The Murmurings (16 page)

“Ask me what you want now,” Adam says. “I won’t be here if you come back.”

“Because you think we’ll turn you in?” I ask. I’ve been so eager for answers, it never occurred to me I might notify the police of Adam’s whereabouts.

“Won’t you?” Something in the way he asks makes me think he
expects
me to turn him in—to blame him. Maybe I do.

“We’ve read your blog,” I say, not yet ready to answer his previous question. I’m in more of an asking mood.

“But you didn’t need to read it, did you?” Adam tilts his head at me in what feels like an accusation.

“Not all of it, no.” I meet his challenge, even though my stomach is starting to twist into a knot.

“And why not? Why didn’t you need to read all of it?” he asks.

Evan tenses next to me, but I put my hand on his knee and squeeze it under the table. This is a conversation that needs to happen.

“I already knew some of it,” I say, hoping I sound brave.

“Because her sister—”

Adam cuts off Evan with a twitch of his hunched shoulders. “I’m not talking about Nell.”

Evan opens his mouth, but I interject before he can ask more. I’m not ready for him to know I hear the murmurings. Not yet. Besides, I have a bigger demon to face.

“You’re right,” I allow, though I can’t seem to unclench my
jaw when I say it. “I wasn’t . . . I should have been there for her.”

This is the first time I’ve said it aloud. I’ve been trying for so long not to, and now that I’ve unleashed the words, I feel empty. Adam looks down and squeezes his eyes shut behind thick black lashes. The angry veneer he’s been holding over his face dissipates, and what’s left looks exposed and pale.

“We both should have been there for her more,” he says so quietly I almost don’t hear him. “I knew more than you did. I should have been the one to protect her. I tried to. I . . . I tried.”

Adam’s voice breaks under the weight of what he’s saying, and I don’t even think before I reach across the flimsy fold-out table and put my hand on his wrist. He flinches at my touch, but then his black eyes meet my gaze. It’s strange to be sharing my grief about Nell with someone I’ve never met. But whatever suspicion or anger I was feeling toward Adam a second ago has given way to relief.

“So you
are
the Insider, right?” Evan asks, stunned by our exchange, and clearly uncomfortable with my touching Adam. But I can’t let him go. Not yet. However sympathetic Evan might be, he can’t know what it felt like to lose Nell.

Adam nods, his face crinkling against more unseen pain. “I am. Or I was. I haven’t written for a while. There’s just not much more to say.”

He looks toward a laptop plugged into an outlet in a tiny kitchenette. The outlet shares space with an ancient coffee maker, which looks like it’s filled with coffee. Come to think of it, the whole place smells like charred coffee.

From where we’re sitting, I can see the whole room: a squat fridge and a narrow, antique-looking stove, a small unmade bed, and a door, which is ajar revealing a closet-size bathroom with toilet, sink, and shower stall. A space on the plaster above the sink—roughly two feet high and oval-shaped—boasts a slightly cleaner surface, as though something used to hang there.

A mirror.

“Are you living here?” I ask, hoping the question isn’t offensive. It’s just so hard to imagine.

He nods again and looks surprisingly unashamed. “I think it used to be the foreman’s lodging or something. I don’t know. But it’s pretty much got everything I need.” Then he chuckles a humorless laugh. “Everything but running water, that is. There are places I can go in town for that, though.”

“How is there even electricity here still?” Evan wonders.

“Dunno,” Adam shrugs, and I guess I wouldn’t question it either if I had it when I needed it.

“You’ve been hiding out here ever since?” I ask, knowing Adam knows what I mean.

“Almost.” The shadow returns to his face. He stands from the table with some effort—the cramped quarters beginning to show their wear on him—and begins pacing slowly. This person in this tiny, self-made prison cell is nothing like the one described in Nell’s journal, or even the angry bolding and italicizing
Insider
from his blog. Adam looks utterly vulnerable.

“It was her idea to come here,” Adam starts, then looks at me shyly. He’s being careful with me. He wants to be sure whatever he says doesn’t hurt. I give him a small smile that I hope tells him that’s impossible, so he might as well say it all.

“She said she used to come here when she was a kid,” Adam continues. “We thought with all of the tragedy that’d happened here, there would be a ton of that emotion still floating around, almost like a cloud of sadness. Maybe it’d be harder to detect
our
pain,
our
tragedy underneath all of that. We’d hoped it would run interference or something. Besides, who would think to look for us in Jerome? Not long after we arrived, I heard that the sheriff was counting the days until his retirement. I guessed it was as good a place as any to get lost and stay that way. All I knew was that the longer we stayed at Oakside, the more danger Nell was in—because of him.”

“Dr. Keller,” I confirm, and Adam nods.

“He had a special interest in Nell. Said she was uniquely
talented. He’s out of his mind.” Adam smiles a sad smile. “You know, he used to actually help people. He was almost like a father to me.”

“We’re talking about the same Dr. Keller?” I ask.

“You didn’t know him before,” Adam says, his voice soaked in melancholy. “Haven’t you ever wished, just once, you could tell someone everything you see, everything you hear, and have him understand exactly what you’re talking about? Have him truly believe you, not treat you like some sort of maniac?”

I bite my bottom lip in response.

“You must know what that’s like,” Adam says, holding my gaze.

“I know what my sister knew,” I say, sneaking a glance at Evan as he scans my face for clues.

“I know you’re a Seer,” Adam says, and my body goes cold.

“What’s he talking about?” Evan asks quietly, as though he is trying to block Adam from the conversation.

“He doesn’t know?” Adam asks. I look from one accusing face to the other. I feel trapped between two faltering realities.

“I don’t know. I mean, I don’t really understand what it is myself,” I plead.

“You’ve been hearing things? Seeing things?” Evan accuses me.

“It started less than a year ago, and I’m not even sure I’m actually—”

“She’s sure,” Adam finishes for me, directing his assertion at Evan, who looks like he wants to punch Adam in the face.

“Excuse me, I don’t need your help with this,” I fire at Adam, who shakes his head like I’ve betrayed him in a way I couldn’t possibly betray someone I barely know.

“Well you certainly need help from someone,” Evan spits at me.

“What are you saying?” I can’t believe he could be so mad at me about this. And after everything with Deb! Who does he think he is? “Hey, you’re the one who wanted to know more about this shit in the first place. Well, here you go. Take a look,” I fire back.

Evan balls his fist and fits it into the palm of his other hand and squeezes. He clenches his jaw so his cheeks hollow out.

Adam casts one more cautionary glance toward Evan, but it’s pointless. It looks as though Evan has decided to stop listening, so Adam turns to me instead.

“You want to know more about Dr. Keller.”

I lean in, still a little angry at Adam, but at least Evan knows about me now. It’s not how I wanted him to hear it, but if this is the only way to find out what happened to Nell, so be it.

“Dr. Keller was the first person who understood me,” Adam continues.

I nod, then remember what made Dr. Keller believe Adam.

“ ‘You promised me you would come back. Is that bracelet for me?’ ” I repeat the two sentences that were whispered in Adam’s ear.

He responds with a shudder that travels the entire length of his tall body. Then he wipes his mouth with his enormous hand and begins.

“All he said when I told him that was ‘Susan.’ Dr. Keller stayed away from me days after that. I thought I’d done something wrong telling him what I’d heard. But he came to see me a week later and explained why he was so disturbed. What I’d heard were the very last words his girlfriend, his first love, said to him before she died. They’d met in high school and were going to go away to college together.”

Adam pauses, his lips drawing into a frown. “She was murdered. Stabbed right in front of Dr. Keller by a mugger. He couldn’t protect her. It happened just as he was about to give her a present to mark the next step in their relationship.”

“A bracelet,” I finish.

“A charm bracelet, with a few charms to start her collection. But he only got as far as showing her the box. Dr. Keller’s carried the guilt of Susan’s death with him ever since. It’s
why he went to medical school. To maybe, I don’t know, save other people since he couldn’t save Susan. And the more his grief and his guilt deepened, the more he began to wonder if maybe his girlfriend might assuage his guilt by sending him a sign from the afterlife.”

Adam keeps talking, his speech halting, and it occurs to me that it’s probably been a while since he’s spoken to anyone. I swallow hard as I wonder if the last person he spoke to was Nell.

As Adam tells it, Dr. Keller knew it was dangerous to want a sign from the beyond. After all, before Adam came along, Dr. Keller used to treat people for those types of thoughts. But he began seeing signs from Susan everywhere. His loss was that deep. Somewhere along the way, he began to wonder if what some people—people like Adam—were experiencing weren’t delusions at all, but actually communications from the afterlife, someone trying to make contact from the beyond.

“Isn’t that the definition of a delusion?” I ask, not certain how I’d rather be defined, as delusional or as a Seer.

“Except for one minor difference,” Adam says, some enthusiasm reaching his voice. “If someone’s experiencing a delusion, there won’t be anything to show for it but someone’s description. But with a Seer, there’s always a tiny
piece of evidence left behind from the encounter. It’s easy to overlook unless you know what to look for: something out of place, shifted, or marked.”

I automatically reach for my neck, to the spot just behind my ear.

“Like maybe the dampness from a whispering in your ear,” Adam says, his eyes following my movement. Then his gaze drifts to my bandaged shin. “Or a mishap right after you think you might have heard something. Seen something.”

I turn to Evan, but he’s staring straight ahead past Adam, nostrils flaring.

My stomach twists with anger and guilt, but an earlier thought distracts me. I look to Adam again. “You were young when it started for you, right? Hearing things?”

Adam nods, his eyes drooping like the thought exhausts him.

“I don’t know why some people experience the whispering earlier than others. I was young, as was Nell. But I’ve met others whose onset is later. I think the younger ones are less likely to dismiss what they’re seeing and hearing. When you’re a kid, anything’s possible.”

“I think it started for me when I was with Nell. The night she went to Oakside.”

Adam shakes his head. “It’s not like a virus. You can’t catch
the voices from being around people who experience them. Otherwise, Dr. Keller would have no need for any of us.”

We’re all quiet for a moment, the only sound the faint whistling of Evan’s nose.

“Maybe it’s not so much a matter of when it starts as when we start to believe it,” I venture. Adam simply looks at me, the deep pools of his eyes unreadable.

Another silence follows. I can’t take it anymore.

“How do you know all this?” I ask. I sound suspicious, but who am I kidding? I
am
suspicious of him. How could anybody believe something so unbelievable?

“I told you. Dr. Keller worked with me for over half my life. He shared things with me.”

“You and Dr. Keller sound like you’re pretty tight.” My throat tightens. Did I just see Adam’s eyes shift?

“We were,” he says. His hunched shoulders take on a new tenseness. “When he became head psychiatrist at Oakside, he made me his orderly, his right-hand man, in a way. By then he knew I could detect a Seer as well as he could. He had me convinced we were going to help people. That we were going to protect them from the Takers.”

It’s so strange to hear Adam throwing around terms for what I’ve been experiencing as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.

“The split soul.” The words feel ridiculous on my tongue.

“Just the one half,” he corrects me.

I’m at a loss for what to say next, but to my surprise, it’s Evan who chimes in.

“So what, you just left? You’d had enough?”

Adam looks him squarely in the eye. “I fell in love.”

“Oh,” Evan backs down a little.

“I had to help her. I could see the way Jeremy—Dr. Keller,” Adam says, and blushes a little, “was losing it. He wasn’t sleeping much, and I hardly ever saw him eat. He was getting more, I don’t know, obsessive. He’d been letting his other patients slip—the ones with actual delusions, the ones he keeps on the other side of the ward, away from those he’s identified as Seers.”

I think back to the day I went to Oakside to pick up Nell’s box of belongings. I had tried to turn down one hallway, but Dr. Keller had cut me off at the pass and hurried me in a different direction. I can still hear the sound of his coat as it snapped in his wake.

“They’re still there, and the orderlies are the only ones taking any sort of care of them—though I’d hardly call it that. Those patients aren’t being given the therapy they need. They’re just pumped with drugs to keep them quiet.”

“What about the other Seers?” I ask.

“You mean all two of them?”

“There are only two left?” Evan asks. His brow creases, but every other part of his face falls. It’s as though he was hoping to hear other news.

“And I can’t say how much longer even they’ll be around,” Adam says, a hardness slipping into his tone. “Dr. Keller’s not worried about the safety of the Seers. He used to believe they needed help and protection. Now he just views them as a conduit. A means to getting what he wants.”