Ashes of Foreverland (27 page)

“The truth is down there, Danny.”

“But why Alessandra?”

Cyn stopped midway down the hall, clinging to Alessandra's thin arm. She panted like a cornered animal.
She feels the quiver, too.

“It's the only way out of this?” she said.

“Out of what?”

“This mess, Danny. She told me she'd leave me alone if we did this.”

“Who told you?”

Desperation pleadingly pried her eyes wide. “Just trust me.”

She gently shook Alessandra until her eyelids fluttered again. An unfocused gaze peered through slits.

“We need to walk,” Cyn said.

They took one step, then another. Alessandra's feet dragged and flopped. They held her hands like parents guiding their child to a very scary place.

The hall was long, the doors open and offices empty. The man in the lab coat waited at a metal door. Alessandra was walking on her own when they arrived, her eyes almost completely open. The man in the coat tugged the metal door.

Danny had been to the Institute in the spring, but none of this was familiar. He didn't remember the hall or what was beyond the metal door. He only had a vague memory of arriving. When the metal opened and the funk of wet fur and dung hit him, he remembered.

Coco.

The orangutan lay on a table, long arms at his sides, a needle in the forehead.

The walls weren't walls. They were dark, but he could see through the reflections, could see the cubicles with smaller animals strapped down.

And the wire. All the wires
.

“She has to go back there.” Cyn pointed at another set of doors across the room. The man in the coat waited.

“Why?”

“I don't know! We just have to go back there, Danny.” She swallowed the lump cracking her voice. “We go back there.”

“Why?”

“We have to fall.”

Her voice faltered. She was tired of falling, and that's what scared him. He thought the falling was over. The way she emerged from the brick house, the confidence that brought them here had evaporated. They were two kids that kidnapped a goddess that someone would be looking for very soon.

But the man in the coat continued leading the way. Someone was expecting them. Expecting the goddess.

Cyn reached for his other hand. Even when he didn't take it, she left it out there. They were two steps from the doors, the man in the coat latched onto the handle. The sirens were still audible, the police still at the front door.

We have to fall.

He took her hand and nodded. They would fall together.

The man in the coat opened the doors.

They took the last two steps. Alessandra shuffled between them. Cyn's breath caught in her throat. There were two tables back there. A very old woman was on one.

Alessandra was on the other.

Alessandra crushed Danny's hand. She was standing between them, but she was on the table, too. Unless that was a twin.

That can't be her
.

“You promised,” Cyn said, “you would leave!”

Danny pulled Alessandra close to him, but he wasn't holding Alessandra's hand. He was holding Cyn's hand.

Alessandra was gone.

Upstate New York

A
lex hardly ate.

When she did, Samuel nuked a small bowl of soup. He'd spoon in a couple bites before her eyes started to roll, then dump it back in the pot. He did that for two weeks, same pot of soup. He never bothered to even put it in the refrigerator.

She never knew the difference.

Husbandry is easy.

Alex was a first-class bitch in the beginning. The old man had warned him. “She's a little difficult.”

Difficult. Bitch. Same thing.

But Dr. Tyler Ballard promised him a reward no fool would turn down. He put the needle in Samuel's head and gave him a taste of heaven. “Get her to sleep and you can have that,” the old man said. “Forever.”

Samuel didn't understand how this world was in Alessandra's head, what it meant that she was a host or how she could dream something so real, a dream he was in.

He also didn't give a damn.

He punched that needle in his head and went to work. He smiled when she gave him that condescending look, turned away when she laughed at him. Where he grew up, you didn't walk away from that. He just had to keep his eyes on the prize.

He hadn't heard a peep on the baby monitor all afternoon. That was his idea and it was genius. He found the monitor in the attic, buried behind boxes where no one would find it. Instead of hauling his ass up and down those stairs, he just listened for her smacking those lips.

That meant she was waking up.

He ordered a pizza and decided to smoke a bowl. His stash was above the stove, tucked behind a jar of pennies. Just in case Sleeping Beauty came downstairs, he went out to the back porch. He only needed a puff or two because his stuff was potent. Everything in a Foreverland world, the old man said, was potent.

As potent as I want it to be.

He stepped outside without a coat. The flame flickered near the end of the pipe.

Footsteps.

Someone had been on the back porch. A second set of steps had followed. Those were bare feet.

He dropped the lighter.

Samuel ran upstairs three steps at a time. The bed was empty, the covers thrown back, the robe gone.

“Alex!” He went room to room. “Alex! Where are you?”

He leaped down the steps and crashed through the front door. Samuel raced down the center of the street without a coat. He shouted until his voice gave out, ran until his legs went numb.

Looked until the world turned dark.

And then he found himself nude on a table, staring at a bright light. The smell of death was all around.

He'd never see Foreverland again.

The Institute of Technological Research, New York City

“Y
ou promised,” Cyn said, “you would leave!”

“Patience, child,” Barb said. “It's been a long trip.”

She dragged her fingers along the edge of the table, her bracelets ringing. Barb was in the back room, as if she'd been waiting. She looked the same as she did in the brick house—the red lipstick, the thin scarf and large oval earrings with shiny stones.

She ran her fingers over the very old woman's bent knee, across her knobby hand and up to her hunched shoulders, where the thinning hair—like that of a doll from a bygone era—spread out. Her body sank in a thick cushion. The simple white smock was bunched around her like a potato sack.

“Patricia,” Barb muttered.

Cyn recognized the very old woman—the curling body, the smell of old skin. How could she forget? She'd hosted the wilderness Foreverland that imprisoned Cyn and the girls. And now, with the needle in her head, she was hosting it again.

Cyn's fist clenched involuntarily.

“You said if we brought Alessandra here, you'd get out of my head.”

That was the deal. When she took Barb's hand in the brick house, her thoughts merged into Cyn and told her where to find Alessandra, where to take her, and where to find the truth.

And that she would leave.

Cyn wasn't concerned that Alessandra disappeared, but a small pang of guilt tugged at her. She didn't know where Alessandra was. When they stepped into the back room, there were two Alessandras—the one on the table similar to Patricia's, wearing a baggy green gown. There was also the one they brought to the Institute and disappeared.
What if we delivered her to the Nowhere?

“You tricked me,” Cyn said.

“We trick ourselves, child.” Barb traced the wrinkles in the old woman's forehead, around the protruding needle. “When I first met Patricia, I had serious doubts that any of this Foreverland crap was true. I'd heard through social circles there was a way to cheat death, circles that only people like me are privy to, you know. Circles that run on money. I didn't believe it, of course.”

She sighed.

“But stage 3 cancer will make you listen to anything.”

Barb didn't look like a cancer patient. She'd abandoned that diseased body long ago. The image in front of her was a concept built on memories that only Cyn could see.

Barb flashed lipstick-stained teeth in a joyless smile.

“I wasn't excited about taking your body. I know you find that hard to believe, but it was murder, I knew that. But I was addicted to life, Cynthia. I wasn't willing to give it up cold turkey and told myself I was doing you a favor. How's that for rationalization?”

Barb raked the old woman's hair to the side and combed a part down the middle with her fingers. She smoothed the wrinkles on the white gown and stroked her cheek—a cheek so gray and thin that Cyn was afraid merely touching it would tear it like wet tissue.

“Do you remember your first taste of Foreverland?” Barb asked. “The freedom? The joy? I went there a few times, sort of practice for crossing over when your body was ready. I knew, right then, Patricia had bigger plans than swapping bodies for rich people like me. This body-switching business that she and her son had been doing was just practice for something much grander.”

Barb looked at Alessandra's body.

“I was right.”

Alessandra was set up exactly like Patricia. Was she her replacement? Was she already hosting?

Were there already boys and girls trapped inside?

Cyn squeezed Danny's hand, afraid if she let go, he'd take off running. He was watching her talk to empty space. Barb looked at their clenched hands and smiled—genuinely, sweetly. It reminded her of someone. Cyn sensed Barb's memory.
Her husband
.

Cyn's memories of that man were not so sweet—an old man that murdered Jen and buried her in the garden. He did it in Foreverland, but she woke up with the memory of the things he did to her.

“He murdered, but don't judge,” Barb said. “He was a good man.”

“He was worse. You know the things he did.”

Her smile turned hollow. “You're too young to understand.”

“Why are we here? You promised to tell me
where
we are.”

“I promised to
show
you.”

Barb looked across the room, over the tables, past Alessandra to the heavy curtain drawn across the narrow room. A stack of white boxes was on the floor and mail crates overflowed with envelopes. The Institute had been abandoned in a hurry.

The curtain that separated Patricia's and Alessandra's tables had been pushed aside. Cyn felt the room spin, confusion swirling beneath her. The truth was lurking just beneath the surface.

There are more tables back there
.

“Why are we here?” Cyn muttered.

“Because I and others made a mess, child, but there's a young man that's going to fix all of it. He's going to balance the scales.”

Cyn grabbed Danny's arm.

“I'm not talking about your boyfriend,” Barb said.

Danny began spouting questions and tried to let go, but she wouldn't let him. He'd been patient with her talking to an empty room, but panic was setting in. The crazy train was at full throttle.

“Reed sent the letters,” Barb said.

“Reed?”

Danny yanked her off balance. “What the hell is going on?”

She stilled him with a look, but it wouldn't last for long.

“Why send letters?”

“So
they
wouldn't see,” Barb said.

“
They
...who are
they
?”

“Reed sent Danny to find you, child. There's a connection between you two, something that calms your minds, has something to do with your shared experiences, I don't know how. All I know is that when you were together, I was pushed deep in your subconscious. And Reed was waiting for me.”

“You saw him?”

“I saw the truth.”

She looked down, her expression sagging, her shoulders slumping. An emotional weight had been slung over her like a blanket of chains.
Was that guilt?

“I am no longer blind to my blindness, child. I know what I've done, and what I need to do to balance the scales.”

Barb looked up and half smiled.

Cyn hadn't noticed that Danny let go. She stood alone facing Barb. He went to the stack of boxes and began digging through the mail crate.

“What's back there?” Cyn asked.

“I think you know.” She glanced at the heavy, plastic curtain. “I think you've always known.”

“Reed showed me the folly of our situation, you and I. Even if I managed to possess your body and stuffed you into the dark subconscious, our fight would continue. One of us has to go.” Barb held out her hands. “And it's your body, child.”

“So you're leaving?”

Barb smiled.

“Where?”

“To visit some old friends.”

This didn't make her feel better. She had the sense that Barb was going to haunt someone else's mind, that leaving only meant she would no longer be inside Cyn. After all, her cancer-ridden body was gone. She had nowhere to go.

And she wasn't keen on dying.

“I don't understand.”

“It's all very complicated, child.” Barb slipped her hand into Patricia's curled fingers. “You'll understand once you pull the curtain.”

The boxes crashed. Danny stood in a mess of papers and large beige envelopes. Cyn trembled and wished he was next to her. The truth felt like a monster.

“If you don't want to know the truth, that's up to you. You'll be lost until you do. But that wouldn't be fair to Danny, now would it?”

“Fair?”

Her smile faded. Who was she to speak of fairness, the old woman that refused to die? But Barb's face was so heavy, her eyes slumped with guilt. A thief was no judge of fairness. Barb continued holding onto Patricia, and reached out her free hand and wiggled her painted fingernails for Cyn to take it.