Sisters of Misery (23 page)

It was Finnegan O’Malley.

Maddie walked home in a daze, his name repeating in her head like a mantra:
Finnegan O’Malley. Finnegan O’Malley.
Could he be the one responsible for raping Cordelia? For sending those threatening notes to Maddie? For sending that horrible message to Cordelia right before she disappeared? After the time she spent in the musty police station, Maddie felt the need to clear her head as well as her lungs. Once home, she pulled on her sneakers and decided to take a quick jog. Running always allowed her mind to regain focus. While her body worked out its kinks as she plodded along, her mind was lulled by the rhythm of her Reeboks slapping against the ground. She decided to run through Potter’s Grove in order to retrace the steps of Cordelia on that fateful night she wrote about in her journal. The night she was raped. Maddie could feel her gift growing, but she needed to put herself in emotionally charged places where Cordelia had been. Potter’s Grove was first on her list. Rebecca’s Closet was next.

Everyone Maddie had come in contact with, including her own mother, was convinced that Cordelia had disappeared by choice. Her grandmother, God bless the poor woman, was becoming more delusional by the hour. And her friends, if you could even call them that, were offering up no new information about that Halloween night. The trail was growing colder by the second, and Maddie didn’t know where to turn—or who to turn to—next.

Maddie entered Potter’s Grove, stopped for a moment, and bent down over her knees, trying to catch her breath. A searing cramp reached up her torso. She curved away from the cramp, trying to stretch it out, and was instantly aware of the feeling of being watched. Maddie heard what sounded like footsteps ahead of her in the stand of trees.

“Hello?” she called out. There was no answer. Hair stood up on her arms and on the back of her neck. Someone was watching. She could feel the weight of his eyes.

Maddie pulled up each leg behind her, quickly stretching out her quads before continuing her jog, and then decided to cut past the pond so that she could get to the road quicker.

Footsteps came out of nowhere and thudded up behind her. Before she could turn, Maddie was toppled to the ground by someone.

“What the hell?” Maddie screamed, struggling to pull free from her attacker.

“Hold on, hold on,” came the guy’s voice. “Jesus, Crane. Where’s the love?”

He had her firmly pinned down on her stomach, but Maddie angled her neck so she could look back to see the face attached to the familiar voice. It was Trevor Campbell.

“Trevor!” Maddie elbowed him hard in the side, causing him to roll off of her in pain. “What the hell are you doing? Trying to scare me to death?”

He started laughing. “So, you have no time for me, but you’ve got all the time in the world for my brother?” He stayed on the ground, opening his arms wide. “Like I said, ‘Where’s the love?’”

Trevor Campbell was the last person Maddie wanted to run into while she was in the middle of nowhere. She stood up, brushing herself off. “Nice seeing you, Trevor. Say hi to Kate for me.”

Maddie started jogging again, and within a minute, Trevor was jogging along by her side. “So, you and my brother seem to be getting along well,” he said again, only this time the friendliness had left his voice.

“None of your business, Trevor.” She ran a little faster. To Maddie, Trevor Campbell would always be the boy who used to hide under the bleachers to see the girls’ underwear, the one who’d find a young girl’s weakness or insecurity and then tease her mercilessly, the boy who never had a nice thing to say to anyone, but always expected the world to fall at his feet.

He grabbed her by the arm, hard. “Oh, I think it
is
my business.”

Maddie turned to face him, not wanting to show any weakness or fear. “Is that so?”

“You hanging around with Reed just brings up the whole Cordelia business again, and that’s not good for me or my family, understand? It just makes him look guilty. He doesn’t even know about what went on out on Misery.” The look of shock on her face must have clued him in that he’d said too much.
How could he possibly know about Misery Island?
Could Kate have told him after she’d sworn them all to secrecy?

He let go of her arm and put his hands up in the air. “I’m not trying to be the bad guy, okay? I’m just looking out for my brother.”

“Trevor, you’ve never looked out for anyone but yourself.”

“I’d look out for you if you’d let me,” he said huskily, pulling her body fully against his. Maddie could tell that he wasn’t just being playful. His whole body was at attention. He tried to kiss her then, his tongue roving over her lips, his hands everywhere on her body, pulling, prodding.

Where the hell did this come from? Is this what happened to Cordelia?

“Get off me, you pig!” She pushed him away from her, coming just short of having to knee him in the groin. He pulled back, laughing. He ran his hand through his closely cropped blond hair. He resembled his brother in so many ways, yet Maddie could see evil and a sense of entitlement when she looked into his eyes, something that she didn’t sense from Reed.

“Hey, come on,” he said. “Don’t save it all for my brother.”

“You’re disgusting,” Maddie snapped. She turned and sprinted away from him, lengthening the space between them with every stride.

Maddie heard him call out after her, “You really are nothing like your cousin, are you?” And then quieter, “Stupid bitch.”

All she could think of as she made her way back to the road and out of Potter’s Grove was two things.

One, he definitely was involved in Cordelia’s disappearance

And two, Kate, more than anyone, deserved to end up with that bastard.

THE WHEEL

MAY

T
ess wandered into the kitchen before bed, her hair all in disarray and her eyes showing that she had gone beyond exhaustion but wasn’t ready to give up the fight.

Abigail expected Maddie to keep track of her grandmother, which was becoming more and more of a challenge. When Maddie came home from grocery shopping the other afternoon, arms overflowing with paper bags, she stopped in shock at the sight of Tess in her floral nightgown wandering down the street, heading to the beach.

The other night, Maddie heard a loud banging coming from Tess’s room. After pushing the door open and discovering a chair had been wedged in front of it, she noticed her grandmother’s window open. There sat Tess, perched on the roof like a white cat, staring up at the moon. She was frighteningly close to falling off. Her white hair, normally flattened into even plaits, was wild and splayed around her head like a halo. Her eyes were distant, and she was singing quietly to herself. Then she mumbled about someone in the basement. Maddie assured her that there was no one in the basement and convinced her to come back inside to the safety of her own room.

Now in the warm glow of the kitchen, Tess turned to her, whining, “Momma, I’m hungry.”

Maddie turned to look at Tess, trying to discern if she was joking or if she really saw Maddie as her own mother.

“Grams,” Maddie said sharply, hoping it would snap the woman out of her trance. When she realized that Tess was still staring blankly, Maddie mentally added another item to her to do list.
Call Dr. Stevens
. “If you eat anything right now, it will just give you bad dreams.”

“I don’t have bad dreams, Momma. Only happy ones. I promise,” her grandmother insisted in a child’s voice.

“Grams, I’ve heard you crying out for the past few nights,” Maddie said hesitantly, not sure if she should encourage this regression. “It sounded like you were having nightmares. Plus, I found you out on the rooftop. Do you know how dangerous that is? You could have killed yourself out there.”

“That’s not me, that’s the girl. I hear her crying, too. Can’t sleep ’cause of all that crying.” Tess shuffled over to the kitchen table, looking out the window at the inky sky, and continued, “I keep telling her to leave me alone. Don’t bother me. Keep me out of it.”

A weight fell across Maddie’s shoulders, the same gnawing feeling that she felt when she visited Rebecca.

“What girl are you talking about, Tess?”

“The one who lives in the basement,” she replied flatly.

Maddie could feel herself getting slightly annoyed, perhaps to cover her growing uneasiness.

Forcing a laugh, Maddie said, “Well, Miss Tess, you have quite an imagination, don’t you? I’d think that you of all people would be used to the sounds that come out of this old house at night—the ocean, the wind, the creaking of the old floors—all these things are making your dreams seem like they’re real. But that’s all they are, just dreams. There’s no girl in the basement. There’s nothing here for you to be afraid of.” Maddie heard her own voice rising a few octaves, the way it did when she was nervous.

“Oh, I’m not scared. I’m too old to get scared of the dead. It’s the living that I’m worried about.” She clucked her tongue and gave out a whoop of laughter, chattering to herself as she pushed away from the table and moved out of the kitchen. Maddie could hear her giggling to herself all the way up the stairs, mumbling to herself that “the dead can’t hurt ya, but the living sure can” before slamming her bedroom door.

Maddie had settled into bed with a book when she first heard the crying.

“Tess,” Maddie murmured, shoving the covers away. “I’m coming.”

She quickly moved up the steps toward Tess’s room. The sounds became louder and clearer. Upon reaching the door, the crying stopped as she raised her fist to knock.

Silence. “Are you okay, Tess? I’m coming in now.”

There was no answer.

Maddie turned the glass doorknob, pushing her way into her grandmother’s room. The only sound was the night breeze blowing through an open window and the rise and fall of Tess’s sleep-heavy breath. Confused, Maddie made her way across the room and closed the window. Tess stirred. Maddie stood still for a moment, not wanting to startle her grandmother.

“Who’s there? Leave me alone!” Tess shouted, squinting up at her, confused.

“It’s just me, Grams,” Maddie assured her. “I’m closing your window. You’re going to catch a terrible cold if you sleep with it open like that.”

“I didn’t open it. That girl did. She’s always doing things like that.”

“Tess, there is no girl, okay?” Maddie said firmly, her voice rising. Her eyes darted around the darkened room, taking in every corner. Maddie moved over to the window and peered out at the spindly arms of the oak tree. No one would be able to climb it without being noticed by a neighbor. Not taking any chances, she swung the heavy latch on the old window and pulled the shades down tight.

“Tess, I want you to keep these windows locked from now on. Call me if you hear anything else or if you need me, understand?” Maddie whispered, trying to calm the pounding in her chest. She bent down closer to Tess, listening for her answer, but her grandmother had already drifted back to sleep.

Maddie was making her way out of the room when something sharp dug into the arch of her foot. “Damn!” Maddie cried out. Tess mumbled unintelligibly and then rolled back onto her side. Reaching down to the floor, Maddie’s fingers caught on something jagged attached to a cord. She brought it over to the window to get a better look at it.

It was Cordelia’s quartz crystal necklace. Where had it come from? Maddie held it up so it hung directly in her line of vision; the moonlight streamed through making it shimmer. She slipped it into her pocket and silently exited the room.

It wasn’t until she was back in her room that she remembered her reason for going upstairs in the first place. She’d been so startled by finding Cordelia’s necklace that she had forgotten all about the crying.

Perhaps it was Tess in her sleep. Or maybe a stray cat was prowling outside the window—the lonely cries of cats in heat can almost sound like a child wailing in the night. But the cries seemed too close, too real for any of those explanations. As she got into bed and pulled the covers up tight, she thought of the scary stories that Cordelia used to tell her—about the lonely wails of banshees that crouched beneath windowsills foretelling a death in the family.

And then at that weightless moment right before sleep, a time when the mind is unfettered and often has the most brilliant and true thoughts, only to have them slip away once the shape-shifting light of daybreak creeps in, causing the memories from the night before to scatter and hide—at that moment, Cordelia’s quote sunk in.

For the love of God,
the words came back to her from Reed Campbell’s literature class.
In pace requiescat.
As Maddie tossed and turned that night, the gruesome Edgar Allan Poe short story, “Cask of Amontillado,” played out in her mind. Only, in her dream, Cordelia was the victim who had been suffocated and buried alive, stone by stone by stone. A chill shot through her as she remembered Tess’s dream about stones. Could they have been prophetic once again?

In a cold sweat, Maddie woke up to the sound of knocking. In those first few moments of being roused from a fitful sleep, she realized that something terrified her even more than finding out what had happened out on Misery Island on Halloween. Deep down, what chilled her to the bone was this:

Cordelia would soon be back. And she’d want revenge.