by Abigail Boyd
CHAPTER 24
WE PULLED INTO Corinne's apartment complex forty-five minutes later. Traffic had been heavy, with construction on the expressway that had left Hugh cursing. Orange cones and merge signs were everywhere.
I thought, bitterly, that he was in a hurry to get rid of me. It was a childish thought, but there was also some truth to it.
Corinne was waiting in the doorway as we pulled beneath the covered parking, a mirror image of my last view of Claire.
"Has she eaten?" Corinne asked Hugh as he brought my stuff inside. It sounded like she was talking about taking in someone's dog. Has it been fed?
"Yeah, we stopped for burgers on the way here. She's fine." Hugh said. "Where can I put this?"
"Just leave her suitcase out here in the foyer," Corinne said. "I didn't have much time to get the guest room set up, I have to change the sheets and move my bead stuff out of the way."
Hugh almost looked like he was having second thoughts. His shoulders were pointed, as if stiff with tension. He stayed on the welcome mat, and held his arms out for a hug. I let him embrace me awkwardly, my body just as stiff, and he kissed the top of my hair.
Pulling back, he rubbed his thumb across my chin. "You'll be okay here. If you need anything, any time of the day, let me know. Text me or call me, you know I'll have my phone on me all the time."
"Okay," I croaked numbly.
"Did you want something to drink?" Corinne asked, standing off to the side.
"No, I'm fine. I need to be getting back." He directed his eyes back to me. "This won't be for long. You'll be back home before you can miss us." It was the fifth time he had said as much. Every time he said it wouldn't be long, I added more days to my projected stay.
With a last goodbye, he walked out of the door and pulled it shut. It was just me and my awkward aunt left. We stood on opposite sides of the entrance room, her by a tall vase full of peacock feathers, me by a gold-rimmed, gaudy mirror.
"Let's get you settled in," Corinne said with false cheer. I knew having me here was a huge pain for her; she always harped on about how much she loved living alone.
I followed her through her cluttered apartment to the guest room, dragging the heavy suitcase. The ceilings were low, the rooms themselves boxy. Everything smelled strongly of incense. The decorating theme was eclectic leftovers from garage sales.
I felt less anxious than I had at home. In fact, I felt lighter, like I didn't have so much dragging me down. My thoughts didn't seem so scattered, and I could focus more. Jenna being around seemed like a distant dream, a fantasy, but I didn't think more about it. She felt so far away.
Corinne left me in the room to go get new sheets. It was cluttered with tubs and boxes full of beading supplies, among all of the usual psychic equipment. Baskets of tarot cards and stacks of spiritual books were piled high around the room, which wasn't much bigger than mine at home.
I started unpacking my suitcase into the dresser, pushing aside matchbooks and perfume samples and pamphlets about crystal healing inside.
Corinne came back and made up the bed. We had very little to talk about, although she asked me a little about how school was going. I could practically see her dancing around to avoid bringing the conversation to Warwick.
She left me in the room by myself. I laid down on my side above the fluffy leopard print blanket, and shut my eyes, even though I wasn't tired. Before I knew it, I was fast asleep.
A light rapping on the door woke me up a few hours later. Corinne came in with a white cup and saucer. She handed it to me, and there was hot herbal tea swirling around inside. I blew on the tea, feeling the steam come up to my face.
"So Hugh told me you have a business online?" I said, trying for bland conversation topics.
She was leaning against the doorframe, watching me like a rare insect. "Yeah. I'm between standard jobs right now. It's been going really well, and I get to express myself creatively. I'm selling beads and handmade jewelry."
"How's it been going so far?"
"It started off slow. And it's a lot of work. But I like making my own hours."
I nodded, and then we fell silent again. I didn't know why it was so hard to talk to her, but she was just an uncomfortable person to be around. It wasn't her fault; it was just the way she was, the aura she gave off, in her own terminology.
I sipped at the tea. I knew the interrogation was coming. Claire hadn't had that much time to explain on the phone.
"Has he been seen in Hell?" Corinne asked finally. Just asking the question seemed to disperse the tension in the room.
"Warwick?" I asked. I sat up more, and gripped the saucer. "No, not to my knowledge. How much did my mom tell you?"
"Oh, I already knew most of it from TV. It's been all over the news." She sounded almost excited about it. "I just didn't know if there were any updates that the press didn't know about yet. Anything that made them rush you out of there."
"Not that I know of. Although, they probably wouldn't tell me, anyway. I think that they were planning on sending me away the instant they found out that he had escaped." I sighed. Taking the nap had only made me realize how behind on sleep I was. I set the tea down on the bedside table, next to a vase of fake irises.
Corinne came into the guest room and sat down next to me on the bed. "Why does everyone think he'll come for you?"
"Well, he seemed to take it personally that I caught him," I said, shrugging. "He was two seconds away from shooting me."
"Your boyfriend, too, right?"
"Yeah, Henry. I mean, he isn't anymore. Not my boyfriend, I mean. I don't even know that he was at the time. But he stood up and almost got shot himself."
"That sounds like love to me," Corinne said.
"You weren't there," I said defensively.
"Do you think that Warwick will go after him?" Aunt Corinne, queen of the uncomfortable questions.
I would be lying if I said I hadn't thought about it. But Henry and Warwick only knew each other from school, I doubted that he would hunt Henry down. There was something about me being Hugh's daughter that had affected Warwick. Still, it took a lot of willpower not to text him and make sure he was okay.
It was hard sleeping at Corinne's place. I couldn't get used to the strange sights and smells and noises that her apartment building made. Her neighbors above were up at all hours of the night, slamming around in their kitchen and traversing every square inch of carpet, possibly in combat boots.
I spent my days just hanging out, texting Theo every few hours for an update at school. Everyone had noticed that I went missing, according to her. She had to quash a rumor that I'd been shot. Henry didn't text or call me, and I wondered what that meant. He had been chasing after me for so long, it was selfish of me to miss it. But I did.
I thought about what he'd told me, that his entire time with Lainey was a lie. The truth was, I wanted to be with him again, for things to go back to the way that they were when we first met. But I didn't know if I could trust him; how did I know he wasn't lying now?
There wasn't much to do around Corinne's apartment. I read through the scant collection of books that she had that weren't paranormal, most of them microwave cookbooks and dollar store crime thrillers. I'd had my fill of the paranormal, at least for a little while.
Corinne spent most of her time in the guest room, working on her business. It had turned her into a hermit. I had to give her credit, she was very committed. She was constantly taking pictures and uploading them and packaging beads for sale.
The few times we went out, it was to go to the post office. The people there seemed to regard her with trepidation, taking in her loopy manner and specific instructions for mailing with a sort of humor. I knew they probably gossiped about the crazy bead lady on their breaks.
"And I need the extra cushioned bubble mailers," she said on one occasion. "The other ones are a ripoff; all the bubbles pop the instant you put anything in there."
The wide-eyed clerk behind the counter nodde
d and got them down for her. Corinne inspected them carefully, scrunching up her nose, before giving them the okay and swiping her debit card.
I tried to treat the whole thing like a kind of vacation, separating myself from all the drama back home. As each day passed, it seemed more and more like someone else's life I had left behind, a soap opera that had been canceled.
Adjusting to the diet at her apartment was the hardest, oddly enough. Everything was made out of unidentifiable vegetables and sprouts and weird herbs. Not the good stuff that Lucy made, but food even a blind rabbit wouldn't have eaten. By the end of the first week, I would have killed for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
"Growing girls need their vegetables," she sang, sounding like a possessed Betty Crocker. I could see was she had never become a mother. She didn't even have any pets, and lamented that the tropical fish she'd kept in a now-empty tank in the living room had gotten sick and died.
I laid on my bed in the evenings, going over Eleanor's file, and sometimes reading Henry's book. I read some loose entries that had been scribbled by Eleanor herself, that I'd found when I had reorganized everything.
There were only a handful of pages in her delicate script. She mentioned not feeling understood, and having to lie. Both things I could relate to. But she didn't say much about the ghosts she'd seen, or her visions. I knew she was trying to skirt around the issue.
We kept up with the rumors on the news. Corinne had an old TV set, from the nineties, in a wooden box with a bubbled screen. Every day, Corinne bought a newspaper from the machine at the convenience store across the street.
The crime tip hotlines were blowing up, but nothing could be validated. Warwick was nowhere certain, and yet he seemed to be a million places at once, as far away as Arizona and Quebec. Like he'd evaporated.
Another calender page ripped off, and it was October.
"Everyone will have already had their decorations up," I told Corinne. We were eating tasteless yellow soup she had apparently prepared from squash. I scooped some up and watched it dribbled back off the spoon, with my hand in my chin. "I wonder if Hugh is even putting anything up this year."
"And your mother says I'm the immature one," Corinne said haughtily, rolling her eyes and taking a slurp of her own soup.
"Have they told you at all how long I'm going to be here?" I asked her. "They said not long, but it's been three weeks."
Corinne sloshed her spoon around, biting the inside of her cheek. It suggested she knew more than she was letting on. "They just keep telling me it will only be a little longer. But if I were you, I would prepare for a dull winter."
CHAPTER 25
IN THE RARE times that sleep found me, I dreamed vividly. It was always a variation of the same dream. In it, I was walking up the split staircase to the orphanage. The black dog was sitting on the porch, licking its front paws.
When it saw me, it lifted its head and let off a warning growl. I must have not been too intimidating, though, because it resumed bathing its paws after a moment, ignoring me.
Each time I passed through the building, I got farther and farther inside. I had been wrong all this time. It was lovely inside, glowing with ethereal, peach light. Like spring after a harsh, dead winter. I must have been envisioning the place as it had been many years ago, because the inside was like something out of an old photograph. Beautiful antique furniture decorated the rooms, vases of flowers on every surface.
Something inside Dexter waited patiently for me. Deep in the dark, hidden in shadows. I couldn't see it because I was too blinded by what I could see. It waited patiently, biding its time, until I found it. Or it found me.
One particular night, I heard the fluttering of wings behind my head in the dream. But there were no birds in the room. I woke up.
I heard thudding, and for a moment, I thought I was back at home, a long time ago, listening to a ghost pound frantically for help. A ghost I hadn't put a name on because I didn't want to face the truth. But who else would it be?
But then I realized I was still in Corinne's guest room. Corinne always fell asleep to the sound of the TV, and I could hear it blaring through the wall. But that wasn't what had woken me.
Shadows fluttered outside the wooden blinds. Carefully, I threw off the blanket and stood up, creeping over to the window. I pulled the cord on the blinds and yanked it up.
I shrieked, unable to stop myself. A huge black crow was bashing itself senseless against the window, sooty feathers flying everywhere. I dropped the blind, watching the shadow swoop a few more times and the resulting bang of the bird's body. Then it dropped to the sill.
It had followed me here.
My parents made a surprise visit the next day. I had only seen my mother one other time since Hugh dropped me off. He came out twice a week to bring me the make up work that Theo had gathered, and to update me on things back home. And to see me, I knew, but I still harbored some resentment at being ditched out of town.
The pair of them sat down on Corinne's overstuffed emerald green couch. All of the throw pillows on it were mismatched, the seams starting to fall apart and little fluffs of white stuffing poking out. I made myself comfortable across from them as Corinne went into the kitchen and puttered around, making tea.
Claire picked up an orange candy dish in the shape of a butterfly off of the chipped coffee table. She set it down with a look of distaste. Her purse was balanced on her lap.
"Why are you both here?" I asked, looking back and forth between them.
"We wanted to see you," Claire said. "We've missed you and we wanted to make sure you were adjusting okay."
"Oh yeah, I'm dandy," I said, rolling my eyes. "Is that all you wanted, because if so then you can go." I started to stand up from the chair. I knew I was being a brat, but I couldn't stop it.
"We're also here to discuss you coming back home," Hugh said gently. His words made me pause. Corinne came out with the tea in mismatching mugs, and put one down each for my parents.
"What are you talking about?" I asked, thinking I had misheard him.
Hugh cleared his throat, not making any move towards the tea. He was much more of a coffee man. "There's no sign of Warwick anywhere near Hell. Odds are he was gone a long time ago. Robert wasn't a patient man; if he was going to come back, he would have done it already."
"Police cars have cruised through our neighborhood every day, and they haven't seen one hint of anything amiss," Claire supplied.
"And the school sent us a letter this week. If we don't physically have you back in school, they'll take you out for this school year."
It was a lot to take in at one time, especially after living such a mundane existence for the past month and a half. I'd wanted to go home the entire time, but the prospect also scared me.
"When?"
"We can pack up your stuff right now," Claire said. "We just want you home. To get back to normal life."
"She's just going back, just like that?" Corinne asked, coming in late to the conversation.
"We figured you were probably starting to feel crowded," Claire said. Her voice was unmistakably like a snotty older sister.
"No, not at all," Corinne said, and I felt a rush of affection for my weird aunt. "I'm going to miss her. She's been good company, never causes any trouble. You should let her have a little more space."
I wanted to reach up and kiss her, but I knew that would make her uncomfortable and twitchy. I bit my cheek instead.
"Well, maybe you can visit more often," Claire said. She must have really meant that she wanted me back. "C'mon, Ariel, let's get you packed."
It felt like years had passed when I came home. I could feel the weight the instant I came back to Hell, settling on my shoulders with disquieting familiarity. The Halloween decorations were up in their full glory, and for the first time I realized how ridiculous it was. Still, I felt a sense of nostalgia for Hell.
The ground was covered with piles of fallen leaves, the sky an azure blue. It was still quite wa
rm though, for autumn, but that was just a pleasant addition.
As soon as she saw us pulling up in the driveway, Theo ran over. She was jumping up and down with excitement to see me. I undid my seatbelt clumsily and scrambled out to meet her, as we threw our arms around each other.
I was apprehensive when I finally took my suitcase down to my room. The basement smelled musty and closed up. It didn't look like my parents had been down there much at all, except Claire to do laundry. A fine layer of dust had settled on everything, and I got the creepy feeling that this was how it would look if I'd died suddenly. That morbid imagination again.
I slowly opened the door. The air seemed to shimmer inside, like a heat wave. Jenna was laying on my bed, her arm slung over her eyes.
"Jenna?" I asked cautiously.
"Ariel?" she croaked in a weak voice. She sat up on her elbows. "Welcome back."
"Hi, Jenna. Are you okay?"
Her skin and even her clothes were washed out, paint with too much water mixed in. She looked very weak.
"I'm just really tired," Jenna said. "I need to start running more again, I think I'm out of shape. And there's so much fog in here, it's making it hard to breath..."
That's what I had worried about, but at least it hadn't swallowed her up.
"I'm back now," I said, coming over and sitting on the side of the bed. She looked more otherworldly than before, her skin ashen like that of a corpse, with no blood running through to make it flush. Her eyes were still blue, but the lenses were cloudy. She still made no move to get up.
"When you left, I didn't know what to do," Jenna said somberly.
"I know. I'm sorry, Claire and Hugh just didn't give me much time, they rushed me out of the house..."
"It's okay," Jenna said. "I've been losing track of time, though. I have no idea what day it is. Is it still summer?"
"No. It's October," I told her.
"Wasn't it just June?" Jenna asked. To her maybe it would always be June.
I felt helpless. But at least I was back, and she hadn't disappeared.
