I was so pleased to have left corsets behind.
********************
The sunlight which had peeked through the boards in my window so forcefully and cheerfully before had faded to the duskiness of twilight, then to the darkness of another night. I am alone in the dark once more. To the best of my knowledge without a watch to tell me differently, I have been locked in this room for nearly 24 hours. It has been nearly double that since I’ve slept. I am nauseous from the need to relieve my bladder but I refuse to give in and do the unthinkable on the floor, like an animal. The minute I do that I will know I am officially a prisoner.
My thoughts are jumbled and running together. Nothing makes sense. My memories are blended with my dreams, with my imaginings, with snippets of television and movies I’ve seen, books I’ve read, and nothing is rational or logical. I have gone from thinking and remembering to singing. Whatever comes into my frazzled brain: bawdy Irish drinking songs, Spanish love songs, Elvis Presley, children’s limericks set to tune, hymns, Christmas carols, The Supremes. I sing softly at first, then louder, no longer caring if someone sits on the other side of that door mocking me.
My throat begins to hurt from the singing and from the shouting I had done earlier. I had beaten my fists against the door until my knuckles were bruised. In a house that was falling apart how could one old door defeat me? I had kicked and pummeled and pushed the planks that boarded up the one window but the screws and nails used were long and the wood thick and heavy. There were splinters under my fingernails from digging at the wood and trying to pry them away from their fastenings.
My head has gone from pounding to being listlessly quiet and rather empty feeling. I am not thinking at all any longer. My mind is a black hole from which no thoughts echo. I am so tired. I no longer even want to throw up from my aching bladder, but simply want to give up and put my head down. The only distant thought, like something far, far off in the distant of my brain, is that if I sleep I may lose my whole family.
Will they sleep without me? I wonder sleepily. Have they already? Did they travel without me last night, as they lay in bed where they ought to be, while I was traipsing through this haunted house, looking for ghosts? Are they now hundreds of years in the past, looking for me frantically; Prue a mess of worries, Dad searching for a bottle as frenetically as he looks for his daughter, Israel penetrating the surroundings looking for the tall girl with the light eyes who used to be his friend? Will they grieve for me the way they grieve for Rose? Will they say to each other, their arms around each other, I do hope she found a home with Gladys?
Now my head slips down, down, down. Down to the old smelly mattress beneath me. It’s no longer me who wars with sleep, me who wars with anything, not any longer. I give up. Give in. The comfort of my decision makes the corners of my mouth turn up in a slight smile. And I hear the faintest of all scratching noises. If the room hadn’t been so silent for so very long, perhaps I wouldn’t hear it, but I do. As quickly as it started, it’s gone. I want to spring to my feet, but my feet don’t oblige. My legs buckle under my weight and I am back down on the mattress once more. I try to call out but my throat is parched and my words unvoiced. It takes everything I have for a moment just to stand and wobble like a fawn or a newborn colt to the door.
The knob turns as easily as if it has just been oiled.
Chapter Eighteen
I skim down the dark stairs as though I am a weightless ghost, and I feel as though I may be. Sonnet Gray, dead in this lifeless house, doomed to haunt it for all eternity because she cannot get out. My feet barely skim the floor at the bottom of the stairs as I fling myself at the front door and out into the night air. The first thing I see is the sun coming up over the trees, the second is the Blue Beast sitting quietly where I left it. My foggy brain doesn’t register the fact that the headlights are no longer shining like a symbol of hope and are as an alternative, cold and silent and dark and non-existent. I give a little cry as I realize suddenly what that means: the car is as good as deceased. I have killed the battery and without another car to jump start it, the Blue Beast will stay right here, silent as a tomb.
My fingers which had already grasped the door handle to the car eagerly only seconds before flex and release and I slide my tired body to the ground. I debate just staying there for the rest of my life, for the rest of my life seems quite short and pointless anyway. I am too tired to be scared anymore of whoever locked me in that room and whoever let me out, and my brain is too weary to form any type of plan. Lying in the mud seems a very viable and intriguing option. But if Prue and Dad have managed to stay awake and wait for me, I cannot keep them any longer.
That is the only fuzzy logic that gets me to my feet again. I relieve my aching bladder behind a tree and then rummage in the Blue Beast for nourishment. I find a can of almonds in the console and the bottom inch of a bottle of water that had rolled under the driver’s seat and I make short use of them. Feeling somewhat better, at least somewhat less sick anyway, I begin to walk.
********************
I walk like a drunken man, I think. I walk like a woman balancing on a tightrope. Lean, correct, stumble, over correct. I weave around the road in aimless patterns and I know I am doing it, but I am powerless to straighten myself out. My feet drag, which hurts the soles of my bare feet, but I cannot find the energy it would require to step higher.
The sun rises, every minute illuminating more of my road ahead of me.
Once I look back because I think I can hear the softest sound of someone calling me, but all I see is that hateful house, getting mercifully smaller the further I walk away.
********************
The road I travel on is going to intersect with another road just up ahead; I can see the road signs and the way the two roads make a cross at their juncture. It is only a few yards away from me now and I can hear the rumble of a car approaching the cross, on the other road. I begin to make out its shape, its fuchsia color, the smallness of a two door little hatchback. I see it nearing the cross and I know that if the road I travel on has a stop sign, which it does, then perhaps the road the fuchsia car travels on does not. It will speed by and not look my way.
I call out frantically and begin to run or try to; attempting to reach the sign and the cross at the same time as the car, but it is fruitless. If the driver of the fuchsia car sees me, a dirty girl in a long tattered nightgown, he will think he sees a ghost.
Am I a ghost?
I walk.
********************
I miss driving. I miss the speed, the way the machine hugged the curves, the way my hand would dangle out the window and I would feel so glamorous and modern.
One sore foot in front of the other. My toes are dirty and my heels bruised. I realize eventually when I do not stumble into town, the outskirts of town, or anything that remotely resembles a town, that I have gotten myself lost. I am Lost and I am lost. I laugh out loud. What a dunce I am. I must be the worst heroine in history.
When plotting your next escape, Sonnet old girl, try to remember to turn left at the abandoned scary house, and not right. That’d be great. Thanks.
I decide to sit down and let someone find me. Isn’t that what we learn as little children? If you are lost, stay put and let Mum and Dad find you. Well, I think crossly, dear Mum isn’t coming and Dad can’t seem to find his own way home these days, much less find me. Prue doesn’t drive, Bea and Emme won’t know where to look, Israel has had his car stolen by the girl in question, and Luke…Luke should know where to look!
I have to believe that Luke will know where to look.
I send him what I hope are telepathic messages to turn left and not right after he’s searched the house. Will the someone who locked me in and then let me out try the same thing with him? Is it only I that is being messed with emotionally, and as I look down at my feet, physically? Is Rose traveling with a sociopath? Or was Rose never there at all?
I lean against a tree trunk on the side of th
e lonely dirt road as I ponder. My body feels heavy again, my hopes of reaching town on my own without sleep have diminished. I can’t do this anymore. No one can stay awake forever.
I am realizing this when I hear the motor of a car and see the dust billow up on the road, coming closer and closer. An expensive looking car pulls up beside me. It is silver and the windows are tinted black. I hear the driver’s side door open and slam shut with excessive force. I know I should be very happy about this change of events in my circumstances but I am simply too weary. I don’t even stand, I simply watch as my rescuer comes around the large car and to my side.
My eyes are too heavy to really focus and the form of a person swims before me, blurry and fuzzy around the edges. His voice, when he speaks, sounds distant and remote.
He also sounds angry, I realize with a little surprise, and although I am having trouble with my ears making sense of his diatribe, he appears to be cursing.
“Get in the car,” Israel says, slowly and with measured fury. Without so much as a soft word in my direction, he lifts me bodily and deposits me on the soft seat of the car.
Chapter Nineteen
“Start talking,” Israel demands as we speed off down the dirt road. “Now.”
“Thank you for finding me, Is,” I whisper. “I’m going to sleep now.”
“Oh no, you’re not. Talk! What is going on? What happened to you?”
In my head I explain it all coherently, Israel understands, and we go home. But I cannot seem to make my lips work properly or form articulate sentences. I mumble something but I am not even sure what language I speak it in, if it’s a language at all and not just gibberish. I think it may be Spanish. Israel glances over at me in alarm.
“Just hang on then,” he says. “We’ll be home soon. Everyone is out looking for you, even Matthias and Harry. We’re all going on too little sleep. Just hang on until we can all be together, Sonnet. Don’t sleep without us. Don’t travel without us.”
I nod in obedience but my eyes are already shut fast and it would take an act of God to open them.
********************
“She’s only been asleep for ten minutes,” I faintly hear Israel say. My body has been pulled out of the car with very little care and ceremony – if I ever wake up fully I plan to correct Israel’s manhandling and lack of gentleness – and I feel several hands on me. One on my cheek, another on my wrist, one feels like a complete set of arms around my waist, as I lay like a sack of bones in Israel’s arms.
“Ten minutes is all she’s getting,” I hear Prue’s bark. “Get her in the bathtub.”
“Bath would be nice, but later, please,” I mumble.
My requests are ignored and when we get to the top of the stairs and through the narrow squeeze of the bathroom door, I am dumped awkwardly in the hard, cold porcelain tub.
“Ouch!” I rub my shins and sit up.
My finally open eyes are met with five other pairs, all staring at me. Prue looks so angry she makes Is look like a teddy bear, Dad looks like he has been awake even longer than I have, Matthias and Harry have clearly been crying.
“I’m very glad to see you,” I say, and then I promptly burst into tears.
“You had me worn to the bone with worry and grief, child,” Prue turns on the water. It is frosty cold and I yelp. The iciness stops my crying. “What did you mean going off and with the car? We had no way of knowin’ where you went, when you’d be back. We’ve been up all night waiting for you!”
I consider pointing out that I’ve been up for two nights and then some, but I think better of it. I sit meekly, watching the tub fill up around me, the water turning warm, the edges of my nightgown darkening and billowing out in the tiny pool. The water is already turning grimy and dirty.
“I was looking for Rose,” I say, stealing a glance at Dad as I say it. He does not react. “She was here. I thought I knew where she might have gone, so I found the car keys and went after her. I went to an old house where I thought she was staying but I got locked in. I couldn’t find a way out until this morning and then I started walking. I got lost.” I am too tired, too confused, to say anymore.
Prue doesn’t even appear to be listening; she is scrubbing my hands and elbows with a bar of soap. She turns off the water, lets it drain, me a bedraggled soggy mess, and then fills it back up again. It will take more than one bath to get me clean again, especially wearing this nightgown.
“Israel came and got us when you went missing and we came straight away,” says Harry. His lip quivers like a small boy who is trying to be brave and not cry. “We didn’t know where to look so we went to the soup kitchen, checked with your friends at the coffee shop. Just got back here a bit ago to check in. So relieved you’re back, honey.”
“Thanks, Harry. I’m sorry I messed up your travel plans.”
“Aw, you didn’t mess anything up.”
I feel my eyes closing again, but Prue splashes water on my face.
Really, as far as a rescue and welcome home committee, my family is not the top of the line.
********************
What feels like a torturous number of hours later, but is really less than one, I am clean, my hair shampooed, my nightgown thrown in the laundry although it may not be salvageable, I am wearing clean clothes, I have obediently eaten scrambled eggs and toast, and I am at last, in my bed. Emme has come over and embraced me ferociously (finally, someone who doesn’t yell at me in order to show they care) and left again. No one has forced more explanations from me, though Israel looks at me from underneath hooded, suspicious eyes. He holds his tongue for now, but I know instinctively that when we wake I am going to be drilled with questions.
Everyone is almost as exhausted as I am and they all are as happy to drop into their beds as I am, though Harry and Matthias leave for their new home first. It is not even twilight, but it no longer matters; as long as we all sleep together we don’t care what time of day or night it is. Dad tucks me in like a little girl and I am touched by the rarity of this demonstration of sentimentality.
“You scared me,” he says, from his perch on the side of my bed. “Don’t do that again. Please.”
“Yes, Dad,” I promise, and put my hand over his. His trembles just a bit. With his free hand, he reaches up and smoothes his eyebrow. Then he reaches over and smoothes my hair back from my forehead. I feel pleased and honored to be the recipient of his nervous habits somehow. “I just wanted to find Rose. Be together again. Like it used to be.”
“Rose is gone, Sonnet. Your mother is gone. I couldn’t bear it if I lost you too.” I realize then that he is not slurring his speech and that his eyes are clear and focused on mine. Has my disappearance sobered him?
“Yes, Dad,” I repeat and blink the tears from my eyes. “I’m sorry. Do you feel it coming?”
I speak of traveling. That feeling that has been lingering in my mind and emotions for days now. To my surprise, he seems to know exactly what I’m referring to.
“Yes,” he says. “It’s coming.”
I sleep.
I sleep like the dead and it feels so lovely that when I feel strong hands shaking me awake hours later, I squeeze my eyes closed tighter and mutter a threat. The hands are persistent and I can’t ignore them much longer; I open my eyes and scowl at Dad.
Besides the look on his face – worried and nervous and drawn – the smell is the first thing that clues me in. An odor of cabbage and cold humidity wafts by my nostrils, like the smell of dank heavy fog mixed with old vegetables. The aromas, though not entirely pleasant, match my surroundings, and my surroundings are not my bedroom. It is not my house at all, it is not my town, and it is not the century I fell asleep in. There are cobblestones beneath me, hard and unyielding. I am curled up against a wall; on inspection it seems to be a very large building on a very English looking street. English, I’d wager, not because I am an expert on architecture or geography, but because of the frowning mustached man looming over me. He is quite obviously British,
from his well trained mustache to his bowler hat to his walking cane. If that hadn’t been enough to tip me off, his accent certainly convinces me.
“Get up then, miss,” he pokes me with the tip of his cane. “There isn’t any loitering in this neighborhood. This is a respectable neighborhood, and I’ll thank you, sir,” he turns his attention to my father, “To stay out of it.”
Dad only blinks, touches his own mustache indifferently, and nods.
The man makes a humphing sound and continues his walk down the street. He tips his hat to a smartly dressed lady with a parasol as they pass, and the woman frowns at me, stepping farther away from my vicinity as she walks by.
Wonderful. Corsets. Just my luck. My ribs ache already at the very real memory of whale bone cutting into them. I stand with a sigh.
“Prue and Israel?” I ask Dad.
“Here,” he nods. “Been up a little bit. Went to find things out, thought we’d let you sleep as long as possible.”
“Thanks.” It’s very cold, there is slush on the street, and I jump from one foot to the other to keep warm. My head feels foggy, still not quite awake. I feel the encroaching thoughts of reality coming, and I ache to keep them at bay. I do not want to deal with them just yet. I do not want to think of the coffee shop, of Luke, of Emme and Bea and Joe, of Harry and Matthias, of Rose. I do not want to think of anything at all. I do not want to think. Though I am determined to stick my head in the sand, or the slush as it were, I am incapable and tiny images of the past wander through my head the way your whole life flashes before you when you die. In a way, I feel as though I am dead. I am certainly dead to Micki, to my customers, to Jim and everyone at the soup kitchen, to Luke. Although I have known him the least amount of time, my chest aches with a particular dullness when I think of Luke Dawes. The way he would show up uninvited at my house, our silly little date, the way he humored me by taking me to that old house to look for my invisible sister. The way he doctored up his black coffee until it was unrecognizable and then scowled at me over it. His big feet stretched out in front of him, lined up with mine as we sat together. If he truly believed my story, he will know I am not dead, but traveling. Will he miss me? I wonder.
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