The Murmurings (30 page)

“Let me in,” it says, over and over, soothing, like a lullaby. “Let me in.”

“I-I don’t want to,” I cry, whimpering like a child.

“Let me in, and it won’t hurt anymore. The pain will all go away. Let me in.”

“No, I can’t.”

“Let me in. Do it now. You’ll be with her again. She misses you. Let me in.”

“Sophie, don’t listen. Don’t let it in.” Adam’s voice sounds as though he’s at the end of a long tunnel. He’s slouched in the corner, struggling to get to his feet.

“Don’t let it in, Sophie. Don’t give in. Use what I gave you!”

I hear a rattling breath, and the Taker directs its eyeless stare at Adam in what looks to be a warning. Adam lies still on the floor.

The Taker turns back to me, its mouth moving rhythmically over its hideous yellow teeth. I want to back up. I want to fight it. But I can’t seem to move. I can only stand still and watch it come for me. Three feet away. Two feet. One. It’s nearly on top of me. The smell is horrible, but I can’t make it stop.

“Let me in. Let me in.”

“Sophie, let me in!”

I can’t tell the difference between the voices anymore. The Taker. Evan. Dr. Keller. They all sound the same. Everything sounds like it’s under water. Toneless and muffled. I only want to sleep. To give in to the pain. To release it all and be done for good.

I just want to see Nell again. Just one more time.

“She misses you. You can go to her. Just let me in.”

She misses me. And I miss her. I miss her so badly that my chest feels like it might cave in. I can see her now, a terry-cloth towel wrapped around her shoulders, a hair clip fastening the towel around her neck. Nell holds a hairbrush in her
hand, her fingers making a cutting motion like imaginary scissors.

Come on LS, it’s your turn
, she says to me. She’s motioning to me to take a seat on the stool she’s set up. We’re playing beauty salon, and it’s my turn to be the customer.

“It’s your turn. Let me in.”

I want to see Nell. Just once more. I want to tell her how sorry I am that I let her down. I shouldn’t have been afraid. I should have been as brave as she was.

A metal door handle rattles.

“Sophie, let us in. Adam, for God’s sake!” Deb screams.

“Sophie, open your hand!” Adam pleads.

“Let me in. It’s the only way.”

Now I feel the heat on my ear. It’s telling me how to let go, how I can see Nell again. My toes tingle, like the feeling they get before my feet start to fall asleep. Pins and needles. Flat pine needles in primary colors. All I want to do is sleep and never wake up.

“Wait, no!” I hear a deep voice say. It’s trying to wake me, but I don’t want to wake up.

“You want me, wait!” it says, and I don’t understand.

“Sophie!” Evan calls.

Something roars in the Taker, something prehistoric. Its mouth clacks in front of me, so wide it looks like it could swallow me whole.

Screaming, I startle to my senses and take cover behind a gurney beside the door, but the Taker lifts it up and throws it against the mirror, shattering the glass. My heart throbs, my mind conjuring the memory of a sink dripping with Nell’s blood, the fleeting image of something unnatural reflected in those fragments of glass as they fell from the bathroom wall. Something that Nell tried to stop me from seeing.

“Sophie, look out!”

I’m suddenly aware of Adam again. He lunges forward to push me out of the Taker’s way. My head hits the corner of the countertop that juts from the wall. My ears ring and the rushing waves of the murmurings cease.

The Taker swipes its long arm at me but Adam deflects it, this time bracing himself against the impact. Now he’s directly in front of its face, its mouth still hanging wide open, its yellow teeth bared like a vicious animal.

“Adam!” I cry out, but he holds his hand out to me without turning around. I see now that he’s purposely placed himself directly in front of the Taker’s eyeless gape.

“You want me instead,” he tells the Taker in a voice so steady and calm, I can’t believe I’ve heard him right.

“Adam, no, what are you—?”

He puts his hand out to quiet me again and leans his head in toward the Taker’s. The Taker’s mouth suddenly clamps shut, and this time, its teeth come together in the most hideous
grin I have ever seen, its cracked lips curling under to make space for it.

Adam never breaks his focus, never once flinches as the Taker leans in and whispers in his ear. As his eyes close, Adam rises up onto a single toe, and I watch in utter horror as that toe leads him up the wall and onto the ceiling, the rest of his body hanging like a caterpillar from its cocoon.

“No!” I cry out, but it’s too late.

Adam has already let the Taker in.

It whispers once more into his ear, but by then, Adam is already gone. His black eyes wander to mine just as the last of his life begins to leave him, and the Taker leans in to find that part of itself it can never have.

But this time is different. Adam doesn’t turn to me and utter a parting message like Kenny did. Instead, he points to my fist, which I’d forgotten I was clenching. I open my palm and dangle a long braid of gold—tiny charms in the shape of a shamrock, a shoe, a treasure chest, a puppy. Twinkling with the sweat from my hand is the bracelet that had at one time meant something to a young Dr. Keller and his young Susan.

Holding this symbol of Dr. Keller’s love, I imagine the pain that he felt upon losing Susan, the pain Susan felt when her life was taken from her, her soul ripped in two through no fault of her own. I allow myself to feel the pain of their
separate but connected losses, each equally irretrievable. I envision it so vividly, I’m practically there with them, on some anonymous street corner, a knife between them, a gift ungiven.

The Taker drops its eyeless gape from Adam and focuses on the bracelet dangling from my fingertips. And in that second, Adam squeezes his eyes shut, and with what looks to be his last ounce of strength, he screams.

“O-FOUR-THIRTEEN-THIRTEEN!”

The room falls utterly silent. I can only hear the pounding of my own heart in my ears. Then comes beeping followed by a ping.

The door whooshes open. Dr. Keller is in the doorway, his skin white and filmy with sweat, his lab coat and clothes looking somehow bigger on him. His lip trembles, searching for something to say. His head sways on his neck. His hands shake.

Dr. Keller is transfixed by the Taker, its rotting body twitching in place, its hungry mouth clearly at a loss for whom to attack first.

“Susan,” Dr. Keller whispers, his face twists in horror at what he sees, and the Taker cocks its head so far to the side that it’s nearly sideways.

“That’s not Susan, and you know it,” Adam says, his voice
cracking under the strain of staying conscious and alive.

“Susan, I know you’re in there somewhere,” Dr. Keller croaks through tears. His face is folded into a million creases. His fingers spread and flex, curling into little balls, glistening with the same perspiration that slicks his pasty face.

“She’s not,” Adam says.

The Taker turns to Dr. Keller and tilts its head, taking one jerking step toward him, then two more.

Suddenly, Dr. Keller’s face shifts, and his pleading turns to horror.

The Taker leans toward him, and I remember the bracelet.

Without thinking, I place myself between Dr. Keller and the Taker, fighting the urge to listen to what the rapidly moving mouth has to say. I reach out for its waving fingers. Taking each end of the bracelet, I encircle the rotting blackness of what might have once been a wrist.

The Taker stops jerking its arms and legs. It spreads its cracked lips, teeth clicking, and looks down at the bracelet, letting its mouth fall open like a lever releasing itself.

The sound splits the room in half. It’s like a roar, so horrendous that I scream along with it. The Taker crumbles to pieces like ash falling from a flaming piece of tinder. The remnants fill the room with the putrid smell of decay, then disintegrate into a pile of fine black dust.

Then the dust disappears into the gray linoleum like it was never there. In its place, all that remains is a green Lego. And resting atop that green Lego, wrapped around one of the nubs like a horseshoe around a stick, is a gleaming silver ring that matches the one on my own finger. The only trace of the charm bracelet is the tarnished leaf of a tiny gold shamrock.

•  •  •

The rest of the night is one I know I’ll barely remember even as it’s happening. A cloud has already started to gather over it, obscuring the events and blurring the details. Only the loudest voices, the boldest colors, the strangest actions are left in my memory.

Adam falls from the ceiling and collapses into a heap. He’s revived by none other than Dr. Keller, who cries for him the way I can only imagine a father might cry for a child.

The Pigeon attempts to pull Dr. Keller from Adam’s side and is rewarded with a slap to the face, one that leaves her cheek spotted bright pink.

Adam recovers in time to see the police arrive, nearly a dozen tan uniforms with holstered guns in black cradles at their hips. Handcuffs are produced, and people in white—not the trespassers of the night—are taken to cars with flashing lights that crowd the normally empty parking lot.

Dr. Keller’s perfect hands are bound behind him in silver
bracelets. So are the Pigeon’s, in her tightly wound topknot; and Pucker-Mouth’s, with her phlegmy cough; and Robbie’s, with his face pinched in worry about what will become of him.

Tired-looking people of all ages, all levels of disorientation—all in mint-green scrubs—are led away with blankets wrapped around their shoulders like confused superheroes.

Evan’s arms, strong and stable, encircle me.

Deb’s eyes, amber and wide and alive with fire, watch all of it.

Mom and Aunt Becca, their matching curls and red-rimmed green eyes, search me out in the waiting room.

The smell of conditioner.

Adam stands beside me in the lobby, answering question after question from the sheriff, the health department, social services.

Adam tells them all he can without telling them what he knows they won’t understand.

His coal-black eyes meet mine, and I understand. He’s sorry he scared me. He’s sorry I thought he would betray me.

When no one else is listening, when everyone’s preoccupied with their notes and comforting those who’ve been scarred and scared, Adam says, “I loved her more than I’ve ever loved anyone. I thought I could save her.”

I shake my head at his confession and tell him, “You gave her more than any of us could. You did save her. You saved her from loneliness.”

We made promises—to call the next morning, to talk more, to see one another’s faces the first thing the following day.

Those of us who were left were given rides home in cars that weren’t our own. Red and blue lights flashed spastically against the asphalt until we arrived at our respective homes.

And then there was sleep. In the same bed with Mom and Aunt Becca. The smell of conditioner on either side of my head lulling me into a fitful, but otherwise lovely sleep. Because every time I woke up, one of them was there staring at me, making sure I was okay, making sure I wasn’t going anywhere. Making sure I didn’t feel alone.

T
HE WEATHER IS STILL RELATIVELY
cool. It’s ninety degrees, not bad for April in Phoenix. But the air feels stiff as a linen shirt dried in the sun. I can tell our mild days are numbered as we creep into the long summer.

“So, how does it feel to be the smartest girl to ever pick up a book?” Evan teases me as we walk around the block. We got home from school twenty minutes ago, and we’ve been circling the neighborhood in a bid to squeeze out a little more time together.

It’s been three months since classes started up again for the semester. This is his way of congratulating me on my position as Mrs. Dodd’s teaching assistant for next year, which means I’ll be spending my first period helping other students
analyze Kafka instead of taking some lame elective. I can still hardly believe she asked me of all people. One of these days, she’s going to figure out I don’t actually have any idea what I’m talking about. Of course, that’s precisely the quality she says makes me the best person for the job. As she puts it, so long as I don’t think I have all the answers, I’ll continue to ask the right questions. I’m positive that my face turned a hideous shade of crimson when she said that, but it still felt pretty good to hear it.

“I hope you’ll make time for the little people,” Evan says, teasing me. But I detect a note of insecurity.

“Please, like you’re going to have a spare minute for me with all the time you’ll be spending on the field.”

I’m not the only one who received exciting news this week. Evan made varsity, and he’ll be practicing two times a day in preparation for fall. Apparently, Coach Tarza likes to get an early start.

“Tell you what,” I continue, “if I start spending every free minute buried in a pile of books, you officially have permission to yank me away and make me watch a horror movie marathon.” We both grow quiet with a shared memory of the first time I mentioned my love for horror movies—right before he tried to take me to Jerome for our first date.

“So,” Evan says cautiously. “No more follow-up visits I take
it?” Evan means the police. This is new territory for both of us, talking about my last night in Oakside, and everything that happened afterward.

“Nope, not for a couple of weeks. I guess it’s finally over,” I say, knowing I don’t sound the least bit convincing.

After that night, Oakside hit the news in a big way. National news, as it turns out. Corrupt and neglectful mental institutions make for great headlines. And this, for better or worse, made the police investigation of what happened there the night we killed Susan’s Taker even more invasive. The police brought every one of us in for questioning. Evan, Deb, Adam, and I were all hoping to spend more time together, but that wasn’t exactly the way we’d planned it. We all played dumb, of course. Deb and I told the police that we were drugged at Oakside, and that we were subjected to vague and confusing tests with no clear purpose. We followed Adam’s lead in sharing just enough to answer their questions, but not sharing so much that it would lead to
more
questions.