The Dead Girl in 2A

by Carter Wilson

  Two lines, the first reading Grounds and Maintenance Storage.

  But it’s the second line that reaches into my stomach and squeezes. Words that should be meaningless to me, but I know they are anything but. Because now, right now, I remember.

  Arete Academy.

  My god.

  I remember.

  Thirty-Eight

  Jake

  “What?”

  Landis holds his gaze tight and fixed.

  “Did you kill my family, Jake? My mother and father?”

  I don’t know how to answer his question.

  Because…what if I did kill his family?

  The one memory I’ve had, the one that buckled my knees and roiled my stomach back at Eaton’s apartment. The memory of the bloody bed, the screaming child.

  The child.

  Now I understand.

  Landis was that child.

  Those were his parents.

  Ripped apart. Blood on the walls. Ceiling.

  The screaming. The little boy who’d seen it all.

  I was there, but there were others too. Other children, one of whom clasped my hand in fear. We all stared at the bodies together.

  “What do you remember?” he asks.

  My head spins as I struggle to make sense of this. All I know is the memory is real. Has to be.

  I was there during the killing of Landis’s parents.

  “I was a child,” I say.

  Landis pushes out of his chair and leans over me.

  “Yes,” he says. “We were all children.”

  “You were on the floor. You were screaming. You were so little.”

  “Where were we?” he asks.

  “A bedroom. It was night. Someone turned the light on, and that’s when I saw them.”

  “Where?”

  “In the bed. There was…”

  “What? What did you see, Jake?”

  “There was blood.”

  He turns and belts a guttural cough, as if just sucker punched. When he turns back to me, he wipes his lips with the back of his hand.

  “Were they alive?” His voice is straining, starting to crack.

  “I don’t think so,” I say. I remember blood still oozing. Maybe a moan. “At least I don’t think they could have been saved.”

  “So you did it? You killed them?”

  “No, I… There were others in the room. Other children.”

  “Aside from you and me?”

  “Yes. Someone else turned the light on.”

  “Who else was there? Tell me.”

  “I don’t know. This memory just came back to me. I didn’t really see them as much as I sensed them. Vague shapes. Maybe two, three others. They were children, but I’m not sure how I’m certain of that. I just know.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Someone grabbed my hand. One of the others. I think…maybe for protection.”

  “Think, Jake. Think of the other children. Were any of them holding a knife?”

  A knife. I try to remember more, but it’s starting to wisp away in my mind. I know someone grabbed my left hand, which means the hand in which I’d hold a knife was empty.

  “It’s not that clear. This memory, the whole thing was a few seconds.”

  “Did you hear anything?”

  “Just you. You were screaming. Maybe you were hurt too. I don’t know.”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t have any scars. You must remember something more.”

  I lean forward in my chair, put my palms on my forehead, my view now only of Landis’s shoes.

  “Listen to me,” I say. I decide to try a different tack. Reason with him instead of threaten. “I’m in town for important work. I need this work, and I have a client who’s expecting me.” Though I know this is all likely bullshit. My doubts about Eaton’s real motives have soared since my time with him yesterday. “Just let me do my work. We can meet again and discuss this, but it doesn’t have to be this way. You don’t need to hold me like this.”

  “What’s happening to you is happening to me,” Landis says. “And that’s the important thing at the moment. Your memoir can wait.”

  I look up. “I never mentioned I was working on a memoir.”

  He immediately averts his gaze and looks to the side, as if there’s something to see besides a blank white wall.

  I’m now certain Landis and Eaton are working together. Everything is an elaborate hoax, which means the memoir—and my fee—are as real as Landis’s medical license.

  “I know about the nasty side effects of your programs,” I say. “Side effects like suicide. Mass murder. I know all about Raymond Higgins.”

  “I assumed as much,” he says. “Elle wasn’t supposed to make contact with you.”

  “She’s the only one trying to help me.”

  “No,” Landis says. “Maybe she thinks she’s helping, but all she’s doing is interfering. Not only is that a breach of contract, but it taints the program.”

  I lose it. “Enough about the fucking program—I just want my life back.” I jump out of my chair and pick it up, holding it over my head. It’s cast in light aluminum but still could do some damage.

  “Easy, Jake,” he says.

  “Why?” I’m sweating in this freezing room. “Why am I not allowed to lose my mind? The others did. Maybe my psychotic break starts with you.”

  “They are not psychotic breaks,” he says. “They are breakthroughs, and I think you had one earlier. But these breakthroughs aren’t what we anticipated. They weren’t supposed to be violent. We’ve been tweaking the program, trying to get the desired results. I thought for a moment you might be the first one we succeeded with, but it doesn’t appear so.” He remains seated, seemingly unconcerned about the raised chair. “Jake, if we can get the program to work, then we all benefit. We all get to remember. Which means I can know who killed my parents. Moreover, it means I get to remember who they were. What they were like.”

  Of everything he just said, one word stands out most. I set down the chair.

  “When you say we, who else is involved? Is it Eaton?”

  His face softens a touch, and in the ensuing silence, his mind is churning. Considering. I think he might tell me. I think he wants to tell me.

  Then, the sound of the lock opening on the other side of the door.

  The door opens.

  Thirty-Nine

  Clara

  Imagine a déjà vu so real, it swallows you, threatens to pull you into its own reality, yanking you permanently from your current one. It’s more than a nagging sense of familiarity. It’s a universe created just for you, one of sights, sounds, smells, all of which you know to your core.

  Arete Academy.

  I have been here.

  A breeze ripples through the aspens, bringing a littering of freshly deceased leaves raining around me. Even this is unnaturally familiar.

  The smell is powerful, the smell of Jake, of my past, of lost time.

  Citronella.

  I walk back to the front of the shed, the door secured with a padlock.

  My whole body is tingling, as if warming by a fire after rolling in snow.

  I scan the area. There. A rock. Might be big enough.

  I hold it with two hands and smash at the lock. A chunk of the rock is the first thing to break, but I keep hammering. More bits crumble to the ground, and the repeated impacts send shock waves up my arms.

  Then, as I fear the rock with simply disintegrate, the lock breaks.

  I let the granite remnants fall to the ground as I stare at the door.

  In the distance, the laughter of children. It must be a trick of my mind. But still, there it is.

  I open the door.

  Forty

  Jake

  Landis
turns his head to the door. As do I.

  It’s the younger man with the shaggy hair and beard who threw me in a trunk. He’s got a reddish welt just outside his left eye from where I punched him. It looks wonderfully painful. He’s holding up a cell phone, and I recognize the case. My phone.

  “What is it?” Landis asks, an impatient edge to his voice.

  “He’s got a voicemail. You’re going to want to hear this.”

  “Fine.” Landis turns from me as the man enters the room. He’s still in the same outfit as before, black button-down, not a trace of wrinkles, tucked into black slacks. Polished black shoes, though not as gleaming at Landis’s. He could be a waiter in a nice restaurant, but the giveaway of his menacing true profession is the utility belt around his waist. Pistol, cuffs. Folded knife.

  Landis takes the phone and listens to the message. The younger man glowers at me for a moment, then shifts his focus to his boss. In the brief eye contact, I could read the anger on his face for me getting a punch in. He’s pissed because he truly doesn’t see me as a threat, which is obvious in his casual stance and averted gaze. He thinks I got lucky, and besides, he ended up winning the fight after all, didn’t he?

  He underestimates me, which I see as an opportunity. This asshole doesn’t understand my newly discovered capacity for violence. My desire of it. Landis understands, but he’s distracted with my phone.

  I might die in here if I don’t make a move. Maybe I’m failing at whatever the program is, and they’re just going to kill me instead of releasing me back into the wild. Prevent me from becoming another Raymond Higgins.

  I have just these few seconds to act. Might be my only window.

  I’m just a few feet away. The man’s gun sits snugly in its holster on his belt, but the strap that should be securing it in place is unsnapped. Dangling open.

  Trust your instincts.

  Now.

  I lunge and, in a perfect motion, reach for the gun. The man reacts quickly, begins to turn to me, but it doesn’t matter. There’s nothing he can do, because my timing, my movements, my senses…all perfect. It’s like I’m watching another person.

  I snatch the gun and bound backward to the edge of the room.

  The man is furious, probably more at himself than at me. He starts walking toward me. There’s caution in his small steps, but confidence. I can read it all over him. He knows I’m capable of throwing a punch, but doesn’t think I’m a killer.

  Are you? I wonder. Are you a killer?

  “Cason,” Landis says. “Stay back.”

  Cason. He doesn’t look like a Cason.

  Cason doesn’t listen to him. He doesn’t even tell me to put the gun down. No Take it easy, buddy. He just keeps walking toward me, and there’s even a hint of a swagger in his walk. I think he’s excited he has a reason to come over and properly beat the shit out of me after he takes his gun back.

  I take another step back. My heel hits the wall. Nowhere else to go.

  I raise the gun, which shakes in my unsteady hand.

  I don’t know if the safety is on.

  I don’t know if it’s loaded.

  “Cason,” Landis barks.

  Cason reaches for the folded knife in his utility belt, and in that second, I see the scar on my daughter’s face. Em, who needs me almost as much as I need her.

  I fire.

  The report is deafening in the small room, but I don’t even blink against it.

  Cason’s head snaps back with an unimaginable jolt, as if his puppet master yanked the string attached to it.

  Brilliant red spray. A violent wet burst.

  He collapses into a heap on the floor, blood pumping and spurting from his head.

  And there, because it’s so distinct against the otherwise whiteness of the room, a piece of his skull with a clump of his long hair still attached.

  Yes, I tell myself. You’re a killer after all.

  My heart’s pumping so hard, I imagine my arteries bursting, bleeding me out from the inside. But as I train the gun on Landis, my hand is remarkably steady.

  Landis’s voice is calm. Almost remorseful.

  “You showed promise, Jake. As far as we know, you were the first one to remember anything at all. But…now this. Everything ends in blood. Again.”

  I could argue his point. Tell him this is self-defense, and that I’m not turning into Raymond Higgins. But I don’t even know what the truth is.

  “I’m leaving now,” I say.

  “And where are you going to go?”

  “Give me my phone.”

  “Jake, I can help you.”

  “Give me my fucking phone.”

  His thumb hovers over the screen, and in an instant, I realize he’s considering deleting the voicemail. Whatever it says, he’s already listened and can delete it.

  “Don’t,” I say. “Put it on the floor. Kick it over to me.”

  Landis hesitates, then finally does what I say.

  “And now what, Jake?”

  I reach down and pick up my phone, slide it into my pocket.

  “Where’s the other one?” I ask.

  “The other what?”

  “The other rent-a-cop you have. The older guy.”

  Landis remains silent.

  I shout. Not because I have to, but because it feels good. “Is there anyone outside that goddamned door or not?”

  All he does is shrug. “I guess you’ll be finding out one way or another.”

  I sidestep toward the door, and as I do, my foot catches the edge of the blood pool, and I nearly lose my balance.

  “We can still work together, Jake. I’m not your enemy.”

  I ignore him. I don’t want Landis to convince me of anything. I just want to get the hell out of here.

  I reach the door, which is still open.

  The last thing Landis says is, “You still have potential, Jake.”

  Once I’m through the doorway, I turn and lock Landis inside. I half expect him to start pounding on the door, but he’s quiet as I scan the space I’ve just entered.

  It’s an unremarkable, vacated office space. No furniture, just well-worn industrial carpet, eighties-era wooden cabinets and counters, and rectangular markings on the wall where art once hung. Could be a former medical office, I think.

  My messenger bag and wallet are on top of a counter. There’s overwhelming reassurance in getting them back.

  If there’s anyone else here, they’re concealing themselves. I don’t want to go looking for them.

  My best option is to run. Just run until I find a door that gets me out of here. If I see anyone along the way, I’ll shoot.

  I take off through the office, hurrying down a hallway lined with doors, then enter a vacant reception area. Empty banker boxes and network cables litter the floor.

  Tinted windows line the front wall, framing a single glass door. Outside, an empty parking lot. It’s too normal. Too easy. I resist the urge to sprint for the door and instead pivot around, sweeping the gun with a two-handed grip at eye level. Years ago, I took a gun class with a friend who was more interested than I was. But I can still hear the instructor’s voice as if he were right behind me in this moment. Don’t lock your elbow. Align your sights. Keep light pressure on the trigger.

  It’s quiet. No movement. I wait a few more seconds, straining my ears, listening for the faintest creak, or distant, deep breath. Anything.

  Nothing.

  I sprint to the door. It’s unlocked. I push it open and burst outside, where nothing more than a stiff, chilling October breeze greets me.

  This is just an empty office building in some suburb. The parking-lot asphalt is old and faded, with snakes of tar covering dozens of cracks. The brick-and-stucco building is starkly ordinary, and judging by the unruly juniper bushes, the area hasn’t been maintain
ed in some time. I take a few tentative steps into the daylight, feeling very much as if I’m stepping into a sniper’s sight.

  The car that brought me here is parked maybe fifty yards down to the right, the only car in the lot. Tinted windows. If there’s someone inside, I can’t make them out. But they could certainly see me.

  I run my ass off in the opposite direction. I realize I’m still holding the gun, so I stop and put it in the messenger bag, sliding the safety on before I do. At least I think it’s the safety.

  When I get up an embankment and reach a street humming with traffic, I look back. The car is still there, motionless. No one’s coming after me. The world seems abruptly normal. Even as the sweat glazes my face and my heartbeat is double what it should be, cars whiz by as if nothing is out of place. As if there’s not a dead man in the building behind me.

  After I make my way to an intersection, I slide the phone from my pocket and swipe the screen open. It seems not having a pass code was a good thing, because otherwise, my phone would have been useless to them. But it wasn’t. Someone left me a message, setting forth a sequence of events that freed me.

  Battery at 80 percent. They must have charged it.

  I notice the time on my phone.

  10:34 a.m. Saturday, October 13.

  I was in that room for more than ten hours.

  I swipe to my missed calls, the most recent one about thirty minutes ago. The caller ID lists a 970 number assigned to a Conoco gas station. That area code is Colorado, I think.

  Who would be calling me from a gas station?

  The answer lies in the twenty-seven-second voicemail listed at the top of my received messages. The voicemail that saved my life and ended another.

  “Jake, it’s Clara. I found it, Jake. Not only did I find it, but I remember. Not everything, but some things. But I know how we know each other, and I don’t want to die anymore. You need to come here too. Maybe…maybe you’ll remember. It’s amazing. I can’t tell you how it feels. You have to come here.”

  She leaves the name of a hotel in Aspen, the Hotel Jerome. Gives me her room number, and says that she’ll be waiting.

  Clara.

  What do you remember?