by Amy Cross
“We can't just leave her!” Elly called out. “We have to help!”
“Then you stay,” Annie muttered darkly, picking up her pace. “You're not my conscience.” Stopping suddenly, she looked back at Elly.
“I can't believe you're just going to walk away,” Elly told her.
Annie stared for a moment, before turning and setting off again. Somewhere down in her gut, she was starting to feel deeply uneasy about Elly's constant barrage of questions.
Chapter Sixteen
“Hey,” Annie said a few hours later, leaning against the wall as a man emerged from one of the motel rooms. “Are you by any chance looking for a good time?”
Stopping just as he was about to put a cigarette to his lips, the man glanced at her. After a moment, he looked her up and down, and then a flicker of faint disgust crossed his features. He glanced around, as if he half expected to find himself on some kind of hidden camera show, and then he turned to Annie again.
“I'm looking for a good time,” she continued, forcing a smile in an attempt to appear alluring. Her dress was still soaking wet, and she'd tried to press it against her body in a desperate bid to accentuate her curves. “And I've got all night.”
“You're drenched,” the man pointed out.
“You'd better believe it,” Annie said, as she used her hands to smooth her drenched dress against her hips. “How about helping me get out of this, huh? You can peel it off me.”
“Uh, lady,” the guy replied, “I don't know what's going on here, but I'm a married man and I'm just stopping here on my way to visit my parents. So I'd really appreciate it if you could -”
Before another word could leave his mouth, his head tipped back and he collapsed, letting out a faint grunt as he thudded down heavily against the wooden floor.
“That was easy,” Annie said, taking a deep breath. “Let's just hope he's got car keys and a wallet.”
***
“Relax,” she continued a few minutes later, going through the man's wallet as – behind her – Elly dragged him by his feet into the motel room, “I didn't kill him. I just knocked him out.”
“Are you sure about that?” Elly asked, looking down at the man's face and seeing his cold, dead eyes filled with blood, as more blood trickled from one corner of his mouth. “Annie, I think you did kill him.”
“Of course I didn't. I'm getting better at toning it down.”
“You killed him, Annie.”
“I did?” Annie glanced over at the man for a moment, before returning her attention to his wallet. “Well, I'm not entirely in control of these powers. I had no choice. We need to get on the road.”
“He said he's married,” Elly pointed out. “He might have kids. Annie, you just killed a -”
“I don't care!” Annie snapped, turning to her again. “One man's life doesn't really mean a great deal when you set it against the evil that we're trying to stop!” She looked down at the corpse for a moment and felt a shudder pass through her chest. “I'm sorry he had to die, but he was a sleaze-bag anyway. He shouldn't have let himself be lured out like that.”
“You didn't lure him,” Elly replied. “He was telling you that he wasn't interested in -”
“Can you please shut up?” Annie hissed, as she stormed around the bed and grabbed a set of car keys. “I'm tired, okay? I just dragged that asshole in here, I don't need to listen to your bullshit! I'm not -”
Before she could finish, she felt another burning pain in her head. Falling forward, she landed on the bed. She stayed down there for a moment, trying to make sense of the pain as it twisted and began to ripple down the back of her neck. Then, suddenly, she felt a rush of panic, and she scrambled over the bed and hurried through to the bathroom.
“Annie?” Elly called out. “Annie, what's wrong?”
“I have to check!” Annie gasped, pulling the back of her dress down and turning away from the bathroom's cracked mirror. Looking over her shoulder, she stared for a moment at her bare back. “It's not there.”
“What's not there?” Elly asked from the main room.
“Okay,” Annie said, pulling her dress back up, letting the cold, wet fabric cling once again to her skin. “My brain's my own. At least I've got that going for me.” She paused, thinking back to the nightmares she'd suffered over the past few years, the dreams in which she'd felt her own brain being surgically removed from her body so that she could host somebody else's mind. “That's not what's causing the pain.”
She paused, as the pain continued to flicker in her thoughts.
“Then what is it?” she whispered, trying to make sense of her growing sense of fear. “Something's wrong. Something's wrong right here in this room.”
“You need to focus,” Elly told her.
“You keep saying that,” Annie replied, sounding a little breathless now. After a moment, she looked down at her own hands. “When I dragged that man inside just now,” she continued, “he was so heavy. I struggled. After everything that's happened, I barely had the strength.”
“I dragged him in,” Elly said. “Not you.”
“No, it was me,” Annie said, heading back through to the main room. “I remember noticing that he was heavier than he looked, and his belt caught on the -”
Suddenly she froze, staring at Elly.
“His belt caught on the what?” Elly asked. “You're looking at me funny, Annie. What's wrong?”
“Are you sure you dragged him in?” Annie replied.
“Pretty sure.”
“And did you really give Katia those straws?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean... I'm the one who gave them to her? Aren't I?”
“Why does that matter?” Elly asked. “Annie, you need to focus. You need to -”
“I need to focus on you!” Annie said, cutting her off. “I need to focus on what's right in front of me.”
“I'm right in front of you,” Elly pointed out. “Annie, don't let yourself get distracted. You need to focus on finding Katia. I might not agree with your methods, but at least you get things done, and right now we've got a car and some money and we need to find this Eldion House place. How are we going to do that, Annie?”
“I don't know,” Annie whispered, as her sense of suspicion continued to grow. “You've been acting like my goddamn conscience for a while now. You've been helping me figure out what to do next.”
“You always find a way.”
“Do I?”
“Of course you do! You found a way to escape Lakehurst, didn't you?”
“I did.”
“And you found a way to escape Middleford Cross.”
“I did.”
“And you found a way to survive when Mary Langheim came at you.”
Annie stared at her.
“When Nurse Winter took you and Lacy to Lakehurst,” Elly continued, “and dug up your fake corpse and then went down into the mine, you found a way to survive.”
Again, Annie simply stared.
“Didn't you?” Elly added finally.
“That was you,” Annie whispered.
“What was?”
“You're the one who went with Nurse Winter back to Lakehurst with Lacy,” Annie pointed out, as the pain in the back of her head began to grow. “You were the one who was there for all the Thomas Clay Lacy and Mary Langheim stuff, not me. You were the one who -”
Suddenly the pain burst through her skull, causing her to instantly drop down to her knees and put her hands on either side of her head. The pain remained steady for a few seconds before fading; still, Annie didn't dare move for another couple of seconds, until she was sure that the pain had gone.
“What's wrong?” Elly asked. “Annie, we need to focus on figuring out what to do next.”
“You were the one!” Annie gasped, as fresh memories flooded her thoughts. “Why do I remember it all suddenly, when you're the one who was there?”
“Focus, Annie,” Elly said calmly. “This isn't the time to be d
oing this. There'll be time for that later. You need to focus on what actually works. Your mind is shot, you're fragile. You've found a way to keep going and it might not be perfect but it works for you. Don't screw that up now, not when you're so close to the end.”
“Elly Blackstock,” Annie whispered, wincing as the pain continued to twist in her mind. “Where does that name even come from?”
“It's my name,” Elly replied. “I don't get what's freaking you out, Annie. There'll be time to come to terms with certain things later, but right now Katia's being taken to Eldion House and we have to get after her.”
“I didn't give Katia a box of straws,” Annie said.
“What?”
“I didn't give her a box of straws!” Annie shouted, as tears began to fill her eyes. “At the gas station, I didn't give her anything!”
“You must have done.”
“I didn't,” Annie said through gritted teeth. “That's not a real memory. That's something my subconscious mind made up. I didn't give her anything at the gas station, because I was too busy looking after her and talking to her. And I was too busy looking after her and talking to her because I had no choice, because...”
Her voice trailed off as she stared in horror at Elly.
“Don't do this now,” Elly replied calmly. “You still need me.”
“Because Katia and I were alone at the gas station,” Annie whispered, as a tear rolled down her cheek. “We were alone the whole time.”
“Focus on finding Katia,” Elly ordered her. “Please, Annie, I've helped you this far. You need me until it's all over. You can figure out the rest later, once you've saved Katia, but I'm begging you to stick with a method that works, at least for now. It's the only way you can keep from going completely insane. You need someone to talk to!”
“I can't rely on you,” Annie said, her voice trembling now with fear. “I can't rely on you, Elly Blackstock, because you don't exist. You never existed.”
Chapter Seventeen
“I faked my death,” Annie said, sitting on the end of the bed and staring at her own reflection in the mirror next to the TV. “Then I must have gone back to Middleford Cross in disguise. I pretended to be someone named Elly Blackstock. Maybe I plucked the name out of thin air, or maybe I put it together from somewhere. None of that really matters. What matters is that I believed I was Elly Blackstock, I went all-in. But Nurse Winter was at Middleford Cross, she must have seen through it immediately, she must have known that I...”
Her voice trailed off for a moment.
She sat in silence, desperately trying to keep up with the thoughts that were racing through her head. She felt as if a million loose ends had become tangled in her mind. She kept remembering Elly doing things, only to realize after a fraction of a second that Elly had never existed in the first place.
“You don't have to do this,” a voice said calmly. “Not now. Not here. Just go back to how you were coping.”
Annie looked around, and for a moment she saw nobody. Then, finally, she looked in the mirror and saw the face of Elly Blackstock staring back at her.
“So you imagined me,” Elly continued. “So what? When you went back to Middleford Cross, your mind was ruined. Imagining me, pretending to be someone else, was the only way you were able to continue your work. You started viewing yourself from the outside, almost as if you were narrating your own life in the third person. You're still doing it now, Annie. I know it's not ideal, it might even be crazy, but it works for you. It's keeping your shattered mind together.”
“But I remember searching at Middleford Cross and at Lakehurst,” Annie pointed out. “I remember helping Nurse Winter search for Annie Radford.”
“Nurse Winter saw through it all,” Elly explained. “She probably went along with your fantasy, hoping to use you. Kudos to her, she kept the illusion up all the way to the end. I guess she must be a pretty smart cookie. And you imagined other people reacting to me, too. That's how deep-seated the whole illusion was for you, Annie.”
“But -”
In that instant, Annie was rocked by a sudden, vivid image of Lakehurst late at night, among the ruins.
“I was expecting more,” Nurse Winter was saying with a sigh, stepping back from a coffin that she'd just broken open. “I was expecting a message.”
“Is this her?” Annie saw Elly ask. “Is this Annie Radford?”
“I suppose it must be,” Nurse Winter continued. “Strange, I really thought there was a good chance she'd faked her death. The papers at Middleford Cross said something about cancer, but that seemed so mundane and boring, I couldn't believe mere cancer would be capable of killing someone like her. Now, though...” Stepping over to the body, she crouched on the grass and stared at the withered, rotten face. “Come on, Annie,” she continued, “you must have left something for me. I know you and Kieran were investigating the EMB-57 signal and the work Langheim had been doing here at Lakehurst. You wouldn't have just let all your discoveries become lost, especially if you knew you were dying. Where did you leave them?”
And then, slowly, she turned and glanced at Elly with a strange, knowing smile. It was a smile that hadn't seemed important at the time, but now it revealed the truth.
“No!” Annie gasped, flinching as she realized that she'd been Elly all along.
Nurse Winter had known, but everybody else had seemingly been fooled. The idea seemed impossible, but at the same time it had felt so very true.
“But I met you,” Annie whispered, blinking away the memory and seeing, once again, Elly's face reflected back at her in the mirror. “I mean, you met Annie. I mean, Elly and Annie met. Later on, outside the hearing...”
“All part of your delusion,” Elly's reflection replied. “Don't underestimate just how seriously screwed-up you were, Annie. You invented an entire second persona, with a backstory. You even dreamed the boring moments in Elly Blackstock's life, to make her seem more real. You really fleshed me out as a character, almost like you were writing a book about me and about all that stuff at Middleford Cross.”
“But all of those things must have happened!”
“Of course they did. Middleford Cross, Mary Langheim, the search for something at Lakehurst with Nurse Winter. Thomas Lacy, Rachel Brown, the dashing Doctor Jonathan Carmichael. They were real, and the things that happened to them were real too. You just remember it all a little wrong, because you're remembering it through the filter of when you pretended to be a woman named Elly. It's as if somebody took what really happened, and wrote a book about it with a different main character, and now you only remember the book version even though at the time you were there. You wrote yourself out of the picture, because it was the only way you could manage to keep going. You must be pretty confused right now, Annie, but the truth is... Elly Blackstock was never real. Not even for one second.”
“I feel sick,” Annie gasped, leaning forward and looking down at her feet.
“That's why you need to stop worrying and focus on finding Katia instead,” Elly's voice continued. “Fix your head later. Right now, you have to focus on the bigger picture.”
“How can I do that, if I'm not remembering what really happened?” Annie asked, putting her hands on the sides of her head and starting to rock back and forth. “How can I focus, if I'm imagining a whole extra person standing next to me?”
“Because that's the way your mind works,” Elly purred. “Relax and accept it, Annie. You have a problem, and you came up with a solution to that problem. You should be proud of yourself. You don't want me to go away, not now. You created me for a reason.”
“But I'm not thinking straight,” Annie said through gritted teeth, still rocking on the edge of the bed. “What happened at Middleford Cross, what happened at Lakehurst when I went back there with Lacy... I don't remember it the way it really happened! I remember it through you, and you're not real!”
“All the key elements are there,” Elly explained. “The basics are right.”
�
�I need the details!”
“You need -”
“Go to Hell!” Annie screamed suddenly, looking up and seeing Elly's face still staring at her from the mirror. “I need to see things clearly!”
Elly shook her head.
“I can't keep living like this!” Annie sobbed. “It's been years now!”
“You'd be dead without me,” Elly said. “Sorry to be blunt, but you wouldn't have made it this far. You'd have ended up slitting your own wrists at Middleford Cross, or in the years since then. Even now, you don't know how close you came to that.”
“And that's exactly the problem,” Annie replied. “I need to know everything, even if it kills me.”
She paused, before slowly getting to her feet. Her knees were wobbling and she felt as if she was about to collapse, but after a moment she looked at the mirror and saw that Elly was still smiling at her.
“We need a new plan,” Elly explained. “We need to focus. Katia's probably terrified. Wherever she is, she's in the hands of one of the cults, and she might not be safe for much longer. Instead of jabbering away here in a stolen motel room, we need to hit the road and save this kid. You know that and I know that, so why are we wasting time with this stupid, circular argument?”
Annie opened her mouth to reply, but for a moment she could only stare back at Elly. Deep down, part of her wanted to accept everything Elly was telling her, to go back to fooling herself.
“You know I'm right,” Elly added. “It's time to move.”
“I know,” Annie whispered, nodding slightly. “I do, I know, you're right.”
“Because it worked, Annie,” Elly continued. “You and me, together. It worked.”
“But I remember you talking to people. I remember you talking to Katia, and to Carlyle. I remember you driving the car.”
“You were driving the whole time. And you were always the one talking to people. You're narrating your own life, but you're not a reliable narrator.”
