Dead Silence

by Kimberly Derting

  She turned back to the journal, wanting to know more.

  May 5, 1987

  We’re calling ourselves the Circle of Seven, our strange little group. Ari isn’t a part of the Seven since I now know he has no ability. Apparently, his true skill lies in recruiting. The rest of us, however, those who do have gifts and were brought together because of them, have forged a bond of sorts. A camaraderie like nothing I’ve ever experienced before.

  Violet felt herself nodding along with her grandmother’s words as she read them. Yes, she thought, camaraderie. That was exactly the right way to describe it.

  She was intrigued by the way her grandmother depicted this group, these people who reminded her so much of her own team, right down to the fact that none of the others could find bodies the way she did. In that, she was unique.

  She was restless now, and she sat up, so she was on her knees, knowing she’d have to stop reading soon. It was late and she needed to sleep. Tomorrow she had school.

  But she couldn’t stop herself, she had to know more.

  May 29, 1987

  I’m fascinated by one of the Seven, a young man named Jimmy. His ability isn’t like the others, he can’t read the future or tell your past. Like me, his gift is distinctive.

  He’s been harder to get to know than the others. He’s quiet and reserved, but gentle too. I can tell just by watching him. He’s got a stillness about him, a certain tranquility. It’s not real, though . . . or so I’m told. It’s part of his ability. He makes others feel at ease. He takes away their worries and fears and anxieties, replacing them with . . . calm.

  I’m not sure how I feel about that, being forced to feel serene. But I’m certainly not immune to it, that much I know.

  June 28, 1987

  I’ve made a terrible mistake. It’s not the fault of any of the Seven. Or maybe I’m just naive. Maybe every one of them knows—has known all along—what the group has been up to. Maybe I’m the only one who has qualms about what we’re being asked to do.

  I still don’t know, exactly, who’s behind our operation . . . who’s pulling our strings. But we’re just part of some larger organization, and for whatever reason, they’ve decided we might be useful. Ari becomes tight-lipped whenever I ask.

  Some of the others have been working on projects already, which we all assumed would happen eventually. We couldn’t be tested forever with no outlet for our skills. Muriel said something about doing background checks, which I assumed had something to do with prospective employees or investors, since she was giving a detailed history—more detailed than a standard credit report or criminal record check could be. My guess is that the kind of information she can dig up could be invaluable to a corporation.

  There was one name I kept hearing, again and again. Jack Hewitt. It wasn’t just Muriel who mentioned him. I heard two of the others talking about him as well. I didn’t give it much thought really, I didn’t consider who he was or why I’d heard his name on more than one occasion. Until two nights ago, when John and I were watching the news.

  A man’s face flashed up on the television screen, but it was his name—Jack Hewitt—that made me take notice. I knew immediately it was the man the others in the Seven had been investigating. John said he’d been in the news for several days. He’d been involved in a financial scandal, accused of embezzling almost half a million dollars from his company. On the night I saw the news story though Jack Hewitt had finally cracked under the pressure and shot himself. Right after he’d killed his wife and his two young boys.

  Still, I might not have questioned the circumstances of his death if it hadn’t been for the redecorating of our government-like office. Almost overnight it was transformed into the kind of luxurious workspace that could have belonged to any head of state. It was as if the sky had opened up and rained money down on our group.

  With a little digging, it wasn’t hard to discover that Jack Hewitt’s death facilitated one of the largest mergers in corporate history. That he’d been the majority stockholder in Hewitt and Sons, a company that had been in his family for generations. He hadn’t wanted to sell the business, but his brother had.

  I can’t prove it, but I’m sure that somehow we were involved in his downfall, and the merger that followed. I’m sure that the others had been used to gather information about him, information that had been used against him. Maybe he was blackmailed. Maybe he was just plain threatened. Like I said, I can’t prove anything. All I have are a handful of personal trinkets belonging to a dead man, items that mean nothing . . . unless you have the ability to tell someone’s past just by touching them.

  July 1, 1987

  I confided my suspicions in Muriel, and she confessed that she had concerns as well. She confessed, too, that she’d been asked about Jack Hewitt’s personal life—things that should have remained private. In searching his past, she’d discovered infidelities, including the name of a mistress he’d had for years, and had even given them information about a love child he’d been hiding, filtering money to through the company. Things that might destroy a man’s family, as well as his career.

  Together, we decided to dig for more information, to see if we could connect what she’d found to those who were behind the Seven, all of whom still remained anonymous.

  Jimmy was the one who caught us as we were searching through the files. We told him what we suspected.

  Muriel said she was thinking of quitting the Seven. All the while I was calm, almost too calm, as if Jimmy were manipulating me. Then he said that she couldn’t quit, they wouldn’t let her.

  They, he said. It was ominous, and my feelings were exactly what they should have been. Fear. He told us that no one leaves the Circle.

  He didn’t say “the Seven,” which is what the rest of us call ourselves. He said, “the Circle,” as if the number changes. As if we weren’t the first group they’ve assembled.

  July 15, 1987

  Muriel is dead. And I know why. She tried to quit the Circle.

  I have to find a way out.

  Violet sat back on her heels, as the goose bumps that had started at the base of her neck bloomed outward, spreading over her body, until she was covered in them.

  The Circle of Seven. They’d been just like her team. Just like Rafe and Gemma and Krystal and Sam. And whatever phantom organization had directed the Seven, from behind the scenes, assembling them and then giving them tasks, was so eerily similar to whoever was running the Center—it made Violet’s head spin.

  What if those similarities weren’t just a coincidence? What if there was some connection between the group her grandmother had belonged to and the team she was on now?

  Except, how was that even possible? The members of the Seven had been asked to participate in corporate espionage—even if it was of the psychic variety. Their skills had been used to manipulate financial dealings, had been utilized for personal gain and wealth. Violet’s team wasn’t like that.

  They were helping to find missing persons and stop killers. There was nothing selfish about that, nothing materialistic about what they did.

  Besides, that was almost thirty years ago.

  Yet . . .

  She thought of the Center, where her team met. She pictured the state-of-the-art facility and the high-tech feel, with the computers and LCD monitors . . . and yes, even the security. The cameras and the keypads at every entry. Hadn’t her grandmother mentioned the security?

  She thought too of the fact that her mom had always told her that her grandma had never found a dead person before, not the way Violet had. That the echoes she’d discovered had always been limited to animals she’d come across.

  Lies, Violet knew now. Lies that her grandmother had been forced to tell to protect her family, to keep them safe from a group she suspected were capable of murder.

  How many other secrets had there been? How many other lies?

  Still reeling, Violet was about to close the journal when she saw something sticking out from between the
pages. A slip of paper, maybe. She stuck her finger between the pages of the journal, and just as she was opening the book, a photograph drifted out, floating to the floor in front of her.

  She didn’t have to pick it up to realize what she was looking at. Who she was looking at. All she had to do was count.

  They were all there, the Circle of Seven.

  Gingerly, she plucked up the image, holding it close and inspecting it. She recognized her grandmother right away. She was younger than Violet remembered her, and smiling, making Violet think this picture had been taken before she’d known what the group was all about. Before she’d grown to fear them.

  Her eyes roved over their faces, and she realized that all of these people were older than the members of her own team—even Krystal, who was their oldest member at twenty-one. These were adults, all of them. Most closer to her grandmother’s age than to her own.

  And then she felt the floor drop out from beneath her as all of her doubts evaporated in a single instant.

  Dr. Lee . . .

  Violet looked at the picture again, letting her finger wander over the faded paper—but not so faded that she couldn’t see him, couldn’t recognize his face. Even thirty years younger, she knew it was him.

  She tried to recall whether any of the entries she’d read in her grandmother’s journals had named him, but then realized that they had, she just hadn’t put two and two together. Why would she? Jimmy, or James rather, was a common-enough name.

  He was the young man who could make others feel calm.

  Violet crossed her arms in front of her, trying to ward away the chill that enveloped her, cupping her elbows and drawing her arms against her chest. She took that in as she thought about the visits she’d had with Dr. Lee.

  How much of what he’d taught her was truly technique—meditation, hypnosis, breathing—and how much of what she’d felt was simply the result of his own unusual ability to make those around him relax? To take away their stress, their discomfort?

  But for someone who could put others at ease, he certainly hadn’t always used it. He’d let her be angry and suspicious in the days and weeks since he’d forced her hand. He hadn’t calmed her when she’d been sullen or disrespectful during their mandatory sessions.

  She supposed he had no reason to stop her from feeling those things; she wasn’t hurting anyone really. She’d never actually left the team, despite all her frustration and fury with him.

  But then she remembered . . .

  He had used it on her, she was sure of it . . . when she’d asked him about Rafe and Gemma coming to her school. The way she’d blindly accepted his explanation, and his involvement in the decision to have them attend White River.

  She remembered, too, how she’d felt later, when she’d gone home and thought about it; she’d been frustrated with herself for not questioning him further, for not arguing with him. Suddenly she questioned everything. Everyone.

  She wondered if it had really been the dead boy on the waterfront—the one she’d discovered all those months ago—who had brought her to the attention of Sara Priest in the first place. She wondered if she hadn’t been on their radar all along. She was the granddaughter of one of the Seven, after all. Surely they knew . . . or at least suspected what she could do.

  And her grandmother had been trapped, just like she was.

  When you grow accustomed to something, when it becomes part of your everyday life, you notice when it suddenly vanishes.

  That was what happened when Violet sat bolt upright in the middle of the night. At first she didn’t understand why her pulse was racing even before she was fully awake. She had no idea why her ribs ached as her lungs struggled and gasped for breath, or why she couldn’t see or hear.

  I’m dead was the first thought that found its way through her awareness. It was jarring to consider, but it made a certain amount of sense. This is what it feels like to lose consciousness and succumb to death.

  She blinked, searching for some sort of bright light, or a tunnel that would lead her to the other side, the kind you always hear about in people’s near-death experiences.

  But there was . . . nothing . . .

  Nothing.

  She blinked once . . . twice . . . and then her eyesight adjusted. She was still in her bedroom, and it was still the middle of the night.

  Her breath finally found a place in her throat, and she felt the hitch as she gasped, a long choking sound . . . one that she most definitely heard. Her heart hammered too hard against the walls of her chest and she realized she must’ve been dreaming. That had to be it, she assured herself, it was all a bad dream.

  But it was still eerily quiet around her. Spookily, frighteningly quiet.

  And then she realized why that was.

  It was gone. Her music-box imprint . . .

  It was gone.

  She shook her head, because surely her sanity had slipped, if only a notch. It wasn’t possible for an imprint to just . . . vanish. It wasn’t something you could just lose.

  Yet here she was. Sitting alone in the dark, in total, complete, utter silence.

  The phone, when it vibrated on the nightstand beside her, made her jump and caused her heart to start racing all over again. She lunged for it, pressing her hand against her chest as she took another breath and glanced at the screen.

  “Rafe?” she whispered, her voice unsteady. “What’s wrong?”

  Static poured through the line from the other end, and she thought at first he might not hear her, that they had a bad connection. Then his voice reached through the phone, finding her. “Hopefully nothing. That’s why I was calling. I wanted to see”—he paused—“how you were.”

  “I’m . . .” She swallowed her word. She’d started to say “fine,” something she’d said so many times before it was nearly automatic now. Yet here she was, no longer sure whether that was true or not. Under the circumstances, I’m losing my effing mind might be more accurate. Instead, she settled for “confused.”

  In the background she heard noises: metal banging against metal, maybe; the clang of buckles, probably. What was he doing?

  “But better, right?”

  “Bett—” Her mind whirled as she tried to make sense of their strange conversation. “What have you done? Did you . . . do this?”

  She heard the distinct whooshing sound of a zipper. “Look, I only have a minute. I probably should’ve waited to call, but I wanted to see if it worked or not.”

  Violet lifted her hand to her lips. “I don’t understand . . . how . . . ?” And then stopped pretending, because she did understand. She understood entirely too well. “You didn’t . . . ? You didn’t just dig him up, did you?” She lowered her voice to barely a breath. “You could get in so much trouble.”

  Rafe actually laughed. “Well . . . I didn’t just dig him up, I had to do some other stuff too. Really gross stuff. And since you haven’t said otherwise, I assume it worked. You can thank me later. But for now, I’m cold and I’m dirty, so I’m gonna go.”

  She tried to imagine Rafe going to the graveyard at night and digging up a body—Caine’s body.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, wondering whatever had possessed him to do such a thing, to take such a risk.

  But she knew. “This doesn’t change anything, you know?”

  There was another brief pause, right before she heard him say, “Oh, I don’t know, V. I think it changes everything.” And then he hung up.

  CHAPTER 9

  WAKING UP THE NEXT MORNING HAD BEEN strange. And quiet.

  And . . . well, strange.

  Violet hadn’t slept much after hanging up with Rafe, but this time it had nothing to do with the ghostly imprint she’d become so accustomed to. Or rather it had everything to do with it. Its absence was palpable, and Violet kept waiting for it to reappear, kept searching for it in the darkness of her mind.

  Odd how something she’d once thought she hated had become such an integral part of her daily life. Like breathing.
>
  And without it, peace was nearly as hard to find as it had been with it.

  But not impossible, and eventually Violet had found the silence comforting, letting it wrap around her, swaddling her in solitude.

  In the morning, she thought about other things. Like Rafe, and what he’d done to make the spectral sounds vanish for good.

  She wanted to tell everyone—or at least Jay and her parents. She wanted them to know what he did, that her imprint had been silenced. But she wasn’t sure she could . . . or should. What Rafe had done was criminal.

  So she said nothing, pretending instead that everything was the same as it always had been. That the music-box imprint still followed her. Haunting her.

  Marking her as a killer.

  “I think we should talk,” Rafe told her as he scooted his chair across the aisle so their desks were lined up side by side.

  Violet peered toward the front of the classroom, knowing that if Mr. LeCompte caught them like that, they’d be in trouble. Again.

  Rafe was continually breaking the rules in class, but it was Violet who Mr. LeCompte always seemed to catch. So far this year, she’d been reprimanded for talking, passing notes, and for pushing the perfectly aligned desks out of order—all because of Rafe. Just once, Violet wanted to see Rafe take the blame.

  “Stop it,” she hissed, scooting her desk away from his, but knowing that wasn’t the solution. She’d only be scolded for disfiguring her row too.

  He reached across, surprising her when he captured her hand with his, and she felt that far-too-familiar jolt. “I mean it, Violet. You can’t just pretend I didn’t”—his eyes held hers, and everything around her went still—“do what I did last night. We need to talk about it.”

  She started to draw away from him, to tell him where he could go—in terms that weren’t exactly ladylike, either. But something about his expression stopped her.

  She looked at him, really looked at him, and thought about all the secrets—and the pieces of the puzzle that still didn’t fit. Maybe she did need to talk to him.