Veiled (4 page)

But then there’s this documentary that Dex keeps mentioning but never tells anyone what it’s about. Even Perry shrugs when I ask. I know he has aspirations to be a legit filmmaker beyond the music video business, so a documentary makes the most sense as a stepping stone, but he’s always been strangely cagey about it. Then again, Dex is a pretty cagey guy by nature, so I don’t read too much into it.

“You’ll find out once I know,” Dex says and I know he won’t give us anything more than that.

After dinner I head up to my room to work on my blog for a little bit, which means going through and editing a slew of photos I took with Amy and Tom last week. I admit, I’ve been slacking on my blogging duties which isn’t good since that’s really the whole reason I got into my design school. They liked my sketches of course, but it was the whole social media aspect of being a fashion blogger and the fact that I’ve had my blog since I was fifteen that helped seal the deal. They wanted to take on someone who already had a personal brand and a platform to move forward with.

Perry and Dex are downstairs watching a movie on Netflix and even though I’m working on my sketches, trying my hardest to get the right forms for a leather jacket—maybe a leather jacket partially inspired by the one I thought I saw today, the one belonging to the man who may or may not exist—but I just can’t get it right.

I guess I doze off with my head on the sketchpad and a charcoal pencil in my hand.

Three hard knocks seem to ricochet through my brain.

CHAPTER THREE

My head snaps up from my desk and I let out a muffled cry, heart bouncing in my chest as I try and rescue my thoughts from sleep.

I pull off the paper that’s stuck to my cheek and quickly look around. My bedroom is dark except for the light above my desk. I’m alone, though I could have sworn those three knocks came from someone pounding on the desk, beside my head. That’s how much it rattled me.

I try and catch my breath, taking air in deep and slow. I reach for my phone to check the time, wondering how long I’ve been asleep, wondering if Perry and Dex are still downstairs watching TV, when there’s a flutter at the window.

I gasp and whirl around, nearly falling out of my chair.

Something black flashes past outside the window, the light’s reflection on the glass obscuring most of it.

Holy shit.

I’m on the second floor but that doesn’t really matter because once upon a time, Perry saw a demon on the roof and then fell off said roof trying to run from it. I could never figure out why she even went out there but now I know.

Complete morbid curiosity.

I slowly get out of my chair and edge toward the window, heart in my throat, watching my reflection get closer as I approach it. I reach for the window edge to open it the rest of the way.

I’m just about to open it when an intense chill runs over my limbs, like someone’s just dumped a bucket of ice water down my arms and back.

A slow, laborious
creak
comes from behind me.

From the closet.

I freeze.

Suddenly the window doesn’t seem so interesting anymore.

Bony fingers of terror skitter down my spine and I’m turning around.

The closet door is open a few inches even though I know it was closed before.

Maybe it was the wind,
I tell myself.

There is no wind. If anything, the room has become still, like all the air and smell and life has been sucked out of it and the only thing left is dust.

Maybe I’m dreaming.

I’m always dreaming.

With that in mind, my feet start moving across the room, the rug cold on my soles. I’m poised, every nerve in my body ready to spring, my heart beating so fast I swear it has wings.

I stop outside the closet door and stare dumbly at the crack. The space taunts me with the dark depths behind it. In this moment it feels like it’s not a closet at all, instead it’s something infinite. A doorway to something horrible.

My hand slowly reaches for the doorknob.

I pause, my hand shaking, losing all nerve to grab it.

Then . . .

“Help me, Ada,” a faint voice rasps from inside the closet.

The voice of my mother.

The light in the closet goes on.

I scream.

My whole body launches backward and I’m running for the door out of my room and into the hallway.

I run right into Dex.

“Ada,” he says, grabbing my shoulders. “What is it, what happened?”

My mouth flaps open, soundless as I stare at him and then Perry as she appears behind him, coming out of my old bedroom.

“Something is in my closet,” I manage to say, my whole body trembling now.

The door at the end of the hall opens and my dad stares at us, slipping on his robe and sliding his glasses down on his face.

“It’s past midnight. What’s going on?” he says gruffly, voice hoarse from sleep.

I look up at Dex, not sure what to say.

“She had a dream,” Perry says to him quickly. “It’s nothing. Go back to sleep, dad.”

We stand there in the hallway, halfway to my room, watching my dad carefully. Thankfully he takes the bait, even though I know, I
know
I wasn’t sleeping this time. He frowns at me with a mix of exasperation and concern on his face before stepping back inside his room.

“Stay behind me,” Dex says, pushing me so Perry and I are behind him. Like hell I’d want to go back in first.

Dex walks to the middle of my room while Perry and I hang around the doorway.

“This closet?” Dex asks, pointing at it. It’s still open a crack though the light is off now. “I only ask because it feels like Perry and I are sleeping in an extension of your closet too.”

“Yes,” I tell him, too afraid to be annoyed. “But the light was on. It turned on,
by itself,
just as I was about to open the door. I heard . . .” I trail off, not sure if I should say anything else.

Perry is watching me closely. “Heard what?”

I swallow hard and give her a pleading look. “I heard mom,” I whisper.

“You know that’s not her,” she says to me but I can’t quite agree.

Dex frowns at us, then looks around him. He quickly moves to the desk and grabs the pencil I was using to sketch and holds it like a knife.

“What the hell are you going to do with that?” Perry hisses. “Draw the ghosts?”

He tilts his head, giving her an incredulous look. “Have you ever been stabbed with a pencil in the eye? No, because if you had, you’d probably be dead. Anyway, no one said anything about ghosts.”

“No one has to say anything about ghosts,” I say. “But I don’t think this is that. I know when I’m dealing with a ghost and when I’m dealing with . . . well, I don’t know. If I’m not dreaming then I’m going fucking crazy.”

Perry quickly pinches my arm, hard.

“Ow! The fuck?” I cry out, shying away from her.

“Not dreaming.”

Dex takes in a deep breath and whips the closet door open.

My hands fly to my face. I don’t know what I’m expecting.

But it’s empty. Just full of my clothes, shirts hanging from the rattling hangers. Dex stoops, sticking his hands into the bottom of the closet, shuffling through sandals and heels and clothes that have fallen.

“There’s nothing,” he says, straightening up. “Except that you have an obscene amount of heels that belong on a stripper named Candy.”

“Shut the fuck up,” I tell him, glaring.

He raises his palms, walking over to us. “Hey, I’ve known some mighty fine strippers in my day. It’s not an insult. Unless your name is Candy.”

Perry rolls her eyes. “I thought you were fond of the ones called Marla.”

“Ah, you remember,” he says happily.

Perry ignores him and turns to me. “So what exactly happened?”

I point at the desk. “I was sketching and fell asleep. I woke up. I heard the knocks.”

“Good ol’ exploding head syndrome,” Dex comments.

“Yes. That. But I swear it was right here, like someone was pounding on the desk. Of course I woke up and I was alone. Then there was something outside the window.”

Dex walks over to the window and hauls it up, sticking his head out for a moment.

“There’s a giant ass bird in the tree right there,” he says. “Could it be that? Looks like a raven.”

“Oh, well there just happens to be a fucking raven outside my window, can’t mean a thing,” I tell him, coming over.

I peer outside and sure enough, there’s a raven sitting at the end of the tree, its silhouette lit up by the streetlights. It cocks its head at me, staring at me with beady, glassy eyes, then flies off, its wings beating heavily as it goes.

I shudder again. There aren’t a lot of ravens around here, only crows. And I’ve certainly never seen any past midnight, nor hanging around the tree outside my window.

“Ignoring the bird for now,” Dex says, though from the hard look in his eyes I know he’s thinking something of it too, “then what happened?”

“I heard the closet door open. It wasn’t open before. It was closed. I swear it. Then I went toward it.”

“As you do when you think there’s something horrible in your closet,” Dex says.

“And then I heard my mom’s voice. She said, help me, Ada.” I look at Perry with wide-eyes. “It was her. I know it was her. She sounded so far away, so . . . strained. Then the light went on and I screamed and ran.”

Perry and Dex exchange a look.

“What?” I ask.

“Nothing,” Perry says, coming over to me. She puts her hand on my shoulder and gives it a squeeze. “Want to sleep with us tonight?”

I wrinkle my nose. “No thanks. You do believe me, don’t you?”

“Of course we believe you,” Perry says. “You could tell me my old stuffed animals are trying to kill you and I’d believe you.”

“Wait, what?” I ask, my eyes flitting to the bed where I know her stuffed animals are stored in a box underneath.

“But I also think you’re stressed and exhausted and liable to seeing things. I know sometimes when I was seeing shit it wasn’t because there were actual ghosts, I was just so on edge that everything seemed out to get me.” She looks at Dex. “Sorry baby, I’m sleeping with my sister tonight.”

He shrugs. “Suit yourself. You girls need anything, you know where I am.” He leaves the room, stretching his arms over his head. “Love you,” he calls over his shoulder. “You too, Perry.”

She raises her brow in mild amusement and looks back to me.

“You don’t have to stay here,” I tell her.

“You’ve done the same for me before,” she says. She looks around her. “Though honestly this isn’t my favorite place to be.” She climbs into the bed, moving to the other side. For a moment I’m transported back two years when Perry still lived here, our mother was still alive and things, at least for me, were more or less normal.

But my brain won’t let me pretend for long. Even though Perry is still just twenty-five and looks pretty much the same as she did, there’s a world-weariness to her eyes, the kind that old souls have, the kind that says she’s seen too much and can never go back to the way she was.

I quickly get changed into my matching camisole and boy-short set and get in bed beside her, feeling like a little girl again under the covers.

I turn over on the pillow to look at her. “You know what this reminds me of? When we used to go to the cabin when we were little.”

She rolls over to face me, folding up the thin pillow underneath her head. “Was this when you said I had an imaginary friend and I’d go and talk to him through the window every night?”

“But he never was imaginary, was he?”

She shakes her head, frowning. “No. Nothing ever is.” She closes her eyes. “Nothing ever is.”

You’d think it would be impossible for both of us to sleep, but in seconds she’s out like a light.

Then I follow.

***

I’m dreaming.

For once, I know it.

And I know exactly where I am.

I’m in the Thin Veil, a place I’ve only been to once and here I am again; here but not.

The world is both red and grey, a desaturated hue that seeps into everything, my hands, my clothes, the crunchy, dead grass beneath me.

I’m sitting on a cliff overlooking the ocean, much like the one Perry had mentioned earlier, the one in her dreams. Only she’s nowhere to be found. There’s only the empty sea with waves crashing below, faraway islands in the distance. There is a forest of fir and hemlock behind me, a dark, seemingly fathomless thicket.

Hi
.

I whip my head around to see a man,
the
man, the leather jacket wearing ginger who may or may not be a man named Jay, standing over me.

I stare up at his hulking body, no jacket this time, just a plain t-shirt that shows off every taut muscle, and jeans. He gives me a half-smile.

Mind if I sit down?

He’s speaking to me, right into my head, without opening his mouth.

I’m not a fan of this.

I open my mouth and am surprised when the words, “Can I talk?” come out.

“Of course,” he says. “I understand it must be strange for you. It’s still strange for me.”

I frown at him. My dreams have been so lucid lately, but never the ones that have involved him. I’ve never been able to just exist like this, to interact with him and have it be so real.

I need to take advantage.

“Who are you?” I ask him. “I mean, I know I’m dreaming.”

He stares down at me, his smile twisting slightly. My god, this dude is even more handsome up close. I’m starting to think there is no way in hell that I met him in real life because if he really was the guy from the wedding, I know I would have remembered every detail of his face, no matter how blackout drunk I got.

“
Are
you dreaming?” he asks, easing himself down to sit beside me. He props his elbows on his knees and gives me a sidelong glance. “Or are you awake?”

All the hairs on my arm stand up and I can’t tell if it’s because he’s so close or the way his eyes seem to gaze right into the heart of me, or because I’m starting to think maybe I am awake after all.