Sojourner (32 page)

“I’m right here,” I try to say, but my mouth won’t move.  My throat is parched, and pain blazes through my skull where an image of white light fills my mind and Lev appears, his wings burning behind him in a white-hot fury that makes his skin and hair that much more ethereal.

“Where are you?”

Pain.  Something is wrong.  I struggle with opening my eyes, but that doesn’t do a whole lot of good.  Even when I finally manage to pry them open, there is yet darkness.

 
What’s going on?”  I force myself to remember where I was last.  With Lev?  No.  At the hospital with Jimmie.  The memory is fuzzy, out of focus, and it’s so hot.  It feels like I’m moving.

“Where are you, Elizabeth?”  This time, I know the voice isn’t a dream.  It’s Lev in my mind, his voice worried.

“I don’t know, I think.  How long has it been since I called you?”  My mouth hurts and it takes a moment for me to realize a gag there.

“An hour.  I never should have left you alone.  What happened?”  His face fills my thoughts and I know he’s just doing that to try to keep me calm.  Surely he feels the fear slowly escalating inside me.

“I remember unlocking the Jeep door and then I think somebody hit me.”

“Do you have any idea where you are?”

“In some kind of vehicle.  We’re moving.  I can’t see anything and I can’t move.”

The vehicle begins to slow and finally comes to a stop.  I’m shaking, sweat dappling my forehead.  I try to move my arms and legs but can’t.  Panic rises inside and a wordless cry escapes, a sound I don’t even recognize, animalistic and frightening.

“Elizabeth, what’s going on?” Lev asks frantically, sensing the panic.

“We’ve stopped.”  I struggle harder against my restraints, but no matter how I thrash, I can’t give myself an inch.  Suddenly I hear a key being inserted into a lock, and I expect to be able to see, but everything’s still dark, the feel of hands grabbing my body muted by something.  A blanket?

Still, I struggle, trying to make it more difficult than it’s worth to pull my body out of the vehicle, but I’m no match.  I feel myself being lifted and carried.  A peaceful whistle breaks the silence, and I cringe at the way the notes echo in an upbeat song.  It seems to go on forever and then suddenly my body drops.  The unexpected motion steals my breath, and I use that opportunity to start struggling, but the motion gets me nowhere.

“Quit squirming.  It’s only gonna make me madder than I already am.  And you really don’t want to do that,” a calm voice tells me.

The darkness spins around me, and the heat is beginning to get to me.  I’ve never dealt well with closed-in spaces, and right now it’s all I can do not to focus on the midnight I can’t shed no matter how desperately I want to.  Suddenly the spinning is no longer just inside me.  My body is being jerked around repeatedly, until I spin out into the night and my head slams into something.  I gasp and hear the rasp of my breath and an involuntary groan escapes my lips.

“Elizabeth,” Lev says, “You okay?” 

“Head hurts,” I think, slowly lifting one hand to touch my head.  A sticky goo greets my fingers.  I pull my hand back and see scarlet staining my skin on at least three hands in my blurry vision.  The light around me is dim.  But we are inside a large room.  Half the room still has wooden floorboards.  The other half, where I lie, is rough earth.  For a moment I look around and see the line of windows like at the school. 

“Here you are, making a mess for me to clean up.  At least this will be the last one.”  The voice that had seemed so unfamiliar now takes on a recognizable form.  Mr. Maguire, my history teacher.

“It’s Mr. Maguire?” Lev asks.

“Yes, I think.”  I blink, trying to clear the darkness from my eyes.

“Can you tell where you are yet?”

“The new wing of the school,” I think, struggling to sit up even though I feel lightheaded.

Maguire leans on the handle edge of a shovel stuck into the ground.  He’s actually smiling as I struggle to move, and I recognize the rage in his eyes.

 
“This is my new classroom, Elizabeth.  This way, you’ll always be with me and nobody will ever know any better.  Except me.”

I rub my head trying to ease the pain.  I still feel blood oozing on my hand so I’m guessing the wound hasn’t scabbed over.I manage to get to a squatting position where I can lunge away if necessary.

“Why are you doing this?” I ask, my voice weak and raspy.

“I was in love with your mother.  I loved her since the first day I saw her.  But the only guy she would look at was that red trash who had no business with Anne.  And that night when she had to drive to the bar to get his sorry drunk ass after he’d been laid off work, she wrecked.  He knew the roads were bad.  She never should have been driving.  But she was.  Because of your father.  So I killed him and hid the body.  It was all good until now.  And those damned hikers finding it.  So it forced me to tidy the last of the unfinished business—you.  Once you’re dead, your father will cease to exist, just like Anne.”

He pulls something out of his pocket. It takes a few moments for my eyes to discern the black rectangular barrel of a gun. 

“What’s going on?” Lev thinks.  “What do you see?”

“He’s got a gun.”

The teacher laughs.  He’s wearing khaki slacks and a button down shirt like he always does in class.  He still has his plastic identification card dangling around his neck.  A wicked gleam lights his eyes and he steps toward me, the gun almost invisible against the darkness.

“I’m coming, Elizabeth.”  I hear Lev’s voice fill my head.  But he’s going to be too late.  I lunge past him and the first bullet rips into a wall, barely missing me.

Someone grabs me.  I look up.  Lev.  His blue eyes narrow determinedly.  Another shot.  Those eyes widen.  His lips part.  A spurt of red gleams from a hole in his chest.  Then the two of us begin falling.  Mr. Maguire is still coming, the gun raised.  He stops right in front of me.  Dead aim.  Then, just as I sense his finger pressing the trigger, I see movement behind him.  Griffin, shovel in hand, swings.  The dull silver of the spade clanging against Maguire’s temple.  He falls over.

“Lev,” I whisper.  I feel his warm blood saturating my coat, and I wonder how much has leaked out.  How much is still in his body?

“I’m bleeding on you,” he whispers, scarlet ebbing from the corner of his mouth.  His body shivers, and I don’t see the shimmer that normally wraps around him.

“This can’t be.” I whisper, my body shaking.

“But it is.”  A fit of coughing claims him.  His breath is labored.  A siren distantly wails.  His eyes seem unfocused and he blinks a couple of times.  “No more bad dreams, Elizabeth.  I’ve taken them from you.”

“No,” I whisper.  I know what that means and I won’t accept it.

He inhales sharply and then the breath stutters once or twice before stillness.  I start shaking so hard, and a scream rips through me.  It’s a keening wail, high-pitched and awful.  Griffin is there, trying to pry me from Lev’s body, but I won’t let go.  I can’t. All I can do is scream and scream.

The EMTs arrive and speak to me but I don’t understand.  I clutch Lev to me.  At least until one of them slowly uncurls my fingers from his while the other detangles our bodies.  Dully, I watch one of them start CPR.  The other looks me over, trying to figure out of I’ve been shot, too.

“Lizzie?”  Griffin kneels beside me.  “I’m sorry.  So sorry.”  His expression is haunted.  I keep staring at the EMTs.  It seems to go on forever until finally one nods to the other and they stop.  I draw my thighs to my chest and rest my head atop my knees.  

Chapter Twenty
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Two

THREE WEEKS LATER

The first thing I notice when I wake is how quiet it is.  I find myself lying on my bed, dawn streaming through the window around the big tree outside.  The thick wooden fingers scrabble at the glass most of the time when the wind stirs them so, but I’ve learned to ignore them. 
Even as I stumble into consciousness, there’s a deep, unsettled feeling, like waking from a nightmare I can’t remember or trying to forget something so bad it’s impossible to repress completely.  The dread hangs over and all around me, waiting for remembrance, yet the details of the last couple of weeks are foggy, and no matter how hard I try to distill them, I can’t.

Unable to take the stillness and silence anymore, I pad barefoot to my bureau and grab a brush.  My hand trembles as I pull it through my long black hair.  Without warning images scatter in my brain like pearls from a broken strand.  Maguire.  Gun.  Lev.  Blood. 

The brush clatters to the dresser top.  I can’t move except to inhale and exhale.  The final truth I don’t remember is rushing at me like a locomotive, flying past, just missing, and finally the caboose.  But then sometimes, a near miss is no miss at all.

More memories spatter inside my head.  Maguire shooting at me.  Lev blocking his path then falling.  I shake my head and tell myself to focus.  There’s more locked away.  I sense it, but the part of me that holds them doesn’t seem to want to give them up.  It’s like denying the sun if you stay in a cave.  Unfortunately sunlight finds cracks.

“Lev?” I think, wondering if he can hear me.  I sit on the edge of the bed, waiting.

No answer.

“Lev?”  This time I use my voice and mind, as if by doing so it will force an answer.

Silence.

More images.  Lev in my arms, writing in agony.  Blood seeping out of his body onto mine.  The EMTs pulling me away.  The stretch of CPR and nothing.  Maybe I’m crazy, I tell myself.  Maybe it was all a dream.  Then I start whirling around, searching for signs that will reinforce that stupid hope because if not, the other is unthinkable.  I can’t go there.

No matter where I look, I find nothing to dispel the memories.  All my books line their shelves.  My pictures of friends back in Dallas are still pincushioned to my bulletin board.  Even my stuffed animals are lumped into the piles near the bed where I throw them when I sleep.  Nothing and everything seems different.

I close my eyes and imagine Lev on the bed with me, his glowing wings furled around me, holding me safely each night until dawn spread across the sky.  I remember the heat of his body and the way his skin reflected the light.  I remember the feel of his lips on mine, his hand touching my back.  These are what I know of love, and every part of me bears a memorial to his existence so that I am not myself without him.  I do not exist in his absence.

Shaking, I grab my keys and my purse then head out the door.  The sky is so blue, and I think of Lev’s eyes.  The image of him in my arms comes to mind and I have to force it away.  It’s my fault he suffered.  It’s all my fault.  The guilt hits hard and fast and I have to do something or I won’t be able to breathe.

I thrust the keys into the ignition and drive toward the cemetery.  As usual, the lot is empty, and I wind around across bridge, accelerating carefully so as not to drive off it. 

The pit of my stomach turns to ice.  I look at the empty driveway in disbelief.  Then I shove the car into park and run up to the door.  My fist pounds the door as I yell for Lev.

Silence.  Tears begin seeping down my face and I can’t wipe them away quick enough.  I keep pounding, ignoring the pain in my hand.  He has to be there.  He just has to.

Someone catches my hand.  I turn, expecting Lev.  It’s not even Celia or Evan.  The woman in the office stands there, looking at me as if I’ve gone mad.