Ashes to Ashes (Experiment in Terror #8) (21 page)

Fuck that. I leaned forward,
looking at Jody more closely. “Why doesn’t Shawna like me?” I
whispered.

She shrugged again and went
back to twisting. “I dunno. Maybe you won’t play with her. Or maybe
the bad thing is telling her not to like you.”

My eyes flew over to Dex. I
could see his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed, worry in his eyes.
I looked back at Jody. “What is the bad thing?”

“
I dunno,” she
said again. Then her face brightened. “I used to be afraid of it,
but then one day Shawna said it was her pet, and she had it on a
leash. I was more afraid when it was running around loose. That’s
how it got Miss Brenna one day.”

I was speechless. Speechless
and scared absolutely shitless, sitting here on a picnic table in a
sunny fucking meadow.

“
Jody,”
Rebecca said delicately. “You know it’s wrong to lie about
things.”

“
I know,” she
said. “But I’m not. If I lie, I’ll go to hell. So I tell the truth.
I don’t want to go to hell. Shawna says the bad thing will take me
there if I misbehave.”

I pictured Shawna standing in
the room, the way her smile didn’t reach her eyes, the way the
leash went off and I couldn’t see what was on the other end of it.
But my brain wanted to go there. It wanted to fill in the blanks.
It wanted to see the bad thing.

I had to get fucking out of
there.

“
You’re an
awfully morbid little kid, aren’t you?” Dex said to
Jody.

Jody stuck her tongue out at
him. “No, you’re morbid.”

“
Do you even
know what morbid means?”

“
Dex,” I said
sharply before he could start an argument with a child. I hopped
off the picnic table. “You know, I think I’m done here.”

He looked at me in shock.
“What? For good?”

“
Perry…”
Rebecca cautiously.

I rubbed my arms, feeling a
sudden chill, and eyed the building. “I don’t know. But if I don’t
get away from this place for a few hours, I’m going to lose my
mind.”

Rebecca looked at Dex. “Why
don’t you take her into town,” she suggested. “I’ll stay here and
talk to some people, film some things.”

Dex gave her an odd look, then
nodded as if he was just realizing something. “Sounds like a plan,
boss.” He got up and came over to me, taking my hand in his. “I’m
just going back to the room to get something. Need your purse?”

I nodded. “Can you bring me my
sweater too?” I figured it was warmer down by the water but the
chill had its sudden hold on me, so that even in the sun I couldn’t
imagine warmth.

I looked back at Rebecca who
was smiling at me.

“
What?” I
asked, frowning.

“
Nothing,” she
said, still smiling.

“
Did you want
to play a game with me?” Jody asked her.

Rebecca hesitated. I thanked my
lucky stars that I wasn’t staying behind to play a game – it was
probably hide and go seek out the dead kids.

“
Of course,”
Rebecca said.

“
Do you know
any?” Jody asked, putting her hands on her little hips.

“
Well, in
England I used to play a game called ‘What Time is it Mr. Wolf.’ Do
you fancy you’d like to play that?”

I rolled my eyes. Of course she
had to choose one of the more disturbing children’s games but Jody
seemed game.

Soon enough though, I was in
the Highlander with Dex and we were cruising down the road toward
the coast. I hated being trapped in my head but all I could think
about – all I could see – was Shawna’s face and the black shape of
the bad thing.

“
Baby?” Dex
asked gently. “Are you okay?”

I shook my head, staring out
the window as the trees went past. “No.”

“
Do you want
to quit and go home?” I turned my head to look at him. He looked so
damn sympathetic. “You know I’d understand. I just want to make you
happy.”

Ugh. My heart started to swell
like a warm balloon. I gave him a small smile. “I don’t know what I
want, Dex.”

He swallowed. “Do you still
want me?”

Everything inside me melted. I
twisted in my seat to face him and reached up to touch his cheek.
“Of course I still want you. Dex, I love you. You know I do. I’m
just…really freaked out. Everything that’s going on in that place
is…”

“
Too
much?”

“
Yes. Too
much.”

“
Tell me about
the dream you had. The one where you saw the girl.”

“
Oh, I don’t
want to think about that now,” I said. “Really, I just want to
pretend for the next while that the sanatorium doesn’t exist.
Pretend I’m back in our normal life.”

“
You’re
right,” he said and suddenly he was pulling the car over by a
scenic lookout. He put it in park beside a low stone wall that
overlooked the cliff and the town below. It was so clear you could
see the tiny cars making their way on 101 through Gary, see the
shimmering ocean and the endless blue sky. I immediately felt
better just seeing that, feeling the warmth of the early summer air
that was blowing through the open windows.

Dex reached over and unbuckled
his seat belt, then he unbuckled mine. “Come on,” he said, lifting
it over me. “It’s too nice to be inside the car.”

Though we were halfway down the
mountainside and not in civilization like I wanted to be, I got out
of the car. He took my hand and led me over to the low stone wall
and sat me down. He glanced out at the bright horizon, his eyes
squinting, the eyebrown ring on his dark, arched brow shining in
the sun. Like I had so many times before, I was struck dumb by how
handsome he was. Sometimes it really snuck up on me.

“
This coast,
kiddo,” he said, voice low and rough. “This coast is where we first
met. All because I had this strange feeling that I had to go visit
that lighthouse. I just had to. And then I saw you. And that was
it. I knew why I’d been brought there.”

I couldn’t help but smile. I
didn’t know why Dex was reminiscing so much lately, but I liked it
a lot. “You’re turning into quite the romantic lately.”

He raised his brow coyly.
“That’s a new one. Do you prefer that Dex or the crude Dex?”

I put my hand on his. “It
doesn’t matter. They’re all the same. They’re all you.”

He turned my hand over so that
my wrist was facing up, the anchor displayed. “This is looking real
good, baby. Real good.” He took in a deep breath and glanced up at
me with intensity. “You still don’t regret it?”

“
No fucking
way,” I assured him, unable to look away from his gaze.

“
You know
that’s going to be on you forever.”

“
That was the
point.”

He squeezed my wrist. “We don’t
know what the future holds for us. I see you here, now, you’re
scared, you’re frightened. I don’t want to keep doing this to
you.”

I watched him quizzically.
“What are you saying?”

He licked his lips. “I’m
saying…I want you around for the long haul. By my side. But I don’t
want to keep doing this show. I think I want out. For the both of
us.” My mouth dropped slightly. He went on, “What you said the
other day about this show not going on forever, about doing
something else instead. I think you’re right.”

“
Well what
would we do?”

“
I don’t know,
kiddo,” he said. He reached up and cupped my face in his large
hands. “I don’t know. But I guess we’ll just sort it out along the
way, together. I have money. I will take care of you – take care of
us – until we figure it out.”

His words coated me with a
heady mix of relief and apprehension. “So this is the end of
Experiment in Terror?”

“
I think this
should be the last episode,” he stated. “And I think we should
commit to it, go out with a bang. But yes, I think it should be the
end.”

He let go of my face and bit
his lip anxiously as he gauged my reaction. “So? What do you think?
I can’t make this choice alone.”

The end sounded so final. I’d
only known Dex through this show. I didn’t know what our lives
would be like without it. The unknown – whether with ghosts or with
life – scared me.

He leaned in and brushed his
lips against mine and I breathed in that comforting, familiar musk
of his, the mint and Old Spice. “This is only the end of the show,”
he murmured. “This is the beginning of us.”

“
You promise?”
I purred back.

“
I’ll do more
than promise, baby.” He kissed me softly, my mouth opening against
his, our kiss wet and hot and pulling me under into waves of honey.
I moved in closer, my hand sliding up his shirt and feeling the
tight lines of his stomach underneath.

But to my surprise, he pulled
out of the way, then smiled and brushed my hair behind my ear.
“Perry,” he said. His eyes were alive with emotion, his breath
heavy. “Perry…I…”

I was entranced by what he was
going to say that I wasn’t paying attention to the car that was
pulling up alongside us.

“
Hope I’m not
interrupting anything,” a familiar voice said, breaking through the
spell between Dex and I.

Dex’s eyes sparked with anger.
“Fuck!” he muttered angrily under his breath before fastening his
death gaze on the intruder.

I looked over to see Patrick
Rothburn/Gary Oldman in his Prius, the car running, his arm hanging
out the window.

“
No, it’s no
bother,” I said to him quickly before Dex could blow up at him. I
wasn’t sure why his fuse was suddenly so short, but being on Dex’s
bad side when he had a temper was a dangerous thing.

I squeezed Dex’s hand and got
up, walking over to Oldman. “What brings you back?”

He put his car into park and
adjusted his glasses. “I’m just on my lunch. I just wanted to let
you know that the girl in painting? Well, I did some research back
at the museum. I’m not 100% sure but I think I was right. She was
the daughter of one of the doctors. That’s why he started working
there, to be near to her. Doctor Ridley was his name. His daughter
was Shawna. He died about a year before she did, when she was moved
upstairs to the terminal floor.”

“
How?” I
asked.

“
He fell,” he
said simply. “Probably a suicide, maybe because he couldn’t find a
cure and she was going to die. I don’t know.”

“
Do you think
he’s the man in the coat that you saw that one time?”

He didn’t say anything but
reached into his file folder on the passenger seat and pulled out a
photo. “I drove up here to show you this.”

I took it from him and
looked it over. It was a smiling picture of a man and his daughter.
The man had slicked back hair, tanned skin and a fancy suit with a
pocket watch. The girl, who was in fact the girl I’d seen, had her
hair done up in long ringlets, wearing a dress that looked like it
was made out of metallic threads. A stately Christmas tree in the
background placed the photo around December. I flipped it over
where someone had scrawled “Doctor Timothy Ridley and his daughter
Shawna, admitted May 15
^th
, 1933.”

“
Eighty years
ago tomorrow,” Oldman said. “Do you mind if I have that
back?”

I fervently shook my head and
thrust it back into his hands. Like hell I wanted to hang onto
that.

He craned his neck around to
look at Dex. “Sorry to interrupt. I just thought you guys should be
on the lookout. I don’t know if tomorrow would mean anything in the
grand scheme of things but history has a way of hiding events that
were truly important.”

He raised his palm in farewell,
then took his car into a U-turn and disappeared back down the
hill.

I exhaled noisily, feeling that
tension creeping back into my shoulders, and walked back over to
Dex.

“
That was
weird,” I said, shoving my hands in the back pockets of my
jeans.

Dex glared off into the
distance. “The guy sure has fucking bad timing.”

I frowned. “What do you
mean?”

He sighed and got up from the
wall. “Nevermind, kiddo. Let’s go back.”

“
Back to the
school?” I asked, remembering all too well why we had just
left.

He nodded, pausing by his door
and shielded his eyes from the sun with his hand. “Yeah. If this is
the end of the show, for real, then this is our last episode. We
should get serious about it, I mean really work on getting as much
as we can. I guess we have to tell Rebecca, too.”

“
Do you think
she’ll be mad?” I asked as I opened my door and climbed
in.

“
She might be
disappointed, but she’ll understand. She’s been telling me to grow
up and get serious for a long time.”

As we drove back up to the
school, I asked him, “You’re not doing this because of me, are
you?”

“
Ending the
show? Of course, I am,” he said seriously. “You’re my world, Perry,
that’s all there is to it. There are bigger and better things out
there for us. Something legit, or, as you said earlier,
meaningful.”

I know I said it, I just didn’t
really think Dex had been listening to me. I hated the idea of the
show ending just because he was scared for me, just because I
wanted something more. I didn’t want to live with that ball of
guilt.

“
Don’t feel
guilty,” he said, his mouth twitching into a smile. “This is what I
want. And now I know it’s what you want too.”

I was unnerved. “Did you just
hear my thoughts?”