Experiment in Terror 05.5 Old Blood (16 page)

The shock of it working knocked me backward onto the floor, but sure enough there was little Perry beside me, her blue eyes grey. I wasn’t sure how to make it look like she was in the Thin Veil version of her room and from her confused and frightened face, I knew she had no idea where she was.

“
Mom!” she wailed, looking around her frantically, her long hair whipping past her. I quickly put both my hands on her shoulders, careful not to scare her any further.

“
Perry, don’t be afraid, it’s me, it’s your grandmother, Pippa,” I told her in hushed, soothing tones. “I’m your grandmother, Perry.”

It didn’t matter what I said, Perry struggled to get out of my grasp and then the tears began to spill down her round cheeks.

I really had not thought any of it through. Just what was I hoping to do with a six-year old girl? Did I think she would have a notion of where she was or, more importantly, who I was?

I bit my lip and looked at the portal I had just pulled her out of. I could still make out her room there, although it was fading and getting hard to see. The thought of never returning her to her family made my heart skip a beat.

“
Perry!” I said to her. “I’m sorry, do you want to go home?”

She looked at me and nodded through the tears.

“
Ok darling,” I told her and reached for her with my hand. “Don’t be afraid of me. I’ll take you back. You’ll go back to your room OK? You’ll go back and it will be like none of this ever happened.”

I didn’t know if I had the ability to control someone’s mind like that, to erase memories. It’s obvious that Perry never remembered the incident, even with her therapy sessions and regression. Either it had worked or Perry naturally blocked the traumatic event out of her head.

Perry wiped her tears on the sleeve of her plaid dress and gingerly put her hand in my outstretched one. My skin looked so papery thin and faded with dark grey smudges of age spots. By contrast, hers was as smooth as cream. I grasped it tightly and looked at her little face, thinking it would not only be the first time I saw her but the last. A tear spilled out of my own eye, which seemed to calm Perry down.

“
Why are you crying?” she asked. The concern in her face was genuine and graceful.

“
Because I love you and I have to give you back,” I said, choking on the words. For the first time I felt the blood of myself in another. It felt like I had known Perry for all her life.

Then, she did the sweetest, most wonderful thing. She took a few small steps toward me and wrapped her arms around my neck.

“
If you don’t cry, I won’t cry,” she whispered into my hair. I was so shocked at her affection that I couldn’t move my lips at first.

“
It’s a deal,” I said breathlessly. I squeezed her back and then composed myself. “Let’s put you back where you belong.”

So, with a gentle nudge I pushed Perry through the portal and back into her room. She stumbled a bit, falling to the softly carpeted floor but she seemed OK. I couldn’t bear to watch anymore so I closed my eyes until the portal faded and its place was the one back into my room.

I stepped through, succumbed to the horrible pressure, and everything went black.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I woke up days later in the medical ward. Apparently the nurse had found me passed out the next morning and completely unconscious. However, even when I came to, nothing was the same. Jakob was right once more. I was so far gone that there was no hope for me. My body was weakened, my mind was gone further than it had ever gone before and I saw demons everywhere I looked. Everywhere. Even in my reflection. I started acting out again, attacking nurses and other patients, until they had to put me on the strongest drugs they had.

It’s how I spent the next five years of my life. The last five years of my life. I don’t remember any of it, except for brief flashes until the end. It skips around like an old roll of film. I see myself laughing alone. I see myself dressed up in drapes and funny clothes, and putting outlandish makeup on myself and on others. The nurses indulged me with that, letting me relive my times in the theatre, so long as I took my medication and did what I was told like a good girl.

There was no hope for me. No respite. Memories of my other life, of Karl and Ingrid, of Declan and Perry, of Sweden, even of Ludie…they all faded and became inconsequential in my haze. There was no way out but death.

One night, I smuggled some of the makeup back to my room. I took my chair and as quietly as I could I crunched an eye pencil sharpener underneath its heavy leg. The sharpener shattered, spitting out the shiny puzzle piece I lusted over.

The blade.

I picked up the tiny danger between my shaking fingers, and before I could give it any more thought, I sliced it up both my wrists.

I felt no pain – not physically. The blood ran a shiny dark red down my failing arms and I marveled at it with an eerie sense of detachment. It felt peaceful.

At first.

Then, as I lay down on the floor and the life began to drain out of me in a stream of silken crimson, I felt immeasurable pain. They say your life flashes before your eyes but mine didn’t flash. It crept along slowly and I was forced to relieve all the pain and the few fleeting moments of glory. I clung to those moments with Declan and Michael in Atlantic City, to me and Ludie making love in the theatre, to giving birth to Ingrid, to having my granddaughter’s arms around me despite the impossible odds. I tried to let them live in my mind, to win out over the pain and sorrow that was oh so present and oh so persistent. And I don’t know what side won. Was it the brief happiness I felt in the small things, the simple joys in my life? An accepting look or forgiving touch or sunshine in the backyard? Or was it the feeling of being deserted, abandoned, unknown and unloved?

Either way, I died with an aching heart for the things I suffered through and the things I loved. In the end, it’s all the same.

In the end.

~~~

Oh, but my story doesn’t end there, does it? I don’t think anyone’s does, I’m just one of the first people to tell you so.

Death seemed like an eternity of blackness but who knows how long the moment of emptiness and shadows really was. I opened my eyes and I was no longer on the floor of my room. I was no longer bleeding. I was standing beside the lake back in Sweden, back at my old house. It was grey here, it was dull and grainy but it was still home. I had gone home again.

I heard a throat clear from behind me so I took my eyes off of the shiny, beautiful lake and looked to the forest. Jakob was standing at the edge of it, leaning against a birch tree.

He smiled at me and held out his hand.

“
Come with me, Pippa,” he said gently. “You’re not home yet.”

I grinned at him in return, pleased to see that I was no longer my incoherent self, but younger and able-bodied. I walked toward him up the slight grassy embankment that ran up the side of the house. My house where I grew up with its stone and wood and silence.

I was happy to see him, happy to go. But…

I stopped a few feet away and looked back at the lake. There in the middle of it, the water shimmered more than normal. A portal!

“
Pippa,” he said in a warning tone.

I shook my head and looked at him apologetically.

“
I can’t go yet.”

“
There’s nothing you can do for them. They have their own lives to live.” He knew I was thinking about Declan and Perry. “You have yours to continue living. In another place. In your home.”

“
No,” I told him, the lake holding my full attention. “If I can help them, at least help them find each other…”

“
Fate will bring them together if it’s supposed to be that way.”

“
Curse you and your fate!” I sneered at him, my anger surprising me. How had it followed me from one plane of existence to another?

His boyish face, forever young, showed no sign of annoyance. It’s like he expected it all along. Maybe he knew this to be my fate no matter what I said to him, no matter what I did. Fate would find me.

I looked down at the ground, at my feet that were no longer in the hospital slippers but in glossy, beautiful dancing shoes, ones I only dreamed of owning once upon a time. The sight of them made me smile again and I willed the anger to disappear.

I must remember these little joys
, I thought to myself.
Even in death.

“
You’re not coming then?” he asked.

Somehow, even in the Thin Veil, I heard the call of birds across the water.

“
No. I will not go. Not yet. I’ve made some mistakes that I’d like to make up for.”

I glanced quickly at Jakob. I could see he knew that I brought Perry across into this side all those years ago. I wasn’t sure if I ruined her life by doing so, if I made her see ghosts where there were no ghosts before, and I had to help her if I did. I had to help her anyway, because I cursed her to this life. As for Declan, I knew the potential he had and the life that knocked him around. He’d need me too. I just wasn’t sure how I’d make a difference at all.

But I had to try.

Jakob gave me a salute and walked into the woods. I knew I’d see him again. Until then, I wouldn’t move on.

I had to keep trying.

~~~

I’m still trying.

Continue on to read the first two chapters in Experiment in Terror #6 Into the Hollow…

Into the Hollow

CHAPTER ONE

Whiteout.

That’s all I saw when my eyes finally pried themselves open, my lashes sticking to each other with the glue of tiny snowflakes.

White. White. White.

Where was I?

I rolled over with a groan and felt an explosion of pain in my side. I looked down and as my vision began to right itself, I saw a rock jutting into my stomach. It came out of the cold, snow-blown ground like a weapon.

I went over onto my back, feeling the chill come in through my jacket. My bare fingers tingled as I ran them over my body. I felt intact, nothing bleeding or broken.

But how did that explain the rich, acidic smell of blood in the air?

I slowly sat up and took in my surroundings.

I was sitting on the barren, rocky ground up the side of a mountain. Snow swirled in the air from all directions, some of it falling on the icy white patches on the earth, the rest blown away like angel dust.

Because of the white that went on forever, I could barely make out a forested valley below, and across from me, in the haze of snowfall, there were a few jagged peaks.

Beneath me the ground sloped off gently, alternating between sudden drop-offs. The whole situation gave me vertigo and I dug my frozen fingers into the hard ground, suddenly afraid I’d roll off the side and fall to my death.

A soft rumbling came from my left. I turned, painfully, as my side still smarted, and saw a slight overhang where snow was falling off in gentle lumps. My heart had sped up a few beats.

I let out the breath I was holding, watching it freeze and catch in the air before being swept away, and noticed a trace of red where the snow had just fallen.

My bones seized with chill.

I peered at the red spot, my eyes widening as it began to spread and bleed across the snow.

Glancing up at the overhang where the snow had come from, I saw another clump of it come sailing down, landing on the red with a poof.

It too had a spot of red in it that began to spread like a stain on a paper towel. Curiosity getting the better of me, I carefully got to my feet and walked over to the patch of silky wetness. I hunched over, trying to figure out why the snow was bleeding by itself when I felt a drip on the back of my neck.

I reached back with my hand first and when I took it away, it was slick with blood.

Did I even want to turn around?

I did anyway.

Above me was a limp, lacerated arm, its torn and bloody fingers dangling over the edge of the overhang.

Claws. Teeth. Blood.

Tearing. Gnawing. Eating.

The images and sounds ripped through my head in a flash of smoky darkness.

Dex! I remembered Dex.

My chest collapsed on itself as I tried to recall the last time I saw him.