Dreaming Darkly

by Caitlin Kittredge

  “You don’t understand,” Peter said, his voice cracking. “There’s something out there. Something on that island making us—”

  There was a sharp crack, and I jumped. The tape snapped, broken end flapping, and the rest of the reel crumpled up in the machine, chewed to shreds.

  I sat back, not sure what to think. Who knew what drugs that Peter kid was on, who knew what he’d seen? I couldn’t deny what was on the tape, though. My grandmother had been his friend. Close enough to talk about her health, my mom’s birth.

  About the fact she wasn’t having any more children.

  What did that make my uncle? Maybe it was all bullshit, maybe Peter was a serial killer and my grandmother had just been oversharing because she was lonely and all by herself with a young child.

  I went to the kitchen to make some coffee, only to discover that the jar of instant was empty. I opened the fridge to find a bottle of juice with a Post-it stuck on the front that read IVY, next to one of those packaged granola-and-yogurt breakfasts. It was better than nothing. After a sleepless night, my mouth was sandy and dry, and I gulped the juice. I was going to get ready for school when I smelled the smoke.

  It wasn’t a bad smell, just sharp, and I followed it back to the library, where I saw the small blond girl I’d seen before standing in front of a roaring fire in the library’s head-tall fireplace. The walls around her were empty, the squares where the photos had been darker against the evergreen-colored wallpaper. She stared blankly into the flames, tossing another handful of photos in, the black-and-white images crumpling and flashing different colors as the chemicals burned off the paper, erasing the faces.

  “Hey!” I said as she tossed in a formal portrait of my mom and Simon, taken in front of the doors of the manor.

  She turned to me. I took a step back and tripped over my own feet. Her dress was white and covered in blood, so much that it soaked the fabric and dripped onto the thick Persian rug.

  “Look what you made me do, Ivy,” she whispered, guttural and low, like nails scraping across wood. She advanced another step, as the thick gray smoke began to billow, filling the room. “Look what you made me do!”

  I jolted awake, falling off the library sofa and slamming my elbow hard on the wooden table. The reel-to-reel machine tumbled to the floor, the ruined tape flapping.

  It was full daylight, the photos were on the wall, and the fireplace was cold and unlit, a layer of ash and dust telling me it hadn’t been used in years.

  “Well, your uncle is off to the airport,” Mrs. MacLeod said, bustling in. “Are you . . .” She took in my face and the machine lying on the floor. “Christ almighty, Ivy. You can’t just go around breaking Simon’s things.”

  “I tripped,” I said. “I’m sorry.” I did the thing where I just told myself none of it mattered—not that I’d had another nightmare, or hallucination, or whatever, and that meant I wasn’t getting any better. Not that I’d been listening to a stolen piece of police evidence. Not that I was starting to wonder if anything Simon had told me was the whole truth.

  All that mattered was I had tripped, I was sorry, and otherwise I was fine.

  Mrs. MacLeod grumbled. “At least he hasn’t used this thing in ages.”

  I helped her pick up the reels and the headphones, trying to put the scattered pieces of the player back together. “You’ve known my uncle a long time, right?”

  “Since he and Myra were small,” she said. “Ten and eight. And before you ask, yes, he was always as particular about his things as he is now.”

  That wasn’t what I’d been asking, but whatever. I spotted the photo I’d watched burn in my dream hanging on the wall with the others, and looked at it more closely. Simon and my mom were wearing tennis outfits, posed with their rackets, even though Simon’s arm was in a cast and my mother looked like she’d rather be anywhere else.

  “Fourteen and sixteen,” Mrs. MacLeod said. “Simon was nationally ranked until he broke his arm. Poor thing had to have three pins put in. He was so disappointed. His mother bought him that tape machine to take the sting out of having to stay in and recover all summer. He collected old recordings, could never listen to them until she hunted down that player. She did spoil him so.”

  “Was that before or after she got sent to a mental institution?” I said. I wasn’t in the mood to hear Mrs. MacLeod’s happy-time stories of days gone by.

  “Between visits,” she snapped back. “Get dressed. You’ll miss the boat for school.”

  I did as she said, wanting to be off the island. I had charged the phone Simon had given me, and I played with it on the boat ride over, setting it up and putting in Doyle’s number. I had to take advantage of the freedom of my uncle being in New York. I had to visit my grandmother and figure out what was going on there, ask her about Peter Ross and all of it.

  Then I’d know. I’d be back in control, the one who knew what was really going on. Then I could decide what to do, and maybe stop having this sick feeling in my stomach that had nothing to do with the rolling of the boat taking me to the mainland.

  Chapter 21

  I found Doyle in the parking lot before school started. He looked relieved I was still talking to him. “How was your Betty adventure?” he said when I waved.

  “Way more full of Jesus and prowlers than I’d like,” I said, and left it at that. “Listen, I’ve got a track meet this weekend. After, I’m going to meet my grandmother.”

  Doyle’s forehead wrinkled. “You want some company?”

  My skin warmed at his words. I’d been hoping he’d offer, even though I knew we’d both get into a world of hurt—literally—if Simon or Doyle’s father found out. I couldn’t imagine doing this without him.

  I smiled up at him. “If you’re not over my family drama yet,” I said.

  “I can’t think of anything I’d rather do this weekend than go visit your dead grandma,” Doyle said.

  “Spoken like a true gentleman,” I said. He laughed.

  “Never that. But ferrying you around is a good reason to not be at home, and I’ll take all of those I can get.”

  “Happy to help,” I said. The bell rang, and I let him walk me inside. I just had to get through one more week, I told myself. Then I’d know.

  Doyle picked me up in his rust-bucket Jeep that weekend after the meet—which we lost, but I was so keyed up I could barely sit still, even after running three events and listening to Armitage’s speech about why we all sucked.

  Valerie caught up with me as I was walking to Doyle’s car. “We’re gonna drown our sorrows in coffee and chocolate—you want a lift?”

  I froze, not sure what to do. I had started to genuinely like Valerie, but I needed Doyle with me to see my grandmother. He was the only one I trusted with whatever I was going to find at the psych hospital.

  She followed my gaze toward Doyle. “Oh.”

  “Valerie,” I started. “It’s not—”

  “You know what?” she said, putting up a hand to stop me. “It’s cool. I’m not into jealousy and girls hating on other girls. All I’m gonna say is you could do a lot better than Doyle. He’s never gonna leave Darkhaven, and you seem like you’ve got bigger plans.”

  If only she knew. I exhaled, and tried the truth, which was unusual for me. “I’m not dating him,” I said. “He’s helping me with a family problem. I . . .” I forced myself to keep talking, be sincere, even though the urge to lie, to placate, to say the thing that would bend the other person into doing what I wanted was so strong I could taste it. “I do like him, Valerie. But I like you too, and I want to keep being friends. I haven’t had a lot of female friends. Okay, any, really. If my hanging out with Doyle will make things weird, please tell me.”

  “Pfft,” she said. “Go on, your knight in rusty armor awaits.”

  “It’s really not like that,” I said.

  She patted me on the arm. “You’re a bad liar, Ivy. Look, am I thrilled? No. But I’m not surprised either. You’re his type. Way more than I am
.”

  “Meaning what?” I said, hesitating.

  “Damaged,” she said. “Vulnerable. In need of a white knight. I was just having fun with him. He couldn’t rescue me, so I wasn’t fun for him. I’ve got my shit together.”

  I thought about telling Valerie that she might have all that, but she sucked at reading people. But I bit back my impulse to say something cutting and awful. She was angry, she had a right to be, and I just needed to give her space. “Okay, Valerie,” was all I said. “You have a good weekend.”

  I crossed the lot and got into Doyle’s car. He looked at me as he started the engine. “I won’t ask what that was about. Where are we going?”

  “Mid-Coast Psychiatric,” I said, reading the address off the screen on my phone. I propped it on the dash so Doyle could follow the little blue arrow on the screen.

  “Glad you’re not Amish anymore,” he said. “But you know that thing won’t work on the island.”

  “Simon got it for me because I stayed out longer than I said I would and he flipped his shit,” I said.

  “I’m having a hard time picturing that,” Doyle said. “Much as he sorta creeps me out, he’s pretty quiet.”

  “I wish I still had a hard time picturing it,” I muttered.

  We drove, the silence less than awkward but more than pleasant, until the hospital came into view. It wasn’t at all what I was expecting—not that I’d spent a lot of time in psych wards that weren’t state-run, where patients actually paid to be treated rather than being locked up there by the county sheriff after they tried to stab their boyfriend with a linoleum knife. To give Mom credit for one thing, I at least knew how to bullshit my way past the front desk and the doctors at most of these places.

  Doyle looked out the windshield at the modern glass-front main building, orbited by several pleasant dormitories that looked like upscale country hotels. Patients in scrubs or civilian pajamas were walking on the lawn between buildings, some sitting in a circle on the grass in heavy sweaters and bathrobes taking advantage of the last of the warm fall days before it got really cold, chatting with a nice-looking female shrink. It was about as far from the bleach-scented, Thorazine-tinged nightmares my mother had been locked in as you could get.

  “You need me to come in?” he said. I shook my head.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  He sat back, looking relieved. “Good. Hospitals give me the creeps.”

  “So you’re fine living on the creepy island and chatting me up about curses, but one hint of a white coat and you’re over it?” I said.

  Doyle grunted. “Some people are bothered by normal shit that bothers people,” he said.

  I patted his shoulder. “Don’t worry. I won’t let them give you any shots.” He didn’t laugh, so I slid out of the Jeep and crossed the damp pavement to the entrance by myself.

  The door swished in front of me, and an orderly wearing a jacket and tie approached when I stepped into the lobby. Fountains, classical music—if my grandmother was here, this place had to cost a small fortune. Maybe that was why the manor house on Darkhaven was falling apart and we ate practically nothing but meat loaf.

  “Can I help you find something?” the orderly said, and it took me a second to realize he was being genuine, not snotty.

  “Uh . . . I’m here to see about visiting my grandmother,” I said. “Her name is Simone Bloodgood.”

  The orderly raised an eyebrow and then gestured me over to a desk. “I’ll need to see some ID, Miss . . . ?”

  “Also Bloodgood,” I said, handing over my student ID. He scanned it through a little reader, tapped a few keys, and then nodded.

  “You’ll have to forgive the procedures. I didn’t know Simone had any family besides her son, so we don’t have a visitor list set up for her.”

  I felt my stomach flip hard, like I was still on the deck of the boat that first morning I’d come to the island. She was alive. Not “I’m so sorry, your grandmother died years ago.” Not “We have no record of that name.”

  She was here; she was alive enough to have visitors.

  That was that. Simon had lied to me.

  “I lived a long way away up until a month ago,” I said, when I realized I’d been quiet a heartbeat too long. “I’m just now meeting most of my extended family.”

  He nodded as he typed again, then picked up his handheld radio and muttered into it. “It’s day-room time right now,” he said. “Someone will be here to escort you in just a minute.”

  He’d barely finished talking when a nurse in pink scrubs came out of the locked ward, all smiles, and took me by the elbow. “So nice to hear Simone has some family,” she said. “We’re all very fond of her.”

  “Is she . . . ,” I said, trying to tamp down the reflexive nervousness at being in a mental institution. It might be nicer than most of the homes I’d had, and there might not be screams and straitjackets, but I didn’t miss the two layers of security doors we had to walk through to get to the day room, the thick metal mesh over all the large windows, and the panic buttons by every door. A locked ward was a locked ward, no matter how you dressed it up.

  “What’s wrong with her?” I tried again, as the nurse indicated a small table against the wall in the hall outside the day room.

  “Your grandmother is a paranoid schizophrenic, and unfortunately in the last few years she’s also been showing signs of dementia,” the nurse said. “She’s not violent, though. You don’t have to be nervous about seeing her.”

  “Trust me, this is not my first rodeo,” I said, and to prove it I emptied my pockets and bag onto the table, letting the nurse see I didn’t have contraband or anything the patients could use to hurt me or themselves.

  “Take as long as you like, but don’t be offended if she doesn’t know you,” the nurse said. “Does she? Know of you?”

  “Yes,” I lied as she waved her key card at the sensor and the day-room door swung open. I felt my vision spiraling down to a tunnel from nerves and took a deep breath to calm myself. “We’re family.”

  The nurse pointed me across the day room to a pair of easy chairs by the window. I felt like I might throw up. If I’d managed to eat anything after the meet, I definitely would have heaved into one of the plants decorating the day room. I didn’t know if I was livid at Simon’s lie or just nervous about talking to Simone.

  Maybe Simon had a reason to lie. Hard-core mental illness wasn’t pretty. Maybe this was just his effed-up attempt to protect me.

  But I’d never been that good at giving people the benefit of the doubt. People lied because they were selfish, because they got something out of it.

  I stopped just short of the chairs. A woman sat in the one closest to the window, head nodding in time with something only she could hear, as her hands worked a puzzle spread out on a tray in front of her. The box lid had a picture of three napping kittens.

  I had to keep moving, sit down across from this woman who was supposed to be dead, and try to think of some way to get her to talk to me. I was sure Mom had never sent baby pictures, school photos, good report cards—not that I had many worth bragging about. For all this poor woman knew, I was some con artist out to take her for everything she had.

  And until recently she wouldn’t even have been far off the mark.

  I still sat, trying not to stare as she looked up. Even though her face was sunken and one cheek muscle trembled slightly, her eyes and her nose and her whole face were like a version of Mom’s, if she hadn’t done what she did and had lived to be as old as Simone.

  “Hello,” she said pleasantly. “Are you the young woman from the library?”

  “No,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say—leading with the whole long-lost granddaughter thing seemed like it might be coming on too strong.

  She pursed her lips, looking disappointed. “The library sends volunteers to read to me sometimes. My eyes are starting to go. Cataracts.” Her cheek jumped again, more violently. I had the crazy urge to reach out and smooth it d
own, like a parent would do to a child.

  “I can read to you,” I offered, pointing to a book sitting on the arm of her chair.

  “Oh, thank you, Myra. I do love listening to you read.”

  I bit my lip, trying not to react. She thought I was Mom. I reached for the book, rough cloth cover scratching my fingertips. Maybe this was for the best. “You’re welcome, Mom,” I said.

  She blinked at me as she locked another puzzle piece into place. “Myra, you come visit me so seldom. Why do you stay away?”

  “I don’t like these places,” I said, giving an actual Mom answer.

  Simone snorted. “And you think I do? You think I belong here? I know you won’t talk about it, but I don’t belong here, Myra. Not locked up with these people. My sickness isn’t the same.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s not up to me.”

  “You let him take everything,” she snapped. “You were supposed to be smarter than that, Myra. You let me sign those papers, and you did nothing.”

  “Who?” I asked. She pursed her lips disapprovingly.

  “I don’t know what kind of silly game this is, Myra, but a woman pregnant with a child of her own should behave like an adult, not a spoiled girl,” she grumbled. “I may be the one in the crazy house, but you aren’t far behind me if you’re already starting to forget things.”

  I looked down at the cover of the book. Rebecca. Of freaking course. “I guess I’ve got the Bloodgood sickness,” I ventured, wondering if she’d take the bait.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she grumbled. “Sickness, there’s no sickness besides bad brain chemistry and too much time alone on that damn island. Now either read or get the hell out, Myra. I get enough nutty talk from the people in here.”

  I sighed, thinking that Mom had come by her shitty temper honestly, and opened the book to the marked page. I started reading. “If only there could be an invention,” I said impulsively, “that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again.”