by Jon Auerbach
“Dunc, what do you think of my dress? Lisa lent it to me.” A lie. This dress had been in my closet since college. It was a miracle it still fit.
Duncan nearly spit out the pie, which sparked a coughing fit that continued for over a minute.
“Whoa, sorry. Wrong pipe. Your dress? It looks great, babe. You look good in anything.”
I glared at him, not sure whether to accept the compliment or call him on the-
“What are you doing?”
A woman’s voice cut through the others and I looked around the room to see who was yelling at me.
“I said, what are you doing?”
The voice hit me again a second time and I nearly fell to the ground. A chair was set nearby and I staggered over to it and sat down.
“Jen, what’s wrong?”
“Probably had too much to drink, she’s always been a lightweight.”
Duncan’s words and thoughts hit me back-to-back, but I didn’t want to deal with him right now. I just wanted the voices to go away.
“Just a bit of a headache. I’ll catch up to you in a bit.”
He nodded and walked away, leaving me alone with my thoughts and everyone else’s apparently.
“Don’t ignore me, I asked you a question.”
“Who, me?” I said out loud.
“Yes, you. But you don’t need to shout. I can hear you even if you don’t speak.”
“Oh.” I thought. “What do you mean, what am I doing? I’m being bombarded with the thoughts of half the people at this party.”
“Yes, I know. And you almost ruined a perfectly good experiment.”
“Umm, sorry?”
The sensation of talking with someone in my mind was incredibly disorienting and-
“Stop that. You know I can hear what you’re thinking, right? I just didn’t think you would be able to hear me back. That has made things ... interesting.”
“Glad I could help.”
“I’m not sure I would go that far. But you’ve piqued my curiosity, so I’ll let this go a little more before I get rid of you.”
Crap. Crap. Crap. I knew I shouldn’t have eaten some of the apples. Wait, could she hear this? I needed to come with a plan bef-
“Too late. I heard it. I told you, it’s like you’re shouting in my ears from a foot away. So you’re JadePhoenix42. Kind of a dumb handle if you ask me. But I guess a small thanks is in order, though, for baking such a delicious pie. And for solving the mystery of why you can hear everyone too. That would have been bugg..”
I shut my eyes tightly and blocked out the rest of the voices. Instead of trying to block my tormentor’s thoughts too, I would channel them into a place where I was in control, my anti-meditation skills finally proving their usefulness.
I imagined myself in a bare room with no doors. Without warning a big sheet of glass appeared on one wall that looked out into another room. I could vaguely see the contents of that room and the formless shadow of my tormenter, who was perched at the glass trying to listen. If my thoughts were loud, my “voice” would carry through the glass and she could hear me. But if I whispered, then she was cut off and my thoughts were still my own. Excellent. Now to figure out how to get rid of this woman. So I asked what I thought she would think was a stupid question.
“Because of the apples? When I ate them earlier, nothing happened.”
I saw the shadow of the figure behind the glass move, but then the figure disappeared and a new image appeared on the glass. It was the fuzzy outline of someone walking through Running Brook Orchard. The image vanished as quickly as it appeared and I forced myself not to think about it further.
“Of course not. Did you let your boyfriend over there have some?”
“No.”
“Right. Then there would have been nothing for you to hear. The apples create the link that allows thoughts to travel from one mind to the other.”
The mention of the apples again triggered another scene to start playing on the screen. But it wasn’t like watching a movie. I was reliving a memory through her eyes. It was the orchard, except this time at night. I watched for a few seconds as she walked down the familiar rows of trees, before the memory flickered off again.
“Oh, that makes sense. Like the vervorium linking places.”
“Yes, exactly. Now, if you don’t mind, I need to get going and you-”
“Wait, but then what about the pie?”
“Do I need to lay everything out for you like a kindergartner? When you baked the pie, you degraded the apples so that the linkage between minds only went in one direction. Like a one-way mirror. At least, that was my theory before tonight and now that I’ve proven it, I-”
“Ah, now I got it. But hold on a second. There was streusel on the pie that I didn’t put there. Was that part of it too?”
“Don’t be stupid. Your pie just looked so bland, so I needed to make it more appetizing. Anyway, I’m glad we cleared this whole thing up, and I really do need to get on with the mind wiping and all so-”
“But why didn’t you just go get the apples yourself?”
The memory resumed and this time I could feel what Beatrice was feeling too. I didn’t know if that was her name, but I needed to call her something other than “that woman” or the “mind reader,” and it was the first thing that came to mind.
I felt the thrill of sneaking into the orchard at night, felt that thrill turn to terror as her feet submerged into the same soil that my foot had been trapped in, felt that terror turn to fear and desperation as she struggled to free herself.
“Well, because you so helpfully agreed to get them for me for seven iron. What an asinine question. Quit stalling so I can-”
“Not buying it. If I knew about these apples and what they did, there’s no way I would let some random person know that there was something different about them.”
“You’d be surprised at how desperate some people are for tokens. They don’t ask questions and are just happy to have the chance to get-”
“No. I think that you would have gotten them yourself but you were afraid of going back to the orchard.”
The memory flickered off but it gave me an idea. It was a wisp of a thought, a puff of smoke, there and gone in an instant. I couldn’t risk Beatrice hearing it and ruining the plan before I could execute.
“What? Don’t be ridiculous. It’s an apple orchard, not a torture chamber. You know, you are starting-”
In my mind, I ran over to the glass wall and started “shouting” as loud and fast as I could.
“You got stuck, just like I did. Well, probably worse. You went at night and no one found you until the next morning. I can just imagine the state you were in when they dug your feet out of the ground.”
And as I recounted what I had just seen back to Beatrice, I felt the same feelings resurface in her mind and the linkage between us began to weaken, the joined rooms becoming fuzzy.
“You were cold and tired, your pants were soiled, and then, for good measure, they dropped you on the dirt and gave you a few nice whacks in the stomach. Then they stood you up, walked you out of the orchard, and tossed you onto the road. Guessing they banned you for life, not that you would ever go back, the trauma-”
“STOP IT!”
The force of her voice pushed me out of the room in my mind and nearly out of the actual chair I was sitting on in the real world. I straightened myself up and tried to refocus on the room, only for the voice to-
“You know, I was going to go easy on you, just push you to drink a little too much so by tomorrow you wouldn’t be sure if this was real or not. But now you’ve really pissed me off.”
The rooms snapped back into focus, except, this time, instead of the glass divider, there was an old wooden door between my mind and her mind. As the knob began to jiggle slowly, I retreated to the back of my room.
“Oh have I? The way I see it, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation if it wasn’t for me.”
I tried to keep up m
y confident front, but I could feel the fierceness of her anger increasing like a shark that smelled blood.
“Not a great way to repay someone who helped you out, now is it?”
“You got paid what you agreed to,” she yelled through the door. It began to open, but the wood was warped and Beatrice had trouble pushing all the way through.
“Maybe so. But had I known when I agreed to your Quest what I was really fetching, well…”
“Well nothing. I found the apples. You’re just a pair of hands. A pair that has overstayed its welcome, so if you don’t mind, I think you’ll be going now...”
The door flung open and I saw her for the first time. Except it wasn’t the first time, I realized. I had thought Beatrice was likely the snooty wife of one of Jeff’s investors, but this made much more sense. The perfect way to infiltrate a party full of rich people with lots of secrets to be purloined.
Because no one ever pays attention to the help.
The avatar Beatrice presented in my mind was different than the frazzled waitress I had seen in the kitchen. The dusty jacket was replaced with a long black gown, her blond hair was long and stick straight, and there were no bags under her piercing green eyes. She stared at me, cowering at the back of this room I’d constructed and smiled.
“Nowhere to run, Jade,” she said, as she slowly walked the length of the room toward me.
She was right. I had nowhere to run. My back was against the wall and the only thing separating me from her was time.
Wait. That was the answer. If I couldn’t run away, then I would make her keep running to me. Because after all, this whole room was of a construction of my own making. It could be as long as I wanted it to be.
As the thought finished, the room exploded and I felt myself being flung backward. When the dust settled, I was still against the same wall, except instead I was now at the end of a very long hallway.
“Neat trick,” Beatrice yelled from the other end. “But I’m going to catch up to you eventually, so all that you’ve done is postponed the inevitable.”
Beatrice trudged down the hallway in her heels but that gave me precious moments to think of how to stop her. With the orchard memory used up, I didn’t have any of her own pain left to use against her.
That was OK, though, because I had plenty of my own to spare.
“Can I tell you a story?” I shouted.
“It won’t take long. I’ll be done by the time you reach me. I was having a drink with a dear, dear friend the other day and he was telling me about he got into a right nasty scuffle with a bunch of street toughs and things got ugly. One of them had a knife, you see. And not one of your everyday, run-of-the-mill knives that just stabs someone and makes all the blood come out. No, this knife was different.”
“Enough.” She was getting closer, maybe only 10 feet away. “Get out of this house now or-”
“It left a mark on its victim that just wouldn’t go away. And then my friend, who loves a good joke, pulled up his shirt and…”
I pulled up the bottom of my dress while calling up the image of Steve’s green scar. It was as horrifying as I had remembered it, and I felt a shudder ripple through my body. I looked down and there was the scar, criss-crossing my stomach like a lightning bolt, its otherworldly glow casting the hallway with an eerie light. I looked up to see Beatrice only a foot in front of me, and the last thing I remember before the floor dissolved underneath us was her necklace floating up from her neck as we fell into a black abyss.
13
Mind reader
“General Washington continues to evade Howe but for how long, I do not know. Winter approaches and I am running low on ink.”
I opened my eyes. The party was still in full swing around me, as if no time had passed. I squinted at the harsh light of the real world and I felt beads of sweat dripping down my forehead. Whether the people around me were actually talking out loud or if I was still hearing their thoughts, I wasn’t sure, and I felt a growing urge to vomit for the second time that day. Suddenly, one of the waiters ran past me toward the kitchen. I took that as a sign that Beatrice had caused some sort of commotion and I staggered off to the front door. Luckily, the valet stand was not crowded and I was soon winding my way back through the dark country roads.
I was halfway back to the house when I was sure the voices had stopped, which was about 10 minutes before I realized I left Duncan at the party with no car. I had bigger problems to deal with now though. I finally pulled into the unlit driveway of the rental and found my phone flooded with dozens of texts from Duncan, who had been scouring the party looking for me.
“Sorry, Dunc. Felt sick so needed to get out of there,” I texted him. Also, you’re a dick for thinking that I can’t dress myself.
“U could have told me,” he wrote back.
“I know. But didn’t want u to feel obligated to leave”
“It’s fine. Some stupid waitress knocked into Clarice and she smacked her face against the marble counter. Blood everywhere. Jeff took her to the hospital.”
“Oh. Wow. Is she OK?”
“Not sure. Might need another nose job.”
“Haha.”
“Wasn’t trying to be funny.”
“Oh”
“i need to stay until Jeff gets back.”
“OK.”
I got out of the car and walked to the front door. The night was quiet and starless, the only sound coming from the crunching of my heels on the gravel walkway. It was a marked change from earlier, when the combined chatter of the partygoers’ thoughts had threatened to overwhelm my sanity. I sat down on the stoop and stared out into the darkness, letting the silence wash over me and clear my head, but my thoughts kept drifting back to those stupid apples.
That’s when I remembered I still had two in the kitchen. I headed inside to the kitchen counter where I had left them. I picked them both up and weighed them in my hands, as if they now were the golden apples of Eris. What were they truly capable of? And what else was out there, lurking in plain sight? I put them in the freezer, climbed the rickety stairs, and collapsed on the bed.
I woke up to an empty bed and a text from Duncan that he had stayed over at Jeff’s and was getting a ride back with him to the city. Whatever. He would be on his way back to Hong Kong tomorrow and by the time he came back, last night would be ancient history. Well, nothing to do now but pack up and head back home myself.
It was a long, lonely ride west and I spent most of the time trying not to replay my encounter with Beatrice. Looking back, it was a miracle I had escaped from her clutches unscathed. If she was actually capable of controlling my mind, there’s no telling what she would have made me do.
As I sat in traffic approaching the Midtown Tunnel, I felt like I was trapped on a small boat in the middle of a rushing river with only a worn wooden paddle to navigate, while Steve and Polly and Beatrice and everyone else passed me by on fancy yachts or huge clipper ships. The wake from their boats made my pathetic dinghy rock from side to side. I tried to steady myself with the stupid paddle but it was so useless, I chucked it in the river and just gave myself to the whims of the river.
After what seemed like hours, I finally reached home to find the door to my apartment slightly ajar and the noise from the TV filtering out into the hallway. That wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, as my roommate had a bad habit of leaving the door open with her keys still in the lock.
“Marnie, you left the door open again,” I called out as I entered the apartment. She didn’t respond.
Great, I thought. I just went through a hellish weekend only to come home and find out we’ve been robbed. Or worse, Beatrice had tracked me down and was waiting for me on the couch watching Real Housewives. A quick search of the apartment revealed nothing other than my roommate’s stupidity, so I retreated to my room, shut the door, and pulled out my laptop.
Before I realized what I was doing, the familiar whizzing of the Quest list appeared on my screen. I began scrolling t
hrough the text looking for promising leads, discarding Quests that were too easy or too cheap, and was about to accept one to fetch some Khat leaves when I stopped myself. What the hell was I doing? Any one of these Quests could deliver me right into the arms of another psychopath. Or the same psychopath. I couldn’t stay away though. I had taken the red pill and I needed to keep going down the rabbit hole to see where it went.
The ping of my regular inbox interrupted my moral quandary and I clicked over to see who was bothering me. An email from the New York Public Library was waiting for me with the subject “Book on hold available.”
My eyes widened. Had someone finally returned one of the mystery books? I put all thoughts of Questing on hold and ran out the door to find out.
It was unexpectedly pouring when I exited the subway and I sprinted the last few blocks to avoid getting drenched. After waiting behind an old man trying to return a DVD for 20 minutes, it was finally my turn at the circulation desk. A familiar visage greeted me as I stepped forward: the librarian from my first visit. She looked at me with unknowing eyes and quickly walked to a room in the back after wordlessly looking up my hold on the computer, returning a few minutes later with a large book wrapped in a plastic dust jacket.
“Here you go. Due in two weeks. Next!”
I grabbed the book and scurried away before she changed her mind, retreating to a carrel in the basement to inspect my prize.
The outside was hardened leather and had no discernible title. The bottom of the spine had a small piece of paper taped under the dust jacket - the call number that matched the one Polly had written out on the freezer case so many months ago. I opened the cover to the first page. The texture of the paper was coarse and the weight of the page substantial. Three words and a number were written in dark green ink:
Rita van Asch, 1777
The pages that followed were similarly handwritten in the same dark green ink. Some of the ink had faded. Other pages were incomplete, either with pieces torn out or with the writing stopping halfway down the page. I read the beginning few lines of a couple of random pages, which seemed to recount the history of the settlement of New Amsterdam/New York, although not one that I had ever read.
