The Hawley Book of the Dead (20 page)

I made her run all the way back to her apartment. She brewed tea that I gulped down, not minding that it scalded me. I told her all of it—the offices, the lab, the men with guns. And the horrible man in the chair, whose face I never saw. Who I might identify by only one thing. The tattoo of a thick blue snake winding around his wrist and up his arm. From that day on, for years after, that blue snake would twist through my dreams, a recurring nightmare.

“Shit,” Maggie whispered when I was done telling, slumped with fatigue and the aftereffects of terror. “What are we going to do now?”

I had no answer for her.

About a month later, just before the summer, I felt something alter in Maggie. She changed in some indefinable way. We didn’t see each other much, only met off campus, away from Amherst, and she didn’t seem to be as present when we did. Her eyes were constantly shifting, as if she were looking for someone. She got quiet and moody. Then one morning, she called me in a panic.

“Reve, you’ve got to come. You’ve got to get me out of here!”

I heard traffic noises through the phone. “Where are you? What’s wrong?”

“I’m at the Sunoco station on Pleasant. But I can’t stay here.”

“What happened? Maggie—”

“Please, Reve, just come. I’ll wait for you at Classé. If I’m not there, I’ll be outside Barsies. If I’m not there … I don’t know.” Her voice was edgy, pleading. That, more than anything, terrified me.

“I’ll come right now.”

“Borrow someone else’s car. Is Lisa on campus? Take hers.”

“But—”

“Reve, damn it, just do it! Please. Really, don’t take your truck, or your parents’ car.”

Her panic was contagious, compelling. “Wait for me,” I said.

I screeched up to Classé Café, leapt out of Lisa’s monster Impala, and tripped. A man in a white shirt with a camera around his neck caught me.

“Whoa, there. Where you going so fast?” One of the FBI guys, I was sure. Maybe he’d even been in the tunnels. I had kept away from Amherst since that night—was scared stiff I’d be recognized, although I still thought the only one who’d gotten a good clear look at me was the man with the ice eyes, and this was not him.

I pulled away, said, “Thanks” over my shoulder, and ran into the crowded café. Maggie was nowhere to be seen. I checked the bathroom, then ran back to the car. Camera man was gone.

I drove to Barselotti’s. Just as I pulled up to the curb, Maggie threw the door open, jumped in, and snapped, “Drive, just drive, until I figure this out.”

“Mom said to bring you home.”

“No. Not there. They can’t find out where you live.”

“Shit. What happened?”

“I’ll tell you everything, Reve. I promise. Just drive around. Drive somewhere there’s traffic.”

I took Route 9 toward Northampton. We drove past the malls and the bucolic farms, and Maggie told her story.

“Right after you went down in the tunnels, I started feeling like someone was following me. I didn’t tell you, I didn’t want to scare you. I don’t know, at first I thought it was just me being paranoid. But I was nervous about them, FBI, DOD, whoever they are. Eli’s Freedom of Information Act files were broken into last month. Then stuff started happening to me.”

“What kind of stuff?” My mouth was dry. I felt feverish. Maybe I was entrenched in a nightmare, unable to wake up.

“First, I started thinking … no,
knowing
, I was being followed. Then I was in the Campus Center, writing in my journal. I left it on the chair and went to get some water from the fountain, which was, like, three feet away. When I went back, it was gone.”

“Are you sure it didn’t just fall?”

“Unless it fell into some black hole, yeah, I’m sure. I looked all around for it. And if somebody wanted to steal something, my whole backpack was right there, with my wallet and everything. I swear my back was turned for all of five seconds.”

I took a deep breath, tried to be rational, tried to stop my hands from trembling on the steering wheel. “Okay, so what if somebody did take it? Maybe some hoser just needed paper.”

“That’s not the only thing. Last night I went to the gym. When I got back my apartment was torn up. I’m scared, Reve.
You
should be scared.”

I almost slammed into the car in front of me. “Oh, shit! Did you write anything about the underground lab?”

“That’s the weird part. There was nothing much in the journal. Just stuff about my little life. Classes and parties and rallies. You know. I would never put anything in writing about what you saw. Or that either of us were there at all.”

“Maybe they were looking for information about other people. Maybe Eli.”

“What do I know about him, more than anybody else? It’s not like he’s my boyfriend or anything. No, they’re suddenly all hot on me, for some reason. Maybe there was something in Eli’s files. I changed everybody’s names in my journal, too, just in case.”

“What? Why? What made you do that, if you weren’t writing anything much? Were you writing in code, too?” It was all starting to seem too much like a James Bond movie.

Maggie glared at me. “Stop the car. I’ll get out.”

“Don’t be stupid!”

I could feel her gaze burning my face. “All right. Turn around. Let’s go back.”

“Why?”

“Just go to the center of town and park this beast. There’s something you need to see.”

We walked around the Amherst common, down Main Street. Every now and then, Maggie would give an almost imperceptible nod, whisper, “There.” I’d look and see a conservatively dressed man or woman, always alone. But they all had the same look, as if the emotion had been squeezed out, made them pale and nondescript. I couldn’t ID one two minutes after I’d seen them, they looked so generic. And there were lots of them. They were like a swarm. Even after the tunnels, I had no idea there would be so many.

“Maybe they had a sale on white shirts and dark ties at Sears.”

Maggie laughed for the first time that day. I tried to keep it going. “Maybe they’re Mormons,” I suggested.

“Well, that I could believe, except that lady over there has a camera and is taking pictures of us.” And there she was, less than ten feet away, a pinched woman with no-color hair holding a camera up to her face, pointing it at us. I whipped around to see if she could be taking a photo of something else. There was only the street, with blowing paper and telephone wires. A shiver of foreboding ran through me, chilling me on that
warm day. I heard the shutter click and didn’t stop to think. I started walking toward the woman, but she turned and walked briskly away. “Ma’am?” I called. She walked faster. I ran. “Ma’am!” I called louder. She didn’t turn. When I caught her by a white sleeve, she had to face me. Her lips twitched, as if she was trying to remember how to smile. “Yes?”

“You took a photo of me and my friend. Why?”

She managed to push the corners of her lips further up her face. “Why would I do that, dear? I don’t know you.”

“Then what did you photograph?”

“I’ve been to the Emily Dickinson house. So interesting.”

“I mean now, just a minute ago.”

She shook her head. “I haven’t taken a photograph since I left the tour. I’m sorry, but you’re mistaken.”

A jolt of terror rocked me. It took all the control I had not to disappear. Here I was, on a perfect spring day, in the middle of a public place I knew well, talking with a mild-looking woman who almost certainly had no intention of hurting me, at least in any physical way. But I felt my certainty about everything I thought I knew spiral away. Maybe she was right. Maybe I was crazy. I turned to Maggie for confirmation, but she was tying her sneaker, looking down so I couldn’t see her face. I turned back and the woman was gone. I looked up and down the street. The relief I felt made me dizzy.

“Forget it.” Maggie put a hand on my arm. “She’s not going to give you any straight answers.”

“She said she didn’t take a photo. And I almost believe her. It’s scary.”

“I heard.” Maggie said it wearily. Her face was drawn. I noticed then how thin she’d gotten, how her clothes hung on her. “I’ve tried to corner them, too, ask them what they want from me. They always deny everything. But they’re always on me. Everywhere I go. They’re starting to make me believe I really am nuts. Except I know I’m not. And now you know, too.”

“Yeah, I know.” And I did. I finally knew what Maggie had been going through, alone. These men and women who looked like Mormons or office workers were able to spread fear like a virus. It was a fear worse than
I’d felt in the tunnels, a fear for my own sanity, for Maggie’s. It was still pulsing through me. I had to sit on a bench in front of the town hall. I tried to think rationally. “Look, they can’t link you to anything. Not really. Maybe they’ll just stop after a while.”

“Yeah, well, I can’t just wait around for that to happen. I think they actually
could
make me crazy. That they’re
trying
to.”

I took Maggie’s hand, squeezed it. “What can we do?”

She tugged her hand away. “I don’t know. But I’m scared they’ll find out who you are, that it was you down there.” She looked away. “And they might make me crazy enough to tell them. Shit, Reve, I’m the one that got you into this mess in the first place, and now—well, I might just be getting you into worse trouble.”

“I guess we should have thought about that before we let that woman take our picture.”

“What were we going to do? Smash her camera? Like that wouldn’t attract attention. Anyway, I don’t think pictures matter so much. I have a reason. I’ll show you. Then you have to make sure no one follows you home. Although that may not be a problem, either.”

“What do you mean?”

“It has to do with the disappearing. But now I have to disappear, too.”

Maggie’s studio apartment was tiny, and when I’d been in it before, it was always neat and orderly. Maggie’s taste ran to the spartan—a futon that was always made up the moment she rose, a standing lamp, a glass coffee table with a teapot and never more than one book on it. The bookshelves were only cement blocks and slats of wood, the books arranged alphabetically. But that day, the books were scattered everywhere, pages torn. Shards of the glass coffee table glittered on the floor. The teapot was cracked. The sweats and flannel shirts Maggie favored lay with outstretched arms, the dresser itself on its side, drawers smashed. Flour spattered the floor of the closet-sized kitchen, the refrigerator door swung open, and ketchup dripped like blood. It would have shocked me if I hadn’t been so numbed by what had just happened in town. I could see tears starting down Maggie’s face. I put my arms around her. “Oh, Mags, I’m so sorry …”

She pulled away, wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “Yeah, me, too. But I’ve got to get out of here. I called my cousin in New York. I can stay there for the summer.”

Her suitcase had been kicked into a corner. It had a foot-long gash in its side. “Guess I’m going in style.” She got a big black garbage bag from the kitchen and filled it with clothing, books, soap, and a toothbrush.

She took a long look at the room. “I liked it here. You know, it was the first time I ever lived alone.” Fresh tears welled in her eyes.

“You’ll be back.”

“I don’t know, Reve. I wish …” But she didn’t say what her wish was. I could tell she didn’t think it would come true.

I drove her to the bus station, waited with her for the bus driver to board everyone heading to New York. He stuffed Maggie’s garbage bag far into the storage bay under the bus. I gave Maggie a long hug, felt her bones through her clothes. I held her, breathing her in, denim and Teaberry gum, then tucked five twenties in her jacket pocket. “Call me when you get there. Don’t forget.”

“Thanks, Reve. I’m sorry I got you into this. I’m sorry for everything.” She turned away, then turned back. She pulled a crumpled envelope from her day pack. “I almost forgot. I’m going to leave these with you. They’re photos someone took, like today, and sent to me. No return address. They seem normal, but … you’ll see. I don’t think anyone is going to find out it was you down in the lab, as long as you stay away. I don’t think you should worry. And don’t worry about me now, either. I’ll be fine.” She nodded, then tipped her baseball cap at me. It was the same dark blue cap with a smiley face on it she’d worn the first day I met her.

I waited until the bus rolled away, straining for a last look at Maggie’s face through the window. I knew she wouldn’t be fine. I knew I should have got on that bus with her. I’m still not sure why I didn’t.

I kept the envelope Maggie had given me that day she got on the bus. I still had it, carried it through every move. My only keepsake of that time, of Maggie. It contained photographs of her, at the Big Indian shop on Route 2, in front of the Longview Tower in Greenfield, the places we’d met after I’d infiltrated the tunnels. She was clearly talking to someone. Only the person she was talking to hadn’t been captured by the camera’s eye. I should have been right next to her in each photograph. It was me she’d been talking to. I was in every one of those photos, only I was in them disappeared.

My parents went to the police with me when Maggie failed to call me, when I’d talked to her worried mom, the cousin she was supposed to be staying with who told us she’d never showed up in New York. The police, whose investigation into the harassment of a couple of troublemaking college girls was cursory at best. Because Maggie was seen at the protests. Because I had been there, too. And because Maggie was black, I was sure. We were told that lots of college kids run away, and she was undoubtedly one of them. Her grades were falling, she’d been acting strangely, she was paranoid and distrustful. There was no evidence anyone but Maggie had been in her apartment when it was ransacked. The detective assigned to her case implied that she had done it herself, to attract attention. That was the sum of his report.