Cries from the Lost Island

by Kathleen O'Neal Gear

  “She was here, Roberto. Just outside my front door.”

  Roberto gave me the most adult look I’ve ever seen on his face. “You didn’t tell your parents, right?”

  I shrugged helplessly. “I couldn’t help it! They were right there when I saw her walk up the path to the front door. I’m not sure what I said aloud, but they at least heard me shout her name.”

  Roberto leaned his chair back on two legs again and rocked it back and forth while he stared across the room to consider that fact. “Okay, I hear you. No wonder your mom thinks you’re delusional. This could be the luckiest break of your life, dude.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Oh, come on. If you play along and go see the shrink, you can make them give you anything you want.”

  “I don’t want anything. Except maybe a first-class ticket to—”

  “You’re not thinking right. Don’t you remember last fall when Dwight Hornsby ran through math class stark naked screaming his dead grandmother was loping after him on all fours? His parents bought him a freaking Porsche to soothe his nerves. You should start making out your Christmas list. How about a red Ducati?”

  “I don’t want a red Ducati.”

  Roberto looked more stunned by that than by my revelation that I’d seen Cleo standing just outside my front door. “Well, if it bothers your conscience, you can sign it over to me.” He paused, and then returned to the subject at hand. “So, what did Cleo look like? Was she a ghost, or—”

  “Just like she did that last day at Starbucks.” I wrapped my arms around myself and tried to force my muscles to stop shaking. The day she died an earthquake had been born inside me, and it wouldn’t stop.

  Roberto got to his feet, wiped his sweaty hands on his jeans, and sat on the bed beside me. “When you shouted her name, did she answer?”

  “No. But before I ran to the door, I was watching through the kitchen window. I saw her mouth the words don’t go.”

  “What’d she mean?”

  “How would I know?” I cried in frustration.

  Roberto extended his hands and made a calming motion. “Chill, bro. We just need to stay calm and figure this out. Maybe she didn’t want you to go see the shrink?”

  I dropped my head into my hands and massaged my throbbing temples. “Yeah. That must be what she meant.”

  “Sure. What else could it be?” He gave me a quizzical look, as though he knew there was something I wasn’t telling him.

  “I don’t know. God, I’m glad you came over today. I really needed to talk to somebody who can think straight.”

  “You may be the only person who’s ever concluded that after talking to me. So, what aren’t you telling—”

  From downstairs, my mother called, “Robert? Isn’t it time you headed home?”

  Roberto made a disgusted sound. “My half hour must be up. I should probably leave before she comes up to throw me out, like usual. You going to be okay?”

  “I’m a little better now.” Actually, I felt a ray of hope for the first time in days. “Thanks. I mean it. You’re a good friend. My . . . my best friend.” I would have never said that if Cleo was still alive, and Roberto knew it.

  The sound of my mother’s shoes pounded the stairs.

  Roberto got to his feet and straightened his bad-ass-biker jacket as he reached down for his backpack. “Yeah, well, don’t start thinking you can bombard me with stories of Hector or Plato or other boring shit like you used to do Cleo. I still have my pride.”

  Tears filled my eyes, but I actually smiled. “I won’t.”

  I tucked the medallion beneath my blanket and watched him walk across the room.

  Roberto stood in front of my door, listening to my mother’s steps, then jerked open the door at the exactly the instant Mom was about to knock.

  “Jesus, Robert, you scared me!” She threw a hand up to her heart.

  “Oh, hey, Mrs. Stevens. Sorry about that. Take care.”

  Roberto shouldered past Mom and trotted down the stairs. I heard the front door open and close. If I knew Roberto, right now he was searching for Cleo’s tracks in the snow.

  Mom stood in my doorway looking in at me through her reading glasses. Suspiciously, she asked, “What did you two talk about?”

  There was an unpleasant accusation hidden in her voice, but I wasn’t sure what I was being accused of, so I said, “Oh, nothing. His mom has been sending naked pictures of herself to fifteen-year-olds. Close my door, please?”

  Mom got a slightly horrified look on her face. Apparently, she wasn’t sure I was joking. When she opened her mouth to ask a question, I said:

  “I’m suffering from DID, Mom. I need to sleep.”

  “Right. Okay.” She pulled my door closed.

  Flopping onto my back, I stared at the ceiling.

  It had just occurred to me for the first time that I would never again lie on my bedroom floor beside Cleo, reading Plato and Plutarch aloud, laughing, mesmerized by her knowledge and the sheer wonder of her presence. I felt empty. Just so empty, as though losing her had torn my soul loose and cast it out into the storm. Deep aching cold settled in my bones.

  Reaching for the medallion, I clutched it against my heart and rolled up in my bedspread to try and sleep. If I could just sleep long enough, maybe I’d wake to discover this was all a bad dream. Maybe she’d still be alive, smiling at me with love in her eyes.

  * * *

  • • •

  “The blood! The blood!”

  I sat bolt upright in bed screaming, holding my shaking fists out in front of me. It was evening. Stars glittered outside my window. The air in my bedroom smelled of pines and wet earth.

  “Hal!” My father cried, and I heard his feet climbing the stairs. “Hal, I’m coming!”

  He threw open my door and lurched toward my bedside. “What happened? You all right?”

  “Sorry. I’m sorry, Dad.”

  He sat down on the bed and gathered me in his arms, rocking me like a child. “Don’t be sorry. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  I sagged against him. “Is she really dead? Is she dead, Dad? Did I just dream that?”

  “She’s dead, Hal. But you’re all right. No one’s going to hurt you, not while I’m alive. You hear me?”

  Cleo’s dead. . . .

  He kept rocking me in his arms while I cried.

  CHAPTER TEN

  At 2:00 the next afternoon, I was coming back from the library, slogging through the snowdrifts, when I saw the Starbucks ahead. My steps faltered. I really needed to warm up, but Starbucks had been “our” place. Girding myself, I tried not to look as I passed the bench where I’d always sat talking and smiling with Cleo. Shoving open the door, I hurried inside.

  The place was empty except for the gray-haired woman behind the counter. I’d never seen her here before, but in small mountain towns businesses went through employees fast.

  “I’ll have a coffee. Grande, please,” I said as I dug in my pocket for money.

  “Coming right up.”

  While I waited, I wandered around the store, picking up logo cups, examining them, putting them down, smelling the bags of coffee and tea in the displays. For some reason, the Darjeeling smelled especially good.

  “Here you go,” she said at last and set my cup on the counter.

  I took my coffee over to one of the tables on the opposite side of the store where I could stare out the window at the quiet street. The mountains beyond the glass gleamed with fresh snow. They looked pretty, though I felt sorry for the trees. Because of the weight of the snow, the boughs sagged mournfully. I suspected there would be a wealth of broken limbs when the snow disappeared.

  For a while, I just held my hot cup in both hands. The warmth felt good on my icy fingers.

  Two of the girls in my history class walked by
outside. Bundled in down coats and mufflers, they briefly stopped to stare in at me, as though surprised to see me having a coffee by myself. Neither waved. They hated me. The one dressed in the red coat was Stef Brown. She was best known around school for having two rows of needle-sharp teeth in her jaw. I’d asked Stef out on a date once when I was thirteen. She’d humiliated me in front of everybody by laughing in my face. The girls whispered furiously to each other for a few seconds, then continued on their way.

  I felt awkward. Having a coffee alone was a bad experience. Every time I’d ever been here, I’d been with a friend. Usually Cleo. What wonderful times those had been. If only I’d cherished them more, but I never thought they’d end. Closing my eyes, I tried to live in those moments, tried really hard, but grief was a strange thing. I could remember the happiness of being with Cleo, but not actually feel it. It was as though an ocean of emptiness had dragged me far out to sea, and I couldn’t find my way back to shore.

  And I wondered if Marcus Antonius had felt this way? He must have known that by losing the Battle of Actium, he’d signed Cleopatra’s death warrant. Did her impending death become his life? Just as Cleo’s death had become mine?

  Pulling the lid off my coffee, I took a sip. It was just barely cool enough to drink, so I nursed the cup, taking small sips, enjoying the flavor and the warmth while I thought about history and demons. Everyone kept telling me that the thing I’d seen in the forest was a figment of my imagination. Was it? Had I been so traumatized by her last words, by watching her die, that my mind had invented the “demon”? After all, though the moment had seemed endless, I’d only seen it for a second. Maybe less than that. Even in my memory the experience had a sparkling dreamlike quality.

  Brought on by the intense role-playing you and Cleo used to do.

  “No,” I whispered aloud to myself and glanced around to make sure the barista hadn’t heard me. “I saw it. I saw it.”

  When I started fiddling with my empty cup, using it to trace the circles of old coffee rings on the dirty table, I figured it was time to leave.

  Halfway across the floor, the strangest feeling hit me. As though my body knew something my brain refused to believe, every nerve ending suddenly tingled to life with fiery intensity. My brain said panic attack. My body said run!

  “Stop this!” I hissed to myself, barely audible. “Look around. There’s nothing to be afraid of in Starbucks.”

  The woman behind the counter called, “Did you say something to me?”

  Turning, I smiled. “Just trying to remember what I was supposed to do this afternoon. You know how sometimes just asking yourself about it jogs your memory?”

  “Oh, yeah, sweetie. I do that all the time.” She smiled back and returned to wiping off the counter.

  My heart rate had slowed a bit, enough that I could get a full breath into my lungs, so I continued to the door and pushed it open. Cold air hit me in the face as I stepped outside and headed home.

  I hadn’t taken four steps before I froze.

  Sitting on the bench with her back to me was a girl with shoulder-length black hair. A girl I would have known anywhere: asleep, dead, walking the lonely road to heaven.

  Overwhelming relief rushed through my veins, and I longed to run to her, to throw my arms around her, but to do so would be to leap over the fragile cliff of sanity and plunge into the depths of madness. She’s not there. She couldn’t be. I’d seen her die. I’d gone to her funeral.

  The girl rose to her feet, and walked away, heading west down the snowy street.

  I couldn’t stop myself, I shouted, “Cleo?”

  At the sound of my voice, she broke into a desperate run, slogging through the drifts. I could hear her panting as though terrified. As she swerved to run around the street corner, she cast a glance over her shoulder. I couldn’t see her face, but it was as though she saw something—something I did not see—following her. Then she vanished around the corner.

  Moments later, two rifle shots rang out.

  Then.

  Screams.

  Another shot.

  I spontaneously cried out and almost started to run after her.

  But I knew . . . I knew . . .

  Dear God, I’m reliving the day of her death when I’m awake.

  As of this instant, the imagination game had been elevated to a whole new level.

  Before my knees gave out, I walked to the bench where she’d been sitting and eased down to try and pull myself together. I really was falling apart. No doubt about it. My parents were right. Maybe I should be institutionalized for my own good.

  “What’s happening to me?” I asked through gritted teeth. “I have to figure this out. If I can’t control . . .”

  The realization seeped in slowly, shutting down my voice.

  The bench was still warm.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A cry formed behind my lips, and without my own volition, my head turned to stare at the street corner where she’d vanished.

  Striding around that corner, as though without a care in the world, was Dr. Moriarity. He had the hood of his navy-blue coat pulled up, but I could see his distinctive black-rimmed glasses and graying brown beard.

  He’d made the turn and started up the walk to go into the Starbucks before he noticed me and did a double take. My face must have been ashen or something, because he quickly detoured and walked to the bench to sit beside me. “Are you okay, Hal? You don’t look well.”

  “Fine. You?”

  “Still struggling, as I’m sure you are.”

  We sat in silence, each staring out at the snowy town. The historic buildings struck me as oddly alien, as though I was seeing them through someone else’s eyes.

  Trying to strike up a conversation, he said, “You know I’m meeting with your parents and the police this afternoon. Is there anything you want me to tell them?”

  My head slowly turned. “Meeting? About what?”

  Moriarity blanched, as though he suddenly realized that it was supposed to be a secret meeting. “I should let your parents tell you, but . . . I really want you to think about going to Egypt with me. When I spoke with your mother yesterday, she said you were hesitating. May I ask why? I know you and Cleo always talked about going to Egypt together.”

  My nerves were still jangling. I whispered, “What are you talking about?”

  “Oh. My God,” he said as though shocked. “Sorry. I didn’t know they hadn’t spoken to you about it. That’s unfortunate.”

  “You want me to go to Egypt with you?”

  “Well, yes. I have a dig starting there in a couple of weeks, and I thought, you know, if you spent some time in the land she loved, it might help you get over—”

  “I’m not going to get over it! Not any time soon. It doesn’t matter whether I go to Egypt on your dig or not, I’m still going to be sad and lonely for a long, long time.”

  “Well . . . sure,” he said sympathetically. “We all know that. You’re human just like everybody else. The horror of what happened—”

  “Is tearing me apart, okay? Can you leave it at that?” I was shouting and didn’t realize it until my voice echoed from the buildings across the street. I glanced around, expecting to see Cleo appear at any moment and give me that sad heartbreaking look.

  Dr. Moriarity squinted at the rivers of melted snow running down the gutter. After a few moments, he shoved his hood back and used a hand to ruffle up his hair. “Hal, let me explain why I think it’s important that you come to Egypt with me. I know you have the medallion—no, don’t try to deny it—but I also suspect that you don’t know why it’s important.”

  Only my eyes seemed capable of moving. They slid to the side to look at him. If I asked what it was for, it would verify that I had the medallion. If I did not ask, I’d explode.

  Moriarity continued, “Did Cleo explain that her fat
her had found it in my excavation along the Great Horus Road?”

  Mildly, I asked, “What’s the Great Horus Road?”

  “An old military road. I know it was found there, but I don’t know exactly where. Cleo’s father never told me. However, I know a man who was excavating with him at the time, so I’m fairly sure I can find out. The problem is that Samael Saqqara is sort of a demented hermit.”

  Samael . . . secret bargain . . . the medallion for the dagger.

  “Why didn’t Cleo’s father tell you where he’d found it? What was he afraid of?”

  Moriarity’s eyes glinted just for an instant, before the professional mask came back to his face. “I suspect he found more than the medallion, and didn’t want me to know about it, because he feared I’d take some action.”

  I paused. “What does that have to do with me?”

  “Hal, I want to be your friend. You and I have the same passion for ancient history. We should be friends.” He gave me one of those have-to-humor-the-psychotic-kid looks, which I found totally insulting. “Would that be all right?”

  “Where’s your dig in Egypt?”

  Moriarity frowned, probably because I hadn’t answered his question. “A site called Pelusium. That’s why I pleaded with Cleo to give me the medallion, so I could take it back and try to reconstruct exactly where her father had found it. You see, Hal, I’m fairly sure he stole it from a grave.”

  “Whose grave?”

  He looked like he didn’t want to tell me, but finally said, “All right. Here’s the story in a nutshell: No one knows where Cleopatra or Marc Antony are buried. Local legend says it was either at Per Usiri or Per Amun. Today, Per Amun is the archaeological site called Pelusium. Finding their grave would be the archaeological discovery of the century. Do you realize that? The archaeologist who found it would become a legend.”