Crazy Love You (34 page)

“I don't know,” I said lamely. “Please, just tell me what's happened.”

My head was a siren of pain, and the world was spinning all around me. I was moving toward the front door, still clutching the phone even though the line was suddenly silent.

“Binky!” I yelled, stopping in my tracks.

I pulled the phone away from my ear and looked at the slim black device clutched in my hand. It was dead. My phone was completely out of power.

“No, no!” I shook it stupidly, issuing a string of expletives.

Then I started moving again. My mind was a dervish, planning, scheming. I'd get in the Scout and go to their house. They could see me, do what they wanted to me, but they'd know that I hadn't, would
never
, hurt their daughter. We'd find her together.

She was just hiding out, taking some time to think. Didn't she say she did that sometimes? Wouldn't anyone who'd been through what I'd put her through want to get away? And when we found her, all would be forgiven. We'd help Priss together. The house would be demolished and we'd never go back to The Hollows again. It was all going to be okay. Right? Right?

But at the door, I saw that I had company. The police had surrounded the Scout. There were three squad cars, maybe ten cops in crisp blue uniforms. They all looked suitably grim and important.

“Oh, shit,” I said.

I turned to see Joy behind me. I expected her to go screaming out into the street. Instead, she looked me up and down again. Then, “There's another way out.”

I didn't know why she was helping me but I followed her through the building, into a small kitchen, then through a door. We walked down a rickety set of wooden steps into the basement. We wove our way through shelves and shelves of books and records, cardboard boxes, old computers. The mold and dust stung the inside of my nose, clung to the back of my throat. Finally, she hefted open a thick metal door. It led into pitch black. A tunnel. She looked inside, and then back to me.

“Just keep walking until you can't walk any more, then reach up and unlatch the door,” she said. She might have been giving me directions to the A&P, she was so unflappable and cool. “Though you might consider waiting until dark before you exit.”

I didn't have that kind of time. “Where does it let out?”

“About a mile from here, near the railroad tracks.”

“Thank you,” I said.

She didn't answer, just closed the door with a heavy clang and locked it behind me. I didn't have time to be scared or hesitant, or even clumsy. I only had Meg on my mind as I ran through the pitch darkness, keeping my hands on the wall. I was deaf and blind like a mole, moving through the earth, only touch to guide me. How would I draw it? I thought. Just panel after panel after panel of black.

After hurrying awhile in the dark, I slowed my pace. I had a stitch in my side, and my lungs ached with the effort of running. I must have gone a mile or more. What was this place? A remnant of the Underground Railroad, an old mine tunnel? Maybe Joy was locking me in here, and the police would approach from either or both directions. Why had she helped me? Maybe she saw something in me—my innocence, my desperation.

But for the moment, there was silence, not even the sound of dripping water or the scurrying of rats. Just hard concrete beneath my feet and a great yawn of nothingness.

I tried to get my head together. Whatever I had taken earlier in the day was wearing off. In addition to my headache, I was starting to feel shaky and nauseated. I kept moving; I had to get out of here, get to Megan, wherever she'd gone.

“Priss,” I screamed into the darkness. “What have you done with her?”

I thought she'd emerge from the darkness, laughing. But she didn't. I was totally alone. I picked up my pace. And just when I thought I would stay there forever, trapped, alone with my own panic and insanity, I came to the end of the tunnel, running hard into a wall. I reached up and found the latch, just as Joy promised.

I have never been so glad for the daylight. I took big gulping breaths as if emerging from deep water. I climbed up and lay on the ground, looking up at the tops of trees and bright sunlight, high cirrus clouds. It took me a minute to notice the idling white Prius. Eloise.

I pulled myself to my feet and raced to the vehicle, crashed into it. I didn't even ask Eloise how she knew where I was, figuring Joy had told her. She started driving without a word.

“Stay down,” she said.

“I need to get back to the city,” I told her. I tried to sink down low, but my big body and her small car were not working well together. I pulled myself into an awkward crouch.

“Your business is here,” she said.

“My fiancée,” I said. “She's missing. She's pregnant.”

She glanced at me with something like pity on her face, but she kept driving. I slumped against the seat, trying to piece it all together, trying to understand.

“Is it revenge that she wants?” I asked. “I am the descendant of Nicholas Paine and she wants me to suffer as she has? She wants to destroy everything I love?”

Eloise gave me a look she seemed to have mastered, the teacher summoning patience for her terribly slow student.

“That's not a motive,” she said. She had her hands at ten and two, her eyes on the road. She drove exactly the speed limit. I had no idea where she was going. “Revenge is not a motivator.”

“You must be joking,” I said. “It's a motivator as old as time.”

“No, the desire for revenge is a secondary impulse,” she said. She was driving faster now, keeping to the back roads. She knew this place as well as I did. Like me, she was of The Hollows. We were both trapped here, I thought. Why didn't she seem to mind?

“People act out of love or they act out of fear,” she said. “Those are the only two primary motivators.”

I could tell she wasn't someone worth arguing with; you couldn't change her any more than you'd change the flow of a river or the phases of the moon.

“Where are we going?” I asked. “I need to find Megan.”

I was aware of a sound, distant but persistent in the air all around us.
Thwack-thwack-thwack.
Slowly, it started to dawn on me that it was the blades of a helicopter. Then I saw up ahead that a roadblock had been established. A line of twenty cars were stopped, waiting, as the police checked inside each vehicle.

“This is bad,” she said. She pulled off onto a side street, moving slowly. Did anyone see? Surely that was something they looked for, people turning from the line, heading in another direction. She drove a short way, around a bend, out of sight of the other vehicles. She pulled along the edge of The Hollows Wood. I calculated that we were about five hard miles through the woods from my house—not that I could go there. Where
could
I go? Nowhere, that's where. One thing was for sure: I couldn't get myself arrested. I had to find Meg.

“I'm getting out,” I said.

Her eyes darted back the way we'd come and then to me. Something in her gaze acknowledged that yes, that's precisely what I should do.

“Where are you going?”

“I don't know.”

I wondered if she had some idea where I should go. She hadn't been that much help, really. Maybe she'd come through now with some great piece of advice.

“How about your place?” I suggested when she didn't say anything. I was only half kidding.

She shook her head. “You can only hide so long,” she said. “It's not going to help you to hole up.”

“I know,” I said. I couldn't keep the exasperation out of my voice. “I have to find her and give her what she wants, right? Except I don't find her; she finds me. And she takes what she wants.”

Eloise looked back again toward where we'd come. I followed her eyes, expecting to see the police pulling up. But no.

“Ian,” she said. “You have it, too.”

“What?”

“It's not the same as what I have,” she said. “But you have some measure of my ability. Otherwise this wouldn't be happening to you. You're tapped in, you're picking up frequencies. Maybe just her frequency, but you're connected.”

“Not by blood,” I said.

“No,” she said. “That's the least thing that connects us.”

I felt so lost, so utterly inept. The hero always knows exactly what he's supposed to do. And he does it. He fights those inner battles of fear and self-doubt, and then he goes on to take on the big, external demons. He fights and wins. I was not that man. Eloise must have seen it then. She closed her eyes and shook her head, put a strong hand on my arm.

“Find her,” she said. “End this. Or she'll crush you. She's so close to taking everything—your fiancée, your baby, your life. This might be your last chance.”

These words were not inspiring. I fell from, more than exited, her car. Before she could issue any more soul-crushing warnings, I entered the woods and started to run. Once again, I didn't even know where I was going.

•  •  •

Fatboy is running through the woods, the tall black trees tower above him, branches whipping at his face, leaving angry gashes. The woods seem to fold and tip into him, tripping him, making him stumble. The Whispers around him are low but ubiquitous.
Welcome home, asshole.

“Priss,” he yells. His voice echoes and bounces, coming back at him in the Whispers—taunting, mocking. “What do you want?”

The woods turn around him, like a fun-house maze. He's not sure where he is, or even how to get out of the woods. Finally, his running slows. He can't run anymore. He starts walking, the sky growing dark. Even though he hadn't been heading there, he comes to a clearing, and through the trees, he sees the back of his childhood home. That's the trick of The Hollows. It always gets what it wants.

•  •  •

I stood in the clearing, looking at my house. I was drenched with sweat. I hadn't wanted to come here, and yet I had. It was deserted, and so quiet. No police. Was it possible that they hadn't linked me to this place yet?

No. Megan would have told Binky and Julia about it. It's the first place the police would have come. If I had done something with Megan—if I had harmed her, abducted her—surely I would have brought her here. Yes, of course. If I had killed her, I'd have brought her body back to this place. I'd have put her in the back of the Scout and carried her body out to the graveyard. Wouldn't I?

I could envision it, very clearly. I could think of how I'd draw it. I saw myself hefting her from the trunk. Bodies were heavy. Even Megan, who was a small woman, short and small-boned, would weigh more than one expected. So it would be a physical struggle.

She'd be wrapped in that Moroccan rug she'd had in her living room, the one Binky and Julia brought back from a recent trip they'd reluctantly made without her. I'd have been weeping, sick with grief and regret as I trudged through the woods.
I'msorryI'msorryMegI'msososorry.

The trees would have bent in to watch, and the Whispers would be deafening, like the wind in a storm. I could envision it, panel by panel.

Maybe those were strange thoughts to be having, but I lost myself to them for a while—feeling the sickness of misery and dread I would surely feel if I had done something horrible to Meg.

I lingered under the tree cover, watching. Maybe the police had come and gone. Or they'd come here first and found the house empty. Or maybe they were hiding, taking up a space among the many shadows, hoping I'd turn up. When I stepped into the clearing the shadows would take their human form, as uniformed police, and they would descend upon me. Maybe they were watching me right now.

If I could just find my charger, hide for a while somewhere while my phone juiced back up, I could call Binky. And then what? Make him understand that I would never hurt his daughter.

Then, suddenly, I remembered the video. The video that had sent me running from the apartment. I had managed to press it away, deep down inside me. Now I saw it playing out now before my eyes.

I collapsed against the tree, and let myself sink to the ground. I saw the hooded figure cutting through the crowd toward Megan, her standing, oblivious to the approach of danger, listening to her music. I saw the hulking monster on the platform, the one who pushed her, and then smiled for the camera. It was not some nameless maniac assailant. It was not even Priss.

It had been me. I had pushed her onto the tracks, and hadn't even stayed to watch her die. I saw my own face in the video, wearing a horrible expression of malicious glee.

But I had no memory of this event. None. I couldn't even put myself there, despite what the detective had shown me. The detective knew when he came to my apartment that it was me. Why hadn't he arrested me on the spot? Why hadn't he called and warned Megan?

I got to my feet then, stumbled through the woods toward the graveyard. I was weeping. I mean, really sobbing like a woman. Who was I? What had I done? What was I capable of doing?

The little church rose up ahead of me, and when I reached it, I let myself fall among the graves. Priscilla, Clara, Martha. Fallen, broken, abused by circumstance and design.

“I'm sorry,” I said to Priss, who wasn't there, to Megan, to our unborn child, to my sister, to my lost mother. “I'm so sorry.”

And then she was there, as she always was when things were at their worst. I could see her standing behind the church—a child, a fairy, the most delicate wood sprite. We locked eyes and everything around me, all the thoughts in my head, disappeared as I was pulled into her deep blue, drowning like Ella.

“Priss, what have I done?”

And then I was with her, in another time, another world. I saw her, just a little girl, running through the night, thin white legs pumping, her face a mask of tears and terror. Her breath was ragged in my ears, her panicked heartbeat one with mine.