by Tara Brown
When we took the brothel down, it was the room I wanted so badly to get into, the one I assumed held all the information on the brothel’s history. The one room that would actually show all the clients and all the victims.
In my place, a team of hand-selected federal agents looked through the room in the real world, but Rory’s memory of it might hold other clues to other crimes.
From the window in the hall, I can see the outside door is open. I rush for the door that leads right out into a blizzard and along the side of the building. The wall doesn’t look the way it did in the real world. Here the wall is open, like a hatch, and behind the panel that was a wall when I walked past it is now a glass door. I pull it open, pausing the moment I step inside.
The gray hallway with the elevator.
I sigh in disappointment that I might never see inside the stupid room, but with a little relief at seeing the elevator again. I press the button to close the door, and drop down into the corner. It takes a minute to catch my breath and my heart. The cold dankness of the elevator feels like a warm welcome. I close my eyes and sigh into the dark.
The elevator jerks to life.
I lift my head, watching the lights on the panel glow. Somewhere in that moment I lose the worry. I stand, in my ridiculous genie costume, and lift my hands. When the door opens, I am going to kill him with my bare hands, or die trying.
I have avoided combat with him; he’s stronger and faster and a better fighter. But I am far angrier than he is.
Coldness surrounds me as the numbers decrease and the elevator creaks and groans its complaints. When the door opens, I cock an eyebrow at the small boy tilting his head before me. “What are ya wearing?”
I lower my hands slowly and look down again at the ridiculous outfit.
“I never have seen a sister wear something like this before.”
“No. I don’t suppose you have,” I say, forgetting to use my Irish accent, and offer him my hand. “But I’m pretending to be a genie, so I can grant your wish.”
He looks confused, but he takes my hand and steps into the elevator with me. I squeeze, finding it conflicting to want to protect the boy and yet kill the older version of him. The door starts to close, but I slip a foot into the gap with a smile as I hear something—the scampering of little white feet across the broken gray floor. Binx climbs in and rubs himself against my ankles. Just as I’m about to tell little Rory not to, he picks the cat up. Binx doesn’t squirm. He doesn’t do a thing. He lets the boy hold him.
I press the very top floor, but I don’t care to let big Rory control the destination. I look at little Rory and smile softly. “If you could pick one place in all the world that this elevator went, where would it be?”
“To the good sisters who love the little boys.”
I smile. “Let’s close our eyes then and imagine that place.” I close my eyes too. “There’s a stone house. It’s very large. There’s a large front stoop with a porch all the way around, surrounded by a garden like no other. The gardens are mounds of black earth with colors shooting from them in every shape and color—daisies and roses and tulips. Crawling vines with purple flowers that look like stars and bushes of lavender infusing the air around you with a beautiful smell. Large trees provide shade and dark-green hedges keep you safe. Inside the house are rooms, more rooms than you can count. There’s wallpaper with flowers, and fluffy couches for when you want to read a book from the massive library. Every boy and girl gets their own special room. Everyone is loved. The sisters, all the kindest women, dress simply, but they are more than they seem. They will be waving and waiting for us on a sunny day.”
I grip his tiny hand harder. “Don’t open your eyes when the doors open. Focus really hard inside, instead. That’s how the magic works.”
His breath hitches and his grip on my hands matches mine. Though he’s small and excited, he’s also brave and hopeful. I doubt it’s fear causing his hand to tremble—it might well be hope.
When the old groaning elevator stops moving with a jerk, I whisper, “You ready?”
The doors open and I smile when I feel the warm breeze. I crack one eye, grinning from ear to ear—it looks almost as good as the real thing did. To him it is the real thing. His smile is so big it takes over his entire face.
He grips my scowling cat and hurries out of the elevator, running onto the bright-green grass toward the women in soft-colored dresses. I step out behind him. Just as I leave the elevator, it drops behind us, crashing below.
I’m sure big Rory has heard, but I don’t even care. I now know the secret to his mind: the little boy runs the show. He has been here longer. Big Rory scared him and little Rory shut him out. He shuts out most of the bad stuff. Except the nuns, but they are all he really knows. Better than being alone, I suppose.
As the boy runs for the ladies, Binx squirms from his hands. As he lands with a plop on the ground, he shakes and turns back, giving me a look. I walk to him, lifting him into my arms. He’s my version of my cat; he will let me struggle-snuggle him.
The women surround little Rory, hugging him with wide smiles. He beams, practically glowing from love and affection.
He looks back at me with a wave and the scene changes.
13. SLOW IT DOWN
The house has morphed into the one in the French countryside, the one I use as a trigger to help me leave the mind runs. It’s telling me it’s time to go. My favorite nun is there, sitting beside me. She covers my hand in hers, just as she did when I was a little girl. “We are not ashamed of you, Jane.” She says it so calmly.
It is one of my greatest fears, the nuns thinking less of me for the path I have chosen. “We know you have done the very best you could with the life you had.” She lifts her weathered face and smiles. “But now you know what you must do.” She turns into flower petals right before my eyes and blows off, out the open window. Yet the warmth where her hand touched mine lingers.
Little Rory sits next to me on the other side, stuffing in far too big a bite of mashed potatoes for such a small boy. “Just like my ma made them.”
A peaceful feeling sweeps over me as I lean his way, whispering, “If I go, will ya be okay?”
He looks confused. “Why in God’s name would ya want to go anywhere but here?”
The answer isn’t there straightaway so I pause, giving it a moment of thought. “I don’t belong here. This is yer place now. I spent my childhood here and now it’s time for me to go.”
“I don’t want ya to go. I like it when yer here.”
I glance about the room at all the other children and sisters. “But yer safest here. The big Rory can’t come here. He doesn’t like the light.”
His nose wrinkles. “He never comes to where I am, and when I try to go to him, he keeps me away. We never see each other. Not since he let the bad things in.”
I kiss his cheek. “Yer safe here.” I get up from the table and walk to the bathroom. It looks the same as it did in our townhouse when Rory and I were dating, if you could call it that, in the last run.
I drop to my knees and fish the grate off the heater vent. I slide the box with the four-leaf clover on it from the hole and stare at it.
There are so many things I don’t remember about my life before and the little glimpses only ever started coming when I did mind runs. No matter what terrible things occurred here in the minds of bad people, I learned more about myself inside the minds of others than I ever could have on my own. I can never begrudge the fact I came.
I lift the lid and whisper, “Tell me about the swans, the way the swans circle the stars and shoot across the sky.”
Everything turns black—not the response I expect. Yet inside Rory’s mind it never is.
Instead of swirling and the confusion that comes with leaving a mind, I sit in a darkness that echoes and yet is silent. The sound I hear in the echo is my own breath and heart
beat.
I close my eyes and submit to defeat. “You are better at this than I am,” I mutter into the darkness.
“I know.” Rory is here. “The best part about ya coming into my head this time is that I was able to turn the tables on ya. I was able to venture into yer head.”
I flinch, realizing why it seemed like he wasn’t aware of me inside him. He was, but he just didn’t care what I found out. He was never planning on hiding anything. It was about finding things in my head. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not, Jane. Can we be more original than falling on the old ways of creating doubt and playing mind games back and forth? You’ve seen my darkest secrets—all the nooks and crannies. Ya know what kind of person I am, what makes me tick. So end the bullshit and let’s be real.”
I open my eyes to find we are still in the dark.
“I am going to take ya on a tour.” His voice is confident and cocky. It can only mean one thing. He is about to do something dastardly. “Show ya the lies in your head.”
“Lead away,” I offer, refusing to fight about this. I am ready. The moment he makes himself vulnerable, I am going to gut him like a fish. I don’t care if we die in here together.
A warm hand takes mine, floating me through the void. There’s nothing but his warm hand through what feels like eternity. I squeeze and try pulling him to me, but it doesn’t work that way. He controls everything. He pulls me along until we enter a tunnel—I can tell by the way my breath echoes against the closeness of the walls around us.
The same door I used to get into his mind materializes, surrounded by light. I feel weaker now than I did the first time I saw it. I was ready then. I’m tired now.
He’s suddenly right beside me. “You ready?”
I nod, not understanding what I am ready for or what we are doing. He opens the door, blinding me with the light from the other side.
I wince and shield my face, struggling to see what’s before me.
When my eyes clear and the brightness fades, I smile. I can’t even help myself. It’s my mom. I would recognize her anywhere. She looks exactly the same as she did in my faded and blurry memory, only now her face is perfectly clear. She waves and I run to her, no longer attached to Rory.
She hugs me and the smell is the same. It’s home. Lilacs or some sort of flower. And her perfume.
She laughs and squeezes me as my father wraps himself around me. He is the perfect mix of deodorant and laundry detergent and the smell a man has that is his own. I close my eyes and drink them in.
It is the moment I have waited my entire life for.
Tears stream down my cheeks, and even though I know it is fake and a trap, I don’t care. I know them.
I open my eyes and see her. She is me, only her eyes match and she is a child still. She was frozen as a child in my mind, never aging a minute more.
Andrea, my twin sister, smiles wide, reaching for me. I cling to my parents, not certain if the dream will end with a trap if I take Andrea’s hand. Binx is there; he swirls around her feet, rubbing and purring. I take it as a sign from my mind that this is safe.
I step to her, wrapping my entire hand around hers. She takes my hand and flips it over, showing me that the pattern in the lines on our palms matches perfectly. I don’t know what that means, maybe that she has lived a whole life with me, sharing in my experiences.
“We are the same person, you and I,” she whispers.
I nod, looking down on her and wondering if we might have been the very best of friends if the accident had not happened.
I look back at my mother and father and smile, still crying silently. “Where did we live?”
They shake their heads. “It doesn’t matter, Jane. What matters is that you are whole and happy. Your life is there, on the outside. This isn’t real. It never was. And chasing us in the minds of others will never bring us back.”
My mother’s words burn inside me. They are true and yet they hurt more than anything.
Rory shakes his head. “Ya could stay here, with me. They are here, inside me and you. We can live here.” He snaps his fingers and we are in a home with flowered wallpaper and fancy couches.
The house in France. Rory has been in my mind and seen all the little places I hid and kept to myself.
“Ya have saved me, Jane. I knew ya might. The moment I met ya, I suspected if one girl could save me, it was ya. I knew if I could get ya to love me the way I love ya, we could be happy, really happy in here. No one understands yer pain like I do.”
I grimace, not believing his bullshit for a second.
Done with it all, I turn and hug my sister, whispering in her ear, “I miss you.” She trembles a bit and nods. She doesn’t speak, because I don’t know what I want her to say. They say the things I want them to.
I let go and walk back to my parents. They wrap around me, whispering all the things a little orphan needs to hear. “We are so proud of you and we wish we had been able to stay. We love you, Janey. We always have.”
I blink and the world fuzzes into a mess, everything blurred and oddly shaped. I let them go and walk to the cat, the one who has had my heart wholly since the beginning.
“If ya leave, ya won’t remember them. They’re in here, in my mind. Ya won’t have new memories, just the glimpse I showed ya.”
I nod, fully aware of the rules of the run.
He moves quickly, pulling a knife and sliding it along my sister’s throat. “I will torture them, if you don’t stay.”
I bend and pick up my cat, shrugging. “Like you said, I won’t remember this. This is a glimpse you gave me of a lie you made up based on my memories.” A slow smile crosses my lips. “You cannot hurt the dead, Rory. Just like the dead cannot hurt you.”
I snuggle into Binx, pressing my face into his fur and whispering my secret words, “Tell me about the swans, the way the swans circle the stars and shoot across the sky.”
He screams, my sister screams, I can smell the blood mixing with the air as everything swirls and falls apart. I grip my cat and in a moment he’s gone too.
I blink and the hospital-exam-room lights above me make it hard to see. Angie is there, worried and speaking, but I cannot hear the things she says. My hearing hasn’t come back into the present just yet.
I lift my hands and pull off the headphones and the tabs stuck to my face. Hunger gnaws at me, but there is only one face I want to see—the man who was a monster in my brain for a half a second.
I need to see the real Dash.
I shiver, searching the room for him, but he’s not there. Only Angie and a team plucking sensors. They each speak over me and yet to me, but I don’t comprehend it all.
I take a deep breath and nod. This is the real world. I can taste the difference in the air.
14. BILLY, DON’T BE A HERO
The sidewalk traffic moves faster than I remember it. Everyone is in a hurry, and if you just sat and watched, you could feel like you were still in a dream.
“He’s still not taking yer calls?” Angie asks over her giant latte.
“No.” What is there to add to that?
“Has he been by the townhouse?”
I glance down, furrowing my brow. “He must have been by while I was at the lab. His stuff is gone. It was gone when I got home from the mind run.”
She drums her gel nails, a new beauty thing she’s doing since she’s single. They click when she types like little tap shoes on the ends of her fingers. I sort of like the sound of them, but I know I would instantly have to pick them off. I don’t like things that are so permanent. I’ve worn falsies and those long eyelashes for undercover missions, and the moment I got to undo all the hard work the makeup team put in, I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Did you and Dash date?” I finally say it. I’ve been plotting asking it for the two days it’s been since I left Rory.
<
br /> “No.” She scowls, giving me a look. “Rory was a bad man, Jane. That’s all that ya can take from that. The Russian is on the list of names that was found in the secret room at the brothel. Antoine found him. He was on there as ‘G. Rusky.’ Giant Rusky. His flights to Mexico with his cousins coincide with the dates at the hotel in the heaps of shite they found.”
“They went into the little room? Did Antoine get to go in there?”
She smiles, but looks confused, like I was there for it all. “Of course. The whole team out west was in there. It was a gold mine of terrible things. The names and dates are shocking. Presidents and kings and princes and prime ministers and clergymen. Ya know that. It was awful. The names of some of the girls shocked us as well. Young starlets who then had a sudden surge to fame.”
“Creepy.”
“Truly creepy.”
“Can I ask you the weirdest question ever?”
Her cheeks flushed with color. “I don’t care what he showed ya in there. I don’t care to know, I guess.”
I want to ask her about being screwed in the office supply room while Rory choked her for pleasure. But she’s right. It doesn’t matter.
“Does any of it make ya think less of me, Janey?”
“No.” I sigh and ask her the other thing I wanted to know. “What did he say when you told him I was in again?”
“Who?”
“Dash.”
She shakes her head. “It wasn’t me that told Dash. He showed up, angry and ornery, and that’s how I found out he knew ya had gone back into Rory’s head. He was livid with ya and said that ya had tricked him into believing ya were done. That if ya couldn’t care about yer own well-being, he might as well not care either. But he did stick around long enough to help the engineers with some of the fine-tuning, and then packed his office. The engineers were the bastards who outed us to him. They called him to ask some advice before I came in with the plan. After ya were under, Dash told the president that he was done. He walked out and that was that. He never came back.”
