“Here, give me the capsule.” Root stretched out her hand, which reminded me of a paw; thick hair grew like fur across its back. “I’ll find out what’s in it, and I’ll let you know.”
Then she gathered up the mail and left without saying good-bye, as if she’d had more than enough of our company.
“So that Root is a friend of yours now?” Dashay’s voice dripped skepticism.
“At least she doesn’t spread rumors.” I felt miffed, but I couldn’t stay mad at Dashay. “I have a question,” I said.
“You always do.”
It wasn’t easy to phrase this one. “It’s okay to kill a demon?” My father was an advocate of nonviolence, and I’d grown up thinking that all killing was wrong.
Dashay listened to me without moving, without even blinking. “It’s like removing a cancer,” she said. “Once you know it’s there, it would be wrong not to get rid of it.”
I took a deep breath. “So what does it look like?”
“Every sasa is different.” Dashay walked over to the bowl of nuts on the coffee table. She lifted out a walnut. “It was about the size and shape of this nut, but dark, and without a hard shell. It’s softer, you know. Like a tumor.”
I’d never seen or felt a tumor, and I hoped I never would. “So it doesn’t have eyes?”
Dashay laughed. “You looked at it, remember? No, it does not have eyes or ears or a nose.” Then she laughed again. “Don’t look so disappointed. It does have a little mouth—that’s how it attaches itself. And it vibrates and sometimes it sends out a high-pitched sound that only foy-eyes hear.”
I didn’t tell her that I’d heard it, too.
Later that day we received a visit from the FBI.
At the sound of the buzzer, my mother went down to the front gate. She returned a moment later, followed by Agent Cecil Burton.
I’d seen him only a month ago. He’d turned up at the place in Kissimmee where we stayed after the hurricane. He was still trying to find out who killed Kathleen.
Now that I was a “person of interest” in Mysty’s disappearance as well, he wanted to ask me some questions.
I was lying on the living room sofa, reading The Count of Monte Cristo and thinking about the nature of honor, when he came in. From our first exchange of glances I knew this interview wasn’t going to be anything like the last one.
Agent Burton’s eyes had always been world-weary, but this time they had a look of cold determination. His fingernails, buffed and trimmed the last time I’d seen him, were ragged now, as if he’d bitten them.
He said, “How are you, Miss Ariella?”
I sat up. “I’m fine.”
He sat in a chair across from me. Mãe offered him a drink and he said that water would be very nice. As usual, he wore a suit and tie, in spite of the heat. He looked fit, but his eyes were bloodshot, as if he hadn’t slept well in a long time. I had a sense that personal problems were keeping him awake.
“Lovely place you have here.” He took a small tape recorder out of his pocket and set it on the table between us.
Mãe came back with two glasses of water, which she set on either side of the tape recorder.
Agent Burton said he had some questions for me that were important in finding out what happened to Kathleen and to Mysty. He asked if I wanted to help.
“Of course.” I sent Mãe a quick question: Am I allowed to listen to his thoughts?
Mãe sent back, Of course. She sat on the sofa next to me.
The next hour went quickly, but I felt exhausted by the time it ended. Listening to Burton’s questions and his thoughts required concentration. Answering the questions was the easy part.
By and large, I told him the truth. We’d been over the details of Kathleen’s murder before, so I found myself repeating things I’d already said. Of course I didn’t talk about Malcolm, or his admission that he’d murdered Kathleen.
From time to time my mother let me know that I was doing a good job.
When we got to Mysty, Burton’s thoughts became fresher and more complicated. Now I had to think before I spoke. Yes, I said, I’d heard rumors that I was involved in her disappearance.
His thoughts told me he didn’t take the rumors seriously. He was mostly intrigued by the coincidence: two girls I’d known had come to “bad ends.” That was his phrase for it. Like most people, he assumed that Mysty was dead.
“Tell me about Jesse Springer.”
I told Burton all I knew: the kayak accident, the trip to the mall, Jesse’s interest in the stars and deep space, Jesse’s decision to stop drinking.
I even mentioned Jesse’s visit to our house the night I’d hypnotized him. All I left out was the hypnosis itself.
It was hard for me to talk at times, because Burton was thinking such contrary thoughts: that Jesse had deliberately capsized the kayak to get attention, that he’d only pretended to stop drinking, and that he’d killed Mysty without a qualm.
The polygraph tests indicated that Jesse was lying in response to some questions. He’d said that he’d agreed to meet Mysty that night at one of the river docks, but that she never turned up.
Apparently Jesse fit the FBI profile for Mysty’s abductor/murderer: a white male between twenty and thirty who tended to be a loner and substance abuser who’d had previous problems with the law. Mysty’s stepbrothers in Tennessee also had been interviewed, but were ruled out as suspects since both had solid alibis.
Burton asked me about the man I’d seen driving the beige Chevrolet van, but he was thinking that the man-in-van was a long shot. Jesse was the one.
I was so intent on listening to his thoughts that I stopped in mid-sentence, having no idea of what I’d been saying. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“It’s natural for you to be upset,” Burton said, but he was thinking, All in all, she’s a pretty cool customer.
Mãe said, “She’s only fourteen.”
Finally the tape recorder was shut off. Burton looked at me, his eyes still cold and detached. “If you think of anything else,” he said, and handed me his card.
I already had this card, but I took a new one.
That’s when Dashay came in. She’d been swimming in the river, and she strode into the living room, wrapped in a red towel, beads of water flying from her shoulders. Her skin gleamed, and her hair was hidden by a vintage bathing cap festooned with white rubber zinnias. Anyone else would have looked ridiculous in this getup. Dashay looked stunning.
Agent Burton dropped the tape recorder as he stood up.
Mãe and Dashay tried not to laugh.
“How do you do?” Dashay extended her hand as my mother introduced them and smiled her dazzling fake smile. She stood close to Burton and looked into his eyes.
A spot near the kidneys, she thought. Nothing sizable yet. Probably a result of consorting with criminal types—or with the ex-wife.
A week later, I stopped riding my bicycle.
I’d developed the habit of riding into town three or four times a week, going to the library or the drugstore, drinking a soda, and stopping for a swim on the way home. The city streets were quiet those days. Most of the locals had volunteered for the Mysty search parties.
I saw one group, fanned out in the forest between the town and the river, walking slowly, looking from side to side. I knew they were hoping to find a body, and the thought made me shiver.
At the library and the drugstore, people stared at me with suspicion. I heard them thinking: That’s her. She’s the one. Poor Mysty. And sometimes I had the sense that I was being followed, although no one was visible. Finally the unpleasantness outweighed my need for exercise. I stayed home.
We were visited again by the sheriff ’s detectives, who asked the same questions as before. I felt like a parrot, repeating syllables that carried no meaning for me.
Our house was finished now, stronger and larger than it had been before the hurricane. Mãe had added three new rooms and a deck for my telescope. But I didn’t feel like sta
rgazing, or helping her arrange the furniture and artwork we’d brought from Saratoga Springs.
The days were quiet with the work crew gone. Mãe mourned her honeybees and Dashay brooded about Bennett; both tried to hide their feelings. We were living in a house of heartbreak.
Mãe tried to interest me in Florida folk tales. Dashay renewed her offer to teach me about sasa. I wasn’t interested. And I didn’t want to go to Flo’s to eat oysters. I had no appetite.
My mother told me that many vampires are prone to bouts of depression. “Some of it is justified,” she said. “When you look at the state of the world, it makes you more than sad.”
My father, I thought, had given me a classical education but had kept me from knowledge of current events and crime. He’d wanted to keep me optimistic for as long as he could.
The strangest thing about that time: words failed me. I couldn’t find the right phrases or terms. More and more, I resorted to nodding and shaking my head, and then to avoiding opportunities for conversation altogether.
At night I lay awake for hours, thinking about Mysty and Kathleen: people who’d been presences in my life only briefly, and now were voids. I remembered my father talking about presence and absence, tension and release, as the basis of all art and all science. I wanted to think about the implications of that, but my head was too foggy to get anywhere.
One morning, after a nearly sleepless night, I came out to the kitchen and found Mãe sitting at the table, doing the New York Times crossword puzzle. She downloaded it on her computer every morning.
“What is the football term for ‘shoving away’?” she asked me.
I shrugged and traced a spiral pattern with my finger on the tablecloth.
“I hate sports clues.” Mãe set down her pen. “How about some oatmeal?”
I made a face. The idea of thick, congealed food lacked appeal.
Neither did the bowl of fresh fruit and yogurt she set in front of me. “Ariella,” she said. “You are beginning to worry me.”
I thought, I’m worrying me, too.
“I understand how you feel,” my mother said, her voice full of concern. “It’s hard when people are talking about you, thinking you’re part of whatever happened to Mysty.”
And Kathleen, I thought.
“Why aren’t you talking?” she asked.
Speaking requires too much effort, I thought. Words have lost their meaning.
“Sounds like teenage angst.” Mãe went back to the crossword, trying to hide her worry.
Part of me, I have to admit, enjoyed the experience of teenage angst. I spent days lying around the house or going down to Dashay’s mourning garden. It had been wrecked by the hurricane and patiently restored by her; she’d replanted the flowers and foliage, all in shades of black, and replaced the obelisk fountain with a new one: a statue of a woman that wept black tears. I sat on a black iron bench and contemplated death, because that’s what one is supposed to do in a garden of gloom.
My mood lasted for nearly two weeks. Then, one afternoon in late September, when the humidity dropped and a sweet breeze blew in from the Gulf, I found a letter from my father to my mother lying unfolded on the kitchen table. I saw my name written in his handwriting. I didn’t even have to touch it to begin reading it.
My father wrote: “I’m sorry to hear that Ariella is feeling depressed, but not surprised, given all she’s had to endure this year. The disappearance of the local girl is regrettable, not only for her family but for ours.”
I liked the “ours.”
“Since the FBI is involved in the investigation, I won’t return as I’d planned,” he wrote. “But Ari’s lessons should not be suspended indefinitely. Her current mood no doubt reflects a degree of boredom as well as the shock of recent events. My suggestion is that we begin at once to look into options for continuing her education. She’s more than ready for college, and a change of place will do her good.”
At that point I stopped reading. I wasn’t at all sure I was ready for college. But I let myself imagine what it might be like to begin a new life in a new place. It might be exciting. It might even be fun.
That’s when I decided I’d had enough angst. It had succeeded only in worrying my parents and in boring me.
Mãe was in one of the new upstairs rooms, painting its walls a pale shade of turquoise that had a hint of silver in it. She said that yes, Raphael had planned to return the following month, and that she’d warned him about the FBI interest in me.
She handed me a paintbrush. “You can do the corners.”
“I like this color,” I said. “What’s it called?”
“Indian Ocean,” she said. “A glorified name for a simple blue.”
“But it’s appropriate,” I said. I dipped the brush into the can, then tapped off the excess paint. “It looks like the color of an ocean far away.”
She smiled. “It’s good to hear your voice again.”
“I read my father’s letter to you,” I said, fanning the brush up the inner corner of a wall.
“I know you did.” She poured more paint into her roller pan.
She’d left it there for me to read, I thought. Mothers can be devious creatures.
For a while we painted. The windows were open, and the salty breeze mixed with the smell of fresh paint seemed to signal new beginnings.
“Do you think I’m ready for college?” My voice sounded as uncertain as I felt.
“I’m not sure.” She’d finished two walls, and now began a third. “I think it might be worth a try.”
The next time Agent Burton called on us, Dashay was waiting for him. She met him at the gate, wearing a close-fitting dark red dress, her hair loose and wavy.
From the kitchen window, Mãe and I watched her talk to Burton as they came slowly toward the house. “She’s flirting with him,” I said.
“She wants him to help her find Bennett.” Mãe’s voice carried disapproval and understanding, both. “She says she has a plan. And when Dashay has a plan, things happen.”
“Good things?”
Mãe said, “Things happen fast. And some things get broken.”
We looked out at Dashay and Burton, and I had a sudden wild fantasy: Dashay would make Burton one of us, and then all our troubles would go away. But I knew better.
Root sent me an e-mail later that day. Normally I received nothing personal, only newsletters about music and books. When I saw her name on my laptop’s screen, I felt repulsed, as if she herself had appeared in my room, and for the first time I questioned my reaction. Why did she bother me so? Was she part of my Jungian shadow?
Root’s e-mail style was terse and to the point: “Vallanium capsule is a sugar pill.”
She signed the e-mail: “ROOT.”
I typed a thank-you, and added a question: “No eternal life?”
She wrote back within an hour: “Not a chance.”
My father hated e-mail and telephones. He preferred letters and face-to-face conversations, modes of expression that allowed verbal sophistication and style.
I respected the reasons for his feelings. Nonetheless, sometimes I wished he would pick up the telephone or dash off an e-mail. He was another void in my life.
For many vampires, telepathy doesn’t work for long-distance communication—but like all traits, this one varies considerably. My mother had managed to send me messages that turned up in my dreams in Saratoga Springs. I don’t think this was possible because she had unusual telepathic powers, but because she was my mother, and the psychic relations between parents and children are known to be atypical.
After lunch that day Mãe asked if I’d take my bike into town and buy more masking tape. The cooler weather made the prospect of a long bike ride enticing.
I saw no one that I knew, until I was outside the pharmacy, unlocking my bike from the rack, and a woman’s voice said my name. I turned. A small woman, probably in her forties, with blond hair straggling past her shoulders, stood under a live oak tree, watching me
. Mysty’s mother. I recognized her from the TV news we’d seen at Flo’s.
“Will you come here for a minute?” Her voice was soft, with a Southern accent more pronounced than Mysty’s. “I’d like to talk with you.”
I wheeled my bike over to her. She wore a faded denim shirtdress and sandals.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, but she interrupted.
“Tell me what you know. You’re that Ari girl, aren’t you?”
I nodded.
“I heard the things people are saying about you,” she said. “Tell me what you know.” Her eyes were the color of spring grass.
“I didn’t see her the night she disappeared,” I said.
“Some say you killed her.” Her hand flew out and clutched my arm. She had sharp fingernails. The red polish was chipped.
I tried to pull my arm free. She was surprisingly strong. When I wrenched it away, her nails gouged my skin. I stared at the slashes, at my dark red blood.
“Tell me what you know.” Her voice reminded me of Mysty’s.
When she tried to grab my arm again, I swerved away. “I’ve told you,” I said. “I had nothing to do with it.”
I climbed onto my bike and rode away, but I felt her eyes following me. She’d been spending most days since Mysty disappeared walking around town, watching and waiting.
For a moment I thought about turning back, about telling her I’d been thinking hard, trying to hear Mysty’s thoughts—sending out what we call “locators,” thoughts that sometimes tell us where others are. I’d sent them to my father, too. But, like him, Mysty wasn’t sending anything back. She wasn’t anywhere within my range.
The sight of blood clotted along my arm kept me pedaling. I rode fast, out of town, past another group of searchers gathered around a sheriff ’s car, into the country again. I was thinking unpleasant thoughts. What if I did have something to do with it? What if whoever followed us at the mall that day was really after me?
By the time I reached home, the gashes on my arm still hadn’t healed.
Later that night, someone spray-painted the word KILLER across our front gate.
The Year of Disappearances Page 9
