Eternity (21 page)

“It’s okay,” Em said. The truth was, Em didn’t care about the nitty-gritty of Skylar’s mistakes—not as much as she wanted the key to saving her own soul. “We all make mistakes.”
And some pay for them more than others.

She could still hear strains of Lucy’s babbling. God, it was creepy, yet melodic and relaxing. Em had to fight competing urges to run up the stairs or out the door.
Everyone wants to be good,
Em heard her say.

“Can I talk to her?” Em said suddenly. She knew it was forward, but there was something about that voice. Those words.

Skylar looked at Em suspiciously. “You want to meet her?”

“If it’s okay with you,” Em said, but she was already moving toward the stairs.

“Okay,” Skylar relented. “But we have to be quiet. I don’t want Aunt Nora to wake up.” She motioned for Em to follow her up the creaky wooden steps, closer and closer to the singsong tune that emanated from behind a wooden door on the second floor.

The noise continued, high-pitched and repetitive, like a music box that refused to unwind. Em heard snippets of words; they seemed to be luring her forward. The song was somehow familiar, like a lullaby Em would have heard when she was little. And the way Skylar was reacting to the sound—all jittery, clearing her throat over and over—it made Em very nervous.

Skylar stopped for a moment in the hall. She took a deep breath, then swung open the door.

A girl was sitting on the floor in front of a full-length mirror. She had high cheekbones and she was thin, almost wiry. Her arms reminded Em of something you might see in a museum: all sinew and ropy muscle. Em could tell she used to be pretty, but it was hard to see her as such now. A prominent scar ran along her hairline. Her forehead was pale and sheened with sweat, even though it was cold in the house. Her dirty-blond hair, the same shade as Skylar’s, was uncombed. She was in the process of applying maroon lipstick shakily across her lips.

She made piercing eye contact with Em in the mirror and stopped humming immediately.

“Hi, Sky,” the girl said happily. “Want to try this new color I found?” She held up the tube of lipstick.

Skylar swallowed and offered a strained smile, obviously trying to regain her composure. “Lucy, this is my friend Emily,” she then said, taking an unsteady step forward. She gestured for Em to follow her. The room was clearly an office that had been converted into a makeshift bedroom. An old computer and a jumble of wires and electrical equipment were heaped in the corner beyond the bed. It was small and musty and smelled, to Em, like ink cartridges.

Lucy continued to primp. Her eyes seemed to be locked into a wide stare.

“Lucy?” Skylar ventured.

“Yes?” Lucy turned around slowly, with an expression somewhere between confused and content. Then she smiled, like she was remembering a line from a script. “It’s nice to meet you, Emily.”

“You too,” Em said. She wished Lucy would start mumbling again, now that she was close enough to catch every word.

But Skylar’s sister seemed suddenly shy. She mashed her lips together, rubbing the redness into the skin around her mouth.

Skylar shrugged apologetically. “Sometimes she doesn’t really say much,” she offered.

“That’s okay,” Em said. Outside Lucy’s window, the night was dark and starless. “What color is that, Lucy?” She moved closer, hoping to make the girl more comfortable.

Lucy turned it over to check, and as she did, her whole body stiffened. Without warning, she threw the lipstick away from her; when it hit the wall near Em and Skylar it left a sharp red smear on the wall.

“Lucy! What are you doing? Why did you do that?” Skylar shrieked, going to her sister, who had begun to rock softly back and forth.

“I’m sorry, Sky,” she said, drooping into Skylar’s arms. They won’t leave me alone. Even the lipstick . . . ” A single tear ran down her face, and when she swatted at it, she smudged her makeup.

Skylar stroked her hair. “Shhhh,” she said. “Shhhh.”

Something in Lucy’s tone made Em’s blood run cold. Made her want to listen more closely. She bent to pick up the tube, which had landed near her feet. When she turned in over, there was a little white sticker on the bottom of the silver tube.

DEEP ORCHID,
it read. Em stiffened, resisting the urge to throw it across the room just as Lucy had. The color of the lipstick was Deep Orchid.

“Skylar . . . ” Em started to say. But Lucy began talking again.

“The mouth . . . of the albino,” she said, clearly finding it increasingly difficult to catch her breath. “It’s the only way . . . to undo it.”

Undo it.
It couldn’t be. . . . Did Lucy know something about the Furies? Was she one of the unlucky “patients” whom Em had read about, whose damaged minds made them susceptible to the Furies’ evil ramblings?

“Undo what?” Em said. She moved into a squat. Skylar glared at her, clearly wanting the interrogation to end, but Em ignored her. Her heart was beating very fast. “What do you mean, the albino?”

“It’s purity,” Lucy said. “Clean slate. Purity. Clean slate. Purity. Clean—” The words gave Em goose bumps from her scalp to her legs.

“Okay, we hear you, Luce,” Skylar said. Her eyes were wide with anguish.

“She knows about the Furies,” Em said aloud. “She hears them.”

“Ever since the accident, she gets riled up and I can’t calm her down.” Skylar shook her head, on the verge of tears. “You’re right. She somehow knows about them. Will ramble about them for hours, then just stop. Like a switch has been flipped in her brain. But nothing she says makes any sense. You have to believe me. I didn’t mean—I didn’t want this to happen.”

“I believe you,” Em said quietly.

So the Furies brought this on
too,
Em thought. Em remembered the passage in her book about how sometimes the brain was damaged in such a way as to make patients “open” to the voices
of the Furies.
They hear the Furies’ chatter, but they cannot channel it. Unlike prophets, these troubled souls have no direct links to the Furies’ energy. They are merely exposed to it and tormented by it.
Em had wondered many times whether this was her punishment, her terrible fate: to be driven mad by the Furies. But now she knew that
her
punishment would be even worse.

The albino
—what did that mean? Who was she referring to? Em’s breath came tight and fast. Whiteness. Purity. A clean slate, as Lucy had said. She tried to stay calm, even as a soaring sensation of hope fluttered through her chest.

Nora had said there might be a way to reverse it. A way to banish them. Something about purity.

Was there really some way to make the Furies think that their job here was done?

The early morning light shone hazily on the AHS athletic field, where the girls’ field hockey team was warming up on Sunday morning. JD made his way toward the bleachers, expecting to see Walt Feiffer’s pinched face staring back at him from the metal seats. As he climbed up the steps, he took in the expansive field, the smell of freshly cut grass and dew, and the sound of wooden sticks clacking against each other.

JD settled into a spot near the announcer’s booth, where he could see both entrances and wait for Walt to arrive. He had a view of the school, up on a small hill just to the east of the field.

It felt surreal that this could be JD’s life. It was like a film he’d once loved as a kid, but as he watched it now, everything felt forced—the script, the dialogue, the settings. As if
everything he’d understood about the film no longer connected to the person he now was. Sitting there, feeling the cold metal through his jeans and overlooking the whole of his high school campus, JD thought about Chase and Zach, and how jealous he had been of that whole crowd. Of their clichéd high school experience, of the effortlessness with which it all came. He used to think he’d have to do something really freaking amazing in order to win Em’s heart. To stand out amid all that perfect normalcy.

But now, here he was—waiting to meet Walt Feiffer, who still hadn’t showed. And he was doing it
for
Em. To save her. All that crap from before . . . how he’d felt passed over. It was meaningless now. He could barely remember what it felt like to be that guy.

He rubbed his arms against his thick canvas jacket and checked his phone. 8:20. Drea’s dad was twenty minutes late. There was no answer when JD tried calling the Feiffers’ landline.

A whistle blast pierced the air and the field hockey girls moved from warm-ups into drills. The sun rose higher in the sky and JD stood up, craning his neck and wondering if he should go back out to the parking lot to look for Walt. Had he misunderstood their plan?

Mr. Feiffer had been drunk at both the funeral and his house. Had he drunk too much last night and passed out? There was a decent chance he had forgotten all about their meeting.

No, that didn’t make sense—Walt was the one to have suggested the meeting in the first place, and now he was almost half an hour late. JD tried calling Drea’s home phone again. Nothing. He had a bad, bad feeling. His boots clanged against the metal as he jogged back down to the parking lot. Seeing no sign of Walt, JD made the split-second decision to pay the Feiffers’ a visit. He needed to hear what Drea’s dad had to say.

The feeling of unease only got worse as he drove up to the Feiffers’ house, his heart hammering in his chest. The place had seemed run-down yesterday, but when JD pulled into the driveway it looked as though it was on the verge of collapse. No one answered when he rang the bell (though he hadn’t expected anyone to), and when he leaned over the stoop railing to peer into the front window, he didn’t see any signs of life. Everything was still. Lifeless.

A sense of foreboding flickered in JD’s stomach. The front door was locked, so he made his way around to the back door, which swung open. There was no sound in the kitchen except the faint buzzing of an invisible fly.

He knew instinctively that it was useless to call out, but he did anyway. An itching sense of fear tremored through his whole body. “Mr. Feiffer?” There was no one here. Nothing. No response.

Except for a sudden, loud, shattering
crash
just to JD’s left. He jumped; his neck stung from twisting it so hard and so fast.

Jesus.

But it was nothing. A plate, slipping from the top of a pile of dishes in the sink and breaking into a hundred pieces on the Feiffers’ tile kitchen floor.

His hands were sweating. He palmed them on the back of his jeans. JD moved through the kitchen, conscious of the tiny sounds his sneakers made on the squeaky linoleum. Just before he crossed into the living room, he grabbed a frying pan off the counter. Just in case.

“Mr. Feiffer?” he said again, pushing through the door onto the matted carpeting. Every hair on his body stood up straight.

The smell hit him first. Stale. Not yet rancid, but something like a trash can—like coffee grounds and wet newspapers and a dog’s breath mixed together. He gagged, brought his hand to his nose.

Oh god.
The reeking odor of the place was making him delirious as he stepped cautiously down the hallway—he almost thought he heard the distant sound of shrill laughter. He tightened his grip of the handle of the frying pan.

Another step.

Another.

“Mr. Feiffer?” he tried one last time. “Are you—”

But the words were ripped from his throat.

Because there was Walt Feiffer.

Sitting upright in his recliner. Eyes open, but unseeing. His
face red and twisted and completely frozen. Pinned to his shirt, right above his heart, was a red orchid.

“Oh shit. Oh my god, oh shit, Mr. Feiffer, oh god.” JD’s voice sounded wild and strangled even to his own ears.

Walt Feiffer was dead.

JD stumbled backward into the hall, his legs like heavy blocks he had no control over. And then a wave of dizziness hit him and he hunched over, gagging. He was on his knees now. His face was burning from the feeling of having to puke or cry or in some way get what he had just seen
out
.

Another one dead.

He heaved, trying to catch his breath in the wretched air.

Slowly, his breath started to get to normal. He tried to steady his mind.
What do I do what do I do what do I do . . .

Call the cops. Of course. Of course.

Unable to take his eyes off the body in front of him, he called 911. It seemed to take forever for someone to pick up.

“I’m calling to report . . . a man. A dead man.” JD ran a hand through his hair. “Sixty-one Hanover Way . . . Yes, I’m certain he’s dead. . . . Yes, I’ll stay here.”

He hung up and headed down the hall toward the front door, avoiding the living room entrance. Just then, a figure—in the window. There. Someone’s face. He could have sworn he’d just seen eyes, shining against the glass.

Had Mr. Feiffer been murdered? Was the killer still here?

“Get out of here,” he told himself. “Get the hell away.”

But he knew deep in his blood. He knew what kind of killing this was.

This was the work of the Furies.

There was no longer any doubt: The Furies were real, and they had done this. That awful red flower bloomed just next to Mr. Feiffer’s heart, like an enormous spot of blood.

He’d missed his chance.

Mr. Feiffer was gone. And with him, JD’s chance of learning about the banishment ritual.

Drea was gone.

There was a good chance that Em, too, would soon leave him.

Gone.

He had to talk to her. Had to find out who—or what—was doing this.

JD stumbled to the front door and opened it, taking deep, grateful breaths of fresh air. He collapsed to a seated position on the stoop.

It wasn’t until the police cruiser pulled up that he started to think about what he would say to them. JD stood up and steadied himself.

“Drea Feiffer, Walt’s daughter, was a friend of mine,” he told them when they asked. “I’ve been visiting Walt now and then. Just checking in. He’s been having a tough time. When I came by today . . . this is what I found.”