Our house has white paint, blue shutters, and a wraparound porch with a slope grade visible to the naked eye. The windows are long and narrow, and protest with an obnoxiously loud groan when pushed open. My dad used to say there was no need to install an alarm in my bedroom window, a secret joke between us, since we both knew I was hardly the kind of daughter to sneak out.
My parents moved into the farmhouse-slash-money-pit shortly before I was born on the philosophy that you can’t argue with love at first sight. Their dream was straightforward: to slowly restore the house to its charming 1771 condition, and one day hammer a bed-and-breakfast sign in the front yard and serve the best lobster bisque up and down Maine’s coast. The dream dissolved when my dad was murdered one night in downtown Portland.
This morning I’d been released from the hospital, and now I was alone in my room. Hugging a pillow to my chest, I eased back on my bed, my eyes nostalgically tracing the collage of pictures tacked to a corkboard on the wall. There were snapshots of my parents posing at the top of Raspberry Hill, Vee modeling a span-dex Catwoman disaster she sewed for Halloween a few years back, my sophomore yearbook picture. Looking at our smiling faces, I tried to fool myself into believing I was safe now that I was back in my world. The truth was, I’d never feel safe and I’d never have my life back until I could remember what I’d gone through during the last five months, particularly the last two and a half. Five months seemed insignificant held up against seventeen years (I’d missed my seventeenth birthday during those eleven unaccountable weeks), but the missing gap was all I could see. A huge hole standing in my path, blocking me from seeing beyond it. I had no past, no future. Only a huge void that haunted me.
The tests Dr. Howlett had ordered had come back fine, just fine. As far as anyone could tell, except for a few healing cuts and bruises, my physical health was as stellar as it had been on the day I’d gone missing.
But the deeper things, the invisible things, those parts of me that lay under the surface out of reach of any test—with those things I found my resilience wavering. Who was I now? What had I undergone during those missing months? Had the trauma shaped me in ways I would never understand? Or worse, never recover from?
Mom had imposed a strict no-visitors policy while I was in the hospital, and Dr. Howlett had backed her up. I could understand their concern, but now that I was home and slowly settling back into the familiarity of my world, I wasn’t going to let Mom seal me up with the well-meant but misguided intention of protecting me. Maybe I was changed, but I was still me. And the only thing I wanted right now was to talk everything out with Vee.
Downstairs, I swiped Mom’s BlackBerry off the counter and took it back to my room. When I’d woken up in the cemetery, I hadn’t had my cell phone with me, and until I picked up a replacement, her phone would have to do.
IT’S NORA. CAN U TALK? I texted Vee. It was late, and Vee’s mom enforced lights-out at ten. If I called, and her mom heard the ring, it could mean a lot of trouble for Vee. Knowing Mrs. Sky, I didn’t think she’d be lenient, even with the special nature of the circumstances.
A moment later the BlackBerry chimed. BABE?!?!!!!!! AM FREAKING OUT. AM A TOTAL WRECK. WHERE R U?
CALL ME AT THIS NUMBER.
I set the BlackBerry in my lap, chewing the tip of my nail. I couldn’t believe how nervous I felt. This was Vee. But best friends or not, we hadn’t talked in months. It didn’t feel that long in my mind, but there it was. Thinking of the two sayings, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder” versus “Out of sight, out of mind,” I was definitely hoping for the former.
Even though I was expecting Vee’s call, I still jumped when the BlackBerry rang.
“Hello? Hello?” Vee said.
Hearing her voice caused my throat to thicken with emotion. “It’s me!” I choked.
“’Bout time,” she huffed, but her voice sounded thick and emotional too. “I was at the hospital all day yesterday, but they wouldn’t let me see you. I bolted past security, but they called a code ninetynine and chased me down. They escorted me out in handcuffs, and by escorted I mean there was a lot of kicking and bad language being slung in both directions. The way I see it, the only criminal here is your mom. No visitors? I’m your best friend, or did she not get the memo every year for the past eleven? Next time I’m over, I am going to lay into that woman.”
In the darkness, I felt my trembling lips crack into a smile. I clutched the phone to my chest, torn between laughing and crying. I should have known Vee wouldn’t let me down. The memory of everything that had gone horribly wrong since I’d woken up in the cemetery three nights ago was quickly eclipsed by the mere fact that I had the best friend in the world. Maybe everything else had changed, but my relationship with Vee was rock solid. We were unbreakable. Nothing could change that.
“Vee,” I breathed, a sigh of relief. I wanted to bask in the normalcy of this moment. It was late, we were supposed to be sleeping, and here we were, chatting with the lights off. Last year Vee’s mom had trashed Vee’s phone after catching her talking to me after lights-out. The next morning, in front of the whole neighborhood, Vee went Dumpster diving for it. To this day, she uses that phone. We call it Oscar, as in Oscar the Grouch.
“Are they giving you quality drugs?” Vee asked. “Apparently Anthony Amowitz’s dad is a pharmacist, and I could probably score you some good stuff.”
My eyebrows lifted in surprise. “What’s this? You and Anthony?”
“Heck, no. Not like that. I’ve sworn off guys. If I need romance, that’s what Netflix is for.”
I’ll believe it when I see it, I thought with a smirk. “Where is my best friend and what have you done with her?”
“I’m doing boy detox. Like a diet, only for my emotional health. Never mind that, I’m coming over,” Vee continued. “I haven’t seen my best friend in three months, and this phone reunion is crap. Girl, I’m gonna show you the bear in hug.”
“Good luck getting past my mom,” I said. “She’s the new spokeswoman for helicopter parenting.”
“That woman!” Vee hissed. “I’m making the sign of the cross right now.”
We could debate my mom’s status as a witch another day. Right now, we had more important things to discuss. “I want a rundown of the days leading up to my kidnapping, Vee,” I said, taking our conversation to a far more serious level. “I can’t shake the feeling that my kidnapping wasn’t random. There had to have been warning signs, but I can’t remember any of them. My doctor said the memory loss is temporary, but in the meantime I need you to tell me where I went, what I did, and who I was with that last week. Walk me through it.”
Vee was slow to answer. “You sure this is a good idea? It’s kind of soon to stress about that stuff. Your mom told me about the amnesia—”
“Seriously?” I interjected. “You’re going to side with my mom?”
“Stuff it,” Vee muttered, relenting.
For the next twenty minutes, she recounted every event during that final week. The more she talked, however, the more my heart sank. No bizarre phone calls. No strangers skulking unexpectedly into my life. No unusual cars following us around town.
“What about the night I disappeared?” I asked, interrupting her midsentence.
“We went to Delphic Amusement Park. I remember taking off to buy hot dogs … and then all hell broke loose. I heard gunfire and people started stampeding out of the park. I circled back to find you, but you were gone. I figured you’d done the smart thing and bolted. Only I didn’t find you in the parking lot. I would have gone back inside the park, but the police came and kicked everybody out. I tried to tell them that you might still be in the park, but they weren’t in the mood. They forced everyone home. I called you a zillion times, but you didn’t answer.”
It felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. Gunfire? Delphic had a reputation, but still. Gunfire? It was so bizarre—so completely outrageous—that had anyone other than Vee been telling me, I wouldn’t have believed
it.
Vee said, “I never saw you again. I found out later about the whole hostage situation.”
“Hostage situation?”
“Apparently the same psychopath who shot up the park held you hostage in the mechanical room under the fun house. Nobody knows why. He eventually let you go and bolted.”
I opened my mouth, shut it. At last I managed a shocked, “What?”
“The police found you, got your statement, and took you home around two in the morning. That was the last anybody saw you. As for the guy who took you hostage … nobody knows what happened to him.”
Right then, all the threads converged into one. “I must have been taken from my house,” I concluded, working it out as I went. “After two a.m., I was probably sleeping. The guy who held me hostage must have followed me home. Whatever he hoped to accomplish at Delphic was interrupted, and he came back for me. He must have broken in.”
“That’s the thing. There was no sign of a struggle. Doors and windows were all locked.”
I kneaded the heel of my hand into my forehead. “Did the police have any leads? This guy—whoever he was—couldn’t have been a complete ghost.”
“They said he was most likely using a phony name. But for what it’s worth, you told them his name was Rixon.”
“I don’t know anyone named Rixon.”
Vee sighed. “That’s the problem. Nobody does.” She was quiet a moment. “Here’s another thing. Sometimes I think I recognize his name, but when I try to remember how, my mind goes blank. Like the memory is there, but I can’t retrieve it. Almost like … there’s a hole where his name should be. It’s the freakiest feeling. I keep telling myself maybe it’s just that I want to remember him, you know? Like if I remember him—bingo! We have our bad guy. And the police can arrest him. Too simple, I know. And now I’m just babbling,” she said. Then, softly, “Still … I could have sworn …”
My bedroom door creaked open, and Mom ducked her head inside. “I’m going to turn in for the night.” Her eyes traveled to the BlackBerry. “It’s getting late, and we both need our sleep.” She waited expectantly, and I caught her hidden message.
“Vee, I have to go. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Send the witch my love.” And she hung up.
“Do you need anything?” Mom asked, casually taking the Black-Berry from me. “Water? Extra blankets?”
“No, I’m good. ’Night, Mom.” I forced a quick but reassuring smile.
“Did you double-check your window?”
“Three times.”
She crossed the room and rattled the lock anyway. When she found it secure, she gave a weak laugh. “Doesn’t hurt to check one last time, right? Good night, baby,” she added, smoothing my hair and kissing my forehead.
After she backed out, I scrunched under my covers and mulled over everything Vee had said. A shoot-out at Delphic, but why? What had the shooter hoped to accomplish? And why, of the presumably thousands of people at the park that night, had he chosen me as his hostage? Maybe it was sheer bad luck on my side, but it didn’t feel right. The unknown spun through my head until I was exhausted. If only—
If only I could remember.
Yawning, I settled in for sleep.
Fifteen minutes ticked away. Then twenty. Flopping onto my back, I stared slightly cross-eyed at the ceiling, trying to sneak up on my memory and catch it off guard. When that failed to produce results, I tried a more direct approach. I banged my head against my pillow, trying to knock loose an image. A line of dialogue. A scent that might spark ideas. Anything! But it quickly became apparent that rather than anything, I was going to have to settle for nothing.
When I’d checked out of the hospital this morning, I was convinced my memory was lost forever. But with my head cleared and the worst of the shock over, I was beginning to think otherwise. I sensed, acutely, a broken bridge in my mind, the truth on the far side of the gap. If I was responsible for tearing down the bridge as a defense mechanism against the trauma I’d suffered during my kidnapping, then surely I could rebuild it again. I just needed to figure out how.
Starting with the color black. Deep, dark unearthly black. I hadn’t told anyone yet, but the color kept streaking across my mind at the oddest moments. When it did, my skin shivered pleasantly, and it was as if I could feel the color tracing a finger tenderly along my jaw, tipping my chin up to face it directly.
I knew it was absurd to think a color could come to life, but once or twice, I was sure I’d caught a flash of something more substantial behind the color. A pair of eyes. The way they studied me cut to the heart.
But how could something lost in my memory during this time cause me pleasure instead of pain?
I let go of a slow breath. I felt a desperate urgency to follow the color, no matter where it led me. I longed to find those black eyes, to stand face-to-face with them. I longed to know who they belonged to. The color tugged at me, beckoning me to follow it. Rationally, it made no sense. But the thought stuck in my brain. I felt a hypnotic, obsessive desire to let the color guide me. A powerful magnetism that even logic couldn’t break.
I let this desire build up inside me until it vibrated powerfully under my skin. Uncomfortably hot, I wrestled out of my blankets. My head buzzing, I tossed and turned. The intensity of the buzzing increased until I shivered with heat. A strange fever. The cemetery, I thought. It all started in the cemetery.
The black night, the black fog. Black grass, black gravestones. The glittering black river. And now a pair of black eyes watching me. I couldn’t ignore the flashes of black, and I couldn’t sleep them away. I couldn’t rest until I acted on them.
I swung out of bed. I stretched a knit shirt over my head, zipped myself into a pair of jeans, and threw a cardigan over my shoulders. I paused at my bedroom door. The hall outside was quiet except for the reverberating tick of the grandfather clock carrying up from the main level. Mom’s bedroom door was not quite shut, but no light spilled from the crack. If I listened hard enough, I could just make out the soft purr of her snoring.
I moved silently down the stairs, grabbed a flashlight and house key, and let myself out through the back door, fearing the creaky boards on the front porch would give me away. That, and there was a uniformed officer stationed at the curb. He was there to divert reporters and cameras, but I had a feeling that if I strolled out front at this hour, he’d speed-dial Detective Basso.
A small voice at the rear of my mind protested that it probably wasn’t safe to go out, but I was propelled by a strange trance. Black night, black fog. Black grass, black gravestones. Glittering black river. A pair of black eyes watching me.
I had to find those eyes. They had the answers.
Forty minutes later I’d walked to the arched gates leading inside Coldwater’s cemetery. Under the breeze, leaves twirled down from their branches like dark pinwheels. I found my father’s grave without difficulty. Shuddering against the damp chill in the air, I used trial and error to find my way back to the flat headstone where it had all begun.
Crouching down, I ran my finger over the aged marble. I shut my eyes and blocked out the night sounds, concentrating on finding the black eyes. I threw my question out there, hoping they’d hear. How had I gotten to the point of sleeping in a cemetery after spending eleven weeks in captivity?
I let my eyes travel a slow circle around the graveyard. The decaying smells of approaching autumn, the rich tang of cut grass, the pulse of insect wings rubbing together—none of it illuminated the answer I so desperately wanted. I swallowed against the thickness in my throat, trying hard not to feel defeated. The color black, teasing me for days, had failed me. Shoving my hands inside the pockets of my jeans, I turned to go.
From the edge of my vision, I noticed a smudge on the grass. I picked up a black feather. It was easily the length of my arm, shoulder to wrist. My eyebrows pulled together as I tried to envision what kind of bird could have left it. It was much too big for a crow. Much too big for any bird, as fa
r as I was concerned. I ran my finger over the feather’s vane, each satiny barb snapping back into place.
A memory stirred inside me. Angel, I seemed to hear a smooth voice whisper. You’re mine.
Of all the ridiculous, confusing things, I blushed. I looked around, just to make sure the voice wasn’t real.
I haven’t forgotten you.
With my posture rigid, I waited to hear the voice again, but it faded into the wind. Whatever flicker of memories it left behind dived out of reach before I could grasp them. I felt torn between wanting to fling the feather away, and the frantic impulse to bury it where no one would find it. I had the intense impression that I’d stumbled across something secret, something private, something that could cause a great deal of harm if discovered.
A car revved into the parking lot just up the hill from the cemetery, blaring music. I heard shouts and spurts of laughter, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if they belonged to people I went to school with. This part of town was dense with trees, far from the hub of downtown, and made a good place to hang out unsupervised on weekends and nights. Not wanting to stumble across anyone I knew, especially since my sudden reappearance was being splashed across local news, I tucked the feather under my arm and speed-walked along the gravel path leading back to the main road.
Shortly after two thirty a.m. I let myself inside the farmhouse and, after locking up, tiptoed upstairs. I stood, indecisive, in the middle of my bedroom a moment, then hid the feather in my middle dresser drawer, where I also stashed my socks, leggings, and scarves. In hindsight, I didn’t even know why I’d carried it home. It wasn’t like me to collect scrappy items, let alone tuck them inside my drawers. But it had sparked a memory….
Stripping off my clothes and stretching out a yawn, I turned toward bed. I was halfway there when my feet came to a halt. A sheet of paper rested on my pillow. One that hadn’t been there when I left.
The Complete Hush, Hush Saga Page 62