Phantom Limb: A Gripping Psychological Thriller

by Lucinda Berry

  PHANTOM LIMB

  A Gripping Psychological Thriller

  Lucinda Berry

  COPYRIGHT © 2016 by Lucinda Berry

  All rights reserved

  Published in the United States by Rise Press

  ISBN-10: 1541034953

  ISBN-13: 978-1541034952

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and businesses are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, places, or events is purely coincidental

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  1

  It was always the same phone call. Always the same desperate pleas.

  “Don’t say a word,” she’d beg.

  Who would I tell? Had I ever told? I’d been keeping her secrets for years.

  I pulled my car into my parking spot and looked up at the third story of our apartment building at the last window on the left. The shades were sealed shut. They’d been that way for days. I stepped out and walked into the entryway, passing Mrs. Jasberson by the mailboxes. She checked her mail at least five times a day so she could interact with someone other than the characters on her TV.

  “Hello, Elizabeth,” she called when she spotted me. “How was work today?”

  “Great,” I replied without turning around. No need to tell her that, once again, I’d left three hours before the end of my shift.

  “You tell that sister of yours she needs to get out in the sun more often.”

  I turned around and smiled at her as I waited for the elevator. “I will.”

  I waved to her over my shoulder and stepped inside the box as soon as the doors opened. They closed in front of me, and I stared at the numbers as they lit up, anxiously tapping my feet back and forth against each other. The familiar ding sounded and then the doors opened to the long hallway.

  Stale cigarette smoke greeted me when I opened our door. I took a deep breath before walking down the hallway and into our bedroom. A small lump hid underneath the yellow comforter. I stepped over the scattered piles of clothes as I walked to the window and pulled on the blinds’ string, flooding the room with light and making it more cheerful. I opened the window, letting the fresh air sweep into the room, and took another deep breath to fortify myself for what I had to do next. I sat on a spot on the edge of the bed and peeled back the comforter, revealing Emily’s small body tucked into the fetal position, her arms cradling her head. She was wearing her purple pajamas. Not a good sign. The last time she’d worn them, we’d almost ended up in the emergency room. I’d grown to hate the color purple.

  I stroked her brown hair away from her face. “Hi, sweetie. I’m home.”

  Her arms reached out for me like a small child reaching for her mother. I lay down beside her and wrapped my arms around her. We’d been through this routine many times. She nestled her head on my chest and began to cry.

  “Shh.” I stroked her hair. “It’s gonna be all right. We always make it through.”

  “I couldn’t even get dressed.” Her tears wet my shirt. “I tried, Bethy. I really tried. I did.”

  “I know you did, honey,” I said.

  “Don’t you get tired of me?”

  She looked up at me and I looked down at my twin’s face—our features the same, even down to the small mole on each of our foreheads, right below the hairline. I shook my head. I always shook my head.

  Even though she was the one to come out first, I looked after her. I’d devoted myself to protecting her through the tragedy we’d faced together as kids, through her depressed teenage years, and I was still doing it. She’d spent the first three minutes of her life without me, but that was it.

  “Let’s get you showered, all right?”

  I didn’t wait for her answer. I stood and pulled her up with me, her stick-thin arms and body leaning against me for support. Her hair was matted against the side of her head.

  “Then maybe we can go out and get dinner. Someone at school told me there’s this really great Chinese buffet that opened up downtown a few weeks ago. The teriyaki chicken is supposed to be amazing.”

  Her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open in fear of going out in public as if I’d suggested she cut off her arm.

  “Or we can just order a pizza and watch a movie. I’ve been in the mood to watch a romantic comedy.”

  Her face instantly relaxed.

  I chattered away about my day and laughed about Mrs. Jasberson’s gossipy interest in our lives as I moved us into the bathroom. I flicked on the fluorescent lights and ran the bathwater. Emily walked in to join me, hanging her head, her arms wrapped tightly around her stomach. I stopped filling the silence and let out a deep sigh.

  “What’d you do?” I asked.

  She shrugged and began undressing, her head still hanging low as if she were a puppy who’d been caught peeing on the floor or getting into the garbage. She slid off her pajama pants. Dried blood was smeared all over her legs like crusted trails of rust. There was a lot of it, which meant she’d been cutting herself all day. She undressed slowly, wary of her raw skin. I stared at the jagged edges of her wounds, new and old, as they spliced their way over her pale skin in a tangled web. Three deep gashes scarred the left side of her stomach. We’d ended up in the emergency room that time. It’d taken over thirty staples to stop the bleeding, but they’d done an impressive job with her skin. If you didn’t know otherwise, you might think it was an abdominal surgery scar. Her name was crudely etched on her upper right thigh. She’d methodically carved the letters into her skin with a razor on our fourteenth birthday. When I saw it, I threatened to cut myself too if she didn’t stop hurting herself, but it didn’t do any good. She kept cutting, and I could never follow through on my threat. I would hold the razor blade to my flesh but could never slice myself. I didn’t have it in me. I didn’t say anything about her cutting anymore. There was no need. I understood why she crucified herself.

  I held her hand as she stepped into the tub and sank into the warm water. I picked up the washcloth and began washing her back.

  “Tell me about your day,” she said as her body relaxed.

  I filled the bathroom with more stories from my day as I washed her fresh wounds. I told her about the test I’d taken in my Introduction to Psychology class that morning and how surprised I’d been at how easy it was since the reading material had been so dense and difficult to get through. I sprinkled in stories about the nice weather and how good the breeze felt while I walked to my car, hoping it’d motivate her to start leaving the house again. By the time she was ready to get out of the tub, I’d moved on to my telemarketing stories.

  “How many times today?” she asked.

  I smiled. “Twelve.” I kept track of how many times I got hung up on every day. We kept a running tally. So far, my record was thirty-two.

  I couldn’t convince her to watch a romantic comedy. She insisted on another episode of Law & Order: SVU. I didn’t understand her obsession with the darkest and most depraved parts of humanity. I couldn’t stand the stories of kids kept in cages or sold into prostitution, but she loved them. If I had my choice, we’d never watch the stuff again.

  As she cuddled up next to me on our
beat-up couch and got ready to solve the latest sex crime with Olivia and the SVU team, I tried to shake the images of her mangled body. It never got easier for me to see the pain she inflicted on herself.

  “Haven’t we already seen this one?” I asked as a vaguely familiar story about a kidnapped girl found in a trunk unfolded in front of me.

  “Yes, but only once and it’s one of my favorites.” She didn’t break her gaze from the TV.

  I made it to the second commercial break before I couldn’t take any more. “I’m going to make dinner.”

  I walked into the kitchen and started rummaging through the refrigerator. I didn’t like cooking but was willing to do it so I didn’t have to watch the show. I didn’t know what I did wrong when I cooked. I followed the same recipes as Emily, but my dishes never tasted like hers. She was a great cook, and back when she used to leave the house, she’d make exotic meals for us like Chicken Makhani or Modenese Pork Chops. She still loved to experiment in the kitchen on her good days, but her options were limited when I did all of the grocery shopping.

  I settled on pasta, something easy that I couldn’t screw up, and hoped by the time we finished eating, I could convince her to watch something happy. I daydreamed about my boyfriend, Thomas, while I waited for the water to boil. He’d brought me flowers at work again. He loved to give me flowers when it wasn’t a special occasion and never brought roses because he knew I hated them. He’d tucked in another cheesy poem and I’d teased him about it for the rest of our shift. By the time the water came to a boil, I was smiling and humming to myself. He always had that effect on me.

  “What are you smiling about?” Emily came up behind me and leaned over the stove to peek into the pot.

  “Oh, nothing,” I said. It’d been over a year and I still hadn’t told her about Thomas. “Just something one of the jocks said in class today. It wasn’t remotely related to what the professor was talking about, and he sounded like a complete idiot.”

  “Why do you always have to be so hard on the jocks?”

  I rolled my eyes. In high school, she’d loved their chiseled bodies and hadn’t minded their stupidity, but they were only interested in how many points they could score on the field and how many girls they could score with. During our junior year, the football team had a competition where they awarded point values to each girl and then proceeded to see who could earn the most points by sleeping with them. They got extra points if they didn’t wear a condom. Emily ended up on their list, but I didn’t. I wasn’t sure if college jocks were the same as the jocks in high school, but I had no interest in finding out.

  “There are plenty of openings in my health class, and it’s filled with half of the hockey team if you want to come and meet him yourself.”

  “Subtle, Bethy. Real subtle.” She grabbed the spoon from my hand and moved to stir the sauce simmering next to the pasta. “Let me help you with this so that it’s actually edible.” She flashed me a wide smile.

  We moved through our small kitchen in a perfectly choreographed dance, sliding around each other smoothly and effortlessly like we’d done so many times in the past. I was continually amazed at how quickly her moods changed. She’d already forgotten that less than an hour ago we’d been in the bathroom washing blood off her body.

  We skipped setting the table and balanced our dishes on our laps in front of the TV instead. SVU was over and Emily switched to Dateline. They were doing a documentary on teenage depression and the increased rates of girls cutting themselves.

  “No way, Em. I’m not watching this.” I reached for the remote, but she pulled her arm away, keeping it out of my reach.

  “C’mon, just for a minute. Please?” She batted her long lashes at me.

  I gave in to her like I always did. “Ten minutes. That’s it. Then we’re watching reruns of Friends.”

  The news anchor launched into a detailed discussion about a mother who discovered her twelve-year-old daughter cutting herself and how her daughter lied to cover it up. He interviewed the girl and her friends, trying to understand why she did it.

  “Do you remember when I started?” Emily asked when the focus of the show turned back to the mother’s horror at finding out her daughter was injuring herself.

  “Of course I remember.”

  I’d never forget the day she’d started to carve herself. It was the day designed to mark our liberation from Mother. We were eight, and our adoption was finally complete. It’d been a long process. We’d been living with the Rooths for nine months, but everything was finally legal. We were officially theirs and they were officially ours. The papers had been signed in black ink and Mother could never get us back. There was nothing left to do except throw a party.

  It was supposed to be a happy day, and it might have been if Mother hadn’t shown up. We’d only seen her three times since Child Protective Services had taken us away from her, and each visit had resulted in some form of emotional meltdown, especially for Emily. Living with Mother was harder on her than it was on me. I’d given up trying to get Mother to love me, but Emily never gave up hope that she could get Mother to love her. I understood why Emily held on, because she’d always been Mother’s favorite. She was the one who got the sparse hugs and affection when Mother needed to pretend as if she cared.

  Our adoption party had been thoughtfully and lovingly designed to look like a birthday party, a valiant effort by our new family to symbolize our birth into a new world. Our therapist, Lisa, who we saw twice a week, had suggested the party. The Rooths had loved the idea and had spared no expense. There were pink balloons floating everywhere and purple streamers hanging from the tall oak trees in the backyard. The Rooths had rented a big bounce house that had a huge princess with her arms wide open as if she were trying to give you a hug before you went inside. We each had a beautifully decorated cake with our names scrawled across the center, and Dalila had let us each pick a flavor. Mine was vanilla and Emily’s was chocolate. We’d spent the morning arguing over whose was going to taste better. There was a table stacked with brightly wrapped presents, and we couldn’t wait for the party to be over so we could tear into them since we’d never had presents before.

  Emily and I stood off to the side, holding hands and watching the activities go on around us, even though we were supposed to be the center of attention. Our new family was still so foreign to us. They flitted about and laughed with each other, effortlessly doling out big hugs. Every few moments, one of them would point in our direction, wave, and flash us a huge smile.

  The party had barely gotten started when we heard her impossible-to-miss voice, a high-pitched, Valley Girl squeal, even though she’d never spent a day of her life living in Southern California.

  “Hi, Bob! Hi, Dalila. It’s so good to see you,” she gushed, flashing one of the smiles I’d seen her practice in the mirror. “I can’t tell you how glad I am that you’re taking such good care of my girls.”

  We watched as Mother, Bob, and Dalila made their way toward us. Lisa trailed behind the trio, ready to step in if we needed her. Mother squeezed her way into the middle of our new parents and linked her arms through each of theirs.

  “Did I tell you I’m going into the military? I’m taking the test on Monday. It’s gonna be good for me. Real good. It’s not as hard as I thought it’d be. Boot camp is gonna suck, but ya know, I’m kinda tough. I work out. Haven’t been working out much lately. I’ll get back—”

  Bob interrupted her. “Girls, your mom is here to see you.”

  She wasn’t there to see us. I didn’t know why she was there, but it had nothing to do with us. Mother grabbed Emily and threw her arms around her in a showy hug. Emily stood with her arms at her sides, looking around Mother at me, apologizing with her eyes.

  “How’s my precious Emily? My sweet baby girl. You’ve gotten so big, darling. So big.” She raised Emily’s arms up in the air dramatically. “Remember when we used to do that when you were little? You’re so tall. Must’ve grown at least a couple
inches. Let me look at you.”

  She stepped back, hands on Emily’s shoulders, and sized her up. “Absolutely. Two inches. For sure.” She turned to look at Bob, fluttering her dark eyelashes, and said, “She looks so cute. Just like her mama.” She tossed her hair back over her shoulder and giggled.

  Bob flushed and instinctively put his arm around Dalila. “They’re both beautiful.”

  “When do I get to see them again? You’ll probably have to come pick me up since I don’t have a car. Jeremy gave me a ride here today. He’s waiting outside. Too scared to come in. You know men.” She poked Dalila in the side. Dalila laughed nervously. Mother turned back to Emily and squeezed her cheeks in her hands. “I just had to come see my baby.”

  Emily stepped back and reached out, grabbing my hand and pulling me close to her again.

  “Hi, Elizabeth,” Mother said without glancing in my direction.

  I stared at her, saying nothing, hoping she could read the hate in my eyes. Mother coughed and flipped her hair over her shoulders again. Too much time with us made her uncomfortable, and she’d reached her limit.

  “I can’t wait for us to go on vacation, girls. I think we’re gonna go to Disneyland. I’m getting it all planned now.”

  She might as well have been promising to take us to the moon. She put her arms around both of us, kissing the top of Emily’s head.

  “Now, your mama loves you. Don’t you forget. I love you.”

  She skipped off, turning around when she reached the garage to dramatically blow us a kiss good-bye. We never saw her again.

  Later on that night, while we were supposed to be sleeping in our separate bedrooms, Emily crept into my bed like she did every night. We had our own rooms as part of the differentiation process that Lisa talked about all the time. It had something to do with separating us and treating us as individuals instead of grouping us together like one person. Lisa had suggested ways for Bob and Dalila to do it, and sleeping apart was one of them. We hated it. It didn’t matter, though, because nothing could separate us. Every night after they tucked each of us into our own beds, Emily would tiptoe through the “Jack and Jill” bathroom connecting our rooms and crawl into bed with me. Each morning the Rooths would find us wrapped up together.