Mercy (6 page)

the dark, lively eyes that are so like Ryan’s. But she’s a fine-boned ash blonde where Ryan’s hair is so dark it could almost be black. Physically, they couldn’t look less like twins.

Maybe that girl was right. Maybe it did go deeper than the twin thing and I should just extricate myself now, say it was all a horrible mistake, sorry for sticking my oar in, what was I thinking? But I don’t. I like a challenge. Recognise it for a truth.

‘She’s beautiful,’ I say.

He lets go of my sleeve, throws down his rucksack, deliberately ignores the comment.

‘How did you know?’ he demands again harshly.

‘About today. Don’t bullshit me, choirgirl.’

‘I saw you,’ I say. He doesn’t need to know that it wasn’t with my eyes. Trust doesn’t need to come into this. ‘You were digging around.’

His gaze slides sideways to his abandoned pack, back to me.

‘Yeah?’ he sneers. ‘You followed me then. Did
she
put you up to this?’ He rolls his eyes in the direction of the stairs outside. ‘You my new little watchdog now?

Got a crush on me, have you? That was quick work.

You’ll get over it; plenty have.’ The look on his face is 60

ugly, self-mocking.

I meet his glare steadily. ‘It doesn’t matter how I got there. But the church is too obvious. No one would be able to hide someone who looks like Lauren in the Paradise First Presbyterian Church and get away with it!

Especially if she’s some sort of live
trophy
. Think about how many people go in and out of that place in a week, use the church, the hall, the rec rooms, the outbuildings you were sniffing around today.’

Ryan’s eyes are unfocused for a moment before snapping back to mine.

‘Someone would hear something, see something,’ I say. ‘That place, that room you’re looking for? I don’t think it’s inside the church grounds.’

Ryan is so sunk in thought that he doesn’t realise what I’m saying. I
know
he isn’t looking for a body, but don’t ask me how it works, this knowledge. He’s looking for some kind of storeroom where a girl is being kept alive.
I heard her, too
, I almost tell him.
She was
breathing. It was dark. It has something to do with the
fact she can sing like an angel.

‘But I’m getting evangelical music,’ Ryan insists quietly, no longer looking at me. ‘Hymns, snatches of a sermon. It’s
got
to be the church. It’s the only one in 61

town. Because, funnily enough,’ there is no mirth in his voice, ‘the people of Paradise aren’t huge churchgoers.

Contrary to what everyone else says and thinks — even my own parents — Lauren is
not
dead and she’s close.

Close enough that I can sometimes pick up her dreams and her thoughts — the stuff of nightmares, Carmen.’

It’s the first time he’s said my name, and for a minute I’m not sure who he’s talking to. Then I remember who I’m supposed to be, and I shake my head. ‘The manse would be the better bet,’ I say quietly.

He looks at me blindly, his gaze still so inward-focused that he doesn’t ask how it is that I know for sure that the living quarters of the church’s minister are located outside the church grounds. But I
saw
the place he went to today, if only in illogical fragments. And there was no house there.

‘You know, the preacher’s private residence,’ I go on as his dark eyes finally settle once more on me. ‘It should be close to the church. That’s how it usually works. It’s likely to be less scrutinised, less frequented, but near enough to the church for you to hear the kinds of things you say you’ve heard.’

I don’t elaborate that I’ve heard them, too, through him, through his skin. Voices raised in vigorous Protestant 62

song. An organ. Bible thumping. But the sound was too distant, too faint, not immediate. I perceived snatches of brilliant sunlight, too, falling slantwise down a flight of stairs, blinding when it came. One door. Two. More stairs. The feeling of one room flowing into another. A clock ticking. The sounds of cars leaving a nearby car park in convoy after service, horns tooting. Ordinary things. But then that feeling of terror. With light came misery. The light brought pain and shame and a feeling of wanting to die. I was sure — don’t ask me how — that Lauren found the darkness almost more bearable than the light.

The sensation was fleeting, and to Ryan probably indistinguishable from his own nightmares. But in that strange way I have of seeing too much all at once, I saw it and I know that he is right. She is still alive and he still has some kind of faint, open connection to her. And he believes she’s there, at that church. So, it’s a starting point, of sorts. And it seems a good enough reason for me to be here, gives me something else to focus on other than myself. Self-pity wears you down, eventually. You know?

And admit it
, niggles that small voice inside,
it gives
you an excuse to spend more time with the guy
.

63

‘Tonight,’ I say firmly, telling that inner voice to go to hell, ‘we go back after everyone’s asleep and we try the manse.’

Ryan looks like he’s about to protest but then his shoulders slump. ‘I can’t understand why you’d believe me, why you’d want to help, when we’re total strangers.’

Not to me
, I think.
There’s something about you so
familiar I feel the pull of it in my soul.

‘She was a soprano like I am,’ I say. ‘She was a singer.

She should be with us …’

There’s no need to say any more, for Ryan’s face is bleak and he closes his eyes, swallows convulsively.

Maybe he understands more, remembers more, of his night terrors than I give him credit for.

We promise to meet downstairs by the front door after his parents have gone to sleep.

I head back down the hallway to Lauren’s room, slough off Carmen’s clothing like dead skin and stand under the jets of the shower, head bowed. No thought, no action for a while, just sensation.

When I get out, there’s one thing I have to do for Carmen. This is her gig, after all. And I’m trashing it.

I need her to know that I’m looking out for her. I also need to know what my limits are, whether I have any 64

limits.

Wrapped once again in a pristine white towel, I take a cracked CD case off the top of a pile of Carmen’s things and slip it into Lauren’s sound system.

When the music starts up, though I never feel sick and I never feel cold, I cannot stop shivering.

65

It is past midnight and I thought the Daleys would never go to bed. Finally, I hear them tossing and turning in their private hells, which is what sleep has become for them, I suppose.

On the stairs, I freeze momentarily when Mrs Daley cries out, ‘Give her to me!’ in a voice unlike her own. As if she is locked in a contest of wills with the Devil and the Devil is winning.

Ryan is already waiting near the front door, the loaded rucksack at his feet, lumpy and misshapen.

‘Thought you weren’t coming,’ he growls, hand on the latch.

‘Wait!’ I whisper. ‘The dogs.’

66

‘Oh, yeah,’ he says, frowning. ‘It’ll wake them for sure. We’ll have to go through the Charltons’ place.’

We head down the hallway back towards the kitchen and Ryan stares hard at me for a moment as I cross into a patch of moonlight.

‘What?’ I say.

‘Nothing.’ He shakes his head and opens the back door quietly. ‘Up and over. Quickly.’

Ryan vaults the paling fence between the Daleys and the Charltons, who keep no dogs, catching me easily on the way down. Before anyone can see us go, we are already out onto the street and heading north.

‘Church is this way,’ says Ryan curtly. I can see he’s already regretting this. ‘Try and keep up.’

He doesn’t look back again as we cross block after block. Though the streetlights are dim, it’s not hard for me to keep him in sight. The streets are deserted, the night chilly enough to keep even the most hardy, indoors.

There’s nothing and no one to check our progress and suddenly we’re standing in front of a waist-high wire fence that separates the First Presbyterian Church of Paradise from the street.

In the dark, the church and its outbuildings look small and uninviting. We stand within the shadow of a 67

huge spreading pine on the footpath outside the car park entrance and listen for a moment. Like if we concentrate hard enough, we’ll be able to hear Lauren just breathing, just holding on.

‘Let’s go,’ I say finally, giving Ryan a small shove in the kidneys. ‘Manse is that way.’

I point him towards a small, clinker-brick, one-storey house on the property next door to the car park with a
Pastoral Care Available
sign stuck neatly into a garden bed in the front yard. There are no lights on. It’s time to dig.

I walk forward stealthily in the absolute shadow of the tree, but Ryan doesn’t move.

‘Come on!’ I hiss. ‘We don’t have much time. Let’s do this.’

I don’t fancy Carmen getting caught out here, in Ryan Daley’s company, with no good explanation. I’ve got her into enough trouble already. Everything has to look like it’s by the book from now on. I’ve made that promise to myself, and to her.

Ryan is still frozen in place, staring at me strangely.

His eyes are huge in his face.

‘What?’ I say.

‘You’re, uh …’ he says shakily.

68

‘Spit it out,’ I snap. ‘Being a
choirgirl
, I have a rehearsal to get to in the morning and the night isn’t getting any younger, buddy.’

His hands sketch the air unsteadily. ‘You’re, you’re, uh …
glowing
.’

I look down at my hand, hold it up to my face. He’s right. In the absence of light, a faint sheen of illumination seems to seep up out of my skin, the lightest mother-of-pearl glow. It lights up the immediate area around me.

I frown, and then a hazy memory of the bookshop girl, the girl whose name I can no longer remember, breaks the surface of my mind. Her new boyfriend had said something similar once, on a walk home. It had been a moonless night. We’d been drinking and giggling all night long like thieves, though it had been more of an act on my part. I don’t even like the taste of beer, but I’d downed a truckload of the stuff and it had still done nothing for me. ‘It must be love,’ I’d replied at the time, puzzled. ‘Or beer goggles, Bernie.’

He’d laughed and forgotten all about it in the harsh light of morning; and I’d left soon afterwards, left the tentative courtship, the rest of her life, to her. The strange comment had completely slipped my mind. But now I saw it for myself.

69

For a moment, I’m grateful for the memory, it’s a beautiful memory and I’ll hold onto it for as long as I can.

But I’m also angry. It’s just another stupid complication for me to deal with. Right now, it’s not supposed to be about me, although some day soon I hope it will be.

I let my glowing hand fall gently to my side.

‘Oh, that,’ I say casually. ‘Well, I guess I won’t be needing to borrow a torch from you, after all.’

Perversely, as we approach the back door of the manse and absolute silence is what the situation calls for, all Ryan wants to do is talk.

‘How do you
do
that?’ he hisses. ‘It wasn’t my eyes playing tricks then, back at home. It’s really faint, but noticeable. Like you’re
made
of it.’

He runs a finger quickly down one of my arms and it’s electric, his touch. I shake him off quickly, though a big part of me doesn’t want to.

‘Shut up and focus,’ I snap.

I scout the barren backyard for any signs of a trapdoor, a basement; see nothing but withering lawn and concrete. These are not green-fingered people. Their concerns are clearly not of this earth. The house is low to the ground, ugly and functional. There are no suspicious 70

outbuildings, no other structures at all. If there is any kind of hidden cavity or chamber to this place, it will have to be hewn into the ground itself and accessed from somewhere inside that house.

Ryan won’t leave it alone. ‘Are you a ghost?’ he demands. ‘You feel pretty real. Has Lauren “crossed over”, is that it? Is she trying to tell me something? Is that why you’re here?’

I put my hand on the unlatched screen door and say icily, ‘
No
,
no, no
and
no
as far as I’m aware. If I was a ghost with omniscient powers, you think I’d need to be breaking into some stranger’s house with you? You think I’d even be here? I’d just walk through the walls, wouldn’t I? I’m just a freak with freaky skin, okay?’

Out of ideas, I show him the unhealed eczema scars on both wrists and he frowns rebelliously.

‘I’m not stupid,’ he growls after a moment.

‘And I’m not saying you are,’ I reply fiercely under my breath. ‘But I don’t have all the answers, and that’s the truth. Now either you start digging up the whole backyard like you tried to do around the church today, or we figure out whether this place has a basement from the inside. And I know which option I’m liking better, so get in there, hero boy. We don’t have much time.’

71

Ryan’s mouth compresses into a straight line. I know we will be having this talk later. He pulls a pair of gloves from a side pocket of his pack, takes the screen-door latch out of my hand, and pushes me out of the way.

Of course, being Paradise, the back door is unlocked.

Shooting me a hard look, Ryan removes a torch from his pack and opens the door silently.

We comb the house on sneakered feet, from room to room. Study the joints in the floorboards, lift up the rugs and bath mats, play the beam of the torch along the skirting that hugs the intersection between walls and floor, the single manhole cover in the bathroom ceiling, doing everything together, me watching his back, him watching mine.