by Marissa Lete
“What is that?” I panic. “Please don’t do this.” The woman gives me a small look of pity, then comes closer, ignoring my plea. She grabs a sanitizing wipe and attempts to rub a patch of my arm, but I struggle, moving as much of my body as I possibly can away from her. I knock her arm backward, causing her to drop the wipe on the floor. A beat later, her hand closes around my throat.
She leans close, her cold fingers sending chills across my skin. “I can make this hurt a lot worse if you don’t stop,” she sneers, tightening her grip just enough to cut off the air flowing into my lungs.
I try to meet her gaze in defiance, but the sudden lack of oxygen causes tears to spring into my eyes. The woman smiles, satisfied, and releases her grip. I cough.
“I’m glad you understand,” she says, then grabs a new wipe from off the cart and rubs a small circle on my left arm. “I’m Alice, by the way,” she tells me, her eyes connecting with mine just as she plunges the needle into my arm.
“What was that?” I ask after she slides the needle out, my heart racing. Alice goes over to the cart, sets down the used needle, then grabs a fresh one. When she comes back over to me, she ties a band around my upper arm tightly. “What is going on?” I ask her, but it’s as if I’m talking to echoes. She ignores me, sticking a second needle into my arm and drawing a small vial of blood. She holds it up in front of her eye, tapping it.
“That should be plenty. Dave, you can let her go now,” I hear Alice say, but it sounds far away. And her mouth doesn’t move. A second later, she looks over to Dave. “That should be plenty. Dave, you can let her go now,” she says. I stare blankly at her, a strange sensation coming over me like I’m about to be nauseous.
Then there’s the sound of footsteps moving, a few seconds before Dave actually starts moving to release me.
“What did you do?” I hear my voice mumble. It sounds like an echo, just like Alice’s voice a few seconds ago. But I’ve said nothing.
“What did you do?” I ask as Dave unties me from the chair. Suddenly, the room is filled with echoes. Doubles, then triples of sounds echoing back to me, moments before they happen in the present. I hear Alice rolling the cart out of the room with Dave’s footsteps just behind her. Faintly, then a little louder a second later, then I watch it happen, making the sound in the present.
“Wait!” I hear an echo of myself call, once, then twice. Then I call, “Wait!”
Alice pauses, peering at me through the doorway as I hear an echo of myself say, “What is happening to me?”
“What is happening to me?” I ask, a deep ache forming behind my eyes.
Alice’s eyebrows lift in curiosity. Her echo says, “I guess we’re going to find out,” then she smiles and says the exact same thing. I hear the door slamming shut a second before Dave grabs it and slams it shut.
I sit there in the chair, frozen. Normally when I hear echoes, they’re always from exactly one year ago, no matter where I am. They’re from the past. That’s how the echoes work. You can’t have an echo without a sound that happened before it. And yet, right there, I was hearing echoes of things a few seconds before they occurred in the present. Whatever Alice put into me made something strange happen:
I’m hearing echoes of the future.
Chapter 20
I sit there, listening. For the first few hours, every time I decide to move, I hear the movement a second before I do it. It’s like a strange deja vu where I can hear what’s going to happen a moment before it does.
As the hours tick by, however, the future echoes start to grow fainter until I no longer hear them. It’s as if they were just a temporary malfunction in my brain that finally wore off.
What was in that needle?
And who is this Alice lady, anyway? How does she tie into the echoes I’d been hearing of Maverick?
The hours tick by, one, then three, then six. Maybe more, maybe less. It’s hard to judge the passing of time in this room with no clock and no windows. No one comes into the room to bring me food or water, and my stomach begins to grumble, aching for sustenance. I begin to wonder if the real reason I’ve been brought here is for Alice to watch me starve to death.
Eventually, my eyelids grow heavy. I glance up at the security camera hanging in the corner, wondering if I’m being watched at this very moment. What if they’re waiting for me to fall asleep? What if I miss my chance of escape by nodding off?
The fears swirl inside of me, but as time continues to march forward, I finally give in. I climb onto the cot, pull one of the rough, itchy blankets over my torso, and lay down.
The second I close my eyes, an alarm screeches through the building, making me jolt back upright.
Above the door, a red light comes to life, spinning in circles as the alarm blares in bursts of three.
I leap to my feet and try pushing on the door, hoping that the alarm has triggered some kind of release mechanism, but it remains solid. If this is just a drill or a test of the alarm system, then it’s possible that nothing will happen and the alarms will stop after a few minutes. But if it isn’t, someone might end up coming to help me get out of the building.
I won’t hold my breath, but if someone does come, I have to be ready to make my escape attempt. So I grab one of the blankets and stand by the door, ready to spring into action at any moment. I listen, trying to hear the sounds of footsteps outside the door, but I’m not sure I can make out anything above the sound of the alarm. And anyway, I’m pretty sure this room is soundproof, considering I never heard Alice and Dave coming when they visited me last time.
The minutes tick by, the alarm continuing its siege through the building. Then, finally, the door swings open.
The second it does, I pounce on the person entering and throw the blanket over their head. I recognize the figure as Dave, and a glance through the door tells me he’s alone. I know there’s no way I’ll be able to hold him down, so this is my only chance. I use the extra few seconds I’ve bought myself to slide past him through the door and bolt down the hallway.
As I sprint, I go over the mental map I’d drawn of the place earlier. I’ll round a corner up ahead, then the staircase will be on the right at the end of the hallway. I’m not sure where all of the other doors lead—maybe to more rooms with more people being held captive—but I do know that the stairs are my best chance.
I round the corner, glancing behind me, and I see Dave in hot pursuit, already catching up. So I pump my limbs faster, building as much speed as my hungry, fatigued body can muster. I make it to the door, swing it open, and run straight into another person.
We hit each other, hard, and I fall, my head colliding with the bottom step of the staircase. I roll over in a rush, peering at the figure standing above me. His back is to me, a dark gray hoodie pulled over his head.
Dave comes barreling through the door and the other person side steps. Dave runs past him, then sees me on the ground and skids to a halt, turning to face the hooded figure.
I seize the moment, scrambling to my feet. I’ve made it up exactly seven stairs when a voice calls out, stopping me in my tracks.
“Wait! Don’t go that way!” it calls, and immediately I know who the hooded figure is. I whip around, facing him. Dave is laying on the ground facedown. Two amber eyes peer at me from under the hood.
“What?” I can barely say the word, my heart thudding in my chest.
“Come with me. I’m here to help you escape,” Maverick says.
I stand there, trembling. I can’t get myself to move. All I can manage to do is say three little words: “Who are you?”
“There’s no time to explain, I just need you to trust me,” he tells me. I remember that same voice from the echo on Halloween.
“Do you trust me?” he’d asked.
“Of course I do,” I’d replied.
But that was a playful, fun exchange, not a dire situation where my life was in danger. And I don’t even remember it. Obviously Maverick exists, meaning the echoes quite possibly coul
d have happened, but I wonder how well I knew him back then. And how little I know about him now. I’m not sure I can trust him.
But right now, I’m not sure I have a choice.
I take a step forward. “Okay,” I whisper.
“Follow me,” he says, and I do.
We take off, sprinting back down the hallway in the direction I’d just come from. Maverick is faster than me, but he slows down when he notices I’m struggling to keep up. He leads us around the corner and just before we get to the room I’d been held in, there’s another staircase entrance. When we get to the first floor, Maverick peers through the window on the door into the main hallway.
“Wait here. I’ll take care of the guards. Don’t let them see you,” he whispers, staring directly into my eyes to make sure I understand. His eyes don’t miss a thing, not the fear in mine, not the tremble of my hands, not the heat that forms in my cheeks under his gaze. I can tell by the depth of them, the endless pools of amber that don’t drift a millimeter away from mine.
I steady my breath and nod, and then he slips through the door. I watch through the small rectangular window as he rushes to the first guard and places his hands on the guard’s arms, shoving him toward the ground. It doesn’t look like that hard of a shove, but the guard falls, rolling onto his back, and goes still.
A second guard rushes toward Maverick, pushing him against the wall. They move just outside of the range of vision provided by the small window, and I strain to see what’s happening. I hear a loud thump, the sound of a body hitting the ground, and I wait, my breath coming out in short gasps. A beat later, Maverick appears in front of the window, then pulls the door open.
“Come on,” he says, voice low, gesturing for me to follow him. I slip through the door and he leads us down the main hallway. I can see two double glass doors directly in front of us, a hundred yards away. Outside, the sun is shining, but there’s a faded, reddish tint to the light that tells me it must be sometime in the evening.
When we get about halfway to the door, a person steps in front of it, blocking our path.
“Not so fast,” Alice calls out, her voice echoing down the hall. Maverick grabs my arm and pushes me behind him protectively. “Don’t. Move.” Alice says, and then I notice the gun. Pointed directly at us. We both freeze.
Behind me, I hear footsteps. I whip my head around, noticing two guards who are also holding guns.
“Did you think you could get away so easily?” Alice asks, then tilts her head back and lets out a short laugh.
Maverick doesn’t miss a beat. Just then, in one swift movement, he places his hand on a door next to us, pushes me inside, and slams it shut. He grabs the closest piece of furniture, a chair, and wedges it under the doorknob just as I hear Alice yell, “Get them!”
The door vibrates as the guards bang on it, the sound kicking my adrenaline to a new level. Maverick goes over to the window on the back wall and gives it a hard kick with his shoe. The glass shatters, and a gust of cold air bursts into the room. This window, unlike the one in the room I’d woken up in, isn’t barred. Either we got lucky, or Maverick knows his way around this place.
“You go first,” he tells me, and I throw my leg over the window sill. It’s a relatively short drop and I land on a bed of pine needles, shrubs on either side of me. Maverick drops a second later, and from inside the room, I hear the scraping of furniture along the floor. “Run,” he says, and he doesn’t have to wait for my response.
We take off, tearing across a small lawn, then crashing into woods. Thorns and branches reach out at us, scraping as we move through the vegetation. I ignore them, my need to escape outweighing the pain of a few cuts. I glance behind us and see two figures making their way across the turf behind us. They’re a good distance away, so we might have a decent chance of losing them.
I face forward and press on, sticking as close to Maverick’s side as I can. I’m not sure where we’re going, but it seems like Maverick has a destination in mind because he makes purposeful turns through the woods. Eventually, we reach a small clearing and at the opposite end, a small car is parked. When we get closer, I recognize it: the little black sport’s car. The one I’d seen at the school and in the driveway of the abandoned house across the street.
“Get in on this side,” Maverick gestures toward the driver’s side as he opens the door, and I remember seeing the entire right side crushed in. Because he’d pulled in front of the Suburban, stopping it from chasing me.
I climb in, scooting across the center console into the passenger seat. It’s tiny, with barely enough room to fit my legs. And sure enough, the right side door is crushed in; even from the inside it looks pretty badly damaged.
Maverick slides in next to me, cranking the engine up. He drives forward slowly, winding the car between trees until we reach a road. Maverick makes a right turn, pressing his foot down on the accelerator.
The car’s powerful engine hums beneath us as we drive. Maverick doesn’t take his eyes off the road, and I don’t take mine off the speedometer slowly creeping upward. I’m not sure where we are—or where we are going, for that matter—but I know that even I have a limit to how far I’ll go over the speed limit. Maverick, apparently, doesn’t.
We drive for a long time on a two-lane road, nothing but trees on either side for miles. My ears pop as the road drops in elevation, letting me know we must be somewhere up in the mountains. I wonder if Maverick knows where we are or if he’s just heading in an arbitrary direction. I don’t ask him. I don’t want to break the silence.
Fatigue hits me as my heart rate finally slows, the adrenaline wearing off. I’m not sure how long it’s been when we pull off onto a dirt road, but I feel heavy like I’ve been asleep. The sky is a bright orange, the sun probably setting somewhere behind all the trees.
At the end of the dirt road is a mobile home, and next to it, a garage. I wonder if this is where Maverick lives. He obviously doesn’t live in the house across the street from mine anymore.
“One second,” he tells me, then hops out of the car and walks into the house. A moment later he comes back out and the door of the garage slides up. Inside is another car, a blue Toyota Corolla that looks about a decade old. He hops into it and backs up next to the sport’s car, then comes over and opens the door.
“We don’t want them to be able to follow us in this, so we need to move to the other car. Is that okay with you?” he asks. As if I have a say in the situation. As if I have any idea what is going on.
“Where are we going?” I ask, my voice gravelly.
“Somewhere safer than here,” he tells me. It’s purposefully not much information, but I’m too exhausted to dig for more. Maverick helped me escape from Alice, at least, so for now, I don’t care where we go. As long as it’s far away from her.
Climbing into the Corolla feels strange after riding in the sport’s car. The sport’s car was cramped and had a brand-new car smell. The Corolla is more spacious and smells stale like it’s been sitting for a while. Maverick pulls the sport’s car into the garage, closes it up, and gets back in the car with me.
As we pull out of the driveway and back onto the road, I try to think of something to say, but I can’t even begin to imagine where to start, so I let the silence be our companion. I don’t know what’s happening, but I know that at least for right now, I feel somewhat safe. And I let that feeling carry me down to sleep.
Chapter 21
“Laura,” the voice is soft, like it’s from the past, but echoing back and forth through my mind, growing louder and louder as time shoots towards me.
“Laura,” the voice calls again. I open my eyes.
Two golden eyes are staring back at me. The door of the Toyota is open and bright, artificial light shines onto my seat. I sit up, squinting.
“Where are we?” I ask, looking around. We’re parked on a hedge-rimmed, stone-circle driveway, a massive water fountain jutting from the center. It’s dark outside now, but there’s a surprising amou
nt of light coming from something behind me.
“This is—” Maverick begins, then pauses. “My, uhh… house.”
I slip out of the car, turning around to take in the house. Or, I guess I should say, mansion. The sight of it makes my jaw fall open.
Giant spotlights light up the front, explaining the glow that reaches out into the driveway. Four giant stone columns line the front, and there are more than a dozen windows along each side. It has a pristine white exterior and a front door that’s at least twice my height.
“This is your house?” I exclaim in disbelief.
He scratches the back of his neck. “Kind of, I guess. Come inside.”
I follow him hesitantly, wondering if this is all just some wild dream.
When we step into a massive, brightly lit entranceway, I gasp. I can see a swimming pool through giant, floor-to-ceiling windows at the opposite end of the room, and then the house continues behind the pool. There’s a grand staircase to my left, and directly above me is a glass dome that I can see the stars through. The hallways to my left and right appear to go on forever.
As I stand there, gaping, I notice how quiet it is. There are a couple of echoes of footsteps tapping across the marble floor and voices talking in a distant room, but they’re all so old they’re barely there. Other than that, the house is quiet.
“Jacob, will you find Laura a room? And some clean clothes, too” Maverick calls. I look down at my muddy jeans and torn shirt, feeling suddenly improper in this massive, gorgeous house. An older man in a suit walks out of a side room and nods to me. Is he the butler?
“You may follow me,” he says, turning on his heel. I glance over at Maverick, suddenly wanting desperately to stop and ask him all of my questions. But he gives me a nod that says go on, so I follow Jacob. I’ll ask the questions soon.