Before I Wake (22 page)

“This is my brother, Daniel.”

They all stood in the master bedroom. Eli had released Harley. Daniel stood to one side, the rifle pointed to the floor. Arden had her arm around Franny, who had quit crying and was sniffling and wiping her nose with the sleeve of her sweater that she’d stretched over her hand.

Had she spoken Daniel’s name aloud since the day he’d accused her of being responsible for the murders that had taken place in that very room? Arden wondered.

They hadn’t been able to erase that painful memory.

Franny looked up from her sweatered hand, eyes red-rimmed. “Are you okay?”

The truth was that none of them were okay, but they all knew it. Why state the obvious? “Tired. We’re all tired,” Arden said.

Daniel stared at her.

He was her brother. She should know him well, but he’d always been hard to read. He had a way of shutting off his expression while at the same time remaining still and watchful. You knew his brain was humming along, but you had no idea what he was thinking until he spoke.

“What are you doing here?” Daniel asked.

The hostility in his voice caused Harley to look up sharply.

“What do you want?” Daniel asked.

This was hard for Arden. His hatred hurt. It was a pain in her chest that was sharp and dull at the same time.

In her mind, she saw the isolation tank. All along, she’d been terrified of it. Suddenly she craved it. Longed for the sanctuary and the security. The bleaching that was the only thing beyond death that could stop the pain.

Franny had been right. They were ghosts.

What did she want? Daniel had asked. She wanted things to be the way they’d been before. She wanted to turn back time. She wanted her parents to still be alive.

She didn’t want her brother to hate her.

She wanted to quit hating herself.

But none of those things would happen.

“We needed a place to stay,” she said. “Just for a while.”

He looked from her to the others, then back. “I have to talk to you in private.” He took a couple of steps toward the door, then hesitated. Now there was finally something to read, as indecision flitted across his face. “Down the hall. My room, I guess.”

He moved away and she followed. In his old bedroom, she shut the door as he turned to face her. “I don’t want you here,” he said.

She’d expected something like that. But it wasn’t for him to say. The place was just as much hers as his. “You obviously aren’t using the house, so what difference does it make?”

“What
difference
?”

The rifle had belonged to their dad. It was a semiautomatic. Arden had fired it several times when she was growing up.

Daniel removed the clip and jammed it into the front pocket of his jeans. Then he removed the remaining bullet from the gun’s chamber, pocketing that too. He leaned the gun against the wall and turned to her.

“Do you think I don’t watch the news?” he asked. “People are looking for you.” He motioned toward the closed door. “And looking for them.”

“We haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Why are you running then?”

“We need some time.” She wasn’t ready to give him the full story. She wasn’t even sure what the full story was. “Just a little time. They want us for questioning. That’s all.”

“They are calling you ‘persons of interest.’ That’s like putting the word
alleged
in front of
killer
when you saw the guy blow somebody’s brains out.”

“A couple of days,” Arden said. “That’s all.”

He let out a snort of disbelief and braced his hands on his waist, elbows out. “And then what? You’ll take off again?” He was wearing a heavy brown canvas Carhartt jacket that hit him at mid-thigh. “Haven’t you stopped to think about how your running away has fucked everything up?”

“I know that.”

She could make excuses. She could say the bleaching had erased more than she’d planned. She could say she couldn’t face his hatred. But she wouldn’t say those things, because in the end he was right. She should have stayed.

His jaw was dark; he needed to shave.

She didn’t remember ever seeing him with a shadow. It made her feel weird, as if he weren’t really her brother at all, but some impostor. Somebody who’d been trained to act and sound like Daniel, but didn’t have the role down quite right.

“I watched the execution.” His voice was quiet. “I had to. I’d been waiting for a long time.”

She swallowed.

“I can’t say I enjoyed it, but… it’s a relief, you know?”

Tell him. You have to tell him.

He swung away and dragged his finger through a layer of heavy dust on the painted windowsill. He brushed the dust on his jeans. “I said too much that day.”

“It was the truth.”

Tell him.

How would he react when he found out that the person who’d killed their parents was very possibly still running loose? Would he hate her all over again?

“It wasn’t like you killed them yourself,” he said. “It wasn’t like they died by your hand.”

She frowned. In her mind, she imagined a knife blade slicing across skin. Flesh parting. A layer of fat, muscle, bone. She thought about Noah and what he’d done. She thought about poor Vera Thompson.
The shadow people are coming. Whatever you most fear will eventually find you
. Daniel swung back around, head down, not making eye contact. “I have to go to work.” He grabbed the gun.

“Work?” Wasn’t he in school? College? “Where?”

“The grain elevator in town. In Grove.”

Grain elevator
? “Why?”

“Let’s just say I took some time off too.” If you didn’t get out of Lake County immediately, you never got out. High school graduates always said they were just going to stick around a year. Get a job. Make a little money. Save for college. But they never left. Because after a while, things started to seem… well, if not okay, then easy. Laziness set in, and you began to think,
This isn’t bad. What’s so bad about it
? And it wouldn’t
be
bad. Not at the time.

But when you got older, when you looked back and tried to think about what you’d done with your life… that’s when it hit you. That’s when it suddenly became important. When you were too trapped or too sick or too old to do anything about it. She hadn’t wanted anything in a long time, but suddenly she wanted Daniel to have more than he would have here. She was eight years older. She’d looked out for him, taken care of him.

Not that it was much better out there, but he had to at least see what life could be like beyond Lake County. For a while. And then if he wanted to come back he could. Then he would know if it was right or not.

“You should put some ice on your neck,” she told him.

His skin was already turning black and blue. She could make out a couple of fingerprints. Good thing Harley was still weak from his ordeal on the Hill.

Daniel ignored her the way he used to ignore their mother when she told him to take care of himself. “I’ll come back when I get off work.” He pushed past her and jerked open the door. It stuck at the top, the way it always had, making a shimmying sound as it broke loose. “I’ll stop at the Quick Mart and get a few groceries.”

She would tell Daniel about Albert French when he returned.

His feet pounded in the hall, down the steps, and across the living room to make contact with the vinyl floor in the kitchen.

A door slammed.

Arden walked to the window and saw Daniel running across the yard, past the tire swing and down the hill to the barn. Running as if the devil were chasing him.

Daniel rounded the corner of the barn, slipping in loose gravel. He threw his body forward to regain his footing. Now that he could no longer see the house, he slowed to a walk.

On the driver’s side of the truck, he hooked his fingers under the latch, but didn’t open the door. Instead, he leaned against the truck, pressing his head to his bent forearm.

When Arden was about twelve, she’d scratched her name in the moss that grew on the cement wall on the south side of the barn. The letters had been huge, maybe four feet high. They were still there.

He’d asked her why she’d done it, and she’d smiled and said, “So the farm doesn’t forget me.”

“You aren’t leaving, are you?” he’d asked.

“I will someday. So will you.”

“No, I won’t.”

He’d been too young to understand that for his generation staying had become an exercise in clinging to the past for the sake of his grandparents and parents. If he left, if he turned his back on them, he somehow invalidated their lives and his own. It was a no-win situation.

He always felt he had to stay. That he didn’t have a choice.

But now they were gone.

A loud, harsh sob escaped him. He swallowed and straightened away from the truck, sniffling and wiping his nose and cheeks with the sleeve of his jacket.

He opened the door, wedging the rifle behind the seat. Then he slid behind the wheel and turned the ignition key, the engine rumbling to life.

He told her he’d be back, but he wasn’t sure he could do it.

Harley slid down in the porcelain tub, knees sharply bent. He heard water lapping, and felt it channel into his ears.

Deeper.

He needed to go deeper.

He held his breath as the water covered his face.

Eyes wide open, he could see the square of light that was the bathroom window. He could see the white, ruffled curtains and the round bulb above the sink. A sink that was full of hair he’d cut from his head with a pair of scissors. Full of hair he’d removed from his face with the razor he’d found in the cupboard.

He wanted to submerge his entire body, but the tub was too small.

He craved water, loved water, felt safe in water.

Water told him things. Kept him updated. Water remembered all the things he’d forgotten. It was an extension of himself, of who he was. It moved through him, around him.

I
need a swimming pool. That’s what I need
.

But pool water would be cold. He needed warm water.

He lifted his head enough to exhale and take a new breath before going back down.

Rapture of the deep.

Nitrogen narcosis.

Beautiful, beautiful…

A sound disturbed his communion.

A muffled voice, followed by a knock on the door. “Harley? Are you okay?”

It was Arden.

Go away.

She could be such a nag.

Had she really kidnapped him? She claimed to have
rescued
him, but he wasn’t sure. It felt like a kidnapping. Because he’d been someplace he loved, someplace he wanted to be. If you took somebody away from that place… If you broke into a building and sneaked away at night… If you
hid
, wasn’t that kidnapping?

Confusing, very confusing…

He’d been trying to figure it out for quite some time. But then his head would start hurting, and he would just let it go.

Was there a ransom? he wondered. Was she asking somebody for money?

Who? Who would pay for his release? He didn’t know of anybody who would pay. Harris? Yeah. Harris might. Harris would want him back.

Harris was a good guy. Not somebody you’d want to hang out with, but a kind person. You could go a long way with kindness.

“Harley?”

Damn
. There she was again. This time her voice was louder.

She’d opened the door. He could see it, all fuzzy, open about a foot, a blurred head poking through.

She’d seen him naked. He didn’t care about that. He had the memory of Arden’s own naked body curled next to his. Or was that just a dream? Wishful thinking?

“Harley!” She shot into the room, alarmed and panicky.

Oh, yeah. I’m underwater. I forgot I’m underwater.

Meditation destroyed, he surfaced, gasping, surprised to find that his lungs were on fire. Mouth open wide, he sucked in air like a dying man.

Arden ran to the tub and grabbed him by the upper arms. “Harley! Jesus! What are you doing?”

The look on her face was priceless. Mad and worried and horrified all at once. He started laughing. That didn’t help the breathing situation.

She rubbed his back. “Relax,” she told him. “Relax and take easy breaths. There you go. That’s the way.”

She was right. It worked.

In another minute he was breathing normally.

He looked at her and smiled.

She smiled back. “You shaved.” She ran a hand across his jaw. A tender, stroking motion. She touched his hair. “And you cut your hair.”

She was looking at him strangely, almost as if she’d never seen him before. As if trying to figure out who he was.

Did she have memories of the two of them? Together? Or had she left them in the water somewhere? For the water to hold and store and keep safe until she was ready to find them again? Because water remembered.

He wanted her in the water with him. If she could join him there, then they would somehow make a whole person and he would be able to understand and figure out what was going on.

Don’t let them see that you don’t know anything. Never let them see that you’re confused.

“I remember you,” he said.

Her eyebrows drew together. “Of course you do.”

He reached up and touched her hair, rubbing it between his fingers. The red strands made a crunchy sound that was at odds with how soft it felt. He wanted to smell it, but she was too far away.

“Do you remember me?” he asked. “Really remember?”

The puzzled look in her eyes intensified. “I’m not sure I remember everything.”

“The cemetery at the Hill?” he ventured.

Her face cleared. “Yes.”

“A kiss?”

“Yes.”

He let go of her hair and grabbed her by the arm. He gently tugged her closer. “And more,” he whispered, looking at her mouth. “I remember something else.”

“Harley, I—”

She was really close now. So close that he was able to touch his mouth to hers. Just a little at first. A small, timid brush that slowly turned into more. Into open mouths and soft, warm breath.

They were soul mates.

That’s what the contact told him. They’d done this before, and they knew each other. Not just as pals who’d been in an experiment together, but as something more.

He didn’t know if love was part of the equation. Because what he was sensing was something different. Something symbiotic and cerebral. They were chained in a way you couldn’t see. Connected beyond the mere physical.

And what if you added water to a kiss? What if they could go back to the womb together? How strong would they be then? If they became one?

He tried to pull her into the tub with him, but she broke away. Moving her hands nervously. A hand at her waist, another in her hair. Turning away from him. No eye contact.

“I’m sorry,” he said, hoping to make her feel less uncomfortable.

“That’s okay.” Her voice was tight.

The water was getting cold.

He pulled the rubber plug attached to a small chain, then pushed himself to his feet, leaving the water behind him. “Remember that time we were in France?”

She turned back around. “What?”

He picked up a towel and began drying off. “When we went to France? We stayed at some kind of chateau where we drank wine on a terrace overlooking a vineyard. Oh, and we rode bikes.” He pointed at her. “Do you remember that? Do you remember how it started to rain?”

He continued to dry himself as he talked. “We rode the bikes back to the chateau in the pouring rain? It rained all night, but we didn’t care. We stayed inside. We stayed in our room.”

She shook her head, the puzzlement back in her face. “I don’t think I’ve ever been to France.”

“Yes, you have. With me. You just don’t remember.”

“Harley, I don’t think so.”

“It’ll come back to you. It just came back to me. Right here. Kind of a déjà vu feeling.”

Now that he was dry, he reached for her again. She moved toward the door. “I have to go.”

She left, closing the door behind her.

Harley smiled to himself.

She would remember him.