly deaf or watching a movie with the sound off. Then he was on his feet, standing, and, with more strength than she had imagined he had, he was lifting Holly under her arms and hurling her into the glass wall, shattering