Sanctum (13 page)

“No. I started yelling at him, clapping. Nothing worked. I didn’t know what to do. I panicked and flipped over, thinking maybe I was dreaming, you know? Imagining it. I opened my eyes again and looked over my shoulder and he was back in bed. Snoring. Just . . . snoring.” Jordan pinched the bridge of his nose and leaned into Abby’s hand.

“Maybe he sleepwalks,” Dan suggested. “It’s not unheard of.”

But he was already thinking about this summer with Felix, and how almost the exact same thing had happened. He could feel sweat gathering in his palms despite the cold; maybe they were making a huge mistake by staying. Jordan could be in danger. . . . Cal could be Felix 2.0.

“It wasn’t sleepwalking,” Jordan replied firmly. “I mean, Micah even warned you about him. Look . . . I can’t go back to that room right now. I don’t want to be alone with him. Can I stay with you guys?”

“Of course,” Abby said. She offered him her latte and he took a sip. “We’re on our way to Lucy’s. You guys can wait outside if you don’t feel like coming in.”

They crossed the street, putting the chapel to their backs, and followed Abby to the sidewalk. The street sloped downward, bringing them past a row of houses that were used by the college for offices and guest housing.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” Abby asked as they went. Dan fell in step behind them.

“I’ll be fine,” Jordan assured her. “Let’s just talk about something else. How’s your aunt? Does she know we’re coming?”

“Truthfully?” She sighed and then shrugged her slim shoulders. “I have no idea. . . . She hasn’t been returning my calls or my letters. I’m not sure she even knows how to use a computer so email is out of the question. I just hope she’s okay. Losing her husband, being confronted with her past . . . It’s a lot for anyone to handle, and after what they did to her in the asylum . . .”

“So how do you know she’s even at home?” Jordan asked, taking another drink from her coffee.

“I guess I don’t. She moved into a new house at the end of the summer and mailed me the address. That was the last I heard from her. My gut tells me she wouldn’t leave Camford, though. I guess we’re about to find out, right?”

The walk was longer than Dan expected, and by the time they arrived at Lucy’s small cottage he was that uncomfortable combination of freezing and sweaty. Everything covered by his jacket was clammy, but his face and hands were red from the autumn wind.

Jordan wiped at his runny nose as they stood at the edge of the lawn.

“Not one for good housekeeping, then,” he mumbled.

Nobody had mowed the lawn or done anything to prepare for the colder weather. Most people had huge piles of leaves covering gardens to keep the annuals warm during the snow months. But here the grass had grown long and snarling, vines and morning glory strands twining up the outer walls. A few shingles on the roof had come loose.

Even so, a cheery wisp of smoke rose from the chimney.

“Looks like she’s home,” Dan said, pointing to the smoke.

“Okay . . .” Abby shook out her mittens, vibrating with nervous energy. “Just hang back. Let me see how she reacts to you guys before I ask if we can go in.”

“No pressure,” Jordan replied, apparently unexcited about the idea of going into the dilapidated house at all.

The windows were shuttered. The front stoop could hardly be seen under a thick cover of uncollected newspapers. Everything about the place looked abandoned except for the chimney. Dan remembered the way Lucy had looked at him . . . Accusatory.
Afraid
. Like maybe he wasn’t a monster but one was inside him and she could see it. But he owed it to Abby to be here.

“Here we go.” Abby drew in a deep breath and marched up to the door, pressing her mitten to the doorbell.

Dan heard the echo of the bell inside, and they waited for almost a minute before footsteps came from the other side of the door.

“Someone’s coming,” Dan said.

It sounded as if whoever was on the inside had to undo about twelve locks and chains before the door swung inward.

Lucy, gaunt and frizzy-haired, but very much there, greeted them with a gasp and then a smile.

“It’s you,” she said, fixing her eyes on Abby. She was wearing a threadbare cardigan over a knit dress, woolen tights, and house slippers. “Have you come for a visit?”

“Uh, yes,” Abby replied, rocking up onto her toes and then back down to her heels. “Yeah. I, um, wanted to check in and see if you were doing okay. We never got to talk much after this summer and—”

“Come in.” Lucy took a big step back and then ushered them toward her. Her gaze shifted to Jordan and then Dan, where it lingered. “Why don’t you all come in?”

Abby started right forward, but Jordan and Dan both hesitated until Abby gave them an impatient look. With a shiver, Dan was the last to cross the threshold. Behind him, Lucy closed the door and did up half the dozen or so locks.

“Make yourselves comfortable,” Lucy said, zooming past them toward the kitchen down the hall. “Let me get you something to eat. . . .”

“Someone call A and E,” Jordan said out of the corner of his mouth. “I think we’ve got a bona fide hoarder.”

Abby hissed softly under her breath. “It’s a disaster,” she said, wading through the stacks of newspapers and junk to the living room on the left. She navigated the group to a couch, where she had to displace several baskets of fake fruit to make room for them all.

“I thought you said she just moved in here,” Dan whispered.

They sat all together in a row, hands in their laps.

“She did,” Abby replied. “How can you even gather up this much junk in two months?”

“Did she seem weird to you?” Jordan asked, carefully pushing aside a wax apple that tumbled against his leg. “Like . . . way peppy? Way, way too peppy to see us?”

“It does seem a bit . . . irregular. Maybe she’s doing better than I thought.”

Or worse
, Dan didn’t suggest.

Lucy returned then with a plate of Oreos and Swiss Rolls. She set it down on the coffee table in front of them, and then took a seat in a grimy, overstuffed chair opposite the couch. A few crooked picture frames hung on the walls, most of them old black-and-whites of what looked like Lucy’s parents or grandparents. The images were so faded and wrinkled the people staring out of them looked like hardly more than ghosts.

One of the pictures in particular caught Dan’s eye. It was of a man standing in a field, his face turned upward, balancing—impossibly—a wheelbarrow on the flat of his chin. He couldn’t know for sure without asking Lucy, but Dan had a feeling this man was her late husband, Sal Weathers, in his youth. Three months ago, Dan had been the one to find Sal’s body in the woods. At the time, Lucy had seemed to blame Dan for Sal’s death.

Now Lucy scooted forward in her seat and beamed across the table at Abby.

“Are you getting excited to graduate? Sending in your applications? There are so many big changes in store for you!”

This was not the frail, shy woman Dan remembered. Not that he had much experience with lobotomy patients, but the quiet, slightly unhinged woman he had met this summer fit his image of a survivor much more closely than this Lucy did. As he listened to her barrage Abby with questions, he decided to accept this as a positive turn of events, rather than a frightening one—especially for Abby. He sat back and took an Oreo, biting into what appeared to be an ordinary cookie but tasted more like ashy mush. He heard Jordan cough quietly and then saw a balled-up napkin appear on the coffee table.

“What brings you back to Camford?” Lucy asked. Dan couldn’t help but notice that even while she directed her questions to Abby, her eyes remained fixed on him. His knee bounced anxiously.

“We decided to come for a campus visit. One of the overnight weekends,” Abby explained.

“You picked a good time, with the carnival and everything—there’s so much to see.”

“Will you be going? To the carnival, I mean?” Abby asked.

“No, no . . . I remember Sal mentioning it, that his father went as a child, although . . . I don’t remember all of what he said, some of it is . . . Well, I can’t recall some of it. But his father went as a boy. I remember that.”

Dan perked up at the mention of her memory. As keyed in and coherent as she seemed to be, maybe she
would
be able to answer some of their questions after all. Abby seemed to have had the same thought.

“So your memory,” she prompted slowly, “it’s better? I mean, you’re coping with everything okay?”

Lucy nodded, tipping her head to the side and looking at Abby fondly. “I am. I’m coping. The college sends students over sometimes to sit with me, to bring groceries, that kind of thing. Everything has been so much better since I found the bright burning star.”

Jordan coughed again, but this time it was sharp. Dan had heard it, too. He must have mentally gone over his visit to Felix seventy times by now. He could recall Felix’s exact intonation. . . .
Bright burning star.

It couldn’t be a coincidence.

“The what?” Dan asked, sitting up straighter.

“The bright burning star,” Lucy replied matter-of-factly. She reached back behind her chair, taking a framed photograph from the table there, one Dan hadn’t noticed at first. Smiling, she handed the photograph across to Dan. It was a faded, vintage photo of a piece of oblong red stone, like a geode. It hung from a delicate chain. “It’s beautiful,” she murmured, watching him intently, “isn’t it?”

“Where . . . did you get this picture?” Abby must have realized the connection, too. She stared at her aunt, breathless.

“You know, it’s the funniest thing . . . I really can’t remember. I feel like it’s always been here with me.”

“It’s so pretty,” Abby said, shifting to the side before sliding her cell phone out of her jeans pocket. “Could I take a picture of it?”

Lucy took the frame back from Dan and then propped it up with both hands, displaying it proudly while Abby snapped a photo with her phone.
Brilliant thinking, Abby.

“What makes you call it that?” Dan asked, maybe a bit too eagerly. “‘Bright burning star.’ That’s, uh, a very specific way of describing it.”

“I suppose so. . . .” She looked down at the picture again. “It’s not even really shaped like a star, is it?” Laughing, she turned the frame this way and that, as if she could make the stone in the photograph catch the light. “I’ve just . . . always called it that. I was so afraid. . . .” Putting the frame back on the table, she turned again to Dan. He squirmed under the intensity of her gaze. “I was afraid of you, Daniel Crawford. I was afraid of everything. . . . Then the bright burning star came and it was all better. All calmer.”

“Oh,” Dan said, looking helplessly to Abby, who stared back, just as dumbfounded. He couldn’t make eye contact with Lucy; it unnerved him—the blank, unwavering stare. . . . He looked over her shoulder at the window, jolted by a face glaring back at him from outside.

It wasn’t a human face, not really, but a mask. Red and black, like a skull but melting, the mouth gaping down in an exaggerated clown’s pout.

“What the . . .” Dan stood up, pointing at the window.

“I see it, too,” Jordan exclaimed. But then it was gone, disappearing into the hedgerow, leaving behind nothing but a few rattling branches.