Secrets and Lies (Cassie Scot)

by Amsden, Christine

  “What did you tell him?” Sherry asked as I relayed my story. She seemed half worried, half fascinated by my obvious excitement. Sheridan didn’t say much at all. She was the quiet one, except when she sang.

  I’d told him about the time I’d been very angry with Jack Schneider and he tripped and fell. And about the time I’d been desperate not to see Ernie Bloom at school and we’d ended up having a snow day – in May. About the time Mom had said we’d have to put the cat to sleep and I loved that cat and begged her not to, when suddenly, the cat started eating again. The vet said his kidney was healed. On and on I’d talked, about strange things that happened, sometimes at random, but most often when all three of us focused our mind on the same thing – like with the cat. We always worked better together.

  “You told him all that?” Sherry asked. I could almost feel her fear. That was another thing we could do, though I hadn’t told Mr. Hart about it.

  “But wait until you hear!” I insisted. After all that, he’d shown me what he could do. With one hand – one hand – he’d lifted me and the chair upon which I’d sat. I’d screamed, but before the secretary ran in to find out what was wrong, he set me down and began offering reassurances. Then he’d showed me other things he could do with his strength.

  Shock and excitement were written all over Sherry’s face. But Sheridan – oh, Sheridan! Why didn’t I listen to you?

  “He wants to teach us to use magic. To really use it!” I told them.

  “What’s the catch?” Sheridan asked.

  There’s always a catch.

  I refused to believe there was a catch. Mr. Hart had been so sincere. “He wants us to stay after school tomorrow to talk to him. He wants to test us.”

  Sherry and Sheridan asked questions at the same time, tripping over one another, but the scene began to fade. The memory was faded. I could only remember my enthusiasm and my excitement. Mom and Dad knew nothing of magic, but we’d known for a long time we could do things. We’d always kept it secret, a little afraid of what others would do to us, a little afraid of what we might do to them.

  But he had come to me. He had pretty much known already, hadn’t he?

  He’d suspected, but I’d told him a great deal. It was my fault. I’d let him in and through me, he got to my sisters.

  Oh, did he test us. He learned our strengths and our weaknesses. He learned about Sherry’s gift with plants. Anything would grow for her, even in infertile soil. Our house was always full of plants.

  He learned about Sheridan’s songs. Her achingly beautiful songs that could lift or destroy our spirits. Songbird, he’d called her.

  We were strong, he said. So strong because there were three. There was power in three, he said.

  Lots of power. We were so strong and so naïve. Of course, he just wanted to teach us. He liked us. He said he’d always wanted daughters just like us.

  Fools. Sheridan never trusted him, but she’d never been the leader. I was the leader. The others leaned on me.

  Suddenly, everything went black. I was back in my quiet place, but I wasn’t alone. Mom was there. It seemed she had been scarcely aware of my presence but with a jolt, she’d noticed me behind her eyes, watching her past, and she was afraid.

  Afraid of what?

  Of him. Of Mr. Hart. In my mind I saw him again – a middle-aged man not yet past his prime, with a full head of luscious, brown hair. What color had his eyes been before? They were red now. He looked eight feel tall and so powerfully built. So overpowering. Overwhelming.

  The power was seductive. It called to me. I wanted to know, to learn. What good was power if I didn’t know what to do with it?

  What good was knowledge if I had no power? That last was my own thought, I realized, and Mom realized it too.

  What happened next? I wanted to know.

  The basement. I couldn’t stand to return to the basement. Anywhere but there. Let’s think about something else. Let’s just stay here, in this dark, quiet place.

  Powerless place.

  Like my quiet place, when I had my first real lesson.

  What do you mean, Mom? I need to understand. I wanted to understand.

  My parents died while I was in the basement. He didn’t tell us. I found out later. I’d always wondered why they never looked for us.

  Were you a prisoner?

  I still am. But now, the prison is of my own making.

  Silence. I felt drained, emotionally and spiritually. Mom didn’t want to tell me the rest. She was holding back.

  You do love Evan, Mom told me. I told Edward you did. He didn’t want to hear it.

  I tried to blank my thoughts, to keep her out of my head. This trip was about her, not about me. Get out of my head.

  Well, you’re looking in mine. And love feels so much better than...than...

  The basement.

  Mr. Hart told us we couldn’t learn magic at school. We’d have to come to his house on a Saturday and he would show us everything. He gave us the address and we went, bright and early, so we would be there when the sun rose. Sunrise is a powerful time of day. So is sunset, but he wanted us there at sunrise.

  So it would look like we’d run away. But I didn’t know that at the time.

  The basement had no windows and only a single door led to it – a door hidden in a paneled wall. No one would see that door, unless they knew what they were looking for. I only saw it twice, once on my way down and once on my way up.

  The way down was easier. I was excited. The door was part of this new intrigue. This game.

  There were three beds in the basement. I saw them first. I think they were the first clue I had that something wasn’t quite right. Three beds. Three twin beds side-by-side, They were in a room to the right of the stairs. To the left of the stairs were some storage shelves, an air conditioner, heater, washer, dryer...the sorts of things you would expect to see in a basement.

  But off to the right was a room. With three beds and a little bathroom connected by yet another door.

  Shouldn’t there have been an altar or something? Candles? Spell books? There were no books at all and no furniture, save for those beds. The walls were brown, wood paneled like a bar or some nightmare of a bachelor pad.

  No pictures. No windows. A small closet behind yet another door.

  Slam. Click.

  I remembered it just like that. My whole body tightened with fear beyond expressing. No! No!

  Denial.

  He had locked us in.

  Shock.

  Let us out! Let us out!

  Bargaining.

  Acceptance never came.

  The door was made of steel, as it turned out. Steel. Why hadn’t I noticed on the way in?

  Sheridan was crying. Sobbing. Sherry held her. I sat alone on one of the beds, staring at them, at Sherry’s accusatory stare. She hated me. I had done this. Me. My fault.

  We would be in that room together for two years.

  Two years? That was me. I couldn’t understand. I couldn’t even fathom. What had this man done to my mother in there for two years? Perverted thoughts danced before my mind but I instantly knew they were wrong. That wasn’t it. He wasn’t after our bodies.

  He was after our souls – the part that spilled into the blood and became the magic.

  He brought us good food for a while. He slid it through a little flap in the door. But he didn’t speak much and there was nothing to do. We ate and talked. Sheridan would sing to us. I would recite novels from memory.

  Boredom. Afraid, alone, imprisoned, and bored. Time is endless.

  The food gets a little worse after a while. How long? We had no clock, no window, no way of knowing. We slept when we were tired or bored, but that was often, so sleeping was no measure of time. We tried counting meals but after a while, there weren’t three in a day. There might only be one. Or none.

  He was angry. We knew that, but he didn’t answer questions for a long, long time.

  Oh and we tried to escape! We poole
d our magic, but we didn’t know how to focus it and Mr. Hart had built a magic-proof cage for us, though we didn’t know it at the time.

  Time and time and time. That’s all we had. More time.

  Then one day, he came into the room.

  My heart was in my throat.

  He never came in, but that day he did. We were all lying in bed. We’d pushed the beds together so we could cling to one another. We didn’t wear clothes anymore. We had no replacements for the ones we had brought and there’s only so long you can wear the same thing. We washed our clothes in the bathtub for a while, but they still became rags.

  We hadn’t eaten in a long time. Our ribs were clearly visible through our skin.

  He hadn’t brought a tray of food.

  “Which one of you is always singing?”

  Don’t tell him. Don’t tell him.

  But he knew. He had ways of knowing. He found Sheridan and thrust a glass of mud at her.

  Don’t drink it.

  Oh, but she was hungry. Hungry enough to eat anything, even dirt.

  She didn’t say anything when she took the glass from him. She never said anything again after she drank it. Her voice was gone.

  “I can’t stand the damned singing.”

  We hadn’t known he could hear.

  “How much longer will we be here?” I asked. I didn’t understand. I didn’t know yet that Sheridan would never speak or sing again. I didn’t know that she would die a little inside every day she could not sing. I didn’t know how the song was such a part of her soul.

  “As long as it takes for me to figure out how to get past your protections!”

  Protections. We had protections? But he’d said too much and he fled the room.

  What can you do with a surplus of time except regret? We had nothing but regrets. What we should have done. What we should have known. And I most of all.

  Sheridan was dying. She could not speak, could not communicate. We made up a sign language, but she did not care.

  Food started to come more regularly again, but she did not eat.

  We tried to force her, but she threw it up.

  Eat, Sheridan, eat. We’ll find some way to get your voice back.

  She was a part of my soul. A part of Sherry’s soul. We clung to one another, watching her die.

  One can die of a broken heart. I didn’t, but I wished I would.

  The only reason I didn’t was for Sherry. We clung to one another. We held so tightly I thought we would merge into one.

  We felt the instant Sheridan’s spirit left her body. Part of ours must have gone with it.

  There’s power in three. Now, we were two.

  Mr. Hart came inside the room for the second time the day she died. Was that regret on his monstrous face? No, not that. He didn’t feel a thing. No one could feel as much as Sherry and I.

  Oh, Sheridan. Don’t take Sheridan.

  “At least there’s nothing to protect your powers any longer,” Mr. Hart said. “I wanted all of it, but this will do. It will all be over soon.”

  Soon?

  The scene went black and I thought we’d returned to my quiet place again, but it wasn’t a moment before I realized we hadn’t. We just couldn’t see. The black was in our eyes and in our minds.

  Sherry? Sheridan? Where are you?

  Nothing. Alone.

  Pain.

  Was it Sheridan’s death? It felt like Sheridan’s death, again and again and again. That moment. That agonizing moment when her soul left her body.

  But it was my soul. Her soul. My soul. Sherry’s soul.

  My body was on fire. A thousand knives. A jolt of electricity.

  Body. Soul. Heart. Mind.

  The blackness was deafening. It roared and it clawed and it ached.

  I screamed. For the first time since Mr. Wolf had cast the spell, I was aware of my own body and attempting to claw my way back to it. I felt my throat open with wild abandon as my lungs tried to push their way out behind the force of the scream.

  Not yet! You wanted to see! You wanted to know!

  Did I? Did I want this? What was this? What was this!

  It was still black, but the insanity had dulled to fear and weariness. I was in my quiet place and Mom was there with me, trembling.

  He took my magic. Every drop.

  Your magic?

  All but the gift. The gifts cannot be separated from the soul.

  Flickers of color danced through my quiet place.

  There’s nothing here. No magic. Just like me.

  Mom, you use magic all the time.

  Borrowed. From my children. For almost two decades I’ve lived for pregnancy and, to a lesser extent, nursing. Why do you think I nurse my babies for over two years?

  You said it was good for us.

  It is. And the intimate bond maintains the magical connection, though it weakens with weaning.

  Borrowed magic. I never got it back. It was truly gone. There was truly a hole in my soul where the magic should have been.

  Blackness in the quiet place. But with each child, the quiet place changed. I borrowed theirs. I wouldn’t let myself think of the day it would end. The day there were seven and the youngest had weaned.

  Empty. Sad. Sullen. I’d barely noticed. I’d been too busy starting my own business. What a joke that had been. Failure. Useless. Inadequate.

  Who was feeling that? We didn’t know.

  But what happened then? Did he let you go?

  Not exactly.

  We returned to the basement one last time. Sherry and I knew just what had happened to us. We had been clinging to one another for weeks, our fingernails clawing into one another’s bodies. Our skin was broken and bleeding. We were emaciated. We hadn’t eaten. How we had survived the lack of water would remain a mystery until I really studied magic.

  And Mr. Hart was not done with us yet. He had our magic and now he would have one of us for his own. He would have one of us and he would sell one of us as chattel. As breeding stock.

  Strong genes. No threat. Easily controlled.

  My life, always in the hands of powerful men who would use me.

  I wrenched my mind free of her chain of thought. Not Dad!

  Love. Gratitude. No, not Dad. Edward rescued me.

  From what?

  He sold me. Mr. Hart sold me. Separated me from Sherry. Oh, Sherry! No, leave her alone. She was pregnant inside two months and then...

  With Jason.

  But she lives alone now.

  Edward rescued her, too.

  Dad. Didn’t I hate him?

  No, I loved him. He loved me.

  Don’t be too hard on him. He just wanted to make me happy. He resisted for a long time. Said it wouldn’t work. Should have listened. Was just afraid... so afraid... that someone would hurt them... like they hurt Sheridan. I wanted the power of seven so badly... too badly... and I wanted another baby.

  Cassandra. Oh, Cassandra. I’m so sorry. It didn’t work. The disownment didn’t take. My heart wasn’t in it. You can’t break a bond of love, and in my heart, I never let you go.

  We were in my quiet place, and she was begging me to forgive her.

  I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

  But what about... Who bought you? How did Dad rescue you?

  I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I love you.

  Love. And... Respect?

  I was never able to live without the magic. Not really. You are stronger than I am.

  Tears began spilling down my cheeks and with the hand that wasn’t clutching my mother’s, I wiped them away – or tried to. “I forgive you,” I whispered. It was with my real voice this time. My real hand was clutching her frail hand. Real tears were pouring down my cheeks. My throat felt hoarse from the scream that had escaped earlier. Sensation began to return to my body.

  It didn’t mean things were perfect between us. It didn’t mean I condoned what she had done. She had wronged me, and we both knew it. Only time and effort could heal our relat
ionship. But, I realized as I gazed back over the memories we had shared, I needed to forgive her. Understanding helped, but the forgiveness wasn’t for her. It was for me. For my healing. Then, perhaps, we could work on healing our relationship.

  A strong hand fell on my shoulder. Mr. Wolf didn’t say anything. He let me have my moment, but he showed me he was there. Had been there all along.

  Mom’s eyes fluttered open and her gaze fell upon me. “None of the others know the truth.”

  “I won’t tell them,” I promised. I was used to keeping secrets, after all.

  “I will,” Mom said.

  After that, two nurses and a doctor came into the unit and began fussing around the bed.

  “You’ll have to leave now,” one of them said.

  “I’ll be home tonight,” Mom whispered.

  “We’ll need to keep you here for at least a few more days,” the doctor was saying to her, but she and I both knew better. She’d be home tonight.

  26

  I SLIPPED AWAY FROM THE HOSPITAL shortly after giving my family the news that Mom was awake. They noticed, but nobody said anything. I think they understood that by forgiving my mother (and, indirectly, my father), I had opened a door but not yet stepped through. We needed time to figure out our new relationship. And I needed time to think.

  I had to take a personal day my second day on the job. The sheriff claimed to understand, but it worried me. His prediction about my unpredictability was turning out to be truer than I would have guessed, and he no longer had an actively weird case open which would benefit from my inside information. But even knowing the risks, I had to take one last day to think, to reflect, and to figure out where to go from here.

  I didn’t get the chance.

  When I climbed the stairs to my second-story apartment, someone waited for me outside the door. She didn’t look familiar, but I knew instantly who she was. Perhaps it was the way her eyes kept shifting from the stairway to the door, or the way she chewed at her fingernails until they bled. But I knew this was a young woman who had been through a lot lately. It could only be Renee.

  She jumped when she saw me. “Are you Cassie Scot?”

  “Yes. Are you Renee Larkin?”

  She shot another frightened glance along the hallway. “How did you know? You’re not the one who’s been following me, are you?”