Terrorscape (27 page)

He pulled the hem of her shirt down, covering
her demurely, and contemplated her sleeping face. If
they were married she could not escape him. Yes, it
would accord her some dignity—but in name only.

And he could lock her up if she defied him; if she
were dependent on him and his numerous resources
she would not be able to leave. He could chain her to
the wall like an animal, in her room like a prisoner, or
on his bed like an odalisque.

Of course, there would have to be some give and
take in the economy of his household. And yes, her
good behavior would earn her privileges, gifts, which
he could revoke whenever she became so feisty as to
be outright defiant.

He could put her out on display during social
occasions, dressed in beautiful fabrics as if she were a
rare, exotic animal. He could teach her French poetry
and Italian pillow talk. He could control what she did,
who she saw, and even what she ate and wore.

He could dress her to his tastes morning, day, and
night. Especially nights. Every night, he could take
her if he pleased, and it would be his marital right.

Oh, she might resist at first because a bird that
has known freedom is the bird that fights hardest
when caged, but she could not fight him forever.

Especially if there were children.

He placed a lacy green plant on the blanket,
folding her hands over the leaves to keep it in place. A
mere token, a reminder to be vigilant.

His task completed, the door closed with him on
the other side, latching with almost no sound. And
then, except for the steady ticking of an unseen clock,
the room subsided into a hush once more.

▪▫▪▫▪▫▪

Hours passed before she roused herself from
sleep, blinking in confusion as her eyes took in the
afternoon sun. Sleeping pills were not meant to be
used in this way, to make oneself sleep whenever
reality became too overbearing to face-on. They were
meant to be taken at bedtime to maintain a healthy,
normal sleep schedule.

Sometimes, when she thought about this, she felt
guilt uncurl inside her like an insect uncoiling to
reveal its horrendous inner parts. She wondered if she
was becoming an addict, or if she had finally gone
crazy. She knew she should call her psychiatrist and
let her know what she was doing, if only to find out if
it was possible to sicken from abusing her medication
the way she was, but then she worried that her pills
might be taken from her and, as a result, did not make
the call. Mostly, she tried not to think about it.

Even so, her dreams had been strange and
disjointed, as surreal as what she imagined an acid
trip might be like. She had been having a lot of
strange dreams like that lately. The last one, for
example. One moment, she had been drowning in a
black sea, each breath knifing pain through her lungs,
and then in the next, a dark prince was kissing her
back to life, as if she were sleeping beauty—only to
kill her again with a blade of ice and starlight.

She took in the room dazedly, feeling a bit as if
she were in another dream.
Mary was sitting at her desk, working on her
Stats homework. Val could hear the punch-punchpunch of the graphing calculator's buttons, followed
by the scratch of pencil on paper.
She considered feigning sleep a little while longer.
Mary would have questions that she would insist be
answered. A few more minutes of avoidance could be
a blessing. On the other hand, her spine was stiff and
she felt as groggy as if her brain had been packed in
cotton. If she lay in bed for much longer she would
just end up falling asleep again.
Also she was relieved that she hadn't had to wake
up alone. Often when she woke up, her roommate
was already gone and that made her feel even lonelier
than she already did. Maybe she needed somebody to
confide in, if only so the burden wouldn't be on her
shoulders.

Val stretched, and something slid off her bed to
brush lightly against the floor. She paused, frowning,
and leaned over to peer beneath her bed to see what
had fallen. Some sort of plant. She had never seen its
like before, but it looked kind of like carrot leaves.

“Hey, you're awake. Good. There was something I
wanted to—” Mary trailed off into a startled yelp.
“Oh. My. God. Val, what the heck are you doing? Is
that hemlock? What are you doing with hemlock?”

Val dropped the plant in her hands as if it were
on fire or had sprouted thorns. “Hemlock?”
Mary went into the bathroom to get a wad of
paper towels. She carefully picked up the plant—the
hemlock—from the floor.

 

“That's hemlock?” Val yelped.

Mary crushed the leaves a little and a foul odor
asserted itself, making Val wince. “Hemlock,” she
confirmed. “My parents had some in our garden. By
accident. It killed our neighbor's dog. So I'll ask you
again, what the heck are you doing with hemlock?”

“H-how do you know it's hemlock?”

Mary shook her head in disgust. “See the white
flowers? Also, the stalk—it's not fuzzy. Parsnips and
parsley and carrots—the lookalikes—have, like, these
little fuzzy bits on the stalks. But mainly it's the smell
that's a dead giveaway. And the color.”

The stem was an angry purple with streaks of red
that reminded Val of infection.

“You weren't going to eat it, were you?”
“What? No!”

“This couldn't have come from around here.
There are laws about this sort of thing. The university
would be real careful not to have any of this stuff
growing were students or animals or kids could get at
it. This had to have come from the woods.”

She turned suspicious eyes on Val.

“I
wasn't
going to eat it. I'm not suicidal just
because I'm depressed.”
“Right. Okay. Sorry.”

Mary put the hemlock in a ziplock bag, towels
and all, and sealed it tight. She went into the
bathroom. Water gushed from the sink as she washed
the traces of the plant from her hands.

Val stared at the plastic baggie of hemlock and
wondered if she was feeling the effects of its poison.

Gavin had access to plants.
He knew a lot about them.

He knew about their uses, their properties, their
meanings.

But what was he trying to say here?
Hemlock, for hatred?
Knowing him, it wasn't that simple.
Val washed her own hands and nearly ran into

Mary,
who
had
positioned
herself
outside
the
bathroom door. “If you weren't going to eat it, what
were
you going to do with it?”

“Nothing.” Val spoke through clenched teeth. “It
was there when I…woke up…”
The dream—the kiss
.
“Shit.” That had been no prince kissing her.
He was
here. He was here, watching me sleep.

And then he'd tried to poison her.
“Someone is trying to kill me.”

Mary shook her head and picked up the phone.
She disappeared with it into the bathroom. Val heard
her voice, a low, urgent murmur, issue from the door.

Calling the men in the white coats
.

No. She was being paranoid. Mary wouldn't do
that—would she?
I don't know. You already know that she thinks you're
crazy
.

But Mary was also nice to her. Respectful.
Tiptoeing around the patient.

Val went to her computer to research hemlock.
She quickly learned that it was very, very poisonous.
Even a trace amount was enough to kill someone. She
read a story about campers who, attracted by the
straw-like shape of water hemlock, used them in their
drinks. They all died from the effects of the poison.

Hemlock paralyzed the respiratory muscles and
essentially caused suffocation. It was a member of the
deadly nightshade family. An entire branch of the
stuff was a death sentence. If she had ingested part of
the plant in sleep, or even touched her lips or mouth
with her contaminated hands, she wouldn't have
woken to see the light of day ever again.

What had been going through his mind as he
twisted her fingers through the leaves of the plant?
What about when he had kissed her?

If he had kissed her.
Reality was blurring.
Or maybe she was going crazy after all.

Mary came out of the bathroom and set her phone
on her desk. Val watched her grab a pile of clothes
from the floor and cram them into one of her open
drawers, pushing down, hard, until it could close.

“What are you doing?”
“Cleaning.”
Val frowned. “Why?”

“I called Student Services and told them we
needed the locks changed.”

 

“Is that who you were calling?”

“Who
did
you
think?”
Mary
said
lightly,
redoubling Val's doubts.
“And they're doing a room inspection? What did
they say?”

“After they finished chewing me out for being
irresponsible, you mean? They're sending someone
over at four.”

Both girls turned to look at the clock—it was two.
Thinking
of
Gavin,
Val
said,
“That's
not
soon
enough.” He must have gotten a copy made of her
key. If he had a mind to, he could easily pay them
both another visit. Neither she nor Mary was capable
of overpowering him.

“Yeah, well, it's better than nothing.”
That was true. But then, almost anything was.
“This is really freaking me out.”

Val
opened
her
mouth
to—what,
provide
comfort? She wouldn't be doing Mary any favors.
Fear wasn't pleasant but that was why it saved lives.

Aversive stimuli.
Paranoia.

She wondered if Mary really
had
been calling
Student Services, or if she had called her in as some
sort of psychiatric emergency instead. “Help, my
roommate has gone crazy—send backup.”

“I don't want to die,” Mary was now saying.
Did anyone?
Yes. Some people do.
I do
.
Sometimes.
Fleetingly
.

But the human body was a determined engine;
even when things were at their bleakest, it clung
desperately to survival, switching to reserves hidden
so deep that even scientists hadn't found them all.

“I'm sorry,” Val whispered.

“This
wasn't
what
I
signed
up
for.”
Mary
sounded like she was going to cry. “This isn't how I
pictured my freshman year. God, Val, why didn't you
say something sooner? Why didn't you tell me?”

Why don't I come with a warning label, you mean?
“Because I'm trying to forget,” Val said, harshly.

“At least tell me what he looks like.”
“Who?”
“
Him
.”

Val rolled over to face the wall. “I don't want to
talk about him.”

“It's not like I'm asking you to dish. I don't want
to know your life's story. I don't want to know how
you two met. I just want to know what he looks like
in case—in case I ever run into him.”

She did sound fearful. But Val had long ago
ceased
to
believe
that
anyone
was
completely
innocent. There was always some darker motive at
play. Even with those who were close to you.

Especially those who are close to you.

 

Blake, Lisa, James—they'd all had secrets. Secrets
that had driven a wedge between the four of them
and had, ultimately, led to their destruction.
It was the people closest to you who knew how to
hurt you best.

“He has black hair. Pale skin. Gray eyes. He's
very…tall. Striking—his coloring, I mean.”
Not just
his coloring
. “You would know him straightaway.
There's like this energy that surrounds him.”

Animal magnetism.
Mary went still. “I think I have seen him.”

Val looked over at her so quickly that she heard
something snap. “What? You have? When?”

“A while ago—he wanted to know where Vance
lived. He said he'd been bothering you. Vance, that is.
That he was a friend looking out for you.”

“I haven't seen or talked to Vance since the party.

Did you give him the address? You didn't—did you?”
“I think I did. Oh my God, what have I done?”
Val shook her head. So much for Vance.

Mary chewed on her lip. “You know—I think I
might have seen him in the hall. Earlier today. Yeah.
Now that I think about it, it was him.”

“Did he say anything to you?”
“No.”
Then he might not kill her.

None of this was making any sense. Vance wasn't
the rook. He couldn't be the rook. She would have
staked her life that it was Mary.

But it looked like GM planned to kill Vance first.

 

▪▫▪▫▪▫▪

Val paid a drop-in visit to the school psychologist,
who doubled as an adjunct professor (her patients
were not allowed to take her courses). Val revealed as
much of her story as she dared. The psychologist
nodded complacently throughout the duration of the
hour-long session, withholding judgment.

This actually might be helping
.

And then, afterward, the psychologist gave Val a
deferral to a psychiatrist, which Val tore up and threw
away into the wastebasket on her way out. She didn't
want to be foisted upon someone else, like garbage.

The upside—if there was an upside to this
wretched situation—was that she wouldn't have to
attend
class
for
a
couple
days.
Psychological
evaluations were apparently academic “get out of jail
free” cards.

Val
emailed
her
professors
explaining
her
position very briefly. Most didn't ask for additional
details. The school was in an uproar over the murders
of its students. The staff had about as many details as
they could stand to deal with at the moment.

By the time Val arrived back at the dorms it was
five past four. Mary had already gone to class. There
was no sign of the locksmith.

Val dropped her purse on the bed and changed
her shirt. She had gotten all sweaty from her dash
back home. It wasn't hot, but it was humid. The cool
clean cotton against her clammy skin felt good and
uplifted her mood. When the locksmith did arrive,
half an hour late, she was even remotely polite.

He was young, in his mid-twenties probably, with
a goatee that did not suit his face and a pair of
overalls emblazoned with the name of the company.
On his shoulder he carried a canvas bag of tools and,
if the scowl on his face was any indication, a grudge.