Melinda reaches out and places her hand on her father’s chest, closes her eyes, and takes a long, deep breath, as if transferring her energy to him. For his part, Charles looks confused and embarrassed.
“I missed you, Daddy.”
He softens a bit.
“I just couldn’t come to that place to see you anymore,” he says. “Living like that. And knowing what…what you two had done. I wasn’t even planning to come now, but then Alice showed up on my doorstep.”
“Yes,” she said. “Of course. I never blamed you for anything. I was a demon then.” Now those bright eyes flash at me. “But I’m a different person now. That will never excuse what I did, but God guides me now, so I can never stray off the path of righteousness.” She smiles again at me, and I wish she wouldn’t. “Come. Please come in to the living room. I will fix us all some tea.”
Charles says, “Where’s Sylvia?”
“Quite likely sleeping,” Melinda answers. “She doesn’t come out of her room much when we’re at home. She fatigues easily, I’m afraid. And you know that—”
“That she doesn’t speak,” Charles says. “Yes, you’ve written me about that. Is it a condition?”
“No. I think she simply has nothing to say.”
“How do you communicate with her?” I ask.
“Well, Alice, that’s the thing about twins: we do quite a good job of knowing what the other one is thinking.”
What a horrifying thought.
“Of course,” she continues, “Syl will write things down when she needs to, use hand gestures, that kind of thing. Please sit, Alice. You’re making me feel like a bad hostess.”
This is so surreal, I think. I’m having tea with Melinda Glassin. She’s my hostess. I want to feel rage at her. For years, I’ve been studying martial arts, almost as if preparing for this very moment, a moment where I can dominate her, hurt her. Make her bleed. But now that I’m here, I don’t want that. I just want to get out of here.
She seems to have lost a bit of her mind, and that seems to be wildly comforting to her. What a different experience from mine. My mind is a prison of memories, and hers is an open field of delusion. It almost makes me jealous.
I sit on a lumpy couch, and Charles takes a nearby chair. He looks at me without saying anything as Melinda prepares tea in the kitchen. I look around and wish for more light. There are too many dark corners.
She comes back a few minutes later, carrying a basic tea set with four cups. She pours a cup for me, which I’m in no mood to drink. Still, I sip to be polite, and then immediately think:
Polite? What the hell?
I place the cup down.
“Melinda,” I say. “You need to understand something. I’m not here to forgive you. Maybe you’ve found Jesus, but you will never have my forgiveness. You have no way of understanding how what you and your sister did to me continues to haunt me. I’ve turned to drugs. I’ve considered suicide. I’ve spent countless nights awake and horrified. The panic attacks, the neuroses. It’s all never ending. If it were my decision, you’d be in prison for the rest of your life.”
“Oh, my dear Alice…” she starts, still smiling.
“And if you don’t wipe that fucking smile off your face, I’ll smash your teeth in, you cunt. And don’t think I’m not capable. You have no idea how satisfying it would feel.”
That does it. The smile disappears, and for the briefest of moments, there’s a flash of something on her face. Not quite anger, but perhaps resolve. Whatever it is, there’s not an ounce of Jesus in it.
“Of course, Alice. You have every right to be angry. So why, exactly, are you here?”
Charles remains quiet. I wonder how he feels about me calling his daughter a cunt. Mixed emotions, I suspect.
“I’m here because someone is stalking me. This person is dangerous.”
“Oh my,” she says. “Well, that must be awful.”
“Yes, it is.”
“And what does that have to do with me?”
“Because this person is part of a small group of people obsessed with me. And the reason for their obsession is your crime. These people know where I live, where I work, where I go. They’ve taken pictures of me while I’m sleeping. They’ve spoken to people from my past—people I’ve wanted to avoid—and told them where to find me.”
“That’s terrible,” she says. “You should call the authorities.”
I’ve brought my backpack with me, and I pull out the book.
“I got this in the mail,” I tell her as she delicately takes the book from my hand. “It was postmarked London. The cover and the inscription come from my father. The other panels were drawn by someone else.”
She doesn’t open the book. She’s too mesmerized by the image on the cover.
“This was never published,” she whispers. It’s like I’m showing her a lost book of the New Testament.
“No, it’s the beginning of an unfinished book by my father.”
She runs her fingertips along the page, as if she could caress the soft, stubbled cheeks of Mister Tender. In her eyes, I can see the remnants of a deep wanting. Then she shuts her eyes, shakes her head, and thrusts the book back at me.
“Take this,” she says. “I can’t see it. I’m not allowed to even be looking at things like that. That was…that was a long time ago, anyway.” I don’t reach for the book, so she drops it to the coffee table as if it were in flames. “I’m very sorry for your situation, Alice. But I can’t help you. I don’t know who’s doing this to you. You should go to the police.”
“They can’t help me. You must know something, Melinda. Maybe they’ve contacted you. There’s a leader of this group. He goes by the name Mr. Interested. It’s just an anagram for Mister Tender.”
I sense a flicker of recognition in her eyes.
“Do you know that name?”
“No, I…”
“What? What is it?”
“I did get some letters. A long time ago. Years ago. I didn’t keep them.”
“Were they from him?”
“Yes.”
Then Charles speaks for the first time since we’ve sat down. “What did the letters say, Melinda?”
She looks over to her father, and her eyes hint at a vulnerability I hadn’t seen before. “They were the exact same letters I received…back then.”
“You mean the three letters you got in the mail fourteen years ago? The ones telling you to target me?”
She nods. “But these weren’t signed Mister Tender. They were signed Mr. Interested.”
“Do you have any idea who sent you the original letters?”
Her words are very slow and measured. “No. I mean…at the time. Things were so different back then. I was so different. I truly thought they were sent by Mister Tender. Some manifestation of him at least. That Sylvia and I would be famous.”
“But you know he’s not real.”
“Yes,” she says. “Of course I know that now. I’m sure the letters were some kind of prank. Someone from school. But then I got the other ones in prison, and it just…”
“Just what?”
“There was something else that was sent. It was in the last letter from Mr. Interested.”
“What was it?”
“A drawing.”
Charles says, “What sort of drawing?”
Melinda’s eyes seem to ice over as she stares deeply into my face. “It was a picture of you, Alice. From that night in Gladstone Park.”
I want to ask before or after you stabbed me, but I don’t. But now I know there’s at least one other picture of me, this time from years ago. I reach forward and flip the pages of the book until the four panels of me appear.
“Look at this, Melinda. Just look. It’s okay.”
She glances down.
“Did it lo
ok like these drawings? Could the drawing you saw have been done by the same person as these?”
She looks at the panels for maybe a second.
“I don’t know,” she says. “Perhaps.”
“Has Mr. Interested written to you again? Or Sylvia?”
“No. Not me, at least. I don’t believe to her, either.”
“Melinda, is there anything else you can remember? Do you have any idea who could have sent you those letters? I need to find out who’s doing this to me in order to have any chance at finding peace. You understand that, right?”
“You can always find peace in God, Alice.”
“Just answer me.”
“I don’t know anything else.”
I lean back into the couch, frustrated. Dust motes drift in schools, floating through weak, filtered sunlight, swirling and dancing.
“Melinda,” I say. “Why did you do it? Just tell me why.”
“Forgive me, Alice.”
“I’m not forgiving you. I just want to understand.”
I don’t think she’s going to answer, but she finally says, “I believed I was being commanded. We both were. I can’t explain it any better than that, Alice.”
Her words reveal the soul of a fragile and fractured woman. So easily lured. So wanting to believe. To be a part of something bigger. Significant.
“Don’t you see, Melinda?” I say.
“See what?”
“You just want someone to tell you what to do. Fourteen years ago, it was Mister Tender. Now, it’s Jesus. You can’t think for yourself.”
“Don’t blaspheme Jesus in my house.”
Now I feel anger at her. Anger that this person, who is just a simpleminded follower, changed the course of my life.
“Your life is devoted to imaginary characters, Melinda. You live in the world of fantasy, but your actions have real consequences. You’re pathetic.”
“You have to leave now, Alice.”
Charles says, “Alice is just expressing her feelings.”
But Melinda ignores him. “I’m asking you to leave. Now.”
Fine by me. I get up from the couch and start to walk to the door, then turn to see if Charles is coming. He remains seated quietly next to his daughter on the couch; Melinda stares away from him and wears a sullen expression, all traces of her smile gone. His hand is half outstretched toward her arm, as if he wants to touch her, make a connection to the girl he once knew. But his fingers hang in midair for only a few seconds before Charles pulls his arm back.
I hadn’t considered his true pain until this very moment; I’d been too absorbed in my own. Maybe I haven’t dwelled on it because it’s not something I can even comprehend. His loss is different from mine. The twins took away who I was. But Charles had spent fourteen years raising and loving his girls, committing his soul to their happiness and well-being. And with a few flicks of the wrist, a few slashes with a kitchen knife, they destroyed everything he’d built. In a span of seconds, they made Charles a failure as a parent and, by proxy, as a human being. The twins took away my childhood, but they had utterly decimated their parents’ souls.
He leans in to her and, with the gentlest voice I’ve ever heard used by a man, says, “I can never see you again.”
Melinda lowers her chin into her chest and begins to cry. Soft, soft weeping, barely a sound. Heartbreaking.
His final gesture is to commit to that touch after all. He stands, bends down to her head, and places a light kiss on the top of it. He stays there for a moment and breathes her in, perhaps hoping for a familiar scent, a flash of a good memory, maybe. Then straightens, turns to me, and nods.
“Let’s go,” Charles says to me.
We shuffle side by side out of the living room and toward the front door. The sunlight streaming through the small window in the door is tantalizing, and I’m suddenly eager to smell the sea when we pass through to the outside. Just before we reach the door, there’s a sound. Then a movement.
Next to me, a door opens.
The room behind the door is pitch-black, as if it’s nothing more than a windowless cell. It takes a moment for my eyes to focus, but then Sylvia Glassin steps forward into the muted light, and I see her clearly.
It’s as if there was only one Glassin girl, and at some point, someone split her into two people. One of those two found religion and, though still quite mad, figured out how to exist on a day-to-day basis—how to cook, clean, shop, care for herself. The other one was sent into the wild to live the rest of her life as a feral creature.
This latter one looks at me with wide, glowing eyes, like a cat that’s suddenly spotted a small creature scurrying near the baseboards. Her long hair is wild and kinked, extending outward almost as far as down. She wears a thin robe that hardly conceals her bony frame, and with a quick glance, I see that her fingernails are unnaturally long and sharp, like claws. She doesn’t move, but her eyes dart back and forth between Charles and me.
I say nothing. The truth is, I’m scared in a way I didn’t feel at all with Melinda. I can almost smell the danger on Sylvia, the unpredictability, the rawness of her being. She says nothing but rather holds up a sheet of paper.
It’s a drawing, and instantly I realize it’s the one Melinda told me about. It’s a scene of Gladstone Park at night, the wan light beautifully shaded by an expert hand—the same hand, very clearly, that drew the other panels sent to me. Dark, towering trees, the arched footbridge, the trickling, haunted stream glimmering under the moon. This could be a scene from a gorgeously illustrated Winnie the Pooh book, the Hundred Acre Wood at night, except for one small but gruesome detail. At the foot of the bridge, fourteen-year-old Alice lies crumpled and bleeding, a pool of black spreading beneath her, and little, perfectly inked puncture wounds peppering her body. In this image, Alice’s eyes are open. Wide.
Sylvia holds the image higher, nearly to my face, as if gesturing for me to take it from her. I reach for it, but the moment I do, she backs away a couple of feet into her cave. She keeps holding the picture out, as if to taunt me.
I move inside her room, just a few inches, smelling her for the first time, and though her scent is not powerful, it’s unmistakable. This woman hasn’t bathed in some time, nor made any attempt to hide her stench with perfume.
She takes another step back.
I look to Charles, who stares at his other daughter with shock.
“Come on, Alice,” he says. “We need to leave.”
I turn back to Sylvia, and we lock in to each other. She says nothing. Just as I’m about to turn and leave, she holds the picture against her chest and smiles.
It’s not the plastic, brainwashed smile of her sister. No, this is the smile as it was first ever invented by humans. Not one to convey joy or happiness, but simply to show the enemy your fangs.
I turn away, slightly conscious of having my back to Sylvia Glassin. I walk to the front door and open it, and I drink in the salt air as if it’s the only thing that will save me in this moment. I step outside, and Charles follows, having never said a word to his other daughter.
The door closes behind us, and the Glassin twins return to being the ghosts of my mind.
Thirty-Four
Charles drops me off at my hotel after a silent ride back to London. He seems shell-shocked. Whatever he was expecting to find in Dover, it wasn’t there. He sat hunched forward over the steering wheel during the drive back, both hands curled tightly over the worn leather grip, as if he needed every ounce of focus and determination to escape the event horizon of where we’d just been.
I get out of his car, turn, then lean back down to him.
“You’re not a failure, Charles. You raised your girls the best way you knew how. Some people just turn out…broken. Not everyone can be saved.”
He neither accepts nor rejects this. “Goodbye, Alice.”
I close the door, knowing I have likely seen the very last of the Glassin family.
Up to my room. I grab my laptop, navigate to the forum on MisterTender.com, and direct message Mr. Interested, telling him I want to talk. I’ve come to realize a few things during my visit here, but the one thing that stands out the most is that I’m being very inefficient in achieving my objective. I’m trying to find Mr. Interested and going to great lengths to do so, but the one thing I’m not doing is reaching out to him directly.
I wait a few moments with no reply, so I decide to take a shower. I’m feeling the need to scrub the visit with the twins off my skin. I stand for a long time beneath the jets, letting the steaming water beat against me. When I finally get around to soaping up, I take extra time massaging my scars. They seem bigger today, more pronounced, like ropes of worms breaching the surface of my skin.
I wrap a towel around myself, then check my laptop again. Now there’s a message in the center of my screen.
Are you enjoying your holiday?
I sit on the bed and perch over the keyboard.
How did you know I was here?
Technology, Alice. Your phone gives everything away. Though I have lost track of you. Switched out your SIM card, I suppose, haven’t you?
Of course.
Another message appears.
I haven’t been well.
Good, I think. But I don’t type this. I want to keep him engaged so I can learn enough to find him.
What’s wrong with you?
I’m dying, Alice.
The words sit there on my screen. I stare at them, not knowing if I can believe anything this person tells me. He writes more before I can reply.
Thus, the nature of my urgency.
You mean why you’re stalking me?
I’ve never stalked you. I’ve just wanted to be a part of your life.
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