The Garden of Dead Dreams (21 page)

The biographical portion of the dissertation ended with the Tanaka family leaving for Japan in 1929 when Vincent was twenty years old. It didn’t mention anything about Buchanan visiting the Tanaka family in Japan.

Matthew Lowther instead turned to an analysis of The Western Defense, theorizing that Buchanan wrote about Japan’s aggression during World War II as a genesis of his boyhood interest in Japan. Etta’s mind began to wander, and she had to reread several lines. His thesis just felt anemic. Isn’t that why people studied things? Because they were interested in them? Etta’s eyes fluttered closed again.

Somewhere on the borders of slumber, she realized that Matthew Lowther’s research felt incomplete because it was. He’d come to the academy to finish it. Then he’d disappeared.

Bang, bang, bang. Etta pushed herself up. The digital clock on her nightstand read 7:44. Fifteen minutes until class. The cabin door shook with another series of bangs. Several seconds passed. Etta slid from her bed, padded across the room, and rested her ear on the door. Rain pattered against the tin porch roof. Marla, who thought Central Park was wilderness, had mailed Etta bear spray as a congratulatory present for getting into the academy. Etta had decided not to bring it. Now she wished she had.

It was Friday. By one o’clock Etta was supposed to make copies of her story for each student and the resident authors. The class would have two days to read it and write their first critique for Walker’s Monday workshop on plot. Etta laughed out loud, but the sound died in the air—high-pitched and shrill.

Etta glimpsed her cellular phone on the corner of her desk, where it had been charging for months. She unplugged it, turned it on, and fought a wave of dizziness. Olivia beamed back at her. Etta had taken the photo not long after she’d met her new roommate. They’d been on a picture-taking frenzy, snapping photos of everything: their new room, the lodge, each other sitting at their writing desks. Olivia’s face was flushed, her teeth gleaming white. When Etta had taken it, she’d pegged her new roommate as sweet, flirtatious, friendly, giggly, easy to talk to—fun.

“Who are you, Liv?” Etta whispered.

Etta clicked on her list of contacts and scrolled down to Olivia’s name. They’d exchanged phone numbers in their first weeks at the academy, when they were used to everyone being a phone call or instant message away. They’d wandered up the hills surrounding the lodge several times looking for a spot with cellular coverage. A few students had reported getting a few bars on a hill near the swimming pool. But Etta and Olivia hadn’t had any luck, which had disappointed Olivia more than Etta. Olivia had left a boyfriend named Kody behind in New York, whom she talked about in her first few weeks at the academy then seemed to forget entirely once she met Jordan. Etta, on the other hand, hadn’t been sure whom she’d call even if they’d found a patch of coverage. Maybe her brother Cook—just to hear his voice. Then she’d hang up.

Etta closed her phone and slumped into her desk chair, staring at the pile of books that sat there. She ran her finger along the one on top of the pile, leaving a line in the layer of dust there. Reed had brought them, handed them to her. She’d slid them onto her desk. But, why? She closed her eyes. A memory drifted somewhere just on the edges of where she could retrieve it. And then she remembered.

She yanked her bottom desk drawer open, pulled out “Cherry Blossom,” and turned the pages over. The call number: BL UB271.J3S4 P.98.

The books didn’t have library labels on the spines. They’d been rebound in hard covers, with no titles, authors, or words of any kind on them. Etta opened the book on top of the pile. Her hands trembled when she saw the call number scrawled in tight cursive on the first page. BL UB271.J3H297. She compared it to the call number on “Cherry Blossom.” Close. She flipped to the title page and her pulse thundered into her ears. It was in Chinese . . . or Japanese. Etta flipped through two more books with similar, but unmatching, call numbers, both in Japanese.

Etta opened the fourth book and drew in a breath: BL UB271.J3S4. She thumbed to the title page.
Japanese Espionage in the West
by David Nash. Copyright: 1943. Etta studied the call number on Matthew Lowther’s story. P.98? Page ninety-eight? She flipped through the book until she found it. A grainy black and white photo filled the page. In it, about twenty Japanese men posed for the camera. Most of them were dressed in suits; a few donned black robes. Three of them stood out, because they wore round glasses with black frames.

Etta read the caption:
It is believed that a few Americans and Britons have ties to Japan’s notorious ultranationalist secret societies, including the Dark Ocean Society, the Black Dragon Society, and the League of Blood. According to one source, the man sitting in the top row, second from the left in this rare photograph of a Black Dragon Society meeting in Kyoto in 1932 is an American ex-patriot named Peter Morrison.

Peter Morrison? That was the main character in “Cherry Blossom.” Etta flipped the story over and stared at the typewritten pages. But the Peter Morrison in Lowther’s story was a fictionalized Vincent Buchanan. Or was he?

She squinted at the photo in the book. The man sitting in the top row second from the left wore a suit and tie and had dark hair like the rest of the men. But the photo was washed out, and Etta couldn’t make out his facial features.

She thumbed to the index and found the Black Dragon Society. Chapter four was all about the Black Dragon Society, a secret society originally founded in 1901 to support Japan’s military efforts to take over Manchuria up to the Amur River. Its membership included cabinet members, military officials, and professional spies. In the nineteen thirties the Black Dragon Society expanded its activities around the globe and stationed agents in Europe and the United States.

Etta flipped back to the photo and studied it again. Then she crossed to her bookshelf, pulled down
The Western Defense
, and stared at the grainy, black-and-white photo of Vincent Buchanan on the back. She studied the photos, and then dropped both books into her bag along with her notebook, the dissertation, “Cherry Blossom,” and the 1985 class roster.

She closed her eyes, trying to conjure up images of Vincent Buchanan and Sakura, but her mother’s lined face emerged instead, pinched in the tight expression Etta had last seen in her rearview mirror the last time she’d seen her family—more than a year ago.

Etta didn’t even know her own mother. How was she going to understand someone she’d lived with just a few months, let alone a long-dead writer she’d never met? Coldness eased through her limbs. She couldn’t shake the feeling that her safety—her life even—relied on her understanding.

* * *

Etta crouched in the shadows next to Buchanan’s portrait and watched her classmates file down the staircase. Mallory Chambers’ voice boomed above the rest: “Now is the winter of our discontent. Made glorious summer by this sun of York; And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house. In the deep bosom of the ocean buried . . .”

Etta recognized Gloucester’s soliloquy from
Richard III
. Reciting Shakespeare was one of Mallory’s favorite ways to show off, and these were some of his favorite lines to recite. Etta had heard Mallory pronounce the same sentences with the same flourish at least a half dozen times as she’d filed out of class.

Mallory also liked
Macbeth
and
Hamlet
soliloquies, the prologue to
The Canterbury Tales
, and he seemed to have an endless arsenal of poems memorized—Robert Frost, Alfred Tennyson, William Butler Yeats, W.H. Auden.

As Opal Waters bristled by, her hair long and loose down her back, Etta tried to will herself deeper into the shadows, letting her breath out as Opal descended the stairs without noticing her.

Poppy and Reed did not emerge. After several minutes, Etta crept down the hallway and peered around the doorway into the classroom. Everyone was gone. Etta slipped back into the shadows and waited for the students to amble up the stairs and trudge back to the classroom. Then Walker Ryan strode by and closed the door behind him.

Where were Poppy and Reed? Etta’s heart drummed against her temples. She raced to the stairs, taking them as quickly as she could, and then crossed the great room and emerged into the rain. She raced around the lodge to the back entrance, pulled the theater door open, and blinked into the darkness. Silence hung in the air with the dust. “Reed . . .” Etta’s voice echoed through the hollow room.

“Poppy?”

Silence.

Etta spun around. Were they in one of their cabins?

She hardly felt the rain as she ran, keeping her eyes glued to the trail, ignoring the way her bag flapped against her back.

“Whoa. Watch it!”

Etta jerked to a stop and brought her head up. Jordan and Chase were standing in front of her, staring at her. After an awkward moment, they stepped around her and continued down the trail toward the lodge, disappearing into the trees. Etta spun around and broke into a run again. She didn’t stop until she was in the clearing in front of the men’s cabins. She turned in a circle. Which one was Reed’s? She picked a cabin, climbed the steps, and rapped on the door. No answer. She raced to the next cabin, pounding as hard as she could. By the time she’d knocked on all of them, her knuckles were raw.

Etta jogged down the shortcut to the women’s cabins, heaving from the exertion. When had she grown out of shape? She made a beeline to Poppy’s cabin, took the steps two at a time, and pounded on the door. She only heard her own breath in response—short, frantic intakes of air. Etta whipped around and squinted through the rain, which fell in drifting sheets through the clearing.

She took a step forward and then the blood drained from her face. The door of her own cabin was open. She went numb. She heard a low sound—a voice?

She ran down the steps and into the rain, fighting to keep her footing on the trail to the men’s cabins and back to the theater entrance. She slipped inside and hunched forward into the darkness, bringing her hands to her knees, flinching against the sharp pangs in her sides. The door creaked open behind her.

She spun around and stared into the darkness. Her body started to tremble. “Reed?” she whispered.

“Good morning, Loretta.”

Etta cringed at the sound of her given name. She inched backward into the blackness. “Hi Teddy,” she whispered. If she ran down the aisle and onto the stage, could she find the stage exit in the dark?

“I am under orders to bring you to the director’s office. Will you comply, or shall I use force?”

Was Teddy laughing?

“Force?” Etta asked as calmly as she could muster.

“Force is the last resort of any good officer. However, I’m under orders, and disobeying the lawful orders of a superior has consequences. My grandfather and uncles are peace officers. Hauling in outlaws, man slayers, perps, and women of the street is in my genes. I won’t hesitate to use my taser if I have to. Have you ever felt fifty thousand volts coursing through you?”

Teddy was talking a little like Dirty Harry, and Etta had a sense that he neither had a taser gun on him, nor was he prepared to use any other kind of physical force against her. “Teddy, you’re a secretary at a literary academy.”

“I am the administrative assistant to Director Edwin J. Hardin, and he, as my superior, ordered me to escort you to his office. I advise you to stop resisting and follow me. Insubordination is what gets cadets court-marshaled.”

Court-marshaled? Etta didn’t bother to ask. Perhaps Teddy had an actual psychosis that made him believe he worked at a military school. She stared behind her into the emptiness and tried to make out the shape of the velvet seats, the stage, anything. If she ran, and by some miracle managed to make it through the darkness, onto the stage, and out the stage-wing door, where would she go then?

“Okay,” she finally said. “Let’s go.”

Etta pretended to scan a
Poets & Scribes
article about the best five MFA programs in the Northeast, while Teddy reclined in his chair staring at her, his navy tie thrown back over one shoulder. After several minutes passed, she dropped the magazine onto the table next to her and forced a smile. “If the director is busy, I can come back later.”

Teddy narrowed his eyes at her. The stiff hair product he usually slicked his curls back with must have washed out in the rain, and his hair was a mess of loose curls.

When Hardin’s door finally swung open, Etta jumped to her feet.

Reed stepped out and froze when he saw Etta. His eyes flashed to the floor and then back to her face.

“Reed,” Etta whispered. She reached for the bookshelf beside her. Reed made a beeline toward the door. The door didn’t make a sound as it slammed shut behind him. Or maybe it did, because Etta realized someone was saying her name.

She snapped her gaze to Hardin. His lips were moving, but it was Reed’s voice echoing through her head. It felt as though he’d shouted the words at her, even though she was sure he’d only mouthed them. Two of them: “I’m sorry.”

* * *

Opal stood near the windows behind Hardin, her gray gaze set on Etta. The vein down her forehead was more prominent than usual. Hardin was in his chair. His sagging face revealed nothing. He gestured for Etta to be seated.

Hardin and Opal glanced at each other, and then Opal stepped away from the window. “You were not in class today.”

It wasn’t a question, but they both waited for Etta to speak. “I’ve had some stuff, um, issues of a personal nature.” Etta hoped the subject might dissuade any further questions.

Opal glanced out the window, and then fixed her gaze on Etta. “We expect a certain caliber of performance from our student writers, and frankly, you are not meeting that standard. You’ve missed sixteen classes and eight mandatory writing sessions in the last month, and you’ve consistently been absent for meals. During writing sessions, you’ve been observed reading, doodling in your notebook, and staring out the window. You were sighted yesterday outside of the property boundaries—a direct violation of the codes.