The Shadow Writer

by Maxwell, Eliza

  Graye stares at Laura’s back as she climbs the wooden steps from the beach to her house. Her posture is straight, shoulders squared. A warrior into battle, and Graye is nothing. A page boy left holding her horse.

  Her skin is tight, her tongue caught between her teeth, fitting into a groove left by a long-ago scar. She tastes the dark copper-penny tang of blood.

  The sound of Laura closing the door behind her registers, and Graye is left mute in the dark. Alone, so she believes. Again.

  She twists, turning away. Laura West is an iceberg that has slowly, silently, ripped a gash along Graye’s side, then left her here to sink into the frigid waves with no one to mourn her passing.

  All this time, Graye believed Nick was the biggest threat, but with Laura’s words thoughts of Nick fade to useless murmurs in the distance.

  Graye stumbles. Not toward the guesthouse, but away, back to the beach. Away from the broken promise of Laura and away from her own ridiculous dreams.

  One foot moves in front of the other until she’s at the edge of the earth. Salt water licks at her ankles. Waves rush in her ears.

  She stares, eyes wide, at the stars winking, light traveling from years in the past only to mock her on arrival.

  34

  In sleep the cinder girl dreams, but dreams can’t shield her from the whispers.

  “Wake up, little sister,” they say with a tickle in her ear that becomes a tap, then turns to a scratch. “Wake up now.”

  The cinder girl bolts upright in her bed, her hand batting at her ear and her heart beating fast.

  A spider, soft and black with eight long, prickly legs and as many eyes, scuttles down her body. But the spider’s not afraid, for it stops and turns to stare in her direction. Waiting.

  The cinder girl’s breath is short and fast, and she scrambles backward, moving faster than the spider bothered to go.

  No one speaks, but the spider’s pincers widen slowly, then snap back together fast.

  Though she’s never seen this creature, as big as the palm of her hand, the cinder girl somehow knows without question—her sister has called.

  Nearly two full cycles of the moon have passed since her golden sister became a golden prisoner, locked away in the tower keep. Mother delivers her meals and guards the key.

  The cinder girl does not wish to go, as memories of the shadows swirling around her are fresh and terrible, but she can’t help a leap of wonder that she’s been sought out.

  Why would her sister want her?

  The spider moves languidly to the icy stone floor, and the cinder girl tosses the bedcovers back. The spider waits, and she doesn’t hesitate. She’s used to the cold.

  Out the door and down the hall, past the great room and Mother’s chambers, the spider scuttles and the cinder girl follows behind.

  Into the tower and up the long and winding stairs they climb, her foggy breath rising into the night the only sign of their passing.

  Up and up they climb.

  Near the top of the stairs, the cinder girl stops. Chanting pours from her sister’s prison cell, low and insistent like it was before.

  The spider continues farther than the cinder girl can go, disappearing beneath a small crack below the door.

  The cinder girl is alone.

  Except for her sister.

  “It is time for you to do something for me, cinder sister,” the voice says from behind the barred door.

  Sister does not sound weakened from weeks under lock and key. Her voice is rich and persuasive, as it always was. Perhaps more.

  “Anything, Sister.”

  “There are things I need. You will get them for me.”

  The shadows swirl again, but this time the cinder girl is not afraid. Her golden sister’s voice whispers in her ear once more, telling her exactly what she requires.

  GRAYE

  The party is an unexpected complication. Normally, Graye would have heard them laughing, or seen them building their campfire on the wet sand long before anyone got close enough to interact. But she’s lost in her head, suffocating beneath her wasted hopes, and they’re upon her before she can think to retreat.

  “Is there someone over there, sitting by the water?” she hears a woman’s voice ask.

  “Don’t know, maybe.”

  It’s a couple, broken off from the group for a stroll down the deserted beach. Deserted, save for Graye.

  “Hello?”

  She doesn’t answer. She barely registers the darkened figures moving toward her. Only when they’re close enough to touch does she slowly turn her head and stare up at them.

  Graye has no idea how she looks, but she knows how she feels, and that must show in her face because it triggers a response.

  “Hey.” The woman kneels at Graye’s side. Her voice is kind. Soothing. She’s speaking as a mother might to a lost child found wandering alone.

  “Are you okay?” she asks. Her concern is real. Graye struggles to find a way out of her own head to give an answer.

  No, she thinks.

  “Yeah,” she whispers.

  “Are you by yourself?” the man asks. He’s standing by their side, looking around to see if anyone else is with her.

  “Yes,” Graye says. “But I live just over there.” She gestures with her hand somewhere in the direction of her guesthouse but doesn’t turn around.

  “I know you,” he says, snapping his fingers and pointing at her. He’s too happy, too laid-back, and Graye recognizes the sweet, skunky smell wafting off him.

  “You’re with that book lady,” he says. “The one with the asshole husband. I waited tables at that fancy dinner tonight. Man, that was wild.” He’s smiling and nodding before it occurs to him to ask, “Is she okay?”

  Graye nods slowly. “She’s fine.”

  Better than me.

  “We’re just hanging out,” the girl says. “Our friend Tom’s got a guitar and we’ve got drinks. Why don’t you join us?”

  Graye shakes her head. “No, I don’t want to intrude.”

  “No way, the more the better,” the man says, happy again now that he’s forgotten about the book lady’s asshole husband.

  Near the campfire in the distance, the group is growing larger and Graye can hear laughter and a strum of strings. She glances out at the waves and mulls the idea of not being alone, just for a little while.

  Just this once.

  “Okay,” she concedes. “If you’re sure.”

  “Come on then.” The woman stands and holds her hand out for Graye to grab hold of, just as Graye did not so long ago for Laura. Graye hesitates only a moment before reaching out to grasp the girl’s warm, welcoming palm.

  Just for a little while.

  Jesse and Karina, the couple are called. They’re engaged but haven’t set a date. He’s an architecture student. She’s pre-med. They’re staying with friends for the summer, picking up odd jobs for spending money and squeezing the last drops out of their final days on the island before real life intrudes.

  What will it hurt to pass an hour, that maybe stretches into two, with people she’s never met? There’s nothing to stop her. Nothing to stop her accepting when she’s offered a bottle of beer. No one to contradict her for weaving a backstory for herself, fabricated from the sea air, when they ask.

  The lies trip off her tongue. No one claims they don’t trust her. They don’t stare, squinty-eyed, like she’s not being straight with them.

  So she smiles and listens to Tom, who plays guitar better than he sings.

  When the “cigarette” is passed around the first time, she declines and passes it along, and no one cares.

  And this little island of light on an island of darkness becomes an oasis. Graye is someone new in the warm glow of the embers, with the laughter of strangers caressing her. Not Gracie Thacker. Not even Graye Templeton, heavy with disappointment, but someone wholly fresh, her possibilities endless and intriguing.

  She smiles and accepts the offer when it comes her way again, th
ough the smoke squeezes her lungs, and she coughs once, then again.

  The night grows fuzzy and soft, and Laura’s earlier words lose their edge, no longer razors cutting her from the inside.

  She makes new friends.

  Time abandons her and Graye is content just to be, here on this bit of sand with the fire burning low and the waves muffling the world.

  Faces lose their distinction and Graye’s thoughts drift, but she knows she’ll never forget this night. Karina and her kindness. Jesse’s gentle presence at his fiancée’s side, like a happy Labrador.

  The faces in the dark, at the far side of the circle, aren’t staring, examining every move she makes and every lie she tells, no matter what her imagination is whispering to her. She’s a stranger here, to herself and to everyone else.

  The moon has moved lower in the sky by the time worry starts to creep in. Her words won’t come. Not the ones she wants. Sentences fall from her mouth in jumbled nonsense, nothing like what she wants to say.

  The others are laughing and she tries to laugh as well, but her attempt is weak. Her smile falters.

  No matter who she is, no matter who she’s ever been, words are the thing she can count on.

  She takes a deep breath and pictures them in her head. Slowly, she arranges them in the order they should be and carefully speaks them aloud. The effort it takes is unsettling and her high begins to fade.

  Graye stands, then sways on her feet.

  “I should go home,” she says, then pulls in a deep breath of relief and smiles wide. There. Her words are still there. She just needs to sleep. Sleep and everything will be fine.

  “Oh, don’t go,” Karina says and reaches up to squeeze her hand.

  She kneels to hug the woman who gave her this gift when she needed it most.

  “Thank you,” Graye whispers in her ear.

  “Anytime,” Karina says. “Do you want Jesse to walk you home?”

  “No.”

  Jesse is happily stretched out on the sand debating with Tom whether Bob Dylan should have been given a Nobel Prize. “Man, nobody can say he’s not a poet.”

  She shakes her head. “I’m just up the beach. I’ll be fine.”

  She’s lost her fear of who might wait on her, unseen in the night.

  “Okay, then. It was nice to meet you, Graye.”

  And perhaps her path back home is a winding one, but Graye is too numb to be unhappy.

  The steps from the beach to the West home are harder to navigate than she remembers, and she concentrates on her footing, each step taking her away from the sounds of the sea and closer to her bed.

  Light still burns from the windows, but Graye can’t bring herself to get worked up over how Laura is faring as she packs up one half of her life, to be cut out and left for dead the next day.

  Laura and her problems loom less large in her mind now.

  Graye veers left, heading for the guesthouse. Maybe it’s time to exorcise herself from Laura’s life as well. Things haven’t gone as planned here. She needs to consider whether anything can be salvaged, or if it’s time to move on.

  But not tonight. She’s done thinking tonight.

  From several yards, her door swims into focus. Almost there. Only a few more steps.

  Muffled, as if from a great distance, the sound of shouting reaches her ears, causing a hitch in her step.

  Graye stops and tilts her head.

  A crash follows.

  Laura and David, at it again. Apparently, Laura’s assumption that her husband would be passed out was wishful thinking.

  She stands beneath the carport, her gaze torn between the Wests’ kitchen door and her guesthouse. Her bed is calling to her.

  She’s in no condition to help anyone. And Laura’s made it clear she can take care of herself.

  The sound Laura’s skull made when it connected with the hardwood floor of the ballroom reverberates in her mind, and Graye realizes she’s taken two steps toward their door.

  She’s reaching out a hand when another memory intrudes.

  “I just didn’t trust her, I guess. The narrator . . . Something was off, you know?”

  Her hand falters.

  Whatever is going on inside the West home, it isn’t her problem. It isn’t her fault either, and she can do nothing to fix it.

  Besides, Laura knows where to find her if she needs her. With determined steps, Graye turns back to her own door.

  She won’t give in to guilt. A friend, a good friend, wouldn’t turn their back, but her friendship with Laura has soured. How much more can she afford to invest in such a one-sided relationship? She’d give anything to make it not so, but she can’t do that. It wasn’t her choice.

  Graye opens her door. She gives one last look at the West home, where the shouting continues.

  Slowly, Graye closes the door, shutting out the sounds.

  35

  GRAYE

  “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a hundred times. If I want to hear your voice, I’ll tell you what to say!”

  The ripping sound of silver-edged tape being pulled from the roll fills her head, and she scrambles backward on her heels and bottom.

  “No, Mother. I’ll be quiet, I will.”

  The hard grip of fingers that clamp in her hair, forcing her head to turn, isn’t as bad as the tight, sticky seal the duct tape makes when it’s slapped over her mouth.

  Graye wakes with her lips clamped over her teeth, a stifled scream caught behind them.

  Her eyes wide but bleary, she shakes her head, trying to break free from the grip of memory.

  “It was so long ago. So long ago,” she tells herself. “I’m not that little girl.”

  She has to say it a few more times before her breathing begins to slow. Once it does, there will be no more sleep for her, regardless of the early hour.

  Dawn isn’t quite ready to break over the horizon when Graye peeks out of the blinds, but the darkness is fading a little at a time.

  She reaches for her phone, but it isn’t on the table where she normally places it.

  Graye’s head is already pounding, but when she bends at the waist to check if her phone has fallen beneath the bed, blood rushes to her brain and she squeezes her eyes against the onslaught.

  Groaning, she takes a seat on the floor and drops her aching head into her hands.

  What was she thinking, getting wasted on the beach with a group of strangers?

  Whatever had been going through her head, she’s paying the price for it today.

  Slowly, Graye drags herself from the floor and heads toward the small bathroom. Dizzy, and possibly still a little drunk, she searches blindly for a bottle of ibuprofen and pulls some water from the tap into the palm of her hand to swallow two of them down.

  She splashes cold water on her face and avoids examining her reflection in the mirror.

  Today is going to be one of the hardest days of her life.

  Somewhere between Laura’s hurtful words the night before and falling into her bed after a night of indulgence, Graye has come to a decision.

  Things can’t go on like this.

  Laura won’t be the one who helps her voice be heard.

  If Graye has any doubts, she needs only to recall Laura’s easy dismissal of her work. The hours since haven’t lessened the blow. If anything, her sense of abandonment and betrayal has deepened into a chasm that can’t be bridged.

  Graye will tell Laura the truth and deal with the consequences.

  After that, it will be time to move on.

  It will mean a change of plans, but Graye will just have to adapt. She’s no stranger to disappointment. With enough time and distance, she’ll figure it out. She’ll make new plans.

  It’s all she knows.

  With the decision fresh in her mind, Graye takes Laura’s own words to heart.

  I have to face this now, head-on, before I lose my nerve.

  She brushes the grit from her teeth and pulls her hair into a messy ponytail.
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  Laura first. Everything else will fall into place after.

  Graye still can’t find her phone, so there’s no clock to chide her for the ungodly hour. She pulls on a fresh pair of jeans and a T-shirt, then collects what she’ll need before walking out into the gray breaking dawn.

  From the outside, the carriage house is quiet. No shouting spills into the dawn, as it did the previous night. The entire island is quiet, in fact, save for a few gulls near the beach.

  Laura is probably sleeping at this hour, but Graye doesn’t let that stop her. She knows where her bedroom is.

  Considering the state of things between the couple, David is no doubt passed out on the couch in his office again.

  No second thoughts trouble her as she opens the unlocked door to the West kitchen and lets herself in. Graye carries a sadness inside of her, but it’s a resigned sadness.

  Laura isn’t the first friend who’s let her down.

  A clock ticking somewhere in the depths of the house is the only sound that reaches her.

  How vulnerable we are in sleep.

  Anyone could walk in off the street.

  This island, it casts a spell. It’s an existence that hinges on the goodwill of the elements. Time may pass. Years turn into decades, and the deadliest storms veer right or left, allowing the decades to stack upon one another. But eventually, as though it were all castles built of sand, another storm will come and wipe everything away. It’s only a matter of time.

  And still, people build their castles taller, more ornate, thumbing their noses at Mother Nature. They’ll lose in the end, but the defiance makes them careless. Distracted.

  Not all storms come from the sky. Even at the edge of the world, the heart has an infinite capacity for darkness.

  Laura should really lock her doors.

  Graye releases the handle carefully behind her. She doesn’t want to startle anyone.

  On soft feet she moves through the kitchen. The light is slowly gaining a foothold outside the windows, and the dim glow that filters through reveals nothing out of place. A dishtowel is folded along the edge of the sink. A drip builds at the faucet, growing fat before dropping into the basin.

  At the entry to the living room, Graye pauses, one hand on the doorjamb. Unconsciously, her fingers tighten, gripping the wall for support. Only her eyes move as she scans the room in front of her, struggling to make sense of what she’s seeing.