Life Eternal (24 page)

Over the intercom, the conductor announced that the next stop would be Breaker Chasm. Eagerly, I looked out the window. We were nearing the base of a mountain, where a tunnel had been bored through the hillside. Suddenly worried, I pressed my face against the glass to look at the railroad tracks. There was only one set, and they led directly into the tunnel. I couldn’t go there; I would die.

I stood up and walked briskly down the aisle. The train wasn’t very crowded; most of the other passengers were sleeping or listening to music. I tried to not to disturb them as I made my way to the exit door. Trying to be discreet, I pulled the handle, but the door was locked.

I glanced out the window again. We had almost reached the mouth of the tunnel. Quickly, I slid open the door leading to the next car and stepped outside. The cold December air blew past my face as I straddled the narrow platform connecting my car to the next. The noise of the wheels on the tracks below me was deafening.

The train rattled as the front of it entered the tunnel. I inched toward the edge of the platform. Beyond it was just the snowy ground, rushing by much faster than I had expected. I waited for a clearing in the trees, and just before the car entered the tunnel, I jumped.

It was painless. I landed in the snow and slid a little ways down the hill until a patch of underbrush broke my fall. There, I watched as the mountain swallowed the rest of the train, leaving behind a curl of black smoke.

I traveled the rest of the way by foot, trudging through the knee-deep snow as I skirted around the mountain and followed the train tracks until I reached a small town, the sun setting behind the peaks of the houses. A sign stood on the side of the road. Written in friendly cursive were the words:
BREAKER CHASM WELCOMES YOU
!

It was a quaint town—quiet. As I walked down the road, the streetlamps clicked on above me. Most of the stores were closed, except for a single gas station. I approached it. Inside, behind a register, sat an overweight man wearing a checkered shirt. He was eating something out of a Styrofoam container. Rolls and rolls of scratch tickets hung on the wall behind him.

He stopped eating. “Cold night,” he said, stirring his food.

I ignored his comment. “Can you point me toward Knollwood Drive?”

“Are you heading to the farm?”

“No,” I said. “Why do you ask?”

“I’ve got lots of kids coming in here looking for one of those farms.”

I didn’t respond. Instead, I leaned over the refrigerated case, picked out as many bottles of water as I could carry, and put them on the counter. “I’ll take these,” I said, searching through my pockets for change. The man gave me a strange look, but then rung me up and pointed me in the direction of Knollwood Drive.

I walked for what seemed like miles, past frozen fields and barns, until I reached a tin mailbox. A little ways down the drive was a yellow farmhouse with a big yellow barn. There was no street sign, but on the side of the road I spotted dozens of small footprints embedded in the snow. I placed my bag of bottled water on the ground. Crouching over, I brushed off the mailbox so I could read the number, and then slipped a piece of paper out of my pocket and compared the addresses. Both read:
15 Knollwood Drive.

Holding the joints in case they squeaked, I opened the door of the mailbox. Inside was a piece of paper. A single name was written on it:
Cindy Bell.

I folded the note into my pocket. Before I left, I opened a bottle of water and poured it out on the ground behind me to melt my footprints.

I awoke to a loud crash, followed by the sound of things clattering to the floor.

Blinking, I opened my eyes. The morning sun was burning the back of my neck as it shone through the window of my grandfather’s library. I must have slept through the night here, my head resting on the pile of clippings on the desk.

Rolling my neck, I sat up and looked at the postcard of Breaker Chasm that had fallen out of the stack. I flipped it over to see if anything was written on it, but it was blank.

Cindy Bell.
That was Eleanor’s mom. Why had her name been written on a slip of paper in a mailbox?

My thoughts were interrupted by a deep thump in an adjacent room. Then shouting. Tucking the postcard into my pocket, I ran out to the hallway.

I followed the voices to my grandfather’s office, where I found him standing across the room from Dustin. Both of their faces were red and flustered.

“We should have done something,” my grandfather yelled, not noticing that I was standing in the doorway. “Why didn’t you tell me it was this bad?”

Dustin was about to respond when the floor creaked beneath me. Turning in my direction, both men went silent.

The room was a complete mess. A platter of breakfast was strewn across the floor, the eggs, hollandaise sauce, jam, and pancakes all smeared into the wood among silverware and broken dishes.

“What happened?” I asked, wincing as I took it all in.

On top of all this lay dozens of loose papers, which looked like they had been purposely knocked off the desk. They were now matted to the ground, sopping up the syrup and coffee. Even more incredible was that Dustin wasn’t trying to clean it all up, as he normally would have.

I glanced between him and my grandfather. I had never seen them fight before; I had never even seen Dustin angry.

“What is going on?” I demanded.

Before my grandfather could answer, the phone rang. He picked it up and growled, “Yes?”

He looked at me. “It’s for you.”

“Me?”

He nodded. “I suggest you take it in the Red Room.”

“Okay,” I said slowly, and went to the small room down the hall, where I picked up the phone. “Hello?”

All I could hear was steady breathing on the other end of the line.

“Hello? Who is this?” I repeated.

“It’s me,” a thick voice said.

“Eleanor?” I said, sitting down on a bench. She sounded different. Somber.

“Tell me what to do,” she said, pleading into the phone.

“Do about what?” I asked, suddenly frightened.

“She disappeared,” Eleanor said. “She must have run to the lake in the middle of the night while I was sleeping.”

“Who disappeared? What lake? Where are you?”

“I’m in the bathroom,” she said. “I’m in the bathroom of the ski lodge in Colorado.”

I let out a sigh of relief. At first I thought she was in trouble, but it couldn’t be that bad if she was with her family skiing. I tried to steady my voice. “Are you okay? What happened?”

There was a long pause.

“They found my mom this morning by the lake. She’s dead.”

After Eleanor hung up, I sat there on the bench for a long time, the receiver resting on my collarbone.

The only information I could glean from her was that her mother left the ski lodge in the middle of the night, unbeknownst to Eleanor, and was found by the mountain patrol at the foot of a lake, dead, with gauze stuffed in her mouth. It had snowed several inches that night, covering all tracks except for those of the rescuers.

Gauze. A lake. Just like Miss LaBarge.

I thought of the photograph I had found in the cottage, of Miss LaBarge and Cindy Bell as young girls. I thought of Miss LaBarge’s funeral, and how Cindy Bell was sitting all alone on the boat, lost in her thoughts. Had she been searching for the secret of the Nine Sisters, too?

Dropping the phone, I ran upstairs to my room. There, I searched my dresser until I found the postcards Eleanor had sent to me last summer when she was traveling in Europe with her mother. I’d kept them with me, rereading Dante’s embedded messages whenever I felt particularly lonely. But this time, I looked at the photographs on the cards. Each one was of a lake.

Backing onto my bed, I flipped through the pictures again, amazed that I’d had these cards all along, but hadn’t realized what they suggested. Eleanor’s mother had been searching for the last part of the riddle in Europe, and had brought Eleanor along with her.

Cindy Bell had been searching for the last sister, too. She must have gotten the first two riddles from Miss LaBarge, and was searching in the lakes for something buried in salt water. Until someone killed her.

Had she found anything? I wondered how close I had been to finding the secret before I’d been distracted by Noah and my search for Dante, and if the Undead who killed Cindy Bell would find it instead of me. Why hadn’t I tried harder? People had died for this secret, people were still dying, and I had chosen to do nothing.

I wiped my eyes and shoved my hands into my pockets. That’s when I felt it. The weathered photograph that had prompted my vision.
My vision,
I repeated, my stomach twisting into a knot. Last night I’d had a dream of going to a farmhouse in Vermont and taking a piece of paper with Cindy Bell’s name on it from the mailbox. Now she was dead. And before Miss LaBarge died, I’d envisioned that I was chasing her to an island. Except this time I knew where the vision had come from.

I steadied myself, feeling like I was going to be sick. Had Dante done this?

Reluctantly, I slipped the postcard of Breaker Chasm out of my pocket. My vision was of Vermont, not Colorado, where Cindy Bell was found. That must mean something. Maybe Dante hadn’t killed her. Maybe he was just…just…what?

Closing my eyes, I tried to recall a memory of the boy I fell in love with, any memory that would remind me that the Dante I knew would never hurt anyone. But as I did, the memories crumpled like flimsy photographs. I had to know what Breaker Chasm was; I had to know what he had done.

My grandfather was still in his office, stuffing a briefcase full of papers. In front of him, Dustin hunched down, cleaning up the mess.

I stepped around him and held up the postcard. “What is this place?”

Taking it from me, my grandfather put on his glasses and squinted at the image. “Where did you get this? Did you go through my office?”

When I didn’t respond, he threw down his briefcase.

“Did you take Annette LaBarge’s file from my desk? I’ve been looking for it all morning.”

“I just stumbled across it,” I said, stepping back.

Taking off his glasses, he stormed out the door and into the library, where the rest of the clippings were scattered on the desk. I watched as he shoved them into his briefcase.

‘Where are you going?”

“Business,” he said.

“What was Miss LaBarge looking for in Breaker Chasm, Vermont?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “Which is why it’s important that I keep things in order. You can’t just take things like this and leave them about the house. What if they’d gotten thrown out? Misplaced? We would have lost the only clues we have.” He snapped his briefcase shut. “This isn’t a game. People are dying.
Monitors
are dying. I don’t think your friend Eleanor would be amused by whatever half-hatched theory you’ve come up with. So I would suggest you save your childish endeavors for the dormitories.”

That night, it started to snow. I ate dinner alone, sitting at the end of the long dining room table while Dustin stood in the corner, his hands clasped behind his back.

“If I may, Miss Renée,” he said as I picked at my duck. “I believe Breaker Chasm is in the part of the lake country that many people believe is haunted.”

“Haunted?” I repeated.

“I believe so.”

That’s when I felt it. At first it was subtle. Just a slight chill tickling my ankles. And then it moved, traveling up beneath the table to my arms, my shoulders, my neck.

I dropped my fork. It clattered against my plate and fell to the floor. The air around me seemed to rearrange itself into his name: Dante. But it couldn’t be. He wouldn’t be here; it was too dangerous.

Dustin stared at me. “Miss Renée, is everything all right?”

Shaking myself to attention, I nodded and reached under the table to pick up my fork. A draft must have snuck in through an upstairs window. Except we were deep into the Massachusetts winter; none of the windows were open. Could he really be here?

It was too dark to see anything out the window, except for the snow collecting on the panes, but I could still feel him.

“I’m finished,” I said, picking up my plate. I had to go outside and see if he was there.

“But you’ve barely touched your food,” Dustin said, concerned. “Come, just a few more bites?” He must have seen me glance out the window, because he continued. “Is there something outside?” he said, following my gaze. “I can call the gardener to fetch it for you.”

“No,” I said quickly. “I was just admiring the snow,” I said, and sat back down, not wanting to draw his attention to Dante.

After dinner I stayed up with Dustin, watching late-night talk shows until he nodded off, his head in his hand as he leaned on the arm of the sofa. Tiptoeing across the room, I turned off the television. The room went dark, save for the twinkling lights on the Christmas tree. I crept out, up the stairs, and into my room.

Before I could turn on the lights, a cold hand covered my mouth and pulled me inside, the door clicking shut behind me.

“I didn’t want you to scream,” a deep voice said.

My body went rigid. Dante. He was here, in my bedroom, his chest expanding against my back as he breathed. I could smell the sap on his clothes; I could hear the branches tapping on the windowpanes in rhythm with his heart.

When he released me, I backed away from him. Framed in the doorway of my closet, he looked like a mannequin. Tall, pale, and too perfect to be real, his broad shoulders stiff beneath his sweater.

He pushed a loose lock of hair behind his ear. “Why are you looking at me like that?” he said, his voice gentle. He moved toward me, but I stepped away.

His smile faded. “What’s wrong?”

“Where have you been?”

“I was moving around,” he said, offering me the same answer he always did.

“But where?”

He frowned, his forehead wrinkling into delicate lines. “Why does it matter? I’m here now.”

“Why does it matter?” I breathed. “I’ve been trying to find you for months. I’ve been waiting for you, not knowing where you were or what you were doing. You know everything about me, but I know nothing about you. Do you know how that feels?”