Touching Eternity (Touch Series 1.5)

by Airicka Phoenix

  Garrison raised a hand, signaling him to be quiet. His remarkably flat, cold eyes watched the ballet being performed around the table as trays were set in their proper places, glasses were filled and food was catered.

  “We can serve ourselves,” he told the nearest server.

  The man, staring respectfully at his feet, bowed his head, snapped smartly on his shiny heels and hurried to grab his trolley. The others followed his lead like dogs on a tether.

  Garrison watched them, waited until they were fully out of sight before focusing on Isaiah once more. “After the mess Julia made, I can’t trust people not to talk and I don’t want word of Amalie getting out to certain people.”

  “She’s alone?” Those two words were laced with anguish, with anger and disbelief.

  “No, not alone.” Garrison sat back, hands folded neatly in his lap. “She has Gabriel — Julia’s replacement — who comes in five times a week to tutor her and Isabella takes up her food and makes sure the room is in order. Amalie and I have our meetings three times a week where we discuss her progress. I already mentioned to her that we would consider bringing more people into her life as soon as she makes more of an effort to get better. I do not want another horrific incident like with Julius Barnabas. You remember that, don’t you?”

  Isaiah nodded. “Has she…” he trailed off, too numb to formulate the nagging words.

  Garrison shook his head. “She assures me she no longer sees things, but there are times I see it in her eyes, the way she moves. I keep our meetings to her room. I notice she’s more relaxed there. I’ve told her that until she makes more progress, she will be confined to her room. I think this saves me from having to constantly hover over her and make sure she’s not going to do anything stupid.”

  Isaiah didn’t want to imagine it, didn’t think he had the nerve to continue sitting there when the image of Amalie — tiny, fragile Amalie — sitting alone and sick in her room, kept rotating around in his skull. But now that it was there, digging roots into his brain, he didn’t know how to shake it.

  “Sir, I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but does she need to be locked up?”

  “It’s for her good, Isaiah. I know it sounds harsh and unreasonable right now, but I can’t have her wandering about, talking to herself! Can you imagine the chaos that would cause if someone were to see? I have enemies watching my every move and major backers that would not hesitate to pull their funding if word of Amalie got out. These people don’t understand how hard I’ve worked to bring her this far. I can’t have them getting wind that, here I am trying to cure mankind of retardation and my own daughter is mentally challenged. Do you understand?”

  He didn’t. Maybe he was too blinded by emotion, too overcome by the ever present need to protect her, but he didn’t like the idea of her being stored away like some dirty secret. He didn’t like her being alone. The latter killed him, destroyed him, devastated him. The very idea that she was somewhere in the maze of rooms and corridors, alone, maybe frightened, slashed at his heart.

  Garrison sighed when Isaiah sat torn between two voices. “It’s for her own good, Isaiah. I promise you. Everything I do is to help make her better.”

  Chapter 2

  Amalie

  Soft sunrise kissed the liquid navy in passing, as splinters of light pricked the early dawn. Pools of gold stretched across the ceiling of her room, trickled down the walls and painted everything with fire. The sweet fragrance of roses, sea salt, vanilla and citrus washed through the room, surrounding her, willing her decaying senses to rise.

  Beyond the barricade of her confines, the low moans of the damned seeped through the cracks, pricking her, but not with the same ferocity as they once did. She was no longer the scared little girl hiding from the voices. She had learned long ago to simply ignore them when they begged for her to come out and help them.

  It was just another day, she thought, closing her eyes. Another day she would have to endure. Another day of fooling herself into believing she wasn’t insane when the voices urged her otherwise. After twelve years, it really shouldn’t have been as hard as it was to block them out. But they were a steady trickle against stone, eventually even the toughest granite would crack.

  She drew the sheets up over her head and blocked out the warmth of the sun trying to probe the empty shell that was her body into what could resemble a shred of animation. She just didn’t want to be warm, to feel alive. There was no reason to.

  Across the room, the penetrating sound of locks disengaging and brass grinding on brass pressed through the silence. Hinges squealed as the door was opened a crack. She didn’t have to look to know Isabella had poked her head in, hazel eyes wide, glassy with fear as they darted like a frightened rabbit around the room. She had a feeling Isabella was always waiting to be ambushed by her. Maybe the maid thought one of those days she’d walk in and get a pillow in the face. It was, after all, the only weapon Amalie had.

  When she deemed it safe, the maid padded hurriedly across the room, her soft, rapid patter reminding Amalie of a small creature scuttling to safety. There was scuffling as she set out Amalie’s breakfast on the desk. No rattling of china. No clink of silverware. No clunk of glass. But there was the familiar rustle of Styrofoam against wood. Then the quick scurry of Isabella’s feet as she retreated, much faster than when she’d entered. The door cracked in closing. The locks snapped into place sharply, the sound of thunder slicing heaven and earth.

  Amalie was left alone with the sound of her own breathing and the rush of the ocean as company. It was Monday, she wouldn’t see anyone for another four hours. She was safe for four hours.

  Detangling herself from the sheets, Amalie padded to the washroom. Chilled hardwood floors gave way to icy laminate. She no longer winced at the contact.

  At the sink, she washed her face with water too cold to contain any heat, taking great pains not to glance into the wrapped mirror just inches from her face. She hadn’t seen her own reflection in a year.

  The mirror wasn’t real. The glass was distorted like the mirrors of a funhouse. Her father thought this would be safer for someone like her. But she couldn’t look into the gilded frame without shuddering at the demon staring back at her. She was almost certain it was the same monster hiding inside her, the one that made her this way. Made her like her mother. Her father saw it every time they were together. She could see it in his eyes. If he tried to mask the anger, the hatred and betrayal, he never did a very good job.

  Her mother had destroyed him and Amalie had helped in her ignorance. It was only right he despise her.

  She snapped off the water, scrubbed her face dry with a hand towel and padded back into her room. She froze. The towel dropped from her fingers.

  “Good morning, Amalie.”

  No! He was early! Why was he so early?

  Middle-aged with a head full of shiny scalp and straggly tufts of hair behind large ears the color of steel wool, Gabriel Tomas leered. His gray dishwater-colored eyes roamed the length of her, turning her nightgown transparent. Cold sweat dampened the cotton material, plastering it to her spine.

  “You look surprised to see me.” Teeth like a picket fence flashed against his round, sweaty face. “Did you forget today was Monday?”

  No, but she had four hours! She had four hours to prepare herself for what he wanted. Four hours to take the numbing medication crushed to powder in her breakfast. Those precious minutes weren’t much, but they were enough to save her from feeling what would happen next.

  “You’re early.” She was boiled in anxiety, drowned in it. Her head and feet warred with the indecision to run, to hide, to attack. But none of those things were an option. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide and she had nothing, nothing to attack with! She was at his mercy. She was alone and without even nails to protect her.

  The bathroom doorframe came up against her back, restraining her.

  Tomas grinned, his eyes slivers of hot iron. “Your father called me. He said he wanted
to move up your meeting with him so I should come in a few hours early to make up the time and hoped I wouldn’t mind. I, of course, don’t mind in the least.”

  Her limbs convulsed involuntarily. They threatened to desert her. She sagged against the frame, willing herself not to break. It would be worse if she broke. The demon inside him thrived on her fears, grew on them. She couldn’t let him see how easily he had the power to shatter her.

  “Are you ready to learn, Amalie?”

  Her only response was the tightening of her fists at her sides and the aversion on her face as he approached.

  ***

  Light from the terrace spiked off the silver tip of her father’s pen as it weaved across the notepad. Amalie watched it move, vomiting her life across blank pages in slow, fluid swirls.

  Every moment of her existence lay within the flaps of that folder resting precisely on her father’s knee. Her every breath was documented with cold, hard numbers and labels. She doubted her father ever really saw her or maybe he chose not to look. She had inherited too much of her mother. Amalie had only the faintest memory of the woman who had brought her screaming into the world. But she remembered enough to know they shared the same auburn curls, the same blue eyes, the same heart-shaped face and small mouth. They shared the same smile and the same slight frame. And they both shared the desire to die.

  “Gabriel submitted his evaluation before he left.” He never glanced up, never looked at her. She was an invisible force, something insignificant and undesirable. “I am very pleased by his report of your progress. You seem to be taking very well to your new medication. More focused, cooperative…” He tapped the end of his pen on the notepad. “Yes, quite pleased.”

  Pages rustled as he flipped to the written report. His free hand fidgeted with the thin frames sliding over the bump on his beakish nose.

  He sat so straight, Amalie mused, tracing the erect line of her father’s posture. She had an image of her own spinal column shattering like glass if she even attempted to straighten the perpetual bend in her backbone.

  “It’s his recommendation that your isolation be reevaluated.” A fold appeared between his eyebrows. “I’ll have to discuss this with him a little more.” The review was stuffed away inside the voluminous pile already tucked inside the folder. “We can’t push too much too quickly. Things like this take time and gradual…anyway.” He waved his pen-wielding hand. “I think we can start slow, maybe with you joining the supper table tonight. If you can control yourself, we can maybe make meal times a permanent arrangement.” He closed his books, studied his splayed fingers before finally glancing up. His green eyes never rested on her, but settled on something just over her shoulder. “How does that sound?”

  The opportunity to finally leave the four walls of her bedroom, to breathe air that wasn’t vanilla, citrus and roses shredded with the sickly sweet tinge Tomas left behind should have elated her. It should have excited her, freed her. Instead, she was blinking back tears.

  It wasn’t freedom. This reward came with a price. Tomas would want something in return for the kindness he was bestowing upon her. He would demand a payment. But what did she have that he hadn’t already taken? What more could he possibly do to her?

  No. Tomas worried her, frightened her, but he wasn’t the only demon haunting her. He was just the only one that could step over her threshold. Outside the security of her door, there was something worse waiting for her, something that didn’t want her body.

  “Amalie?”

  Surfacing from the flood of dread threatening to pull her under, Amalie blinked, focused on her father’s face. He was finally looking at her, his face a blank wall, careful, but calculating. Already, he was reconsidering his words, analyzing the next best course of action. She could see him tearing apart her thoughts, ripping apart the tissues of her brain.

  She was the one to duck her head, breaking connection before he could devour what little sense she had left. “Yes, sir.”

  He gave a satisfied nod. His gaze went back to the folder. “And how are you doing? Is there anything you want to talk about?”

  She shook her head. “No, sir.”

  “And the…delusions?” He cleared his throat, shifted in his seat. “Have you seen anything else since our last meeting?”

  She hadn’t left her room since their last meeting. The shadows never came into her room, only the low whine of their pleading that filtered through the door. “No, sir.”

  His shoulders visibly relaxed. He exhaled. “Excellent. I think this new medication was just what you needed.”

  He rose to his feet, one hand smoothing down the front of his steel-gray suit. His face tilted, a fine crinkle formed over his nose.

  “I’ll have Isabella air out this room.” He started towards her door. “It’s beginning to smell sour in here.”

  Amalie almost choked on the twisted laugh curdling at the back of her throat. She had to bite her lip to smother hysteria, to swallow it. The path of it burned down her esophagus, oozing like acid into her churning gut, wrenching her with pain. Her hands shook as she balled them in her lap. The heel of her right foot rocked as she fought not to. Hot and cold sweat clashed over the length of her shuddering body, warring for dominance, for the right to cripple her.

  Her father never noticed.

  He opened her door and paused. “Someone will retrieve you for supper.” Another pause. “Don’t embarrass me this time, Amalie.”

  The click of the door shutting, the snick of the lock latching into place, sealed her in with his words. It locked her in with her pain and she was alone once more, alone to drag her bruised and exhausted body into a shower that didn’t even generate hot water because she might deliberately hurt herself. She was left to deteriorate in a body that was no more hers than the breaths she took. She was left to beg for mercy only to burn in torment again the next day. She was a weed struggling through cracks of concrete, unwanted, undesired, crushed and abused under trampling feet. She would never see the sun. She would never be free. She would always be a solitary candle in the dark, cold without a flame to warm it, forever peering out at the world through a laminated sheet of glass too thick to penetrate. When she died, if she was ever allowed, no one would ever know. She would pass a faded ghost of a girl abandoned by all.

  But didn’t she deserve it after what she’d done? Did her kind even belong with the mass populace? How differently would she be treated outside the gilded walls her father built around her? Didn’t people like her belong behind glass and bars, away from normal people? She was a murderer and she was insane — this was hell and she was home.

  ***

  True to his promise, her father sent a solemn-faced guard to unlock her door. His blank, gray eyes stared evenly just over her head while one gloved hand rested comfortably over the butt of the gun strapped to his hip. Hair the softest shade of wet sand was swept back from a square face she almost recognized. She didn’t know his name, but she often caught sight of him during those rare moments of freedom when she was allowed to leave the confines of her room, usually on her way to the white room.

  He inclined his head, a gesture that threatened to snap his stiff posture. “Ma’am.”

  Unused to being spoken to, acknowledged even, Amalie slipped past his rigid frame in uncertain silence, so careful not to let any part of her brush his. He followed her hesitant dance, shifting his tall frame in the opposite direction, leaving ample space between them to avoid contact. At her sides, her fingers twitched. Her gaze darted anxiously from him to the open bedroom door, to the empty hall behind him.

  They were there, always there, the shadows, the vapors, the faces. Her mother, in her white dress, weeping. Amalie tore her gaze away, fixated on her feet. Some of the tension slipped off her shoulders once she was no longer looking at the cause of her insanity, only to jump back on when she glanced back at her guard and found him watching her.

  A moment of tense silence reverberated between them as he sized her up and she weig
hed the curiosity shadowing his eyes. She didn’t blame him for gawking, for being curious. She was a circus freak in his eyes and she understood that. What she didn’t understand was why he looked so conflicted.

  Anxious, she switched her weight from her right foot to her left. Her arms folded just under her chest, her hands cupping her elbows. She dropped her gaze, which was why she didn’t see him move until the heat of his body was suddenly too close. She jumped back startled by the sudden forward step. Her heart leapt into her throat, a frantic ball of fear. Her mind raced, questions tripping over images of him grabbing her, touching her, hurting her. The explosion of pain rocketing through her shoulder was fleeting when she hit the wall in her desperate attempt to flee. Her eyes were wild, her hand out, warding him back.

  “Don’t!” she choked out. “Don’t…please…”

  He jerked back as if her words were fists hitting him in the chest. His hands jerked up, a sign of peace one would use on a wild animal. His eyes were as wide as hers, filled with surprise and uncertainty.