Temptation: A Novel (15 page)

41. Prisoners

I only get Lily’s voice mail. It worries me, not being able to talk to her in person. I just leave a message saying I’m fine and I hope she’s fine and to call me soon.

It takes a few moments to get to the bottom of the drive.

So now I know what’s behind the gate. Sorta.

A normal mansion that’s decorated in Ernest Hemingway macho-hunter style.

And the suggestion that my great-grandfather is alive and keeping tabs on me.

I hear the crunching of dirt and rock underneath my tennis shoes.

I want to know how everything could have suddenly gotten all—all dark and dreary again. It’s this road. This road and these woods and everything stuck inside them.

I want to find Lily and take her away the same way I should have taken Jocelyn.

This time I’m going to learn.

The more I understand, the more confused I am.

I remember that gravestone I found with the French writing and the name Solitaire.

I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.

I’m walking and breathing heavily, and I realize that I’m shaking all over. I stop for a minute and try to control the shaking, but I can’t. I can’t. I realize that I’ve been holding back on the terrified shakes, but now they’ve got me like some heroin addict who’s been clean for twenty-four hours.

I need someone to come and grab me and tell me I’m not losing my mind.

To tell me I haven’t lost my soul.

Maybe Staunch was right. Maybe I was shot dead and I’m a ghost wandering around these woods like the ghost dogs and wolves I’ve seen.

I lean over and put my hands on my knees like I’m some marathon runner who’s just finished a long race. For a moment I’m dizzy. The morning sun beats down on me.

Then I stand back up and keep walking.

I don’t feel special or different. Being watched and haunted doesn’t mean you’re special. It just means you’re a prisoner.

No different from the guy shackled to a rock below the waterfall.

Maybe we’re all prisoners in one way or another and don’t know it.

I just want to be released from all of this. Every little bit of it.

I want to go about my life just like I was doing before Wade showed up last night.

42. Some Weird Voodoo Stuff

“Hey, Chris.”

My mom smiles as I walk through the door. I was already surprised to see my bike in the driveway. Somehow Staunch got it there without a problem. Now Mom is smiling at me as if it’s just any ordinary morning.

“Did you have breakfast?”

Yep, just finished some French toast with Wade. Oh, and your grandfather.

At first I shake my head, then I nod. My head doesn’t seem to know what to do with itself.

“Was that a yes or a no?”

“No—I’m fine—thanks.”

“Okay. Hey—I wanted to tell you the good news. I got a promotion yesterday. Actually just a pay increase, but still. It’s something.”

I nod, feign a smile, look around to see if anything else seems strange or if it’s just me.

Hey—wanted to tell you my good news too! I got shot, but somehow I survived. Thanks to good old great-grandpa, who I’m dying to meet. Get it, Mom? DYING??

“I’m busy—gotta run to Asheville before work. Want to come?”

I shake my head.

“How is Oli doing? You guys have fun?”

I feel something scraping against the scab on my stomach. Then I hear a laugh. And even though these things are only in my mind, it certainly feels and sounds like they’re happening.

“What do you mean?”

“Oli—the guy you spent the night with? Hello?”

I tighten my lips and nod. I raise my eyebrows and force a smile. “Good.”

“Bring him by sometime.”

I don’t think you want me to do that, Mom.

She continues to get ready as I try to unpack my brains on the sofa.

It just never stops.

That was a warning, Chris. Just like everything else. A warning. A little hocus-pocus shazam to show you.

I sit on the couch and close my eyes.

Sleep comes, but like everything else, it’s short-lived and not satisfying in the least.

Lily is hysterical when she calls.

All I get is “phone died” and “charged” and “thought you were going to die” and then some curses and a very loud and very distinct “What happened?”

She sounds like she’s outside walking, because she sounds out of breath and her connection is cutting in and out. I just keep asking where she is, so I can get on my bike and go see her, but then the call drops completely.

Yet when I hear the knock on the front door, along with the handle turning and the door swinging open, I see I don’t have to call Lily back.

She’s managed to get to me very quickly.

“I left the moment I got your message,” she says, rushing up beside me and then wrapping me up in her wonderful arms.

I’m buried in her soft and sweet-smelling hair and skin for some time. She just holds me, shaking, maybe crying, though I can’t see it and I don’t know. For the longest time she doesn’t say anything.

When she finally lets me go, I stand there feeling a bit light-headed from being so close to her.

“You okay?” she asks me, touching my stomach gently to see if there’s a hole or anything in it.

“I’d get shot again if I’ll get one of those every time.”

“Chris—seriously. What—you don’t even have bandages or anything?”

I shake my head.

“What happened—who were those men that took you?”

“Listen,” I say, “I don’t really know what happened.”

She lifts up my shirt and sees the scab. “That’s impossible.”

“I know.”

“Chris, I saw you get shot. I was there.”

“I don’t know what happened.”

She shouts my name and curses, as if I just vanished into thin air or something.

“What if it was all an illusion?” I ask, trying to come up with some explanation.

“I heard the gun go off.”

“What if it was a fake? A prop or something?”

“I saw blood. I saw you.”

Yeah, and I
felt
blood.

“What if—I don’t know—what if somehow he just shocked me to think I got shot—then everything else was acting? Like made up.”

“Chris!”

“What?”

“How can you—oh, I don’t—I just can’t—”

“I know,” I say again.

“You know what?”

“It’s this place. And the people here.”

“That’s some weird voodoo stuff going on here. First that card game, and now this.”

“What about the cards?”

“I didn’t tell you—Chris, nobody, and I mean nobody except
one
person in this whole world knows about that rose tattoo. Nobody has ever seen it except him. It’s not exactly in a place where people can see it.”

“A tattoo?”

“One that looks exactly like the card. That’s why—I just couldn’t believe it. I still don’t. But this—you’re walking around like it was a toy gun that went off.”

“Maybe it was.”

Lily curses in disbelief. “No. It’s something—something evil. Something wicked.”

“You don’t have to tell me.”

She looks at my cabin, and I realize she’s never been here before. Not that I need to give her the grand tour or anything. I wonder how she got my address and then remember that she took me home from the party that night.

“Chris—”

“What?”

“What is going on here?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you’re not freaking out like you should be. I mean—feel this.”

She takes my hand and puts it against her soft blouse and even softer skin. I guess I’m supposed to feel her beating heart, but I’m a bit taken aback by having my hand thrust
there.

“Come on—stop being a boy and start talking.”

“I can’t—Lily, no.”

“What?”

“I can’t just start talking. I don’t even know where I’d start.”

Then I think about this cabin and the tunnels underneath.

I think about the cell phone that doesn’t belong to me. That maybe lets someone else know just where I am.

“Come on, let’s leave and go somewhere,” I say.

“I’m driving.”

“You have a car?”

“Of course I have a car,” she says.

As I follow her outside, I leave the iPhone behind. Just in case.

43. Partial Answers

“You’re not telling me everything.”

We’ve been sitting in the parking lot of the grocery store for some time, the car off and the convertible top down. It’s starting to get really hot in this two-seater. Lily said that her old Mazda Miata doesn’t have air, that it’s broken but she never bothered to get it fixed. She doesn’t seem fazed by the morning heat coming on like an electric blanket.

“I’ve told you enough.”

“Enough? Chris—what’s happening here? I want to know everything.”

In the half hour it took us to get out of Solitary and then find a spot to park and talk, I decided that I couldn’t tell her everything. Everybody who ends up knowing something leaves. Rachel and Poe, two prime examples.

For a while this summer, it was nice to have Lily be a part of another life and another world, one that didn’t involve darkness and evil and weird happenings. But now she’s right in the middle of it.

“Are those men bad?” she asks me.

“The one who attacked me was.”

“Why’d he attack you?”

“Because—because I threatened him once with a gun. Actually, I shot him.”

Lily can’t believe it. I nod.

“But why? And what were you doing with a gun?”

“It wasn’t mine. I was helping out a girl I knew.”

“Who?”

“You don’t know her,” I say, and leave it at that.

We continue to play the back-and-forth game.

“Chris—you need to tell me. Did you get shot?”

Of course I got shot, but how am I supposed to explain something I don’t understand?

“No.”

“Chris—”

“I think the whole thing was a warning.”

Lily shakes her head, her hair more curly since last night, her face pale because she’s wearing almost no makeup. “A warning for you to do what?”

“Stay out of people’s business. Which is what I’m going to do.”

“We need to get help.”

“No.” I find my hand grabbing her wrist.

She looks down at it, and I let her go.

“Lily—please. Don’t do anything. Don’t—not now at least.”

“Why?”

“Because—listen, they’re starting to tell me what’s going on. Why people are so interested in me around here.”

“And why is that?”

I shrug, wiping my damp forehead. My back is getting nice and wet. “I think—they say it’s because someone who founded the town of Solitary is a relative.”

“So?”

“Yeah, I know. I don’t know why that’s noteworthy.”

Of course, I’m not really being honest, because I have ideas. They don’t all make sense, but I’ve seen enough movies to know that being related to someone can be a big deal.

“Is there some evil cult thing going on in this town?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“The pastor you mentioned—is he involved?”

I nod. “In some way.”

“This car isn’t bugged, you know.”

But I don’t know anything. Whether I can trust her completely, whether I can believe what Marsh and Staunch were saying, whether I am going to make it to my senior year of high school.

“Lily—I just want to get the school year over and then leave. That’s all.”

For a moment I see her staring at me. She looks so determined and fierce.

“Let’s leave. Right now. Right this very instant.”

I laugh. “Yeah, right.”

“I’m serious.”

“And go where?”

“I don’t know.”

“And do what?”

She shakes her head, but doesn’t reply.

“Lily—I—my mom is not doing so great.”

“Is she sick?”

“Yeah, I guess you could say that. I’m afraid—I’ve thought of it before. Of leaving. But I can’t leave her. And I know she won’t come with me.”

“Does she know about this?”

Oh yeah, sure, give her some more reason to drink.

“No.”

“Does anybody?”

“Everybody who does—the people I tell—all end up leaving.”

She moves in her seat so she’s facing me square on. Then she grabs both of my hands in hers. “I’m not going anywhere—you hear me? Nowhere.”

“They have a way of changing that.”

“They?”
she shouts. “I want to know who
they
are!”

I nod.

“Chris—this is what you need to do. Find everything you can about these people—whoever they are and what exactly they want.”

“Why?”

“So they can be exposed.”

I think of all my attempts to do just that. Everywhere I tried to get help turned into a dead end.

I think of Sheriff Wells. A picture of someone weak, regardless of whose side he’s on.

“I’ve tried, Lily. Believe me. And I don’t want to risk anything else happening.”

“You’ll be fine,” Lily says.

“No—I’m talking about something happening to you.”

“I’m not afraid.”

“You haven’t been here long enough,” I say. “Give it time.”