Don't Come Home

by Bea Bledsoe

  Winnie narrowed her eyes, and in a second the two men stopped running and froze like statues in the middle of the valley. Leigh watched in horror as they slowly raised their guns in front of them and fired first on their own tires, and then on Leigh’s. The tires popped and exploded, sending pieces of rubber flying into the air. Leigh felt like she was sinking into the Blackriver soil beneath her feet.

  There was no escape.

  After they popped the tires, the guards raised their guns toward each other, fighting each inch and slowly losing. In a second, Henry was sprinting towards them, hoping he could grab their guns from their hands but he was too late; with faces contorted in fear and disbelief, the men pulled the trigger at the exact same time. Blood exploded from their chests as they fell backwards in the exact same way, their heads hitting the dirt with a thud.

  “Hmm!” Winnie shrugged good naturedly. “That was strange! Looks like those Faraday Cages didn’t work after all.” Then she clicked her tongue at Dr. Saratoga, whose face had been drained of all color. “I had plenty of interactions with Todd and Clark, but you weren’t there in those early years. I knew their minds already.”

  Leigh spun on her heel, Henry following her, as they began to sprint toward the woods. The car wouldn’t help them now; any thought of leaving was now a dream. Now they just wanted to survive. When they had almost reached the tree line, they heard the Dr. start screaming, but Leigh didn’t look back. She couldn’t die here. She couldn’t.

  Together they flew into the trees and then were running up, up, up, leaping over the small creeks that Leigh had splashed barefoot in when she was a little girl, sprinting past the circle of aspens that made the perfect reading spot. They ran up toward the ravine that ran like a jagged scar on the ridge beyond her house. Behind them, they heard a terrible whimpering but they kept running, feet slipping on the wet mud. Henry was close behind her, crashing loudly through brush, yelling at her to keep going.

  And then, there was no sound from Henry. Leigh’s blood ran cold as she turned around. Henry was stood perfectly still behind her, frozen in place, his eyes blinking rapid fire as a single tear made its way down his face.

  “Leigh!” He whispered. “It’s happening. Help me, please.”

  He let out a whimper, but it was too late; she watched as his eyes surrendered to whatever battle was happening in his brain and slowly closed. Her heart pounding in fear, Leigh ran to him and put her hands on his stubbly cheeks, her fingers tracing his face.

  “Henry.” She whispered. “Please don’t leave me.” She watched helplessly as the boy she loved fought to keep his mind out from under Winnie’s control. “Don’t go.” She whispered desperately, kissing his cheek. “Look at me. I’m right here. Your name is Henry Champney. You have control over your own mind. Henry…fight it, please. For me. For you. For us.” She was pleading with him now, but his eyes focused past her, as if she wasn’t even there.

  Finally, he opened his eyes, and when they met hers, Leigh felt hope drain out of her. The love he had for Leigh was gone, and its place was a raw, burning hatred. Henry’s head tipped downwards as he looked at Leigh, his lips twisted strangely as his face became a distorted mask. When he spoke, the words and the cadence belonged to Winnie.

  “Ready or not, Leigh, here I come.” Then he smiled.

  24

  Leigh leapt backwards just as Henry grabbed for her, narrowly missing his outstretched arms. Her foot caught on a root, and she went stumbling backwards the ground. She scooted in the dirt as Henry clawed for her, his big hands making deep crevasses in the soil on either side of her.

  “Come here, Leigh!” Winnie snarled from inside of Henry. “I want to talk to you.” He grabbed her foot and dragged her roughly over the mud, a tree branch slamming hard into her side. Leigh flipped over so she was on her knees and shook her foot loose. When he bent down to grab her again, Leigh reared back and delivered a hard kick to the side of his face. When her foot made the impact, she felt something break inside of her. I’m so sorry, Henry, she despaired. I love your face.

  Winnie roared. “You just kicked in your boyfriend ‘s face! What kind of girlfriend does that make you?” One who wants to survive, thought Leigh, struggling to her feet.

  “I don’t know why you are making this so difficult.” Winnie snarled at her through Henry’s mouth. “Though I shouldn’t be surprised. Your father tried to make things very difficult for me too.” Leigh thought it wasn’t possible for her heart to break anymore, but when Henry grabbed her shoulder and twisted violently, she knew she had been wrong. It felt like her bones would break under his grasp.

  “Henry!” She gasped. “Stop!”

  Their eyes met and for a second, she saw a flicker of him from somewhere deep inside, but his eyes quickly returned to Winnie’s blank, dispassionate gaze.

  “Run!” He finally managed to choke out, but then his eyes turned cold once more, and he squeezed harder. Leigh punched him hard across the cheek. He let out a cry and staggered backwards, releasing her shoulder. Leigh glanced backwards. Attack or retreat, she thought, panic flowing through her, but where could she go? She was trapped in the middle of the wilderness with a psychic.

  And she wouldn’t leave Henry here to die. Leigh planted her feet. Attack.

  With a scream, he lunged for her, but she was fast, and he missed. She needed to understand her surroundings: Where exactly was she? Leigh quickly scanned the woods around her, but her moment of pause cost her dearly. Henry was on her in a second. He picked her up and then slammed her back down against the ground, where her head bounced against a tree branch. She felt the trees spinning around her as she lay huddled on her side, her face spotted with blood and mud.

  “Now, where were we?” Henry said in Winnie’s uppity voice, with a quick flick of his hand. “Before Dr. Saratoga got so rudely interrupted by breaking her own neck? Oh yes...when she left me in Blackriver for her little control experiment.”

  Leigh rolled onto her feet and tried moving away, but she was trapped; up ahead was the ravine that passed over the river. Behind her lay a vertical foothill of rock and shale; too steep to climb. There was nowhere to go. A whimper passed through her lips. Not here, not here. Henry walked toward her with tiny, delicate steps, his movements so foreign in his big frame.

  “When I first got to Blackriver, I was thrilled with the newness of it all; the people and their little lives, the tiny decisions that made up their days. And the beauty of this place…” He let out a girlish sigh. “I mean, I couldn’t blame any of them for living here. But soon it became overwhelming. I began taking ahold of minds; first the Kassels who housed me, then their neighbors. The more people I controlled, the more crowded and noisy my mind became.” Henry passed through the trees in front of her, walking slowly toward where Leigh had her back pressed up against the rock wall.

  “Minds are strange, specific things. Memories flood them at odd times, and they hold carefully guarded secrets. Some have interior monologues all day long, while others are silent. Navigating around those walls – especially emotional ones - can be particularly exhausting. I knew when I had eighty-six minds under my control that it was too much for me, but I kept going. I wanted to please her.” She nodded back to the doctor’s body. “I could barely function. Those that I was holding were becoming unruly, trying to break the bond. Your mother for example; she tried many times to escape my hold on her. The remaining townspeople that I didn’t control started asking me questions; it was like somehow, they knew. It turned out that the minds I controlled were betraying me in a thousand different ways; writing things down, trying to kill themselves, trying to warn others. In the meantime, I was drowning in the dark places of people’s minds. There was so much pain, so much noise. My hold on them was faltering.”

  Henry rushed at Leigh. He was huge and terrifying, but Winnie’s control over his movements were clumsy, making him like a puppet on a string. He dipped just as he was about to reach her, as if somewhere Henry was trying to stop the att
ack. Leigh dove forward and knocked against Henry’s legs as his fists slashed downward against her body. He fell hard to the ground, but before Leigh could respond to him falling, Henry reached up and swiftly punched her in the stomach, knocking the wind out of her. Leigh rolled away from him, clutching her stomach, stunned as Henry picked up a large rock, weighing in his hand with a smile.

  “You don’t have to do this, Winnie.” Leigh wheezed, clutching her arm over her ribs as she crawled away from him. “You can choose to let people live. You don’t have to be a monster.” Henry paused, Winnie’s voice coming through his lips.

  “I’m not a monster, Leigh. You know who are monsters? The people of this town and their exhausting thoughts. Their sparse glowing memories overshadowed by their petty grudges, their contradictions and the elaborate lies they tell themselves. Did you know they began calling me a witch? I mean, what year is it? And in case you didn’t know, your dear father organized a secret town council meeting about me! Can you imagine them trying to surprise me? I already had most of their minds – but the hubris of it was admirable.” Henry tossed the rock in the air casually. “Instead, I showed up and took control of everyone, all at once. It was my greatest accomplishment. It turns out that when a person is actually scared they can do amazing things. Dr. Saratoga would have been impressed, but by that time I had already disconnected the cameras she had placed around Blackriver. There was nothing they could do.” Henry shook his head back and forth, clicking his tongue. “

  You can’t even imagine the feeling of having 162 minds at my command. It felt like I was a god. I marched all those people right onto Main Street, and I made them stand there for hours, like a little army of my own. But after about seven hours, I began to lose my hold on them. One got away.”

  “Dog.” Rasped Leigh. The poor man. Henry mirrored her movements, his hand clutched hard around the rock.

  “A shame; I liked his mind. It was a wild place, unpredictable. He got away, but not forever. I still visited him from time to time when I had the focus. See, I never quite lose a mind. I might not control it, but I’m always there.” Then she heard Winnie’s voice in her own head. Always here.

  Henry smiled. “I knew that when I lost control, every single person in the town would come for me; they would kill me, call the police, or even worse, hold me until the Pathfinder Collective came back. I couldn’t go back there – I was free, but the experiment it was all too much. I was drowning in their minds, and so I did the only thing I could think of: I had them experience the same thing. I needed the noise to stop. I needed quiet and peace and room in my mind for myself again. The idea was brilliant. I only had to give them each one simple command and I would be free of it all.”

  The real Winnie walked out of the woods at the bottom of the hill. Leigh could see her mouth moving, her words in tandem with Henry’s. “So I told them to walk into the river.”

  With that, Henry lunged at her. Leigh fell to the ground and closed her eyes as Henry hit the rock wall behind her. In that second, she cried out to her parents, to whatever God slept in this wild land. Help me, help me. Leigh felt a burst of strength surge up from the soil beneath her feet. This was her home, her land.

  “Henry, I love you.” She stated plainly, and he paused, giving Leigh enough time to move. She pushed off the ground up towards Henry. But instead of colliding, she twisted sideways and flung herself up and onto Henry’s back. Without hesitation, she wrapped her arms around his neck. One of the last things her dad had taught her before she left for Harvard was how to do a choke hold. He had barely talked to her that last month, but while her dad hadn’t been able to face the fact that she was leaving, he was damned sure that he would teach her how to protect herself from those city boys.

  “Leigh!” Henry let out a cry as she hooked her arm around his neck and then grabbed her opposite elbow. Then she squeezed. Strength didn’t matter as much here, which was good, because as Henry was trying his best to get her off his back he was using a ton of oxygen that he needed. She braced herself as he ripped violently at her legs and arms. Eventually Henry’s movements became slower. His face flushed, and she could feel his body uncoiling beneath her, losing the will to resist. She squeezed harder, counting in her head so that she didn’t choke him to death. 11…12…13. Finally, Henry slumped forward onto his knees, and then collapsed face-down in the mud. Leigh slid off his back.

  Winnie couldn’t control him if he was unconscious.

  She reached forward and checked his pulse. It was steady, which was both good and bad. Good because she hadn’t killed him. Bad because he was going to wake up in a minute or two.

  When Leigh looked up, Winnie’s face had turned furious before she turned and ran into the woods, heading back down toward the valley. Leigh took off running after her. Just as the shadow of their leaves passed over her head, Leigh felt something strange, like someone blowing on the back of her neck, only the breath was in her mind. She felt the trail of cold fingers passing over her thoughts. Her mind sensed something foreign, something unwelcome. A strong headache crackled at her temples and around to the front of her forehead. Winnie was trying to get control. Leigh kept running as the invasive pressure in her brain kept building, tendrils of curiosity ripping her mind apart. Leigh couldn’t breathe; she couldn’t think. She clutched her hands to her head and let out a scream, struggling to keep out the inevitable. What had Dog said? How had he broken free? Fight it. Make a maze you can get lost in. Keep your feet dry.

  But how? Dr. Saratoga’s words played in her mind as she stumbled through the trees: “Winnie has to get to know a mind to seize control over it.”

  What if Leigh could make it impossible to get to know her?

  What if…Leigh’s eyes snapped opened as her brain battled back against the oncoming tide. What if she wasn’t Leigh at all? What if Evelyn Porch came out to play?

  Leigh shut her eyes and slipped into Evelyn’s skin as she had so many nights at the bars that lined Harvard Square. In her mind, she put on Evelyn’s chic glasses and long coat. Leigh lifted her shoulders and pressed them back into a straight, hard line, posture being the mark of good breeding. Her mouth curled at the edges into the wry, sarcastic smile that was always at the tip of Evelyn’s mouth. I am Evelyn, she thought. She let her mind flood with Evelyn’s thoughts, Evelyn’s concerns. She could feel the fingers in her mind loosening their grasp, becoming clumsy and confused. Leigh heard a rustling in the trees in front of her and looked up in despair, imagining Winnie coming through the trees, but instead, a sleek black head emerged from in between the branches. A sigh of relief blew out of Leigh’s mouth as the fingers pressed harder in her mind, searching for where she was.

  “Good boy. C’mere.” She clicked her tongue and Napoleon trotted forward. Leigh struggled to keep the wall up in her mind; and as she climbed onto Napoleon’s bare back, she imagined a maze, a labyrinth of Evelyn’s thoughts. It was a prison unfolding within herself, made up of another personality.

  “Yah!” She kicked Napoleon and then they were flying down through the trees, back toward the valley. She could feel Winnie’s presence in her mind like a smothering blanket. She was slowly pressing down, finding the weaknesses, the cracks in Evelyn’s psyche. Any minute now, she would find her way to where Leigh was. There was only the two of them left.

  “Go!” She whispered to Napoleon. “Go.”

  Inside her mind, Winnie was whispering, her voice barreling through her psyche.

  I’ll find you in here, Leigh. Do you know what being in someone’s mind feels like? It’s like burrowing down in a nest of who they are. You make yourself comfortable and then you begin plucking at the walls, one string at a time, unraveling who they thought they were. Slowly, the structure becomes unsteady and in time, it collapses. No more nest. And when it does, the rubble is mine to control.

  Napoleon’s hooves hit the bottom of the hill and they shot forward into Blackriver Valley. In front of her was the scene of a massacre: The two dead men from Path
finder were lying in pools of their own blood, and Dr. Saratoga looked back at Leigh, her head turned at an odd angle, staring forever at the mountain range in the distance. Suddenly, Leigh saw something on the ground beside them. Something that might help her.

  “Move!” She screamed, and Napoleon flew over the ground as Leigh battled the war raging in her mind. Winnie was tearing at Evelyn like a wild animal now, bursting through every thought and misdirection. Leigh leaned forward and tried to avoid focusing on what was in front of her. Don’t think about it, don’t think about it.

  She grabbed Napoleon’s mane with a hard yank and the horse reared to a violent stop. Leigh slid off his side and landed hard on her back, wincing as pain shot through her. Her focus broke for just a second, but it was enough. It felt like a wall being blown apart inside of her. She looked up, clutching her side just as Winnie walked out of the woods behind her, reddish hair blowing in the wind, a shy smile on her face. “Look who woke up, Leigh!”

  She had just pulled herself to her knees as Henry followed behind Winnie, walking out of the trees. He was holding a knife to his own throat, tears running down his cheeks. Any prayer she had at holding onto her own mind was lost, and within seconds, Winnie flooded her mind like a tidal wave.

  Leigh froze as Winnie whispered, “Stop.” She could feel Winnie’s fingers combing deep into all the parts of her brain.

  “Do you want to see what happened that day?” Winnie whispered in her mind. “I’d really like you to see.” Images began pouring into her mind, Winnie’s memories from that day, unleashed on Leigh without mercy.

  The town was standing motionless in the town square, awaiting Winnie’s commands, their eyes darting as they struggled to free themselves from her hold to no avail. Winnie stepped into the middle of them, wearing a clean blue dress, jeans, and no shoes. She was exhausted; she was on fire. Winnie raised her hands. Then: a simple command, spoken and played in each mind.