Chapter 16
Worse than being stuck in the house was to have nothing to do. Sylvia had thought of everything; she’d cut the cable as well as the telephone. Somehow she’d even managed to block out the normal television signals so all of Dan’s five television sets showed only static. Something equally nefarious was at work with his computers, so that she couldn’t even bring up a game of solitaire.
Dan, like Emma, didn’t do much for leisure besides reading, so there wasn’t a deck of cards and the only board game a chessboard with elaborately carved pieces in gold and silver. She didn’t touch the chessboard not only because she didn’t know the game very well, but she also didn’t want to damage something that obviously cost a lot of money. Then again most everything in Dan’s house looked as if it cost a lot of money—except for his wardrobe. Most of his clothes looked as dated and worn as if he’d bought them from a rummage sale. But then Dan didn’t worry about fashion either, especially since he’d spent most of his post-college years in the Egyptian desert, to dig for artifacts.
Becky didn’t want to snoop in Dan’s wardrobe, but she had hoped against hope there might be something in there that would be of use. A cell phone Sylvia might have missed or that elusive deck of cards at the very least. She tore the clothes out of the closets and drawers to search the pockets but turned up exactly nothing.
She couldn’t even write a message in a bottle. Sylvia had frozen all of the windows shut. Becky had strained and grunted to try to get even the tiniest bathroom window to budge just a half-inch, but they refused to move. Out of desperation she ran back to the dining room and seized a chair. With a scream she hurled this at the nearest window; the chair shattered into toothpick-sized pieces while the window didn’t show even the slightest crack.
After hours of trying to find some way to escape or to at least contact the outside world, she collapsed on the couch in the living room. She panted, sweated, and ached as if she’d gone fifteen rounds in a boxing ring. She was completely trapped. The only thing she could do was sit back and wait for Emma to rescue her.
To ward off these dark thoughts, Becky went into the library to find something to read. Her personal tastes tended towards Danielle Steele or Nora Roberts, but of course Dan didn’t have anything like that around. All of the books in the library were either nonfiction books about Egypt and archaeology, or novels from two or more centuries ago.
Becky had never read most of the classics in literature. That had been a subject where she and Emma shared a common disinterest, as Emma read mostly nonfiction. Becky had managed to skim enough pages and read enough Cliff Notes to bluff her way through book reports and tests to pass her lit classes in high school and college.
She ran her finger along the spines of the books, until she stopped at Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The title at least sounded exciting. She pulled the book from the shelf and wondered if it might trigger a secret tunnel like in the movies. The book simply fell out into her hand. She tried the rest of the books on the shelf with similar results and then took the Shakespeare upstairs to Dan’s bedroom.
He—she forced herself to use that pronoun despite his current appearance—was still fast asleep in the bed. She pulled up a chair to the side of the bed and tried not to watch the way his breasts rose and fell against the covers as he breathed. “I guess you’d probably like a book on Egyptian mythology better,” she said. “Well, here goes.”
It took only about an hour for her to realize she’d picked the wrong book to read at this moment. Being stranded on an island wasn’t far removed from being trapped inside a house in the middle of the city. Then there were the wizards and spirits involved, which were the last things Becky wanted to think about right now. With a sigh she snapped the book shut and set it gently on the nightstand. “I think that’s about enough of that,” she said.
As if in response, Dan’s body twitched like a full-body hiccup. She watched him carefully for a moment and hoped his eyes would open. Maybe the spell would wear off on its own, and soon he would be awake and himself again.
Instead, the hiccup turned into a full spasm. Dan’s midsection convulsed as if someone had punched him in the stomach. His arms and legs began to shake violently, followed by foam that came out of the corners of his mouth. “Dan!” she shouted. She leaned across the bed to try to calm him down, but he bucked under her like a wild bull. On the nightstand she found a pencil, which she jammed into his mouth so he wouldn’t accidentally bite down on his tongue, something she vaguely remembered from a first aid course.
The spasm continued for another two minutes; she imagined at any moment his body would go slack and begin to turn cold. It passed as suddenly as it began. One moment Dan’s body writhed beneath her and the next he went still. She rolled off of him and saw his chest move gently up and down, the same as it had been only a few minutes before.
With a sigh, Becky picked up the book again. She took Dan’s hand and tried not to notice how soft and thin it felt in her hand. “I guess it’s better than nothing,” she said and then continued to read with her other hand.
***
That he was on a bed of trash didn’t surprise Jim Rizzard. The surprise would have been if he wasn’t on a bed of trash. From what he smelled, this wasn’t trash from his sewers. This stuff didn’t have the same dankness, the aroma provided by over a century of rot. That meant he wasn’t in his sewers.
He opened his eyes and saw the vomit-orange glow that was Rampart City’s nighttime sky. He cringed involuntarily at this and turned to face the metal wall of what he knew was a dumpster. The memories came back slowly to him. He had spent the day with Emma Earl at a store and then some business and then a museum. He had taken her to his special place—and there they had kissed. Unlike the last time he tried to kiss her, this time she had given in and returned the kiss just as passionately.
He had confessed his love for her, but then her phone rang to spoil the moment. A friend of hers was in trouble and she had to go help. She wanted to go alone; she’d called a cab to take him back to her friend’s house. He had let the cab go a couple of miles before he told the driver to stop. After he paid the driver, he found the nearest entrance into the sewers.
It didn’t take long to find a scout for the nearest tribe—its name unpronounceable in English. He asked the scout to have some of the others fetch one of his jackets. He didn’t wait there for the scout to return; they would be able to catch up to him. Instead, he went back in the direction Emma had gone. From another scout, he learned she had gone to the waterfront.
By the time he reached the waterfront, she was already gone and fire crews had arrived to put out a blaze. His chest tightened at the thought she might have been killed, but he soon learned she was in a sewer pipe, safe and sound—for the moment. Much as he wanted to go down there and be with her, he knew that’s not what she wanted. She wanted to take care of this problem on her own; she wanted to protect him from it. He saw that as almost as good as a declaration of love.
When she went on the move again, he followed from a safe distance to finally arrive at the gravel yards. A group of scouts met him there with one of his ratskin jackets. Putting this on, he felt more natural than he had all day. The other clothes might have made him look nice—made people not run from him in fear—but those felt like the clothes of another man. “You stay here,” he told the scouts. “I go.”
There was a woman there, one who looked similar enough to Emma to be her older sister. Even before he could hear the conversation, he could tell this was not a friendly meeting by the hand Emma kept on the pommel of her sword.
While the two women talked, Jim began to sneak up on the other woman. He had plenty of experience in stealth and Emma did her part to keep the woman distracted. Just before Jim was ready to lunge at the woman, Emma mentioned something about her and another man. When she said it was a mistake, he nearly cried out in joy. There wasn’t any time to celebrate. He leaped on the other woman to overpower her.
After that events became hazy. The woman’s body suddenly blazed with the heat of a sun. Jim screamed and rolled off of her. The next thing he remembered, he was suspended in the air; Emma held the front of his shirt. “I’m sorry, Jim,” she said. The sadness in her eyes told him everything he needed to know. He nodded to her.
Then he had woke up here, in this dumpster. Jim saw the neat piles of gravel now lay like an ocean of stone. “Emma,” he said.
He sifted through the rocks for hours to look for some sign of her. A glove, her sword, or even a bit of hair; something to indicate she had been here. There was nothing. She was gone.
Near the center of the gravel ocean, he paused in sweeping away the rocks. He could smell her. Not just her, but the armor she wore, which gave off a dusty scent, like an ancient book. There was no sign of her beneath the rocks there, only her smell. Jim stood up and looked around the gravel yards. She had been here, but now she was gone. She was still alive!
The question became why she hadn’t come back for him. There was no way Emma would have left him in the dumpster to go off and do something else, not if she had a choice. That other woman must have forced her to go somewhere, to leave him behind.
Wherever they had gone, he would find them. He would find them and save Emma, the woman he loved and the woman who loved him.
Chapter 17
She awoke to someone shaking her. She didn’t open her eyes; she didn’t want to let the dream slip away. For a reason she couldn’t name, she knew it was important to hang on to it, to remember it. The shaking continued until at last she had to open her eyes.
The girl who looked down at her seemed familiar, but she couldn’t be sure why. “Hey, come on, get up. It’s almost time for class,” the girl said.
“Class?”
“Aren’t you going? Isn’t that why you came back?”
“Back?”
“What’s the matter with you? You sound like a goddamned parrot.”
“I do?”
“What have you been doing, drinking turpentine or something?”
“I don’t think so.” She sat up in bed and then looked around at the room. The beige walls covered on one side with posters, the two twin beds, and the pair of desks all seemed as familiar as the girl’s face, but she couldn’t be sure why. Had she been here before? She put a hand to her head. Had she been anywhere before?
She tried to think back to the dream; she knew it was important, but as she’d feared, most of it had slipped away like sand through her hands. She could only remember bits and pieces: a woman with red hair who for some reason carried a yellow sword, another woman with darker red hair and very sad eyes, and rocks piling on top of her, to bury her alive. But she wasn’t buried alive, was she, if she was in this room? And she didn’t see anyone with red hair, just this girl with her dark brown hair, whose eyes looked far more angry than sad.
“You’d better have come up with a story for everyone. They’ve all been looking for you. It’s been on the news. There was even some teacher here asking about it,” the girl said.
“Asking about what?”
“About you, dummy.” The girl waved a hand in front of her face. “Are you sure you didn’t get into some paint thinner? Maybe break open Daddy’s liquor cabinet?”
“Why are people looking for me? What did I do?”
“You’ve been gone for over a week. You didn’t think anyone would notice?” The girl took a piece of paper and held it up. The picture showed a girl with long, almost white hair, whose face looked on the verge of tears. “They were handing these out all over campus. You should keep one as a souvenir.”
“Why?”
“You know, a keepsake of the moment and all that. Something to put in your scrapbook to show your grandkids later.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Are you fucking with me? Why are you acting all retarded?”
“I don’t understand.” Why was this girl being so mean to her? Her chest tightened; a slight whistle came out with every breath. The whistle became more pronounced as the girl took her by the arm and dragged her from the bed, over to the closet. The girl revealed a mirror and held up the poster.
The girl tapped the picture on the paper and then her reflection in the mirror. “Are you getting it now?”
“It’s me.” She tried to read the words on the poster from the reflection in the mirror, but they showed up backwards. Her breath came out like a teapot about to boil as she snatched the paper away from the girl to read it. “Megan Putnam. That’s me?”
The last thing she expected was for the girl to laugh. “Oh my God, that is so cliché. You really think that’s going to work?”
“What’s going to work?”
“This little amnesia bit. What, you’re going to tell the cops you don’t remember where you’ve been for the last week?”
“But I don’t—” The tightness in her chest became unbearable. She couldn’t breathe. She remembered how she’d felt buried alive from the dream, as if she were about to suffocate. She staggered back towards the bed, but fell to her knees instead. Each breath became a battle, wherein she had to fight against her own body for the air she needed.
As she knelt on the carpet, gasping, she felt something small and plastic thrust into her hands. “Go on,” the girl said. “Take it. Try to relax. It’s all right.”
She did as the girl said, holding up the tiny plastic thing. One end of it looked like a whistle while the other had a metal cylinder. Her inhaler. She remembered that. She pressed down on the cylinder and heard the hiss as medicine squirted into her lungs. The girl kept a hand on her back and encouraged her to relax, to breathe. “Come on, Megan. Settle down. Relax and focus, remember?”
Everything else faded away in those moments as she imagined her respiratory system: the lungs like a couple of leather bags in her chest that expanded and contracted, the larynx that carried air up and down her neck, and finally the mouth where the air rushed in and out. She concentrated on the process of good air going in and bad air going out. Nice and easy, gently. The tightness in her chest finally subsided.
“There you go,” the girl said. “All better now.”
“Thank you,” she said. She allowed the girl to help her back onto the bed, where she lay on her back, the whistling gone from her breathing now.
The girl studied her for a moment. “You really don’t remember, do you? You’re not faking. You actually lost your memory.”
“I guess so.”
The girl knelt down beside the bed and then held up the poster of the missing girl again, the same girl she had seen in the mirror. “That’s you. Megan Putnam. That’s your name. You go to school at Rampart State University, that’s where we are right now, in one of the dorms. My name is Amanda Murdoch, I’m your roommate.” The girl—Amanda—smiled at her. “I’m your friend.”
She took the poster from Amanda’s hands. “That’s me,” she said. “I’m Megan Putnam.”
***
Since she’d recovered from the initial shock when she saw herself in the mirror, other details came back to her. She went over to a set of drawers and took out a blouse, pair of jeans, and undergarments. She asked Amanda to turn around while she changed her clothes in front of the mirror. Like everything else, her body seemed familiar and yet it was as if she saw it through someone else’s eyes or watched herself in a movie.
She picked up a brush and began to run it through her hair. Once she’d gotten out the tangles so it was perfectly smooth, she put the brush down. Her hand hovered over the tubes of lipstick, mascara, and other cosmetics. She thought about the face in the poster, how the girl’s skin had seemed even paler than her hair. “I don’t wear makeup, do I?” she asked Amanda, who sat on the edge of her bed.
“No, you don’t. Anything else you remember?”
Megan looked around the room. Something was missing. She went over to the closet and pulled out a mustard-colored cardigan sweater. The sweater felt like a blanket, warm and safe, arou
nd her body. She hugged herself as she looked into the mirror on the closet door again. That’s me, she thought.
“Are you hungry?” Amanda asked. “I could run over to the cafeteria—”
Megan put a hand to her flat stomach. “I am hungry,” she said.
“All right, you wait here and—”
“No!” Megan said. “I want to go with you.”
“I think you’d better stay here. Get some rest.”
Megan felt the vise tighten around her chest again. “No, please. I don’t want to be alone right now.”
Amanda considered this for a moment and then nodded. “Sure, maybe it’ll help your memory.”
Like everything else, the rest of the dorm and campus seemed familiar to her. Not everyone they passed seemed familiar, but most everyone did a double take when they saw her. She stayed close to Amanda, as she felt the eyes on her. “Why are they staring at me?” she asked.
“They remember you from TV,” Amanda said.
In the main courtyard, she held Amanda up to stare at the water that bubbled from the center of the fountain. For a moment she just watched this and tried to remember why this seemed so familiar to her. Why couldn’t she remember? What had happened to her?
“Come on, let’s go,” Amanda said into her ear.
“OK.” Megan remained pressed against Amanda, like an old woman who leaned against a younger relative for support. She didn’t feel weak or even scared so much as vulnerable. After Amanda’s kindness towards her in the dorm room, Megan decided to trust this girl who claimed to be her roommate. Everyone else was suspect, at least until she got her memory back—if she ever did.
The line in the cafeteria wasn’t long. Those ahead of them did the same double take as everyone else; they hurriedly grabbed their food and beverages to take up to the cashier. “Are they scared of me?” Megan asked.
“No. They’re just surprised to see you. The cops have been beating the bushes all over campus for you.”
“Oh.” Megan turned her attention to the variety of items along the shelves and refrigerated cases. What sort of things did she like to eat: bagels, donuts, muffins? She picked up a blue-and-silver aluminum can. Red Bull. That seemed familiar to her. She pressed the cold can to her side and then continued to browse. She paused at rows of yogurt and then shook her head. “Do they have any protein shakes?”
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis Page 47
