Love Me to Death

by Maggie Shayne

  She moved her lips, because her arms and legs would no longer cooperate. She thought she could manage, perhaps, to scream for help—and she did, as loudly as she could with a voice gone hoarse. The sound was so loud and so real and so foreign to her own ears that it shocked her wide-awake.

  Lifting her head, blinking the room into focus, Sara Jensen saw two sets of wide eyes fixed on her. Her roommates looked more than worried. They looked scared.

  Nikki was closest, already coming closer, frowning, feeling for the pulse in her wrist.

  “I’m fine,” Sara said, and tried to pull her arm free.

  “Yeah, and I’m an R.N., so shut up.”

  “It was just a bad dream.”

  “You were screaming, Sara.” Nikki dropped her wrist and touched her forehead. She would be going for her bag next. “Not to mention you’re soaked in sweat, shaking all over and your heart’s running at about two-ten.”

  “It’s the fifth time this week, Nikki,” Cami said. “I’ve been worried sick about her.”

  “Fifth time?” Now Nikki really looked worried. She tilted her head, studied Sara in an intense way that made her want to squirm. “Why didn’t one of you tell me? I mean, I only moved in yesterday, but still—”

  “I was hoping it would go away,” Cami said. “And…I didn’t want you to change your mind about taking the room.”

  “You think I’m that hard-hearted?”

  Cami shrugged.

  “And you, Sara? Why didn’t you say something?”

  Sara shook her head. “I don’t like discussing it. It’s my problem, I’ll deal with it.”

  Nikki sighed. “It’s probably stress-induced. Stress will wreak havoc on your entire body, you know. And with stuff like that, not talking about it tends to just let it keep building.”

  Sara nodded as if in full agreement, but she didn’t really think so. There wasn’t any unusual amount of stress in her life. She was teaching art to elementary students and loved her job. She was painting—and even if the images were troubling, they were good. And yet she felt nervous, jumpy, as if something was wrong, but it was something too elusive to see or understand.

  “So what’s the dream about?” Nikki asked. “Is it the same one every time?”

  Even as Sara began to nod, Cami jumped in. “She’s trapped in a fire, unable to breathe or see or find her way out.”

  Nikki frowned. “And that’s it?”

  “That’s it,” Cami said. “Except that this time she screamed a name, instead of just a…well, a scream.”

  Sara looked at Cami, licked her lips. “I screamed a name?”

  Cami nodded. “David.” And she watched Sara’s face. “That name mean anything to you?”

  A chill moved through her, but she tried to ignore it. “Hell, I probably know a dozen Davids. None of them well enough to have me shouting their names in my sleep, though.”

  “So, tell me more,” Nikki said. “What kind of place are you in? What do you see and hear—”

  “Wait, wait, you can see for yourself.” Cami bounced off the bed and crossed Sara’s bedroom to where her paintings stood, covered in white sheets. One was on a tripod, and the others leaned up against the wall. Sara sighed and pushed her dark hair off her face. She had a headache.

  One by one, and with great care, the petite redhead pulled the sheets off the canvases, revealing the paintings. One was of a big old house that appeared on the verge of falling down. It had rounded balconies outside several of the second-floor rooms, and a rounded front porch to match. There was a turret of sorts, with a cone-shaped peak on top.

  The others in the series were the same, but each showed the house during a different season. The giant maple in the front lawn went from red buds and tiny leaves to full lush foliage to the scarlet and orange transformation of autumn.

  “And then the new one. It’s the worst,” Cami said. Sara sent her a look and she returned a sheepish smile. “I mean, the scariest and most horrifying. They’re good, they’re all good. Just awful, you know?”

  “I’m glad you’re not an art critic, Cam. I don’t think ‘good but awful’ would help me sell anything.”

  “Oh, Sara, you know I love your work.”

  Nikki was staring at the latest canvas as if mesmerized. The newest painting showed the house in flames, and a hazy face in an upstairs window. There were shadows on the snow-covered ground outside. As if people were standing out there, watching the place burn.

  “Hey, Nurse Nikki,” Sara said, trying to feign a casual tone, even though she was far from feeling okay. “You think you’re going to come up with a diagnosis if you stare at that thing long enough?”

  “It’s the old Muller House,” she said.

  Sara felt her body shudder in involuntary reaction. The ripple of it rushed up her spine at the words, but she didn’t know why. “It’s not a real place, Nik. It’s just made up.”

  Nikki turned to her. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No.”

  “No, you had to have seen it. Maybe when you were a kid or something. It’s a real place—hell, I used to walk past it every day on my way to school. It’s all new and nice now, but it’s really old. And you’ve captured it, right down to that big maple tree on the front lawn.”

  Sara got out of bed and moved toward the painting. “I’m sure I made it up. Maybe it’s just similar.”

  “You’re from Maine, right?” Cami asked Nikki. “Is that where it is?”

  “Yeah. Port Lucinda. It’s a small town on the coast.” She looked at Sara. “Have you ever been there, Sara?”

  “No. Never. It has to be a coincidence.”

  Nikki lowered her head, paced away from them. “Don’t freak out on me, okay? But, um…that place is kind of famous in my hometown. They don’t call it the old Muller House anymore. It’s Sierra House now. A crisis center for teens.”

  Sara blinked and looked at her. “Sierra House.”

  Nikki put a hand on her shoulder. “There was a fire, I don’t know, some twenty-odd years ago. A girl was killed. She was a runaway or something. The town restored the place and named it in her memory.”

  “Oh my God,” Cami whispered.

  But Sara was shaking her head. “It’s not the same place. It’s not, how could it be?”

  “Sara,” Nikki said, “I would tend to agree with you, but…there were five teenage boys sent to juvie for starting that fire. My mother grew up there. She knew them, used to talk about it all the time. How horrible it was that they did what they did, how no one knew the girl was inside and how those boys would have to live with that for the rest of their lives. Five boys, Sara. And look, look what you painted here.”

  Cami moved closer, tilting her head as she stared at the painting. Then she gasped, clapped a hand over her mouth.

  Sara looked, too, at the shadows on the snowy ground. Five of them. Five shadows. She frowned, looked from Cami to Nikki and back again. And she knew she had to go to Port Lucinda. She had to see that place, uncover the story, for herself. She had to prove to herself that it wasn’t the same house, that this was all just coincidence.

  Because if it wasn’t, then she didn’t know what it was. She didn’t know what it could mean. She didn’t know why it gave her a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  * * *

  SHE LEFT THAT VERY AFTERNOON—with a lot of help from Nikki, her brand new roommate and fast friend. Nikki had given her a set of keys to her mother’s house in Port Lucinda, and told her to make herself at home there. Her parents were on vacation, and she’d phoned to ask if she could use the house for a few nights in their absence.

  It wasn’t entirely honest, Sara thought. Nikki didn’t want to use the place herself—oh, she and Cami both would have come with her, if they could. But she was the only one with a pile of unused sick days at her disposal. Nikki’s job as a nurse at the Trauma Center was as new as her room in their apartment, so she couldn’t very well ask for time off. And Cami was in great demand, as w
ell. She was one of three chefs at Denton, New Hampshire’s classiest restaurant. One of the few female chefs they’d ever had, and the youngest of either gender. She had a lot to prove to the owners of Tastebud. And so far, she was knocking them dead.

  Both of Sara’s roommates wanted her to wait until they had time to come along. Both of them promised to join her in Port Lucinda if she hadn’t returned by mid-week, when they both had days off. Both insisted she stay in near-constant contact by phone. And both were worried to death.

  Those things they had in common. But they were on complete opposite sides in their opinions about Sara’s symptoms. Nikki was convinced it was stress combined with having heard, and then buried deeply in her subconscious mind, the story about the Muller House tragedy. Maybe she identified with something about the victim, Sierra Terrence. It was certainly either that, Nikki opined, or a brain tumor.

  Cami was convinced it was something far different. The ghost of Sierra, haunting Sara’s dreams, trying to get a message through to the living, through her. When asked why a dead girl from Maine would choose Sara to dump her problems on, Cami hypothesized that maybe Sara was the only one the dead girl could reach. Maybe she’d tried with others. Maybe she even nudged Nikki to come live here, so that Sara would find out about the real location of the house. She had a mission to accomplish here, Cami insisted. And the ghost wouldn’t leave her alone until it was done. Just like on Ghost Whisperer, or Medium.

  Cami’s theories made Nikki angry. Nikki’s skepticism made Cami crazy. And all in all, Sara thought Port Lucinda, Maine, was going to be a peaceful haven from the friction at home, even if it were entirely populated by ghosts with unfinished business.

  She drove her canary-yellow VW Bug to the address Nikki had supplied without a hint of trouble thanks to her handy little GPS system, its confident, computerized voice (she’d chosen the female version) guiding her right to the front door with a nearly cheerful-sounding, “You have reached your destination.”

  She reached up and shut it off. “Thanks, Jane-Jane.” The house was gorgeous, a great big rectangle with a covered front porch, a wide, paved driveway and an attached two-car garage with room for an apartment above it. The lamps that flanked the entryway looked like a pair of old-fashioned carriage lamps, she thought.

  She took out her key and opened the door, feeling as if she were intruding, and yet not. She hadn’t driven into the village of Port Lucinda yet. This house was on the outskirts, and she’d reached it first and felt inclined to establish a home base before braving the next step on her journey of discovery, as she was calling this mad trip—even while knowing there was likely not going to be a damned thing to discover. She would feel silly for driving all the way up here by this time tomorrow. She would feel ridiculous.

  But tonight, she felt afraid. And not quite ready.

  And her cell phone was ringing already.

  Thinning her lips, she toed off her shoes and left them near the front door, then answered the phone while walking slowly through the house and looking around.

  “Are you there yet?” Nikki asked.

  “I just walked in the front door. You’re psychic.”

  “Don’t talk like Cami. Listen, go into the living room.”

  “Nik, I’m tired. I’m hungry and I need to use the bathroom. Could you maybe chill, and let me call you back in a half hour?”

  “No, but this will only take a minute. I’ve got something for you.”

  Sara closed her eyes and sighed, but walked through a wide hall that emptied into a big living room with outdated, but spotless, furniture in powder blue.

  “Go to the bookshelf,” Nikki said. “See it?”

  “Mmm-hmm.” She crossed that plush cushy carpet to the bookshelf—built-in, floor to ceiling, five shelves and the length of the entire wall. There had to be a couple of hundred volumes there. “What am I looking for?”

  “Mom’s high school yearbooks. Should be on the bottom, toward the right.”

  Sara traced the spines with her eyes and spotted Memories on a handful of slender volumes, each one with a year after the word. “I see them,” she said.

  “Good, grab the one from 1988. The boys who set that fire are part of the sophomore class that year. Mom was a senior. She gave me their names, said everyone knew, even though they were too young for the press to make them public. It’s a small town. And best of all, she said one of them still lives there.”

  Sara pulled the book from the shelf, then walked to an overstuffed blue chair. She leaned over to turn on a lamp before sinking nearly out of sight in the soft, snuggly seat. “So I’m looking for sophomores?” she asked as she opened the book. But she didn’t hear the answer, because she’d frozen on the very first page. “Oh my God. Oh my God. Jesus, Nikki, what the hell?”

  “What? Honey, what’s wrong? What’s going on?”

  Sara could barely see now for the tears that had flooded her eyes. The very first leaf of the yearbook sported a full-page photo of a dark-haired teenage girl, obviously of mixed heritage, with bronze skin, like her own. She had very large, dark brown eyes that looked as if they were lined with kohl, and thick black lashes, just like her own. She had long, perfectly straight, perfectly black, shiny hair, just like her own.

  In fact, she looked enough like Sara to have been her own sister. Maybe even a twin sister.

  It took her several moments to realize that Nikki was shouting at her from the telephone, which had apparently fallen from her numb hands into her lap. Shaking herself, Sara picked it up. “First page of the yearbook, Nikki. It’s a photo of…her. It reads, ‘In Loving Memory of Sierra Terrence.’”

  “Oh! Is that all? God, I was scared. So, what’s she look like?”

  Sara took a slow breath. “She looks like me. She looks…just like me.” God, she didn’t need this. Not now, when all she’d wanted was to rest, regroup, prepare. And now this? Hell.

  “What am I supposed to think about all this, Nikki?”

  “I don’t know. I just…I don’t know. Worse, I don’t even want to think about what Cami’s going to make of this latest revelation.”

  “Maybe…maybe she has a point.”

  “I never heard of a ghost that could make you look like an old photo of her,” Nikki said. “Look, why don’t you just lay low at my mom’s for a few days. I’ll come out Wednesday and we’ll dig into this then.”

  Sara drew in another breath, closed her eyes slowly. “I’ll think about it. But first, why don’t you give me those boys’ names so I can look at their photos. And then I promise, I’m going to get some food and some sleep before I do another thing.”

  “I have your word on it?”

  “Yes, you do. I’m beat, and I can’t take any more shocks tonight.” She cast her eyes around the room in search of a pen, and not seeing one, opened the drawer in the end table and smiled at the accuracy of her guess. A pen and pad lay in wait. She took them out. “Go ahead with those names.”

  She proceeded to write them down as Nikki recited them to her.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  SARA DIDN’T KEEP THE PROMISE she’d made to her roommate.

  She tried, she really did. She put her things in Nikki’s old bedroom, which was right where Nikki had told her it would be. But not exactly the way Nikki had told her it would be. She’d said it would be exactly as she had left it. Purple paint on the walls. Cheerleading uniform hanging on the outside of the closet door, flanked by pompoms, boy band posters everywhere and her orange beanbag chair underneath the window.

  It wasn’t. It was a charming, neat-as-a-pin guest room. The walls were pale blue, to match the blue and yellow pattern of the curtains and bedspread. The colonial-style four-poster bed, matching dresser and nightstand all looked like a deep cherrywood, and all of the drawers were empty, as if awaiting guests.

  She smiled and decided Nikki’s parents were dealing far better with her being away from home than she thought they were. Far better.

  She left her two bags, one bi
g, one small, on the bed, and headed back downstairs to find something to eat. The fridge was fairly empty, as she’d expected. People didn’t leave perishable stuff around when they went on vacation. But the freezer was well-stocked, and the cupboards were, too. She settled on a personal-size frozen pizza, popping it into the microwave. Some juice, with ice, because it hadn’t been refrigerated, and she’d be good to go.

  To sleep. She thought.

  But she didn’t go to sleep. She couldn’t sleep. She tossed and turned in the quiet guest room. It drove her crazy, being so close to the town that held all the answers. Why sleep and wait? Why risk the repetitive dream of dying in a fire, returning to torment her yet again?

  Or the other dream, the one she hadn’t told her friends about.

  The one where she was in the arms of a beautiful man—a man she’d never seen before. And loving him with everything in her. The emotion of it had come through her so powerfully that it felt as if it remained there, heavy on her chest, for the entire next day. And for a week now, she’d felt on the verge of weeping for a man who wasn’t even real.

  Indeed, why sleep and risk another dream?

  Sitting up in the bed, she opened the yearbook, careful to avoid the page where her own face seemed to stare back at her. Instead, she flipped to the pages she’d marked, where the sophomore class were in a big group shot up top, and then in individual headshots below and on the facing page. For the tenth time that night, she skimmed those faces, dragging her forefinger over them and pausing on each of the ones whose names she’d written down.

  She wondered if she would have been able to pick them out without the names. When she heard them, they hadn’t seemed any more familiar than their faces. She’d felt that odd chill up her spine only once—and she felt it again now, when her finger and her gaze came to rest on David Nichols.