Somewhere to Dream (Berkley Sensation) (21 page)

“But if you ignore it, it might kill you.”

I smiled vaguely. “Yeah, maybe.”

“Nah. It won’t kill you,” he assured me. “It’s stuck in your brain, though. Let me help you.”

“You’ll hate me when you hear it.”

He shrugged lightly, his gaze confident. “Not possible.”

I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and let myself fall back into the nightmare.

CHAPTER
32

From Behind the Wall

We had gone weeks without rain. Our mouths and eyes burned constantly, dry as the fragile blades of grass that scratched the door frame of our sagging little house. The sun attacked our bedroom as if it were a beast, sinking hungry rays into the worm-eaten wood of the walls, licking our skin until it shone. Maggie, Ruth, and I shared a bed, making the heat even more difficult to bear. I slept each night with my head pressed to Ruth’s, breathing the essence of her sweat. She was ten, five years younger than I, and while her body was still young enough to be called that of a child, it had begun to seep the musk of a woman.

Maggie always woke with a different expression on her face. Sometimes she appeared distracted, as if trying to remember what she had just seen. Sometimes she awoke with what I can only describe as the most wonderful halo around her. I could actually see the colours, the ethereal shimmering, breathing along with her. Those were the best mornings. The air around her seemed to glow like the sun when they came, like it was thick with something delicious. And when she’d reach over and touch me, or when she’d hug me, still warm from sleep, I could almost share whatever she’d dreamed. Not the visions, of course. Just the feel of them. It was beautiful.

But on that morning Maggie woke with terror carved into her face, and her sweat-soaked hair stuck to her cheeks. No colour brightened her face, nor the air around her. In fact, the air in our room was still as death. Wet with the kind of viscous slime an earthworm oozes as it burrows through the earth. Cold, even, though it was the hottest summer anyone could remember. As if our room had become a tomb. She clung to our faded yellow walls with fingers like claws, beads of sweat rolling down her cheeks. She stared at me and tried to speak, but nothing passed through her lips save a trembling breath.

“What is it?” I whispered, but still no words came.

I turned to Ruth, who blinked like a blue-eyed owl. “Get Mama,” I said.

Ruth rolled to the edge of the bed and set her little pink feet on the floor. She ran from the room, mussed blond curls bouncing down her back. Ruth always ran on her toes. Like a fairy. Ruth was just like a little fairy.

Mama appeared in the doorway, and Maggie wrapped her arms around her, clinging to the old white nightgown as if she was a child, not a grown woman of seventeen. She didn’t cry, only stared without blinking. It was the most frightening thing I’d ever seen.

Breath by breath she came back to life, though she seemed reluctant to drop her hands and step away. It was only when our mother put her hands on Maggie’s shoulders and pressed her a step back from her that my sister was able to stand on her own. Her chest rose and fell as it had in younger days, when she’d chased me up and down the hill outside our home until we both giggled and rolled in the stiff, golden grass. There were no giggles this time, only a silence at last broken by the croak of a raven in the woods beyond our land.

Mama, her fair hair pasted onto her neck in sweaty curls, looked just as terrified. I wasn’t brave, but I was the calm sister, the one to speak reason when the others spun in circles. Perhaps that’s why I was so afraid most of the time. It seemed reasonable to me. Anything unknown should remain unknown, because it posed a possible threat.

“Let me help her, Mama,” I said.

Mama smiled at me through bewildered eyes, and in them I saw my own fear. I had inherited my timid personality from her. How a woman as slight as she survived the bleak South Carolina grasslands, I will never know. Then again, I am still alive, so maybe I do know. We do what we must. We survive, though we would often rather not. It is the way of man and beast to refuse our own deaths, though we’re never really given a choice. I often wonder about that. I wonder if, after the cruelest day of all, might I have chosen otherwise if I’d only been brave enough?

I helped Maggie dress, guiding her arms through the short sleeves, handing her a comb to slide through the tangles the pillow had tied in her hair when she’d rolled, attempting to escape the dreams. She sat on the side of the bed and stared at the comb for a moment, frowning, like she couldn’t remember what it was for.

“Comb your hair, Maggie. You’ll feel better.”

When she looked at me, her eyes were so sad. As if she carried the worst possible news in them. Maybe if she’d cried, it might have eased their burden. But Maggie rarely cried. In fact, I couldn’t remember ever having seen her cry.

She combed through her dark hair in long, smooth strokes and watched me clean my face and teeth, using the tepid water from the old tin bowl on the table. She braided her hair, then helped me with mine, but her fingers shook while she tied the bow.

In appearance, Maggie was what people called plain, though it never would have been a term I used. She was dark and strong, like our father, God rest his soul. Ruth and I were blond and slight like our mother, though I was never as beautiful as Ruth. No one could have been. People stared at her when we went to town, and she smiled at everyone. She made them smile. Like she cast a spell over anyone she ever saw. I often wonder what she might have become had she been given the chance.

Maggie was seventeen at the time, and I was two years younger. Both she and I had developed the bodies we would carry as women. Hers was always in motion. Like her mind. It was always moving, digging into problems, unwilling to stop until the answer was revealed. She was also our defender, standing up to our father more than once when he came home reeking of whisky. Unafraid, my Maggie.

But on that day, I marveled at the change in my older sister. She startled as if she were a fawn, wild-eyed at any unexpected noise. She eventually settled into whatever she could find to keep her hands and mind busy. Despite the crippling heat, the broom was busy in every corner of the decrepit house, her sewing needle winked in and out of anything needing to be mended, and she wove me a bracelet out of long, dry grass. It was rough work because without rain to soften the ground, the grass splintered when she tried to bend it. When it was done, she sewed a little dress for the shabby, yellow-haired rag doll Ruth carried everywhere.

Ah, Ruth. I have to stop thinking of her, because my heart breaks anew every time her face flits through my memory.

And yet the story must be told, and Ruth played a part in it, no matter how brief.

A dozen men came in the afternoon, their sweating horses stirring up dry dirt as they slowed in front of our house. We weren’t often visited by anyone, living as remotely as we did, and Mama reflexively pulled our father’s rifle from the wall. I remember the clouds of dust lingering around the men, how hot air pressed urgently against my skin as we stepped through the door to see what they wanted. The heat had pushed any hint of a breeze away; the horses barely lifted their tails when flies lit.

Maggie went still beside me, then she started to shake. Mama stepped in front of us, holding the rifle as if she knew exactly how to use it, though I don’t think she’d ever shot anything in her life.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” she said. “My husband will be here shortly. Is there something I can help you with?”

One of the men seemed to be in charge. He wore a tattered blue shirt while the clothes on the others faded, almost camouflaged into the dirt. He grinned and shifted in his saddle, looking at his men while he spoke. “Well, now, missus, we all know that ain’t true, don’t we?”

Another man called out from somewhere in the group. I only knew where he was because the others turned to laugh with him. “Ain’t no husband, ’less you’s married to a ghost,” he said.

He was right, of course. My father had died in a wagon accident one night, and Mama had never remarried. There weren’t a lot of men to choose from out there, if a woman were looking to get married, and until that day we had done well enough without one.

Five of the men got off their horses and started walking toward our house, carrying frayed coils of rope. It was a moment before I realized those ropes were for us. My skin prickled, and my lips felt oddly numb. Mama’s skirt trembled, but her voice was strong.

“Hold it right there. Get right back on those horses, please,” she said. I was proud of her in that moment, but the feeling passed rapidly. She shook like Maggie did, trembling like a cornered squirrel. She lifted the rifle and pressed it against her cheek, aiming it at the men. I hoped it was loaded. “I have no wish to shoot any of you.”

The next instant brought something I’ve tried hard to forget, but I doubt I will ever be able to do that. Why is it so easy to forget the happy times, but the ones that cut out your heart are forever etched in your mind?

The man in the blue shirt said something to one of the men behind him. His name, I think.

“Yes, sir,” the young man said. Quick as lightning, he pulled a pistol from his belt, aimed it at my mother, and shot her through the head. Mama flew backward and hit the door with a thud. Her bones seemed to melt, and she slid down the wall, dirty-blond hair bunching in loops behind her.

Ruth screamed. The tortured sound went on and on, like the howls of a dog in a trap. Her voice probably carried for miles across that flat nothingness of land, but I barely heard her. I don’t know if I screamed.

Maggie grabbed Ruth and shoved her into the house. I reached for Maggie, but a man’s arm, big enough that it felt like a tree branch, wrapped around my stomach, jerking the wind from my lungs. I inhaled a sour gust of grime and sweat as he pulled me hard against his chest. I screamed and kicked backward, jerking my head around, doing anything I could to loosen his grip, but failed. I was nothing against him. A flea on a dog. He spun me around and slammed me into the wall right beside the place where my mother’s life had ended. If I’d wanted to—if he’d let me—I could have reached out and touched the place where the bullet had pierced the wall after passing through her brain. He held my throat, but from the edge of my vision, I could see her eyes were open. Dead eyes, pale as the sky just before it clouds over. I looked away. I couldn’t bear to remember her eyes that way. And yet I do.

I screamed through the pressure of his hand, choking on tears. I grabbed at the wrist pinning me in place, its leathery skin thick with black hairs. I yanked and twisted, but his hand didn’t budge. Through swollen, disbelieving eyes, I watched another man tie my hands in front of me. I saw the calloused fingers grip my wrists, saw him wind the rope around once, twice, then knot it with a jerk.

“Shut your mouth,” the first man growled. He reached behind his neck with one hand, the other still anchored against my throat. He loosed the knot on the kerchief he’d had tied around his neck and yanked it off. It was filthy and smeared with old sweat. He balled it up in his hand and thrust it toward my mouth.

“Open up,” he said.

I clamped my mouth shut and squeezed my lips as tightly together as I could, but in the end, he jammed one disgusting finger into the side of my mouth and wedged it open. I bit down hard, and he grunted but kept at it. The stiff cloth touched my tongue, and he shoved the rest in. I didn’t want to breathe, couldn’t stand the sweet stench wafting from the cloth as it soaked in my mouth. I gagged, but he held me still, like a bug on a pin. Bile rose in my throat, but I had to swallow it back. He had no intention of letting go.

“Lewis,” he bellowed, turning toward a couple of the men who still held the horses. “Bring me your kerchief, boy.”

One of the others nodded and came toward us, pulling off his own neck cloth as he came. I stared at him, pleading with my eyes, sniffling, hoping he might stop this madness. Instead, he smiled. It was a half smile with something cruel lurking in it I’d never seen before. He winked, then tied the kerchief at the back of my head, pulling tight so the wad of cloth completely filled my mouth and I had no hope of shoving it out. My jaw ached from being forced open, and now the kerchief bit into my lips. I kept yelling, praying they’d stop, have mercy, but my cries were muffled and more pathetic than ever. It was getting difficult to breathe through my nose because of all the crying, and I realized I could actually suffocate. I collapsed helplessly against the man when he leaned over and scooped me up, carrying me in his arms as if I were a weightless baby. He lifted me onto his horse’s saddle, then swung up behind me, pressing his body to my back. His hands were hard as granite, holding me in place.

I had to stop crying or I wouldn’t be able to breathe for much longer. I chewed through the constricting cloth until I could at least get my teeth around it. That way I could breathe easier through my mouth. I gasped in my sobs, trying to slow them, trying to calm myself so I could think. I had to find some way to escape.

My sisters were dragged out of the house, and I tried to call to them, but nothing could get past the gag, wet and heavy on my tongue. Ruth was slung over a man’s shoulder, looking small for a ten-year-old. The man hardly seemed to know she was there, despite the fact her entire body struggled against his grip. A screaming Maggie fought every step, pulling against a rope until I saw blood smear her wrists. The man finally gave up the battle of towing her behind him. Avoiding the wild swinging of her arms and desperate kicks, he picked her up and carried her to a different horse. He handed her to the rider, who held her between his legs, then jammed a gag into her mouth as well.