Last Breath

by Diane Hoh

  “Oh, I was talking to Sophie about the dance. You know, the dance you haven’t asked me to yet? We’re a little worried about the decorations. I mean, the way Cassidy’s been lately…”

  “What was that noise?” Travis interrupted when he’d dropped the cubes into his cup.

  Ann straightened the collar of her blue blouse. “What?”

  “That noise. Didn’t you hear it? Like a car with a bad battery. From the cellar?”

  Ann laughed. “I didn’t hear anything. Like there’d be a car in the basement, Trav. What’s in your drink, anyway?”

  Travis frowned. “No, I mean it. Listen!”

  Smiling tolerantly, Ann obeyed. And her smile disappeared. “I hear it. God, what is it?” She listened more intently. “It sounds like…” She looked at Travis with wide eyes. “Travis, where’s Cassidy?” she asked sharply.

  “What?”

  “She never came back inside, did she? And that sound coming from the cellar, it’s horrible, but. I’ve heard it before. I’ll never forget it. I heard it for the first time that night Cassidy had her asthma attack at the Quad. Travis, that’s the same sound.”

  Travis dropped his drink and ran to the cellar door, yanking it open. The rasping sound filled the staircase, echoing up and out into the kitchen. He reached out and flipped the light switch at the top of the stairs.

  Cassidy was on her knees, her hands on the dirt floor. Her mouth was open and her lips, when she turned her face upward, had a faint bluish tinge.

  “Call an ambulance!” Travis barked at Ann, and took the stairs three at a time.

  Cassidy was unable to speak, but when Travis reached her, she gestured with her hands toward her shoulder bag, lying underneath the wooden stairs.

  Travis grabbed it, pulled the inhaler out, and thrust it at Cassidy. “That’s not going to do the trick,” he said grimly, gently cradling her head on his shoulder as she put the inhaler to her mouth. “Not this time.”

  But it did. At least, enough to put an end to the agonized rasping. Enough to enable Cassidy to speak.

  “This was supposed to be a restroom,” she whispered as the agony in her chest eased. “There was a sticker, like Ann said. I checked first. It was there.”

  But she wasn’t surprised at all when the ambulance attendants brought her up the stairs and into the kitchen in front of a curious, anxious crowd and she glanced at the cellar door as it closed. There was no Salem University sticker on the door. No sticker anywhere on it.

  Oh, God, she thought, too exhausted to dwell on the missing sticker, it’s happened again!

  She was aware of comments swirling around her as she was taken from Nightmare Hall. “What’s she doing with Travis?” she heard someone say as Travis remained beside the stretcher. “I thought she was with Sawyer Duncan.” And Talia’s voice, saying, “Oh, no, is she sick again?” And then Sawyer’s voice, “Okay, McVey, I’ll take over now. You can go back to your own date.”

  And then Sawyer was walking beside her, not Travis, and Cassidy was vaguely conscious of a twinge of disappointment. She remembered how safe she’d felt with her head against Travis’s shoulder, and how he hadn’t accused her of imagining the sticker on the cellar door.

  She was only in the infirmary overnight. And grateful to be, because she didn’t want to face her friends back at the Quad. Travis had probably already told them that she thought she’d seen a sticker on the cellar door. She had gone to the party to prove that she was A-OK, and had proved instead exactly the opposite.

  How had that happened?

  Had someone really opened the cellar door, seen her in agony, and then closed the door again without helping her? Or had she imagined that, too?

  With the help of medication, Cassidy slept a deep, dreamless sleep all night.

  And she slept all day Sunday, when she got back to her room. Mostly to avoid questions. If someone asked her why she had stepped into the cellar, she wouldn’t have known what to say. The truth wouldn’t work. “I thought I saw a sticker on the door”? That would be admitting out loud that she didn’t know what she was seeing these days.

  Easier to sleep and avoid everything.

  But on Monday, she dressed and went to all of her classes, then to a dance committee meeting, a Hike and Bike Club meeting, and made a trip to the bookstore to buy notebooks. Her motions were automatic, her mind numb. Throughout the day, people asked her with what seemed like genuine concern how she was feeling, and she told them she was feeling fine. Look! she wanted to say, look how well I’m functioning, just like a normal person. But she couldn’t eat, and she couldn’t concentrate, and she was just going through the motions.

  She knew she needed help. How much of her mind was left? How long would it take to lose the rest of it? Then what would she be? When the last of the real Cassidy Kirk had disappeared forever, where would they put the empty shell that was left? In the kind of hospital where Talia’s mother worked?

  The thought made her physically ill.

  But while she was still functioning, she could at least pretend she was normal, and that meant finishing up the business of the decorations. Ann and Talia and Sophie had all asked her that morning, innocently enough, if everything was “taken care of,” and she’d been asked again by others at the committee meeting. She knew they were all worried that she’d forgotten something.

  She didn’t think she had. But how could she be sure? The only way to know was to go to the mall and pick up the order.

  Since she couldn’t carry all of the supplies on her bike and it would be awkward on the shuttle, she drove. It felt good for a change. Driving was a competent act that required concentration. She seemed to be doing it okay. Hadn’t driven off the road or crashed into another car. That was a good sign, wasn’t it?

  It was twilight by the time she pulled out of the campus parking lot, and already beginning to grow dark when she parked in front of the mall. She should have left school earlier. Ever since she’d nearly hit a deer driving home one night shortly after she got her license, she had hated driving in the dark.

  But collecting the supplies was important. It would be worth a little night driving to see the expressions on everyone’s faces when she dropped the decorations on her bed.

  The mall was uncrowded, the rental-supply store empty but for the clerk.

  When Cassidy told the woman why she was there, the clerk nodded, excused herself, and was back in minutes carrying two shopping bags filled to the brim, the surfaces covered with tissue paper.

  “Could I just see the tablecloths, please?” Cassidy asked.

  “Of course. I’m sure you’ll love them.” Bending, the woman pulled one tissue-wrapped parcel from the bag, laid it on the counter, and unfolded the covering. “There!” she said, “isn’t that pretty!”

  It was pretty. It was very pretty. The only problem was, the folded tablecloth Cassidy was staring at wasn’t black.

  It was royal blue.

  “It’s blue,” she said in a dull voice. “That tablecloth is blue.”

  The woman looked up. “Well, yes, of course it is. They all are.”

  “I ordered black.”

  “Well, that was the first time,” the clerk said patiently. “But then you called and changed the order to blue and orange. And I must say, the order was much easier to fill than the black and silver would have been.”

  Cassidy’s stomach rolled over. Blue and orange? Those weren’t even Salem’s colors. “What are you talking about?” she asked, her voice rising. “I never changed the order.”

  The woman’s smile disappeared. She reached into the bag and pulled out a slip of paper. “Here it is, right here,” she said, her tone of voice decidedly less friendly. “You called a week ago and changed the order. I have your student I.D. number right here on the slip.”

  “But I didn’t!” Cassidy cried. “I never called you! We wanted black and silver, and that’s what I ordered. That’s what I have to have! I have to!” She remembered then with sickening c
larity that blue and orange were the school colors of their archrival, State University. How could she go back to campus with bags filled with blue and orange? “I can’t take this stuff, I can’t!”

  “Well,” the woman said coolly, rewrapping the offending blue in its tissue paper, “I just don’t see any way that I could locate the black and silver at this late date.”

  Cassidy leaned forward over the glass case. “You have to! Oh, God, you have to!”

  Hearing the panic in her voice, the woman’s face softened. “Your dance is Saturday night?”

  Cassidy nodded numbly.

  “Well, I’ll do the best I can. If I don’t have any luck, could you use these instead?”

  “Oh, no,” Cassidy breathed, “absolutely not. No way.”

  “All right, then. I don’t understand any of this, but I’ll do my best. Call me on Thursday. I’ll know by then.”

  Dazed and shaken, Cassidy left the store. How could this have happened? Had she really called the woman and changed the order? Could she have done that without even knowing she was doing it? Was this just another part of what was wrong with her?

  It’s like some other part of me is deliberately trying to sabotage me, she thought dazedly as she made her way through the mall. A very sick part of me.

  And what was she going to tell everyone when she got back to the dorm?

  Nothing. She was going to tell them nothing. She would pray like crazy that the clerk managed to come up with the black and silver and if she didn’t, there’d be time to face the music then. But not now. She was too tired. Too tired.

  And scared. She had never been so scared. Something terrible was happening to her mind, and she didn’t know what to do about it. Where was she to go for help? Who should she talk to?

  She was crying quiet tears of despair as she drove past Nightmare Hall, thinking as she did so that the fall down the cellar stairs hadn’t been as bad as this, this terrifying feeling that her brain was dissolving and she couldn’t stop it from happening.

  The tears blurred her vision. She reached with her right hand for a tissue just as something large and bulky darted out of the woods and into her path.

  Cassidy screamed, stomped down on the brake, but too late.

  There was a loud, sickening thunk and a body flew up into the air, somersaulted, and landed fifty feet away at the edge of the woods.

  Chapter 19

  AS THE CAR SCREECHED to a halt, Cassidy’s head snapped forward, slamming into the steering wheel. But not before she’d seen the body flying up into the air.

  She didn’t lift her head. She couldn’t. Fully conscious, she was nevertheless too dazed with shock to move.

  She struggled to think. She had hit something? Someone? Oh, no, no, not that. She couldn’t have.

  But she had. She had felt the impact, seen the…body…

  Oh, God, no.

  She should get out of the car. She should go look, see how bad it was.

  She lifted her head. Something warm and sticky dripped down her cheek, teased the corner of her lip. She reached out tentatively with her tongue. Salty…but not tears. Blood. From her forehead.

  She should get out. She should go look.

  Had she killed someone?

  No, no, she couldn’t have. Couldn’t have.

  But she knew she could have.

  She sat very still, her hands sitting limply on the wheel. She had to do something.

  But she could not get out and look at that body. She could not.

  Her hand reached up and threw the car into reverse, her foot came down hard on the accelerator, and in a spin of gravel and screeching tires, she raced backward until she reached the driveway to Nightmare Hall. Spun the wheel sharply right, tore up the driveway, stopped the car, jumped out, ran to the front door and began pounding with both fists, screaming for help.

  Jess Vogt was the first to reach the door. Ian Banion was right behind her. “What on earth…?” Jess cried when she saw Cassidy’s tear-streaked face and blood streaming from a cut on her forehead. “Cassidy, what happened?”

  “Come, come with me,” Cassidy gasped, “in my car. Hit someone, I hit someone, on the highway, come with me, please, I can’t look, I can’t…”

  Without asking any questions, Jess and Ian ran to the car with her, Jess taking the driver’s seat, urging Cassidy into the front passenger seat, Ian in the back.

  No one said a word.

  “There!” Cassidy cried when they reached the spot, “it was right there. He’s…he’s lying there, at the edge of the woods. Is he dead? Go see if he’s dead. Oh, God, please don’t let him be dead.”

  “I’ll check,” Ian volunteered and jumped out, leaving the lights on so he could see.

  The two girls sat frozen in the front seat, holding hands, as Ian’s tall, lanky figure walked into the path of the lights.

  He walked up the highway several hundred feet.

  Then he turned around and walked back again, clearly searching the road and the edge of the woods with his eyes.

  He shrugged as he turned to go over the same ground a second time.

  “Why hasn’t he found him?” Cassidy whispered. Her head was beginning to ache terribly. “He was right in front of me. I never saw a thing until it was too late.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Jess said soothingly. “I’m sure it wasn’t. And maybe he wasn’t even hurt badly, Cassidy.”

  “Oh, yes, he was. He had to be. He hit my car so hard, and then he flew up into the air…just like my bicycle, that night by the state park.” Immediately she thought, I shouldn’t have said that. No one believes that ever happened. I don’t even believe it now.

  Ian returned to the car, opened the door, got in, turned toward Cassidy. “I don’t know what you hit, Cassidy, but it couldn’t have been a person, or else they couldn’t have been hurt. Because I looked up and down the highway twice, and didn’t see a thing. There’s no one there. No one at all.”

  Chapter 20

  “NO, IAN,” CASSIDY SAID, wringing her hands, “that’s not right. That’s not right! I hit him, the front of my car hit him and he flew…he has to be there, he has to!”

  Ian shook his head. “Cassidy, I’m telling you, there’s nothing there. Nothing. Not an animal, not a person, nothing. I wouldn’t lie to you.”

  And Cassidy knew that. Everyone on campus knew that Ian Banion wouldn’t lie.

  It was too much. Too much. The terror of believing that she had killed or injured another human being had already sucked most of the life out of her. Now, the relief that she hadn’t done that, after all, was so overwhelming, it drained the last bit of strength from her bones.

  “But the horrifying knowledge that something she had believed to be so real was just another hallucination was the most draining of all. All of those things combined sent her over the edge.

  The wail of despair that came from her mouth then chilled Jess and Ian. They had expected Cassidy to be relieved by Ian’s news. They stared in horror as instead, she hid behind her hands, deep, mournful sounds pouring out of her.

  “Get her to the infirmary,” Ian told Jess in a low, intense voice, “now!”

  Cassidy’s despairing wails continued as they raced up the highway to campus.

  The doctor who cared for her was friendly and gentle. She bandaged Cassidy’s forehead, gave her a pill to calm her down and then sat by her side until the medication took effect, saying there were two doctors on duty and no other patients.

  “Your friends tell me you’ve had a rough time of it,” the doctor said. Her plastic name tag read Dr. Cleo Mandini, M.D.

  Cassidy turned her face away. Jess and Ian had talked about her to the doctor? Probably told this nice woman that Cassidy Kirk was a basket case, ready for a padded cell. Humiliating. It was so humiliating. But true. So true.

  The pill was working. Her headache was going away, and there wasn’t anything wrong with her breathing, in spite of the horror of what had just happened out on the highway. O
r…hadn’t happened. Whatever, Cassidy thought foggily, letting the medication begin to erase her anguish.

  The doctor was still sitting beside her bed.

  “I see things, you know,” Cassidy said in a low, confidential tone. “Did they tell you? I see things that aren’t there. Everyone knows it. I even know it. Don’t you think that’s funny, that I know it, too? I always thought…I always thought that when you hallucinate, you don’t know that you did it. But I know. Does that mean I’m not as far gone as some people?”

  “What kind of things do you see?” the doctor asked, patting Cassidy’s hand.

  Jess and Ian must have told her to check me out, Cassidy thought. She’s going to play psychiatrist for me. Isn’t that nice. God knows I need one. “Well,” she said lazily, “I see essays that I didn’t really write, and I see the wrong time on my clock and wristwatch, and I see the wrong date on invitations and I see money that isn’t really there and I see stickers on doors and then there’s this car…this car…the car is the worst. Only it doesn’t really exist. I know, because I checked. It’s only in my head.”

  “What kind of car is it?”

  Nice of her to humor me, Cassidy thought. Well, why not? Maybe talking about the car would make it seem less real. “It’s a TransAm. Black. With dark, tinted windows that make it look like no one’s driving it. And it has these cute little red hearts, two of them, tied to the driver’s door handle.”

  The room was so white, so very white, there seemed to be white everywhere. And it was chilly. Maybe she wasn’t really in the infirmary, after all. Maybe she was lying outside on the commons in the middle of a cold, white blizzard. Cassidy shivered and pulled the scratchy white blanket up under her chin.

  And then Dr. Cleo Mandini, M.D., said so easily, so casually, as if she were saying that it just might rain tomorrow, “Oh, I know that car. It’s not a figment of your imagination, though. It’s very real. And it’s right here on campus.”