Within These Walls (35 page)

No. Stop. I’m not even supposed to be here.

But they kept on coming.

The boys were faster than the girls. The front-runner wore cowboy boots and a shirt that would have made John Wayne proud.
Lucas searched for the right words to stop the group in their tracks, but he came up empty. Because the guy leading the charge was unmistakable with his tight blue jeans. Lucas had stared at the man’s picture long enough to have known Derrick Fink anywhere.

Mid-run, Derrick’s mouth turned up into a dogged sneer. In three seconds’ time Lucas would be knocked flat onto his back by a man thirty years dead. And the people that followed him shouldn’t have existed either. Kenneth, with his goofy face and his gangly arms, was hot on Derrick’s heels, grinning and whooping, as though this sprint was the most fun he’d ever had. Nolan trailed a few steps behind, his huge eyes impossibly wide as he struggled to keep up.

“Stop!” Lucas yelled, and tucked his head beneath his pretzeled arms, protecting himself from the impact. Derrick hit him head-on. Then came Kenneth and Nolan, followed by five girls decked out in their kaleidoscope dresses. The riot of color swallowed him whole. But rather than being knocked down, Lucas simply stumbled. His feet skidded across the grass as the group continued past him as though he wasn’t there at all. And yet, he could smell the perfume of patchouli and weed waft up behind them as they tore across the backyard. He could feel the brush of their polyester shirts and soft denim. The flap of airy skirts assured him that this was no hallucination.

He twisted around, watched them bolt for the trees he himself had been advancing toward only seconds before. This time the pine shadows weren’t as empty as they had been. Just beyond the bank of gently swaying conifers was the flash of a girl who, from behind, looked just like Virginia Graham.

Lucas couldn’t help it. He ran after them.

Maybe he had seen wrong.

Maybe Jeanie hadn’t been upstairs.

Maybe she was in both places at once.

Nothing made sense, so why should this?

He ran after them, listening to Kenneth carry on like a delinquent in search of trouble. A couple of the girls laughed while a third catcalled, “Come out, Avis!” Lucas’s steps slowed when a few of the group broke out of formation, the name rattling inside his head.
Who the hel
l is Avis?

They reminded him of Serengeti predators, a group of hungry animals expertly breaking apart to box in their prey. The girl Lucas had thought was Jeanie made a panicked dash for the cherry grove, but they all cornered her in no time flat. She was slow, weighed down by a swollen belly, her arms wrapped around it as if to keep it from tearing away from her body.

Audra Snow.

She looked left, right, then directly at Lucas, as if to implore him for help. Making a final attempt to escape the group, she made a dash for a break in their ranks, stumbled, and crashed onto the forest floor with a muffled cry. Halcomb’s diviners jumped in to stop her. They surrounded her like hyenas falling onto fresh meat.

Audra began to sob as Derrick and Kenneth grabbed her by the arms. She screamed garbled pleas as Georgia and Chloe seized her ankles and helped lift her off the ground. Lucas stared wide-eyed as angel-faced Shelly reeled back and punched Audra square in the mouth. Audra shrieked, and Shelly—the little girl Lucas had only imagined as innocent—hit her again to shut her up.

Audra’s protests were quick to deteriorate. Like a wounded animal, she used up all her fight, then resolved to weeping as she was carried back to the house. Lucas stepped to the side as the group marched past him. Roxanna and Laura looked positively euphoric as they trailed behind the rest of the group. None of them seemed to notice Lucas standing there, as though he had somehow been transported into a moving snapshot of things that had occurred.

Halcomb’s group was nearly out of view when Lucas forced himself to move. When he stepped around the corner of the house, he caught sight of the hem of Roxanna’s skirt just before the front door closed. Lucas picked up the pace, his thoughts tripping over what would happen next.

Somewhere in the span of the next few hours, Audra Snow would lie semiconscious in a circle of eight, their heads pointing toward the center, their legs splayed out like the points of a star. That’s the way the police would find them. Death by arsenic, though the authorities would fail to pin down the poison’s source and Halcomb would refuse to give details.

Lucas pushed the front door open and braced himself for what was to come, but the group was gone. All but one remained.

Echo stood in the center of the room. A mug was cupped in her hands.

“Hello, Lou,” she said. “Welcome.”

Lucas shook his head at her. “What the—where’s Jeanie?” he asked. “Where’s my daughter?”

“She’s fine,” Echo said, her tone dreamy. “She’s so close.”

“Close . . .” He didn’t know what that meant. “Close to what? To where?”

“Close to here, to forever. Close to what you try to create with your books, Lou. In some ways, writing books is like giving
yourself
eternal life, isn’t it? We all want it—we just go about it in different ways.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” He spit the words at her, not in the mood for stupid riddles. “Where’s my kid? What is this?” And for a split second, he honestly believed that she could explain it all away—the house, the furniture, the fact that he’d stepped out of night and into day. The entire world had shifted and it had taken him and Jeanie, and now Echo, with it.

Echo gave him a thoughtful smile. She approached the couch in her bare feet, then took a seat and faced the blank TV.

Upstairs, a door swung open and hit the wall behind it.

Lucas’s gaze darted back to Jeanie’s room just in time to see a young Jeffrey Halcomb step into the hall.

INCIDENT/INVESTIGATION REPORT

AGENCY:
Pier Pointe Police Department

CASE NO:
83-138

REPORTING OFFICER:
Barrett, Albert J.

INCIDENT INFORMATION

DATE/TIME REPORTED:
03/14/83, 09:45

DATE/TIME OCCURRED:
03/14/83, 09:20

INCIDENT LOCATION:
Pier Pointe Public Health Center

REPORTING PARTY:
Alana Seawell

VICTIMS

NAME:
Audra Snow

DATE OF BIRTH:
02/09/63

AGE:
20

OFFICER’S REPORT

Dispatchers received a concerned phone call from Alana Seawell of Pier Pointe Public Health concerning a patient in suspected trouble. Ms. Seawell, a nurse at PPPHC, states that Audra Snow entered the facility at a little after 9 AM with a man and two women. [Man: dark hair, late-20’s to early-30’s, approx. 6 ft. tall, leather jacket. Woman #1: blond, early-20’s, thin, patchwork skirt. Woman #2: brunette, long hair, mid-20’s, patchwork skirt.] Ms. Snow proceeded to explain to Ms. Seawell that she was there to pick up a prescription. When Ms. Seawell checked her files, she noted that Ms. Snow had not renewed her prescription with her physician, Doctor Cornish of Pier Pointe. Ms. Seawell also noted that Ms. Snow was with child. The medication the patient was requesting is not approved
for pregnant women. Ms. Seawell discreetly voiced these concerns to the patient. Ms. Snow became anxious. Ms. Seawell assured the patient that they would sort it out, but Ms. Snow continued to grow increasingly agitated. Ms. Seawell reports that the patient looked over her shoulder multiple times at the three individuals who had accompanied her to the clinic [see above]. At one point, the two women described above stepped outside while the man remained. Ms. Seawell sensed that the man was about to pull Ms. Snow away from the counter due to her growing agitation. Ms. Seawell slid a scrap piece of paper across the counter to Ms. Snow, where Ms. Seawell had jotted
Do you need help?
Ms. Seawell states that Ms. Snow did not confirm in the affirmative, but that her expression convinced her that Ms. Snow was, in fact, in some sort of trouble. The man then led Ms. Snow out of the clinic after she told Ms. Seawell they would come back later. After their exit, Ms. Seawell called the police to report possible child endangerment and suspected domestic abuse. I radioed in a 150 to dispatch at approximately 10:20 AM. Dispatch stated they’d send someone to check on Ms. Snow later that afternoon. The call was tagged as low priority.

54

V
IVI CLUTCHED TO
her chest the cross she’d found in her father’s study, and for a moment that felt like forever, she didn’t know what to do.

Every corner of the room was frightening in its foreignness. The yard sale paintings that hung against a backdrop of yellow wallpaper brought a sour, almost fruity taste to the back of her throat. She felt that if she touched the wrong thing in this house that shouldn’t have been, she’d set off a chain reaction. She’d never be allowed back into the real world again.

She decided to focus her attention on the door that had shut behind her. It should have led out into the upstairs hall and to her dad’s ground-floor study. Some promise of the familiar. But all it did was give her the sense of being trapped in some impossible dream. She didn’t make a move for it. Escape wasn’t the point. She was here to meet her new family—one free of anger and yelling and negligence. A family that would finally make her feel part of something better, who knew what being forgotten felt like.
Jeff will fix everything,
she reminded herself, trying to keep her nerves in check.
Jeff will make it better. You just have to have faith.

But that didn’t mean she wasn’t scared. The cross bit into her fingers while she held it against the front of her shirt, as if to fend off the devil himself. The rectangle of black paper beckoned her from the foot of the bed.

YES. NO. GOODBYE.

The coin she had been using as a makeshift planchette was missing, but she didn’t need it. The cross would work better than any coin could.

The thudding of her heart assured her that now, finally, all the pieces were in place. This was exactly what they wanted, exactly the way it was supposed to happen.

The cross is the answer.

She had no idea how it had gotten in her father’s desk drawer, didn’t know how he had gotten such an artifact. Had Echo brought it to him with the photographs? Had it been in the house all along? It didn’t matter.
A trigger object,
she thought, and with a sense of fearful conviction, she kneeled in front of her closet altar and slowly moved the cross away from her chest.

Being overtaken by such fear earlier had been confusing. Running away from the strange woman in the kitchen and into her father’s study had been reflexive, an instinct, a reaction that she knew was counterproductive, but she hadn’t been able to help herself. She
wanted
to meet the family, so why had she run? But the more she thought about it, the more it made sense. The woman in the kitchen had scared her on purpose. She’d done it so that Vivi would find that strange silver relic in her dad’s study. And then, in some inexplicable way, Jeffrey’s faithful had ushered her up the stairs and back into her room. Everything was happening for a reason. Every move was calculated. She was a puppet, and Jeff Halcomb was tugging her strings.

The Ouija board. The cross.
This
was what would truly bring Jeffrey back from the dead.

“Jeff . . .” She whispered the name into the silence of the room, into the stillness of the closet. “Are you here?” She laid the cross onto the black paper, her fingers just barely grazing its silver surface.

As she knelt there, the familiar sense of not being alone began to
crawl across her skin. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled. She squeezed her eyes shut as the sensation grew. There was a whooping outside, like kids on a playground, reminding her of how she and her best friends had gallivanted around the neighborhood only weeks before. She opened her eyes, abandoned the makeshift board, crossed the room, and paused at the window.

A group of men and women ran together across the yard.

It took her a moment to realize that they were in pursuit of something. Some
one
. It took her even longer to realize that night had turned into day. But she lost those details when her gaze stopped on a man standing to the side of the stampede. Vivi’s heart skittered like a needle on an old record.

“Dad?” It came out as a whisper of disbelief. Was it really daytime? Had she been stuck inside her room all night? What was her dad doing out there? He wasn’t supposed to be there, not when she was so close to bringing Jeff back.

He’ll ruin everything.

She was ready to smack the palms of her hands against the glass in frustration—to yell at him to go back inside, to mind his own business—when that sensation of not being alone returned. Except this time, whoever was watching her wasn’t doing it from a distance. Someone was standing directly behind her, as though peering over her shoulder. She could hear breathing. The small barrier of electricity buzzed between them, like the sensation of just barely being grazed by a passing hand.

Her father’s attention didn’t return to the window. Whatever was happening amid the trees was far too interesting for him to break away. Because of
course
it was. A fresh pang of anger seized her heart. She
knew
her dad had seen her in the window. Their eyes had met. And yet, there was always something more pressing, someone more interesting, something more deserving of his attention.

But she didn’t move, her own trepidation cementing her in place. Afraid to confront whoever was standing behind her, she watched the group drag a captive out from the cherry grove. A blond pregnant girl thrashed madly as two guys and two girls carried her across the grass. She was choking on her sobs, her hair flying around her face.

Vivi recognized her from the photos she’d seen online. It was the girl that used to live here, the daughter of the dead congressman, Audra Snow.

The intake of air behind her was steady, unyielding. Something about its enduring rhythm convinced her that she could stand at that window for days, weeks, years, but the person behind her could stand there even longer.

She had to turn around, face her fear.

“Jeffrey?”

She whispered the name, hoping that it would illicit some sort of response. Or maybe she was dreaming, like she’d read about in her dad’s book.

One, two, three, four, five.

She counted out the fingers of her right hand, one by one.

One, two, three, four, five.

Still the same.

In dreams, you weren’t supposed to be able to perform the finger-­counting trick more than once. Failure meant that you were asleep. But even on the third try, there were five digits on her right hand.

She was wide awake.

The breathing continued.

Jeff killed people.
Distant logic buzzed at the back of her brain.
He’s dangerous. If he doesn’t like you, he might just kill you, too.

The sudden onset of doubt made her feel sick. Perhaps she had
been wrong. Maybe, rather than loving her the way she had hoped, the way Echo had suggested, the person standing behind her would reach out and grab her by the neck. Perhaps she’d be knifed in the back, garroted with piano wire so fiercely that her head would pop right off her neck.

But, no. No, that was wrong.

You’re just like them, you know
, Echo reminded her.
Kids like you, that’s who Jef
f
rey loved the most.

Jeff wanted to meet her. He’d said so himself on the back of that photograph. He’d written it out—
Dearest Vivi
—before he had died. Why would he hurt her? What reason would he have to lie?

She sucked in a breath, slowly turned, kept her gaze focused on the ground and gritted her teeth against her own unease. She half expected to see a couple of snarled Gollum feet, but it was a pair of scuffed-up combat boots instead—boots that made her mind flip to the ones her father kept at the back of his closet and refused to sell. The faded black denim reminded her of Tim, the boy she had once secretly adored, who she had so badly wanted to impress with her knowledge of the strange and unusual. The kid she’d completely forgotten when she had found Jeffrey Halcomb’s smiling face online. Because Jeffrey was better than Tim could ever be. Vivi didn’t need to prove herself to Jeff, or find a way to make him pay attention. He would love her for who she was, just as he’d loved Chloe and Georgia and everyone else. She was just like them.

Kids like you . . .

Her gaze drifted upward until it settled on a weatherworn logo printed on a black T-shirt. It was a triangle with a rainbow shooting through it, something she couldn’t place but knew she had seen before. That shirt was half-hidden beneath a beat-up leather jacket. Taking a half step back toward the window, she blinked at the man before her, her anxiety obliterated by sheer distraction. If this guy
was
an ax murderer, Vivi would never suspect it past his pretty face and disarming smile.

“Vivi.” Her new nickname rolled off his tongue like spun sugar, those two syllables palpitating her heart. He smelled like patchouli and red currants. Nearly pinned against the window, she could hardly move when he reached out to touch her hair. The man who had looked at least twenty-five or thirty years old ten seconds before was now toeing the edge of seventeen.

“
Vivi
. Almost like
viva
. Do you know what that means?” He canted his head to the side, as if inspecting her, a sly smile clinging to his lips.

She shook her head, too stunned to speak.
It’s him. It’s him!
Except Jeffrey Halcomb was even more beautiful than any visage captured on grainy old film.

“
Viva mi familia
,” he said. “Long live my family.
Viva mi amor
. Long live my love. And that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

She opened her mouth to speak, but there was no sound.

“Love,” he said. “Your parents.” Those two words hit her like a double-fisted punch. “I know all about them, I know how cruel they can be. It’s not easy being forgotten. I know that.”

“You do?” She managed to form the question in a faint whisper. The boy nodded, his eyelids dipping low, his face solemn.

“I’ve been watching you, rooting for you, but sometimes even our best intentions go unnoticed. Adults are so wrapped up in their own lives . . .” He paused, as if holding himself back. His brown eyes sparked with a quiet rage that Vivi understood all too well. The neglect. Being shrugged off because she was just a kid. The muffled yelling behind closed doors, only for her parents to act like everything was fine the next day. Like she didn’t know that they were fighting. Like she was too stupid to figure out that, because of their hardheadedness,
her
life was about to fall apart. “I had a father once,”
he said. “He pretended to love me until it became an inconvenience. I was his son until he no longer wanted me. I know that pain, Vivi. I know how much it hurts, how much it makes you
hate.
But we can’t let the hate consume us. We have to take all the goodness we have left in our hearts,” he said, “and direct it somewhere else. Just how you’ve directed your love, your faith, toward me and my friends.” He reached out and gently brushed the pad of his thumb against the swell of her lower lip. “You’re so brave,” he murmured. “And I love you for that, Vivi. For that, I swear you’ll never be lonely again.”

She stared at him, unable to believe what she was hearing. She knew it was insane, but she kept repeating it to herself: he
loved
her. This beautiful boy, this
creature
loved her. Her chest felt full, as though her ribs could crack and her heart could burst. Her bottom lip began to quiver.

“Hey. Don’t cry.” He leaned into her, his lips brushing featherlight against her cheek. “None of that matters now, anyway. Forget the past. It’s toxic. Poison.”

She fought to swallow her sorrow, struggled to push down the sadness. The tips of his dark hair tickled her collarbone. His fingers swept across the length of her right arm.

“They don’t deserve you, Vivi. We’ll run away together, just you and me and my friends. You’ll have a new family, and we’ll be
happy
. Forget the fighting, the anger. Forget they ever existed.”

His fingers slid around her arms. Her pulse quickened by a half-dozen beats.

He was real.

Tactile.

He pulled her close, and she inhaled the scent of worn leather. His hands tangled in the waves of her hair. She closed her eyes, wondering what it would be like to start a new life, to forget the frustration and hurt. To just run away, and never come back. She had
considered it when the arguments had gotten bad, shoving a few T-shirts and a change of underwear into her school backpack in the middle of the night. She had counted out her money, making sure she had enough for train fare.

Just head to the F train,
she had thought.
If you can get out of Queens, you can go anywhere in the whole world. But you gotta get out of here first.

Having snuck down the stairs while her mother slept, she found her dad working on his laptop, his back to the living room. Vee hovered around the doormat that read “HOME SWEET HOME” just inside the front door. She was ready to go, ready to run, ready to never see either one of them again. That would give them something worth fighting over . . . or getting back together over. It didn’t matter
what
happened to them—all she cared about was that she wouldn’t be there to listen to their screaming through the walls.

But as she stared at her father’s back, she took in the way he hunched over his work. The way he grabbed for his coffee mug every minute or two, as though what he was drinking was some sort of creative life source. It all gave rise to a cancerous lump in the center of her heart, a dormant tumor waiting to become malignant with guilt and regret. Standing on the doormat her mother had picked out with the best intentions for the happiness of their family, Vee had known that abandoning her parents wouldn’t just kill them—it would also be the end of her. It would twist her up, slowly strangle her. And if by chance she survived, there’d be nothing but a shell of what her parents hoped she’d one day become.