Why couldn’t she pick up anything psychically? How could she get through life being half a person? How?
Deep breaths, calm down. Fabric wasn’t the best conductor of psychic energy, and whenever she was sick, her abilities faltered. This was just a temporary glitch. She needed to take care of her physical needs first, but to do that, she had to get the wacko down here.
Mira cleared her throat, preparing to shout for Allie, but then beard the door at the top of the stairs opening. She lifted her head and in the dim glow of the night-light, saw the wacko’s legs. A light flared. “Rise and shine, Mira. I bet you’re starved.” She set a tray on the nearby counter.
Mira glared at her. “I’m hungry, I need to use the bathroom, I’d like to take a shower, and these sheets are filthy.” She noticed that the wacko wore latex gloves and a white smock over black pants and a white pullover sweater. She also wore makeup and had fixed her lustrous black hair so that it fell over her shoulder in a single thick braid. Except for the gloves, she looked as though she were dressed for work.
“Definite improvement. The amoxicillin is doing the trick. I’m going to unfasten the straps.” She reached under her sweater and brought out a gun. “If you try anything—anything at all—I’ll shoot you. Clear?”
“I speak English.”
With her left hand, the wacko unfastened the straps on Mira’s arms and legs and not once did her hands touch Mira’s body.
She stepped back from the bed, the gun aimed at Mira. “Okay, you can sit up.”
Mira pushed up slowly on her elbows, the wretched smell of her own body nauseating her. Her head spun, pain flared in her thigh. She glanced around at the bathroom, way on the other side of the room, and didn’t know if she could make it that distance under her own steam.
“I don’t know if I can walk all the way to the bathroom.”
“You’re going to have to. I’m not touching you.”
And why not? Mira wondered. Had she picked up something on wacko last night and blurted it out? If so, it meant her abilities weren’t totally gone. But why couldn’t she remember any of what she’d said? “I said something to you?”
The wacko emitted a sharp, ugly laugh. “That’s not the half of it. You can eat first or go to the bathroom, your choice.”
“The bathroom, a shower, then I’d like to eat.”
She started coughing, a wet, hacking cough, and Wacko, using the end of the gun, pushed a box of Kleenex toward Mira. “Wipe your chin.”
Mira no longer thought of this woman as having a normal name. In her mind her name was now Wacko. In fact, maybe she didn’t have a gender, either. Maybe that pretty face and dynamite body were just part of her disguise. In that case, she could be described as “the wacko,” a genderless being, a kind of human mutant no less horrifying than Gollum in Lord of the Rings. Gollum had once been a hobbit but had been corrupted so deeply by the power of the ring that it had changed his physical appearance. What had corrupted Wacko?
“You need to move around today and get that fluid out of your lungs.”
“I need something to hold on to.”
Wacko pressed her foot against the bottom of the bedside table and it rolled toward her. “Use that.”
While Wacko kept her foot pressed against the stand, Mira grabbed onto the edges and pulled herself up. She immediately felt light-headed and clutched the edges of the stand to steady herself. “Whatever I said to you must’ve really spooked you,” Mira remarked.
“Let me just put it this way. I had my doubts about whether you were psychic. Now I don’t doubt it at all. You made a believer out of me.”
Mira nearly laughed at the irony. The wacko believed she was psychic and seemed terrified that Mira might see something when, in fact, she couldn’t pick up squat. She felt the way a conjoined twin would feel after separation surgery, as though her soul had been torn out of her.
“Go on, get that thing rolling,” Wacko said. “Your toothbrush and toothpaste are on the sink and there’s a fresh towel and clothes on the rack. While you’re in there, you can remove the bandage and just drop it in the wastebasket.”
“What about when I shower? Can my thigh get wet?”
“Sure. Just don’t use soap on it.”
Mira pushed the stand slowly across the basement. The muscles in her legs cried out, her stomach cramped, her lungs still didn’t feel quite right. “I had pneumonia, right?”
“You still do. But by tomorrow or the next day, you’ll be feeling a hundred percent better.”
“And my leg? Is that going to be a hundred percent better, too?”
“If you don’t tear the stitches out again.”
“Did your bullet hit anything major?”
“You’re the psychic, you tell me.”
And under ordinary conditions, she would be able to do that. But nothing had been normal since she and Shep and Annie had left home. The only thing she could say with any certainty about her health and her body was that her fever had broken.
“Everything feels okay,” Mira replied. “Except that I hurt all over.”
“That’s normal with pneumonia.”
Despite the gun the wacko had, Mira didn’t feel that she was in any immediate danger—i.e., that it was safe to use the bathroom, take a shower, and eat. The big ques-tion was what would happen after that. Why was the wacko dressed up? Was she leaving the house? Is she planning on taking me with her? The possibility filled Mira with dread. Need to find a way outta here.
On her way to the bathroom, she took in all the details of the basement—the placement and size of the windows (too small to squeeze through), that there didn’t appear to be another door, the alcove under the stairs that housed a washer and dryer, the desk with the computer on it.
With an Internet connection?
Doubtful. Wacko was a fucking nutcase, but she was smart and functional. She had found an ideal hiding place, had handled Mira’s medical emergencies, and she knew how to shoot a gun. She apparently had a plan that had been in place for a long time and had fine-tuned it.
The only psychic information she remembered picking up on Wacko was that she was a physician and intended to hang Mira and skin her alive.
And that’s the key to understanding all this.
The stand pressed up against the jamb of the bathroom door and Mira leaned against it, resting. “You watched us for a long time before you made your move,” Mira said.
“I plan well.”
“You went through the glove compartment of our van when we stayed overnight in Savannah.”
It was a guess. But she felt a certain smugness when she glimpsed the expression that flickered, shadowlike, across the wacko’s face.
“So what were you looking for, exactly?” Mira asked.
“A map or some indication of where you were going.”
Mira remembered opening the glove compartment when they were driving between Savannah and Asheville because she was looking for the cell phone. The glove compartment lid was metal, one of the best conductors of psychic energy, yet she hadn’t picked up anything at all when she’d touched the lid. Why not? She hadn’t felt sick then. The scratchy throat and the sneezing had come along once they were in the mountains. She suddenly wondered if the loss of her ability was due to a delayed effect of having gone through the black water mass rather than to pneumonia.
It made a terrible kind of sense. After she had gone through the mass, her abilities had been so heightened, so extreme, it was as if she were plugged into some greater source and power. And for the last six months, that had been the case most of the time. Now, suddenly, she was unplugged and stumbling along at the opposite end of the spectrum, psychically blind, deaf, and mute.
The possibility that the condition might be permanent horrified her.
“Move away from the stand,” the wacko said. “Use the jamb or the knob to steady yourself. That’s right. See? You’re doing fine.”
Mira barely made it to the toilet.
&nb
sp; Wacko didn’t shut the door, but she stepped away from the doorway, presumably to give Mira some privacy. Mira moved toward the sink, holding on to the towel rack, then leaned into the wall to steady herself. A metal towel rack, a concrete wall. Metal and concrete held psychic energy, yet no images came to mind, no impressions, nothing at all. Practically on the verge of tears now, she grabbed onto the edge of the sink. Porcelain.
Nothing.
She yanked the washcloth and towel off the rack, ran the cloth under the cold water, and started to press it against her face—and stopped when she caught sight of herself in the mirror. She looked like someone coming off a weeklong drunk. Her hair was a filthy, tangled mess, her eyelids were swollen, her lips were cracked, and her cheeks had sunk. She pressed the wet cloth to her face, barely stifling a sob.
“Hey, you all right in there?”
“I’m—I’m going to shower now,” Mira called back. “Is there shampoo?”
“In the shower. I’ve got an electric razor you can use after you shower. And that shirt you have on smells pretty ripe. I’ll get you a clean one.”
Mira dropped the washcloth in the sink, avoided looking at herself, and leaned against the wall again. She carefully unwrapped her thigh and nearly passed out. The skin looked as if Dr. Frankenstein had been digging around in her thigh with a filthy fork. It had turned a purple so dark that it could be black, and it wasn’t just an angry bruise. It raged. At the edges, where the stitches were, the skin seemed puckered and raw and stuff leaked out. She brought her hand to within half an inch of the wound and felt the intense heat that radiated from it. Maybe the pneumonia was on its way out, but there was something seriously wrong with this wound.
She tossed the bandage in the trash can, turned on the water in the shower. She stepped inside and shut the flimsy plastic door—and great, heaving sobs burst out of her. Mira slapped her hands over her mouth to smother the sounds. It’s never as bad as it seems.
Yeah, it was worse.
Steam drifted up around her, a thick jungle steam that she sucked deeply into her lungs. It eased the tightness in her chest and made it easier for her to breathe. As she breathed, she began to calm down. The hot spray melted away the soreness in her shoulders, back, arms. Despite what the wacko had said, Mira gently washed the wound with soap and rinsed it off. She shampooed her hair and took her sweet time about it, giving herself a chance to think.
But all she found were riddles. If the wacko intended to hang and flay her, why had she operated on Mira’s leg or treated her pneumonia? Because she had to be conscious and aware when she was hung? Because she had to be aware when Wacko took a scalpel to her arms? Her legs? Because she had a certain time frame in mind? The answers to these questions, she knew, formed the core of Wacko’s motive. Denied any psychic input and lacking basic information like where she was and how long she’d been here, Mira couldn’t begin to fathom what that motive might be. But worse, her mind had seized on the image of her flayed body. Such terror clamped over her that for seconds she couldn’t move or breathe.
Then a vague memory nagged at her, something about a library and a man who looked like a mythological god. Mira struggled to grab the memory, but it was a slippery little devil that kept getting away from her.
“You all right in there?” the wacko called.
“Fine, I’m fine.”
Any second now, Mira thought, she would come in here, rap at the plastic door. Mira wondered if she could hurl it open hard enough so it would slam into her and knock her out. Probably not. And if it didn’t knock her out, she would shoot Mira. She might not shoot to kill—not time for me to die yet—but she definitely would shoot to maim, just as she had done in the barn. Then there might be another surgery, more drugs, and her immune system would collapse. Forget it. Right now, she needed to focus on building up her strength and buying some time. She would eat breakfast, ask questions, observe.
Mira turned off the shower, stepped out, wrapped one towel around her body and another around her hair. She went over to the sink to brush her teeth. The mirror was steamed up, and as she reached out to rub a clear spot, lines began to appear in the foggy glass.
She jerked back, hugging her arms against her, and stared as the lines continued to appear. It astonished her, shocked her, but didn’t frighten her. She simply stood there, fascinated by what she was seeing. Then it hit her. Letters, these were letters, but awkwardly formed, as though a small, invisible child were practicing his writing skills. Thirteen indecipherable letters—then the writing stopped.
Frowning, Mira moved closer to the mirror, tilted her head to the right, the left, then leaned way to the right and tried to look at the letters upside down. No good. She backed up a few steps, studying them, and when it hit her, she nearly laughed out loud. These were mirror-image letters. Once she realized it, she could decipher it: “Dean be careful,” she murmured.
Some kid had probably stayed here recently and written these words on a mirror after taking a shower, and when the air steamed up again, the letters appeared. The big problem with this theory, though, was how many people wrote their mirror messages as mirror images?
She looked around uneasily and whispered, “Is someone here?”
She didn’t know what she expected—an apparition, or a disembodied voice. Again, there was nothing. She decided the source was less important than the message: dean be careful. Or be careful dean.
Who was Dean? It seemed she should know that name, but she couldn’t place it.
She heard Wacko saying something again, so Mira quickly rubbed her hand over the mirror, wiping away the letters.
“Just so you know, the glass in these basement windows is shatterproof. There’s just one way in and out of the basement. That door.” Wacko stabbed her thumb at the door at the top of the stairs. “The basement is soundproof. There’s plenty of food in the fridge, fresh fruit and vegetables, vitamins, immune boosters. As soon as you finish eating, you should take another dose of amoxicillin, then a second dose in about eight hours. I’ve got a lot of stuff to do, so I won’t be back to check on you until later.”
She’s leaving and doesn’t want me to know it. Or she thinks I’m too stupid to get it Or she’s testing me.
“I set up a VCR with some movies and brought you some books, so you don’t get bored. Boredom can be as much a killer as viruses, you know. And I didn’t touch the VCR or the movies, not with my hands. In fact, I’ve cleaned this place so thoroughly that there’s nothing human left in here for you to read, Mira.”
Mira nodded. She just wanted the woman to get the hell out of here. She was sitting at the edge of the bed, consuming her first real meal in she didn’t know how long. Granola cereal with fresh blueberries, an English muffin, a strawberry smoothie, a hard-boiled egg, slices of sharp cheddar cheese. She even had a mug of coffee. It wasn’t Cuban, but it sure tasted good. She tried to eat slowly to prevent herself from getting sick, and paused in between each bite, savoring the taste of everything.
“What’s the point of all this?” Mira finally asked.
“The point?” Wacko blinked rapidly, her gaze skipped around the room. The question seemed to have caught her off guard. “You have to get better, that’s the fucking point.”
“Beyond that.”
Wacko moved closer to the other side of the table and squatted down so her face was even with Mira’s, uncomfortably close. Mira could see every line in her face, the pinched wariness at the corners of her eyes, the fine lines that, in twenty years, would make her mouth plunge into a permanent grimace. And she could see the swirl of color in her irises, part green, part blue, part madness.
“Let’s get one thing straight, Mira. I don’t enjoy your company. I don’t want to engage in conversation with you. I think you’re an aberration of nature. A freak. For my purposes, you aren’t a human being, you aren’t even a woman. You’re a symbol.”
What Mira heard in her voice wasn’t just hatred, but a specific hatred born of some deep, fester
ing wound that demanded vengeance, an eye for an eye, something of almost biblical proportions. “Gee, I was just thinking the same thing about you. I know your name is Allie, but I think of you as Wacko—capital W--or as the ‘wacko.”
“‘Freak’ and ‘Wacko.” She actually smiled. “It sounds like a vaudeville act.”
Yeah, but in vaudeville, no one was held captive. And Mira suddenly knew she was here because of Sheppard, because of their relationship. This woman intended to get even with Sheppard by hanging Mira and skinning her alive. And she would hang her because—what?
What’s the answer?
Be careful dean. “Who’s Dean?” Mira asked.
Allie wrenched back as though she’d been burned—then rage poured into her eyes and she grabbed Mira by the hair and jammed the barrel of the gun up under her jaw. Mira didn’t move, didn’t breathe. “If I pull the trigger,” Allie hissed, “the bullet will blow apart the lower half of your face, pulverize your brain, and you’ll be dead before it exits through the top of your skull. You are not to say that name, think that name, breathe that name. You understand me?”
Mira’s psychic circuits blew wide open:
She’s driving with the windows down, a warm breeze blowing through her hair Dean sits in the passenger seat, saying nothing. His head is turned away from her, toward the water, the Miami skyline.
“Christ, talk to me, Dean.”
He turns his head slowly, as though it’s painful for him to look at her, and as always, she is struck by the exquisite beauty of his face. “I don’t have anything to say.”
“Is it true? You’re married? You’re married and you didn’t tell any of us?”
He doesn’t say anything.
“Who is she? Can she help our defense? Were you with her the night of the accident? Is she your alibi? Where the hell is she?”
He runs his palms over his thighs, shakes his head. “Allie, Allie. There’s so much you’ll never understand. This isn’t about me, okay?”
She swerves to the side of the road, slams on the brakes. Her face is livid when she grabs his jaw, forcing him to look at her “The reason you aren’t rotting in jail while you wait for trial, Dean, is because you’re out on a bond worth nearly two million bucks. Dad and I put up the money. We deserve answers.”
Total Silence Page 16