Chapter 3

The Abyss Bar is located in East Innsmouth, nestled in the gray area between the docks and the old textile mill.

During the day, it is as quiet as a forgotten corner, with years of dust caked inside the neon tubes. After six in the evening, the lights turn on, casting a deep red glow over the street like diluted blood.

Denise pushed open the bar door at two in the afternoon.

The bar had no windows. Daylight was kept out, and the interior was lit by a few wall sconces that cast a dim, sallow glow reminiscent of old photographs. The air carried the lingering scents of stale beer and cloying perfume. Behind the bar, a woman wiped glasses.

Denise had seen her mugshot. But the photo was a world apart from the real person:

Mara Vazquez. Twenty-four years old and of Mexican descent.

Her driver’s license photo was expressionless with her hair pulled back, making her look older than she actually was.

The real person was different. Her long black hair hung loose with dark red ends, like dried blood.

She wore an off-the-shoulder black top, and there was a fresh scar above her collarbone. The scab hadn’t fully fallen off yet, and its edges were still pink.

She wiped the glasses slowly, circle after circle, as if she were polishing not glass but something harder.

Denise walked over to the bar and sat down. Mara didn’t look up.

“What’ll you have?”

“Whiskey. No ice.”

Mara set the glass down, turned, and pulled a bottle of Zhanbian from the shelf. She poured with precision, filling the glass two-thirds full. As she pushed the glass across the counter, Denise noticed dark residue beneath Mara's right index fingernail.

It wasn’t dirt; the color was too dark. Like ink, like blood.

“You’re a cop,” Mara said. It wasn’t a question.

“State trooper. Denise Parker.”

Mara leaned against the bar with her arms crossed over her chest. The position tugged at the wound on her collarbone, causing her brow to twitch, but she didn’t make a sound. It wasn’t that it didn’t hurt, she was just used to the pain.

“You’re here about Brian.”

“You know about Brian?”

“The whole town knows.” The corner of Mara’s mouth twitched. It wasn’t a smile, but something sharper. “Cult sacrifices? Sea monsters killing people. Cthulhu. I’ve seen the news. You cops have more imagination than I thought."

Denise picked up her whiskey, but didn't drink it. She stared at the amber liquid at the bottom of the glass. The light shone through it, casting a small golden patch on the bar.

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“Thursday night.” Mara’s answer was without hesitation. Unlike Evelyn, her directness wasn’t rehearsed. It was like a person standing on the edge of a cliff knowing they’ve already fallen and are no longer afraid of the height.

“Was he at your place Thursday night?”

“He’s at my place every Thursday night.” There was a deliberate lightness in Mara’s tone, like wrapping a sharp shard of glass in candy wrappers. “Thursday is our night. Set in stone. It’s been two years, and it’s never changed.”

“What time did he arrive Thursday night?”

"Around nine. I don’t remember exactly. I was busy that night.”

“When did he leave?”

Mara didn’t answer right away. She picked up the dishcloth from the bar and began wiping the already spotless countertop. Her movements were more forceful than when she’d been drying the glasses earlier; her knuckles turned white.

“He didn’t leave.”

Denise set down her glass. “What do you mean?”

“He fell asleep.” Mara’s hand stopped. The dishcloth was crumpled in her fist like a small animal with its throat squeezed. "He'd been drinking. He got angry, and then he fell asleep. I went out for a bit. When I came back, he was gone. I thought he’d woken up and left on his own.”

“You went out? Where did you go?”

"For a walk.”

“A walk in the early morning?”

“Yes.” Mara looked up and stared straight at Denise. Her eyes were dark brown, almost black—like two pieces of burnt coal with ash on their surfaces and fire still burning beneath. "I couldn't sleep. He was snoring. I went out for a walk. Is there a problem?”

"Can anyone confirm that?"

Mara laughed. Her loud laugh echoed through the empty bar. When she finished, she leaned closer to the bar. The movement pulled the wound on her collarbone open wider, and Denise saw clear fluid seep from beneath the scab.

"Officer, I live upstairs from the bar. A prostitute named Laura lives next door. She brings a different man home every night. You can go ask her if she heard anything. She’ll tell you she heard Brian fucking me. Then she heard him hit me. She heard him fall asleep. She heard me leave. She has good hearing. In her line of work, she can’t survive without them.”

Denise looked into her eyes. There were no tears there. There was something hotter than tears.

“How long has Brian been hitting you?”

Mara’s hand froze in midair.

The silence lasted half a minute. The wall lamp hummed faintly. Cars honked on the street. Innsmouth was far away, but the cry of a seagull drifted in; in this place, the cry of a seagull always sounded like weeping.

"He doesn't hit me," Mara said, her voice suddenly dropping. It wasn't a deliberate lowering; something had pressed down on her vocal cords.

"He says it's love. He says only he can put up with a crazy woman like me. He says that if it weren't for him, I'd have died on the streets long ago, just like my whore of a mother. He says he picked me up off the trash heap and that I should get down on my knees and thank him.”

Denise didn’t interrupt her. She knew that once interrupted, these words would never be spoken again.

“I met him three years ago. Mara picked up another glass and began to wipe it. The glass spun in her hand, emitting a faint squeak.

"I was working at a bar in Lowell. He was investigating a case there. He walked in wearing his police uniform, and everyone fell silent. He was charming. You wouldn't understand unless you knew him. He could make you feel like you were the only person in the room. He bought a drink, sat in the corner, and watched me. He watched me all night. When we closed, he was waiting for me at the back door. He said, “You shouldn’t be in a place like this. You deserve better.”

She set the glass down and picked up another.

"I'd just turned twenty-one. My mom had just died. She died on the street, just like he said. I had no family. I had no money. I was living in a moldy basement. Then he showed up. He was a man in a police uniform who told me that I shouldn’t be in a place like that. I thought he was there to save me.”

The glass spun in her hand. Once. Then again.

"He wasn't."

Denise looked at Mara’s fingers. The dark residue under her nails. The scars. The scabs on her collarbone. And her eyes—the color left behind after being burned.

“When did he hit you for the first time?”

"On my birthday." Mara's voice was flat, as if she were reading a weather report.

"My twenty-first birthday. He bought a cake. He lit the candles. After I blew them out, he told me he loved me. Then, he saw me talking to a male customer. The man was balding and in his fifties. He asked me where the restroom was. I pointed it out to him. That’s all. After the customer left, Brian threw the cake on the floor. He grabbed me by the throat and slammed my head against the wall three times. Three times. I counted them. After that, I always counted them.”

Something tightened in Denise’s throat. She didn’t let it show on her face.

“Then what?”

"Then he knelt on the floor and cried. He clung to my legs and said that he loved me so much it was driving him crazy. He said he couldn’t control himself because he cared about me too much. He said he’d change. He said he couldn’t live without me. The next day, he took me out to buy new clothes. On the third day, he took me to the best restaurant in Boston. On the fourth day, he hit me again.”

Mara put the last glass back on the shelf. She turned to face Denise, her arms hanging at her sides.

"You asked me why I didn't call the police." Her lips moved. It wasn’t a smile, but a shape more desperate than a smile. "Officer. He’s your deputy captain.”

The words fell onto the bar without echoing.

Denise was silent for a long time. Then, for the first time since entering the bar, she picked up the glass of whiskey and took a sip. The liquor rolled down her throat, igniting a wave of heat.

“When he hit you, did he call out someone else’s name?”

Mara’s eyes flickered.

"He did."

“What name?”

Mara turned her head to look at the wall behind the bar. It was covered with liquor labels and faded photographs. One of the photos showed a woman standing on a pier with her hair blowing in the wind. She was smiling happily, her eyes crinkled into crescent moons.

"Evelyn," Mara said. “He called me Evelyn when he hit me. He said, Evelyn, why do you always push me?”

Denise set down her glass. The whiskey left a thin trail down the side of the glass, like a tear, but not quite.

“Do you know Evelyn?”

“No.” Mara’s voice slipped back into that flippant tone, but it was much thinner now, like a sheet of paper that could be pierced at any moment.

"I only know she was his wife. A perfect woman. That’s what he said: Gentle. Quiet. She never made him angry. He said she was like a little deer with tears in her eyes. He said that she would cry when he hit her, but she never screamed. Unlike me. I was too loud."

Denise’s fingers tightened on the bar. She hadn’t realized she was clenching her fist.

“Do you hate her?”

Mara turned her head and looked at Denise. The layer of ash in her eyes cracked open, and the flame beneath flared up. It wasn’t hate. It was something else.

“Why would I hate her?” Her voice was so low that it sounded as if it were coming up from beneath the floor. "She's just like me."

When she finished speaking, the bar fell silent, as still as the ocean floor.

Then Mara smiled. But this time it was different—there was no sound, only the corners of her mouth tugging upward like an old scar being pulled open.

“You want to know what the funniest part is, Officer?” She tossed the rag into the sink, braced her hands on the bar, and leaned forward. The scab on her collarbone peeled back slightly, revealing the tender, pink flesh beneath.

"Once, after he beat me, he fell asleep next to me. His hand was still on my neck, his thumb pressing against my windpipe. I didn’t dare move. I lay there, staring at the ceiling and thinking: Does his wife lie like this in their bed, too—with his thumb pressing against her windpipe? Does she not dare move either?”

Her voice grew quieter.

"In that moment, I suddenly wanted to meet her. Not to hate her. I just wanted to see if the bruises on her neck looked like mine. To see what shade of concealer she used."

Denise didn’t speak. She waited for Mara to continue.

"But I never went looking for her."

Mara sat up and turned to grab a bottle from the wine rack. Her back was slender, and her shoulder blades formed two sharp contours beneath her black top.

"I was afraid she’d hate me if she saw me. After all, I’m the bitch, right? The one who broke up someone else’s family. Everyone thinks that, his coworkers, this whole town, and you probably think so, too.”

Denise didn’t deny it.

Mara poured herself a glass of wine and downed half of it in one gulp. As her Adam's apple bobbed, the scar above her collarbone tugged, and she frowned.

"But actually—"

She set the glass down on the bar with a clink, spilling a few drops.

"Actually, sometimes I think she should thank me. When he’s at my place on Thursday nights, she gets a breather. Wednesday, too. Sunday as well. On those nights, when he’s in my bed, she can at least sleep soundly without worrying about being woken up by a chokehold in the middle of the night.”

Denise tapped her fingers lightly on the bar twice. It was a habit of hers—her hands would move involuntarily when the pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place.

“He hits Evelyn.”

It wasn’t a question.

Mara looked up at her. There was a strange light in her dark brown eyes, like an image slowly emerging from a haze of gray in a developing photograph.

"Have you seen her?"

Denise nodded.

“Did she have bruises on her neck?”

"She was wearing a turtleneck."

Mara smiled again. This time, there was something almost tender in her laughter. "Of course she was. She’s smarter than I am.”

Denise looked at the dark residue under her fingernails. In the dim, yellowish light, it looked like ink or dried blood.

“Mara, what’s under your nails?”

Mara looked down at her fingers. She spread her palm, fingers splayed, as if examining something that didn’t belong to her.

"Paint," she said. "I'm painting."

“What are you painting?”

Mara was silent for a few seconds. Then she lowered her hand and slipped it into her jeans pocket.

"The sea."

Denise didn’t press her. She stood up and slid a business card across the bar. "If you remember anything, give me a call."

Mara didn’t take the card. She just stared at it as if it were a postcard from another world.

As Denise walked toward the door, Mara called out from behind her.

“Officer.”

Denise stopped.

"You think I did it, don't you?"

It wasn’t a question.

Denise turned around. Mara stood behind the bar with her hands in her pockets and her chin slightly raised. Light shone down from above, casting shadows across her face. The scar on her collarbone looked like a closed eye in the shadows.

“You think I killed him,” Mara repeated. "Because I was the other woman? Because I have a temper? Because there’s paint under my nails. Because I have no alibi. Because I hated him.”

She emphasized the last word heavily. Then she laughed—that silent laugh.

"I did hate him."

Her voice was soft, as if drifting in from far away.

"But there's a big difference between hating someone and killing them."

The door closed behind Denise.

The fog on the street grew thicker.

In November in Innsmouth, the fog never lifts. She stood at the entrance to the Abyss Bar, watching the red glow of the neon tubes tint the mist a pale pink. Mara’s last words still hung in the air like smoke and fog, refusing to fade away.

Danielle lowered her head and typed a few more lines on her phone:

Mara Vazquez

No pretense. No acting. No disguise.

She is the opposite of Evelyn.

Evelyn hides everything. Mara lays everything bare.

Which one is more suspicious?

She stared at the screen for a long time.

Then she typed a new line:

Or, they’re playing different roles in the same play.

One plays the good cop; the other, the bad cop.

If that’s the case—

She didn't finish the sentence.

If that’s the case, then every word Mara just said—the things about Evelyn and the line about "she's just like me"—wasn't meant for her. It was meant for a cop.

A performance.

Denise put her phone back in her pocket. The muffled sound of the engine starting was like a heartbeat in the fog.

In the rearview mirror, the red glow of the Abyss Bar grew smaller and smaller until it was just a dot. Then it was swallowed up by the fog.

What she didn’t know was that, just as her car turned the corner, Mara stepped out from behind the bar and walked to the door. She watched the direction in which the black SUV had disappeared. She wasn’t smiling. Her face was expressionless.

Then she locked the bar door, walked behind the counter, and pulled open the bottom drawer.

Inside the drawer was a photograph.

The photo showed two women.

One wore an off-white sweater and had light brown hair and gray-green eyes. She was smiling gently. The other woman had loose black hair, dark brown eyes, and a hint of defiance at the corners of her mouth.

The two women were standing on a pier somewhere with the gray waters of Innsmouth behind them. The wind blew through their hair, tangling the black and brown strands together.

Mara turned the photo over. On the back was a single line of text written in two colors, blue and black, as if two people had taken turns writing it.

Blue ink: Thursday night.

Black ink:I’ll go.

Mara put the photo back in the drawer and closed it.

The drawer clicked shut softly. The sound of the latch snapping back was like a sigh.