Everlasting

by Elizabeth Chandler

  Ivy was amazed that Luke and Corinne had stayed together as long as they did. Having finished high school, Corinne attended art school to study photography, had a job in a camera shop, and had gotten her own apartment, away from River Gardens. But Luke appeared to be trapped in a downward spiral with underage drinking, two DUIs, and an assault outside a bar on his record, although charges for the latter were dropped. Maybe Corinne had felt sorry for him, Ivy reasoned. Or maybe she had been afraid of the violent streak in him, too afraid to break it off.

  The cottage’s screen door banged back and Ivy quickly clicked out of her search and into her e-mail. “Hey,” she called out.

  There was no response. Dusty, who had been snoozing on one of the kitchen chairs, stood up and looked toward the living room, nose twitching.

  “Beth? Dhanya? Kelsey?” Ivy guessed aloud.

  Footsteps, which Ivy recognized as Beth’s, stopped at the entrance to the kitchen. Ivy saw the cat’s tail switch and his pupils grow into round black mirrors. She turned toward Beth but could not see what had drawn such a wary reaction. Ella had been aware of Tristan when he was an angel. Could Dusty sense Gregory?

  “I was just going to make some popcorn,” Ivy said, hoping to lure Beth into a conversation. “Sit down—save me from eating it all.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Well, then just keep me company,” Ivy suggested lightly.

  Beth continued toward the stairs.

  “Beth!” Ivy stood up and caught her friend by the arm. “You’re not yourself. You don’t speak or act like yourself. Do you understand?” She tried to look in her eyes, but Beth turned her head away. “Something has happened to you. Gregory is haunting you.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Beth replied. “It’s you he wants. Gregory is haunting you.” She pulled away from Ivy and hurried up the steps.

  Ivy gazed after her for a moment, then returned to the kitchen table, feeling uneasy. Dusty stood at the edge of the table, the thick fur along his spine bristling. “What do you see?” Ivy asked softly. “Has he grown strong enough for you to see him now?”

  She hunched in front of her laptop, not knowing how she could stop Gregory, wondering what would satisfy his desire for revenge. Lacey had been right—he wanted revenge—and he was already getting it, bit by bit, destroying someone Ivy loved.

  She feared that Beth would have to do something extreme before Will would recognize what they were dealing with. Would Beth be too far gone by then? There must be a way to get through to her. “Angels, help me. Guide me. Show me!”

  Ivy stared at the list of e-mails on her screen—Philip, Mom, Andrew, Philip again, Suzanne.

  Suzanne. Two weeks earlier she had written to Beth saying that she was having dreams of Gregory. Ivy clicked on the new message:

  IVY, I MISS U. WISH U WERE HERE.

  Wish you were with me, Ivy thought.

  IS BETH OK? YESTERDAY GOT A STRANGE MSG FROM HER ABOUT

  A DREAM SHE HAD. SCARED ME.

  Ivy glanced at the clock—12:28 p.m. In Italy, 6:28 a.m.

  WHAT WAS THE DREAM? she typed, sending the message as an IM. Then she rose, fixed herself a glass of ice water, and paced the kitchen. Dusty sat on the stones at the edge of the hearth, looking up the cottage’s steep stairway.

  Wake up, Suzanne. Wake up, Ivy thought.

  A soft beep drew her back to her screen.

  DO YOU KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS HERE?!?! GIRL WITH SNAKE

  COILED AROUND HER NECK, CHOKING HER.

  Ivy frowned, then, sitting down again, typed: PROBLY ABT PROVIDENCE GIRL STRANGLED BY EX. EX WAS HIDING ON CAPE.

  Ivy didn’t know how much Suzanne knew about the Luke story and was debating what to add when a low growl from Dusty caught her attention. Ivy sent the message as it was, then crept to the steps, listening intently for movement above.

  Soft steps, lighter than Beth’s usual tread, crossed the floor to Kelsey and Dhanya’s side. Ivy thought she heard a bureau drawer slide open and closed. She sniffed for the scent of burning candles and wished she had thrown out all of them as well as Dhanya’s Ouija board. The first week they were on the Cape, when Kelsey and Dhanya had wanted to play with the board, Beth had objected to the use of cranberry candles, saying they needed white ones to attract only good spirits. Now Beth kept one dark red votive on the night table between her and Ivy’s beds.

  Hearing Beth return to the side of the room they shared, Ivy tiptoed up several steps and inhaled a sulfurous smell; Beth had lit a match.

  “Beth?”

  Ivy climbed the remaining steps and, reaching the landing, saw Beth lying back in bed, eyes closed, the candle flickering inside its crimson glass. Ivy’s angel statue, pushed to the edge of the night table, looked ghostly in the wavering light.

  Although Beth didn’t move, Ivy knew she couldn’t have fallen asleep that fast. She crossed the room and sat on her bed across from her friend. Beth’s face was still, but not peaceful—a death mask. Tristan’s goodness, trapped in a body of a killer, and Gregory’s evil, wrapped in the body of the sweetest person Ivy knew—there were so many ways for a person to die, Ivy thought, so many ways to lose a person you love.

  The amethyst necklace Ivy and Will had given Beth for her eighteenth birthday lay sparkling next to the candle. Beth hadn’t worn it for several days, maybe a week. Ivy touched the stone with one finger, then leaned over to extinguish the votive flame.

  “What’re you doing?” Beth asked sharply.

  Ivy straightened up. “I was going to blow out your candle. It’s not safe to leave it burning while you sleep.”

  “It’s in a glass.”

  “Even so, if you turned in your sleep suddenly, you could knock it over. Or a sheet could blow on top of it and catch fire.”

  Beth’s only reaction was to shrug, then roll on her side, away from Ivy. The candlelight danced, making Beth a dark shadow huddled against the wall.

  “Beth, I have a question for you. I found glass in my shoe. How did that happen?”

  Beth kept her back to Ivy. “You put it there.”

  “I put it there! That makes no sense. Why would I cut myself?”

  “To get attention,” Beth replied, and added in a singsong voice: “No more Will. No more Tristan. Poor Ivy needs everyone’s attention.”

  Ivy drew back. Was Gregory controlling Beth’s words? Or did Beth, her mind twisted by Gregory’s presence, actually believe what she was saying?

  “That’s a lie,” Ivy said.

  “That’s a lie,” Beth repeated back.

  “Beth, look at me!”

  Beth turned over suddenly, swinging her arm as she did, and knocked over the candle. It rolled across the night table.

  Ivy snatched it, singeing the tips of her fingers, then blew out the flame. “I don’t know how to get through to you, Beth. I don’t know how!”

  Beth met Ivy’s gaze, her eyes coldly glittering though there was no light in the room to reflect in them. Struggling to keep her hand steady, Ivy carried the votive down to the kitchen.

  She sat down shakily. A message had come back from Suzanne.

  IVY, THE GIRL BEING CHOKED WAS YOU.

  Eleven

  TRISTAN LIFTED HIS HEAD, STILL HALF ASLEEP, NOT sure what time it was or why he was lying in somebody’s attic. He rolled over. High above him was a square of light—daylight, he thought—illuminating a ladder with flat wooden steps that led to the bright opening. He sat up. There was enough light to see support beams forming giant upright Xs against the walls of the all-timber room. A thick piece of rope hung from the ceiling, its frayed tail ending about ten feet above the floor. He was in a bell tower in the church Ivy had told him about.

  Before Ivy had left the park the night before, she had given him a clean blanket, flashlight, and spare bottle of water, items from her car’s emergency kit. Tristan had waited till the night sky began to lighten to hike to the church, arriving just before the sun rose, glad for the morning’s heavy mist. The house closest
to the church, facing Route 6A, was small and hidden from the church by a screen of trees. The frame house across Wharf Lane, also shielded by trees, was large enough to be an inn, but dilapidated, with just one car in the rutted driveway. Directly across 6A, another old structure had been converted to a gallery, which, according to its sign, closed at six o’clock each evening. Still, Tristan had been cautious as he crept along the side of the church, trying each window till he found the one with the broken latch.

  With one side of the basement brightened by aboveground windows, the area had been light enough for him to find his way to a stairway without turning on his flashlight. The steps led to the altar end of the church’s main floor. At the opposite end he’d found the ladder to the trapdoor. Standing at the top of the ladder to the tower room, he had finally turned on his flashlight, looking around, hoping not to find a pair of beady eyes looking back.

  The room had been cleaner than he’d expected—or maybe the long hike to the hospital the day before and his shortage of sleep since had made it seem that way. He had thrown down his bedroll, put the clean blanket from Ivy on top, and, feeling more secure than he had for the last eleven nights, slept soundly.

  Slept for how long? He peered down into the shadowy vestibule below him, then squinted up at the square of light above his head. Standing up, he tested the ladder to the belfry, grasping the steps from underneath to see if they would hold his weight, then climbed them. The upper ones were more weather-beaten than the lower, and he stretched out and grabbed the end of the rope in case the wood splintered. But the steps held, and the air at the top was fresh and cool.

  After pulling himself onto the floor of the open belfry, Tristan kept his head below the sills so he wouldn’t be seen from the street, and studied the massive bronze bell and its wheel. A thick rope ran along the lip of the wheel, then rolled over a pulley before disappearing through a hole in the floor. Tristan laughed at himself: If he’d fallen from the ladder and grasped the rope, he would have rung the bell.

  Each side of the square belfry had a pair of large windows making a Gothic arch that framed the sky, dark blue on one side, streaky orange opposite it. He’s slept twelve hours! Tristan could hear the soft whoosh of traffic from the main road and slowly raised his head above the sill to peer through a row of decorative metal spikes. The churchyard with its stone path and overgrown bushes lay undisturbed, as if all the summer vacationers had agreed to walk around its edges.

  Tristan returned to the room where he had slept and descended the ladder to the main level of the small church. Its windows, leaded-glass in a diamond pattern with pastel-colored panes, shielded him from the outside, but let in enough light for him to delineate the Gothic ribs of the building. Sitting in a pew, memories from a lifetime ago flooded Tristan’s mind. His toy action heroes had scaled a lot of pews in the hospital chapel while he’d waited for his dad to finish up paperwork in the chaplain’s office. His mother would finally show up with “Dr. Teddy Ann,” the bear who made evening rounds with her, stuffed in a lab-coat pocket.

  Because of his mother’s medical practice, he had grown up knowing that children and teens died. And he had always assumed that his father, Reverend Carruthers, would be there to pray with people who were scared and worried and grieving. It had never occurred to him that their own safe and happy circle might be broken. He wondered how his parents were doing. He longed to hear their voices again and to hug them as unselfconsciously as he had when he was a child.

  Tristan sat for a long time as dusky shadows filled up the corners and height of the church. Ivy was supposed to leave a care package for him at the beach up the road, a kid’s backpack with Philip’s name scrawled on it, stuffed with food. He was waiting for nightfall.

  When it was almost dark, he descended the turning stairway to the basement, wanting a glimpse of it before the light completely faded. The windows in the basement were clear and curtainless, so he stood with his back against the wall, surveying the room. In addition to old tables and chairs, it contained some of the church’s “memories”: a children’s puppet theater, tarnished Christmas decorations, and rusted fans on tall poles for warm summer Sundays.

  Tristan memorized the layout so he could reenter the church in total darkness and find his way. Suddenly, he couldn’t wait any longer to get outside. It was dark enough, he told himself as he walked to the window with the broken latch. He froze. Someone stood at the edge of the church lawn, gazing at the church. Beth.

  She stood as still as a stone figure in a cemetery. While she was too far away for him to see her eyes, he knew by the lift of her chin that she was looking upward, staring at the bell tower. He couldn’t see Gregory in her, but the unnatural way she held herself, her unrelenting gaze at the place where he had climbed, was creepy. Could Gregory sense that he, Tristan, had been in the tower?

  No, of course not, he told himself. If Gregory could perceive him, Beth would be focused on the basement.

  But that left the question of why exactly Beth was there.

  Twelve

  “DO YOU MIND DRIVING TO THE PARTY?” WILL ASKED Ivy Saturday evening. She and Dhanya met him outside the cottage, Dhanya walking like a robot, the polish on her toenails and fingernails still drying.

  “You’re not going to Chase’s?”

  “Beth has my car,” Will replied.

  “Beth! You lent it to her?” Ivy exclaimed. Open your eyes, Will, she wanted to say. Beth’s not connecting with people. She’s hostile. She shouldn’t be driving around alone.

  Beth’s dream haunted Ivy—not because she thought it was one of her prophetic visions; more likely, it expressed Beth’s fear that “Luke” would strangle Ivy as he had Corinne. But what if Beth believed it was prophetic and acted on that belief? What if she attempted to hunt him down to “save” Ivy? What if the dream was created by Gregory—seeded by him as he prowled her mind—the beginning of a dangerous and demonic plan?

  “Look, if you don’t want to drive, I’ll call Bryan,” Will said, his voice growing edgy. Dhanya looked from one to the other.

  “No, c’mon,” Ivy replied. “I’m just worried about Beth.”

  Ivy realized that Will wasn’t looking forward to this party any more than she was. She wished they had gotten off to a better start this evening. She’d hoped that an uncomfortable party among people they didn’t know would make Will her ally, if only for the evening, and she could make progress toward talking to him about Beth.

  They followed 6A west to Chase’s house, which took them past Tristan’s hideout. When Will turned in his seat to look at the church, Ivy got nervous. She reminded herself that Will was the one who’d first noticed it.

  “Okay, keep an eye out for Toby’s Landing,” she said.

  “There,” Will replied almost immediately, and she turned off 6A, following the road to another one marked PRIVATE. Chase’s was the last of three widely spaced homes facing Cape Cod Bay. The shingled home rose before them, its center portion anchored by two large gambrels that faced the driveway, each one several windows wide.

  “It’s perfect,” Dhanya said as she stood on the cobbled drive, gazing at the old home. “If I lived on Cape Cod, this is the exact house I would buy.”

  “You could probably get it for five mil,” Will told her.

  Dhanya was unfazed by the price tag. “Max’s house costs more than that, but there’s no comparison. I hope it has trellises with climbing roses and a bench under an old arbor. This is the way a house on Cape Cod should look!”

  “Except of course, for the tiny homes that are actually called ‘Cape Cods,’” Will remarked.

  Ivy laughed, but Dhanya was too impressed to pay attention to Will’s wry comment. “Chase said his father is a famous defense attorney,” she went on.

  “Yes, we heard,” Ivy replied as they walked to the front door.

  “Which tells you that crime pays—at least for somebody,” Will said.

  “No, most of their money was inherited from his grandfather.
Not that Chase’s father doesn’t earn a lot of money. His mother runs a gallery selling fine art during the summer, but Chase says it’s not about money. She’s fulfilling herself.”

  Ivy and Will exchanged glances, and for a moment it felt like old times, when an unspoken thought passed between them: Poor Max, thwarted in his effort to drive Dhanya to the party, was on his way to heartbreak. He might have a huge house and a lot of “toys” but Ivy didn’t see how he, with his bargain-chain father could compete with this tasteful, justice-seeking, self-fulfilled family.

  Chase answered the door, then gestured and stepped aside, allowing them to appreciate the dark-paneled hall, the carved staircase with its mysterious alcove halfway up, and a gallery’s worth of art. Will, surrounded by painted canvases, could no longer act disdainful. When Ivy and Dhanya followed Chase to a porch off the back of the house, Will stayed behind to look at the art.

  Chase introduced Ivy and Dhanya to his friends, a dozen guys and girls from various states who had grown up skiing together at Jackson Hole. His friends didn’t appear too interested in talking to the newcomers, but that was natural, Ivy thought, for a group enjoying a reunion. They were dressed casually in designer labels—the kind about which Suzanne had educated Ivy.

  “Don’t sit down till you’ve snagged something to drink,” Chase said, leading Dhanya by the hand. He looked over his shoulder and beckoned to Ivy to follow them to a table of refreshments at the end of the porch. It looked like one of the college-faculty spreads put on by her mother and Andrew: chilled wine, imported beer, Perrier, fancy kabobs, and smaller hors d’oeuvres. The layout told Ivy that Chase’s parents had approved the alcohol.

  After Dhanya chose a Perrier, Chase steered her toward a guy and girl who were deep in conversation. Ivy stayed by the table. Will entered the room, looked around at the strangers, hesitating, then joined Ivy. “You know you’re at a classy party,” he observed, “when you need utensils to pick up the snacks.”