Cold Memory

by Leslie A. Kelly

  She’d listened. That was really all he’d ever wanted. Someone to listen.

  He’d been the grandfather she’d always wanted. She’d been the grandchild he’d never had. But when interviewed by the local cop, she’d merely said they were friends and she was worried. Oh…and that she’d gone inside.

  “So when did you start bending the truth in your statement?”

  That wasn’t hard to remember. “When I got to the part about the blood.”

  Val’s face paled. He didn’t like blood. That made his career choice a pretty funny one, considering he risked drawing her blood every time they took the stage.

  Val asked, “Was there a lot?”

  “No, not really,” she said. “But enough to catch my eye. Thank God.”

  It still gave her a chill to think about that moment this morning, when, arriving at Jersey’s place, she’d looked down at the bottom step and seen one small, red drop of fluid lying starkly against the white-painted wood.

  Blood. She’d recognized it instantly.

  That recognition had been enough to freeze her in her tracks. She’d already been worried about Jersey, of course. That tiny droplet sent her worry right to the DEFCON one level of terror.

  She’d been trying to keep the images at bay, both the real ones and the ones from her vision. They’d begun to swirl around in her mind, blending, mixing together. That always happened after her visions, but especially when she deliberately set out to change fate, change the future. That’s what she’d done this morning. She’d changed her own future by not going into that trailer. The future didn’t like that. So it tormented her by making her feel like she was going crazy—remembering two different versions of the same event.

  Like this morning’s.

  “Jersey? Are you there?” she’d called right before she saw that drop of red, sticky fluid.

  After she had seen it, the drop of blood was all she could focus on.

  Its meaning hit her immediately. Blood, plus Barry’s murder, plus Jersey’s unusual absence this morning…they added up to something being very, very wrong.

  She considered running away screaming. She considered bursting into the trailer to see if she could help Jersey. She knew one reaction was cowardly, the other reckless.

  Then, in an instant, she thought of another way she could find out exactly what was going on, see if Jersey was inside that trailer, and if there was anything she could do for him.

  She could go forward. Only ninety seconds, that was all. Just like always. Ninety seconds into a future when she walked into that place and looked around for the missing man.

  Yes. That she could do for her friend. She only had to convince herself that she was going to, that walking up to that door and opening it was her future.

  Then she could see into it.

  “I am going in to check on Jersey,” she promised herself. She was also trying to convince fate, or Father Time, or the gods of mystery and the inexplicable who had given her this strange power. However this whole thing worked, somebody had to really believe it if she wanted to see a particular version of her future. “That’s what I’m going to do next. I’ll walk up those stairs, test that knob, and if it’s unlocked, I’ll push the door open.”

  She didn’t start feeling that strange pressure building in her chest, and figured her own terror wasn’t making her supposed future plans sound very convincing to…whomever.

  “I’m walking up those steps and coming in. That is absolutely what I am going to do.”

  A slight tingle. Her heart trembled in her chest, and her tummy churned and a warmth spread from one to the other.

  She waited, closing her eyes, scrunching her brow, concentrating on moving forward. Not physically, oh no. She couldn’t time travel, couldn’t move her body outside of the here and now.

  Only her mind could go. Her mind, her vision, her senses. They could travel a minute and a half into the unknown, allowing her to see exactly what was going to happen if she remained on her current path, and then she’d return to the exact instant she’d mentally left.

  The churning, the tingling, the spinning heightened, but as she spied that drop of blood again, all started to sink. It wasn’t happening. Her fear was taking over.

  She thought of the nice old man—maybe he’d cut himself on the way home last night, maybe he’d had a heart attack in bed. The door was closed, as were the windows. There was no sign of forced entry. He could be dying right this minute, and every second she delayed could push him that much further from survival.

  Penny screwed up every ounce of her will and determination, finally making herself believe it when she said, “Okay, I mean it. I am coming in right now!”

  And suddenly she was travelling.

  She saw herself moving in that possible future. Heard her footfalls on the plank steps, felt the splintery, dry wood of the handrail against her palm. She watched as her shoe avoided the drop of blood, tiptoeing around what might have been a footprint. Her fingers brushed against the coolness of the metal doorknob, and the weight of the door resisting slightly as she pushed it open. Stepping inside, she blinked to peer through the darkness—the curtains were closed, no lights on.

  Sweetie wasn’t in her cage. Nor did she come swooping around to see who had entered.

  Strange. Very strange.

  She stepped all the way into the living room, studying shadowy corners, noting that everything appeared to be in its place. Chair upright, newspaper on the coffee table, lap blanket neatly folded over the back of the couch, Jersey’s jacket lying there, too.

  All was well so far. Except for Sweetie’s absence, and that eerie, disturbing quiet.

  “Jersey? You here?”

  Nothing.

  “Sweetie?” She whistled a little. “What’s going on, guys? Jersey, did you oversleep?”

  The quiet was strange and heavy, that mysterious silence that reminded her of being in a great lake of black water, where soundlessness had weight and it pressed in on her from all directions. It was ominous. Malevolent.

  She headed toward the hallway, swallowing hard to both steel her nerves, and to calm them. She’d never been anywhere other than in Jersey’s living room, but the manufactured home was like a lot of others here. The front door opened into a family room. Through it, to the right, was the small kitchen. She remembered how she’d complimented Jersey on the pretty wallpaper in there, not surprised he’d chosen a vividly colored print with tropical birds.

  To the left from the main room was a dark hallway. Four paces down would be the entrance to the bathroom. Three beyond that, the bedroom.

  She didn’t want to go down there. Not one cell in her body wanted to walk those four paces, and then those three triply-damned more.

  But she did it. Four steps. A glance into the bathroom. “Please, oh, please no,” she groaned, seeing splashes of reddish-pink on the counter, in the sink, and on the mirror.

  Someone had carelessly washed-off blood in that basin. Her old friend’s blood.

  “Jersey, I’m so sorry,” she whispered, knowing she had to walk those additional three steps, certain it was already far too late to do anything to help.

  She kept walking and entered the bedroom.

  She saw a shabby carpet, a dinged-up dresser, clothes on the floor, a shiny black button near the foot of the nightstand.

  She saw a pair of boot-clad feet dangling off the bed.

  She saw a man’s splayed legs, wearing worn brown work pants.

  She saw splashes of blood all over the bedspread. So much blood.

  She saw plaid-covered arms stretched out like Christ on the cross.

  She saw something clutched in one age-spotted hand—a piece of wrinkled paper

  She saw a slit throat, gaping open, drenched in blood.

  She saw something shoved in that gaping hole—something with feathers.

  Penny screamed, a wail of pain and revulsion that drew up from deep inside her middle and poured from her throat like the gush
of water through a fire hose. Every bit of her felt pressured to fly apart into a million pieces, to express the terror, rage and grief with an explosion of all that she was and all that she ever would be.

  But because there was an angel in heaven who must be watching over her, the ninety seconds was up.

  “Ahh!” her scream continued, even as she felt her consciousness being jerked out of the future, back into her own body, into the very next second of her lifetime after she’d left.

  She clamped her mouth closed, cutting off the shriek mid-breath, making herself come back to awareness of where—and when—she was. It always took a moment or two, the surreal feeling of having been out of her own body hard to recover from.

  The thought of Jersey lying beyond the door in front of which she stood was enough to snap her back to reality immediately. Jersey, her friend, had been slaughtered. If the future went as she’d envisioned, she would walk in there and find him like…like….

  “Fuck that,” she snapped, spinning away to run across the field toward the carnival, toward other people. Toward life.

  Before she’d gone five feet, she tripped and fell to her knees. The ground between the trailer park and the carnival seemed to have grown traps and land mines. The grass tangled around her ankles, slowing her, dragging her back toward the future she didn’t want to experience. She fell again, twice, knowing nobody was close enough to see.

  Fate wanted to stop her. It wanted her to go into that mobile home to find Jersey.

  She would do anything she could to avoid that.

  Her will carried her to the carnival—bright lights, people and safety. She raced straight for the back end, to the Italian Sausage stand where she knew Frank Bell would be working. He saw her face and grabbed her, dragging her inside so she could tell him what she’d seen.

  The rest happened in a blur. Frank had sent somebody to the front gate. The cop on patrol had come at a run. He’d asked her what she’d seen. She’d stammered and told him as much truth as she could before seguing painfully into the lie, claiming she really had gone in, just as her vision had played out. He’d searched the trailer and had come out pale-faced, getting on his radio and calling for backup, asking her to stay at the carnival as there would be more questions.

  Now she didn’t know what on earth to do.

  “Here, have a drink,” Val said, handing her a beer he’d grabbed out of the small fridge in Frank’s office.

  She shook her head. She wasn’t a beer drinker at the best of times, and right now, the way her stomach was churning, she’d puke it up for sure. “That won’t help. I have to call those detectives and come clean.”

  “No,” he insisted. “If you call anybody, it’s got to be Gypsy Bell.”

  Frank’s granddaughter. Of course. Everybody at the carnival knew the case had been taken away from the local chief of police by the out-of-town detectives who’d shown up and bossed everyone around this afternoon. But at least Gypsy, who’d known Jersey for a long time, too, might be willing to help her figure out what to do.

  “Do you think she’ll believe me?”

  Val nodded. “I really do. Actually, that guy who’s been hanging around with her this week…”

  “The hot one with the amazing eyes and those wild gloves?”

  Her brother rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Him. I hear he’s got some secrets of his own. Andrea told me he used to have his own act here in the carnival, and some people think he’s got some kind of ESP of his own.”

  “I don’t have ESP,” she insisted, wishing her brother, of all people, would get it right. He’d been around her all his life, he’d seen what she did, and what it cost her. He could at least remember what she could and could not do. “I can’t move things with my mind.”

  Except, perhaps, the future. Oh, she couldn’t move it, precisely. But she could bend it. Like this morning when she’d bent the part of it that had included her discovering Jersey’s bloody, mutilated corpse in his bed. For that alone, she would be forever thankful for a gift she’d considered both a blessing and a curse throughout her life.

  “I know. Sorry,” he said, looking like he meant it. Val often pushed, but only to the point where he knew she was ready to break. Then, when she fought back, he always gave way. “Franklin Bell’s granddaughter has got to have an open mind, right? Especially if she’s got some supposedly psychic detective who grew up with her here in the carnival working with her?”

  Penny hadn’t heard that part—about the sexy psychic having grown up with Gypsy in the carnival circuit. She wondered what he’d been like as a kid. If he’d had those crazy-intense eyes. If he’d worn those crazy-sexy gloves.

  “Okay, stop fantasizing about the dude and let’s make a plan.”

  “A plan?”

  “Let’s think about what you’ll say to Chief Bell.”

  “Uhh, how about, ‘Hi, I’m Penny, I can see into the future, and right now I see that you’re not going to believe a word I say and will storm out of this room in ninety seconds.’”

  “Penn…”

  “Enough, okay? I’ve never told anybody outside the family what I can do. I’m really not ready to tell a complete stranger.”

  He sighed, obviously realizing she might be right. It wouldn’t be easy for her to talk to anyone else about this. Not even someone who might believe her, like Frank’s granddaughter.

  “So let’s go back to what you told the cops. Start with the lack of prints,” he said. “Maybe the door was partly open and you just nudged it with your arm. No prints.”

  “That could mess up the case, though, couldn’t it? I don’t want to do anything that would help this psycho get away. Or get off in a court of law because some evidence doesn’t match up.”

  God, this was such a mess.

  He frowned, thinking again. Although he hadn’t grown as close to Jersey as Penny had, he’d certainly liked the old man, too. No way would he want to do anything to obstruct the investigation into the carny’s death. Pretending the door had been slightly open when it had been shut tight could do exactly that. It seemed like a tiny, unimportant detail, when in truth it might be of enough significance to identify the motive, or the means. Or the murderer.

  “Honestly? I don’t think there’s any other choice. You’ve got to call Chief Bell and tell her the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

  “No way,” she replied immediately. But even as she said the words, she was wondering if Val was right. She was running out of options, and time. She buried her face in her hands as tears rose to her eyes. “They’ll put me in a place with people who think they’re Napoleon.”

  Or that they can travel through time.

  His arm dropped over her shoulders and gave her a brief, brotherly hug. “It’ll be okay.”

  She didn’t lift her head, knowing her tears were wetting his shirt, but needing his support.

  “Look,” he finally said, “why don’t you get out of here for a day or two? Go home. Go see mom. Clear your head.”

  “But the detectives…”

  “The cops won’t have the fingerprints sorted out within the next twenty-four hours. I’ll put them off and tell them there was an emergency. You can take until Wednesday, at least.”

  Only an extra day to figure this out, but she definitely wanted it. She couldn’t stand the thought of telling anyone her secret. Nor could she bear the idea of letting anybody get away with murdering Jersey. There had to be some way out of this mess. And maybe having some extra time would help her find it.

  “Okay,” she said, sniffing and wiping her tears as she lifted her head. “Wednesday. I’ll figure something out by then.”

  “We will.”

  He no longer looked like the sibling she’d had to raise. In her moment of need, Val was was standing up to his full potential, being the strong brother she needed him to be. She’d always known he could, and was very glad to have him by her side.

  As much as it pained her to think about it, their mom would
be gone soon. She and Val would be each other’s only family. She couldn’t risk going to jail for lying to the police, and had to work out a way to extricate herself from her own mess. She owed it to her brother. She owed it to both of them. She also owed something to Jersey.

  She just had to decide how to pay all she owed without destroying her own future.

  “Is he still following us?”

  Mick glanced over at his Uncle Shane—a little greyer, a little more wrinkled, but still the same long-haired, tattooed, ear-gauge wearing attorney-slash-carny who’d raised him. Shane sat next to him, in the passenger seat of Mick’s car. He’d twisted around, trying to peer out the back window to catch a glimpse of familiar headlights.

  “Yeah, he’s still there,” Mick said, instantly spotting the vehicle in the rearview mirror.

  “Not very good at this, is he?”

  “No, not very.”

  Facing forward, Shane shook his head and rolled his eyes. “That old man just doesn’t give up.”

  “I think he’ll try to bribe the grim reaper on the day he dies.”

  “Well, bribery never worked on you, did it?”

  “Nope.”

  He had money enough. Monty’s millions didn’t matter a damn to him. He could leave them to charity—and Mick hoped he would—when he passed on. The lure of an inheritance, or the threat of being disinherited, hadn’t brought Mick back under his grandfather’s thumb. Nothing would; the old man knew it. That was why he’d sent a not-very-discreet snoop to spy on him. Undoubtedly, Monty had learned Mick was in Ocean Whispers, and that he’d been seen with Chief Bell. The town millionaire would want to know why, and how he could benefit from the situation.