by Rysa Walker
We’ve both been too old to work the trick-or-treat circuit for several years now, but Deo still dresses up, and he usually cajoles me into joining him. I think he likes the fact that there’s one night a year when a guy can wear makeup and outlandish clothes without anyone giving him grief.
“What was the little girl supposed to be?” Aaron asks as he closes the door. “An alien? Or a grasshopper?”
“Mantis,” Deo says. “From the Guardians of the Galaxy series.”
Taylor sniffs. “You mean Gamora. I actually saw that movie.”
Deo pushes away from the table and puts his bowl in the sink. “No, Taylor. Didn’t you see her antennae? Second film. Mantis.” There’s an edge to his voice, but on the positive side, this is more energy than he’s displayed in the last twenty-four hours or so.
He’s given Taylor a wide berth since we left Maryland—well, as wide as possible when four people share an RV. But she’s crossing the line when she questions Deo’s knowledge of the Marvel Universe.
Aaron swears that Taylor doesn’t really blame Deo for shooting Daniel. She’s just upset—understandably—that her oldest brother is lying in a coma three hundred miles east of here. She knows it’s not really Deo’s fault and that most of the blame lies with Graham Cregg, and Ashley, one of the many people Cregg has under his thumb.
Long story short, Cregg forced Ashley to sneak into Daniel’s room at the trauma center and unplug the equipment that was keeping him alive. I screamed for a doctor, but it was pretty clear that they considered me suspect number one. The doctors managed to resuscitate him, but Daniel’s soul, his psyche, whatever it is that makes him Daniel, had already joined the ever-shifting cast of no-longer-living characters inside my head. We were outside the building, trying to avoid hospital security, when the news reached us that Daniel was still, technically speaking, alive.
That hasn’t changed. He’s alive, but there’s very little brain activity.
Well, at least inside his own head. He’s been exceptionally active inside mine.
I add my dishes to the others in the sink and follow Deo back to the little room at the rear of the trailer where he’s been sleeping. He’s already stretched out on one of the pull-down bunks, and he gives me a slightly annoyed look when I rest my hand against his neck.
“How high is it, D?”
“A hundred and one.”
He’s much too hot for me to believe that number, and even if he wasn’t, I’ve known him long enough to tell when he’s fibbing. He’s subtracted a degree. Maybe two.
“Did you take more Tylenol?”
“Mmhmm. I’m okay, Anna. Prob’ly just a bad cold.”
Which is another lie, because he doesn’t want me to worry. And I don’t call him on the lie, because I don’t want him to worry. But neither of us believes this is a cold. I mean, it’s not like Deo never catches a case of the sniffles, and he even had a nasty bout with bronchitis last year, just before our therapist, Dr. Kelsey, finally managed to get him a spot at Bartholomew House, the group home where we were both living when this insanity began. But what are the odds that he would start feeling like crap from purely natural causes less than forty-eight hours after Cregg’s medic jabbed him with a syringe full of who-knows-what?
If he’s not better tomorrow, I’ll have to force the issue. Get him to the doctor and . . .
And what? What will you do then?
I have no idea what I’ll do then, but I’m not going to admit that to Daniel.
They could run tests. Maybe give him something stronger than Tylenol.
They’ll ask for IDs. Insurance. Probably report you to the authorities, too, since I’m sure the State of Maryland has listed you as runaways.
Yeah, well, if Deo doesn’t get better soon, I won’t have a choice. What did they give him? You were there for months, Daniel. Months.
Sorry, Anna. I was working on getting data, tracking down information on which kids they had in the—
But you were working with Ashley, who was with their med unit. She had to have known something about what drugs they were using.
Ashley’s job was to take vital signs. Keep records. She wasn’t in the loop.
There’s a long pause, and then he adds:
Or at least if she was in the loop, she didn’t tell me anything beyond rumors and speculation. I do know that there were a few kids who had . . . reactions . . . to the various serums they were testing. But most of the reactions weren’t life-threatening. I can’t see Ashley willingly hurting any of those kids.
That seems like an odd thing for Daniel to say, given that Ashley’s the one who pulled his life support. But then she’s also the one who stepped in to save me from Lucas, so I kind of get what he’s saying.
He’ll be okay, Anna. You’re overreacting. Deo’s a tough kid, and it would be really stupid to risk—
Daniel stops abruptly, probably because he can tell that he’s pissing me off, and slides back into the corners of my consciousness. I’m not going to argue with him, because in the end, nothing he’s said is relevant. If Deo doesn’t get better soon, I’ll be taking him to a doctor, consequences be damned.
The light burns, even with my eyes squeezed tight.
The man knows this.
He likes this. Likes that it causes me to cower against the back wall with Daciana. Likes that it keeps both of us off guard, unable to see anything as he descends the narrow stairway into this damp, dark, and frigid hole.
“Hello, ladies.”
After so many hours—or is it days?—in the pitch black, the beam is a white, glaring sun. He keeps it trained on our faces as he speaks.
“I’m taking volunteers tonight. Which one of you would like to come upstairs first?” He pauses, waiting, as though he really believes either of us would volunteer to follow him. “I brought food, if that provides extra incentive. And while I believe there’s enough for both of you, I’m never very good at judging these things. It could be that only the person who volunteers will have dinner.”
My stomach, long past the point of simply growling, howls at the mention of food. We finished the last two granola bars yesterday and split the last of the moldy Pop-Tarts this morning. But the gnawing sensation in my stomach hasn’t quite reached the point where it can compete with the pain from my hand, which is now short one finger.
Neither of us moves.
Cregg gives a long-suffering sigh, and a moment of complete silence follows. Then Daciana staggers forward.
“And hunger will enforce them to be more eager.” Cregg laughs softly, although I don’t think it’s hunger pulling Daciana toward him. He’s doing it, doing that thing with his mind again.
“Help. Please help.” Daciana looks back at me, clutching her hands—her still completely intact hands. And then her head jerks back forward, and she screams something at him in her native language.
Cregg winces at the noise in the small space. Daciana falls silent midshriek, giving me one last imploring look over her shoulder as she starts up the stairs.
I’ve only seen Cregg do his mind-control trick when he was seated and focused, and he’s standing now. But he’s standing perfectly still, staring intently at Daciana as she climbs the narrow stairs that lead up from the basement. Will breaking his concentration also break his control over her?
This may be the best chance I’ll get. Maybe the only chance.
Pa’s voice fills my head. You ever need to get away from a guy, don’t hesitate for a minute, Molly. Kick him hard as you can in the nuts and run.
I wasn’t able to do that with Lucas. I tried, but he was too strong. Too fast.
Cregg is older and slower. His eyes are squinted, nearly closed, and he’s only ten feet away.
Do it!
The buzzing starts before I cover half the distance. It fills my ears, and my feet become lead weights, pinning me to the ground.
His narrowed eyes shift between me and Daciana now. My legs crumple beneath me, and I feel my left arm fly abov
e my head. It hovers there, completely out of my control.
Cregg backs slowly up the stairs, keeping that hateful floodlight shining directly into my eyes until he nears the top. When he moves the light away, however, his face has changed. It’s not Graham Cregg anymore.
It’s Myron.
And then it’s Cregg again, and the buzzing peaks, rising to a constant whirr. He invades my mind like a physical force as he pulls my arm down again and again, smashing my injured hand into the concrete floor on the exact—
“Anna! Come on, babe. It’s Aaron. Snap out of it. You’re hurting yourself.”
I open my eyes the tiniest sliver, certain that the blinding light will hit my eyes again, that I’ll see Cregg, that I’ll see Dacia’s face staring down at me from the basement stairs. But the room is nearly dark. The only light streams in from the window—a tiny crescent of moon peeking through the pines.
I’m not in a cold basement cell. I’m still on the floor, but the surface beneath my hand is carpeted. Aaron’s face is directly in front of me. His grip on my left arm loosens as he sees me gradually working my way back to reality. I pull my hand into my lap, remembering the pain from the dream, but it begins to fade as I flex and realize I still have five fingers, not four.
“Where are we? Where’s Deo?”
“We’re somewhere in Ohio,” Aaron says, stifling a yawn. “Deo’s still asleep.”
“Although I can’t imagine how.” Taylor’s voice comes from behind me, and I turn to see her huddled on the other side of the bed that I apparently abandoned in the heat of my nightmare. Her knees are tucked under her chin, and her short auburn hair sticks up in messy tufts on one side. She looks as tired as Aaron. She also looks kind of pissed.
“I’m sorry I woke you.” I don’t add the word again, and neither does Taylor, but it hangs in the air, unspoken.
She snags her pillow from the bed. “I know I said I’d do this, Aaron, but I’m moving to the pullout sofa. You and Deo can fight over who gets to deal with her because I am done.”
Aaron looks embarrassed. “Wow, Taylor. Kinda cold, don’t you think?”
“Cold? It was cold of you to ask me in the first place!” Taylor takes a deep breath, and then her voice softens a little. I can’t see her eyes in the dim light, but it sounds like she’s close to tears. “Anna, I’m really, really sorry you’re going through this, okay? But I’m even more sorry that Molly is dead. I tried, but I just can’t lie here and listen to her being tortured every night while you process her memories or whatever.”
It’s a valid point. None of us were especially eager to go to sleep tonight. We’ve already experienced two nights of interrupted sleep thanks to my dreams. After I woke up screaming around two a.m. that first night, I just stayed up, blearily combing through conspiracy theory sites on my battered laptop—partly because I was barely coherent and the articles don’t require many brain cells, but also because those sites have been our most reliable source of information so far. Which is kind of scary when you think about it.
“I didn’t ask you to stay in here with me, Taylor. In fact, I specifically said to let me work through the dreams on my own. I’ll be fine.”
“Maybe,” Taylor says. “But you don’t sound fine, and none of us can sleep while you’re working through it. I can’t even sleep afterward, because your nightmares give me nightmares.”
Jaden’s nervous laugh echoes inside my head.
Tell Taylor she has it easy. She’s only getting the audio feed. In here, it’s all five senses. Like being in the middle of Saw or one of those Freddy Krueger movies.
Daniel begins to shift toward the front, and I know he’s going to defend Taylor before he even begins. But it doesn’t need to be said. Taylor’s not the most tactful person on the planet, but she’s absolutely right. It could take me another week, maybe longer, to work through the memories that Molly left in my head when her spirit moved on.
I ignore Daniel, pushing both voices to the back of my head as I begin to stack the mental bricks that give me a modicum of privacy inside my own mind. Neither of them like it behind the wall. I guess it feels crowded, and I’m sure it’s harder for them to follow what’s happening out here in the real world. But it’s impossible for me to process two conversations at once, even if one is my own internal chatter.
To be fair, though, the nightmares are new to Daniel and Jaden. I, on the other hand, have been through this at least nine times. Maybe more, since there are scattered fragments that don’t belong in any of the cabinets lined up at the back of my mind. On the plus side, a hitcher leaving means I get my head back to myself. But when they go, my mind begins unpacking their memories, sorting them away for future use. And while some of the memories are useful, my hitchers don’t always pass away peacefully in their sleep.
The dreams are part of the process. Nightmares where it feels like there’s a huge weight on my chest. Where I’m drowning in my own vomit. Where a semitruck is headed straight toward my car and there’s no way to avoid it. And as bad as the others were, I’d go back and work through the departure dreams of every single previous inhabitant in my head—twice, three times even—if it allowed me to avoid another replay of the last few days of Molly Porter’s life.
Especially now that my mind is adding in bits and pieces of my own history. That always happens, but usually it’s a good thing. It means the dreams are coming to a close, that I’m almost finished assimilating the memories. In the past, though, it’s been things about my day or something I’ve been reading that drifts into the dreamscape. Not my own personal nightmare with Myron.
I quickly check my mental walls, especially the far corner. Back there, the walls are always up, and so heavily fortified that I rarely think about them. Rarely think about him.
Back when I was six, Kelsey and I designed my . . . well, not mind palace, since it’s nowhere near as elaborate as Sherlock’s. More of a mind office. But anyway, we labeled and organized everything. That was an important step, not just so that I could find information when I wanted but also to keep their memories from overwhelming me or intruding in my day-to-day life. It was important to label Myron, too, so that I’d have a visual reminder that he can no longer hurt me or anyone else. His memories aren’t simply in a file cabinet. We locked that cabinet and wrapped it in duct tape, which Kelsey says was my contribution, so my six-year-old self must have believed duct tape to be impervious. Then, we walled that entire cabinet up behind multiple layers of brick and mortar and stashed it in the most remote corner of my mind, as far away as possible from the rest of my thoughts and memories.
The Myron corner is still intact. Every brick is in its proper place. Not a single chink in the mortar. Despite the cameo appearance from Myron, this was just another Molly dream.
Taylor is still talking when I tune back in, saying I handle the dreams better with Aaron in the room, anyway. “Or Deo can come in here,” she says, “if you and Aaron insist on being total prudes. But me? I’m going to put on my headphones and crank up the music, because I will not listen to that again. I can’t.”
“It’s okay, Taylor. I understand.”
And I do. Taylor and Molly were best friends, like sisters, really. Just because I can’t opt out of the horror show in my head doesn’t mean it has to be inflicted on anyone else. Well, anyone outside of my head.
Taylor nods and gives me a little mouth twitch that might be a smile as she squeezes past Aaron and into the main cabin of the RV. There was a bit of guilt in that look but a tremendous dose of relief, too.
“I’m sorry,” Aaron begins, but I shake my head.
“Just . . . go back to bed, okay? I won’t be able to sleep for a while anyway. Maybe I’ll sit outside for a bit. Or take a walk around the lake.”
I close the bathroom door behind me, splash some cold water on my face, and run my fingers through my hair so that it doesn’t look quite so much like a haystack.
By the time I’m dressed, everyone else seems to have settled
back down. Taylor is sprawled out on one side of the foldout couch, so I guess Aaron has joined Deo in the back on the other cot. I’m a little annoyed to see that when Taylor said she was putting on her headphones, she really meant Deo’s extra pair that I loaned her back at Kelsey’s beach house. I know it’s unbelievably petty of me under our current circumstances, but if she’s going to be a jerk toward Deo, she should damn well give those back.
The breeze that greets me when I step outside is much chillier than I expected. I turn back, planning to grab my hoodie, but then I hear a voice behind me.
“Looking for this? It was in the truck.”
I startle, bumping my shoulder against the edge of the trailer.
“Oh, God. I’m sorry. Are you okay?” Aaron stands a few feet away holding my hoodie and a plastic grocery bag.
“Yeah, I’m fine. But . . . Aaron, you should go back to sleep. You know you’ll get stuck with most of the driving again.”
Taylor has taken a few shifts in the driver’s seat, but she’s more than a little nervous about towing an RV. Deo’s not old enough to drive, and I’m something of a liability behind the wheel right now. Even if I wasn’t punch-drunk from lack of sleep, I never know when one of Jaden’s visions will hit.
“Oh,” I say as that last thought sinks in. “The visions. That’s why you came out here.”
Aaron gives me a blank look—a perfectly reasonable reaction, since he wasn’t privy to the twists and turns of my internal monologue.
“I meant that you’re here because you’re worried I’ll have another flash-forward and tumble off a cliff or something. Or that one of Cregg’s people is—”
“They generally avoid placing RV parks on the edge of cliffs,” he says with a teasing grin. “The worst you’re likely to find nearby are a few gently rolling hills. And I agree with what you said earlier. I don’t think anyone is still following us, if they ever were. But I’m still not going to let you wander around out here alone.”
“We can go back inside, then.”
“I’m wide awake.” That brings a wave of guilt, since I’m the reason he’s wide awake, but then he adds, “And I thought it might be nice to have a few minutes alone with you when I’m not stressed out about keeping this giant tin can in the proper lane. I even brought us a midnight snack.”
