by S. E. Amadis
Her tall, almost boyish figure that always stood out in a crowd. The deliberately casual jeans. The blazer that conferred a slightly stern, warlike aspect to her look. The timid smile that suddenly flitted across her tense face, softening it.
She melted into his arms, and for one long, immeasurable instant they were completely alone in the world. New York no longer existed. The snotty crowds were no longer present. There was only Jamie, and Carrie Anne.
The instant passed, and it was time to say good-bye. Jamie longed to grasp onto that instant, make time stand still and hold onto Carrie Anne forever. But he understood he had to let her go.
He turned away and bowed his head, not wanting people to realize that there were tears in his eyes. Be a man. Be macho. Isn’t that what they always say?
Carrie Anne apparently didn’t feel the need to be macho. She was crying openly as she walked away from Jamie. In spite of her tears, she squared her shoulders and didn’t look back. Jamie was reminded once again of how she could be all sweetness and light, candy canes and apple floss, when the occasion was right for it.
But she was also the same girl who had run the most prestigious boarding school in the country almost single-handedly for half a year. Who had conned the entire population at the school into believing that she was an unbendable, twenty-seven-year-old dictatorial disciplinarian. This was the girl who had taken up her own particular battle against a self-proclaimed shamanic master, and survived.
But now she was about to face the toughest battle yet. Would she make it, and come through victorious? Jamie almost didn’t dare breathe the answer.
*****
Brass Buttons was there again when I strode in, loitering behind his messy reception desk. He leapt to his feet and stood at attention like a recalcitrant soldier as soon as he saw me, smirking obsequiously. I remembered the last time we had met. He had literally called me a thief and a beggar, almost thrown me out on my heels. This time he didn’t dare make any objections to me. Apparently Charles Houghton had left strict instructions with him.
“Do you remember me?” I asked him coldly.
He only gulped and nodded, without a word.
“You can see, I was telling you the truth. It won’t ever occur to you again, will it, to keep me from entering my own home?”
He started trembling, and the brass buttons started shaking on his shoulders and clanging tinnily together. I derived what small satisfaction I could from this and strolled towards the elevators at the back of the spacious lobby.
The elevator dinged off every floor as it passed. My father lived on the top floor, but still, the ride went by much too quickly. Before I knew it, I was facing that unavoidable moment: the moment of meeting the man who was no longer my father again.
I gripped my suitcase so tightly I feared my knuckles would just tear right through my skin. To say I was terrified, petrified, would be the understatement of the year. My knees banged together so hard I wonder I didn’t just keel over. A cold, hard fish plopped down into the pit of my stomach and settled down as if it planned on spawning babies there. I raised my hand timidly to the doorbell, heaved the deepest breath that I could and rang.
I wasn’t surprised when a lovely young Latina I had never seen before opened the door. Of course. My father might have turned into the devil, but he was still going to want all the luxuries that came with privilege. A team of housekeepers. A butler. A personal assistant and why not, maybe even his own private chauffeur.
I told the strange lady who I was, and immediately she invited me in and ushered me into our living-room. I sat on the brand new cream-coloured sofa and stared distractedly at the corner near the fireplace, where we used to plant our Christmas tree every year. The thought brought back such memories, that I had to clamp down hard on them.
Sometimes, you needed to remember. But sometimes you could also remember too much.
My father pounced in through the doorway and stopped right dead centre in the doorframe, allowing the light to outline his silhouette dramatically. I studied his lean, athletic figure, with not an inch of flab on the well-toned paunch. Armani draped over his shoulders while Louis Vuitton graced his tootsies. My gaze travelled up to his face, and then I nearly tumbled forward to my knees in sorrow.
Because the face that I saw had nothing to do with the beloved countenance beaming kindness and love at me that I remembered from my fondest childhood memories. The once unblemished, fine-pored complexion had been replaced by about a hundred lines and wrinkles marking every bony curve of the facial structure. What people would once have praised as a healthy tan had degenerated into a patchy darkness punctuated by marked vitiligo. His eyes, sunken, held no light in them. Only evil and malice.
He grinned at me, and I noticed that almost all the yellowed teeth had somehow managed to grow into pointed canines.
“So, daughter, you deign to return to your paternal home,” he intoned with the voice of a robot.
Wordlessly, I gulped and nodded.
He clapped his hands and almost immediately, a tiny Puerto Rican with a limp materialized at his side.
“Ricardo, take Miss Houghton’s bag and bring it to my room,” he continued in the same emotionless voice.
The butler or personal assistant or whatever his role might be, bowed obsequiously, seized my suitcase with tremulous hands as if he feared it contained explosives and bore it away. My father stepped down the last few steps that separated the hallway from the living-room and he himself conducted a thorough search through my purse, as I had expected him to do.
He pawed through my papers, took a hold of my money and pocketed it avariciously and then fished out my phone.
“You won’t be needing this anymore, daughter,” he declaimed, sneering.
He smashed it against the floor with a vengeance, where it promptly shattered into smithereens, then completed the task by grinding his shiny Louis Vuittons into the few parts that remained intact.
After that he approached me, a snide smile crossing his face like a gash, and began to grope through my pockets shamelessly, his grasping fingertips lingering suggestively in the back pockets of my jeans. I let him do as he pleased, holding my breath lest he find the fake Carola Hochmeister documents and skeleton keys I had concealed in my inside pocket. But he only scanned his parchment-like hands through the most obvious pockets, which were empty.
At last, apparently satisfied, he shoved my purse into my arms and clapped his hands again. Once more, the limping Ricardo appeared at his feet.
“Take Miss Houghton to her bedroom and lock the door, Ricardo,” he ordered.
The joy I would have felt two years ago at finding myself back in my childhood room, surrounded by the familiar objects that I had loved, was shattered and watered by the circumstances I was in. Once I was sure I was alone, I threw myself onto my old bed and bawled for ages.
*
For several days I never set foot outside my bedroom. The room had a bathroom suite, and Ricardo brought me my meals on a tray. To my relief, at least my father passed on the idea of paying me visits to demonstrate false paternal affection. After that first day, I didn’t see him anymore and even though I was bored, at least he left me alone to do more or less as I pleased.
Ricardo brought me my suitcase, my father obviously having pawed through it to his heart’s content beforehand. Apparently he considered my personal effects acceptable, for I found nothing missing.
The first thing I did was to go through all my old, familiar childhood possessions. The objects that had been gifted to me with love. My memories from my visits to France and the Swiss Alps with my mother and my “real” father. The crystal ball with Schönnbrunn Castle from Vienna, floating in a mist of perpetual snow. My secret diaries, written in a childish hand where, in first grade, I’d confessed my intimate love for a boyfriend whose name I couldn’t even remember anymore.
I knew I would never be able to keep these items. I knew when I left here, I would never see them again. But I want
ed to hold them once more. Grasp them in my hands for old times’ sake. These were things that my mother had held once.
*
I longed to run out to a cyber and write to my friends. I longed for human contact. I missed their faces, the sound of their voices and the warmth of their arms around me: Garry, Jingles, Carola, Lucas and of course, my dear, darling, beloved Jamie.
I could have used my skeleton key to sneak out in the middle of the night while all the household slept, I supposed. Sought out one of those twenty-four hour places where you could write an email or even play video games at any time of the day or night. But I didn’t dare. I could almost swear I’d caught a glimpse of surveillance cameras, which didn’t use to be present, and I had no doubt my father would have planted audio transmitters in my room.
Thrown back onto my own devices, with nothing better to do the whole day long, I decided to spend my time reinforcing the skills I’d gained so painstakingly with Alejandro. I carried out his exercises for “seeing” the unseen and sensing using senses other than eyesight. I sat for hours on my bed and tried to establish telepathic contact with Jamie or my best friend, Carola. I wasn’t very successful, but somehow I knew that I would need these peculiar abilities one day soon.
I also scoured my room and the bathroom with care, checking even the tiniest corners, cracks and crevices to make sure there weren’t any hidden cameras there. I had to make sure my father never discovered my GPS trackers.
When planning our strategy, Jamie and I had decided that the best thing we could do was for me to hide two coin-sized GPS trackers on me, so Jamie would know where I was at every moment. I knew my father would keep me isolated, and I certainly couldn’t carry any obvious tracking devices with me. In the end we had decided on the two coin-sized GPS trackers. They could be recharged in perpetuity, because they possessed solar powered batteries.
I lay on the bed and deliberately flashed obscene gestures in the air, reasoning that if my father could see me, he wouldn’t be able to resist coming in to punish me. But after doing this for a while, nothing happened, and in the end I reached the conclusion that there were probably no cameras in my room.
I even sat on the toilet and flashed obscene gestures towards my father there. Once again, nothing happened, reassuring me that I could safely take my trackers out when I was in the bathroom, taking a shower or getting dressed there. The rest of the time I kept them on me, even when I slept. I took to sleeping with a bra on so I could hide both trackers between my breasts at night. During the day, I always took care to drop one into my shoe. I was never, ever, ever without them on me, since I was aware that my father could come in at any moment, without warning, and take me away someplace else.
*****
Jamie and Jingles tracked Carrie Anne’s GPS assiduously, Jamie on his phone and Jingles on her laptop. Jingles was the genius of the gang and a brilliant hacker.
For days the signal didn’t move and remained locked into place in Charles Houghton’s building. On the one hand, they hoped that that was reassuring and would mean that Carrie Anne was still in her father’s home. But on the other hand, it also made them a bit uneasy, since it could mean that her father had discovered them and taken them away from Carrie Anne.
“Let’s just hope it’s the first possibility,” Jingles muttered. “And now I’ve gotta get onto this research into those three girls that died. There’s gotta be something more to this. Something deeper. Who would want all these people dead? And why? That... thing... said that it wanted Carrie Anne because it considered Carrie Anne responsible for taking Patricia away from it. But why kill those other three girls? They were Patricia’s best friends.”
Jingles called up as much background information as she could possibly muster on all four girls. Gayle, Marie and Diana appeared to be from perfectly normal families with nothing unusual in them. They had hard-working, anonymous parents, lived in nice homes with maids and gardens and swimming pools, had been attending boarding school almost right from the beginning of their lives.
“Which boarding school did they go to?” asked Jamie, insatiably curious as always. “Did they go to the same school? When did they meet? There’s something we’re not getting.”
Jingles fiddled away a bit.
“That’s odd,” she said at last. “They did go to the same boarding school. One called Dorsey’s. It went out of business the same year Miss Havisham founded her school.”
Jingles stuck her favourite pen with the aquamarine peacock feathers into her mouth and frowned. She thumbed away.
“The records for Dorsey’s still exist, but they’ve been closed. I’ll try and hack into them.”
Jingles and Jamie, Jamie’s older brother, Garry, Carrie Anne’s best friend, Carola, and Jamie’s young son, Lucas, formed a team that, along with Carrie Anne herself, Jamie liked to dub The Famous Six. Their bonds had been forged after Carrie Anne and Jamie left Miss Havisham’s and Carrie Anne had been kidnapped by a madman named Howard Walsh. Under Jamie’s insistent urging, The Famous Six had followed Carrie Anne to Europe and wrangled her from Howard Walsh’s grasp there.
Now the group gathered around Jingles and her laptop, their interest roused. After a long space she smiled at them, triumphant.
“Gotcha!” she exclaimed in a huff. “There’s no record or computer in the world that can escape the far-reaching grasp of Jingles O’Connor, ha!”
She skimmed through the information she had just accessed.
“Mmmhh. Seems, even though they’re the same age as Patricia, they weren’t in the same class as her. Patricia was in Grade two-A while Gayle was in group B, and Marie and Diana were lumped together in C.” She glanced up at her friends. “Of course, from a dry, impersonal computer registry, it’s impossible to tell whether any of them were friends back then. But I think it’s most likely the students from different groups didn’t mix a lot. Or at least, not enough to form strong friendships.” She leaned back in her chair. “At least, that’s what happened at my school. But then, what do I know? I’ve been a geek since the first day of school. I don’t know a thing about normal friendships.”
She chuckled.
“Now I’m gonna get into Miss Havisham’s!” she cackled. “Wish me luck. I expect this to be much more difficult, haha.”
Once again, after a long period of trawling around, she came up with a list of dry facts.
“All four girls have been students at Miss Havisham’s since the year the school was founded,” she said, breathless. “In fact, given its close geographical location, Miss Havisham’s stepped in conveniently to fill the gap when Dorsey’s closed, and a large majority of Miss Havisham’s pupils the first year came out of Dorsey’s.” She typed some more. “From the very first year, the four girls were placed in the same class. Patricia also shared a dorm room with Marie, and Gayle and Diana were roomies.”
Jamie jabbed at her.
“Have a look, Jingles,” he cried excitedly. “Who did Carrie Anne share a room with? Come to think of it, she never told me, and I’m curious.”
Jingles grinned and tapped away.
“No one,” she said, shaking her head. “Daddy dearest paid for her to have her own private room.”
Everyone looked at each other.
“So, that means private rooms were available,” commented Carola. “So why didn’t Miss Havisham get one for her own daughter?”
Garry crowed.
“I’ll betcha anything darling Patricia had social probs,” he exclaimed. “And Mommy dearest was probably trying to help her get along and make friends by giving her a roomie.”
“Either that, or Patricia was already friends with Marie before they started at Miss Havisham’s,” suggested Jamie.
Jingles sucked on her pen.
“Well, this is all very well and nice,” she mused, “but it’s still not leading us anywhere. Something must have happened at Dorsey’s. Something they’re all trying very hard to cover up.”
Chapter 3
&n
bsp; My father arrived in my bedroom bright and early one morning, feigning a joviality he obviously didn’t feel. Armani had been replaced by Ralph Lauren, and sparkling trainers which he’d clearly never used before had taken the place of Louis Vuitton.
“Come, daughter, pack your bags,” he chirped succinctly. “We’re going for a long ride.”
I wasn’t surprised. I had been waiting for this moment, expecting it, dreading it. I knew this was the moment when he would take me far away from Jamie. I packed the same things I had brought here to begin with, leaving my childhood mementos behind. Within minutes I was ready, suitcase and purse in hand, GPS trackers tucked in their usual places, my fake Carola Hochmeister documents and skeleton keys cuddled snugly in their hidey place.
“I hope you remembered to include your passport,” my father admonished curtly.
I nodded, understanding the implications of this. I wondered where we were going.
Ricardo materialized by my side as if summoned by telepathy. His bony fingers quaked as he grabbed a hold of my suitcase and lugged it away. My father turned on his heels without a word and began striding down the hallway. I understood that I was to follow him, even though he hadn’t said anything to me.
A chauffeur picked us up in front of the building. I didn’t know when my father had acquired the red Ferrari we were about to climb into. Ricardo slid my suitcase into the trunk along with a set of monogrammed Ralph Lauren luggage that matched my father’s polo shirt. After that, he opened the door for my father. My father slipped into the back seat, carefully tracing his fingers over the pleats in his dress slacks. Ricardo then tugged on the back door on the opposite side, inviting me to glide in next to my father. I shrank back, preferring a thousand times over to sit next to the chauffeur in the front. Or anyplace else as long as it was as far away from my father as possible, for that matter. But I didn’t dare oppose my father.