Kind of Like Life
Page 5
“Wh-who are you?” she asked, scooting back toward the stairs. “How did you get in my room?”
“My name is Blake Carter,” he wheezed before collapsing into a loud coughing fit that sounded terrible.
Renee cringed and stole a glance at the door. Despite every strange event that had just occurred, she was suddenly worried her parents would come up to investigate the noise. Having a boy in her room was against the rules of the Ward household.
“Your parents won’t come up here,” he managed to choke out and leaned back against the wall to catch his breath. “Right now, nothing outside of this room exists, but that won’t last for very long.”
“How did you know I was thinking that?” she asked sharply. Blake didn’t appear to be much of a threat, at least not at the moment, but he still frightened her.
“It was the most logical conclusion,” he said flatly. “We don’t have a lot of time, so you need to listen to me and listen carefully. None of this is real, Renee. Waterside doesn’t exist. The real you is in a coma somewhere back in New Mexico. At least, I think we’re still in New Mexico. They could have moved us.”
“What are you talking about?” Renee asked in an annoyed tone, but her insides suddenly felt squeezed. There was no way that Blake, whom she had never met before, could have possibly known she had just moved from New Mexico. She had to be hallucinating.
“Think,” he said. “What is the last memory you have of the time before you moved here?”
“My parents told me we were moving,” she replied and rolled her eyes. She was definitely hallucinating.
“Before that, think hard,” Blake urged, pleading with his eyes. “You were in an accident. You were driving to the grocery store. Your mother was in the passenger seat and a speeding car ran a red light. Do you remember that?”
Renee thought about it for a moment. She did have a vague recollection of an accident back in Albuquerque, but nothing as serious as Blake was describing. “That was just a fender bender,” she informed him with a dismissive wave of her hand. “The guy that hit us apologized and we exchanged insurance information.”
“Not true,” said Blake. “That’s just the story your mind came up with to rationalize being here. The driver of the other car died and according to the doctors, so did you.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I know, but I can prove it. Aren’t we supposed to be in North Carolina?”
“Of course.”
“Is that the Atlantic Ocean?” he asked, pointing out the window.
“Duh,” Renee said with a sarcastic snort.
“Okay, Miss Smarty Pants, then explain to me how, if the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, were you just out at the lighthouse, watching the sun set over the Atlantic Ocean?”
Renee opened her mouth, expecting to give Blake a sharp reply, but she was stumped. He was right, of course. That was basic geography.
“I’m sure it was just a trick of the light,” she rationalized. “The sun wasn’t really setting over the ocean. That was just the way it reflected off the water, creating the illusion that the sun was going down in the east.”
“Right,” Blake said sarcastically. “And I suppose the fact that it’s January in the northern hemisphere, yet the sun didn’t set until well after nine was also a trick of the light? What about the giant redwood trees out there? I suppose you are going to tell me that they must have been dug up in California and replanted here, right?”
Again, she was stumped.
“You’ve never seen the Atlantic coast,” Blake went on. “But you once spent the summer with your aunt and uncle in Eureka. They took you to the Pacific and to the redwood forest. You’ve just incorporated those memories into this fantasy.”
Renee had indeed spent the summer of her thirteenth year in California. How Blake, someone she had never met before, knew this, was baffling.
“So you’re saying that none of this is real and that I’ve just hallucinated the last week of my life? How is that even possible?”
“It’s not really a hallucination,” Blake explained, “The accident you were involved in was a hell of a lot worse than a fender bender and you almost died. You’re in a coma. Everything that has happened has come out of your subconscious. An entire world was created in your head based on your deepest desires. This house, your friends, your boyfriend, and especially your desire to be something more than ordinary, this is what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it?”
Renee wanted to crawl into a hole and die. Hearing Blake spell out the things that were, in fact, her deepest desires made her feel small and pathetic.
“This is how they are manipulating you,” he continued, “and this is how they intend to kill you.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said sharply, somewhat defensive now. She held out her arm to show him the prickly bumps on her flesh. “I’ve still got goose bumps because I’m cold and wet. This,” she said, pointing to a fading bruise on her shoulder, “came from falling off the rope in gym class.” She reached out and touched Blake’s arm, poking him in the shoulder. “You seem pretty solid. If this is a hallucination, it’s a really convincing one.”
Blake gave her a cold stare. “You just watched your boyfriend fall to his death, killed, I might add, by a man who wielded a tornado made out of fire as if it were a whip. Right after that, I shot the man who killed him, grabbed you, and managed to land an impossible jump hundreds of feet out past the rocks and into the water. Instead of drowning, we’re sitting in your bedroom having this argument. Barring the fact that everything I just described defies the laws of natural science, why aren’t you distraught over the death of the man who had just professed his love for you?”
“Because Sage isn’t dead!” Renee shouted, getting to her feet. “I don’t know where he is, but he’s probably fine and he’s probably looking for me. Everything was normal until we went to that dreadful concert. There were a lot of people there, so that’s probably where I was drugged. Oh my gosh!” Renee gasped and pointed an accusatory finger at Blake. “It was you, wasn’t it? I saw you! You were standing right behind us. You drugged me and dragged me back to where ever we really are.”
“You saw me?” Blake was completely thrown off by this. Every time he entered another’s consciousness, he was undetectable until he made contact with them. Renee must have been mistaken.
“Yes I saw you. You kind of stood out with that filthy coat and cowboy hat. You were staring at us. I just thought you were a harmless creep. I guess I was wrong.”
“That’s new,” he muttered, wondering what this meant. “But I didn’t drug you, Renee. I’m not lying either. You were injured in the car crash and the doctors told your parents that you weren’t going to make it. They agreed to release your body to the hospital for scientific research. I know this because the same thing happened to me. I’m lying in some room, in some godforsaken laboratory, broken, yet somehow still alive, despite the fact that our only purpose is to die.”
The air around them suddenly warmed and began to ripple. Blake stood up and walked over to Renee’s closet.
“We’re out of time,” he sighed. “I have to go back.”
“Back where?” Renee asked crossly. “That’s my closet, you idiot.”
He ignored the insult and gave her one last pleading look. “Think about what I told you. I know it doesn’t make sense, but it will. Be careful. They are actively trying to kill you now. Whatever you do, don’t allow yourself to get too comfortable, that just makes it easier.”
He opened the closet door, stepped inside, and shut it behind him.
“I told you, that’s the…” Renee yanked the door open. “…closet.” Inside, her clothing hung, undisturbed. She pushed the hangers to one side and then the other. Blake was nowhere to be found.
She pulled out a pair of pajamas and numbly walked down the stairs to the bathroom. As she got ready for bed, she still wasn’t convinced that the whole situation was anything more than
a really bad dream, despite the seemingly real evidence surrounding her. Her mother’s dress was ruined. The lace crinoline had torn completely away and the whole thing was streaked with mud and salt deposits. She trudged back upstairs to her room and noted the puddles of water that were now soaking into the floor boards, ruining them, most likely. She crawled into bed and closed her eyes, praying that everything would be normal in the morning.
Blake walked along the snow-covered road that ran parallel to the Volga River, keeping a wary eye on the men who followed just a little too casually behind him. For KGB agents, they weren’t very subtle. He turned up the collar on his wool coat and pushed his fur trapper farther down over his ears. Soviet Russia probably wasn’t the safest place to clear his mind and get his head together, but as he stepped through the portal, it was the first place he thought of. He blamed Renee and her obsession with the eighties.
How easy would it have been to play along with her fantasy? He could have pretended to be the true Dark Protector and convinced her that Sage was a fake. After all, he did have the ability to take on any appearance he chose. Had he dug around a little more in her memories, surely he could have created a persona even more appealing than the one she envisioned. It wouldn’t have saved her life, not in the long run, but she could have died blissfully unaware of the horrible truth.
But it was not in Blake’s nature to deceive. Never had he taken advantage of that one particular gift his masters granted. Blake rationalized that if he went around pretending to be someone he wasn’t, he would eventually lose sight of who he was, who he had been, and why he had to fight back, no matter how hopeless his situation really was. But now he had to wonder if he had made a mistake. Revealing the truth only put Renee in more danger and now, there was nothing he could do to save her. He had used his one trump card and he blew it. The portal wouldn’t open again. Not until another unfortunate ended up in the hands of the corrupt mad men who dared to call themselves doctors.
Still, something nagged at him. Renee said she had seen him at the concert. It was quite possible she was lying or very likely, that she was remembering incorrectly in order to rationalize what had happened. But if she was telling the truth, then this was a new twist to the already convoluted game the masters played. Blake had to wonder what it meant, whether or not that really was the last he would see of Renee Ward, and what the consequences would be for his own survival.
Chapter 7
Renee awoke early on Saturday morning, thanks to the blinding sunlight that filtered into her room through the sheer curtains. She felt as though she had barely slept. As she sat up and reached for her robe, the impossible events of the previous night came back to her. The floor of her room was dry and didn’t appear to have any water damage. Her mother’s dress was carefully folded over her desk chair. Aside from a few wrinkles, it too appeared to be in perfect condition.
“Maybe it was all a bad dream,” she said with a sigh of relief. She threw on her robe and went downstairs to the kitchen, expecting to see her mother making breakfast, but the house was eerily quiet. On the kitchen table was a note and some money. Her parents were out of town for a conference and wouldn’t be back until later in the week. The money was for groceries and lunch at school. It wasn’t unusual for her parents to attend long conferences in other states, but they usually told her well in advance and certainly never announced their absence by way of a note before. It was possible that they had told her before they moved or perhaps they had mentioned it the previous night. After all, she still wasn’t sure about what had actually happened, but she planned on getting some answers later in the day.
She threw a couple of Pop Tarts into the toaster and got dressed. After breakfast, it was still too early to call her friends and none of the shops would be open yet, so she went back up to her room, intending to read for a few hours to kill some time. As she scanned her bookshelf, she noticed that something was amiss. All six of the Light Guardian books were missing. Nothing else had been disturbed. In fact, after looking closely at her collection, it almost seemed as if they had never been there at all. The space she had made for them still held another series that she definitely remembered moving to the closet.
“I’m not going crazy, I’m not…” she muttered as she booted up her computer. But as she searched the internet, her stomach twisted into knots. She could find no evidence that the Light Guardian series ever existed, nor did a search for the name Vera Rimmiri pull up any results. She tried Miriam River next, but the only entries were related to the Twisted Rivers bookstore. With her heart pounding, Renee shut down the computer, grabbed her house keys, and ran downtown, determined to prove that she wasn’t losing her mind.
The bookstore wouldn’t open for another hour, but as Renee looked at the display in the window, her heart sank. Previously, most of the display had been taken up by the latest science fiction and fantasy bestsellers, including the Light Guardian series. Today, a boring wooden shelf held the latest bestsellers from political pundits, self-help gurus, and nature enthusiasts. There was no fiction at all, let alone genre fiction. Considering that Sage had told her genre fiction was the reason that his mother opened the store in the first place, it seemed very strange not to display any in the window. Still, Renee rationalized that perhaps Miriam River was pushing these books because they didn’t move as quickly as the other offerings.
She decided to go to the Latte Loft. If ever she was in need of a sugary caffeinated drink, it was today. But as she crossed the square, Renee stopped short and had to find a bench to sit on. She was going mad. That was the only explanation for what she was seeing. Instead of a nondescript door tucked between the hardware store and a law office, a giant green and white Starbucks sign loomed over a glass and steel storefront, looking incredibly out of place next to the restored historic aesthetic of the rest of the square. Through the window, nearly hidden by row upon row of people in overpriced headphones staring blankly at even more overpriced laptops, she spotted Autumn and Josh.
Determined to get some answers, Renee stood up, took a deep breath, and went inside. Like everyone else, Autumn and Josh were glued to their computer screens. Neither noticed as she approached.
“Hey,” she said, cringing at the noisy screech the chair’s feet made on the tile floor as she sat down.
“Sup,” Autumn muttered, not even looking up from her screen. Josh only lifted his head briefly in acknowledgement. This too was odd. Like most people her age, Renee and her friends were pretty addicted to social media and new tech, but they weren’t in the habit of outright ignoring each other, despite what most adults thought.
“So, what’s up with the bookstore? Why did your mom change the display?”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s nothing but nonfiction. What happened to all of the fantasy books?”
Autumn glanced at her as if she was crazy. “We don’t sell any of that crap. Are you feeling okay?”
Renee’s heart started pounding. She was definitely losing her mind.
“What about the books that Sage recommended to me?” she asked.
“What did you say?” Autumn’s eyes snapped up from her screen at last and she looked at Renee in horror.
“The Light Guardian books? Sage, your brother, said they’re your biggest seller.”
“What is wrong with you? Why would you even say that, especially today?” Autumn stood abruptly and glared at Renee. She looked like she was about to cry.
“Why?” Renee asked. “What’s today?”
“You… you bitch!” Autumn sobbed and ran off to the bathroom. Renee turned to Josh for an explanation, but he just gave her a dirty look.
“Dude, not cool. Seriously, why did you say that?”
“Say what? I don’t even know what…”
Renee’s words died in her throat as her eyes fell on the laptop screen that Autumn had left open. It was Sage’s Facebook page. She recognized it easily because she had been to it many times in the past week, b
ut like everything else, something was very wrong. The page had been memorialized. Dozens of posts from friends and family expressed pain and sorrow over the loss of one so young, with such a bright future. Renee looked at the dates. Today was the one-year anniversary of Sage’s death. According to the post at the top of the page, he had fallen from the observation deck at the lighthouse when the railing collapsed.
Renee stared at the page in horror. “How…” she was at a loss as to what to say.
“I think you should just leave,” Josh told her.
Renee squeezed her eyes shut against the pounding headache that was coming on. “Yeah, you’re right. I’ll just…” she trailed off, stammering awkwardly as she turned around and ran out the door.
Outside, she didn’t stop running. She turned away from the water, heading out of town and into the woods, as if physical distance would help her make sense of everything that had happened. Branches whipped at her face, arms, and legs, but she didn’t stop. She was completely numb. Maybe that crazy guy, Blake, had been right. Maybe this was all in her head.
She ran for several miles. Eventually the woods gave way to a suburban neighborhood. Renee had no idea where she was and she didn’t care. She ran several blocks until she came to a busy intersection. Across the road was a large chain supermarket. It was the same supermarket her family used to shop at in New Mexico. When the light changed, she began to cross, but the sound of a roaring engine caused her to look up. She jumped back onto the sidewalk just in time to avoid being splattered across the pavement by a green SUV that had run the red light. As she watched it fishtail around the corner, something in Renee’s memory broke open and she collapsed onto the sidewalk as the terrible memories flooded her mind.
It was Christmas Eve. Renee and her mother had been baking all day in preparation for her relatives, who would be coming for dinner the next day. At nine o’clock, they realized that they had used all of the butter in the house, leaving them none to set out on the table. Renee offered to go to the store to buy some more, but her mother didn’t want her to go alone. She had only gotten her license a few months earlier and had barely driven at night. As a compromise, Renee was allowed to drive, but her mother went along as well.