The Edge

Edgerton, Oregon

The night was black and calm, silent except for the

mellow whine of the newly tuned Porsche engine, yet

she heard the soft, sobbing voice pleading with her again,

whispering low and deep. It never left her alone now.

No one else was near, it was just Jilly driving alone on

the coast highway. The ocean stirred beside her, but with

no moon out, it looked like an empty, black expanse. The

Porsche, sensitive to the slightest touch of her fingers,

gently swerved left, toward the cliff, toward the endless

expanse of black water beyond. Jilly jerked the car back

to the center line.

Laura’s voice began sobbing in her brain, then grew

louder, filling her, until Jilly wanted to burst.

“Shut up!” Jilly’s scream filled the car for a brief

moment. Her voice sounded harsh and ugly. It was nothing

like Laura’s had been, like a small child’s sobbing,

lost and inconsolable. Only death would bring peace.

Jilly felt that voice, Laura’s voice, build inside her again.

She gripped the steering wheel and stared straight ahead,

2 _ Catherine Coulter

praying to herself, chanting for it to stop, for Laura to go

away.

“Please,” she whispered. “Please stop. Leave me alone.

Please.”

But Laura didn’t stop. She was no longer a child,

speaking in a sweet, terrified voice. She was herself

again, angry now, and this time foul words frothed from

her mouth, spewing rage and saliva that Jilly tasted in the

back of her throat. She banged her fists on the steering

wheel, hard, harder still, rhythmically, to make the

malevolent voice go away. She opened the window,

pressed it all the way down and leaned out, letting the

wind tear her hair back, and her eyes sting and water. She

shouted into the night, “Make it stop!”

It stopped. Suddenly.

Jilly drew a deep breath and pulled her head back into

the car. The wind whooshed through the car and she

sucked in mouthfuls of the cold air. It tasted wonderful. It

was over. Thank God, finally it had stopped. She raised

her head, looking around, wondering where she was.

She’d been driving for hours, it seemed, yet the dashboard

clock read only midnight. She’d been gone from

home for a half hour.

Her life had become whispers and screams until she

couldn’t bear it. Now there was silence, deep and complete

silence.

Jilly began counting. One, two, three—no curses, no

whispers, no small child’s pleading, nothing, just her own

breathing, the soft hum of her car. She threw back her

head and closed her eyes a moment, relishing the silence.

She began counting again. Four, five, six—still blessed

silence.

Seven, eight—soft, very soft, like a faraway rustling of

leaves, coming closer, closer. Not rustling, no, whisperThe

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ing. Laura was whispering again, begging not to die, begging

and pleading and swearing she’d never meant to

sleep with him, but it had just happened, he’d made it

happen. But Jilly hadn’t believed her.

“Please, stop, stop, stop,” Jilly chanted over that feathery

voice. Laura began screaming that Jilly was a pathetic

bitch, a fool who couldn’t see what she was. Jilly

stomped down on the gas pedal. The Porsche lurched forward,

hitting seventy, eighty, eighty-five. The coast road

swerved. She kept the car directly in the center of the

road. She began singing. Laura screamed louder, and

Jilly sang louder. Ninety. Ninety-five.

“Go away. Damn you, go away!” Jilly’s knuckles were

white on the steering wheel, her head low, her forehead

nearly touching the rim. The engine’s vibrations made

Laura’s screaming voice convulse with power.

One hundred.

Jilly saw the sharp turn, but Laura yelled that they

would be together soon now, very soon. She couldn’t

wait to get Jilly, and then they’d see who would win.

Jilly screamed, whether at Laura or at the sight of the

cliff dropping some forty feet to the heaped and tumbled

black rocks below. The Porsche plunged through the railing,

thick wood and steel, picking up speed, and shot out

to the vast empty blackness beyond.

One more scream rent the silence before the Porsche

sliced nose first through the still, black water. There was

scarcely a sound, just the fast downward plunge, the

sharp, clean impact, then the quick shifting and closing

over, the calm water returning to what it had been just a

second before.

Then there was only the black night. And calm and

silence.