The Complete Collection (12 page)

I settle in for bed after a long shower and
a longer night writing notes for my book.

My hotel is comfortable and modest. It
won’t be long before I find another place. I have savings.

From the fire.

Stop it.

We don’t talk about that.

Finally under the covers, I realize I am
exhausted.

I hope I dream of Sam.

Lila, don’t be ridiculous.

Still—

No.

* * *

It is dark.

I am there again.

I can’t stay away.

It is the Blacksmith that leads me here.

This way, Lila
.

You want to know?

Yes, I say.

Yes, I do.

You want to understand?

Yes.

You must dig.

That is the only way.

I kneel before Ainsley’s grave.

Dig, Lila
.

In my nightgown, under the unblinking
eyes of the night creatures in the trees, my clean skin grows filthy with the
task of digging.

Here lies Ainsley.

She lives among the dead.

I claw through the dirt, making slow
progress.

One handful at a time.

I’m not cold, I am determined.

My fingers start to bleed into the
well-sotted earth.

Deeper and deeper I go.

I reach something hard in the earth.

I dust away the dirt and see the face of
my father.

Lila...

I gasp and want to run.

No, Lila—you must dig.

Now the tears fall. My father’s body
crumbles into its final, painful ashes.

I find my mother below him.

Her eyes open briefly in terror.

NO—I can’t.

You must.

Sobbing now, I dig deeper.

Where are you, Ainsley?!

My cries echo off the moon.

Where are you?

I wipe my eyes with the grotesque
fingers of a grave digger.

I am covered in filth.

Finally, I reach a coffin.

I laugh with relief and hysteria.

I ease it open.

I see my face.

LILA!

I gasp and turn at the harsh whisper in
my ear.

I fall backward into the coffin.

I am face-to-face with her.

Ainsley.

“Lila,” she hisses. Her throat is an open,
red wound.

“YOU are ME!”

The coffin slams on my scream.

The same scream that wakes me from my sleep,
shuddering and crying for my mother.

I hear the key in the door just as I'm filling
one of my last boxes at the old apartment.

Ugh.

I was really hoping to avoid a scene.

“Hi,” Scott says, quietly.

“Hi,” I say, not looking his way. “I’m
almost done.”

“No rush. I’m glad I caught you… Lila,”
he says.

“Yes?” I say, still continuing to pack
up my things.

Scott picks up a picture of us from a
football game. It feels like centuries ago.

“Stop for a minute and talk to me,” he
says.

I turn and look at him. He recoils from
my coldness.

“Haven’t you talked enough, Scott?”

He looks down.

“You’re right. I should have been more
supportive. I should have listened. I was self-absorbed. Maybe I felt like I
was losing you in some way. And it scared me,” Scott says.

I sigh.

“Maybe you were, Scott. And maybe that’s
why this is for the best. I really have sights for myself beyond this little town.
I want to do real writing. Real writing that makes a difference. And no one supports
me. Not you. Not Ray. No one. I need to find people who will,” I say.

“Like Sam?” he says.

I blush before I can look away.

“Please, Scott. Sam has nothing to do
with this. He’s a source. That’s all.”

“Don’t bullshit me, Lila. You’re not that
far gone that I don’t know you anymore.”

“Okay, so we have a connection. We’re
both passionate about Ainsley’s story. We’re both feeling rather…alone…at the
moment,” I concede, again not meeting Scott’s eyes.

“Oh, really?” Scott says.

“Don’t get angry. That’s not why I’m
here. I’m not defending myself to you anymore,” I say.

“Okay, okay—I’m not going to ask any
more questions. I just want you to be careful. You're in a vulnerable position
right now. You’re not…yourself,” Scott says.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I push my
glasses back up on my nose.

“I don’t know, Lila. You haven’t been
yourself since you started obsessing over this story. I can’t explain it. You've
gone…somewhere else."

I sit down, wearily.

I know he's right.

Or maybe—just maybe—this is
who I really am. Who I've been all along.

“Talk to me, babe. Just talk,” he says.

“Can you get me a beer?” I say.

“Of course.”

He grabs two beers and sits down next to
me.

“There’s something I never told you,
Scott,” I say.

“Okay—tell me now, then.”

“This is really hard to talk about, so
just let me talk,” I say.

“Okay."

And so I tell Scott
the story
.

He knew that my parents died when I was
young. He knew there was a fire. But that’s all he knew: whatever the
newspapers told him.

Now, I tell him my own story:

I tell him about the fire.

I cry some.

He listens.

And then, I'm done.

“Jesus, Lila,” Scott says.

He puts his beer down.

“Can I hug you?” he says.

I put my beer down, and feel his arms
around me.

We hug tightly. I feel myself getting
vulnerable again, and I pull away.

“It’s okay to hug, Lila,” he says.

“I know,” I say.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” he says.

“I don’t tell anyone. It’s buried so deeply
inside of me—I think these headlines and this tragedy and the media
circus around it have brought it all to the surface,” I explain. “And maybe, I
guess, that’s why it’s made me a little crazy,” I admit.

“Of course, honey. Of course,” Scott
says. “It makes so much more sense now. I wish you had told me sooner.”

I wipe my eyes and finish my beer.

“I better go,” I say.

“Lila… Can you stay, just for tonight? I
won’t do anything. I just want to be near you. I think you need it. I know I
need it. And we can take tomorrow as it comes,” Scott begs.

I can tell in his voice that this is hard
for him to say.

“Okay, Scott. Maybe you’re right.”

I am so tired.

So, so tired.

We make dinner, and, for a little while,
it feels like old times.

Maybe, just maybe, I think to myself,
maybe we can save this.

We ignore the boxes lingering around the
house, signs of our crumbling foundation.

I feel a sense of relief having
explained some of myself to Scott.

Maybe, just for tonight, I've chased my
darkness away.

I sleep.

Sam calls to me in my dreams.

I can’t escape.

Lila...

But it’s not Sam, is it?

It’s the Blacksmith.

I belong to him now, and I don’t know
why I ever thought I could escape.

I don’t know why I’d want to.

I get out of the bed and leave Scott
sleeping peacefully behind.

He deserves better than me.

I look in the mirror as I leave and Ainsley’s
eyes look back at me, so much like mine. We smile at one another.

It’s so much easier now.

My car gets to the house on its own now.
I barely need to hit the gas pedal or turn the steering wheel.

But this time, I stop at the bottom. I
must earn this right.

Earn this night.

Slowly, I walk up the driveway. The
rocks cause me to stumble and I fall once, scraping my knee—more blood
for the hungry earth.

The wind is whispering in my voice.

Hated your parents.

No, I didn’t!

Glad they were dead.

You must dig, Lila. You must.

I reach the crest of the driveway and
again, the light on the second-floor window is on.

A shadow beckons me inside.

I am not afraid.

I make my way up the steps to the lit
room—I hear a rocking chair, rocking.

Rocking.

I push the door open to see a young
woman with long, brown hair, holding a baby.

She turns to me.

The baby is dead.

He’s dead.

She smiles.

I smile back.

She fades from sight and the light
shifts.

Now it’s a little girl, eight years old,
asleep in her room.

No, Lila, not asleep.

Pretending to be asleep.

Hoping not to hear the
creak
of
the opening door.

I bite my knuckle.

So does the little girl.

We pray for peace together.

I leave the child behind. I have no
other choice.

I walk again to the graveyard garden.

The shadow of Ainsley reaches for my
hand.

She understands me.

She shows me the earth where I must dig.

She shows me where the Blacksmith waits.

It’s my turn now.

The Blacksmith offers such sweet pain.

He takes me in his arms—this is
where I belong. He is my savage and my salvation.

I barely notice him drinking my tears.

This is my story. This is the only way.
The world will only see what it wants to see. It will only read what it wants
to read.

My roots spring forth and dig deep.

My story will grow and thrive.

I have found myself in Ainsley’s garden.

She is me.

Scott stirs in his empty bed—waking
with a smile.

What a great talk they had. He is
hopeful for the future.

“Lila?”

No answer.

He knocks on the bathroom door.

“Lila?”

Nothing.

She is not in the apartment.

Of course she isn’t.

Scott tries her cellphone number.

In a moment of cold terror, he hears it
ring in the apartment—inside her purse. Her wallet is also in her purse.

Scott begins to worry.

He thumbs through her phone and finds
the number he is looking for.

“Hi, Sam? This is Scott. Lila’s Scott,
yes. Is she with you? I won’t be angry. I’m just—honestly, I just want to
know that she’s okay,” he says.

Sam pauses on the other end of the
phone.

On the one hand, Sam wants to tell Scott
where to find her—on the other, he knows that Lila is exactly where she
should be.

The whispers tease him.

“It’s all right,” he replies softly.

“What?” Scott says.

 “She's—she’s at the house,”
he says.

“Okay. Yeah, that’s sort of what I
thought too,” Scott said, a sinking feeling already in his stomach.

“I’ll meet you there,” he says.

Scott hits the gas hard and throws the
siren on the top of his car.

He calls for some backup—he has a
bad feeling.

Of course he does.

Ten minutes later, the scene of the
grisly murders is once again alight with red police lights and ambulances.

“What’s the deal, Scott?” one of his
fellow officers says.

“I've got a bad feeling,” he says.

Sam pulls up shortly behind him.

“Anything?” he says.

“LILA!” Scott yells. His voice echoes
over the trees and mocks her name back at him.

“Did you look up there?” Sam says.

Sam is eerily calm.

Scott does not admit to himself that he is
mildly afraid to go into the backyard.

“No, not yet,” he said.

“If she’s here, that’s where she’ll be,”
Sam says.

“How do you—?” Scott stops when
Sam’s eyes meet his.

“Okay” he says.

They get to the top of the hill.

Scott’s heart sinks when he sees the pile
of freshly packed earth.

“I can’t do it,” he says.

His fellow officers lead him away.

Sam stays.

“Guys, come on, let’s do it,” one of
them says.

The men make quick work of the hole that
took Lila hours.

“Oh, fuck,” one of the officers says.

“What? What?” Scott says.

“Don’t, man—stay back,” another
officer says.

Scott pushes one of the men in anger.

“This is your goddamned fault!” he screams.
“If your hack police crew had found that fucking journal when you searched the
crime scene in the first place, this never would have happened. Instead, Lila
found it and look what it did to her!” he says, falling to his knees.

“Journal? Scott, what are you talking
about?” the officer says.

A detective approaches.

“Scott—we found the journal,” he
says quietly. “It’s been locked up in evidence for weeks.”

Scott buries his head in his hands.

Sam drops into the grave—Lila is
there, a faint smile on her face.

“What the fuck? How…?” Sam whispers.

He stops. It’s a foolish thing to ask.

The arms come from below to wrap around
her.

Dead arms. My arms.

Lila holds something tightly in her
hands. Something she dug deep to find.

Sam reaches for it, unfurls her fingers.

A pack of matches falls into the dirt.

I am Lila.

She is me.

The End.