Don't Ever Forget (Adler and Dwyer)

by Matthew Farrell

  WALK

  He took a step, steadied himself, then took another. When he took his third step alongside the bed, his right knee gave out, and he lost his balance. He reached out in front of him as he began to fall sideways, realizing almost immediately that he was too far from the bed and was going to fall to the floor. At the last second, he caught the edge of the mattress with both hands and ended up on his knees. The mattress slid off the box spring, but he was unharmed. He waited to see if he could feel any sharp pain in his legs, knees, or hip, but other than a little pain in his knees from hitting the hard tiles, he was fine. He stood back up, then sat on the bed to catch his breath.

  He’d done it. He’d stood. He’d walked. He wasn’t paralyzed. They were lying to him. But why?

  A piece of paper that was stuck between the mattress and the box spring caught James’s eye. He reached down and pulled it out. It was folded in half but looked like the same kind of paper he’d had in his mouth. He unfolded it and read words he knew he’d read before.

  DON’T EVER FORGET

  He flipped the paper over.

  TIFFANY GREENE

  SONIA GARLAND

  MARCUS RULEY

  BONNIE BERNSTEIN

  James stood back up, using the wheelchair to balance himself. He could see the corner of another sheet of paper sticking out from between the mattress and box spring. He bent down and pushed the mattress as hard as he could, sending it off the bed and onto the floor on the opposite side. As he did, several sheets of paper flew up and rocked back down to the box spring, settling on top of one another. Some were folded. Most were open so he could read the words the man had written for him to help him remember. His eyes widened, and a chill ran down his spine as he read them.

  THEY WANT TO HURT YOU

  YOU’RE IN DANGER

  THEY’RE NOT WHO YOU THINK THEY ARE

  THEY’RE GOING TO KILL YOU

  It took a minute for James’s overworked mind to process what he was seeing. The notes lying in a pile under his mattress the entire time. The man had been warning him day after day, but he could never remember.

  James could hear the noise from the street outside the three windows and was reminded that he was in the city. All he had to do was get outside and grab the first person walking by. He would ask them to call the police, and he would put his faith in the authorities to make things right. The police would rescue him from the people who had lied about his life and kept him hidden from the world.

  He just had to get outside.

  The fog was thin enough for him to know that he couldn’t risk climbing up to the main floor. The man and the woman could be around, lurking in the house or just outside on the street. In a crowded city it would be easy for them to subdue him before he could cry out for help. They’d undoubtedly be ignored by people who were focused only on themselves. They’d have no time to help a hysterical old man. The only other option was the hurricane doors down the dark corridor where the ghosts lived. He knew they were waiting. For him. But it was the only way.

  He looked at the notes again.

  THEY WANT TO HURT YOU

  YOU’RE IN DANGER

  THEY’RE NOT WHO YOU THINK THEY ARE

  THEY’RE GOING TO KILL YOU

  He had to go. His life depended on it.

  64

  Cindy stood in front of the desk in the dining room, chewing on her bottom lip, staring at the drawer she’d seen Trevor put a folder in a few days earlier. She remembered he’d locked that drawer and put the tiny key in his pants pocket. Never really wondered about it until now. Her conversation with David replayed in her mind, and it wasn’t lost on her that each of them was trying to get her to buy into the fact that the other could be Hagen. There was too much uncertainty to take a side. Yes, either of them could be Hagen. Or neither of them. That’s what made things dangerous. There was no one she could trust with 100 percent certainty. And as the plans they’d made with such precision and care crumbled at their feet, she needed to find out everything she could about the men she was living with. And that meant she needed to know what was in that drawer.

  She knelt in front of the desk and gripped the chrome letter opener she’d taken from the mail basket in the hallway. The desk was made mostly of balsa wood and hard plastic, so she didn’t think the locking mechanism would be too tough to overcome. Of course, just asking Trevor what was in the drawer would have been the easiest way to go about this, but whatever his answer was, she knew she wouldn’t believe him without seeing for herself. The truth was the one thing that she could no longer compromise.

  Cindy pushed the tip of the letter opener into the keyhole and tried turning. It was always done with such ease in the movies. A bobby pin, a twist, a turn, an opened door. In reality, this was not the case.

  The lock didn’t budge, so she applied more pressure, leaning in, using her upper body for leverage as she pushed even harder, trying to turn the letter opener at the same time.

  Come on.

  The lock suddenly gave without warning, shattering into pieces, the wood around it splintering and falling to the floor. Cindy held her breath as tiny metal parts bounced across the hardwood. When everything finally settled, she slid the drawer open and peeked inside.

  The red folder—the one she’d seen him put in the drawer the other day—was on top. Cindy took it out and sat on the floor, opening it across her lap. It was a mail-order paternity test from one of those trace-your-family-tree websites. After her father died, leaving her the last surviving member of their family, she’d contemplated taking a DNA test to see if there were others out there who she could reach out to, but ultimately decided against it. Her family had too much baggage as it was, and finding out she was a descendant of one of the largest slave-owning bloodlines in the country or discovering that a distant great uncle was a spy for the Germans during World War II would be too much. Better to let sleeping dogs lie.

  She scanned the results page, and her breath caught in her throat. According to the report, twenty-two genetic markers had been tested, and the results concluded that the father was a 99.99 percent match to the child, making paternity a certainty.

  Her world began to spin, the ceiling dipping to her left while the floor came up on her right. She could feel her heart beating in her chest and sweat forming under her arms. Her breathing became shallow and labored. She thought she might be having a heart attack.

  How can this be?

  How is this possible?

  There was a handwritten note next to the subject line marked Child. It was her name.

  Cynthia Garland.

  The note next to the subject line marked Parent/Father was a name she thought she couldn’t possibly be seeing.

  James Darville.

  According to the test she was looking at, James Darville was her father.

  “What are you doing?”

  She looked up and saw Trevor standing in the doorway, although his outline was skewed by the tears in her eyes and the throbbing in her head. Under normal circumstances, she’d be trying to fumble for an excuse as to why she was breaking into his desk and rummaging through his things, but the weight of this news was so heavy and confusing that she forgot about manners or the fact that she’d done anything wrong or the fact that she’d thought she was alone in the house. Instead, she simply held up the results report as she began to cry.

  “What is this?”

  He rushed into the dining room and snatched the folder from her. “You weren’t supposed to see that.”

  “Why do you have that? How could you have that? What’s going on?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Forget it. It’s nothing.”

  “Tell me!” she screamed as loud as she could. “Tell me right now! What is this?”

  The room fell silent.

  “I needed to know the truth,” he finally said.

  She pointed and laughed as if he were mad. “That is not the truth!”

  T
revor shook his head. “I’m sorry. It is.” He took a moment, and she could tell he was trying to figure out what he was going to say. “That jewelry box of souvenirs wasn’t the only thing I found in the hole at James’s house. I found cassette tapes too. Four of them. They were tucked in a plastic bag under the part of the floor that didn’t pop out, behind where the jewelry box was. You had to really stick your hand in there, or else there’s no way you would’ve seen them. Anyway, my flashlight happened to catch the reflection of the bag, so I grabbed it to see what it was. Before I could tell you guys what I found, David tripped and spilled everything out of the box. We were scrambling to pick it all up and get the hell out of there. I mean, we were making way too much noise, and we had James in one car and a dead woman in the other. It was crazy. When we got back to the house, I figured I would listen to see what was on there before I said anything about them.”

  Cindy’s eyes were wide. She was hyperventilating. “I don’t care what was on those tapes. That man is not my father. You’re not my brother.”

  “James said on the tape that he met your mother when he was still teaching at the Lynch Academy in Ohio. She’s the reason he moved to West Finley. She’d just started her job delivering her catalogs and had a little piece of Ohio as part of her route. They met at a coffee shop, and that chance encounter started everything.”

  “No, no, no, no, no, no.”

  “It’s all there,” he replied, pointing to the drawer. “Look for yourself.”

  Cindy reached in and pulled out a small plastic bag. She opened it and grabbed one of the cassettes. Old-school blank tapes. The kind she used to record her favorite songs on right from the radio, always catching the DJ at the beginning or end of a song. She never could get that quite right.

  “I wasn’t sure if he was lying or confused, so I had to find out for myself. I waited until he was asleep and swabbed his mouth with one of the Q-tip things they give you in the test kit. Did the same to you when you were passed out from all the wine you drank after you were watching the news coverage of that trooper’s funeral.”

  “You bastard.”

  “I needed to know. I took the samples and mailed them in. Came back two days later, just like the package said. He was telling the truth.” Trevor held up the results page. “Ninety-nine point ninety-nine percent match. He’s your father. And I’m your half brother.”

  Cindy couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She refused to believe what she was hearing. “That report doesn’t have our names on it. You wrote our names on there. That could be anyone’s report and you’re lying.”

  “Why would I lie?”

  “I don’t know! To hurt me or make me feel vulnerable. To knock me down so you can use me.”

  “Use you for what? All I’m trying to do is get my family back and not get me or them hurt in the process. Hagen, and whoever else is working for him, is going to be coming for James soon. There’s a good chance he’s going to want to kill us once he’s done with the old man. We’re all loose ends here. Think about it. I need you lucid and with me. Why would I try and manipulate you with lies about James being your father? You’re not making any sense.”

  “None of this makes sense!” Cindy cried, her tears still blurring her vision, the room still tilting up and away. “That man is not my father.”

  He held up his hands. “Okay. If that’s what you want to believe. That’s fine with me. I wasn’t going to tell you anyway. You’re the one who broke into my desk.”

  Cindy turned around and reached into the bag, pulling the remaining three tapes out. “I want to listen.”

  “I’m not sure you do.”

  “If the man in the basement really is my father, that means he had an affair with my mother, killed my sister, and killed the other children too. I want to hear what’s on those tapes. If you say it’s the truth, I want to know. That’s all I’ve been after for three decades. I want the truth.”

  Trevor bent down next to her and gently grabbed her shoulders. She’d done the same to him only days earlier. His eyes were compassionate, and that scared her the most.

  “We’ve been through a lot these past few days,” he said. “You and I have done things we never would’ve dreamed a month ago. People died because of us. I’m not sure you can take what’s on those tapes. It’s too much. You shouldn’t listen.”

  She blinked a new set of tears from her eyes and slowly lifted the tip of the letter opener up to the bottom of his chin. “Don’t worry about me,” she said through clenched teeth. “I can handle it. Let me listen.”

  He exhaled through his nose. Resignation. “Okay, but just remember—you asked for this. For the record, I think it’s a very bad idea.”

  65

  James shuffled past the wheelchair, using the bed to steady himself. His legs ached from being immobile for so long; his head swam from being in an upright position. When he reached the end of the bed, he focused on the dark corridor across the way, immersed in the shadows. The ghosts were waiting for him there. He couldn’t see them or hear them, but he knew they were there, with their decaying skin and horrific eyes and toothless grins. They were waiting to tear him apart. But that was the only way out.

  James pushed himself off the end of the bed and took his first few, unsteady steps without the assistance of anything to help his balance. He kept his arms out to his sides as if he were on a tightrope, swaying from right to left as he went, making slow progress across the tiled floor. The open mouth of the shadows came closer, his eyes fixed on the hallway that would lead to the hurricane doors, his mind concentrating on each step.

  Left . . . stop.

  Right . . . stop.

  Left . . . stop.

  His legs burned, and his breath came quick, more from fear than exhaustion. If the ghosts wanted him, he’d be vulnerable. They could come from the shadows and take him while he was busy concentrating on walking. He’d never see them approaching. He’d just feel their small, dirty fingers curl around his skin, and that would be it.

  The concrete step seemed larger now that he knew he had to get up on it. He held his breath and bent one knee, pushing himself up and forward while balancing a hand on the wall. He fought to keep steady and brought his other leg behind him, then balanced himself again as he slid his hand farther down the wall. He’d made it.

  James took a step, and his leg suddenly gave out. He landed hard on his right hip and rolled onto his back. His head bounced off the floor, and he saw stars for a moment. The fog was coming. He could feel it. His body wanted to stay there and rest, to sleep the remainder of the day away and not worry about escaping the people who were trying to hurt him. Just a few minutes of rest.

  No!

  He clawed his way through the fog and pushed himself up off the floor. He got into a kneeling position, then used the wall to steady himself as he stood. A thin trail of blood trickled down the side of his face.

  The hall ended with a single door. James opened it and walked through to another corridor that turned left. He could see the outline of the hurricane doors at the end of this new hallway. The daylight outlined the seams in the frame.

  As he walked, he noticed something else in front of him, off to the side, against the wall. He couldn’t make out what it was in the dark and thought it could be one of the ghosts, but he had to keep moving. He was in their world now. The shadow world. If they were going to take him, so be it. He would focus on the doors and not stop moving.

  Each step was painful. At first just a dull thud in his hip and knee, but it quickly became more excruciating. Perhaps he’d broken something when he fell. But he couldn’t stop. He had to keep moving. He was close now. Almost there.

  The object against the wall was long and white. James kept his focus on the daylight outlining the hurricane doors, swallowing the pain, which was getting worse. As he got closer to the object, he could see that it wasn’t white after all. It was plastic. Clear plastic. He stopped when he reached it and looked down. Fear enveloped him. Wh
at was this thing he was about to pass?

  His subconscious registered what he was looking at before his mind allowed him to see it for what it was. Clear plastic. Long. Rolled like a carpet. Kept against the wall. He bent closer and could see something through the rolled layers. It was as if he were looking at it through a thick patch of ice.

  It was a body.

  The light from the seams in the door helped him make out the blurred features of the face. Although it was faint, he could smell the stench of rotting skin even through the tight wrapping. He got down on his knees, wincing at the pain, and bent even closer. A small fragment of recollection came to him. The hair. The dark skin. The scrubs she was dressed in. Those purple scrubs with the small embroidered cartoon cats. She’d loved that top.

  It was Rebecca.

  “No!”

  His voice echoed in the quiet space as he clawed at the plastic. It couldn’t be Rebecca. It couldn’t! But he knew it was. She was dead, and somehow, he knew he was to blame. But the fog kept the details from him, hiding the actions that had led the poor, kind nurse to where she was, wrapped up and discarded like a bag of trash.

  The plastic was too thick and his hands and fingers too weak to break through. He wiped the tears from his eyes and stood back up on shaky legs. He had to get out of there. Had to get help. People needed to know what was happening in that basement. Even if the fog kept him from the ultimate truths, others would figure it out.

  James pushed himself through the last few painful steps until he was leaning against the hurricane doors, panting and crying. He unlocked the bolt and turned the knob, opening the doors onto the Manhattan streets that would bring him the help he so desperately needed.

  Only the streets of the city weren’t there. No cars. No pedestrians walking. No taxis honking or busses revving their engines. No police sirens or ambulances working their way through backed-up traffic. There was none of that. There was, in fact, no city at all.

  James stepped out from the basement and surveyed the acres and acres of land that were laid out in front of him. All he could see were dead cornstalks, cut off or bent in the center, in a field so dense it blocked everything else but the tip of a silo off in the distance. Snow covered the ground here, and he looked down at his feet, realizing for the first time that he was only wearing socks. He’d never considered the weather when planning his escape. He’d never considered anything but the crowds of people who were supposed to be there to help him when he got out. But this. What was this? Where was this?