Proof of Life

by Sheila Lowe

  “Thanks, Jess, you’re right. Flare was a sweet, old dog.” Claudia’s voice was wistful. “In her younger days there was no fiercer protector. That’s why I want this sculpture. She saved my life a few years ago.”

  “Seriously? What happened?”

  “It’s kind of a long story. I’ll tell you about it sometime.”

  “I can’t wait to hear it. For now, how would you like me to send it to you? FedEx?”

  “As it happens, I have a friend driving down here from Ojai on Saturday afternoon. If it’s okay with you, I’ll have him drop by and pick it up. You’re not all that far out of his way.”

  “Of course. What time?”

  “How’s three o’clock?”

  “I’ll be here.”

  “Great. His name is Sage Boles.”

  Jessica scribbled the name on her calendar. “I’ll have it packed up and ready for him.”

  “I’m so excited to see it!”

  They ended the call. Jessica found a box and packed up the bust. With Claudia’s friend picking it up, there was no need for a label. With the task out of the way, she realized she was famished and zapped a slice of leftover pizza from the refrigerator. While she waited for the ding, she guzzled half a Longboard. The beer hit her empty stomach fast and hard, making the thought of pizza less appealing.

  What do you expect? You never eat right.

  The one positive thing Jessica had to say about that snarky voice was that it did not come from the dead people. It had resided within her mind for as far back as she could remember, relentlessly nagging and complaining, reliably showing up to carp at her when she was tired or vulnerable.

  There was one less voice from the spirit world knocking at the door of her mind with their ceaseless requests. Ever since Hailey Martin’s body had been recovered, she no longer showed up to badger her. Hopefully, she had gone on to the light, or whatever she was supposed to do next.

  Jessica stretched out on the futon bed and wrapped herself in the warm comforter, ready for a break after the long hours of work. Within seconds she had fallen into a sound sleep.

  She awoke close to midnight. Rain pelting the roof again. Even in her sleep, the argument with Jenna had been looping in her brain. How could identical twins be such different people? She had asked herself that question many times. They shared the same DNA. They had shared the same uterus for nine months, they had come from the same egg, for crying out loud.

  Of course they’d had spats that sometimes got physical when they were younger, but they had always made up and laughed about it later. She could not remember any argument that had left her as miserable as this one. Seriously? Her sister believed she was possessed?

  Why couldn’t Jenna be on her side? She had asked for the facts with a closed mind and judged Jessica without hearing her.

  If only she could retreat back into sleep instead of lying in her dark little cottage. Lying there, listening to the wind whistling eerily through unseen cracks, trying to tune out the furious thoughts, the images rushing through her brain, the more awake Jessica became.

  Then the whispers turned up the volume. As usual, they were pleading for her help and there was nothing she knew to do to help them. Hailey Martin had made very clear what she needed. These other voices were like a radio station fading in and out. Even if she had been inclined to do their bidding, not enough information came through for her to follow up. Hailey must have been an unusually strong spirit to communicate the way she had.

  The constant noise was driving her crazy, but there was no place to go. She pulled up a Queen album on her phone and tapped the sound up as high as it would go, then put her pillow over her head. Still, the low whispers persisted. Was it her imagination or were the voices extra-loud tonight? A discordant symphony that made her wonder whether she was crazy. Or possessed.

  Thanks, Jenna.

  After an hour of fighting it, Jessica gave up on sleep. She got up and brewed a fresh pot of coffee. Her stomach was growling but the fridge was as empty as it had been when she went to bed. A trip to the grocery store was definitely on the horizon. In the meantime, she resorted to re-heating the slice of pizza she had left in the microwave earlier. The chewy cardboard crust and gummy cheese were hard to stomach. She told herself that she needed a new project for distraction.

  She washed the grease off her fingers and logged into her Etsy account, glad to find a new order waiting in her in-box. It came from a mother who wanted her to make a custom shadowbox for her eight-year-old daughter. She had described down to the tiniest detail what she wanted done: the model for “a perfect fantasy princess bedroom.”

  Obviously, the fantasy was the mother’s own and she was foisting it on her daughter, Jessica concluded grumpily with no basis. Then she reminded herself that just because she would never choose that icky marshmallowy pinkiness, it didn’t mean that the child wouldn’t love it. In fact, she decided defiantly, she would create the best damn shadowbox in the whole world and make sure the little girl was happy with it.

  Still, she thought as she sketched out the room, if she had a daughter, this was not what she would choose for her. Not even Jenna would put her twins in a room this sweety-sweet.

  Sour grapes, Jess.

  You can’t replace love with a stupid room.

  She should know. When they were eight years old, the room she and Jenna shared could have been a children’s TV show set. Their mother, Lorraine, knew all the “right people.” she created the perfect place to display her adorable twins and impress her café society friends. The girls were never allowed to make a mess, so it wasn’t much fun to play there.

  Despite the noise in her head, the cottage was too quiet. Shaking off the unhappy memories, Jessica scrolled through the music on her laptop for a UB40 album. The staccato off-beats of Reggae seemed to do a better job of muffling the whispers than some other genres.

  With Red Red Wine playing in the background, she rummaged through her supplies and decided on a 12 x 12 wooden frame for the display case. The bed and café table and chair she would cut from small rectangles of hard foam. Striped sateen pink and white rectangles would be turned into the bed cover.

  She added other items she would need, a lump of modeling clay and her sculpting tools, then made notes based on the email: Tufted canopy bed, pillows, bedspread. Shabby chic night stand, café table and chairs. Loveseat. Pink shaggy rug. Plush animals. Bookshelf, books. Anything else, she would add along the way.

  Starting with the itsy-bitsy bed, she carved the Styrofoam with an X-acto knife into a neat rectangle. Next, she formed a length of thin wire to make the canopy frame. Soon, she was engrossed in the task, singing along with Gregory Isaacs. Night Nurse.

  Oh, the pain it’s getting worse…I don’t wanna see no doc. I need attendance from my nurse around the clock…

  Threading a fine needle, she sewed a tiny pink pillowcase with what had to be the smallest stitches in the world, and stuffed it with tufts of cotton from a swab. She thought of her nieces with a thrum of renewed anger at her sister. She would have loved to show them what she was making, but Jenna had decided she was demon-possessed, so she didn’t get to. It infuriated her. Most little girls would be enthralled to see the sateen bedspread she had just hemmed, and the tablecloth for the little round table.

  Jessica sewed until the music ran out, concentrating on keeping the stitches in a straight row and tamping her emotions back down where her sister’s comments could no longer hurt her. She had been at it for a couple of hours when her vision began to blur. She reached up to rub her eyes. Her hands and feet began to tingle.

  Was she having an episode? If so, it was unlike any of the others. She looked around for her phone, then remembered that she could not call Jenna. Who, then? Zach? Dr. Gold? Claudia? And disturb them in the middle of the night, for what? She would never ask them to come and take care of her.

  Something was happening to her vision. Wavy lines hovered at the edges of her line of sight, bending the light odd
ly, so that it seemed as if she was under water.

  Then the lamp flickered. Off/on. Off/on. Off/on. The pace of her breathing picked up. What was happening?

  Was it the wind, wreaking havoc with the electricity? Jessica shivered. She should climb back into bed and hide under the warmth of the comforter, pretend that her head wasn’t humming with dead people’s thoughts.

  An ice-cold breeze blew straight through her. She leapt up, poised to run.

  But Jessica did not run. She found herself paralyzed by a loud shriek that swelled to an agonized scream.

  HELP ME!

  FIVE

  The ear-piercing chorus of birds whooping it up roused her to consciousness. Jessica stared at her surroundings, struggling for meaning. Why was she standing in waterlogged grass in a cold, silvery dawn, shivering violently, hair and clothing soaked through?

  Omigod. How long have I been here?

  In her experience, finding herself in a strange place and not knowing how she got there equated with amnesia. The realization that this time she was in her own backyard came with a small burst of relief. She stumbled to the back door of the cottage and opened it with a whimper of gratitude. It would have been awful to find it locked and have to find some way to explain, cold and wet, to Imelda that she needed a spare key.

  Jessica ducked inside, skating on the thin edge of hysteria. She locked the deadbolt on the back door, then double-checked it to make sure it was secure. Then she hurried to check the front door, too, her sodden socks leaving a trail like snail slime on the tile as she struggled to remember how she had come to be outside.

  As though a thick black curtain had dropped down over her brain, nothing seemed to penetrate but the cold, hard fact that she had been out there, rather than snug inside the cottage.

  Am I losing my memory again?

  As if to protect herself from that terrifying thought, Jessica locked herself in the bathroom. Her teeth were chattering, partly due to standing outside in the cold and rain, partly from her tangled nerves. She turned on the hot water full blast and peeled out of her wet clothes, dropping them to the floor in a heap.

  She stepped under the shower head, and as she turned around and around, letting hot water soak every part of her until her skin stung, a Joyce Kilmer poem drifted into her head.

  A tree that may in Summer wear a nest of robins in her hair; Upon whose bosom snow has lain, who intimately lives with rain.

  She almost smiled. Left matted and tangled by the rain—with which she had become intimately familiar—her hair was pretty much a bird’s nest.

  She was so tired. The simplest act of reaching for the shampoo bottle seemed an impossible task.

  Why was I on the patio?

  Squeeze a dab into your palms. Massage it into your hair. Come on, just do it.

  The black curtain opened a crack.

  It had been well past midnight; she remembered that much. She was at her desk, working on the shadowbox. That icky sweet miniature bedroom. Stitching the bedspread for the miniature. She’d felt strange. The light had flickered on and off. After that, nothing.

  Why was I outside? What’s happening to me?

  Amnesia had long ago acquainted her with that frustrating condition of questions with no answers.

  Even after the tank was empty, the water running cool, the shivers would not stop. Fear had seeped into her marrow, settled in her soul and left her chilled to the bone. Jessica wrapped herself in a plush, terry cloth bath sheet and dried her hair, an awful suspicion taking hold that she might never feel warm again.

  The voices were whispering:

  “Tell my kids I’m okay.”

  “Let my dad know I’m with his mom.”

  “Grandma wants Josie to have her ring.”

  On and on, an endless thread.

  How can I help any of you when I can’t help myself? She wanted to scream. But what good would screaming do when the voices lived inside her mind? Bitter tears spilled over and wet her cheeks. Ever since the accident, her entire life had spun out of her control.

  Goddamn you, Greg Mack.

  Goddamn me.

  The temptation to crawl into bed and pull the covers over her head was getting stronger by the minute.

  Oh, poor baby, throw yourself a pity party, why don’t you?

  Why don’t you shut the hell up?

  Spirit voices, judgy voices, she was sick of them all.

  Wearing her heaviest fleece sweats, a sweater coat and two pairs of socks, Jessica curled up in her armchair under a blanket with a mug of strong black coffee.

  Until now, the episodes had taken no more than a minute or two to complete and she had always retained some understanding of what was happening to her. Never, since getting her memory back after amnesia, had she lost so much time in one episode. What was causing the change?

  She thought long and hard about her situation. By the time the mug was empty she had reached a decision. She had lived through worse. Whatever was happening, it was not going to defeat her.

  And with that, she began to feel almost human again.

  A sudden loud knocking on the front door vibrated along her nerves like a broken violin string. It came again, insistent, urgent, before she managed to cross the room. Who would be knocking at seven a.m.? It was unlikely to be someone selling the Watchtower.

  “Who is it?” she called out, unwilling to face whoever was on the other side of the door.

  “Open the door, Jess, it’s me.”

  Zach Smith.

  Jessica opened the door with a scowl darkening her face. She did not want to see Zach. Didn’t want to talk to anyone until she got her head sorted out. “Why are you here?” she asked bluntly.

  Ignoring her curt tone, he strode past her. He wore a heavy Pendleton jacket and a watch cap pulled low. The scruffy stubble darkening the lower half of his face had not seen a razor in a day or two. He looked more like a burglar than a special agent for the FBI.

  “You’re okay?” he asked.

  Jessica shut the door and faced him with her arms folded across her chest. “I’m fine,” she snapped. “Why?”

  “Jenna’s freaking out. She thinks something happened to you.”

  Jenna. Her anti-twin shields had not held up well enough. The last thing she needed was for her nighttime excursion to the patio to get back to her twin’s ears. If Jenna was freaking now, how would she react to hearing about the latest episode?

  Jessica gave an elaborate yawn to give Zach the impression that he had woken her. “Why would she say that?”

  “You’re asking the wrong person. Call your sister.”

  “Shouldn’t have drunk that beer on an empty stomach last night. I’ve been sleeping it off.”

  Zach took off his jacket and draped it over a kitchen chair. “Why is it so hot in here?”

  “I was cold. I turned the heater up. Do you mind?”

  His suspicious FBI eyes darted around as if he suspected someone of hiding in the cottage.

  “You really oughta answer your phone, Jess.”

  “Forgot to charge it. You look beat. Go home.”

  “I am beat. And I was on my way home, but when my boss’s wife calls and wants a welfare check on her twin—”

  “As you can see, I don’t need a welfare check.” He looked so tired, she felt bad for being harsh. Resigning herself to the fact that he wasn’t going anywhere until he had convinced himself that she was telling the truth, Jessica relented. “I made some coffee. Want some?”

  “Sure; I’ll get it.”

  “No, let me. It’s the least I can do. Why don’t you take it easy?”

  The thing was, Zach did not know how to take it easy. He had told her once that he’d had ADD as a kid. She thought he still did. While she set about washing a mug and filling it, he prowled restlessly, his long, slender limbs like a daddy long legs, always on the move.

  When Jessica turned with the mug in hand, Zach was standing at her worktable, his attention was on the shadowbox she ha
d been working on before last night’s episode. Since her early morning foray onto the patio, she had avoided her worktable as if it was the cause of her problems. What had happened was too weird and frightening.

  “That’s not exactly the décor I would have chosen,” she said. “It’s what the client—” The look he turned on her stunned her into silence. Shock and anger seemed to be at war on his face.

  “What the fuck, Jess?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t even know what to say.” His gaze roamed back and forth between her and the shadowbox on her worktable as if seeing her through new eyes. “How the fuck did you know—”

  “I don’t know what you you’re talking about. What the hell is wrong?”

  He flicked an angry hand at her creation. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  Jessica couldn’t help staring at him. Zach was the most laid-back person she knew, but the energy bristling off him now was making her nervous. It reminded her of her ex-husband. A sour feeling in the pit of her stomach told her that whatever had set off his anger was going to hurt her. She set the mug back on the kitchen counter and joined him at the worktable.

  And saw it…

  Vomit rushed into her throat.

  “Well? How do you explain it?” Zach’s FBI special agent voice was one Jessica was not accustomed to hearing directed at her.

  All of a sudden, her nighttime outing to the patio was about as consequential as a single flame in a forest fire. She stared at the abomination on her worktable, desperate to work out how it had come into being. Gone was the sugary pink and white little girl’s room she had constructed in the shadowbox. In its place was a house of horrors.

  The charming dollhouse-sized furniture she had meticulously constructed and arranged in the wooden frame was now broken and turned on its sides as if a violent struggle had taken place in the miniature room. Rivulets of crimson paint had dried on the wallpapered walls, splattered the satin pillow and bedspread.

  Hogtied on its side was a nude female figure, shocking in its realism. A tiny butcher knife protruded from the sculpted clay back.