Cold Image

by Leslie A. Kelly

  “Anytime, sweetheart.”

  They resumed walking, and he slowed even more and stared even harder when he figured they’d gone at least thirty feet from the ruin. Robby had said twenty yards—but his memory was based on the recollection of an abused, rebellious teen who’d been locked in a hellhole overnight. So he wasn’t about to rely only on the kid’s memory.

  Another step. A deep croak—the mating call of an alligator, he knew—came from somewhere ahead of them. He hoped the dude found a girlfriend in the next two minutes and the happy couple scampered off to a private mud patch far off the trail.

  “Derek.”

  “It’s okay, I think it’s moving away.”

  “Derek!”

  Hearing her tension, he looked over his shoulder at her. Kate was hunched over, peering to the left. He swung around, seeing what looked like a hundred arthritic bushes that had grown into one solid hedge rising a couple of feet by the path. “What?”

  “I think that’s a bench.”

  Derek pointed his flashlight at it, which gave more light than her phone screen. A vine-encrusted object stood several feet away, rising off the ground at an angle, like a sliding board. It was about five feet long, and when you really looked at it, you could see the shape was too precise to be natural.

  “Damn, you have good eyesight.”

  “It looks like it collapsed since the last time Robby was here.”

  “Yes, it does. It also looks like the scrub has grown over the path he mentioned. Let’s step over it and see if we can pick it up past the bench.”

  He reached for her hand, intending to help her over, when something caught his attention. It was a strange light, coming from somewhere ahead of them, in the thick copse of trees into which they were headed.

  Derek froze. His heart beat faster. His breath reached his lungs and stayed there; he couldn’t draw another one.

  He knew what was coming.

  He just didn’t know who was coming.

  “Derek?”

  Unable to respond, fearing he was about to see something that would tear the heart out of the woman standing beside him, he remained very still. Someone was about to die. That person might have been dead for fifty years…or six months.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered, realizing what was happening. Then she fell silent.

  Derek barely paid attention, stepping over the tangled hedge alone, walking toward that ghostly light. Mud sucked at his feet, trying to pull him in, but he drove through it, drawn toward the victim, who appeared to be staggering toward him as well.

  The figure was hunched over, stumbling out of some kind of building that was so overgrown it had almost disappeared into the landscape as much as the decrepit bench.

  They had found Building 13. It seemed the awful things he had feared might have gone on within its walls really had occurred. They continued to occur now in an endless loop of pain and fear.

  The hunched, lurching figure was trying to escape. With every other awkward step—he was obviously injured—he looked over his shoulder at some invisible person pursuing him. Each look made him try to go faster.

  He wasn’t bulky or tall. Knowing he could be a student, Derek clenched his fists at his side. The figure stumbled. Went to a knee and paused before clambering onto all fours and up again. But he still didn’t lift his face.

  “Look up,” Derek ordered. Isaac? He took a step forward, heading toward the murder victim even as that person came directly at him. Charlie?

  He was perhaps twenty feet from the shambling figure when it jerked upright, arms flung up and out, back dramatically arched. As if something had hit him hard from behind.

  The victim went down immediately, hitting the marshy ground, landing on his stomach. A knife handle protruded from the small of the back. Derek had no doubt he was badly hurt now; that had probably been the death blow.

  But he wasn’t dead yet. Not yet. The misty black-and-white figure was still there, shaking and trembling. A filthy, mud-caked hand rose and reached out, grabbing earth. He pulled himself a few inches, and then grabbed with the other hand. Crawling. Not giving up.

  Oh, how he wanted to live.

  Derek found himself rooting for this poor victim, mentally urging him to keep going, even though he knew the struggle was doomed to failure. Hating the ability that left him an impotent spectator, he wanted to rage at the sky. He longed to protect that poor, crawling figure, to stand over him, to destroy whoever had put that knife in his back.

  This unwanted ability of his was never more of a curse than at the scene of every murder where he was shown, once again, that he was utterly helpless. Nothing was worse than watching someone fighting so desperately to live…all the while knowing they were going to lose.

  Derek walked closer. His heart pounded in his head, blocking out all other sound. He felt as if he had stepped inside this poor doomed victim’s nightmare and was walking into a void, a place where there was no here, no now, no sound, no taste. Just pain. Just emptiness.

  Five feet more. The face was still down, the body wriggling. Shimmying.

  Who are you?

  Suddenly, the knife was pulled from the back. Black blood gushed. So much blood.

  The short, filthy, matted hair was yanked. It stood straight up in the back. Someone had grabbed it and was pulling hard, lifting the head, inch by inch, revealing the face.

  That face, twisted with agony, a silent scream emitting from the mouth.

  And he suddenly saw. Through the dirt, and the blood, and the pain, he caught the features, the shape, the mouth, the nose.

  It was a familiar face. A face he knew.

  “Oh my God,” he whispered. Derek fell to his knees, unable to keep his feet. Tears pricked his eyes. “Jesus, I’m sorry. I’m so damn sorry.”

  “Derek!”

  Kate hurried over, dropping the ground beside him. Putting an arm around his waist, she helped support him, whispering, “I’m here. It’s all right, I’m here with you. I’ll stay with you.”

  She didn’t ask what he was seeing—she knew that.

  She didn’t ask who he was seeing—which he knew was a tremendous sacrifice.

  “It’s not him,” he managed to croak out. “Not Isaac.”

  He felt a soft, relieved rush of air leave her mouth. “Charlie?”

  He shook his head, collapsing back onto his haunches, watching as the body jerked and more pools of blood appeared on that vulnerable back with every thrust of the knife.

  “It’s my fault,” he muttered, speaking to himself and not to her. “All my fault.”

  She crawled in front of him, blocking his view. Cupping his face in her hands, she made him look at her and wouldn’t let him pull away. “No. None of this is your fault.”

  “It is. If I hadn’t…”

  “Don’t, Derek.” Kate was weeping now, too, her lips trembling, her whole body shaking. “Please don’t do this to yourself. Look away now.”

  “I have to. It’s my responsibility,” he said, his voice low.

  She hesitated, and then slowly lowered her hands and moved out of his way. His body clenched, he looked past her, needing to see the end. Needing to see the moment the person Derek had gotten killed disappeared back into his endless death-loop.

  After it was over, once there was nothing but darkness and dank, deep night, he dropped his head and swiped his hands over his face. Tears of grief. Tears of guilt. Tears of rage.

  When he felt capable of looking up again, he said, “Will you pray with me, Kate?”

  “Of course, darling. Of course I will.” She swallowed, her throat working, her lips parted, and asked, “Derek…who are we praying for?”

  He met her stare, tried to lose himself in those green eyes, to absolve himself in her sympathetic expression. But he couldn’t. Honestly, he wasn’t sure he would ever be able to.

  “It’s the teacher,” he whispered. “It’s Sam Andrews.”

  CHAPTER 11

  “Aren’t you ready to give
up on this yet?” Vonnie asked as she watched Taylor prepare their dorm room for another soul-walking experiment. This was the third one today.

  “La la la, not listening!” Her friend was nothing if not stubborn.

  Vonnie threw herself into her desk chair, wondering where her reasonable, rational self had gone. The old Vonnie would have gotten outta here hours ago. Yes, she had decided it was easier to go along rather than argue about it the first time. No matter what she said, Taylor had intended to do it, and Vonnie had preferred to be on hand in case things went south.

  It hadn’t worked. Big surprise. After an hour of candles, gross-smelling incense, stroking a gold necklace that had belonged to Jenny, and then closing her eyes and counting backward from one-hundred while lying on her bed, her roommate had gone exactly nowhere.

  Not giving up—spouting the old try, try again credo—Taylor went back to her books, had visited message boards on weird websites, determined to figure out what she’d done wrong. Certain she had nailed it, she’d insisted on going for it again after class this afternoon.

  Same result.

  Well, actually, although she hadn’t admitted it, Vonnie had been unsure at one point. During that second attempt, Taylor’s deep, even breaths had stopped for a few seconds. For the briefest instant, the idea that her friend really had gone somewhere flashed through Vonnie’s mind. Then Taylor gasped, returned to her audible backward counting. And failure. Vonnie had forced herself to forget that one weird moment, and made a mental note to suggest Taylor talk to her doctor to see if she suffered from sleep apnea.

  Efforts number one and two were a bust. Now, late Monday night, Taylor was determined to give it one last shot. And Vonnie was determined to resist.

  “Come on, Tay, this has taken up most of our day. I really have to study.”

  “So study. It’s not like I’m going to make any noise.”

  “Like I’ll be able to focus when you’re there trying to push your soul out of your body.”

  “It’s not my body pushing,” Taylor said as she put fresh, fragrant flowers in a vase. “It’s my spirit climbing.”

  “Same difference.”

  “No, it’s not.” Taylor lit the gross-smelling incense that probably had everyone on the hall thinking they were smoking pot. She smoothed her white dress and straightened the flower wreath in her hair—she’d made a daisy chain out of dandelions picked from the quad. Then she glanced at her feet to make sure they were still coated with dirt.

  “You are going to ruin those sheets,” Vonnie grumbled. “I’m not doing your laundry.”

  “Soil will ground me. It’s a reminder that I am of the earth, and to the earth I must return.”

  Vonnie rolled her eyes, certain her roomie was quoting something she’d read online.

  Taylor didn’t notice. “I missed that last time, which was probably why my body couldn’t release my soul. It was too risky.”

  “Stopped it from climbing up the ladder, huh?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Uh huh.” Picking up the remote, Vonnie flicked on the TV, needing a distraction.

  Taylor plucked the device away. “Wait until I’m gone. I need to concentrate.”

  “You’re not going anywhere.”

  Tossing the remote onto a chair, Taylor said, “Please, Von. One try. The last one.”

  “You promise?”

  After only a tiny hesitation, Taylor nodded.

  Vonnie frowned. “You’re not going to claim you meant it was the last time tonight?”

  “That’s a good idea, but no, I’m serious. If this doesn’t work, that’s it. I’ll call it quits.”

  It wasn’t great, but Vonnie knew it was the biggest concession she would get. Taylor was determined to do this. When Taylor was determined to do something, she would eventually do it.

  “Fine,” she snapped. “But hurry up with it, would you? I do need to study. So do you.”

  Taylor stuck out her hand to seal the deal. Vonnie took it. In a moment of deep connection, they both gripped tight and held on for a long time. Although she still felt this was a waste of time, a hint of fear clutched at Vonnie’s heart. She was more nervous this time than she had been before. Possibly because Taylor was calmer than she had been before.

  “Wish me luck?” Taylor finally asked when she let go.

  Vonnie forced herself to smile. “Good luck trying to get me not to laugh at you again.”

  There was no more talking. Taylor finished her ritual and climbed the ladder to her mattress. She’d insisted they re-bunk the beds, and was on the top. To give her soul a shorter trip? Who knew.

  She rang a tiny silver bell three times. With a last, hopeful nod, Taylor lay down, crossed her arms over her chest in a pose that was way too much like a body in a grave, and started to count. “One hundred. Ninety-nine.”

  Vonnie sat at her desk, opening a textbook and staring at a page. She couldn’t concentrate—of course she couldn’t, with Taylor doing her countdown to nothing again. So she went over to her own bed, grabbed her phone and opened a game. That didn’t distract her either.

  Staring up at the bottom of the top mattress, she waited as the numbers went lower and lower, and Taylor’s voice grew softer and softer. That hadn’t happened earlier, as far as she recalled. The breathing had been slow and steady—except for that breathless moment—but Taylor’s voice had remained firm and rhythmic both times before.

  Softer. The word ten was barely a whisper.

  Vonnie slipped out of her bed and stepped up onto its edge to peek at the one above. Taylor’s face was smooth, her body utterly relaxed. She looked almost boneless. Almost…dead.

  “Damn,” she whispered, completely spooked. “You did it.” Not the soul-climbing part, but Tay had, it appeared, managed to hypnotize herself into a deep trance. Vonnie could hardly believe it, and wished she’d gotten Taylor to teach her how to offer hypnotic suggestions. It would be really nice if her roommate weren’t such a slob.

  One.

  She saw the word on her friend’s lips, but didn’t hear a thing except her own raging heart, and Taylor’s regular, low and easy breaths.

  Then they stopped.

  “Oh, shit.” She waited. “Come on, big gasp, baby.”

  There was no response. Vonnie started a count of her own, watching Taylor’s face, wondering, mentally urging her to breathe. After twenty silent seconds, she started to panic.

  Climbing onto her own mattress and standing on tiptoe, she stretched up over Taylor’s prone form and put her hand just above her lips. When she felt the tiniest puff of air, followed by several more, she almost cried in relief. Tay was breathing, just very gently. Soft and shallow inhalations seemed to be all she needed to maintain the strange state she was in.

  Still worried, Vonnie put two fingers against her neck and felt a slow, steady pulse.

  “Tay?” she whispered, but got no response. Her roommate really was under.

  Relieved Taylor still had a beating heart, Vonnie climbed down. Grabbing her phone, she set the timer to a countdown. She hadn’t believed this would work, but she’d agreed that if it did, she would wake Taylor up after she’d been “gone” for thirty minutes. To do that, she had to ring a bell three times, as Taylor had before she started her countdown.

  Twenty-nine minutes. Then twenty-eight. Twenty-seven. She shoved some cookies into her mouth and tapped her toe.

  Twenty-one. Twenty. She paced the room. She grabbed a bottle of water from their little fridge and gulped it all down, trying to wet her suddenly dry mouth.

  Seventeen. Sixteen. Vonnie sat at her desk. Stood right back up. Sat on her bed and picked up her phone. Put it back down. She grabbed some of Taylor’s clothes off her chest of drawers and folded them before realizing they were dirty.

  Ten. Nine. Picking up the bell, Vonnie fought her urge to ring it now. The tension had increased to an unbearable level. She clutched it tightly, rocking back and forth on her bed, not wanting to consider what she
would do if the chimes didn’t do what they were supposed to.

  What if Taylor didn’t wake up? What if she had to call the Kirbys, who’d already lost so much, and tell them Taylor had been messing around with something she didn’t understand and was now in a coma? “God, I can’t believe I helped her do this.”

  Four. They were dabbling in something they knew nothing about. Psychiatrists with years of training did hypnosis. Not college girls with some library books and good web-searching skills.

  Three. Vonnie’s teeth began to chatter, tension controlling her body. She watched the timer on her phone hit one minute, and continue to count down. Her heart beat in time with each flashing second.

  One. She mouthed the word in silence, just as Taylor had thirty minutes ago.

  The phone beeped. Her time was up.

  Vonnie pushed herself to her feet and said a silent prayer. Turning toward Taylor’s bed, she lifted the bell high and flicked her wrist once, creating a soft, pretty peal. Swallowing hard, she flicked again. “Third time pays for all,” she whispered, and jingled one last time.

  Half of her expected Taylor to gasp and jerk upright immediately.

  Her other, darker half suspected Taylor would never wake up again.

  Holding her breath, she watched for any change—the flicker of an eye beneath a lid, the tremble of a hand. Nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. Taylor continued to breathe in those tiny, shallow puffs. Her face remained cold and still, her body utterly motionless.

  “Come on, girl, snap out of it!”

  But she didn’t, and a wave of worry flooded Vonnie. She darted to the end of the bunk and climbed the ladder, crawling across the bed to kneel beside her best friend.

  “Taylor,” she said, keeping her voice soft so she didn’t shock her friend out of whatever spell she was in. When she got no response, she spoke a little louder. “Wake up, it’s been thirty minutes.” She forced a nervous laugh. “Wake up now. You know you’re dying to gloat about how wrong I was.” Grabbing a limp, pale arm, she gently shook. “Snap out of it. I want to hear everything. Did it work? Did you find Jenny?”