The Evolution of Mara Dyer (33 page)

Read The Evolution of Mara Dyer Online

Authors: Michelle Hodkin

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Family, #General, #Love & Romance, #Mysteries & Detective Stories, #Social Issues, #Dating & Sex, #Paranormal

BOOK: The Evolution of Mara Dyer
4.79Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

That brought a tiny smile to my lips. “Liar. Just tell me.”

He sighed. “The address you gave me, for Claire and
Jude’s parents? I cross-referenced it with what Charles—the investigator—found and I went there to talk to them. To see if anything seemed . . . off.”

I’d been holding my breath. “And?”

“There was a car in the driveway, so I knew someone was home. I knocked, there was no answer, and then I rang the bell. A man opened the door and I asked if he was William Lowe. He said, “Who?” I repeated myself, and he said his name was Asaf Ammar, which, obviously, is not at all the same.”

“Well, we know the Lowes moved after—after what happened, right?”

“Right. So I asked if he knew where William and Deborah Lowe lived and he said he’d never heard of them. Which I told him was strange, because as of four months ago, they were living in that house.” Noah swallowed. “He laughed and said that was impossible. Unamused, I asked him why that would be.” Noah paused. “Mara, he said they bought the house from his wife’s mother, Ortal. Eighteen years ago.”

I backed up onto my bed. My throat was tight. Sealed so I couldn’t speak.

“It’s a mistake, obviously,” Noah said quickly. “It’s the wrong address.”

“Hold on,” I said to him as I carried the phone to my closet. Pulled down my boxes from Rhode Island. Pulled out a notebook from my old history class at my old school.

Rachel had passed me a note one day, telling me to meet
her at Claire’s after school. I handed her my notebook as the teacher droned on, and she scrawled an address inside.

1281 Live Oak Court

“What was the address you went to?” I asked him.

“One two eight one Live Oak Court,” Noah said.

The address wasn’t wrong. Something else was.

50

I
TOLD
N
OAH EXACTLY THAT
.

“Your parents went to the funerals, yes?” he asked. “See if your mother knows anything.”

I tried so, so hard not to lose it.

“People don’t disappear,” he said.

“What about Jude?”

Noah went quiet. Then said, “I don’t know, Mara. I wish—I wish I did. But John is across the street right now. Nothing is going to happen to you or Daniel or Joseph or anyone, all right?” His voice was strong. “I promise.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. “Anna died,” I said after a too-long silence.

“I know.”

“It wasn’t me,” I said.

“I know. Hang on, Mara.”

“My parents think I’m getting better,” I went on. “They said I don’t have to go to the retreat to be evaluated for the residential program.”

“Good,” he said, sounding calm again. “They’re impressed with you. You’re doing well.”

“Except for the fact that it’s a
complete lie
. I’m not getting better. I thought maybe I was but I’m not.”

“You are
not
insane.” He barely concealed his anger. “All right? Something
is
happening to you. To us. I—I saw someone today,” he said quietly. “Some asshole grabbed a girl, twisted her wrist. I thought he was going to break it. He nearly did.”

“Who was she?”

“Don’t know. Never saw her before in my life,” Noah said. “But she’s all right. I wouldn’t have said anything except—you aren’t alone in this, Mara. You aren’t alone. Remember that.”

It was hard to breathe. “Okay.”

“I’ll be back soon. Hang on, Mara.”

“Okay,” I said, and we hung up.

I stared at the phone for five, ten seconds, then forced myself to do something else. I filled a cup of water from my bathroom sink. Drank half. Sat on my bed until Joseph burst in.

“You coming?” he asked breathlessly.

I took a deep breath and carefully composed myself. “Where?”

“Dinner.”

I rubbed my eyes and looked at the clock. “Yeah,” I said, much more brightly than I felt. I stood up and started to leave.

Joseph stared at my feet. “Um, shoes?”

“Why?”

“We’re going out.”

I just wanted to go to sleep and wake up with Noah back in Miami, back in my arms. But my parents thought I was getting better, and I needed to make them believe it. Otherwise I’d be sent away for problems I
didn’t
have. I was taking their drugs, drawing their pictures, passing their tests and it would all be for nothing if I was sent away now. I couldn’t bear that. Not when it would separate me from the one person who believed me. The one person who knew the truth.

I set the cup down. I put on my shoes and a big, fake smile. I laughed on the outside while I screamed on the inside. My body was in the restaurant but my mind was in hell.

And then we went back home. Daniel and Joseph were talking, my parents were joking, and I felt a little better, until I entered my room. I drank some more water from the cup I filled before we went out to eat and got ready for bed, trying not to be afraid. Fear is just a feeling, and feelings aren’t real.

But the disc I found under my pillow that night was.

My fingers curled around it in the dark. I began to hear the sirens of panic wail in my brain but I forced myself to shut them out. I stood slowly and turned on my light.

The CD was plain and unmarked.

Noah’s security guard, John, was outside.

Maybe I made the disc myself? And just didn’t remember? Like writing in the journal?

That had to be it. I glanced at the clock: It was midnight. Noah would be on the plane. My whole family was home and in their rooms, if not asleep. I couldn’t vaporize the healthy normal teenager facade by waking them and losing it, so I drained the cup of water, gritted my teeth, and put the disc in my computer. I could not panic. Not yet.

I moved the mouse and hovered over the file icon hoping for a flash of recognition, but it was just a series of numbers—31281. I double clicked, and a DVD application opened up. I pressed play.

The screen was grainy and black, and then a flash of light illuminated—

“It’s supposed to be in here, come on,” said a voice from the computer.

Rachel’s voice. My mouth formed her name but no sound came out.

“We could be in the wrong section?” Claire’s voice, from behind the video camera. “I don’t know.”

I leaned in close to the screen, the air vanishing from my lungs as the asylum appeared. The paint on my bedroom walls began to peel, curl, and flake off around me like filthy snow. My bedroom walls seemed to melt and new ones, old ones, sprang up in their place. The ceiling above me cracked and the floor beneath my feet rotted away and I was in the asylum, right next to Rachel and Claire.

“What if there’s no chalk?” Claire asked. The light from her video camera swung wildly over the hallway. No focus. No direction.

Rachel smiled at Claire, and held something up in her glove. “I brought.”

Muffled footsteps kicked aside old insulation. Another light flashed—it was Rachel, taking a picture. My eyes brimmed with tears and I couldn’t look away.

“Wait—I think it’s this one.” Rachel smiled wide and a thousand needles pierced my chest. “This is so creepy.”

Oh God oh God oh God.

“I know.” Claire followed Rachel into the room, her light resting on an old, enormous chalkboard, covered in names and dates written by dozens of different hands.

“I told you,” Rachel said smugly. “Wait—where’s Mara? And Jude?”

The image on screen jostled. Claire must have shrugged.

I tried to scream but no sound came out.

“I should get her,” Rachel said, moving out of the frame.

I gagged. I gasped for air, pushed back the hair from my face, covered my mouth with my hands and kept trying to talk, to tell them, to warn them, to save them, but I was mute. Dumb. Silent.

“I’ll go—write my name, okay? Take the camera.”

Rachel winked. “You got it.”

I fell to my knees.

Then she took Claire’s video camera—I couldn’t see her anymore—and pointed it at the blackboard. Scanned all of the names. She began to whistle. Her breath was white steam.

The sound echoed off the cavernous walls and filled my ears and mind. I crouched on the floor and hugged my knees to my chest, unable to breathe or speak or scream. The scrape of the chalk on the filmy, worn blackboard mingled with Rachel’s whistle and my mind processed nothing else until footsteps approached. The shot swung back away from the board to face Claire.

“The lovebirds are enjoying some private time.”

“Really?” Rachel asked. The camera tilted away from Claire. More jostling and chaos, then it pointed at Rachel again. “Mara’s okay?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Bad girl,” Rachel said suggestively.

A laugh. Claire’s.

And then a crack, so loud I could feel it.

“What was—” A panicked whisper. Rachel’s.

There was a metallic groan. Then the ringing, successive slam of thousands of pounds of iron fitting into frames.

“Oh my—” Panting. Screaming.

Interference and dust clouded my vision and the hiss and rush of static filled my ears. White letters appeared in the darkness that arranged themselves into the words
FILE CORRUPTED
. Then silence. The image on the screen went black. The scene in my mind went dark.

But just when I thought the footage was over, I heard the soft lilt of laughter. Unmistakably mine.

I didn’t know how much time passed. All I knew was that when I screamed again, there was sound but it was muffled. I tried to force my eyes to see, but I was trapped in darkness; there was no floor beneath my feet, no ceiling above my head.

Because I was not in the asylum. I was not in my room at home.

I was bound and gagged and in the trunk of someone’s car.

51

I
DON’T KNOW HOW
I
GOT THERE
.

One second I was in my bedroom, watching footage from Claire’s camera, hearing myself laugh, struggling to stay grounded and not let the flashback wash me away. And the next, I was covered in shadow as rough fabric scraped against my cheek, as my lungs were stifled by heat.

But I did know this: Jude was the only person with any reason to want to hurt me, and he had tried before.

Which meant he must be driving.

When the car hit a pothole I bit my tongue. Blood filled my mouth. I tried to spit but my mouth was covered: by what, I didn’t know. I sent messages to my arms and legs,
begging them to move, to struggle, but nothing happened. I imagined myself contorting my limbs, arching and twisting against whatever restrained me, but I was loose and limp. A doll tossed around in a bored child’s toy chest, powerless to move.

He must have taken me from my home—my room—while my family slept, unsuspecting.

What had happened to John?

Tears squeezed out of the corners of my eyes. The texture of the trunk’s interior made my skin itch and burn. The muscles in my arms and legs wouldn’t move, which meant I must be drugged.

But how? We ate at the restaurant, not at home. I rewound the past hour in my mind but my thoughts were blurry and I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t.

The car stopped.
That
was when my slow, sluggish heart finally charged to life. It beat against every inch of my skin. I was soaked in sweat.

A car door slammed. Footsteps crunched on gravel. I lay there, helpless and hopeless, slimy and miserable. Fear made me an animal and my primitive brain could do nothing but play dead.

The trunk opened; I heard it and felt it and then realized that I still couldn’t see, which meant that I was blindfolded. I listened—there was water around us. It lapped against something nearby.

I felt big, meaty hands on my body, which was completely limp. I was shackled by terror. I was lifted out of the trunk and I felt bulging, thick muscles against my flesh.

“Shame,” a voice whispered then. “It’s so much more fun when you fight.”

It was Jude, absolutely.

There was pressure in my head—I must be upside-down. I moaned weakly, but there was nowhere for the sound to go.

And then I was set right side up, propped and arranged in a chair with my arms behind me, chafing against the back. My knees, thighs, calves ached. Smells and sounds—brine and salt, rot and water—were sharp, but thoughts were difficult.

My blindfold was slipped off, then, and I saw him. He looked older than I remembered, but otherwise the same. Bright green eyes. Dirty blond hair. Dimples. And two whole, intact hands. So harmless.

My eyes drank in the details of my surroundings and absorbed them like a sponge. We were in some kind of boathouse. There were life preservers stacked against one wall, two kayaks lying across another, and an old, rusty sign that read
IDLE SPEED, NO WAKE
propped up in a corner. It was well maintained, with a thick coat of grey paint slapped on, obscuring any flaws. There was one door. Jude was in front of it.

I scanned the room wildly for some kind of weapon. Then I remembered: I was one.

It was him or me. I imagined him being gutted, a slash
of blood stretching across his stomach. I imagined him in agony.

“So,” Jude said.

I wanted to spit in his face at the sound of his voice. I would, I decided, if he ripped the gag off.

Other books

Six Bits by Laurence Dahners
Rentboy by Alexander, Fyn
Los viajes de Tuf by George R. R. Martin
WMIS 04 Rock With Me by Kristen Proby
Princess of Dhagabad, The by Kashina, Anna