I shake my head. It’s a lie.
I feel something. I’m not sure what. The emotions aren’t connected to a thought or memory. It’s deeper than that. But I can handle it, and I’m sure as hell not afraid to hear the rest, even if it was so bad that I had my memory eradicated.
“Fine,” she says, sitting back. She wipes her arm across her running nose and sniffs back her emotions. “It was Maya.”
“What was Maya?”
“She killed him. Your wife. Murdered your son.”
“How?”
“With a shard of glass from a broken clock. It was a gift, that clock, from me.” Allenby straightens her posture, steeling herself against the story. “She stabbed him fourteen times. In his arms. His chest. His stomach.”
Emotions roil. I fight against them.
“She held that little boy—he was eight—in her arms and buried the glass into him over and over, into the boy who trusted her implicitly, into the son she adored with every strand of her DNA, into the young man who you would have done anything to save.”
“But … why?”
“That’s harder to answer.” Allenby looks up at me and seems surprised.
“What?” I ask.
She points to the right side of my face. “Your cheek.”
I touch a finger to my cheek. It’s wet. A single tear has fallen. “Tell me why.”
“The official ruling was temporary insanity, which is actually close to the truth. Except there was nothing temporary about it. Over the months that followed, she descended into a kind of madness. She would scream until her throat went raw and she lost her voice. She would dig at her legs, exposing muscle.”
“I saw the scars.”
“She returns to herself on rare occasions, as she must have with you, but we’ve had to keep her heavily sedated. The marks you no doubt saw on her arms were self-inflicted wounds. Someone forgot to add a sedative to her IV bag. When she woke, she used her arms as a pin cushion for the IV needle. Even when she’s loopy on drugs, she finds ways to harm herself.”
“Is it the grief?” I ask. “Remorse for what she did?”
“No,” Allenby says. There’s not a trace of doubt in her voice. “It’s fear that drives her.”
“Fear?” From what I’ve observed over the past year, fear most often has a source. It could be as obvious as a man with a gun or as subtle as an idea. But what could Maya have to fear from an eight-year-old boy whom she adored? “Fear of what?”
“This is going to be hard to understand,” Allenby says.
“Because I don’t feel fear?”
“Because it’s bloody insane.”
“I lived in an asylum,” I remind her. “My life—the life that I remember—is about as insane as it gets.”
Allenby stands and takes the blender pitcher to the sink. Begins rinsing it out. “You’re wrong about that. That capital C you’re so fond of is going to feel a whole lot smaller in about sixty seconds.”
“What happens in sixty seconds?” I ask.
She points to the shade-covered kitchen window. “You’re going to build up the nerve to pull up that shade.”
“And what am I supposed to see?”
She pauses scrubbing the pitcher. “Do you remember injecting yourself?”
I hadn’t thought of it since waking, but I remember it. “Yes.”
“Do you remember the hallucinations?”
“Yeah, but—”
“What did you see?”
I think about the strange, distorted darkness, lined with green.
She doesn’t let me tell her. “What did you hear?”
I nearly say, “nothing,” but then I remember. “Whispers.”
She returns to her chore. “Then it worked.”
“What worked?”
“The drug you destroyed and then used on yourself. Bravo, by the way, hats off.” Her sarcasm is biting. “From the moment you woke up this morning, you were tested. No one knew things would go quite as far as they did—Maya and your dashing escape were not part of the plan—but the results, in the end, were predicted. All the while, your psychological and emotional states were being assessed, not to mention your physical abilities, which don’t seem to have deteriorated.”
“Whose horrible idea was that?” I ask. “I could have killed someone.”
“You nearly did, and I’m afraid Lyons organized the tests. I argued against it. Katzman, too. Though I think he was more concerned about himself.” She looks back at me. “They knew you’d do it, by the way. Inject yourself. All they had to do was convince you the contents were important. They just didn’t think you’d leave in a blaze of glory first.”
“Lyons didn’t have a heart attack, did he?”
She shakes her head. “He’s a decent actor. Knew you wouldn’t kill a man who was already dying.”
“They were shooting to kill.”
She nods. “There’s no other way to test a man who is as hard to kill as you. Lyons’s words. But his confidence in your abilities seems to have been well founded. Frankly, I’m surprised that you didn’t burn this place to the ground.”
“It was on my to-do list.”
“And now?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Then let’s make you sure.” She motions to the window. “Surreality awaits.”
I stand and step around the breakfast table. With a tug, the shade launches up, slapping against the window frame as the powerful spring turns it too many times.
The window is vertical, part of the story-tall steps running down two sides of the building. The view outside is what I remember. New Hampshire in summer. Green and blue. And …
Something else.
“What’s that?” I ask, pointing at the parking lot below. The lot is fairly empty now, and all signs of the previous day’s battle have been cleaned up.
Allenby steps up beside me. “What do you see?”
“Someone in the parking lot.” There’s a shadow moving among the cars, but I can’t make out who it is. “Is that a bear?”
Allenby shrugs. “I don’t see a thing.”
I point. “It’s right there.”
“The lot is empty. I don’t—” There’s a slap and her voice cuts off.
I glance toward the sound and find my hand clutching her wrist. That’s unusual. But it’s not fear. It’s surprise. “What’s happening?”
“Look again,” she says. “Try to see more. When you feel it, push.”
When I look back to the window, my eyes feel strained. Like I need glasses. Something tickles my eye, and I fight the urge to blink. Following Allenby’s advice, I push forward. I can feel the stretch, like some newly formed muscle in my eye, and I will it to flex. And then, with a twitch, it does.
Blinding pain comes in waves, flowing from my eyes and down into my torso. My stomach clutches, pitching me forward with a grunt. My muscles spasm, the pain becoming systemic. “What’s happening?”
“It will get easier,” she says. “Look again, when you can.”
Fighting the pain, I turn my eyes up.
The parking lot is gone.
New Hampshire is gone.
The land is dark, mixed with veins of shimmering green light. The sky appears as a dark purple hue. There’s movement in the dark. Indistinct. Revealed by shifts in the green light. My vision flickers, pulsing pain throughout my body.
I see the parking lot.
And then it’s gone. Or not. It’s just dim. Less focused. And the veins of green remain.
I rub my eyes and the two views—the real and surreal—strobe back and forth. I close my eyes again. “I’m still hallucinating.”
“No,” Allenby says. “You’re not.”
“Then what am I seeing?”
“The world. But in a way no one else can.”
“There’s a shadow in the parking lot. Moving. But there’s no source. It isn’t connected to anyone.”
“Just the one?” Allenby asks, suddenly tense.
&nb
sp; I scan the lot and see nothing else moving. “Yes.”
“That shadow,” she says, “is your enemy, our enemy, hidden from the world but present. Always present. They are the shifting air that makes hair stand on end. The monsters under the bed. The sense of impending doom, great depression, and panic that has no source. Most of us feel their presence—fear without tangible cause—on a regular basis. You, on the other hand, Mr. Fearless, have never felt them.”
The pain lessens and I open my eyes. The view is back to normal. Shifting movement turns my eyes back to the parking lot. The moment I see the strange shape skulking around the cars, the world goes black and green again, bringing a fresh wave of nausea-inducing agony along with it. “Dammit.” I turn away from the window. The apartment and Allenby look normal.
“How do I stop it?” I ask, clutching my gut with one hand, supporting my weight on the kitchen table with the other.
“Are you afraid?” Allenby asks. She sounds concerned, but I think she’s more worried that I’m feeling fear than she is about my physical state.
I rub my throbbing temples. “Is it supposed to hurt like this?”
“Try to focus,” she says. “See what you want to see. See where you want to see.”
“Have you done this before?” I ask.
“God, no.”
“Great,” I say, turning toward the dark window. “So your advice is—”
“Bullshit?” Allenby says. “Maybe. But it’s also you’re only hope, because once we step out of this building, you’re going to have to control it—and the pain—on your own.”
I turn back to the window and lift my head, tracking a fast-moving shadow as it sweeps by. A faint whispering tickles my ears but then fades. Allenby must see my surprise this time because she asks, “What?”
“The shadow.”
“Where?” Her voice is instantly tense. Almost a whisper.
Whatever this thing is, she’s definitely afraid of it. “It just passed by the window.”
Allenby takes a deep breath, lets it out slow. “How did it make you feel? When you saw it.”
I glance at her. “Are you asking me if I felt afraid?”
She nods.
“No.”
She pulls down the shade and collapses into one of the kitchen chairs. “Did it notice you?”
Focused on the kitchen and Allenby, the pain quickly subsides. “Notice me? I said it was a shadow.”
“Mmm.” She’s lost in thought. On another world.
I sit down across from her. “Allenby.”
She doesn’t acknowledge me.
“Aunt Allenby.”
That gets her attention. She looks up with a hint of a smile. “Yes, Josef?”
“Crazy.”
“Still?”
I tilt my head. Half a nod. “It was more than a shadow, wasn’t it?”
“What you saw … however briefly, it’s the reason your son is dead, your wife is lost, and you elected to forget it all. They’re your enemy, Crazy. And they’re right outside the windows. You’re not here to be experimented on. You’re not here to find Simon. Or to save Maya. All of that is in the past.”
“Then why am I here?”
“Honestly? I’m not entirely sure, but I suspect it has a lot, if not everything, to do with vengeance.”
19.
“Vengeance,” I say, without enthusiasm. The word feels hollow. Untrue. Vengeance is an act of passion, driven by emotion. It’s not even a desire. It’s a need.
“And there’s the real problem,” Allenby says. “When Lyons offered to remove your memory, it was an act of mercy, but also refinement. You were always his preferred coconspirator. I was never sure if that was because of your potential to be a living WMD used in humanity’s defense or genuine affection, but when Simon and your parents died and Maya … You lost focus. You nearly lost your mind. You—”
“My parents are dead, too?”
Allenby sucks in a breath. She’s horrible at keeping secrets.
“Tell me about them.”
“They were beautiful people.” Her eyes are downcast, unable to meet mine. “Joyful. Silly, really. Laughed a lot. You did, too, for a time.”
“What I meant,” I say, “is how did they die?”
“Oh,” she says, then a whisper. “Oh…”
“They were on vacation. A tropical resort. Had a suite on the top floor. Jumped off the balcony.”
“They killed themselves?”
“That’s the official report. Mutual suicide. But when you know how to look between the lines, you can make sense of the senseless. Your father, Daniel, hit the concrete walkway not far from the pool. Your mother, Lila, made it to the water but struck the bottom. When she was lifted out, she regained consciousness long enough to speak.” Tears well up in her eyes. She’s describing the brutal death of her best friend and sister-in-law. My mother. Lila. Though I have no memory of the woman, I find myself moved by the story. I take Allenby’s hands. The gesture elicits a sob, but it’s quickly crushed with an efficiency that only comes from practice. “Your mother’s final words revealed the truth about their deaths. ‘The darkness came for us,’ she said. A monster, like the one you glimpsed outside, drove them to jump.”
“Drove them?” I ask.
She nods, her fluffy hair sliding slowly forward and back, seaweed in a current. “They’ve turned fear into a weapon. Can push it into people. Steal their sanity. Force them to do things to themselves, to others, that … they can make us do horrible things.”
“So my mother knew about these fear-inducing shadows? About what’s outside?”
“We all did. And it made our family targets. That same night … that same damn night, they took Hugh, my husband—your uncle—and Simon.”
They … Who or what are they?
“But you survived,” I point out.
“I nearly didn’t. I was tackled before I could follow Hugh into traffic. I tried to warn you, but was too late. The phone was ringing when you found them, Maya and Simon. You never answered, but it was me on the other end.”
“This is what I ran from,” I say. “Why I erased my memory.” Losing an entire family in one night … It sounds like enough to break even the strongest of men. But not Allenby. I hid from it, but she’s been dealing with this pain for more than a year.
“While you retreated, Lyons became even more obsessed with his research,” Allenby says, lost in the past. “His theories about their intentions had been—” She stops. Looks me in the eyes. She’s revealed something she wasn’t supposed to. Knows what my next question will be.
Why did Lyons become obsessed over my family’s deaths?
“You’re not supposed to know,” she whispers.
“No more secrets,” I remind her.
“Except this one,” she says, keeping her voice low. Despite her assurances that our conversation is private, the secret she nearly revealed has her on edge. Nervous.
I continue my argument in a lower voice. “You made opposing promises.”
She shakes her head, disappointed. “Bollocks.” Eyes on mine again. “Not a word.”
I nod.
“Maya’s maiden name is Lyons. Stephen is her father and Simon’s grandfather. He never had a son. Just the one daughter and he loved that boy more than his own child. Their loss set him on a … refined path. He was driven before, by what he described as a cursed childhood, taunted by the darkness, monsters in the closet, unceasing, crippling fear for which there appeared no source. He spent years with psychologists and psychiatrists who rotated him through various drug cocktails. But nothing helped. And then, when he was grown and accustomed to the fear, it left him wounded, but driven to understand it and uncover its source, which he did, and they took his—our—family for it. Rabid curiosity and study shifted to preparedness and, I fear, vengeance. But … who can blame him? I’d be lying if I said I never thought about finding a way to hurt them. Hugh … the man was an angel.”
“Who’s left? In
our family.”
“Just the four of us, counting Maya. Stephen’s wife passed away when Maya was still a child.”
“Why would I run from all this?” I ask. It’s a rhetorical question, wondering aloud because what Allenby has said doesn’t feel like me.
Allenby shrugs. “God only knows, but you took Lyons up on his offer to erase your memory, which, if you ask me, was your first and only real act of cowardice. When you woke with no memory, you attacked. This part is secondhand, mind you. As I mentioned, I found out about your decision via e-mail, and the job was done when I arrived. You were subdued and drugged. Katzman drove you away, put you on a park bench, and set you loose upon the world. I don’t know what the man was thinking, but within a few hours you’d been arrested. I located you when you were committed to SafeHaven a few days later.”
“And left me there.”
“It seemed the best place for you. Even you believed you were crazy. So, yes, we left you there.”
It’s a lot to assimilate, but one detail stands out. “You said I had the potential to be a living WMD.”
She nods.
“I’m just a man.”
This gets a laugh, like I’ve just told the funniest joke. “Okay,” she says. “I’m going to be honest with you because it seems to be the only thing that keeps you from throwing yourself out of windows or punching people in the face.”
“Makes sense.”
“You were born without fear. Didn’t shed a tear when you entered the world. While your mother and I wept, you stayed as calm as a—”
“You were there when I was born?”
“Cut the cord.”
“How old am I?”
“Thirty-four. Your mum was twenty-three at the time. I was twenty-two. Turns out you were born with malformed amygdalas. Your memory was unaffected, but you couldn’t feel fear. You never have.”
“A lack of fear doesn’t explain what I can do.”
“It explains why you excelled in the military.”
“What branch?” I ask. I’m not sure why I care, but I want to know who I was, and different branches of the military can shape a man.
“Army,” she says. “First as a Ranger, and then Delta. But that didn’t last long.”
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