Among These Bones (Book 3): Maybe We'll Remember

by Luzzader, Amanda

  “They’re securing the room, now,” whispered Arie. “Checking it out. Then they’ll come in here.”

  “Arie,” I said.

  “Don’t say anything,” said Arie. “It’s okay.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  He shook his head. “You don’t need to say anything.”

  We heard their voices outside.

  Arie trained his gun on the door.

  I opened the gray plastic case in my lap. I took out one of the vials. It seemed to glow in the dim light.

  “What are you doing?” snapped Arie.

  I looked at him and shrugged. “What does it matter now?”

  I plunged the needle into the vial and pulled back on the stopper, filling the barrel.

  What was the right dose? I didn’t know, couldn’t know. But I didn’t care. I tapped at hollow of my elbow, looking for a blood vessel.

  “Alison,” said Arie, “don’t do it!”

  I squinted in the darkness and stabbed the needle into my vein. A rush of icy electricity flowed up into my shoulder and on through my chest.

  They were at the door now. I heard their boots scuffling on the smooth floor outside, heard their voices. They were setting up to rush in. Then the door flew open. I saw their rifles, black and sinister, and their armor and goggles. They looked like nightmare beasts. They shouted and pointed their weapons. I think Arie threw down his gun and put his hands up. I think they wrestled him to the floor.

  I was only partly paying attention. Because I saw Chase. Seated as I was, I saw between and beyond the legs of the troopers. Chase lay on the floor, a smear of shiny darkness spreading around him, and the troopers left dark, wet footprints. More troopers crowded in around me. I leaned and tilted to keep my eye on Chase. Someone was dragging him away by his feet. He was limp and lifeless.

  I heard a trooper say, “We’ve got two in custody,” and the finality of that shot through me like a bullet. I surrendered to the cold sensation that now seemed to be ripping through me like radiation. My thoughts began to disconnect, to wobble independently. The Agency troopers shouted, but the noise of it receded. Arie shouted back—but I heard him as I would through thick layers of cotton. My vision blurred, blackened.

  I shut my eyes tight and images flashed through my mind, chaotic, busy, impossible to interpret. There were faces, houses, places, each followed by the painful sting of a hot, white flash, as though I were being beaten on the head, or receiving electrical shocks directly to my brain.

  I saw Arie’s face. Flash. A teacup. Flash. Chase’s face. A Ferris wheel. Flash. Faces, colors, doors, sounds. Flash. Flash. Flash. I knew they were memories, my memories, and they were all there. I saw everything, but it was too fast, too loud, too large. My mind sizzled. Agency troopers grabbed my arms and were hauling me out of the room but I was only vaguely aware of it.

  CHAPTER 39

  I was in a bare place, a strange place. I won’t say I awoke there because my first realization was simply that I was there, in this bare room. It was square with concrete walls and concrete floors. One metal door, shut, presumably locked. No windows. Jittery fluorescent light tubes flickering high overhead in a protective metal basket bolted to the concrete ceiling. I was lying on a metal cot which was also bolted to the concrete. In one corner there was an odd metal fixture that appeared to double as toilet and sink. Bolted to the wall above that was a plastic mirror.

  I sat up and was struck by a strong wave of nausea. I dove toward the toilet, almost too late. I vomited several times and when there was nothing left I went on dry heaving.

  My head pounded and my eyes felt hot and scaly. The air and floor were cool, for which I was mildly thankful. I lay on the floor and tried to work out where I was, how I had gotten here.

  I couldn’t.

  I’d never been here before. Nothing seemed familiar. And that would be bad enough, but I couldn’t remember where I’d been before this. Or where I’d ever been.

  The room stank of body odor and urine.

  I stood and tried the door. It was locked. So, this is a cell, I thought.

  Again I tried to remember where I was, or anywhere I had recently been, and even where I wanted to be. Home? Where was that? Nothing came to mind. I lay back down on the cot.

  I was dressed in a simple gray shirt and pants made of cotton, like you might see at a mental hospital. Or prison. Is that where I was?

  Back up, I thought. “Where am I?” might be the wrong question for right now.

  “Who am I?” I said.

  Alison. That was my name. I knew it, but it took some time to realize that I knew it. I tried to think of something else, anything else, but there was nothing to think of.

  So, for now I was Alison.

  But who was Alison?

  There was the feeling that all the rest was on the tip of my tongue, I just needed something to get it started, to jog it free. There had to be in explanation for why I was here and where I had come from.

  I told myself I was probably just very ill, feverish. I’d fallen sick and was in one of those dreadful hospitals in some impoverished, foreign country.

  Okay. So. Where?

  I should just rest and let my mind relax, I thought, and then it would all come back to me. But my heart slammed around inside me in a panic. My hands shook, moving around almost on their own, as if groping for something I’d dropped or lost. I was missing something I badly needed, something precious.

  I began to dry heave again. I went to the sink and turned on the water. It was ice-cold. I cupped it in my hands and splashed it on my face. When I looked up, I saw my reflection in the warped and hazy mirror above the sink.

  I didn’t recognize it, which is not to say that I didn’t know it was me. I knew it was me, but I couldn’t recall ever seeing this face before. I couldn’t place a time when I’d looked at myself before. So I spent quite a while looking at myself. There was a bandage on my forehead. I lifted it and saw a gash there, only a day or two old. Where had it come from?

  I looked at my eyes. They were tired-looking, and they seemed sad to me. My hair was frizzy and unkempt. I needed a bath.

  But these thoughts came to me as though I were observing someone else—a separate person—because I knew nothing of this person in the mirror. I didn’t know where she came from or what her childhood had been like. Or her adulthood for that matter. Didn’t know what things made her happy or what things made her sad. She looked sad now. Why?

  “Hello,” I said. It was an introduction. And my voice seemed familiar, though, again, I couldn’t recall ever having heard it before. I felt immensely curious about this person—who was apparently me, though I felt like I’d somehow stolen someone else’s body. As I looked at myself in the mirror, I turned my head side-to-side, touching my face, lips, nose, ears, collar bone.

  “Who are you?” I asked the mirror.

  When I’d had my fill of looking in the mirror. I went back to the cot and sat on it. The dizziness and nausea were passing, and I suddenly felt quite hungry. I wondered how I’d get food. Would someone bring me some? Why was I locked in? Did anyone know I was here?

  I shook my head. Stop being foolish. You’re a prisoner.

  But am I a prisoner who is fed?

  I wasn’t particularly thin. I wasn’t starving. So they must feed me. Unless I was new here. Was I new? Would I have food or not? Would I ever leave this room? How long was it that people could go without food? I had water. So, I could go quite a while. Somehow I knew that without water, I would die very quickly—a few days, maybe—but I could survive quite a while without food.

  Maybe it was because I was alone with no apparent memories, that these questions and thoughts circled in my mind. My brain felt as though it had nowhere to rest, so instead it brewed and agitated over these few questions I had.

  My name was Alison. I knew that I knew things. I knew that if there were a book in the room, I’d be able to read it, yet I had no memory of when I learned to read. I could c
onjure up images of what an apple was or a banana, yet couldn’t remember having ever eaten one.

  How does this happen? My brain felt as though it were pushing a rock up a mountain and though I had done nothing but sat there, I felt exhausted as though I’d used up all of my physical strength in thought. I faded in and out of something similar to but not exactly the same as sleep. Time passed, but whether it was days or minutes I did not know.

  Then I heard footsteps outside my door. I don’t know why, but I was keen to work out how many sets of footsteps there were, and who they might belong to. There were two or three sets of footsteps, I concluded. At least one of them must be wearing boots or heavy work shoes, for they clomped dully on the floor outside. The other footsteps were the click-click-click of a heeled shoe. A lady’s high-heeled shoe.

  Next came soft, muffled voices and the rattle-jangle of keys.

  CHAPTER 40

  The door swung open and in billowed a breath of fresher air.

  A woman stood at the threshold of the door. Attractive, statuesque. She was a professional of some sort. A lawyer, perhaps? She wore a slate-colored pencil skirt, a lovely black blouse, and black, patent-leather heels. She didn’t enter.

  Three soldiers or policemen stood just behind her. Those were the boots I’d heard. But I’d miscounted them and felt a tinge of disappointment in myself. The soldiers were young looking, baby-faced.

  I smiled. Involuntarily, I suppose. “Hi,” I said, eager to finally get some answers.

  The woman peered into the room. Her expression was almost completely passive, but for a hint of disapproval. A sinister look. She looked directly at me, unblinking. She didn’t change her expression or even blink, but I somehow knew that she recognized me. I didn’t know who I was, but she did.

  I rocked forward to stand, to ask the woman, beg if needed, to explain why I was here. But before I got a word out, she nodded to the soldiers, stepped backward into the hallway outside, and I heard the click-click-click of her heels retreating down the concrete floor of the hallway.

  The soldiers entered, their faces angry, already flushing red. Not so boyish now. They raised their fists, and that is when I saw their batons. I crouched down desperately, covering my face and head with my arms. Without a word, they each hit me with the batons. I screamed and scrunched myself into a tighter ball, absorbing strike after strike. After a while they abruptly stopped, for what reason I don’t know—whether one gave a signal or they’d been some sort of earlier instruction. Then they swiftly left the room, pulling the door shut behind them. Another rattle of keys, the lock turned over, and then the only sound was my sobbing.

  I checked myself, and bruises were already showing on my arms and my side where they’d hit me.

  “What did I do?” I asked the room, sobbing, and then lay still until I fell asleep again.

  Maybe an hour or two had passed when I heard the booted feet of the soldiers returning. I immediately shrank into a corner, balling into a fetal position, trying to expose the least of me as possible. The door opened, and I saw an arm clad in the same black uniform. A tray of food was placed on the floor and the door slammed shut again.

  It wasn’t much. Some runny lukewarm soup and a few stale crackers. But I was hungry and didn’t know when I’d get to eat again, and so I ate it eagerly.

  And that is how it was for a long time.

  The soldiers came in periodically and hit me with the batons and kick me, for no apparent reason. Or they came to bring food. But they never spoke with me. Never seemed to even regard me as human. Sometimes I would plead with them for information. Where was I? Why was I being punished? Why couldn’t I remember anything?

  But they never answered. I felt certain I was being punished for something, yet I couldn’t remember what, and that seemed wholly unfair. I didn’t know how long I’d be kept there and speculated that the most likely answer was forever.

  A despondency grew in me to the point that when the guards brought food or came to beat me, I couldn’t even muster a response. I didn’t get out of bed. All I knew of life and living was misery.

  It occurred to me that I had not even one happy memory.

  In the early days of that captivity, I tried creating an imaginary life for myself outside the concrete walls. But it was very difficult. The thing I tried to imagine the most often was being outside—out of this prison, yes, but more than that, actually outside where there was sunshine and flowers and trees and grass.

  I always started with one tree. I’d look in the hazy plastic mirror by the sink. I looked at myself and then tried to imagine a tree next to me. If I managed that, then I’d try to add another, and another. Try to add grass and dirt. Some days I did better than others. But always, the vision in my mind was fleeting. Difficult to hold on to.

  And when the despondency grew too great, the imaginary life required too much effort to conjure. For all I knew, me and my entire life were the full sum of misery. I’d never known happiness, and I never would.

  So when the soldiers came to hit me. I’d lie there unmoving, until a baton would connect with my stomach or the side of my face, and I’d react reflexively. But my lack of reaction seemed to take some pleasure out of it for the soldiers, so it seemed to become half-hearted for them, the same way one might mop the floor only because they’d been told to and not really caring if the floor was cleaned.

  I stopped eating. The tray would be brought and then picked up again.

  I didn’t care. Not about the food. Not about my imprisonment. Not about feeling pain. Nothing. I only wished to fade away. To disintegrate, to somehow cease to be. I could no longer be hurt because I was numb to everything.

  I don’t know whether I would have starved to death or if the soldiers would have intervened before that happened, but one day, there was a change. Two soldiers came to beat me, but they simply couldn’t anymore. Instead, they swatted the wall next to my cot a few times. Clack, clack. Clack-clack! Clack. It was as if they thought that even though they could no longer stomach the idea of beating me, they must do something or be punished themselves. So they hammered on the wall several times and abruptly left the room.

  When the heavy tread of their boots was gone, I heard something else. There was a banging or rapping on the wall, seemingly where the soldiers had struck the wall with their batons, and something more—it was in the same pattern or cadence of the batons.

  Clack, clack. Clack-clack! Clack.

  I stared at the wall, and the sound repeated. It shook me from my stupor. Goosebumps formed on my arms. I fetched the metal dinner tray, not caring that the food on it spilled on to the floor. I hit the wall with the tray twice. Tap, tap. Tap-tap! Tap.

  I waited.

  After a few seconds I heard it. Tap, tap. Tap-tap! Tap.

  I tapped again, this time in a different pattern. Shave-and-a-haircut…two-bits.

  The tapping from the other side came back the same way.

  I reached out and touched the wall. And I pictured that there, on the other side, was another person, who understood what I was going through.

  From that point on, my wall-mate and I would share taps throughout the day. I’d tried shouting to see if he or she could hear me, but I never heard a response and that always seemed to trigger the guards barging in with their batons. Soon we established that the pipes worked even better. There was a short length of exposed drain pipe at the sink and I could rap on this just with one knuckle and be heard. We exchanged our tapped-out messages every day, all throughout every day. I began to imagine trees in the mirror again. And a river. And warm rocks to sit on and take in the sunlight.

  I wish we knew Morse code so that we could have conversations, but the noise itself was enough for me to imagine what the other person was saying. A tap first thing each day meant, “Good morning.” At meal times was, “Mush again?” After the guards left my room, “Are you okay?”

  I felt like this other prisoner was my guardian angel. I began eating again. I started exerci
sing. I would sing and talk to myself and whenever I was feeling sad or lonely, I’d rap on the pipe and wait for the response and then smile and nod. We were the same, the two of us. Strangers, but friends.

  And while this crude form of communication had made the conditions somewhat bearable, it was still a miserable existence.

  Nobody had told me why I was there or even who I was. Nobody had told me anything. Besides what I could do to keep myself clean with the water from the sink, I stayed in the same dirty clothing. I used the crude commode, but it was never cleaned, and the cloying smell of sewage hung in the room. Having known no other way, however, these conditions seemed normal to me, and I had to work hard with my mind to imagine anything different or better.

  I named my wall-mate Winn. And besides the tapping, I’d converse with Winn through the wall. Which is to say I spoke in the direction of the wall and imagined how Winn might respond.

  I had settled into a routine, complete with even a social life of sorts now that I communicated with Winn. And maybe life would have been okay, maybe I could have lived forever that way.

  Then, one day, Winn didn’t tap back.

  CHAPTER 41

  Usually it was Winn who sent the first greeting, the shave-and-a-haircut…two-bits knock we’d used after our first contact. But a lot of time had passed without hearing from Winn. I tried the morning knock, waited for the reply.

  Silence.

  Maybe Winn was still sleeping.

  So I waited a bit and then tried again.

  No response.

  I tried not to think about it, but I became obsessed and moved to continuously knocking on the wall every few seconds.

  I’d put my ear on the pipe itself, straining to hear even the slightest tapping response, but there was nothing.

  Had the guards discovered what we were doing? Had they moved Winn to punish me?

  I began crying. “Winn, Winn,” I moaned.

  I knew then that it was only the knowledge that someone else was there, that at least one other person on earth would offer me kindness—I knew that it was the only thing keeping me sane, keeping me alive. If Winn was gone—I didn’t know how I could cope.