Dead Girl in 2A (ARC)

by Carter Wilson

  “Yeah,” I reply. “But what’s not as obvious, but I can see, is the weight on you, pushing you into the ground. A desperate, crushing sadness, the kind you can’t ever get rid of.” This sense wasn’t as strong about him before, and maybe that’s because my focus was never fully on him as it is now. “The kind of sadness where you wake up each morning and have to make an active decision not to put that gun in your mouth.” As I say it, it becomes more pronounced, to the point where some of his pain seems to transfer to me, and I have little capacity to bear more.

  “Maybe you should shut your mouth,” he says. The smile is gone, but the teeth are still bared.

  Then it hits me, but Clara says it before I do.

  “You’ve lost someone,” she says.

  “Yes,” I add. “And not just your nephew. Someone much closer, I’m guessing.”

  Markus says nothing. He doesn’t have to; his face says it all. I’ve sensed this on a few other strangers, that these people all carried incredible burdens they could not unload. Until I started having this ability to feel other people the way I do now, I’d never appreciated the massive pull some people have to fight against every day. The slog of living through some incredible loss. Where once life was a field of grass, it’s now an endless stretch of waist-deep mud. Every step an unthinkable burden, every inch a fight, and with no end in sight, no destination in view, a question of whether the journey is even worth taking.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell him, meaning it. I’m thinking he lost a child, which makes me think of Em. It was stupid and selfish of me to attack Eaton back in the hotel room—I could have gotten myself killed. She and Abby have to remain my focus. Whatever happens this afternoon, I have to think of them.

  Clara fills the silence with a question directed at the back of Landis’s head.

  “You’re different from Eaton,” she says. “You don’t want the same thing from all this, do you?”

  Landis keeps his gaze straight ahead, both hands on the wheel, jaw tight. A few seconds pass.

  “I just want to know my parents,” he says.

  “You mean you want to know who killed them,” I say.

  “That’s just part of it. I want to know them.”

  We hit a hairpin curve that he navigates with caution. The barrier on the road’s edge, the thin ribbon of metal separating life and death, has a substantial dent along one section but is otherwise intact. Someone must have had a hell of a scare.

  “You think if you can experience what I did, you can remember them,” Clara says.

  “Every child should know their parents. I want to know who they were, what their faces looked like. I want memories of them, and not just…from the night they died.”

  “And then what?” she asks him. “What happens in your life after you remember them?”

  He looks in the rearview mirror, and we catch each other for a half second. In that instant, it’s clear to me he hasn’t thought much about this answer before. He’s driven only to remember his parents, remember their killer. Those are the only important things to him.

  “I still don’t remember my birth parents,” Clara says.

  “Nothing?” There’s a crack in Landis’s voice.

  “No. Or maybe I did, but it’s gone now. Maybe this time.” Her eyes glisten. “Or maybe that was it. What if it never happens again? What if I was allowed one moment of memories, and nothing more?”

  “We’ll find out soon,” I say.

  A few minutes pass as we wind toward our destination, then Clara points and says, “We’re close. Jake, look.”

  I look out the window on her side.

  “The Maroon Bells,” she says.

  She told me about the twin mountains on the plane, and her description didn’t do them justice. It’s not just that the snow-peppered peaks rise so dramatically out of a low-scooped valley, adding to their majesty. It’s not just the freckling of yellow and red trees at their base, splashing color against the stark granite. It’s something else, and only the orphans from Arete Academy would be able to pinpoint what it is.

  I know. I see it immediately.

  The way the gray of the rock and the wind-whipped snow intertwine. It looks like a very fine pen drawing, as if someone spent endless hours and thousands of tiny ink strokes to create the two peaks I’m looking at now.

  “Landis,” I ask. “Do you know who drew the books? Was that in any of the notes you have?”

  He nods. “My mother. There was a reference to that in my father’s journal.”

  “Up here,” Clara says, and directs Landis to turn down a road ending at a trailhead next to a small lake.

  We pull over, and Eaton’s car soon joins us. I wonder what he and Elle spoke about for the last thirty minutes. Unlikely to have been small talk.

  At first, we don’t get out. We just look through the windshield at the Maroon Bells, which reflect imperfectly in the rippled water of the lake.

  “Do you see it?” I ask the others.

  “See what?” Markus says.

  He won’t see it. The others might.

  “The Maroon Bells look like they were drawn.”

  Perhaps Landis and Clara notice it as well. The Bells look like ink drawings fashioned in the same style as the images in The Responsibility of Death. They were an inspiration for the artist, and I feel that same pull toward them, that same hypnotic gravity, as when I first read my book.

  Patterns. Everything’s a pattern.

  I get out of the car, struggling against fresh waves of pain, and hobble a few feet closer to the lake’s edge. I’m aware of car doors opening and closing, but I don’t even see Clara until she’s standing right next to me. The wind that ripples the water buffets against me, cold but not fierce. As I keep staring at the peaks, mountain air flows through me, deep and familiar, and despite my wounds, this is the most alive I’ve felt since I can remember.

  I ask Clara, “You felt this place all along, didn’t you?”

  “Somehow, yes. I don’t know how I knew to come here. A little bit of magic.”

  I shake my head. “It’s not magic. You must have seen a picture at some point, and it looked just like this.”

  “That’s true. I have seen pictures.”

  I turn to her and see the outline of her face as she looks forward. She evokes a single word in me, which loops a few times in my brain before dissolving.

  Home.

  “You saw the pictures and it evoked something in you. You probably weren’t even consciously aware of it, but it was enough to compel you. The shapes of the rocks, and how the snow is blown against the black and gray of the granite. It looks like the images in the books. It’s a pattern, Clara. Landis’s mother used these rocks as a basis for her illustrations, I’m guessing specifically to make a connection. However their program works—if it works at all—must have connected everything with this place. Maybe at some point we were supposed to come back here all along.” I turn my attention back to the peaks and see the first of a wave of clouds beginning to crown over the tops.

  “Maybe.” The voice comes from Landis, who is now standing behind me. “There are references to peaks in the journal. I knew the school was somewhere in the mountains, but never considered the location itself may be part of the program.”

  “Arete,” I say. “A sharp mountain ridge.”

  Eaton’s voice calls out from behind us.

  “Where is it?”

  I turn to him. He’s standing next to Elle, who carries more concern on her face than when I last saw her getting into Eaton’s car. Markus has moved to their rear, the gun in his hand. The sheepdog, making sure he has full view and command of the herd.

  “Where is the school, Clara?”

  Eaton’s head is tilted to the side, as if he’s losing the muscle to hold it upright. His shaggy hair is even more unruly, and there’s a
quiver in his stance, a tremor in his body, and I don’t think it’s from the growing chill in the air.

  I think Alexander Eaton is coming apart. Right here.

  He staggers a few feet forward. “Take me there, now.”

  Even Landis eyes him with wariness.

  “Do you feel it?” I whisper to Landis. “Do you feel this place?”

  He nods, almost imperceptibly, his gaze on Eaton. “I do. Just a little. But it’s there.”

  I lower my head closer to Landis and keep my voice soft enough so Eaton can’t make out my words. “He’s erratic,” I say. “We can come back here another time. I need medical help. We all need sleep. We can do this together, but it doesn’t have to be right now.”

  “Stop talking!” Eaton shouts.

  Landis turns his face to me. The gray-blue of his eyes turns nearly white in the afternoon light.

  “I’m sorry, Jake,” Landis says. “It needs to be now.”

  “Why?”

  He sighs. “Because I don’t know how to stop it anymore.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Today is either a beginning or an end. It’s only one of those two things. It’s not a pause. Ever since I received that letter, I’ve been consumed with thoughts of who my parents were. The second I stepped out of that car and looked up there”—he points to the peaks, where more clouds gather by the second—“I knew there was no turning back. There are a lot of things I’m capable of, Jake. But turning away now is not one of them.”

  “We have to go now.” Eaton barks at Clara. “Show us.”

  Silence for a moment. No talking, no breeze. No distant birds. Pure, heavy silence.

  Then I feel what Eaton and Landis must feel, a sudden urgency to unveil all the mysteries. The treasure we seek is buried deep within all our minds, memories waiting to be released, and the key is somewhere nearby, a place where Clara can lead us. Of course we can’t wait any longer. It’s as if we found an ancient sunken vessel full of gold bars and I suggested coming back another day to explore.

  In this moment I release all my questions, all my doubts, all my concerns about what’s happening and just allow everything to be. At the edge of this lake, I choose to release it all, and as I do, I turn east and whisper something, thinking maybe my soft words will carry fifteen hundred miles to my daughter’s ears.

  “Everything’s going to be okay.”

  Then I turn to Clara.

  “Let’s do this.”

  “This way,” Clara says.

  We follow.

  Sixty-Two

  Clara

  Thick, menacing clouds pass in front of the sun, pulling a shade down across the landscape, muting colors and bringing an increased chill to the October air. The clouds could bring rain, hail, snow, or nothing at all. Such is the power of places like this, ruled only by nature. I wonder if these clouds scared me as a little girl.

  It doesn’t take long for the trail to snake away from the lake, up along a dusty ridge, and eventually into a deeper section of trees and scrub. I know exactly where I’m going, and even if I didn’t, I could lead by sense. It’s pulling me, this thing, this place, my past. No, that’s not quite right. Pulling implies I might be resisting. I want to go back to this place. It’s not pulling me. It’s luring me.

  I reach a fork in the path and know which way to turn, but I stand a moment, considering, stealing some time. I want to go to the school, but I don’t know what will happen when we get there. There is beauty ahead, yet there is violence here in this group. Those two things are often found in nature together, one sometimes begetting the other, beauty and violence, the end becoming the beginning. Raymond and Kate were seeking a kind of beauty, I think, as was I.

  Eaton is the problem. As I lead the way, he follows directly behind, his feet nearly entangled in mine, his breath coming in huffs not from exertion but from anxiety. It’s hard to tell if he’s anxious for something he’s seeking ahead or leaving behind. But he’s become even more erratic since the hotel, a man losing more of his mind the closer he gets to the thing he wants most. I fear if it’s not what he expects, reality will eat him alive, perhaps taking us along with him.

  We form a single line, though the path is wide enough to accommodate at least two. Behind Eaton is Elle, this poor woman ensnared in something far stranger than she likely imagined. She came to help, but is herself helpless. What she doesn’t know is by being here she is helping, because despite her uncertainty she is strong, and I draw from that. I know nothing of this woman other than she is good, and that energy might somehow prove a tipping point as we move deeper into these woods.

  Jake is behind Elle, limping and wheezing. He has no business being upright, much less hiking, and when we stop we do so for him, as if a momentary pause will help him regain strength. In one of these moments, I take his face in my hands. Soft, silent. I feel him diminishing and I want to fuel him, but I don’t know how. Of all of us, I’m here for him. I want him to experience what I did, to remember it all, if even for a moment. That will heal him faster than any doctor.

  We continue.

  Jake leads Landis, who is dressed in a suit with his fedora snug on his head. He couldn’t look further out of place and time on this mountain trail, and I suppose there’s meaning in that. Of all of us, he holds the quietest desperation. There’s no anger with him, no fury or threatening anxiety. He just wants to find his parents, and I don’t know if he ever will.

  Markus brings up the rear, and every time I look back, his gun remains firm in his right hand, pointed to the ground, his gaze sweeping over us, back and forth. This man belongs to Eaton; that much is clear. I wonder how much a person needs to be paid in order to do whatever another will tell them. Twenty thousand? Fifty? Whatever the number, I have no doubt Markus will do as commanded, just as I have no doubt Eaton is increasingly unfit to command.

  It takes less than a half hour to reach the small clearing with the tree stump. I stop as the others gather around.

  Eaton asks, “Is it here?”

  “Close.” I glance to Jake. “Do you smell it?”

  Jake nods. “Yes.”

  “Smell what?” Eaton lifts his nose and snorts.

  “Citronella,” Jake says. “The scent has been getting stronger for the past few minutes.”

  Landis gives a slight nod but says nothing. Eaton sniffs the air a few more times and, by the look on his face, smells nothing other than the decay of leaves.

  “This is crazy,” Elle mutters, and I can tell by Markus’s expression he agrees with her.

  Rather than letting Jake rest his leg, Eaton sits on the tree stump and places his hands on his knees. Landis walks over and whispers something in his ear. Eaton nods and then stares straight ahead, looking deep into the woods, far beyond us.

  “It’s my book,” Jake whispers. He’s close, and I’m the only one who can hear him.

  “What?”

  “Right here. This scene. This is the end of my book. A king sitting on his throne, someone whispering in his ear.”

  “It’s the end of my book too,” I say.

  “Really?”

  “In the end of mine, an old man waits on a tree stump in the forest.”

  “Waits for what?” Jake asks.

  I look at Eaton in this moment, seeing him as nothing but old and brittle bones.

  “Death,” I reply.

  Jake takes in the sight of Eaton a moment longer, then turns his head, as if not wanting to accept the parallels of the book and reality. The magic of it all. Though if there’s any magic in this spot, it seems of the dark sort. That tree stump was where I was going to slit my wrists. But for the wounded crow, my blood-drained body would be among the fallen leaves and pine needles, mulching the earth.

  “We need to keep moving,” Eaton says, rising from the stump.

  “It’s not
much farther,” I say. “But Jake needs to rest.”

  “No.”

  I start to protest, but Jake waves me off. “I’m okay.”

  “Let me help you,” Elle tells him. Jake resists for only a moment, a knee-jerk reaction, and then puts his arm around her for support.

  I spy the patch of ground where I first saw the crow and lead the others off path and through a maze of trees. As before, my feet sink into fallen leaves and pine needles, and the deeper we go, the less of the tree-filtered afternoon light reaches us. For a moment I think I’ve lost my way, but just as I’m about to try a different direction, I see the remnants of the old path.

  Here it was that the crow stopped and squawked at me.

  “This part is harder to navigate,” I tell the others.

  I go first, crouching beneath living low tree limbs and climbing over dead ones. I push some out of my way, while others claw at me, leaving white scratches that soon turn a dull pink.

  There seems no other way to stay on this path but to push through, and this growth doesn’t appear to be a natural occurrence. This path was covered. A collection of branches and limbs meant to obfuscate, though whoever did this didn’t take too much care or attention in the effort. A sloppy and hasty job, though perhaps it was enough to keep the remains of Arete Academy hidden from most explorers.

  Surely there have been others who have found the small campus throughout the years. Though I didn’t explore farther in my earlier journey here, a sweeping glance at the school revealed much had been burned down. Any hiker stumbling onto the old school would have found it a curiosity, and likely little else.

  Or maybe the school knows how to hide itself. A lost world, available for discovery only to those attuned to its specific frequency.

  Like us.

  For those following me, what lies ahead could change their lives forever.

  “How much farther?” Eaton’s voice is on that edge between anxious and frantic, and I turn to see a spindly, dead branch scrape against his face. He winces and snaps the offending arm in two.