The Dead Girl in 2A

by Carter Wilson

  I try the top drawer, the thin, wide one directly beneath the desk’s surface. It slides open easily.

  Another folder.

  More photocopies, several pages. These aren’t from the varied editions of the bizarre children’s book. These are handwritten notes. A journal. Tight, mesmerizing script, sharp and piercing. Too much to absorb at once, but I scan a few sentences from one of the pages.

  Decreasing the dosage for Clara, given her weight.

  Onset of fatigue noted in Raymond. Possibly related to altitude.

  Jacob has a stunning imagination. I suspect he has a future in the arts.

  There are a couple of formulas toward the bottom of the page, along with a vector drawing. There are also two small sketches, one of which is a simple mountain range. The other drawing is strange and chilling: a disembodied face, appearing to be just above the surface of water.

  “What is it?” Elle asks.

  “Notes. Lots of notes. A few sketches.”

  “Notes from what?”

  I thumb through a few sheets, all of which are in the same script.

  “I’m not sure,” I say. “Journal entries, looks like.” There are dates at the top of each page. “From 1991.”

  I keep flipping through, sheet after sheet.

  The final two copies in the stack are in entirely different handwriting. Feminine, flowing.

  It’s a letter, dated just two years ago.

  It starts:

  Dear Landis.

  That’s all I read before I hear a sound somewhere in the apartment.

  Someone is here.

  Forty-Six

  The faintest creak, betrayal of a hinge.

  I can’t tell if it’s the front door or maybe the bedroom door I just left.

  Elle’s wide eyes tell me she’s heard it too.

  She points, jabbing fingers. It takes me a moment to figure out what she’s telling me. Hide.

  Three steps later, I’m there, pressed up behind a hollow-core door that won’t conceal me for long if someone takes more than a casual look in the office. I reach into my bag and take out the gun. I assume it’s loaded, though I know one bullet is missing.

  There’s a thumping in my ears, and it takes me a second to realize it’s my heartbeat. Adrenaline brings tingles to my fingertips and shortens my breath. I squeeze the handle on the gun, feeling its heft.

  Another creak. Someone’s weight on the floorboards. Picturing Eaton’s skeletal frame, I’m surprised the floor would give even the slightest beneath his weight.

  There’s no chance we’re not getting discovered, so I suddenly wonder why I’m bothering to hide. I came here seeking answers, and I’m going to get them.

  I step out from behind the door, and the first thing I see is Elle. She’s flat against the wall adjacent to the open door. She’s taken the desk lamp, unplugged it, and holds it high above her head, ready to use it as a club.

  She looks at me and mouths, What are you doing?

  I stand a few feet inside the office, directly facing the open door, and wait. Arms by my side, ready to face Eaton. The gun is in my right hand, pointed at the floor. No reason to raise it now—I’m sure I look threatening enough.

  A leg is the first thing to appear in view. It’s coming from the direction of the living room, which means it was the front door I heard, not the bedroom door.

  Eaton must have returned from wherever he was.

  The figure appears in the doorway, turns to me.

  It’s not Eaton.

  It’s Cason’s partner. The other, older fake cop who threw me in the trunk of a car.

  There’s a gun in his right hand, which he brings up to eye level and aims at me.

  “Drop it,” he commands.

  My stomach drops, as if I’ve swum too far out to sea and just realized the riptide is washing me away.

  Logically, I know I should drop my weapon. But all logic evaporates in the moment. In this instant, I see what I did in the white room. A man who is a threat, coming for me. He underestimates me; I’m certain of it. Doesn’t think I’m capable.

  I start to raise my gun when he shoots me.

  Forty-Seven

  Clara

  They’ve taken me to a different room, two floors above mine. We took the stairs, at one point passing a housekeeper, who greeted us warmly in accented English. I wonder if she read anything on my face, saw a look of concern.

  I’m in a large hotel suite, seated at a living-room table, flanked by each of them. When we arrived, Eaton put his briefcase on a nearby sofa, and I’ve yet to see the contents. There is the faint wave of familiarity about both men.

  I’m surrounded by my past and unclear of my future.

  “Can I get you anything?” Eaton asks. “Tea? Coffee?”

  “Coffee.” I almost add thank you.

  “Of course.” He walks away to a bar area, and Landis sits quietly next to me. These few seconds of silence reveal the hierarchy between the two men. Eaton, whoever he is, is very much in charge.

  He returns a moment later with two porcelain cups of coffee and offers one to me.

  “I’m assuming you take it black.”

  “I doubt you’re assuming anything,” I say. “I think you already know everything about me.”

  I take the coffee, wondering for a moment if he’s put anything in it. I set it on the table.

  “That’s actually not true,” he says. “I don’t know everything about you, and that’s why we’re all here in this room. Because there’s more I want to know.”

  So I have information he needs, which means I have some control here. A morsel of power.

  “How does it feel?” he asks. “Being out in the world after being a recluse?” He spreads his arms out. “Out here in the vastness of the mountains. Is it unnerving?”

  I decide to be honest, answer his questions until there’s a clear reason not to. “It’s wonderful,” I say. “Nature doesn’t unnerve me. It’s the people in the world I find best to avoid.”

  “Why the Maroon Bells?” He leans in just a tad, angles his head in interest as he studies my face. I instinctively lean away, but then realize I’m that much closer to Landis, who sits in silence on the other side of me. Two men, studying me like an insect in a jar.

  “Why not the Maroon Bells?” I reply. “They’re wondrous.”

  “They are, Clara. Are you going to drink your coffee?” His cup and mine sit untouched on the table. I reach forward and switch them, then sip from his.

  Eaton laughs, and it rattles his lungs.

  “You’re worried I’m going to drug you?”

  “It doesn’t hurt to be cautious.”

  “No, I suppose it doesn’t. But it’s far too late for that kind of caution.”

  “Meaning?”

  He shrugs.

  “You’ve been taking our drugs for some time. It’s a bit reactive to be concerned now.”

  Our drugs.

  The coffee sits on my tongue, dark and bold, but the savory taste turns instantly acrid. “Yes, I did take them. I don’t regret it.”

  Landis speaks for the first time. “Nor should you, Clara. You have to understand we’re trying to help you. The book. The pills. They’re for your betterment.”

  I don’t argue his point, because even in retrospect, I’m in awe at how I feel. I was so convinced suicide was the answer, but now consider perhaps I was supposed to inch as close to death as I did, so that the taste of ensuing life would be so much sweeter. Still, I wonder what’s in it for him.

  “And why are you so concerned with my betterment?” I ask.

  He looks down and smiles, as if my question were steeped in naivete. “Because your progress gives hope for others.” When he raises his gaze to me, I’m taken aback by the menace in his face. “Namely, me.”

/>   Landis changes the subject. “We know you left Jake a message. That’s why we’re here.”

  This shouldn’t surprise me, but their ability to burrow so deeply into my life is nonetheless unnerving.

  “In your message, you said you remembered everything,” he continues. “We’re very interested in what exactly it is you remember, Clara.”

  I think back to my sudden childhood memories. Some have faded enough that I only have a feeling about them, while others remain vivid. Arete Academy. Tiki torches. The headmaster handing out copies of The Responsibility of Death. The little boy turning to me at his desk, asking what my copy was about.

  Landis. That little boy was Landis.

  “A painter,” I say, remembering. I look at Landis.

  “What?”

  “Your book was about a painter, but all he ever painted were pictures of dead people.”

  “You remember my book?” Landis asks.

  I shake my head. “I never saw it. What I remember was you telling me about it.”

  His gaze fixes on mine, and for a moment, his eyes glisten.

  “Excellent, Clara,” Eaton says. His voice is a bit higher pitched, more excited. “What else do you remember?”

  As I turn back to him, things are snapping into place. I know Landis was at Arete Academy with me. But…

  “You were both there,” I say. “We were all there, weren’t we? Us. Jacob, who must be Jake.”

  “Yes, very good, Clara. Tell us.”

  I swivel my head back and forth between them, then push my chair back from the table far enough that I can look at them both at the same time. They’re both leaning toward me with rapt attention.

  “You don’t remember,” I say. “You were there, but you don’t remember anything, do you?”

  Landis leans in further, now hovering only inches from my face.

  “My parents were murdered there,” he says. “Can you tell me anything at all about that?”

  I’m immediately transported to the memory, the one that germinated my suicidal impulses. A screaming child, two bloodied bodies in a bed. A group of children. I’m holding someone’s hand, staring at the carnage, but it’s just…chaos.

  I shake my head, as if I can just fling the image away. This is one memory burned into my brain.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe.”

  Landis starts to say something, but Eaton cuts him off immediately.

  “We’ll get to that,” Eaton says. “I want to know more about the school itself. The lesson plans. Anything you can recall about dosages or specific instructions. We need to know more about the program. You’re the closest we’ve been to getting it to work.”

  “And I’d like to know if she remembers my parents.” Landis pushes out of his chair and stands. He looks down at Eaton, who doesn’t bother looking back. “Jake remembered their murder, said there were kids at the crime scene. It was a bedroom. I want to know if Clara remembers this as well.”

  Yes, I do. But I say nothing.

  “Enough about your parents.” Eaton’s voice has a hard edge, and he still doesn’t look at Landis as he speaks. “That’s secondary to the information we need right now. In fact, I need you to go back to Clara’s guest room. Jake will likely be arriving soon, and that’s where he’ll be headed. When he arrives, bring him here.”

  Landis looks back and forth between Eaton and me, seeming to decide what to do.

  Eaton takes a breath and speaks in a calmer tone. “I promise we’ll find out everything we can about your parents’ death,” he tells Landis. “We have time. But if Jake goes to her room and no one answers that door, then we’ll lose him. So, please, do as I ask.”

  Landis considers, then turns to me and says, “Let me have your room key.”

  I do as he asks, and after taking it, Landis takes the gun from his ankle holster and offers it to Eaton.

  “I think you’ll need that more than me,” Eaton says. “Jake might need some convincing.”

  “What about her?”

  “Oh, I don’t think she’ll be a problem.” He cracks a thin smile as he stares me down. “Will you, Clara?”

  His arrogance forces me from silence. “I’m stronger than you think,” I say. “You look like you’d snap in a stiff breeze.”

  At this, Eaton laughs, which descends into a minor coughing fit. “Quite so,” he says once he’s controlled his lungs. “But I think you want to stay. We each have answers for the other. Besides, you want to see Jake, don’t you? If you stay here with me, I’ll make sure Landis brings Jake to us in good health. Can we agree on this?”

  A thinly veiled threat. An easy trick, but effective.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Good.”

  Eaton offers a simple nod to Landis, who takes his gun back and leaves the suite.

  It’s now just the two of us.

  This man named Eaton. I don’t recall his name in any of my newly found memories.

  I expect him to flash me an evil smile, say something sinister.

  Instead, he says, “Clara, please help me.”

  His eyes are filled not with evil, but sadness. Resigned and a little desperate.

  “I don’t know how I can help you,” I say.

  “I want what you have, even for a moment. You have to show me how. It’s the only thing that can save me.”

  “Save you from what?”

  “I’m dying.”

  I can’t tell whether he’s lying, but there’s a very dark energy about this man, and perhaps that is indeed a terrible illness. Death inside him, waiting to eat its way up through the skin.

  “Perhaps it’s what you’re meant to do,” I say.

  Forty-Eight

  Jake

  Elle saved my life.

  Just before the gunshot, I saw her arm swing down, smashing the man’s outstretched forearm with the table lamp as he fired.

  If she waited a split second longer, I’m sure I’d have a bullet in my chest. Instead, I have one in my leg.

  The impact collapses me, like a high-voltage current to my muscles. As I hit the floor, my gun releases from my grip and slides toward the wall. I can’t reach it, and now I’m waiting for the second bullet, the one that ends everything.

  Elle pounces, her fierceness efficient. She smashes the lamp against his head with a crack. Neither lamp nor skull seems to break, a surprise.

  She’s knocked him out. Elle slides the gun from his grip.

  “Jake, talk to me.”

  I groan, grabbing my leg. “What do you want me to say?”

  “Are you hurt?”

  Blood breaches the dam of my locked fingers.

  “Yeah.”

  She takes another glance at the man who shot me and seems to decide he’s no longer a problem, then rushes over to me.

  “Where?”

  “My leg.”

  A hole in my jeans, just above the knee, over to the side. I think it hurts, but it’s hard to tell. Either shock or adrenaline is compensating, and I’m hoping it’s the latter.

  “Can you stand?”

  “I have no idea.” It’s as if three-quarters of all the muscle in my right leg suddenly vanished.

  I struggle to get up. I’m not quite standing. I’m listing. Good enough.

  “Okay,” she says. She races over and picks up the gun I dropped. “Let’s get out of here.”

  My impulse is to agree, but I look at the man on the floor, and rage suddenly burns through me. That same feeling as with Eaton. So white-hot and consuming, it makes my whole body itch.

  “Kill him,” I say.

  “What?”

  I answer without pause. “I’ll do it.”

  God, I want to. I don’t even want to use the gun. I want to club him to death, watch him break into pieces. Sharp pieces
at first, then I’d keep pounding until they’re reduced to pulp.

  “Jesus, Jake, no. What’s wrong with you? He’s not a threat anymore. Let’s just go. We need to get you help.”

  I can’t reconcile my sudden violent cravings with who I am as a person, but I suppose who I am is changing. Maybe I’ve reached some next level in the program, just as Raymond Higgins did. My enlightenment seems to end in deep pits of darkness.

  I force myself away from my compulsion. Focus my energy on leaving, which, given my wound, is a damn good distraction.

  Elle supports me, and we make it to the living room before she says, “Hang on.” She lowers me to the floor, where I bleed on Eaton’s hardwood.

  She disappears for a year, or maybe a minute. When she comes back, she has a belt, which she tightens around my leg.

  “Good idea,” I say.

  “You have two holes in your jeans,” she says. “The bullet went through.”

  “That’s good, right?”

  “The hell do I know?” Elle says, tightening the notch. “My trauma knowledge comes from TV.”

  “I thought you…knew stuff.”

  “It’s all I can do not to puke right now.”

  The pain starts now in earnest. A dull, aching throb, as if my lower thigh is trapped in the jaws of a mountain lion.

  “Get up.”

  I do. It’s harder this time.

  The man on the floor emits a groan. He’s coming to, but not yet moving.

  “Okay, we have to get out of here,” Elle says.

  We make our way to the door.

  “Wait,” I say, just as we reach it.

  “What?”

  “The papers.” I point back to the office. “Get the papers.”

  She has that look on her face where two perfectly logical and opposing thoughts are battling for dominance in her brain. Finally, “Fine.”

  I lean against the wall as she rushes back to the office. I experience a spike of concern, wondering if maybe the man is getting up off the floor. But Elle comes back only seconds later, a fistful of papers in her hand. She stuffs them into my messenger bag, which still hangs across my chest.

  “Let’s go.”