Beyond (16 page)

Easy for her to say. She’s not having her skull sawed open.

“But it just takes one wrong twitch of the surgeon’s fingers and I’ll be a drooling vegetable. What if he sneezes when he’s cutting?”

“It might be best to focus on what you can control,” she tells me. “Like lowering your stress level.”

Right. I can’t even control my own body. The bandage on my wrist is showing a little, so I tug on my sleeve to hide it.

I’m sick of being stared at—here, in class, across the dinner table. I get up and walk around the room, avoiding her eyes.

“How are your parents handling it?” she asks.

I pass by the potted palm tree in the corner, brushing my fingers over its flat leaves. They make a dry whisper.

“My mom’s a nervous wreck. Takes my temperature ten times a day. She’s read enough about brain surgery to do it herself.”

After my ghost cornered me in the basement yesterday, I slept with Mom again. I haven’t shared her bed so much since I was little. She likes having me close right now, so she didn’t ask why.

“And your father? How is he dealing with it?”

I shrug. “He’s a cop. A natural fixer. And what’s hurting me, he can’t fix. So I guess it’s eating away at him.”

There’s an aquarium set against the wall. I bend to gaze at the crazy-colored tropical fish. Reminds me of the terrarium I saw in Leo’s room—with the frogs he kept—in those flashes of memory he shared with me when I died. He was collecting tadpoles from a pond when he was taken.

“You know they identified the remains uncovered by that landslide? Those bones I saw. The murdered kid. He’s got a name now.”

“Yes, I saw on the news. How are you coping with all that?”

I’m about to say,
Badly
. But then I get an idea. Maybe Doc Iris can help me with my shadow-ghost problem.

“I’m trying to get a grip on it.” I sit down again. “How could anyone do that to a kid? They’d have to be a psycho, right? I mean, do you think these child-killers are just born that way? All twisted. Or does something happen to make them into monsters?”

I’m not really asking about Leo’s killer, but about Leo himself. Because he’s my monster. Maybe my doctor can analyze him, help me figure him out.

“Well, in cases like this, where the victim was so young, you’ll usually find that the killers were victims themselves when they were children.”

“Victims of what?”

“Violence. Usually sexual abuse. It’s not uncommon for the abused to become the abuser.”

Is that it? Was my ghost so warped by what happened in that black house that he turned into a monster himself?

“Have you dealt with any guys who were abused like that?” I ask.

“Yes, I’ve counseled some.”

“What are they like? I mean, what kind of damage does it do to them?”

“It can be emotionally crippling. They’re afflicted with a deep sense of shame and are left feeling worthless. They feel as if they’re marked by what was done to them, that nobody could ever love them again. Some isolate themselves, not wanting their families to see them after.”

“And some get violent?”

She nods. “But you need to focus on yourself right now, Jane. You look exhausted.”

I sigh. “Yeah. I’m beat.”

“Get some rest. Forget everything else. Give yourself a mental vacation.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Take a vacation from my life. Go somewhere far away.

And leave my ghost behind.

I wake up in the dark with the wind in my face. Rain chilling my skin.

My scream comes out as a ragged gasp.

What? Where am I?

Shaking my head, I try to clear it.

Must have been sleepwalking. But how did I get out of the house without setting off the alarm?

I hold up my hand, checking for my ring. It’s gone. I know I wore it to bed. Maybe I took it off in my sleep. Do they even know I’m gone? Mom and Dad will be frantic.

The moon shines a cool blue light down on me through a gap in the clouds. Where am I? Out in the open.

My feet are like ice. Looking down at them—

I nearly stumble forward. But I stop myself in time, arms out to keep my balance.

My toes are curled over the edge of nothing. The ground ends in a sharp drop. I hear the waves breaking down below, invisible in the dark.

An updraft whips my hair around, smelling of salt
water and seaweed. I fight the shiver in my legs that could tip me over the cliff.

Don’t panic!

Gravity sucks at my knees, trying to get them to fold. If I lean just the slightest bit …

Don’t even twitch!

But my legs shake. Ready to give out.

I stumble back, away from the cliff, and fall hard on the rocks.

My T-shirt and sweatpants are soaked.

Leaning up on my elbows, I try to figure where I am. Off to my right, down a steep slope, I can see the lights of Edgewood.

This must be Lookout Hill. They call it that for the view, and because if you don’t look out you’ll be taking a high dive onto the broken reefs.

If I hadn’t woken up just now—what then? Would they be fishing me out of the surf tomorrow?

Is this my shadow trying to kill me again? Two more days till they take the nail out. If I can just make it till then.

The wind freezes through my wet clothes.

Get moving. Get up!

Rolling onto my knees, I’m about to push myself to my feet when I see it. I’m not alone.

He’s standing by the drop in front of me. Wearing his hooded sweatshirt and jeans. Watching, amber eyes glowing.

I don’t move. Don’t breathe.

So close
, his voice whispers in my head.
You come right up to the edge. But you always pull back
.

I see now that he’s not standing on the cliff at all, but a few yards past the cutoff. Nothing beneath him but air.

Go! Run! But my legs are so shivery I can’t trust them to hold me up.

Come with me
.

He reaches his hand out.

I shake my head.

His hand falls back to his side.

Don’t make me hurt you
.

He sounds almost sad.

“No!” I yell. “You’re not—not going to hurt me anymore! They’re cutting this thing out of my head. And when it’s gone, you’ll be gone too. Back to sleep. Back where you came from.”

You can’t get rid of me. I’m part of you
.

“You’re nothing to me! Nothing!”

He shuts his eyes for a moment, snuffing their fire.

But you’re everything to me
. His voice quiets to a hush, like he’s telling a secret.
Since we first met
.

“We never met!” I shout. “You went missing before I was even born.”

We met before
.

“Before what?”

His eyes open, flaring bright.

Before your first breath
.

A cold deeper than the night wind sinks into me.

When you were born dead. And your soul drifted away. I found you, lost in the dark. Lost like me
.

I don’t want to hear this.

Your soul was so new and bright. Like a firefly. I kept you close, kept you safe. And you were mine
.

The breath shudders out of me, clouding in the frigid air.

But they took you from me
.

I force myself to ask. “They?”

The doctors. They made your newborn heart beat when it wasn’t meant to
.

I’m shivering all over.

But I never let go
.

He was always there? Before my first breath?

“But why? Why did you have to hurt me all those times?”

You were meant for me. Nobody else
.

I squeeze my eyes shut to break away from his gaze. When I open them again I scramble backward on the slick rocks, getting my feet under me.

And I run. Frantic and stumbling in the rainy dark.

You’re mine
.

His voice follows as I rush downhill. Everywhere I look I see yellow afterimages of his eyes, flames burning in the night.

Mine
.

I keep going, fast as I can.

This must be what going crazy feels like. When all your delusions start making sense. And I guess the worst thing about being nuts is how alone you are, when you’re the only one hearing the voices or seeing the ghosts.

If I didn’t have Lexi to prove I’m not nuts, I’d be so lost.

When I got back from Lookout Hill late last night I was surprised all the lights in the house weren’t blazing, that Mom wasn’t on red alert. But the place was dark and sleeping still. Nobody even knew I was gone. I managed to slip inside and up to my room, where I found my ring on the floor beside my bed. Mom and Dad think they don’t have to check up on me at night now as long as the alarm doesn’t go off.

I was so exhausted and cold from the long run home that it was a struggle just to get out of my wet clothes and into some dry ones. Then I collapsed in bed.

In the morning, I felt almost human again. But still shaky. The one thing keeping me from totally falling apart is knowing I only have two more days till the operation.

It’s near noon on Saturday. The house is quiet. By now Mom will be down at the Blushing Rose.

I find a note from her stuck on the doorknob of my room:
Don’t forget your pills
.

I take a long hot shower to thaw out.

I’m still in shock from what Leo told me last night. It’s like the whole history of my life just got rewritten.

He’s always been there with me—every breath, every heartbeat—hiding in my shadow.

I let the heat of the shower sink into me, breathing the steam and losing myself for a while in the mist.

Drying off, I check my computer and find half a dozen new messages from Lexi this morning. But none of them urgent. So I click on her email from two days ago instead. The one where she showed me the trappers’ hut.

Like in the rough sketch my shadow made me draw, the horns stick up from opposite ends of the roof. The reason it has those two chimneys is that one was for the living space, and the other was for the room where the trappers butchered and smoked their meat.

While I’ve been busy with doctors and tests, Lexi has been searching online archives, trying to find out if any of these huts are still standing.

I’ve got to tell her about last night. But I need to wake all the way up first and get something to eat. I’m starving.

Downstairs I find Dad slouched and snoring on the couch, his mouth hanging open. He’s still in uniform from the night shift.

I watch him for a minute, wanting to wake him up and
tell him what’s really going on. When I was growing up, he always made me feel safe. But he can’t save me from something he could never even believe in.

Spread out on the coffee table in front of him are heaps of files. Sneaking a peek, I see that they’re all about Leo Gage. Nearly twenty years of investigating this case adds up to a mountain of paperwork.

I quietly shuffle through a small stack, finding interviews with Gage’s family, friends, classmates, teachers and neighbors.

The officers ask the same questions again and again: When did you see Leo last? Any problems at home, at school? Had he made any new friends lately? Gotten in any fights? Has he ever run away?

Another stack has more interviews, but these have cover sheets with mug shots. Registered sex offenders. Dad says it’s standard procedure to check out the local sickos when any kid goes missing. I do a quick flip through their shots. None look familiar.

Buried under all this paperwork I find a thick file with another boy’s
MISSING
poster attached to the cover. Christopher Ford. Twelve years old. Inside, I find a copy of his autopsy report. He’s not missing anymore.

Dad lets out a loud snort, waking himself up. He looks over, blinking me into focus.

“Hi, Boo.”

“Hi, Bulldog. You’ve got a little drool on your chin there.”

He swipes it away with his sleeve. “What’re you snooping at?”

I show him the kid’s photo. “Who’s he?”

He squints at it, sighing. “Another dead boy.”

“So is he connected somehow to the Leo Gage case?”