by Angel Lawson
“Didn’t you ask me to keep an eye on your sister?”
“Yeah, but—”
“But nothing. Those two aren’t going on a walk. Faye was hiding something behind her back and Memory? Well, let’s just say I can smell trouble and she reeks.”
Julian stares at me as I walk away. I didn’t ask for the job of stalking Memory, but I can’t deny I’m suspicious anyway. Not to mention I kind of just like watching her tromp around campus in her silly shoes and short shorts. Even if I have no plans to ever touch that again, I can still look at her ass.
Faye’s excited rambles are only murmurs at this distance, though I have to fight to keep my laughter at Memory’s posture, the way she shrugs her shoulders and her head tilts in obvious confusion. I’m sure I seemed just as baffled, yesterday. I’ve never met anyone like Faye before. Blunt and self assured, she’s probably the smartest chick I’ve ever met. Cute, like a rebellious china doll, though not my type.
My type is taller. And wears clothes like a pin-up-girl and walked as high above the ground as she could get, and looked like she wanted to puke after I kissed her.
The girls prowl up to the chapel, though I don’t get why they’d have to keep follow-up on the project a big secret. Faye points at the front door, but they keep moving, to the path that curls around the building. I wonder if she’s got it in her mind to break into the basement without me, but then they’re beyond it.
Careful to stay in the shade and avoiding the twigs that will make noise underfoot,
I tail them around the building. It’s just as empty as yesterday, undisturbed but for the grass trampled under the back windows. I drop my bag on the ground, kneel at my shoe as if I’m tying it, and scan the scenery behind me for spectators. No one is watching me or the girls as they walk to the far gate. In fact, no one is around other than some kids with a Frisbee in the upper field, beyond the tree break.
I try the window. It’s loose, but still locked; there is no way they’ve had time to get inside and then re-lock the window back before I caught up to them. I snag the dean’s letter opener from my camera bag, and slip it into the space between the window frame and the building. It only takes a second of wedging the metal around in the gap, and I pop the window open, breaking the century-old lock. Cold, dusty air gusts from the cellar. I lean in, but can see nothing through the dark.
No way the girls went in there, not Cherry in her absurd heels, and neither with flashlights.
I pull back, muffle my cough in my elbow, and close the window.
Standing, I stash the knife and grab my camera, clicking a shot of the one that is unlocked. I scout the two tracks of footsteps disturbing the grass, curving around the edge of campus. I follow after them, holding the camera like I’m taking random shots of the scenery, but the Frisbee players pay no attention to me.
The girls are nowhere in sight.
“Where are you going, Cherry?” I mutter, but no-one answers, save for a bird, cawing into the distance. I glance down at my camera, and stop. I frown, adjust the viewfinder and look through it again.
A house stares back at me, tumbledown green, with paint peeling off black shutters, and a sorry looking potted plant on the stoop. I lower the camera, look at the Frisbee kids, the chapel in the trees, the trod-on grass leading through the back gate of the campus, but there are no houses in view.
Still walking as casually as I can, I turn the camera off, and adjust the settings. I scan through the images saved to the card. The last one I took was of the window by the basement door of the stone church. I pass the sleeping guard and ease through the open gate, spinning once around to look behind me. The wooden striped bar doesn’t slam down with an alarm, and the fence doesn’t roll in on its motored wheels. There’s no electric or barbed wire at the top.
My heart is beating heavy against my ribs. I look at the outside world, the trees that go forever, the horizon behind them, easy hills. Freedom.
I step to the left, but Memory’s voice calls to someone, from the other direction. Digging in my bag, I duck into the shadow of a low branched tree and find the zoom, twisting off my usual and mount the larger lens. I hold it up, pan to the right. “Where are you?” I whisper.
There’s a sofa on the view screen. A couch with ivy fabric cushions, against a shadowed wall with scribble print wallpaper. I’m looking at someone’s living room, someone with butt-ugly furniture.
I lower the Nikon. In front of me is a narrow street, one lane, curving through the sparse trees. I raise the camera, focus again. This time I see the houses at the end of the street. In the distance a figure is walking away, a brown paper bag under one arm. I take a picture, look back at the saved images, but see no house, or couch. Only a guy with groceries.
One of the Frisbee kids shouts at another, or maybe it’s the bird cawing again. I look back at the gate, take a deep breath. “Sorry, Mary,” I say under my breath, as I break every rule handed down from Zoe, Dean Burnett, and several family court judges. “Extenuating circumstances.”
I walk down the street, one foot in front of the other. No one is watching me. My chest is still pounding, and I take huge strides, fast. I come to the end, and the scattering of houses, old nice ones, all well-kept and maintained—except one. It’s green, with black shutters and sulking plants in orange clay pots.
My stomach ties a square-knot and I know without a doubt the girls are in this one, the one I’d seen in my camera, though I shouldn’t have. Of course they couldn’t have picked the nice, freshly painted yellow one, or the one on the left with the tricycle in the front. I stand at the little fence and sure enough, the grass to the door is marred, pushed down by useless sparkly platforms and a tiny pair of witch boots.
I unlatch the gate and walk to the door, only pausing for a second to knock on the torn screen door. The interior door is open and the heat from inside the house is harsh and ripe, the opposite of the air in the chapel basement. No one responds to my knock. “Cherry? Faye?” I call. “Dammit.”
I’m not breaking, I tell Mary. I’m only entering. And we need to get my camera looked at, too, please.
“Hello,” I say louder, pulling back the screen door. The springs protest with a loud creak. I hear a muffled thump and a small Faye-voiced-squeak, but then my mouth goes bone-whisper dry. I’m staring at a small living room, with scribbled wallpaper, shadows drifting over a hideous couch with ivy print on the cushions.
Shit. My mouth forms the word, but no sound comes out.
“Ethan?”
Relief washes over me. “Cherry. What are you doing here?”
“Come in here.” She waves from a hallway, pointing into another room.
I walk past the sofa. She takes my hand, tugs me deeper into the house. Her fingers are tight on mine. “What is going on?” I ask Faye.
The tiny girl’s mouth is open, lips in a perfect circle, eyes midnight dark. “Take pictures,” she breathes.
“There’s something wrong with my camera,” I say, but I fumble in my bag, and snap a one handed shot of Memory’s fingers, still clutching my wrist. I check the saved data. An image of a pale slender hand, with black glittery nail polish, grasping tanned, rough skin. Back one is a long shot of a street, and before that, a chapel window. No green houses, no sofas. I change the lenses out again.
“Is it working?” Memory asks. I nod, and stare around the room. “We came looking for Sonja and found all this.” She points to a tall antique shelf filled with tiny figures. “Make sure you get pictures of that corner.”
“And the paintings,” Faye directs, her nose an inch from one on the wall, like she’s reading the scribbly paper that covers the room.
“Is this her house?” I ask.
“Yeah. I’ll explain in a minute. Just take the pictures so we can get out of here before the guard wakes up.” Memory places a package on the dining room table and ducks from the room. “I’ll be right back.”
I watch her leave. “We need to go. We shouldn’t be here.”
/> “Five minutes,” she calls back. “Less. Three.”
“What’s in the package?” I ask Faye. It has Sonja’s name on it and a dorm address.
“That’s why we came. To bring it to her.”
“Did you open it?”
“Oh, no. Opening someone else’s mail is a felony.”
She’s eager to trespass on private property, but wouldn’t open someone’s mail? I’d be amused if I weren’t so nervous. I lift my camera and start taking photos of the paintings and wallpaper, the gold dusty mirror hanging over the fireplace. I snap pictures of each shelf in the china cabinet, the embroidery on the footstool in front of a plush chair. I take pictures of everything and when I’m done I call to both girls, stashing the package to Sonja in my camera bag.
We scan the street before we leave, and pull the door closed behind us. Faye darts off the steps, to a tall plant that grows off the porch, and wrenches a yellow flower cluster from the top.
“What are you doing?” Memory hisses.
“It’s tansy. A natural bug repellent. Good against bees.”
Cherry groans and grabs Faye by her sweater sleeve, hauling her to the sidewalk. The girls run. I jog behind, and stop short when Faye does, nearly mowing down Memory. I catch her before she topples, arm around her waist. “Dammit!” she hisses.
The guard is up and awake, talking to someone.
“What do we do?” Faye whispers.
The rent-a-cop points up toward campus, and then steps out, gesturing up the hill while a tall skinny dark haired boy in glasses nods and points to his phone. Julian takes a few steps from the shack, and the man follows him, his back to us.
“Go,” I say, and Memory snatches the shoes from her feet and dashes past the gate. Faye flies behind her. I stride past as Julian’s words trail behind us, up the hill. “…just wondering if there were any local legends of the area, or old local landmarks that…”
We’re back on campus. The Frisbee players are gone. The girls stop to breathe in the shade near the chapel. Julian is still talking to the guard.
“What was all that about?” I wipe the sweat off my face with my t-shirt. Memory says nothing. She’s staring at my bare stomach, and I’m pinned still by the look on her face.
“We have to show Julian the pictures. He’s not going to believe it!” Faye says, peeling off a sweater and tying it around her waist. She bounces in her shoes. “Why would Sonja have all that in her house?”
Memory looks away, brushes her hair from her face. A few sweaty strands curl at her ears, the nape of her neck. “I think we need to figure that out. Come on, let’s wait for my brother inside.”
I look behind me at the gate that I’ve just walked back through on my own volition, and then keep following her.
*
The girls walk straight to my dorm room, only stopping to let me enter the code on the security door. We take the stairs in silence, and I unlock the door. Once we’re inside, Faye bursts out in wild giggles, and flops down on Julian’s bed. “Oh my god, that was crazy. Maybe the craziest thing I’ve ever done.”
Cherry and I share amused glances, the first she’s met my eyes since I kissed her and got the mental whiplash of my life. I sit on my bed, giving her room, but she moves to the mini fridge and passes out Julian’s sodas, one to each of us.
Julian bangs the door open less than a minute later. “You owe me. Seriously. What the hell were you thinking?” he yells at Memory, and then shuts up tight when his eyes land on Faye on his bed.
The girls look at me and I shrug. “You start. I have no idea what is going on.”
Cherry rubs the ink on the inside of her wrist. “Sonja received a package. It was in our room. But she lives nearby, so Faye and I decided to take it back to her mom’s house, and find out where she was.”
“You just decided to walk off campus?”
She scrunches her nose. “No, we skipped like school girls. Yes, we found her house. And we went in.”
“Was she there?” Julian asks.
“No one was,” I say.
“We totally broke in!” Faye kicks her feet in the air. “It was awesome!”
“What?” Julian glares at me.
“The door wasn’t locked and no one was home,” his sister says. “I just wanted to see what was going on and where Sonja went. You have to admit, Jules, it’s weird that she never showed up. And she hasn’t posted anything on-line either, not since the first day of camp.”
He sits own at his desk chair. “Did you find anything?”
“Yeah. Her mom, or whoever, has an entire room dedicated to crows.” Memory smirks as his eyebrows rise to his gelled hair. “Paintings and wall paper and little trinkets all over the place. Ethan has pictures.”
“Yeah, I hope they come out right. Let me check them out and send them to everyone. My camera’s being funky.” I say.
“Why were you following us, anyway?” Memory asks.
“Because I knew you were up to something. Good thing, too, or you two would probably still be in there.” I turn to her brother. “And thank you, man. That was good work with the guard.”
“Did you find anything else?” Julian asks. He’s still pissed.
“I went in Sonja’s room while Ethan took the pictures. She has definitely gone somewhere else. No laptop on the desk, the bed was made but the pillows were gone, and her bathroom had no personal products in it anywhere,” Memory says, sharing a glance with Faye.
“Okay,” I say. “So the house is weird. And since we’ve had this crow project it seems like all we can see is black birds. But let’s just cool down a minute. Maybe it’s just us thinking about them. Like wanting a certain kind of car and suddenly seeing it on the road everywhere. Or wishing for a pair of shoes and everyone has them but you.”
Memory and Julian are the ones exchanging looks now, and there’s a weird tension in the air. Faye unwinds the sweater from her waist, pushes her arms through the sleeves, looking at no one.
“Couldn’t this be a coincidence? Maybe Dr. Anders wanted Sonja in our group knowing her interest in crows.” I expect Julian to agree with me but when I look to him for support I see him give her the slightest nod. “What?”
“Julian and I have something we should probably tell you both,” she says.
That tight feeling twists in my stomach again, as I wait for her to speak.
12.
Marks
I spin my little silver mood ring around on my finger, stalling, and then take a deep breath. “There’s something you should know. About my brother and me. We’ve never told anyone. I didn’t think I needed to bring it up before, but now...”
A foot comes down on mine, light pressure on my toes. Julian says, “Just tell them, Mems.”
“You know those stories of twins having a connection? Like psychically?” I look at my brother, who is staring back, face calm, the strong one for once. “Julian and I share dreams.”
“Dreams, like what you hope to accomplish someday or what you have at night when you sleep?” Faye asks.
I shake my head. “The things at night.”
“Those nightmares?” she asks.
Julian and I both nod. “Right. Those,” he says. “Since we were kids we’ve had these cross-over dreams. Me in her head or her in mine.”
Ethan is silent, looking from Julian to me with raised eyebrows. He folds his arms over his chest, leans his back against the wall.
“We can prove it,” I say, hoping my face isn’t red.
Julian nods, reaches for his laptop bag, slides out the spiral notebook from the flap pocket. He ignores my less than subtle head shake, and says, “Show them last March.”
“Oh.” I swallow down my relief. “That one was kind of neat.” I rummage in my purse for the little sketchbook, rifling through the pages to a quick drawing of a black bird, sitting on the wrist of a woman. A heavy ring wraps one of her fingers, with a gem in a setting shaped like an eye. She holds a feather.
Julian reads alo
ud. “March fourth. We aren’t the crow this time, we are behind the weird woman, watching as she plucks a feather out of the sky. She has a ring with a yellow stone. She calls the bird to her, but the feather belongs to another crow, not that one.”
“I take it you don’t discuss them until you document them?” Ethan asks. He is still, staring at my drawing, and I look away before he raises his eyes.
“Yeah.” Julian says. “It’s the only way to prove that we’re not making it up.”
“Every night?” Faye asks again.
“No,” I say. “Just occasionally, but the theme is always the same.”
Faye leans forward, wraps her sweater tighter. “Birds.”
“Yeah. Crows. Ravens. They’re black and sometimes I am the bird and other times I’m watching the bird. Or birds. There can be more than one, sometimes a whole flock or whatever.”
“A murder,” Ethan says. “A flock of crows is called a murder.”
Julian rolls his eyes. “Thanks, Einstein. Everyone knows that. So, yeah, Memory has been obsessed with crows since birth.”
“It’s not an obsession, Jules.”
He grabs my wrist and flips it over. “Explain that.”
“It’s a tattoo.” I snatch my arm back, covering the ink with my hand. “One of several.”
“What does it say?” Faye asks.
I offer her my arm. “Alis Volat Propriis.”
“She flies with her own wings.”
We all turn as one to face Ethan. Julian says it first. “You know Latin?”
“I had to take a language in school, like everyone else.” He shrugs. “The teacher was hot. But big deal. You have dreams about crows and a vague tattoo. I’d hardly call that a conspiracy theory or a cosmic disturbance.”
“Call it what you like, but there has to be a reason Sonja lives in a monument to the same thing that has haunted me for years.” The mood ring is pale green at the moment. I turn it to the inside of my hand, and curl my fingers into my palm.
“What about you?” Ethan eyeballs Julian, like he’s looking for tattoos, or signs of a disease.