The Murmurings

by West, Carly Anne

  I look up into the tree. There’s Nell, hanging upside down from the lowest branch at least ten feet above me, her arm reaching to me.

  “Nell, what are you doing? Come down,” I call to her.

  But she only shakes her head, her smile downturned and mournful. Still, she reaches for me.

  I can hear Mom from somewhere on the other side of the fog.

  “But I just don’t understand. You think she had something to do with this?”

  “It’s possible. But it’s important you realize, Ms. David, how genetically linked this sort of condition is. Her sister, as you’re all too aware, suffered from an acute version of . . . ”

  The smooth voice that answers my mom fades from my ears, and I’m watching Nell’s hand again, her tan arm and slender fingers, with her fingernails filed. I used to love to paint her fingernails. They were the perfect canvas.

  “Miri, this might be the best place for her now. We can’t let the same thing happen to her as . . . ”

  Aunt Becca’s voice floats by. I watch Nell’s fingers as they reach for me. They seem to wave to me as the fog grows.

  “I promise you, we’ll take very good care of her. We’ve put in place precautionary measures since Nell was a patient. You have my personal guarantee she’ll be safe. I’ll just need you to sign some paperwork.”

  “Nell, stop them. We need to stop them. They can’t leave me here,” I try to tell my sister, but her fingers have stopped moving. On the tip of her middle finger, a single drop of cherry-red blood has formed. It falls to the ground amid the green Legos and flattened M&M’s and pine needles. I look up, and her face has gone slack.

  “Nell!”

  I wake with a gasp. My lungs feel like they’ve been deprived of air for hours. I try to sit up, to swipe the hair back from my forehead where it’s plastered with sweat. But I can’t move my hands. I can’t move any part of my body, for that matter. As my eyes regain their focus, I see black rubber and mesh restraints tying my limbs and chest to a gurney. The small room is dark. I can only make out the bed I’m in and a rolling stool with a small folding table, set with instruments—a stethoscope, a blood-pressure cuff, a syringe, a tourniquet.

  The scene from the hallway creeps back to mind, and my brain rewinds to the mirrored room. To Kenny. To what Dr. Keller told me right before my vision went to dark.

  You’re going to finish the job your sister started.

  So they can keep me here. Mom and Aunt Becca have given them what they need to do that.

  The thought of being kept here like this, of Evan trying to warn me, of my mom leaving me here just like she left Nell—I try to hold back tears, but they come in a rush. Soon I’m crying so hard that I’m afraid I might choke.

  “MOM!” I scream through the sobs. “Don’t leave! Don’t listen to him!”

  No one answers. I want to sit up, wipe my eyes, bite my nails, throw something, punch someone. But I can’t do anything except stare at the ceiling and cry and lie to myself that everything is going to be okay. But it’s far from okay. I know that.

  I’ve made a huge mistake. And there’s no one who can help me undo it.

  I’m sobbing so hard my throat is getting sore. And at first, I barely hear the voice that calls to me.

  “Hey. Hey! Nell’s sister. Hey!”

  Calling isn’t quite right. It’s more like hissing.

  “Stop crying and listen to me. Can you hear me? Say yes if you can.”

  I try to place the voice, but I can’t. Of course, I’m not sure how I could given all the whispering. All I know is it isn’t the Taker, and the voice isn’t in the room with me.

  “You’re not crying anymore. Does that mean you can hear me? Yes or no. Tell me now!”

  “Yes,” I hiccup. “Yes, okay? Yes.”

  “Good. Listen to me very carefully, Nell’s sister. The Doc’s going to come in any second. Whatever you do, don’t let him get to you. You hear me?”

  “Dr. Keller? What’s he going to do to me?” I pull against the restraints again. I try to jerk my hands from the wrist cuffs, but I only succeed in chaffing the skin underneath.

  “Nothing, you know, physical. But he’s going to try to get into your head. That’s what he does. Believe me, he’s good at it. Just don’t let him in. Got it?”

  “Wait, I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Yes, you do. Now quit talking before someone hears. Just remember what I told you, Nell’s sister.”

  “Wait! Who are you? Where are you? You’ve got to get me out of here!”

  But my only response is silence. I’m left alone for no more than ten seconds before a tiny tap sounds on the door. Dr. Keller ducks his head inside.

  “Hey there, sleepyhead,” he chides. “Mind some company?”

  He’s treating me like a child. As if a lollipop will bribe me to be a good girl.

  So I don’t give him the pleasure of a response. He doesn’t seem to expect one, though. Instead, he rolls the leather-padded stool to the edge of my bed and takes a seat, bending his athletic legs to ease himself down.

  “Well then, how are we feeling?”

  I stare at him in utter disbelief. Is this guy for real?

  “Now, I know the restraints may seem a little unnecessary, but they’re for your own protection, Sophie. I don’t know if you remember, but you were pretty out of control earlier.”

  “Oh, I remember,” I spit back. I’d hoped to maintain my cool, but he’s making it really hard.

  “I have no doubt.” He frowns. “In fact, I think you have a very good memory. I think you’ve been carrying a lot of memories around with you. I bet there are some you’d give anything to forget.”

  His voice is sincere, and for the first time since I’ve met him, Dr. Keller actually sounds like a decent human being. His face is creased, deep bends around his mouth and crinkles at the corners of his eyes. He looks uncomfortable there on his stool.

  Still, I wait for him to talk. I don’t trust where he’s going with this.

  “You were there that night. When your sister cut herself.”

  My stomach flinches at the memory of Nell, her wrist dripping with red, the flicker of something just out of sight in the shattered bathroom mirror.

  “You walked in on her, saw what she’d done. You’ve had to live with what you saw all this time. No one to talk to about it. Your mother, so unavailable. Your aunt preoccupied with her well-being. Who was left to care for Sophie?”

  A knot edges to the top of my throat, threatening to cut off my airway.

  “So many nights alone to think about what you saw. So afraid to tell anyone. And the nightmares. I’m certain they’ve been awful, haven’t they?”

  I nod before I realize what my head is doing, then scold myself mentally. The whispering voice I just heard. What did it say? He’s going to try to get into your head, and believe me, he’s good at it.

  Dr. Keller closes his eyes, and when he opens them, I see a sheen on his irises. Tears. Tears for me.

  “Well, that’s all going to get better in time. I promise. I’m going to help you, Sophie. I will, I swear it. You just let me help you, and I will make this pain stop for good.”

  I flinch when he reaches a hand to my wrist, just below the restraint. He squeezes it gently, the kind of gesture that makes me think of Mrs. Dodd’s kindness. I want to start weeping all over again. Or screaming. But before I can do either, Dr. Keller lifts himself from the stool, and he’s out the door, closing it behind him with a soft click.

  Maybe it’s the residual effects of the drugs, or the exhaustion, or the trauma, but I fall asleep quickly after that. My dreams stab at my brain, trying to puncture the bubble that’s begun to form over my mind. In those dreams, I see Evan’s strong hands, his jaw clamped in concern. Then I see the coal-black eyes of someone else who used to feel the gratitude of Dr. Keller’s empathy before fear and love drove him to hide in the high desert.

  17

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING,
THE NURSES run a series of tests. Tests on my eyes, my ears, my blood pressure and blood type, my glucose levels, and my level of comprehension. I’m brought from one tiny gray room to the next—each time with a needle in my arm, and an orderly carting a rolling IV behind me as a tube carries medicine to my vein. The needle wiggles at my elbow’s bend, and I get a little queasy whenever I become aware of it again. But they keep telling me I need to remain on a sedative so my nerves don’t affect the tests, and I have no choice but to believe them because everything they’re saying sounds so reasonable. They haven’t used restraints on me all morning, so I suppose the drugs are working. There’s a thickness spreading across my brain, and for so long, that’s all I’ve wanted. Just something to dull me, to make the distance between what I’m thinking and what I’m feeling grow so I can stop hurting. And while there’s something deep inside that tells me I should be feeling something different, I can’t seem to figure out what that feeling should be.

  All I’m certain of is the needle in my arm.

  “Have a seat right there, Ms. David, and we’ll be in the next room behind the glass. Just tell us what you see when we turn out the lights and you look up at that big wall with the projection screen. You see that right there?”

  It’s the Pigeon talking to me now, and she’s pointing one of her talonlike fingers at a broad white surface to my left.

  “Uh-huh,” I mumble. That seems to be the desired response for the orderlies. I haven’t seen Dr. Keller all day, and though a loud, muffled voice inside seems to protest, I can’t help but feel that it might not be so bad to see him again. Maybe I’d misjudged him. Maybe he was telling the truth. Maybe he really gets what I’m going through. Maybe he can help me get better.

  Get better? Or get what he wants?

  The muffled voice hurts my brain. Any thinking at all hurts my brain. So I keep uh-huhing and nodding the way I think they want me to.

  Only I can’t seem to shake the sound of hissing. It’s a vague memory that lingers like a tickle in my throat. It’s the sound of a girl’s voice, the words Nell’s sister. The insistent tone made me listen even though I didn’t want to. All I want to do now is swim in this numbness, but this persistent tickle keeps me from doing that.

  “We’re about to begin the evaluation, Ms. David. Please turn your head to the screen and simply watch. That’s all you have to do. Just watch. Don’t look away. Do you understand?”

  The Pigeon’s voice pipes through a speaker somewhere above me. I feel a little pull at the skin on my chest and back. I look down. At some point, little suction cup tabs have been stuck to me underneath my blue cotton shirt. My eyes drift down to my ankles. The white of my skin dangles below a slightly frayed hem of blue cotton pant legs. A tingle of memory crops up, and I’m momentarily distracted—agitated. Unhappy, though I can’t recall why. My eyes drift to the needle in the bend of my elbow.

  “Ms. David, do you understand?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Good. Now we’ll begin. Just look at the screen.”

  The room lights dim, and a flickering image pulls into focus on the screen. It’s a clearing in a meadow. It’s bright and sunny, and there are tall blades of green grass, sun-bleached in places where beams cut through the opening in the trees above. A little girl smiles up at the sun. It’s a lovely picture. The next image is a close-up of a rosebud, a drop of dew trickling from its outer petal. The next is a seal pup, white and impossibly fluffy, all black eyes and nose and crystalline whiskers, nuzzled against its mother. The next is a mother holding a wide-eyed baby fresh from a bath, swaddled in a downy towel, pressed tight against her breast.

  A flutter in my stomach makes the sensors on my chest and back tingle.

  The next image is a photo taken from behind, a silhouette of two girls, their hands clasped together, their little figures stepping in tandem along a tree-lined path with thick piles of orange and yellow autumn leaves piled around them.

  Another tingle from the sensors.

  “You’re doing great, Sophie. Just keep watching.”

  The next image is of a man smiling down at a child, his hand on her pigtailed head, her upturned nose scrunched in his direction. They seem to be sharing a quiet joke.

  The sensors tingle.

  The next image clicks to the screen. It’s dark, and it takes my eyes a moment to adjust to the picture after such a bright one. This appears to be a room. The only light comes from around the door, like it popped open to a bright hallway on its own. There’s nothing to the picture at all, but for some reason, I don’t like it.

  The sensor tingles on my chest, and as it does, a machine on the wall that is hooked up to the sensors—to me—beeps a single beep.

  “Watch the screen, Sophie. Don’t worry about anything else.”

  The next image clicks forward, and it’s a girl standing alone in the same meadow as the first picture, but this time it’s covered in shadow. The little girl’s face is obscured by her hair, and her shoulders are hunched toward her ears.

  Another tingle. Another beep.

  The next image flicks forward, and it feels like the pictures are playing faster than before. This image is grainy and speckled like an egg, which makes it hard to see. I squint to try to pull it into focus, and when I do, I can just make out a pair of eyes and a wide, oval-shaped mouth. It’s not moving, but something tells me it should be, though I don’t want it to.

  Another tingle, and this time, the monitor behind me beeps three times.

  The next image is a tree in a clearing. A tall pine tree disappearing into the clouds.

  More beeping from behind me.

  “Can I—I need to stop.”

  The next image is a hand with a ring. A tan hand with flat paddles for fingernails and a silver ring.

  More beeping.

  My palms are sweating. The tingling from the sensors on my chest and back is starting to make me nauseated. I cover my eyes. The needle in my arm tugs.

  “Sophie, we need you to keep watching the screen.”

  The next image is in shadows—oily hair covering a face, and long yellow teeth inside a black hole of a mouth.

  “No! Stop! Let me out! Let me out of here!”

  “Sophie, we’re not done with the—”

  “I said let me the fuck out of here!!”

  I tug at the sensors and they peel from my skin, leaving behind sticky residue. I turn from the screen and ball up on the gurney, eyeing the IV cart suspiciously. I want to bend my elbow, to wrap my arms over my body and create an exoskeleton.

  I hear a series of hushed voices at the doorway, then a click.

  “Doctor, she wouldn’t let us finish. She just—”

  Then there’s silence. After another second, the door sighs on its delay and clicks shut. Someone else is in the room with me. I can feel it.

  A hand runs gently over my hair, guiding it behind my ear to expose the side of my face that isn’t pressed into the cot. I squeeze my eyes shut. I want the numbness to come back.

  “There, there, Sophie. You did really well for your first day.”

  The voice is smooth like buttered maple syrup.

  I open my eyes to Dr. Keller, whose gray eyes stare down at me with concern.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell him without even thinking. Suddenly I’m sorry for so much. My stomach flops over when I say it, though, and an insistent voice yells at me, scolding me for something. But what?

  “I know you are. You did the best you could. I know you want to make us all proud.”

  I do?

  He crouches to meet me at eye level.

  “I know you want to make me proud.”

  I nod and blink. My eyes feel dry. My mouth feels dry. I’m starting to get a headache.

  “Don’t worry too much, now,” he says, squeezing my forearm tenderly. “In time, you’ll be able to show us exactly what we need to see. You do want to help us, don’t you?”

  I want to say yes, to be agreeable. At least I think I want that.
>
  He nods slowly, his mouth pinned in a soft frown. “You have a very special gift, Sophie. You can hear what it’s saying. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

  I nod. I can hear what it’s saying. Well, almost. It wants me to hear.

  “Your sister, she had the gift too. But then, I’m sure you knew that.”

  The tickle in my throat is gone now, and it’s been replaced by a lump I can’t swallow. My eyes tear up, spill over onto the tissue paper on the gurney beneath my cheek.

  “Oh, now, why the tears? Surely you two talked about it. Nell trusted you, I know that. She told me she trusted you. Unless . . . oh dear . . . ” Dr. Keller shakes his head slowly, the lines around his mouth deepening, his chin puckering.

  I’m soaking the paper under my face, but I can barely feel the tears falling. My whole face feels like it’s gone numb.

  “I didn’t want to believe her,” I whisper. My body shakes. I feel like my whole body is crying.

  “Of course you didn’t.” The doctor’s voice pours over me. His hand strokes my hair again. “Of course you didn’t.”

  I pinch my eyes shut, my sobs coming in waves, and finally my body stops shaking. Dr. Keller’s hand never leaves my head, never stops stroking my hair. It’s the only thing that seems to keep me connected to this room. And yet, something inside of me is screaming. Part of me wants to throw his hand off of me or take it in my own hand and break it into a thousand pieces. But why? He’s only comforting me. Isn’t that what I’ve been wanting for so long? To feel safe?

  Then I hear him stand. His shoes click then squeak on the linoleum as he walks across the room. A drawer opens and closes, and his shoes click then squeak toward me again. The bag on the cart beside me rustles. I feel the gentlest tug on the needle in my arm, and then my arm and shoulder and chest and the rest of my limbs go cold. My heart races with the sensation, and when I try to open my eyes again, I can’t.