Within These Walls

by Ania Ahlborn

  Jeffrey didn’t announce himself. When Avis turned away from arranging the pine branches on his bedside table, she found him watching her from the threshold of the open door. A quiet gasp escaped her throat. She pressed a hand to her chest, then gave him a small smile. “I was just cleaning up,” she explained, awakened to the fact that, perhaps, she shouldn’t have encroached on his privacy.

  He said nothing, only watched her with intense eyes. She had to turn away from his gaze, its severity making her feel smaller than she already imagined herself to be. But rather than excusing herself and slinking out of the room, that sense of triviality gave spark to anger. Because who was he to look at her that way? Hadn’t she done enough to assure him she wanted to please him? Hadn’t she surrendered enough to prove that she was worthy of his friendship?

  “I saw you outside.” She fluffed his pillow and carefully placed it at the head of the bed. “You and the group.”

  “Nice day, finally,” he said. “We’re all planning on taking a walk later, if you want to come along.”

  Avis frowned. So she was free to walk with them, but when it came to conversation, she had yet to win her way in? “Is that what you all were talking about out there?” She flashed him a skeptical glance. “A walk?”

  Jeffrey gave her a thoughtful look, as though allowing the knowledge that she’d been spying sink in. He raised his shoulders in an easy shrug. “Something like that.”

  “I don’t believe you.” Surprised by how quickly the confession slipped past her lips, she felt her muscles stiffen. Her nerves were suddenly alive, squirming just beneath her skin. For half a second, she was stunned by her own audacity. She’d never had such bravado before. It both energized and terrified her. Finally she had stood up for herself, but it was misguided courage. Jeffrey wasn’t deserving of her rebuttal. It was Avis’s father, Audra’s father, who should have been on the receiving end of her simmering ire.

  But it was Jeffrey who was standing in front of her now, not Congressman Snow.

  She stared down at the ground, trying to weave an apology earnest enough to keep him from throwing up his hands and calling it all off himself. I’m sorry. I’m just upset. I thought . . .

  “There are a lot of people out there that need someone to guide them, Avis,” he said, stalling out her thoughts. She looked up from the floor and searched his face—was he going to let her indiscretion go, or was this the end? Jeffrey’s expression was calm, but the ferocity in his eyes had intensified. “People who are lost,” he continued, even-voiced. “Struggling to navigate through the wasteland that is the world. If you like living among the desolation that has eaten away at society, nobody is asking you to compromise yourself. Nobody is forcing their way into your life.”

  Avis opened her mouth to protest. I don’t think you’re forcing ­your way—but Jeff lifted a hand to silence her. “I’m a patient man, Avis. I’m always watching, always listening. I’m waiting for you to choose the life you want for yourself. But I won’t wait forever. If I did, there would be nobody left to take care of those who can’t take care of themselves. These people . . .” He motioned toward the upstairs hall, the jubilant voices of the group coiling up the staircase and into the room. “They need me. Half of them would be dead of an overdose in the towns they’d grown up in had I not plucked them from the rubble. They had no one, and now they have everything. But it appears that for you, everything may not be enough.”

  She shook her head mutely.

  No, no, it’s enough . . .

  But the words didn’t come. She found herself breathless, unable to find the courage to speak. Too much of what Jeff had said sounded like a good-bye. He was abandoning her. She’d failed him, and now he would leave her to live the lonely life she’d come to know. But the isolation would no longer be a comfort. She’d gotten a taste of companionship. Solitary confinement would be tarnished by the fact that it was no longer self-imposed.

  “Is it fair to wait for the reluctant when the eager are struggling to live?” he asked. “The healer has to attend to the willing. If you aren’t willing, Avis, then I’m wasting my time here.”

  “I don’t understand.” She spit out the words. “What did I do?”

  “What did you do?” Jeffrey canted his head to the right. His mouth quirked up into a ghost of a smile. His expression was tinged with a hint of irritation.

  “Yes.” She struggled to swallow, her throat suddenly chokingly dry. “I . . . surrendered.”

  “Surrender requires honesty,” Jeff shot back. “And you’ve been lying this entire time.”

  Avis gaped at him. Lying? She shook her head again. I haven’t lied about anything. But her silent denial only expounded Jeffrey’s annoyance. He pushed off from the door frame and stepped deeper into the room. Grabbing her by the wrist, he spun her toward the master bathroom with a rough hand. A sickening sense of realization hit her as he pushed her into the tiled room. She stumbled toward the sink, catching her reflection in the mirror that hung above it. She hadn’t slept well since the group had descended upon her home. They kept wild hours, slept in erratic patterns, woke her with their laughter regardless of the hour. The dark circles beneath her eyes were proof of sleep deprivation. She was exhausted; she’d just been too preoccupied to notice until now.

  But her lack of sleep wasn’t Jeffrey’s concern. With Avis standing at the sink, he reached out and pulled open the mirrored door of the medicine cabinet. A row of orange prescription bottles winked at her from the middle shelf. Those aren’t mine, she thought. Those belong to Audra, and Audra is gone.

  Except that was a lie. Despite the group’s presence, she hadn’t stopped taking her medication. She was afraid that if she went off her meds, the darkness would creep back into her thoughts. Afraid that, despite the company, she’d run off the rails and slit her wrists the moment she was faced with adversity—a quandary just like this one.

  Jeff shot his hand across the cabinet’s shelf and sent orange bottles rattling into the sink. “What are these?” he demanded, shaking a bottle of lithium in her face.

  Shame.

  She stared into the sink’s basin, then burst into tears, not wanting him to know how broken she really was. She was moving away from that hopelessness thanks to the group, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t scared of regressing to her previous state. One day, hopefully soon, she’d feel confident enough to stop taking her pills. But that would come after her initiation period. When she was truly a part of the group. Except that might not happen now. You screwed everything up. Leave it to the useless nobody to destroy her only chance at belonging to something bigger than herself.

  Audra turned away from the sink, sat hard on the closed toilet lid, pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes, and sobbed—­something a strong girl like Avis would have never done.

  She heard Jeff drop the bottle of lithium pills into the sink along with the others. For a moment, she was sure he’d leave her in the bathroom to cry it out. Perhaps, by the time she got up the nerve to set foot outside the master bedroom, she’d find their things gone. Empty rooms and haunting quiet. Her old life and old identity would be back just as quickly as it had disappeared.

  She gasped for air between sobs, tried to compose herself. Eventually gaining the upper hand on her emotions, she smeared tears across her face and let her hands drop to her knees. But Jeff hadn’t left. He was standing in the same spot, one hand on the lip of the sink, his gaze fixed on her shuddering shoulders.

  “Doctors who prescribe pills are paid to flatline your thoughts,” he said. “They’re paid to brainwash you. Who’s paying your doctor, Avis? You?”

  “My father,” she whispered.

  “The enemy,” he corrected. “The man who is responsible for breaking your spirit. Do you truly believe he has your best intentions in mind? He’s a politician, Avis. He’s a liar.”

  Her father had kept her under his thumb
all her life, all while her mother shot daggers of judgment into her back. She’d never felt good enough for them, never managed to be as perfect as her mother had hoped she’d be—pink-frosting dresses and a sugar-sweet smile. To them, Audra was a failure, a medicated misfit they’d all but forgotten existed. It had been her idea to move to Pier Pointe, so what reason did they have to make sure she was doing okay on her own?

  “He’ll know I stopped taking them,” she told him. “He’s obsessed with paperwork. They show up on our health insurance bill.” If she stopped her meds, her father would know. It would give him a reason to call, to see what was going on. Because no matter what she told herself about her parents, nothing could convince her that they wanted her dead—at least not in Pier Pointe, not in their summer home. It would be a scandal, all over the papers. The congressman didn’t need that kind of publicity.

  “Then you need to keep picking them up from the drugstore,” Jeff said matter-of-factly. “Just because he pays for the poison doesn’t mean you have to swallow it.”

  Of course Jeff was right. If her father did suspect, he’d appear on the doorstep and discover Jeffrey and his friends and force her to leave with her new family. How would a group of ten people ever find a place big enough, or a person kind enough to take them in? If Audra’s father came to Pier Pointe, if he knew what was going on here, it would render them all homeless. Hungry. Cold in the rain.

  “Avis.” Jeff squared his shoulders. “Get up.”

  She did as she was told, her head throbbing with the beginnings of a headache, care of her crying jag.

  Jeff flipped up the toilet lid, watching her expectantly.

  If she did what he wanted, she was risking her health. Her sanity. But if she refused, he would take his family and leave. She’d then be welcome to gorge herself on handfuls of medication, because what would be the point of going on? She would fill up the tub, put on a record, take them all at once.

  “Do you want to be loved?” Jeff asked, his dark eyes questioning her devotion. She struggled to reply. “Then love yourself first.” He handed her one of the bottles out of the sink.

  She stared at the bottle for a long moment, the name that she no longer wanted printed in black across the label. Audra Snow is gone, she reminded herself. She may as well be dead. That was when it dawned on her—she was saying that she was Avis, but she was continuing to take Audra’s pills, and the pills kept Audra alive.

  If she truly wanted to be Avis, she had to let Audra go.

  Unscrewing the cap, she tipped the bottle above the toilet. Slow-rolling pills plopped into the water, sinking to the bottom like overboard men. Jeffrey handed her bottle after bottle, not leaving a single mood elevator or stabilizer to maintain balance.

  Do you want to be loved?

  She did.

  Can you love me if I lose my mind?

  He would. She had to believe he would.

  With the tipping over of the final bottle, she convinced herself of that.

  And as if to prove it to her, he caught her by the forearm and pulled her out of the bathroom after she had flushed the last of the pills. He pressed her onto the mattress that had once been hers, his mouth hot against her skin. And as he worked the button of her jeans loose, she knew he was finally rewarding her for her faith.

  Things would be okay now.

  She loved him, and he loved her, too.

  She was no longer Audra Snow. She was Avis Everybody.

  But she started crying again despite herself. He eased her jeans down past her hips, and she wept, her eyes wide and staring at the ceiling overhead, her tears pooling in the delicate creases of her ears.

  She wept, and she told herself it was joy.

  21

  * * *

  VEE TRIED TO sleep, but her efforts didn’t last long.

  She tossed and turned, her room unbearably hot. Kicking away the sheets, she pressed her face into her pillow and tried to keep her eyes closed, trying to stay inside her dream. In it, Timothy Steinway was holding her hand. He had her cornered against a locker inside the hall of her future high school, and his lips were parted in such a way that Vee was sure he was going to kiss her. But her anticipation of that long-awaited kiss was derailed. His facial features shifted from Tim’s to something darker, more mysterious. You’re beautiful. Onyx waves replaced Tim’s sandy brown hair. Intense, pragmatic brown eyes gazed out at her from beyond Tim’s greens. The boy whispered against her skin: Just like an angel. She could almost feel his exhalation drift across the curve of her cheek as he enfolded her in his arms. The soft creak of his leather jacket was so real, too real. It pulled her out of her dream just long enough to notice the skin-crawly feeling of someone watching her from not so far away.

  She peeked open an eye, half expecting her laptop screen to illuminate the room like a giant night-light with its bright blue glow. But the screen had turned off due to inactivity.

  Hours before, Vee had plucked the laptop off the floor from next to the mattress and opened the lid. In her inbox, the email from her mother was still waiting to be read. She had ignored it, hit the COMPOSE button on the left side of the browser window, and typed Tim’s name into the TO field. She’d only emailed Tim once before, and it hadn’t been a real email like the one she was determined to write. It had been a link to a list of New York State’s most haunted places; nothing spectacular, nothing personal. She had vacillated on the subject line, from Hi Tim, it’s Vee to I’m living in a haunted house to mimicking her mother’s email: Hello from Washington. But the longer she thought about what she wanted to say, the less urgent her message had seemed. It was as though those smiling strangers in the photographs she’d studied all night were whispering from beyond their graves: Keep us a secret, keep us to yourself. We belong to you. Only you.

  The email never got written. She had clicked over to another browser tab—one she left open from earlier that night—and stared at a group photo of ten people standing in front of her current home. And then she had scrolled down the page and stopped on an old picture of a young, handsome man. Charming. His half smile full of promise and understanding. Vee chewed her lip as she memorized the contours of Jeffrey Halcomb’s face. He looked a little like Jack White and Johnny Depp, kind of vampiric with his pale skin and black hair, sexy in a quiet yet dangerous sort of way. Nothing like Tim.

  Despite Tim’s penchant for horror movies and an interest in the paranormal, he looked like an ordinary kid. But Jeffrey looked like someone out of those movies in the most alluring way. Because he was dangerous. He killed people. And yet, rather than being repulsed by that fact, she only stared longer. Because what would it have felt like for Jeffrey to care about her when he had the capacity of hurting others? Did a murderer give more care to those he loved because he did away with the ones he didn’t care anything about? What did his voice sound like? Vee had opened up the music app on her computer and streamed some of her favorite tracks, stuff her mom hated ­because the lyrics were about death and beauty and eternity. But those sounds were perfect for the strange mystery that exuded from the gorgeous and grinning Jeff.

  She then tried to sleep, but her regret was refusing to let her rest.

  I know what this place is.

  Her father had turned pale as cream when she dropped that bit of info. Boom. He looked almost ready to puke all over the grass, and she had been glad. He deserved the discomfort; he had brought it on himself. Her mother had warned her while helping Vee pack up her stuff. He’s going to lock himself away, you know. He always gets carried away. And she was right. Vee knew it was only a matter of time before she lost her father to his study, to his work. It wouldn’t make a bit of difference whether she was living with him or not. And so, before he could make up some infuriating excuse as to why he had dragged her to a death house, she had left him standing in the dark, bounded up the stairs, and locked herself behind her bedroom door.

 
; He had come upstairs a few minutes later and knocked. Jeanie, open up. We need to talk. Come on, kid, give me a break. I’ll explain. Jeanie? He’d given up after a few minutes. If he wanted to come into her room, he’d have to kick down the door.

  But here came second thoughts. Because now that he knew she knew, things would be different. He’d feel obligated to move them to a new place. Except, they didn’t have any money, which meant they’d probably end up living in some cramped one-bedroom apartment in Pier Pointe for the rest of the summer. Zero privacy. Zero ghosts.

  Damn it.

  She pressed her face into her rumpled sheets. Had she stopped to think what confronting her father would mean, she would have never gone downstairs. Sure, she was spooked that a bunch of ­people had died downstairs. Anyone would have been at least slightly weirded out. Logic dictated that she pack up her stuff and insist her dad move them out, stat. But the dark corners of her brain were bubbling with excitement. Not only was the place haunted, but she had actually seen things far beyond creaky walls and footsteps down the hall. Despite her own fear, Vee wanted to stay right where she was.

  She had gone to bed a little after two in the morning, flipping off the lights but leaving her laptop open. Her music streamed into the darkness as she tried to fall asleep.

  But now the room was silent, her playlist having reached its end. The darkness was heavy—the same weighty murk that had made it hard to breathe the night before. And just like yesterday, Vee’s itch for ghost hunting was gone. She squeezed her eyes tight, not wanting to look at who may have been standing in the night shade of her room. Because you’re an idiot, she thought. You’re a coward, that’s all. A spineless kid who wants to be tough, but when it gets even a little bit scary, you wuss out. For a girl determined to stay living in a haunted house, she was the epitome of a fraidycat. Maybe that’s why she hadn’t been able to construct a proper email to Tim. She was terrified of everything. Ghosts. Boys. Divorce.