“We made an idiotic, tourist mistake. We both ordered mixed drinks but didn’t watch them be mixed. The bartender could easily have slipped something into them. I was sure that was it.”
The detective leaned back, looking disappointed. “Of course we’ll fully investigate the bar and its owner, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up, if I were you.”
“Why in the world not?” Maggie burst out. The drinks. Of course! She hadn’t thought of that, but Jonah was right. It must have been the drinks.
“Because”—the detective’s gaze fell on her—“tourist traps often can’t be traced. The two of you ought to count yourselves lucky that the side effects aren’t worse.”
“So that’s it?” Jonah asked after another brief silence. “You have no idea, not even any theories, and we’re just supposed to go on our merry way and act like nothing happened?”
The detective held up his hands in a calming gesture. “Please, try to understand. We do have theories but no evidence. I know it feels violating to you, but we’ve done about all we can do here.”
Maggie had a sinking feeling that she and Jonah might never know what had happened.
“Thank you,” Jonah murmured, “I appreciate the truth.” He sounded far away again, and Maggie wanted to cry.
“I know you’ve both given your statements already”—the detective shuffled through his papers—“but I must ask. Is there anything else you remember? Even the smallest thing might be significant.”
Jonah shook his head. Maggie thought about the flashes. They were fading. As time passed she was more and more certain they were just dreams. They were just fragments really and would be of no help. She opted not to mention them. They would do the detective no good. She’d seen nothing coherent, and the guy needed hard evidence, not delusional images.
“Well then.” The detective stood, and Maggie and Jonah followed suit. “Why don’t the two of you get some sleep before heading home? I’ll be in touch, and if you remember anything at all, please don’t hesitate.”
Chapter 2: Flash From the Past
One Year Later
Maggie awoke with a start. The sun was streaming through her bedroom window and onto her face. She told herself firmly that it was the sunlight that had awakened her and not unpleasant dreams. As she sat up, her dreams faded beyond memory.
As long as she couldn’t remember, it couldn’t bother her. Swinging her feet over the side of the bed, she stretched. Glancing at her bedside clock, she found that it was nearly eight. A bit earlier than she had planned to rise on her day off, but as long as she was awake, she might as well get up.
Pushing aside the voice that said the real reason she didn’t want to sleep more was because she was afraid of her dreams, Maggie stood, put on a robe, and went downstairs. She decided that she would make some hot chocolate and watch the sun rise.
Just as the detective predicted, nothing turned up. A full investigation into the bar revealed that the owners were clean and the establishment honest. It could only be the individual worker, and he or she had covered their tracks.
Of course, that was assuming it was the drinks that had put them out. Perhaps it wasn’t, though neither Maggie nor Jonah had been able to think of what else it could have been.
Neither of them had suffered any perceivable ill effects—perceivable being the key word there—but Maggie couldn’t get over it. She ran everything she remembered over and over in her head, trying to come up with answers.
Since leaving Vegas, the flashes had returned again and again.
A flash of purple light. A rock formation. Brown boots walking across a room at eye level. A hand with an ugly back burn on the back. A woman standing in front of a broken lighthouse. Blood on her hands. A whisper of a voice. Gasping, clawing for air.
For weeks she woke up sweating, her heart racing, fear ringing through her core. The flashes never faded, though. Each time she dreamed them was as vivid as the last.
Each time she saw the images, the impression became stronger that she was trying to tell herself something. Something had happened to her and Jonah, and those flashes were connected to it in some way.
Eventually she stopped being afraid of what she saw. The flashes became her companions. As long as she had them, she felt like she had some hope of one day figuring it all out, of finding out what had really happened to her.
Five months after the incident, Maggie got up the courage to tell Jonah about the flashes. He had been angry with her.
“But it’s not like it was evidence, Jonah! They were just flashes, completely incoherent hallucinations.”
“How do you know that?” he’d challenged. “They might have been memories.”
Maggie had frowned. She’d never considered the possibility that they’d been more than fever dreams. “Do you think I ought to call Detective Jones?” she asked.
Jonah sighed and dropped his face into his hands. When he looked back up, his eyes were haggard. “Do what you want, Maggs, but do it now and move on. I don’t want to keep dredging this up.”
He’d walked away, leaving Maggie feeling hurt. It was the only bitter conversation they’d ever had. She went home and cried herself to sleep.
It was more than just the dreams, though. Maggie felt an overwhelming sense of loss. At first, she thought it was just the feeling of violation, of being victimized, but as time went on, she realized that it was something else. She could not shake the feeling that she had lost something, some major, vital part of who she was.
And she didn’t even know what it was.
That was the most frustrating part: to feel she’d lost something she yearned to have back so much that it hurt and not be able to define it. Whatever happened in Vegas, it was more than just passing out from some tourist trap. Much more.
Still, Jonah had the right of it. Maggie had dreamed the flashes so many times; they were forever seared into her memory. Perhaps she’d never know what happened, but making herself ill over it was not doing any good. She needed to live her life.
Since making that decision, things had been easier.
It was twelve months to the day since the time loss had occurred, and today was Maggie’s day off. It was Friday, and her catering business would be slow. One of the great things about being the boss was that you could take time off whenever you wanted.
After sipping her hot chocolate and watching the sunrise for half an hour, Maggie decided to do her errands first. She had a whole list of things, but if she did all of them this morning, she could have the afternoon to herself. Mentally, she ran through her list as she washed out her cup and placed it in the dishwasher: order some supplies for the business—see, she’d be working a little bit—pick up some things for the party tonight (Michaela had given her a list); go get her nails done; fill up the tank, as the price of gas had gone down several cents in the past few days, and they were predicting it would be back up by Sunday; groceries; dry cleaning…
***
Maggie returned home roughly three hours after leaving for the supermarket.
Had she closed the blinds last night? She hadn’t done it before leaving this morning. Shrugging, she redoubled her efforts to get the door open.
She heard the door close behind her as she lowered the bag to the couch but thought nothing of it. Just the breeze pulling it shut.
Then she saw it. The front of the house faced east, and the sun had not yet reached its zenith. Even with the blinds closed, muted light coming in around their edges cast a pale shadow onto the wall above the couch. She could see another shadow beside hers coming up from behind.
Spinning on the ball of her foot, she had no time to react to the huge man striding toward her. He fashioned his hand into a long, hard chopping tool. Fingers straight out but held together, he swept his hand in a large, controlled arc and hit her in the throat.
It felt like all the air had been sucked from her lungs. She couldn’t scream; she couldn’t speak; she couldn’t breathe. Collapsing onto the couch, Ma
ggie struggled to draw a breath of relief. She couldn’t. Panic sprouted within her.
Then fingers clinched around her neck. The man picked her up by the throat and slammed her into the wall beside the couch. Her face was an inch above his so that he was looking slightly up at her, but he was a good deal taller than she, and her feet dangled above the floor.
The man’s grip tightened around her neck. Then, for no discernable reason, he froze, eyebrows narrowing.
“Is it you?” His voice was harsh, as though he couldn’t clear his throat.
He had chin-length, greasy brown hair and white, sallow skin. A spider’s web was tattooed over his left eye, which held no emotion at all. His eyes were so dead she couldn’t discern their color.
Still holding her against the wall, the man turned to glance at the windows, as though someone might be spying through the closed blinds. His hair was shaved short in the back—it was only long on the sides—and on the back of his neck just below the hairline was an angry, red puncture mark. In his right ear he wore an earring with an X on it and a dot in the space directly below the X. She’d seen that symbol before but wasn’t sure where.
Maggie still couldn’t breathe. Darkness was stealing in from the corners of her vision. So this was it. This man, who had somehow entered her home, was going to kill her. She didn’t even know why or who he was. He seemed content to keep the pressure on her throat until she passed out—or died out. Her limbs felt heavy. Her vision was going. Everything seemed dim.
As she succumbed to the claustrophobic darkness, another man entered the room. There was something familiar about him. He started screaming something, but she couldn’t hear him. Perhaps her hearing was going along with her vision. But she could see his mouth. He was saying her name.
Then it hit her. Vegas. Just before she and Jonah lost time, she had seen that man. She had rarely thought of him since, but it had been such a bizarre encounter that his face had remained clearly etched in her memory. It didn’t matter now, though. The dimness turned to opaqueness, and awareness went with it. Then there was only darkness.
A flash of purple light. A rock formation. Brown boots walking across a room at eye level. A hand with a black burn on it. A woman standing in front of a broken lighthouse. Blood on her hands—were they her hands? A whisper of a voice. She could never quite make out his words.
Vegas. The spider web tattoo. A man in her house. A man in her house!
Maggie’s eyes snapped open. Awareness crashed in, and she lunged into a sitting position, gulping air. She was on the floor beside the couch. Her groceries were still situated on it. The man—not Spider Web Tat but Creepy Vegas Guy—was leaning over her.
She stared at him, wild-eyed and chest heaving, gulping air through a spontaneously healed throat.
He sat back in a crouch, but his eyes never left her. It was definitely him. There was no mistaking those strange amber eyes or the oddly shaped scar.
Not knowing what else to do under his direct stare, she decided to test her voice. “I was sure he crushed my trachea.”
His voice was solid and calm. “He did.”
A chill ran down her spine. Then her eyes saw past him to the lifeless body of Spider Web Tat. Maggie’s eyes slid warily back to the man crouching next to her. Creepy Vegas Guy might have just saved her life but that didn’t make him safe to be around.
As though reading her thoughts, the man smiled then extended his hand. “I’m Marcus. How are you, Maggie?”
Chapter 3: Breaking Away
She glanced warily at his outstretched hand but didn’t take it. After a moment, it dropped. Silence stretched between them, and she realized he was waiting for her to speak.
“Who are you?”
“That’s a long story. We don’t have time to go over all of it. This man shouldn’t be here. The fact that he is—that he got here first—means we should move quickly. I need you to trust—”
“I saw you in Vegas. Are you the reason my brother and I lost time?”
His eyes narrowed. “You saw me in Vegas? What…” He searched her face, as though the explanation should be written there. “What do you mean?”
“Oh come on. You must remember. You grabbed my arm and looked at me like you knew me. Are you telling me it’s a coincidence that half an hour later my brother and I blacked out and lost twelve hours of our lives?”
Until the words were out of her mouth, Maggie never considered that her encounter with him and her time loss might be related.
He was silent for a long time, and she looked away from his penetrating gaze.
Finally, he spoke. His voice was soft, controlled. “Of course I remember, Maggie. But you shouldn’t.”
Her head snapped up. “What?”
“Tell me everything you remember about Vegas. Specifically, what you remember about me.”
Maggie threw up her hands. Why was he suddenly the one asking the questions? “Who are you?”
He heaved a sigh. His eyes wandered briefly around the room, resting on the dead man. It seemed to jolt him back to his original purpose.
“My name is Marcus, Maggie.”
She opened her mouth to shout again, but he raised his hands.
“I can’t tell you much more than that right now. We have to go. It’s not safe here. I know you have no idea who I am, but I need you to trust me. I need you to come with me.”
“I’m not going anywhere until you explain yourself. And him.” She nodded toward the dead man.
“Don’t be stubborn, Maggie—”
“Then don’t be ludicrous! You come into my house a year after doing heaven-knows-what to me and my brother in Vegas. You kill a man in my parlor, and now you think I’ll go with you? I have no reason to trust you. I’m calling the police.”
She swung around onto her knees. Before she could pull herself to her feet, he grabbed her wrist and yanked her upward. His face was inches from hers, as it had been in Vegas, and she could feel his hot breath on her forehead. His unmistakable eyes—a rainbow of hazel—held anger. His vice-like grip said he wasn’t planning on letting go.
“You dated a man named Jared several years ago, almost married him. When he dumped you, he took things you had told him—personal things you’d never told anyone else—and threw them in your face. He tore you to shreds emotionally. Since then, you haven’t had any serious relationships. You find ways to sabotage them, because you’re afraid of being hurt that deeply again.”
Maggie’s lower jaw slowly cranked away from her upper one as he spoke, her eyes widening in sync with her mouth. When he finished, she snapped her mouth shut, blinking rapidly.
“How do you know that? What are you, stalking me or something?”
He smiled at her. It seemed genuine.
“Even a stalker couldn’t have that kind of insight into your soul. I know because you told me.”
“I did not—”
He raised a hand. “I know you don’t remember telling me, but you did. If you’ve never told anyone, how else could I know? You said you had no reason to trust me. Consider this reason: in another place, another lifetime, you knew and trusted me enough to tell me your darkest secrets. Trust me now.”
When she didn’t reply, he went on, his eyes begging her. “Is there any other explanation for me knowing that?”
She had no answer. She’d never admitted what he’d said, not even to herself. She’d never fully formed the thoughts. Yet, he was right. That was exactly what had happened and what she had been doing since. How could he know that about her?
“Maggie, if you can’t trust me, I understand. But trust yourself, even if it’s another self you can’t remember. More men like this one are coming soon. I need to get you somewhere safe.”
Maggie looked at Marcus then at the dead man on the floor. He had saved her life and healed a serious injury. She took a deep breath and asked herself how she felt.
She reached over and took her purse from the couch. Ever since Vegas she’d carried a small
.25 caliber handgun. If he tried anything, she would be able to defend herself. Against her better judgment, she nodded.
“All right.”
***
It was an Instant. A single, inappreciable moment in time. He didn’t understand its significance as it came and went, but he would reflect upon it with near constancy for the rest of his life.
The Others had been with him for so long that he no longer knew what it was like to be without them. In that moment, he pulled away. He walled his mind off from theirs and became Alone.
It was like putting his feet on the side of a swimming pool and using his own weight and momentum to push off, muscling through the water as hard as he could, trying to get as much distance as possible. In his case, the water was cement that was drying too quickly. The pushing was excruciating, and the more distance he got, the more it hurt.
After what seemed a thousand years, the pain became numbness… Then the loneliness set in. To be so Alone in the darkness, to hear nothing, except one’s own thoughts…
The terror that crashed in to fill his chest was consuming.
He curled his body into a fetal position, wrapping his long arms around his head, and screamed silently. He screamed in his heart and in his soul and in his mind…but his voice made no utterance.
He crawled through the grass. He couldn’t raise his belly from the ground, so he had to use his arms to drag himself along.
Strangely, despite the loneliness and horror of his choice, he never reconsidered. He was a revolutionary unto himself, and there was no going back. Not now, not ever. He’d known that in the Instant he made the choice, but that seemed so long ago now. He’d had the others with him only minutes before, but it seemed a lifetime had passed.
The farther he got from the encampment, the more physical strength he found. Soon he was able to get up onto his knees and crawl. He didn’t know if anyone who found him would act unfavorably, but he didn’t know that they wouldn’t either. He had to get away.
He could feel them, pushing at the edges of his consciousness, trying to get back in. His body was weak, but his mind was not. He kept them out. He just didn’t know if they would be able to follow their sense of his mind to where he was physically. The farther he got, the longer he was Alone, the harder they pushed, slamming themselves against the barrier he’d put up around his mind, trying to get in. He succeeded in keeping them out. It was the first time in his life he’d known success against them, but then, it was the first time he’d wanted to.
Persistence of Vision Page 2