The Last Time I Lied_A Novel

by Riley Sager

  “Why did he put it there?”

  “To keep an eye on Dogwood, of course,” Franny says.

  Since we’re on the topic of surveillance, I’m tempted to tell her that someone might have watched me take a shower this morning. I don’t because I’m not entirely sure there was. It would also require me to reveal just how I know about the crack in the shower wall. That’s a conversation I’d like to avoid at all costs.

  Instead, I say, “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  But it does, actually. Only the answer is an unspoken one, left for me to infer on my own. The camera is trained on Dogwood because I’m staying there. That’s why it was installed last night. They didn’t know it was the cabin I’d be occupying until after I’d arrived.

  Franny looks at me from across the table, her head tilted, concern glowing in her green eyes. “You’re upset. And probably offended. I can’t say I blame you. We should have told you immediately.”

  The slight throb of a headache presses against my temples. I chalk it up to confusion and too much hastily swallowed prosecco on an empty stomach. But Franny is right. I am upset and offended.

  “You still haven’t told me why it’s there,” I say. “Are you spying on me?”

  “That’s putting it a bit harshly. Spying.” Franny smacks her lips in distaste, as if just saying the word has soured her tongue. She takes a tiny sip of prosecco to wash it away. “I like to think it’s there for your own protection.”

  “From what?”

  “Yourself.”

  It’s Theo who answers. Hearing it from him forces a huff of surprise from my lungs.

  “Back when I was getting ready to reopen the camp, we did background checks on everyone staying here for the summer,” Franny says, exhibiting more gentleness than her son. “I didn’t think it was necessary, but my lawyers insisted on it. Instructors. Kitchen staff. Even the campers. We found nothing to be concerned about. Except with you.”

  “I don’t understand,” I say, when really I do. I know what’s coming next.

  A pained expression crosses Franny’s face. It strikes me as exaggerated and not entirely sincere. Like she wants me to know just how much it hurts to utter whatever she’s about to say.

  “We know, Emma,” she tells me. “We know what happened to you after you left Camp Nightingale.”

  14

  I don’t talk about it.

  Not even with Marc.

  The only other people who know what happened are my parents, who are all too happy to avoid discussing those horrible six months when I was fourteen.

  I was still in school when it began. A gangly freshman desperately trying to fit in with all the other prep school girls. It wasn’t easy. Not after what had happened that summer. Everyone knew about the disappearance at Camp Nightingale, giving me the kind of notoriety no one wanted anything to do with. My friends started pulling away from me. Even Heather and Marissa. My life became a form of solitary confinement. Weekends spent in my room. Cafeteria lunches consumed alone.

  Just when it seemed like things couldn’t get any worse, I saw the girls and everything truly went to hell.

  It was during a class trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A hundred schoolgirls tittering through the halls in a parade of plaid skirts and haughty insecurity. I had broken off from the group in the wing of nineteenth-century European paintings, roaming the labyrinth of galleries, dazzled by all the Gauguins and Renoirs and Cézannes.

  One of the galleries was empty, save for three girls standing in front of a work by Gustave Courbet. Young Ladies of the Village. A massive landscape painted mostly in greens and golds and populated by four women. Three of them appear to be in their late teens. The young ladies of the title, casually elegant with their afternoon dresses, bonnets, and parasols. The other girl is younger. A peasant. Barefoot, kerchief on her head, apron around her waist.

  I stared, but not at the painting. I was more interested in the girls studying it. They wore white dresses. Plain and subdued. They stood straight-backed and completely still, as poised as the young women Courbet had created. It was almost as if they had just emerged from the painting itself and were now curious to see how it looked without them.

  It’s beautiful, one of the girls said. Don’t you think so, Em?

  She didn’t turn around. She didn’t need to. I knew in my bones that it was Vivian, just as I knew the other two were Natalie and Allison. I didn’t care if it was actually them or their ghosts or figments of my imagination. Their presence was enough to terrify me.

  You seem surprised, Vivian said. Guess you never pegged us as art lovers.

  I couldn’t summon the nerve to reply. Fear had silenced me. It took all the strength I could muster to take a step backward, trying to put some distance between us. Once I managed that first tiny step, others followed in quick succession. My legs propelled me out of the gallery, saddle shoes tapping loudly against the parquet floor. Once I was safely out, I risked a glance behind me.

  Vivian, Natalie, and Allison were still there, only now they were facing me. Before I could run away completely, Vivian winked and said, See you soon.

  And I did. A few days later during a matinee of Jersey Boys my mother dragged me to during one of her rare instances of attentiveness. When she ducked out a minute before intermission to secure a prime spot at the lobby bar, Vivian took her place. The house lights rose, and there she was, once again in the white dress.

  This show sucks, she said.

  I didn’t dare look at her. I stayed frozen in my seat, eyes fixed to the distant stage in front of me. Vivian remained where she was, a white blur on the edge of my vision.

  You’re not real. My voice was a murmur, pitched low so that no one else could hear it. You don’t exist.

  Come on, Em. You and I both know you don’t believe that.

  Why are you doing this?

  Doing what?

  Haunting me.

  You know exactly why.

  Vivian didn’t sound angry when she said it. There was no accusation in her voice. If anything, she sounded sad. So desperately sad that a sob rose in my throat. I croaked it out through trembling lips, tears stinging the corners of my eyes.

  Spare me the tears, Vivian said. We both know they’re not real.

  Then she was gone. I waited a full five minutes before summoning the courage to leave my seat and go to the ladies’ room. I spent the second act hiding in a stall. After the show, I told my mother I wasn’t feeling well. She was too buzzed on overpriced vodka tonics to realize I was lying.

  The girls appeared frequently after that. I saw Natalie standing on the opposite side of the street as I walked to school. Allison stared at me across the cafeteria one day at lunch. All three roamed the lingerie department at Macy’s as I tried to pick out a bra to accommodate my suddenly blossoming frame. I never said a word about it to anyone. I feared that no one would believe me.

  It could have gone on like that for months if I hadn’t woken up one night to find Vivian sitting on the edge of my bed.

  I’m curious, Em, she said. Did you really think you could get away with it?

  I woke my parents with my screaming. They burst into my room to find me cowering under the covers, completely alone. I spent the rest of the night explaining that I kept seeing the girls, that they were haunting me, that I feared they wanted to do me harm. I talked for hours, most of what I said incoherent even to myself. My parents dismissed it as a vividly bad dream. I knew otherwise.

  After that, I refused to leave the apartment. I skipped school. Feigned illness. Spent three days locked in my room, unwilling to shower or let a toothbrush touch my filmed-over teeth. My parents had no choice but to take me to a psychiatrist, who declared that the sightings of the girls were in fact hallucinations.

  I was officially diagnosed with schizophreniform disorder, a kissing cous
in to schizophrenia itself. The doctor made it clear that what happened at Camp Nightingale didn’t cause the disorder. That particular chemical imbalance had always been there, lightly percolating in the recesses of my brain. All the girls’ disappearance did was set it free like lava bursting forth from a long-dormant volcano.

  The doctor also stressed that schizophreniform disorder was mostly temporary. He said those who suffered from it usually got better with the right treatment. Which is how I came to spend six months in a mental-health facility that specialized in treating teenage girls.

  The place was clean, comfortable, professional. There was no raving insanity on display. No Girl, Interrupted–style drama. It was just a bunch of girls my age trying their best to get better. And I did, thanks to a combination of therapy, medication, and old-fashioned patience.

  That hospital was where I first started painting. Art therapy, it was called. They set me down in front of a blank canvas, stuck a brush in my hand, and told me to paint my feelings. I sliced the canvas with a streak of blue. The instructor, a spindly woman with gray hair and a gentle demeanor, took the canvas away, replaced it with a fresh one, and said, Paint what you see, Emma.

  I painted the girls.

  Vivian, Natalie, Allison.

  In that order.

  It was far different from my later efforts. Rough and childish and awful. The girls in the painting bore no resemblance to their real-life counterparts. They were black squiggles protruding from triangular dresses. But I knew who they were, which was enough to help me heal.

  Six months later, I was released, although I still had to take an antipsychotic and go to therapy once a week. The meds lasted another five years. The therapy continues to this day. It helps, although not as much as the sessions at the mental hospital with the kind, infinitely patient Dr. Shively. On my last day there, she presented me with a charm bracelet. Dangling from it were three delicate birds.

  Consider it a talisman, she said as she clasped it around my wrist. Never underestimate the power of positive thinking. If you ever experience another hallucination, I want you to touch this bracelet and tell yourself that what you’re seeing isn’t real, that it has no power over you, that you’re stronger than everyone realizes.

  Instead of returning to my old prep school, my parents sent me to the nearest public one. I made friends. I got serious about art. I started to thrive.

  I never saw the girls again.

  Except in my paintings.

  I had thought that information was private. That it was my secret to bear. Yet somehow Franny was able to find out. I’m not surprised. I suppose her kind of money can open a lot of doors. Now she and Theo stare at me, curiosity dancing in their eyes, likely wondering if I’m capable of snapping at any moment.

  “It was a long time ago,” I say.

  “Of course it was,” Theo says.

  Franny adds, “The last thing we want is for you to feel ostracized or punished in any way. Which is why we should have told you about the camera in the first place.”

  I have no idea what they want me to say. That all is forgiven? That it’s perfectly acceptable to be spied on because of something I experienced when I was still in high school?

  “I understand,” I say, my voice clipped. “It’s better to be safe than sorry. After all, we don’t want another mess on our hands, do we?”

  I excuse myself from the table and make my escape between two of the statues. Both seem to stare at me as I depart, their blank eyes seeing nothing but knowing everything.

  * * *

  —

  Theo follows me into the woods. His footsteps shush through the underbrush behind me, faster than my own, more familiar with the terrain. I quicken my pace, despite already knowing he’ll catch up to me. I just want to make him work for it. I veer left without warning, trying to outmaneuver him. Cutting across untrampled forest floor. When Theo follows suit, I do it again, this time zigging farther to the left.

  He calls out to me. “Emma, don’t be mad.”

  I make another sharp veer, heading off in a new direction. This time, my right foot gets caught on a tree root curving out of the ground. I trip and take a series of increasingly faltering steps, trying to right myself before succumbing to the inevitable fall.

  The only thing I end up hurting is my pride. I land on my hands and knees, the blow cushioned by the leaves coating the soft, mossy earth. Getting to my feet, I see I’m in another clearing. One not as neatly maintained as the sculpture garden. It’s darker, wilder, on the cusp of again becoming one with the forest.

  I rotate slowly, looking around, trying to get my bearings.

  That’s when I notice the sundial.

  It sits in the center of the clearing—a copper circle atop a tilted column of marble. Time has turned the copper a light blue, which makes the Roman numerals and compass rose etched into the surface stand out even more. The center of the dial bears a motto, written in Latin.

  Omnes vulnerant; ultima necat.

  I remember the phrase from high school Latin class, although not because I excelled at the language. In fact, I was terrible at it. I remember only because it sent a chill through me when I first learned what it meant.

  All hours wound; the last one kills.

  I touch the sundial, running my fingers over the words as Theo finally catches up to me. He emerges through the trees, slightly out of breath, his hair mussed by the chase.

  “I don’t want to talk to you,” I say.

  “Listen, you have every right to be angry. We should have just told you what we were doing. We completely handled it the wrong way.”

  “That we can agree on.”

  “I just want to know that you’re better,” he says. “As your friend.”

  “I’m one hundred percent fine.”

  “Then I’m sorry, okay? So is my mother.”

  The apology, more forced than sincere, angers me all over again. “If you don’t trust me, then why did you invite me back here?”

  “Because my mother wanted you here,” Theo says. “We just didn’t know what to expect. Fifteen years have passed, Emma. People change. And we had no idea what you’d be like, especially considering what happened the last time you were here. It was a matter of safety, not trust.”

  “Safety? What do you think I’m going to do to these girls?”

  “Maybe the same thing you said I did to Vivian, Allison, and Natalie.”

  I stumble backward, gripping the sundial for support, the copper cold and smooth beneath my fingers.

  “It’s because of that, isn’t it?” I say. “The camera. Digging up my health records. It’s because I accused you of hurting them all those years ago.”

  Theo runs a hand through his hair, exasperated. “That couldn’t be further from the truth. But since you brought it up, I have to say it was a lousy thing you did back then.”

  “It was,” I admit. “And I’ve spent years beating myself up over it. But I was young and confused and scared.”

  “You think I wasn’t?” Theo shoots back. “You should have seen the way the police grilled me. We had cops, state troopers, the fucking FBI coming to the Lodge, demanding that I tell them the truth. They made me take a lie-detector test. They made Chet do it, too. A ten-year-old kid hooked up to a polygraph. He cried for an entire week after that. And all because of what you accused me of doing.”

  His face has gone red, making the pale slash of scar on his cheek stand out. He’s mad now, piling it on to make it clear how much I had wronged him.

  “I didn’t know any better,” I say.

  “There’s more to it than that,” Theo says. “We were friends, Em. Why did you think I had anything to do with what happened to them?”

  I stare at him, dumbfounded. The fact that he has to ask why I accused him makes my anger flare up once again. He might not have caused Vivia
n and the others to vanish, but he’s certainly not completely innocent. Neither of us are.

  “You know exactly why,” I say.

  Then I’m off again, leaving Theo alone in the clearing. After a few wrong turns and another stumble-inducing sneak attack by exposed tree roots, I find my way back to camp. I march to the cabins, seething all the way. I’m mad at Franny. Even more mad at Theo. Yet the bulk of my anger is reserved for myself for thinking that returning here was a good idea.

  Back at Dogwood, I throw open the door. Inside, something springs from the floor, taking flight. I see dark shapes at the window, hear the flap of wings.

  Birds.

  Three of them.

  Crows. I can tell by their jet-black feathers.

  They fly in a frenzied group, smacking against the ceiling, squawking. One of them swoops toward me. Clawed feet skim my hair. Another heads straight for my face. Black eyes staring. Sharp beak gaping.

  I drop to the floor and cover my head. The crows keep flapping. Keep squawking. Keep slamming themselves against the cabin walls. I stretch across the floor, reaching for the door, opening it wide. The movement sends the birds in the opposite direction. Toward the window, where they strike glass in a series of sickening thuds.

  I crawl toward them, my right hand over my eyes, my left one slicing the air to shoo them the other way. The bracelet slides up and down my wrist. Three more birds in motion. It does the trick. One crow spies the open door and darts through it, followed immediately by another.

  The third bird lets out one last squawk, its feathers brushing the ceiling. Then it, too, is gone, leaving the cabin suddenly silent.

  I remain on the floor, catching my breath and calming down. I look around the cabin, making sure there’s not another bird inside waiting to attack. Not that attacking was their goal. They were just trapped and scared. I assume they came in through the window, curious and hungry. Once inside, they didn’t know how to get back out, so they panicked.

  It makes sense. I’ve been there.

  But then I remember the birds thudding against the glass. Such a dreadful sound. I sit up and look to the window.