Before I Wake (8 page)

Her legs began to tremble and she had to stop her descent. With both hands gripping the metal railing, she waited.

The trembling continued.

As if driven by some electrical impulse, the trembling traveled through her legs, up her torso, to her arms, neck, and head.

She broke into a cold sweat.

Her legs crumpled. She sank to the step and sat there, her cheek pressed to the cement wall, her hands still gripping the railing above her.

An old fear. An irrational, reasonless fear she couldn’t even name because the visual memory no longer existed. The only thing left was the feeling, the emotion.

She was a child afraid of the dark.

Her legs and arms began to ache—a reminder of the passage of time.

She stood up.

Beyond the stairwell, metal steam pipes clanged and whistled.

It’s not the fear of the building
. It was the irrational fear of coming face-to-face with the memories they’d taken from her here. Almost as if they’d locked them up in a jar somewhere and hidden them away for her to find upon her return.

A quart canning jar with her name on it.

ARDEN’S BAD MEMORIES.

That’s what the jar would say. The words written on some cute, homey label. The jar tucked into a cupboard next to the strawberry preserves.

Open the jar.

Stick in a knife.

Spread the jam on a piece of bread and take a bite___

She gave herself a mental shake. How much time had passed?

Someone shouted her name from deep below. “Arden! Arden! Can you hear us?
Arden! “

Franny. Calling her.

And now the voice was joined by another.

Eli.

They sounded scared.

They sounded terrified.

What did they have to be frightened of? No one had taken their memories, had they? There were no labeled jars with their names on them, were there?

In their case, Cottage 25 was just a building.

Yeah, like Hitler was just a man.

Shut up
! she told herself.
Shut up! If you can’t say anything helpful, then just shut the fuck up
.

Right.

So she would find those pesky kids, she told herself in a chipper voice.
Silly, silly… kids
…

She was no better off than a child who was afraid of the—

A door.

Painted black.

She’d seen that door before.

She stared at it a long time. She tested the knob.

Unlocked,

She pushed it open.

A couple of small safety lights illuminated the gray cement floor. Bulky shapes like coffins with legs were waiting.

Not coffins.

Float tanks.

The name bobbed into her head.

Some people called them isolation chambers.

Like going back to the womb.

Had Harley said that?

The smell: metal corroded by salt.

The rubber-lined tanks were filled with water and enough salt to float the occupant like a cork. No submersion. Just total darkness. With nothing but your own thoughts.

And the voice of a madman…

A jolt of consciousness brought her back to now, to the immediate time and place.

For a moment, she’d backtracked. For a little while, she’d forgotten the mission and why she was there. Forgotten about Franny and Eli and the kid who’d run off. What was his name? Noah. That’s it. They were on a quest for Noah.

She crossed the room. She headed for the nearest tank.

They’d always reminded her of iron lungs used by TB patients. Metal, with gauges on the side. Temperature and heat gauges so the water wouldn’t get cold. A timer.

That could be set for hours…

It wasn’t so much what they looked like, but what they did.

The suffocating isolation.

Locked in a box.

In the dark.

No control, completely dependent on another person to let you out.

And then the added element of water…

It didn’t make it any better.

She undid the latch and swung the lid open. Even though the tank was empty and dry, it still smelled like disinfectant and old rubber, and like somebody’s wet, cotton swimsuit that had been left in the corner.

Her memory was fuzzy, but tactilely her fingers recalled the edge of the metal encasement. Her feet remembered the tread on the ladder. The temperature of the water. Almost as if someone had peed in it. And its buoyancy, the way the salt felt as it worked its way into every crack in your skin, every little abrasion. Burning like a vat of battery acid.

When she was done, her fingers and toes would be wrinkled, her legs white and trembling. Like some pickled old woman, she used to think as she struggled from the container with the weakness of an astronaut back from six weeks in space.

Arden slammed the lid.

Float tanks were supposed to be good things. Hippies and New Agers loved them, claiming that an hour or two in the tank every few weeks made them better able to focus. That it cleared their heads of excess garbage.

But then, most objects weren’t bad until the human component came into play. A stick was just a stick unless someone picked it up and beat the shit out of you with it.

There were three tanks in the room. All identical, all industrial green.

She approached the second tank. She opened it.

Also dry.

The third one was warm to the touch.

The power of three…

Two hours was the maximum amount of time a person should remain inside. Arden had the feeling she’d been locked in there for much, much longer.

Somebody’s words came back to her.
My head is getting fucked up
.

Was there water in the tank? They should be emptied every time they were used.

Was the tank occupied? Right now?

She wanted to run. She wanted to turn and get the hell out of there. But what if someone was trapped in the tank?

Harley. Could it be Harley? Maybe he hadn’t really left. Maybe he’d been right here all along.

She unlocked the lid.

Snap. Snap
. Two metal latches that reminded her of the latches on an old lunchbox you might find in a junk shop.

She swung the lunchbox open.

She recoiled. She blinked.

A body.

Nude.

Male.

Long, dark hair.

She let out a gasp, dropped the lid, and jumped away.

Her foot caught on something and she tumbled backward, everything suddenly moving too fast.

She reached out, trying to catch herself, stop herself, her hand making contact with a metal table. She pulled it down with her as she went, crashing to the floor at the same time her head struck concrete.

Pain knifed through Arden’s head.

“In here!” someone shouted.

She tried to get up; the movement sent a wave of dizziness washing over her.

The shout from the hallway was followed by the sound of pounding feet.

A door crashed open, slamming against a wall.

“Come on!”

Someone—Eli—grabbed Arden’s arm. “We found a way out!” He pulled her up from the floor.

The pain in her head intensified. Sharp, white light strobed behind her pupils.

The scene was delivered in choppy fragments.

A dark room, with bits of gray seeping around corners and through cracks.

A girl with a name Arden couldn’t remember.

Noah. Where had he come from?

An argument was going on between the girl and Noah.

“Don’t make such a big deal out of this,” Noah pleaded. “I thought it would be funny.”

“Funny if you get us kicked out of the study?” the girl asked.

Can’t remember her name. What is her name?

“It’s your fault. You were tormenting me,” Noah shot back.

“I can’t talk about this now,” the girl said.

“But I want to.”

“Shut up. Just shut up.”

Arden had to tell them something. Had to tell them about… what?

Her head.

Tell them that her head hurt.

Hurt like hell. And they weren’t helping.

From the edges of her pain came Eli’s impatient voice. “Hurry!” And, “Be quiet!”

In an awkward cluster, they exited the room, Arden stumbling, trying to keep up, trying to ignore the throbbing in her skull.

The girl grabbed Arden’s other arm, and then they were half dragging her, running and panting.

“We have to get out of here before somebody comes,” the girl said, her voice breathless.

Running is always a good choice. Can’t go wrong with running.

“Left?” That was Eli.

“No, right.”

Noah? Was that Noah’s voice?

“Here! Turn here!”

Skid around a corner.

Jerky images, everything coming too fast.

Through a thick, institutional door, metal lock bar clanging heavily.

Another corner and up a set of stairs.

Burst outside.

“Don’t stop,” the girl gasped.

Everything—the brick buildings, the stand of evergreens in the distance, the grass—was washed in a predawn fog. Sharp rain pelted Arden’s face.

Pasty, gaunt face framed by dark, stringy hair.

They ran for the trees. Wet grass, soaking through shoes.

Wet and cold.

What am I doing here?

She was finished. Done in. Couldn’t go another inch.

Arden quit running, quit trying to keep up. “Stop.”

The girl and Eli paused, still gripping her arms.

“Let go.” Arden tugged her arms free. Her legs buckled, her knees sinking into the saturated ground.

The girl and Eli tried to reattach themselves.

“No.” Arden shooed them away with a sloppy sweep of her hand.

Leave me alone
. She’d had enough. Enough of their pulling and dragging and shouting.

Her vision was blurred. She felt queasy. Her head hurt, hurt, hurt.

Gaunt face. Stringy hair. Open eyes. Looking at her. Staring at her with accusation.

“Oh, my God!”

The girl’s voice seemed to come from the other end of a long tunnel. “She’s hurt! She’s bleeding!”

Bleeding? Who were they talking about?

Arden felt a finger poking gingerly at the back of her head.

Her
. They were talking about
her
.

She didn’t know if it was the mental image of somebody sticking a finger in a cracked skull that did it, but the queasiness in Arden’s stomach intensified.

She knocked the girl’s hand away, crawled a few feet, and threw up. When the most severe of the nausea faded, she shoved herself to her feet and began making her way to the trees.

The ground tilted ninety degrees. She fell, her face slamming into the wet, muddy grass.

Everything was fine and dandy until a roar intruded upon her consciousness. Until she returned to the real world and panic-filled voices.

The rain was coming harder now, beating down on Arden’s face, pattering against fallen leaves, the sound of a million striking drops competing for space in her throbbing head.

A fresh argument was taking place a few feet away.

“—your fault,” came the girl’s voice.

“Don’t say that, Franny. How can you say that?”

Franny
. That was her name. The name Arden hadn’t been able to remember. They’d met in the tower room. Franny and Noah had been playing cards.

“My fault?” Noah asked. “How is it my fault?”

“She was looking for
you
.”

“Hey, I didn’t tell her to come after me. I didn’t tell her to hit her fucking head.”

“Did you call 911?” Eli asked. He was crouched a few feet from Arden, staring at her, hands wrapped around his knees.

“I tried, but my phone’s acting up,” Noah said.

“Franny, call 911.”

Arden rolled to her back, her arms outstretched. How had this happened? How had she gotten here? Yesterday life had been so much simpler. Yesterday she’d been two thousand miles away.

“Shit,” Noah said, his voice tense. “Here comes a car. Should we run?”

“You are unbelievable,” Eli said.

The roar of a car engine. A slamming door.

“Who is it?” Franny asked.

“Fury.” Eli sounded worried. “It’s Agent Fury.”

*

Nathan Fury strode across the wet grass, a high-powered flashlight sweeping the area. Dawn had arrived, but was hiding. Rain pelted his black trench coat while birds sang hopefully from a windbreak of evergreens.

Kids.

Three, to be exact.

Fury had seen them around. He knew they’d taken some time off from college to participate in a study of Harris’s.

They stood in a semicircle. As the distance between Fury and the group closed, he saw someone sprawled on the ground.

He directed his flashlight beam at the body, beginning at the feet.

Sneakers. Jeans. A T-shirt. Then the beam rested on the ashen, muddy face of Arden Davis.

A heavy stone dropped in the pit of his stomach. He started to run when the body moved, when she lifted her arm and draped it across her face to cover her eyes.

He immediately downshifted his emotions, immediately collected himself and fell back into the role of Special Agent Nathan Fury, detached, cool, and in control.

“What are you doing out here?” His voice was remarkably steady as he walked toward them, his leather shoes sinking into the soggy ground.

All three started babbling at once.

“She hit her head.”

“She needs a doctor.”

“She’s bleeding.”

He crouched beside Arden, one arm resting on a bent knee, the other reaching out to touch her cheek. “Arden?”

She pushed herself to a sitting position. “I’m okay.” Her voice was weak, slightly slurred.

Had she been drinking again? What did he mean,
again
? Had she ever quit?

“We were just, you know, goofing around,” the kid named Eli said. “Somehow she hit her head.”

Fury wasn’t interested in the details of who did what. He probably wouldn’t get the truth anyway. Arden needed a hospital. “Help me get her to my car. I’ll take her to the emergency room.”

Arden protested, but not as much as he’d expected, which was a bad sign.

With the help of Eli, they got her to the car, packing her into the passenger seat.

“We’ll be okay,” Fury said when the kid started to get in the backseat.

Eli nodded. Doors slammed and then Fury and Arden were moving down the rough road.

“Do they give you morphine for a concussion?” Arden asked, head against the seat, eyes closed.

Fury tried to miss the larger dips in the cobblestone drive, but some were unavoidable. “They won’t want to sedate you.”

“Too bad. Morphine would be nice.”

That figured.

Over the past several months, there had been a lot of talk around Quantico about how far she’d fallen. People, even FBI agents, liked to gossip and exaggerate, but he was afraid everything people had been saying about her was true.

After two hours in the emergency room, a CT scan, and tetanus shot, Arden was diagnosed with an extremely mild concussion, given something for the pain, and told to go home and rest.

“No stitches?” she asked the young ER doctor.

“I think you’ll be okay without them.” He left the exam room to put together a prescription and home-care information.

Arden remained where she was, her legs dangling over the end of the padded exam table.

Fury stood across the room.

He hadn’t bothered to remove his soaked and wrinkled coat, which was unbuttoned and hanging limply. His short hair was rumpled. He stared out the window of the old brick building at rain that was falling harder than ever, his back to her, hands in his pockets.

“I don’t mind rain,” he surprised her by saying. “It’s kind of peaceful…”

Earlier, while the doctor had been examining her head, Arden had remembered what she’d forgotten. “I saw a body,” she now blurted out.

Fury slowly turned to look at her. “What?” He glanced around the room, as if expecting to find a corpse nearby.

“A body.”

“Where?”

“Cottage 25. In one of the float tanks.”

He recoiled, then seemed to collect himself.

She could see him thinking things over, weighing her mental stability and injury. Organizing, reorganizing. Dismissing. “You’ve had a concussion. The doctor said you might be a little confused for a while.”