Shadowlands (Shadowlands (Hyperion)) (5 page)

He was right. He had gotten me. He’d gotten my dad, then Darcy, and now me. This time, as I lay there with the evergreen trees circling me, my life did pass before my eyes. I saw my mom’s laughing face as we sat at the dinner table. My dad’s proud grin when I got first place at the science fair. Darcy’s flashing green eyes as she snuck an extra scoop of ice cream. Christopher’s sweet smile before he kissed me.

Mr. Nell had won.

Or had he? I wrapped my hands around the knife’s handle, my entire body on fire. I’d taken enough biology to know that the only thing keeping me from bleeding out was the knife, and that removing it would be the last thing I did.

The second to last, I vowed.

I stared at Steven, his legs trapped in mine, his torso splayed out on the muddy forest floor. His eyes were closed behind his cracked, wire-rimmed glasses, and he was lying on his back, taking rattling breaths through his broken teeth. His tan corduroy jacket was stained with dirt and blood, the flaps open, exposing his ripped flannel shirt—and his heart.

Gritting my teeth, I pulled the knife from my stomach. I registered the pain dimly, but I was too close to the end to feel anything but my need for revenge.

Steven’s eyes flicked open. His pupils were huge and as black as his soul. Then the moon came out again, spilling bright light over us, and all I could see was my own reflection in the lenses of his glasses. My hands lifting the knife. My blood dripping from the metal blade. The grim set of my lips as I swung down hard, right over Steven’s heart.

When it was done, I lay back, spent, staring up at the black sky.

“Rory!” a voice yelled from somewhere. “Rory!”

Suddenly, I woke up in the backseat of our new SUV, a scream wedged in my throat. Darcy’s hand gripped the front of my sweatshirt.

“Shhh! Dad’s sleeping,” she hissed, releasing me and twisting back into her seat next to my father. “You were having a nightmare.”

“A nightmare?”

I shook my head, my heart pounding wildly. My shirt clung to my back in patches of sweat and my neck was wet under my braid. I ran my hands over the seat and over my body, touching anything real to prove that what I’d just experienced was nothing but a dream. My body was whole. My sister, very much alive, was staring at me, and on my lap was the envelope containing the story of Nick, Darcy, and Rory Thayer, which wasn’t all that different than our real story. Except for the fact that we came from Manhattan and that my father was a private tutor instead of a literature professor at Princeton.

I breathed in and out slowly, trying to calm myself down and get my bearings.

“Where are we now?” I pressed my forehead against the window, the cool glass bringing me fully back to reality. The car was surrounded by fog, and my father was snoring behind the wheel. A foghorn sounded and I realized the engine wasn’t even running. I squinted out the window and saw another car’s side mirror just inches away, not moving. We were on a ferry, just like the one we’d taken when we went to my cousin Talia’s wedding up in Massachusetts.

Darcy shrugged. “No clue. I just woke up because you were yelling.”

“Have we stopped since the crash?” I asked.

“What crash?” Darcy asked, her forehead wrinkling in confusion.

I balked. “The crash at the exit in Virginia.”

Darcy stared at me like I was a crazy person. “Rory, you passed out in Virginia. There was no crash.”

There was no crash.
As Darcy’s words washed over me, I let out a sigh of relief. “Thank god.”

Darcy rolled her eyes. “Okay, if you’re done freaking out I’m going to sleep some more.”

I nodded weakly, pulling out my iPad and clicking over to my copy of
The Emperor of All Maladies
. I was too scared to go back to sleep in case I started dreaming again. But as I stared at the glowing screen, a faint smile flitted across my lips. We were on a ferry to a safe house. We were alive. And we were far, far away from Steven Nell.

My father and Darcy stirred just as the fog started to lift. To my right was dark blue water and whitecaps as far as the eye could see. There was a clatter and a shouted directive, answered by another and another. The ferry was docking.

“Are we there?” Darcy asked with a yawn, looking out the window.

My father blinked the sleep from his eyes and reached for the GPS. It let out a loud double beep and flashed to life. The white screen displayed the message no one ever wants to see:
NO SIGNAL
.

Ahead of us, the car ramp was lowered. A man in a blue polo shirt with a white swan embroidered onto the breast pocket waved us ahead. My dad started the engine and sat up, clearing his throat.

“Guess we’re about to find out.”

He drove us off the ferry, bumping onto the ramp and into a small parking lot, where a man was handing out maps. My dad cracked his window to take one, and a warm, salty sea breeze tickled my skin. I pushed the button for my own window, too, breathing in as the fresh air surrounded me. Outside, seagulls cawed and a bell on a buoy sounded.

As my dad angled into a parking spot to look at the map, I watched the passengers disembarking onto the pedestrian walkway. It was mostly kids my age and younger adults, with a few middle-aged and elderly people peppered in. I saw two guys holding hands, the definition of opposites attract. The taller guy had dark skin and dark hair and wore a tight graphic tee and a funky straw fedora, while his boyfriend had white-blond hair and freckles, and sported a green polo shirt over shorts. But almost everyone else seemed to be alone, lost in their own thoughts. I sat up a little straighter as I noticed a carved wooden sign that was painted dark blue on the background, the words spelled out in raised white letters:

WELCOME TO JUNIPER LANDING

Above the message was a wooden swan, puffing its chest out proudly, its wings back and its head held high.

“Rory, do the pamphlets Messenger gave us have an address?” my dad asked, turning the map over.

I riffled through the papers on my lap and found a little card in the folder pocket with a house key taped to it. “Yep. Ninety-nine Magnolia Street.”

My dad dropped a finger on the map. “Got it,” he said. “Right on the beach.”

“Nice,” Darcy commented, slipping on a pair of sunglasses.

My dad pulled out of the parking lot and drove slowly into town.

The buildings were crowded close together, their wooden shingles weathered and gray, the white trim around their windows splintered in places. There were wide-plank porches; bright, beach-themed wind socks tossed by the breeze; and surfboards leaned up against doorways. At least a dozen bikes were parked all over, none of them locked up, and as we rolled by a butcher shop, I heard kitschy fifties music playing through a crackly old speaker. Every window had a flower box, and every business had a hand-painted sign and a colorful awning.

We passed everything from a bakery to a bathing-suit shop to a corner stand selling sunglasses. It actually reminded me of Ocean City, where we rented a house for a week every August. Definitely a vacation destination, which would explain all the young singles on the ferry. They probably came out from the mainland every morning to work. A place like this had to be booming in the summer.

The road opened up onto a town square and a pretty park with a stone swan fountain that spouted water into the air. A guy with long dreads and a knit cap stood in the center of one of the crisscrossing walkways, singing “One Love.” He had a red, yellow, and green guitar strap that looked like it had seen better days, and his guitar case was open on the ground in front of him. He kept time by tapping his bare foot.

“Way to embrace the stereotype, dude,” Darcy said under her breath.

Over his head, strung from lamppost to lamppost, was a big blue sign that read
JUNIPER LANDING ANNUAL FIREWORKS DISPLAY! FRIDAY AT SUNDOWN!

I turned around as we passed the Juniper Landing Police Department, wanting to solidify the location of the small brick building in my memory, just in case. In the distance, I could just make out the top two points of a bridge above the wafting white clouds of the fog, which still hovered over the water.

“Why didn’t we take the bridge?” I asked, sitting forward again.

Pausing at a stop sign, my dad glanced in the side mirror, then turned to look over his shoulder.

“Because the GPS took us to the ferry,” he said impatiently.

My face burned. I was so sick of my dad’s demeaning tone I could have screamed. But, of course, I said nothing. As always.

We started moving again. A couple of girls strolled by on the sidewalk and stared at our car like they were trying to see if there was anyone famous inside. One of them, a tall, solid-looking girl with curly red hair, caught my eye and didn’t look away. She held my gaze until I finally felt so uncomfortable I turned my head and pretended to cough.

“Oh my god, check out the tall-dark-and-handsome!” Darcy hissed.

She sat forward in her seat as we passed the Juniper Landing General Store, which had a blue-and-white striped awning, a couple of white wire tables set up outside, and a big sign in the window advertising breakfast and lunch service as well as
THE BEST HOMEMADE ICE CREAM ON THE ISLAND
. A dark-haired, broad-shouldered, square-jawed guy leaned against the window with one foot pressed back into the glass. He was casually flipping a quarter that glinted in the sun, which gave it the appearance of gold or bronze, and laughing at something the blond girl next to him had said. His laughter carried across the road.

On the other side of him was a guy with longish blond hair, sharp cheekbones, and blue eyes so striking I could see them even from this distance. His hands were crossed behind his back, his elbows out, and he was staring at our car. As I watched, he nudged the dark-haired boy, and he looked up, too. Then the blond girl did, then the petite Asian girl next to her, then the three other kids sitting at a table nearby. They simply stopped talking and stared.

Darcy instantly sat back and looked straight ahead, trying to appear cool, but I couldn’t tear my eyes from the blond guy. His gaze was locked on mine, much like the redhead on the sidewalk’s had been. But somehow, this was different. He was looking at me as if he knew me. As if we knew each other. But also as if he was sad to see me.

My heart started to pound in a whole new way. Like I was on the edge of something, but I didn’t know whether it was something good or something bad.

“God. He is literally the hottest guy I’ve ever seen,” Darcy said as my father pulled the car toward a dip in the road. “Maybe this whole running from Princeton thing wasn’t the worst idea ever.”

I didn’t answer her. Instead, I turned in my seat to look back at the crowd once more. They were still staring. And they kept right on staring until we finally dipped down the hill and out of sight.

Perfection. This place was perfection. A vacation town. Residents of vacation towns were blasé by nature. They never took note of a strange face, because every face was strange. And places like this were notorious for their bumbling police forces—lackadaisical, poorly trained individuals who had no idea how to deal with anything more pressing than lost children and drunken fights on the beach. Not to mention the fact that it was an island. An island with, as far as he was able to discern, only two possible routes back to the mainland—a ferry with a sporadic schedule and a bridge at the far north end, a good half-hour drive from town.

She would not escape him. She was as good as trapped. He couldn’t have asked the FBI to send Rory Miller and her family to a more opportune location.

He would have to remember to send a thank-you card when it was over.

I gazed out the window as my dad pulled up in front of a beautiful white house with blue shutters, a huge front porch, and a white picket fence. A weeping willow hung over the sidewalk, and the garden was bursting with orange daylilies and purple coneflowers. Behind the house, the ocean stretched out toward the distant horizon. The water was a brilliant aqua near the sandy shore and deepened to navy blue beyond the breakers.

“This is it?” I said dubiously. I had been imagining a depressing gray building with three cots and one shower. Maybe the government had more empathy than I’d thought. Maybe they figured if you were on a run from a serial killer, you deserved a little pampering.

“It’s number ninety-nine,” Darcy sang happily, popping open her car door.

I got out and tipped my head back, relishing the warm sun on my face. A pungent, floral scent prickled my nose in a pleasant way. I breathed it in, hoping that one good inhale would soothe my frayed nerves and stop the erratic pounding in my chest. I held the air inside my lungs for as long as it took Darcy to unlatch the gate and stroll onto the porch, where a large swing creaked back and forth in the breeze. Then I finally let it go.

My heart slammed against my rib cage. Nope. Still terrified. But at least the sun was out, the breeze was cool, and there were no serial killers in sight. For the moment.

“Door’s locked,” Darcy announced, rattling the handle.

My father strode over to join her as I brought up the rear.

“Here,” I said, tossing the key from the packet to him.

He caught it easily. Darcy bounced up and down on her toes as my dad opened the door. Spotting some hot surfer boys had clearly buoyed her mood.

The door squealed loudly, as if it hadn’t been moved in years. Inside, the house was bright and sunny, and everything was polished to a gleam. Darcy ran right up the stairs, no doubt intent on getting the best bedroom. My father and I just stood there for a moment, taking in the faded antique rugs, the dark wood floors, the antique furniture. A pastel fifties-style kitchen loomed at the back of the house.

My mother would have loved it.

“I guess we should unpack,” my father said, looking tired and sounding exhausted.

“Okay. I’ll go check out the—”

But he was already moving away from me back to the car. I climbed the rickety wooden staircase, my limbs feeling suddenly heavy. Darcy barreled out of the first room on the right, nearly mowing me down.

“That’s mine,” she announced before running downstairs and out the front door. I stepped inside her new room, surveying the yellow-and-white striped wallpaper and queen-size bed. A huge bay window faced the street, and I could see Darcy as she yanked open the trunk of the car and pulled out her bag.

Her choice was fine by me. After everything that had happened, the last thing I wanted was to face the street.

Across the hall was a master suite done up in blues and grays, which my father would claim, and the next door opened onto a white tiled bathroom. At the end of the hallway, a third door stood ajar, revealing a winding staircase. I peeked inside and tilted my head, but all I could see was a wood-paneled ceiling.

The stairway was so narrow that I was able to trail my fingers along the opposite walls as I made my way up, the stairs creaking beneath my every step. At the top, I paused. The room was wide, almost as wide as the house, with a sloped ceiling and white-washed walls. A double bed stood in the center under the highest part of the ceiling, with a six-paneled floor-to-ceiling window behind it facing the water. The only other window overlooked the beach to the north. The furniture was sparse—a wardrobe, a desk, a bookshelf filled with haphazardly shelved cloth-covered volumes.

In any other circumstance, I would have loved it. But right then, I wanted nothing more than to go home. I missed my room. I missed my desk and all my things. And being away from home, away from my mom’s wallpaper, her kitchen utensils, the artwork she’d arranged so carefully in the living room, was making me miss her even more.

It’s only temporary, I reminded myself with a deep, fortifying breath. But I knew the first thing I’d be unpacking was the framed picture of the two of us.

Turning around, I headed downstairs to get my stuff. As I passed by the open door to Darcy’s room, she tugged her hood from her hair. In the back of her head was a huge blotch of blood, all dried into her tangled hair.

“Darcy! Your head! It’s still bleeding!” I gasped.

She whirled on me, her green eyes flashing as she attempted to cover it up again. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine,” I said, a chill running through me.

Out of nowhere, a flash overtook my vision. A pale hand in the silvery moonlight. A distant hoot of an owl. A tumble of bloody black hair over a smashed-in skull. But when I blinked, the vision was gone. It was just a nightmare, I reminded myself. I pressed my hand onto the nearest wall and tried to breathe.

“Rory? What is it? What’s wrong?” Darcy asked, alarmed.

“Nothing,” I said, looking away, avoiding her eyes.

“That didn’t look like nothing. It looked like…you got the exact same look on your face as when you had—”

“The flashes,” we both said at the same time.

I swallowed hard and sat down next to her. My heart pounded with panic, and I tried to do what my psychiatrist had told me to do all those years ago—focus on what was real, focus on what was here. There was a gray smudge on my sneaker. A big black knot in the wood plank under my foot. A cuticle torn on my right ring finger. These things were real. This room, this seat, and Darcy. They were here.

“I knew it!” Darcy exclaimed, her face lined with concern. “It’s happening again? Since when?”

“I don’t know. Just…that was the first time,” I said. “I’m sure it’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

But even as I said it, my stomach was tied in knots. After my mother had died, I went through months where I’d get flashes every day. Vivid visions of her coughing up blood or moaning in pain or crying out for my dad. But they weren’t just memories. It was as if I was transported back to the moment I’d seen these things happen and I was there all over again, reliving them in pure 3-D. My father had taken me to a psychiatrist, who had diagnosed me with post-traumatic stress disorder, and after a few months of therapy, the flashes had slowed, then finally stopped. But now, apparently, they were back. And I was flashing on the worst nightmare I’d ever had.

“You sure?” Darcy asked me.

“Yeah. I’m all right,” I said, standing up again. The room spun for one split second, but I forced myself to focus and breathe. “I’ll be right back. We have to clean you up.”

“No. I can handle it. You should sit,” Darcy said.

But I ignored her and headed for the bathroom. I was too glad to have something to do—something to distract myself from that flash. I found a washcloth in a linen closet behind the bathroom door and ran the water in the ceramic sink until it turned warm. Then I splashed some water on my face and gave myself a bolstering look in the mirror for good measure. When I returned to Darcy’s room, she was sitting on the window seat, waiting for me.

“Do you want me to do it?” I asked.

She didn’t say yes, but she also didn’t throw me out of her room, which I took as a positive sign. Instead, she brought her feet up on the plaid bench cushion and turned to look out at the street. Tentatively, I touched the wet cloth to the wound. She winced.

“Does it hurt a lot?” I asked.

“Just get it over with,” she answered tersely.

I cleaned up the blood and was relieved to find that underneath it all it was simply a superficial scrape. When I was done, I brought her leather hobo bag over to the bench, knowing she would want to work on her hair. She rummaged through it until she found her brush and started to detangle the ends.

“We should walk into town and find those guys,” Darcy mused, pulling the ends of her hair around to study a stubborn knot. “If we’re going to be here for a while, we might as well make friends.”

I turned my profile to Darcy and stared at the hardwood floor. Three dark knots in the wood grain formed a wobbly smiley face.

“How long do you think we’ll be here?” I asked quietly.

Darcy shrugged, working on her tangles. “I’d say it’s a bad sign that they’ve been chasing him for ten years.”

“Yeah,” I said, my heart folding in on itself. “I guess he’s pretty smart.”

Darcy was silent for a moment. She was staring out the window, as though lost in thought, the brush limp in her hand.

“Do you want to hear something really sick?” she finally said in a disgusted voice. “I actually
liked
Mr. Nell. He always explained math in ways that I might actually use it in real life, which made it way more interesting. And I liked how he did speed-math contests for the last five minutes of every class because he knew that otherwise everyone would be watching the clock tick.” She shuddered.

“I know. I liked him, too,” I admitted. And I had. I liked how he carried his coffee in a Beatles travel mug, how he always had a dog-eared copy of
Auto Repair for Dummies
tucked under his arm, and how he never had bad breath when he leaned in to check my work, unlike every other teacher at Princeton Hills High. I used to smile when I saw him strolling the halls, holding the strap of his gray messenger bag with both hands, whistling like he hadn’t a care.

“I guess you can never really know what’s going on in someone’s head,” Darcy mused, beginning to brush her hair again.

I glanced over at her bright green eyes, which were so much like our mother’s. We hadn’t been the best of friends in a long time, not since before our mom died. But after Christopher dumped Darcy, she’d completely changed. Every other sentence out of her mouth was a snap or an insult. The only thing that had stayed the same was her standing up to Dad. She was always the one to talk back to him while I cowered in the corner. I was grateful to her for that—for getting in his face a little so I didn’t have to. But I didn’t know how to tell her.

My mother would have told me to just say it. That it was important to let people know how I felt. My heart pounded nervous energy through my veins at the very thought, but I decided to try anyway. I could have been dead right now, after all. Then she never would have known. Apparently, “Life is short” was going to be my new mantra.

“Darcy, I—”

She stood up abruptly. “I’m gonna go check out the rest of the house,” she said, turning away, avoiding looking me in the eye. It was as if she’d heard the emotion in my voice and it had scared her.

“Um, okay.”

I tucked my hands under my butt, embarrassed, but she was already out the door. Sighing, I turned toward the window and glanced out at my new neighborhood. It was quaint, with brightly colored houses in lemon yellow and mint green. Each garden contained a riot of flowers and neatly trimmed trees. Only the house across the street seemed out of place. It was light gray with painted black shutters. It had no trees, no garden, no shrubs. The only interesting thing about it was the square grate in the center of the front door—one of those old-fashioned peepholes that opened like a mini door from the inside.

As I watched, a curtain fell over the window directly opposite Darcy’s and I saw a hand disappear from view. My heart hit my throat. Was someone watching us? I leaned forward, squinting as the curtain fluttered.

Something crashed downstairs, and my hand flew to my heart. My father cursed at the top of his lungs. I got up and made my way to my new bedroom. Shaking off the quick scare I’d had in Darcy’s room, I closed the door quietly behind me. We were safe here. No one was watching me anymore. People were allowed to look out their windows.

I climbed the stairs, sank down on the bed, and stared up at the wood-beamed ceiling with a sigh. So this was it. This was my new life. With my family but entirely alone. At least something about this place was familiar.