Break Away (Away, Book 1)

by Tatiana Vila

  With a narrowed, suspicious gaze, she said, “You know…he has never let anyone come in here besides me. Not even Mr. Townsend—or Buffy,” she added on a second thought. The words why did he let you? hung in the air.

  Hating all these half conversations, I decided to play Bullseye and shot straight at the target by answering her. “I'm an artist, too,” I shrugged, “Maybe he feels more comfortable with people that know the drill of creating art.”

  “The drill?” she asked, confused. “He never uses drills.”

  I smiled. “No. What I meant is that when you create something, you want to show it to people who understand and appreciate what you do. And since I'm all those things…”

  Her brown eyes, if possible, narrowed more. She wasn't convinced. That much was obvious. “I know Ian. Ever since he was a kid, his love for crayon colors and Play-Doh told me what his future would be. Mr. Townsend had other plans for him, of course, and once Ian grew aware of it, his true passion became our little secret—a secret that saw the light of day when he decided to confront his father. Dios mio, he wasn't happy,” she said, with her mind lost in far away memories. “But soon he came to terms with Ian's career choice and everything got better. The only problem was that Ian realized his secret wasn't secret anymore.”

  She paused, as if thinking of a way to explain this and carried on. “You see mija, when Ian used to hide from his father in the garden shed to sculpt, that somehow made it special in his mind. When he became aware that the spark was vanishing after having broken the secret, he asked his father for a place of his own to work on his sculptures. Mr. Townsend gave him this,” she opened her arms wide to show the room, “and two keys—one for Ian and one for me. So it was all over again the two of us shielding his work from the eyes of others. It was again our secret, and Ian was happy.” She looked at me with a small smile. “Until you, no one besides him and mi misma had entered this room. Not even friends from his art classes.”

  I gave a shake of my head. “The door was open, so I kind of sneaked myself in here. It's not like he revealed to me his secret place.”

  “But he let you stay,” she pointed out.

  I stared at her, unable to give an answer to that, not knowing what to think. So I did what was best and ignored it. “I have to hurry and go to take a shower. I'll see you later Lola.” I pressed my lips against each other in a tight smile and reached the door. Then, I stopped and turned around. “Thanks for sharing that with me,” I told her against what my brain was screaming at me, because people could assume that in some way, I was interested in Ian's past. And I wasn't. So I stepped out of the threshold and drove my feet into the hallway.

  Destination: Ian's oh-so-heavenly shower. I sighed. At least there was one thing to smile about.

  CHAPTER 11

  “Thirsty little fella, huh?” Ian told me when I slipped into the car after feeding good oily nutrients into my Mini. “And picky at that.”

  I turned on the engine and threw him a glare over my shoulder. “Your Rover feeds on premium gas, too, so you better shut the hell up.”

  We'd already been to the hospital to check Buffy. I'd taken the chance to tell Gran I had to go to Chicago because an Aremihc's recruiter had scheduled a meeting to talk to me. It was the only world-shaking reason that I could tell her that might've explained me leaving in this moment—though there was no need to tell her that not even an acceptance letter from Aremihc would've pushed me away from my sister's room. Then we'd gone to the Lady to get fresh clothes for me and to get my Mini out of her driveway, because as I'd told Ian, I could better endure a ride with Jack the Ripper than spend a whole four hours in his leather-stuffed Rover to go to Oxford, Ohio.

  While waiting for me to get ready, Ian had Googled Comus' home address and surprise, surprise, he didn't live in Chicago as we'd expected. No, he lived in a town where paranormal research and ghost sightings were the daily bread. My stomach had clenched in—I hated to admit—fear. But I'd shoved aside my reluctance to go and had prompted Ian to begin our journey. A journey that he wasn't so pleased to do in the tight, enclosed space of my beautiful, loyal Mini.

  “My legs are in serious pain,” Ian said, struggling to shift his body to the side. “Could we please stop somewhere for a few minutes so I can stretch them?”

  “God, you're worse than a woman with a urinary problem.”

  “Blame the pocket-sized space of this thing,” he said, looking down at his constricted legs.

  I scoffed at that. It wasn't my Mini's fault he was so tall. “We just stopped at the gas station and we're only an hour away.”

  “I could get a blood clot from this.”

  I rolled my eyes. “That's only when you're confined to constricted spaces for long periods of time—and four hours certainly isn't. I'm not stopping, so deal with it.”

  I heard him muttering something low that didn't sound pleasant. I left him to his inner bitchy tantrum and focused on the road ahead. The map on Ian's iPhone had shown Comus' house was ten minutes away from Oxford, probably in a deserted place with foggy, Sleepy Hollow-like surroundings. I shivered at the thought. Ohio was a state widely known for its vast array of haunted houses and ghost stories. The fact that I was adventuring myself into this creepy, shadowy place shattered any doubt someone might've had on the love I felt for Buffy.

  Holding someone's hand through the darkness was easy, but shoving yourself into the core of that darkness wasn't, and that's why coming here was so important. Facing one's biggest fear for the ones you held dear in your heart was the biggest proof of devotion, the biggest sacrifice one could ever do. And I was doing that for Buffy. I was facing my fear of the paranormal for her, and maybe this didn't sound so heroic or epic, but for the little Dafne cowering in one corner of my mind, it meant the world. And I felt proud. Felt proud for her courage and for what she was risking.

  Whatever happened with Comus, I would always hold this tad of respect for her in my heart, with the hopes that in a near future it'd grow to complete self-fulfillment. And who knows? Someday I might turn into the most fearless ghost slayer or ghost lover the world has ever known, I thought with a small smile. Life was about transformation and evolution after all.

  I glanced at Ian out of the corner of my eye. Not everything was entitled to that positive conversion, though. Some things just weren’t meant to change, and my relationship with Ian was a fine example of it.

  He crossed his arms over his chest in a sulky mode and leaned back on the headrest with a frustrated sigh. He truly seemed to be battling against my Mini’s comfort. Good, I thought with a smile. He still had a few more minutes to enjoy my absolutely gorgeous and cozy car.

  Oxford, Ohio was everything I’d imagined once we’d rolled into its silent outskirts—sun-deprived, gray, cold, unwelcoming. At first, the city was charming and filled with warm colors, a place where I could see a wrinkled version of me living her last days. It was peaceful and inviting. But later, as if we glided into a dual mirror, a cloud took over the sky and coated the town’s distant surroundings with a dull blush, turning the trees into lifeless, tall forms. The sun a sparkling remembrance of the now shadowy cold. With each passing mile, icy fingers dug into my chest.

  I tightened my hands around the steer wheel, my knuckles white with pressure.

  “Who’s uncomfortable now?” Ian suddenly said, curious laughter edging his voice.

  I kept my eyes on the creepy road, thinking about those movie scenes where the driver turned to look at the person beside them only to find a second later a ghastly shape in the middle of the road when he pulled back his gaze to it. I definitely didn’t want that to happen. So my eyes stayed fixed on the firm, gray carpet spreading ahead. “I’m super. Not uncomfortable at all. Why would I be?” I said, with a small nervous hitch at the end.

  “No idea.” He reached the radio and turned it on.

  “Don’t,” I said almost immediately. “I, uh, get distracted with music. I don’t want us to get lost.” Even if it was a
lie, I rather be seen as a person with ADD than a crazy one. Because what would’ve he thought if I told him radio could lead to static and static could lead to distorted messages from the other side? Yep. I guess I wasn’t ready to become a ghost lover yet. Bummer.

  “We have the GPS and me to not let you get us tangled in the middle of a foggy forest,” he said. “Wouldn’t it be cool if we stumbled upon the infamous Headless Horseman?”

  I swallowed. “Don’t tell me you believe in that, too.”

  “Why not? If people believe in UFO’s why not in a headless man riding a black horse?”

  “I’m really starting to believe you’re one of those superstitious people.” This talk was making me nervous.

  He shrugged. “I do believe that to be a good artist you have to acknowledge the possibility of other realms. Believe that there’s much more than what surrounds us. It fuels one’s imagination.”

  I shot him a curious glance.

  He smiled at the speck of interest dancing in my eyes and took it as a cue to continue. “When I sculpt, I feel like my mind isn’t in this world. That it’s somehow suspended in a place where soul and mind become one, where colors and motions are its language. I’m just not…here. I’m somewhere else.”

  “Like a parallel dimension you mean?”

  “I don’t know what it is. I just feel it there, like a special spot in the back of my head.”

  Something about his last words rang a bell, good or bad, I couldn’t tell.

  He looked at his iPhone and said, “Turn to the right on the next road. It’ll head us straight to Comus’ house.”

  Though the fog lining the road made it hard to see said turn, I slowed down our speed right in time to catch it. The road narrowed and the fog became denser, nearly obliterating our surroundings in a frightening, dreary cloud. The front lights of my Mini were two vapory tunnels of blurry clearness. I hesitated, my foot more heavy on the brakes with each passing second. My heartbeats faster than the drums of a tribal song.

  I was imagining the ghost of a little girl dressed in a white dress, with long black hair hiding her ashen face, when Ian’s alarmed voice broke through the frightening image. “Stop!”

  I slammed the brakes and screeched my Mini to a sharp halt. “What? What is it?” I said with my heart in my throat, glancing all around, looking for the blood-curdling girl I’d seen in my mind.

  “You were about to go right through the gate,” he said, waving his hands to the windshield.

  Not the windshield, I thought as the thick fog parted, but to an iron gate. And above the chunky spikes of the iron gate, a tall stone-clad structure that looked more like a castle rose imperviously against the smoky afternoon sky.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I sighed.

  “No, I wasn’t,” he said in a dark tone, oblivious to my real thoughts. “You almost folded your miniscule car into a freaking sandwich. Look at the size of that thing!” He pointed to the jumbo sized bars of the gate.

  “I have looked, and I wasn’t talking about that, and why do you care if my car got twisted around those bars, huh? Didn’t you hate it in the first place?”

  “What part of ‘miniscule’ didn’t you get? Small car crashes are the worst kind. My legs”—he waved his hands to them—”would’ve ended up in the middle of all that,” he said, his finger pointing and circling the place where a collision of polished black against sturdy iron would’ve happened if I hadn’t stopped in time.

  “You really have a flare for the dramatic.” I held back a roll of eyes.

  “Well, if it wasn’t for my ‘flare for the dramatic’ your pretty face would’ve ended up needing facial reconstruction.”

  “Pretty face? Since when am I pretty to you? Have we really stepped into the Twilight Zone?”

  He turned to look at me. “I never said you weren’t pretty.” His deep stare did something inside of me, a dangerous flip-flop in my stomach I didn’t like. Fortunately, the feeling was immediately crushed a few seconds later when he said, “But that doesn’t mean you aren’t a pain in the ass.” He turned his face away.

  Aren’t you a charmer? I thought, gritting my teeth. I balled my hands into fists and held back the call for punching some sense into him. “If I’m a pain in the ass, then why did you insist on coming with me?”

  He ignored my question and pulled open the door. “I better find out how to get inside.” He slipped out of the car, not before stretching his legs with a pleased sigh.

  The moment the door closed behind him, my breath caught in my throat. The fog seemed to have thickened again, enclosing us in an unyielding ring of mist, as if it didn’t like us being here. Beyond the gate, the mansion or small castle—I couldn’t choose which words were best—that teetered on the edge of gothic, looked like an intimidating medieval magician. The fog skirts floating around its grounds were reminiscent of times where old spells were cast for protection.

  As Ian walked around the car, eyeing the gate for some type of entrance, fog parted and swirled around his legs, like blown cigarette smoke. He stopped where a cast iron bell was hanging, watched it closely and pulled the string underneath the metal cup back and forth, producing a deep chiming sound.

  I rolled down the window and said, “What do you think you’re doing? Calling people for Mass?”

  He glanced at me over his shoulder. “We have to let him know we’re here. Or do you want to wait here all night until this fog swallows you whole?”

  I winced.

  “Yeah. I didn’t think so.”

  Surprisingly, the gate chose that moment to grant us entrance, a deep mechanic hum following the welcoming movement of the archaic doors. Is this for real? I thought as I watched what looked like a scene out of a horror movie. Really, is all this fog necessary? The house is creepy enough already.

  Buffy would’ve been proud of me. After bailing on her before boarding the Doom buggies that took you through Disney’s Haunted Mansion years ago—an eleven-year-old Buffy had dropped her first F-Bomb at the end of the ride once she’d spotted me waiting guiltily outside—Mom had threatened to wash her “dirty” mouth with soap—it seemed karma had finally found me, with a strange sense of humor. Not only was a gothic-looking mansion waiting for me to step inside, but a real gothic-looking mansion with a crazy man waiting for me inside. This was the real stuff, not some mechanical ride where everything was orchestrated to give your heartbeats a wild, fun boost.

  Once I pulled into the driveway and saw the mansion up close, the brave Dafne that’d been gathering her wits to face whatever this trip threw at her disappeared. I swallowed the hard lump of fright in my throat. At least there weren’t eerie gargoyles perched on the sides of the house.

  I turned off the engine and pushed every remnant of brave Dafne forward, willing my feet to follow the path that led to the tall wooden doorway. I’d come all the way down here for a purpose, and I was going to make sure that purpose saw the day of light, no matter what.

  “Isn’t this little fella an evil-looking thing?” Ian said, eyeing the door knocker with a half smile.

  The little fella was evil-looking alright. Pointed cheekbones and ears, piercing stilted eyes, eyebrows and mustache that spread like flames, deep menacing frown—the old man holding the metal ring through his mouth looked like something out of Dante’s Inferno.

  I looked at it expectantly.

  Ian shook his head, grasping the silent message of my stare. “And you wanted to come without me?” He pulled the metal ring and knocked it twice against the door. “If you can’t even touch an old door knocker, how are you expecting to talk to a crazy old man?”

  I glared at him. “I will talk to him.”

  A sudden crack in the door made me jump, pushing me to Ian’s side.

  He chuckled. “Really?” he said, looking down at the hand clutching his arm.

  I jerked it back with a resentful glance at him and, without hesitation, strode through the now open door and past the small butler who was ho
lding it open.

  They say you can know someone’s personality and soul just by looking at his possessions. I prayed to God this wasn’t true because if it was, if it held the slightest speck of truth, then we were royally screwed. Everything in this place screamed darkness all over. From the medieval lamp hovering over us with the ominous threat of its downward spikes, to the deadly centaur with needle-like teeth and to the carnivorous Minotaurus swallowing the naked woman’s head, Camus’ soul looked to be the most pitch black soul I’d ever seen.

  Dark hallways lined with dim ornate lanterns made way for places my soul begged not to know. Towering vaulted ceilings promised hidden shady secrets one’s ears recoiled at. And the living room, with its flaring fireplace, spoke of inner passions and musings one’s untarnished mind couldn’t even process.

  Before sitting down in the dark chair that was waiting for me, I eyed its backrest with distrust. Two pointed wings that belonged to a horned creature spread in an ominous, welcoming embrace. For a second, the image of that creature waking up from its slumber once I leaned against it flashed into my mind. I closed my eyes and shook that image away. Keep yourself together, Dafne. It's just a chair. A frightening, out-of-your-nightmare chair, but just a chair.

  I turned and took my place on it with a shaky sigh. I slid my hands across the armrests, feeling the smooth wood under my palms, until reaching the snake heads at the end. I pulled up my hands in lightening speed. Better not to touch anything.

  I looked across from me. Ian was sitting in a similar chair, with a smug smile lifting one corner of his lips. He patted its threatening snake heads as if they were cute little puppies and said, “A bit jumpy, are we?”

  “I already told you,” I said, lifting my chin while straightening my back so it wouldn't touch those scary wings, “I'm not scared. This place is…interesting.”

  “Interesting?” He arched his eyebrows. “As in deadly interesting?”