WHITE WALLS (7 page)

I try to lift my head again and I succeed, but only to rest it in the crook of my elbow. My eyes are on the ground and I notice a pair of brown shoes, an added accessory to the forest debris along the path. My eyes travel upward, taking in Damien's appearance. He doesn't look like the Damien I was seeing when I was in Oakhill. He looks like he did the last time I saw him. He looks the way he did a second before he died.

I suck in breath that I can't release. My lips quiver at the sight of the dried blood on his light blue button up. His skin is pale, his lips gray. And the haunting, lifeless look in his blue eyes is too much to bear. I blanch and look away. “No,” I cry. “No.”

He moves closer, twigs snapping beneath his feet, followed by a rustling of dead leaves. My body goes rigid. Panic flushes through my blood stream. I can feel him right next me and his cold, rancid breath fans across my face. I inhale then exhale quickly, gagging on the way he tastes, like a dug up corpse. “What's the matter, Addy?” His fingers are in my hair and his voice is eerie. Emotionless.

This is not my Damien. This is not my Damien. This is not my Damien.

I repeat the words in my head. This is not my Damien. He's a manifestation of my mind similar to a nightmare. “Stop,”
 
I whisper, thinking that pleading might actually work.

I'm wrong.

The dead vision of the love of
 
life laughs. The laugh isn't pleasant. It's dark, cold, and evil. He pets my head and repeats his previous question, “What's the matter, Addy?” His fingers feel like slime as they slide across my skin. They keep sliding and sliding, and they send a shiver of fear down my spine. I shudder and use all the strength I have to pull away from him. I stare into his dead eyes. “But I thought you loved me?” His clammy grayish skin bunches on his forehead.

Yes. Loved is the key word.

Will always are another two.

There will always be a part of me that loves him. There will always be a part of me that remembers the Damien I met one summer on a dirt road in West Des Moines, Iowa. The Damien who was beautiful, smart, caring, and funny. The Damien who stole my heart, promised to love me forever, and had plans for our future.

A future that was cut short and killed by my evil, conflicted father.

I have since learned that even though a part of me will always love him that doesn't mean I can continue to love him the way I used to. Because he's dead. I have to remind myself of this often.
 
And this too; I can't go on loving a poltergeist for the rest of my life.

I think of my Damien and I know he wouldn't want this for me. He'd want me to remember what we had, but he'd want me to move on. He'd want me to try and do all the things I wanted to do. He'd want me to try and find love again.

Some day.

“I did love you,” I tell him. “I loved you more than...” I stumble on my words. “I loved you more than I loved myself. I never thought I'd be able to get over what happened to you. Or get over the thought of living my life without you.”

He sneers and steps closer to me, backing me up into another tree. The rough grated bark digs into my skin at the top of my back and I wince, but push through the pain. “But you have, haven't you Adelaide?” His hands are placed above me on the tree trunk and he hovers over me. I will myself to look into his eyes and it's like he's shifted into a different Damien.

He's my Damien.

The color is back in his skin. His blue eyes are vibrant and twinkling. “I can make you love me like you used to,” he says with confidence.

“Damien.” Tears water in my eyes and spill down my cheeks. Guilt whips through my stomach and my fingers begin trembling. “You're dead,” I croak.

He flashes me a bright smile then drops one hand from the tree trunk and slides it around my waist. “Ridiculous,” he hisses through his teeth. “Would a dead person be able to do this?” In one swift shift of his hips, he pins me against the tree and places his lips on my neck. I close my eyes, ignoring the silent pleas inside of my head that are telling me that this isn't right. That there is something very, very wrong with this scenario. Damien places his lips against my ear and murmurs, “Tell me Addy, would a dead person be able to do this?” He gently tugs on my lower earlobe with his teeth. “Or this?” His free hand climbs up my stomach beneath the fabric of my hospital gown. “Or even this?” He crushes his mouth against mine and kisses me softly. The kiss twists from soft and sensual, to hungry and passionate in a second.

But then it's like out of nowhere things begin to fall apart again. His bare hand on my skin makes goosebumps rise all over my arms and legs. A nervous, uneasy feeling settles in the pit of my stomach. His lips are icy and the feel of them stalls my beating heart. Something about this interlude makes all of the blood in my body run cold. His hand begins a downward descent, fingers skimming my lower abdomen. Every part of me is conflicted. It's like I have two voices in my head shouting different things.

Damien's fingertips dip below the band of my underwear and he whispers, “Do you like this, Addy? Do you love it when I touch you here?”

No. No. No. “Yes.”

“I know you do.” I realize there is something different about his voice. It's lower, more gravelly.

More deadly.

“Because you're a whore.” My eyes snap open and my lungs clench. “Just like your mother.”

Daddy stands in front of me.
 
He pumps his shot gun. “No!” I scream at the top of my lungs. The way my scream pierces the night air makes all the birds in the trees fly away.

I want to be a bird right now.

I want to fly away.

“No!”

Daddy lifts his shot gun to his face. Aims it at me. “Once a whore, always a whore.” Daddy slips his finger over the trigger. “You'll be better off dead.”

“No!”

Before he can fire the shot gun, I muster up every amount of strength I have and start hobbling down the path. My feet sting from all the open wounds, and a dull ache pumps through all my limbs. I hear Daddy behind me. “Get back here you little bitch!” He fires the shotgun. “It was supposed to be you!”

I break out into a jog, crying out every time my feet hit the ground. Up ahead there's light. And a loud rushing noise. I run in that direction, the whole time telling myself…

Do.

Not.

Stop.

And I don't.

I break through a thick mass of wiry branches and jaggers, barely noticing when the thorns cut into my face. Branches snap as I swat at them with my hands, bursting through the brush in just enough time to see the road beneath my feet.

A road?

I'm on a road.

My head jerks up and my eyes shift to my left as a bright white light blinds me. It blankets my body from head to toe. I shriek, arms raised. Palms face up.

Then the light devours me and I drift off into the quiet, calm sea of darkness.

Chapter Nine

~After~

My eye lids flutter and bright fluorescent lights zoom past me, fading in and out of focus.

Part of me feels like I'm in a car. There's no top. It's a convertible. The wind whips through my hair and blows it into my face. It feels like the driver is speeding down a long stretch of open road.

We pass trees.

Open fields full of long, swaying grass.

We're going so fast that everything appears to be blurring together.

But there’s this other part of me.

The lifeless part of me that feels like I’ve crashed the convertible into a river and am sinking slowly to the bottom of the river bed.

I hope someone saves me.

I hope to God they don’t let me drown.

Muffled voices throb in my ears. I hear a man to my left, talking. I try and turn my head, but I can't. Then I realize they have me in some sort of neck brace. Rolling my eyes to the left, I get a look at the man who is speaking. His gold hair shimmers underneath the bright lights and it looks like he has a halo.

Wait…

Did I die?

Maybe this man is an angel.

Maybe God sent him down here to bring me to heaven.

But if I'm really dead, then where is Mommy?

And Damien?

My angel is running. I roll my eyes to the right and there is a nurse next to me and she's running too. Her white nurses cap bobs up and down on her head as she runs, her red curls bouncing beneath her cap. Then it hits me. I'm on a gurney. I'm not back at Oakhill am I?

Nausea circles the pit of my stomach. Please don't let that be where I am.

No.

I can't be back there.

I can't be.

I know this because I felt like I was running in the forest, dodging trees and my own screwed up hallucinations for days. Maybe even weeks. And I know I can't possibly be back
 
because I've never seen either one of the people on my sides rolling me down the hall at Oakhill and I know every person in that horrible place.

“Get a crash cart ready!” my angel shouts. “Where's Dr. Pizzuto?”

“Here.” There's another deep voice added to the equation and it’s followed by the shuffling of papers. “What's the diagnosis?”

“She was hit by a car and sustained a number of injuries. Fractured arm. Broken ribs. She's bleeding internally. It's a miracle she's alive. She was already severely dehydrated and there's nothing in her stomach. I don't think she's eaten or drank anything in at least a week. There are also cuts on her feet that are infected.”

“You've done a good job assessing the patient, Elijah. You'll make a fine surgeon someday.” He pauses. “How did she get here?”

More papers shuffling. More shouting. “Prep OR two!”

“We need to open her up and cauterize the bleeding site in her stomach. If we don't she'll bleed out.”

“Tell me how she got here?” the second doctor repeats his previous question.

“The couple who hit her dropped her off at the door.”

“And they didn't even bother to stay to see if she'd live?”

“No, sir. One of the nurses who retrieved her suspected that they had been drinking. They claim she just ran out of the forest and stopped in front of their car.”

The tiny bit of strength I had gives out and my eyelids drop down. I try to open them again, but I’m too weak to even do that. I can still hear all these voices echoing around me. I don't know where I am or what's going on. I have the vague notion that I'm in a hospital, but the last few months have been a blur. I've been tranquilized to the point where I've felt like a robot and I can't be sure of anything anymore.

Frantic shouts are everywhere combined with loud footsteps. There must be several people in the room. A woman shouts, “Page the anesthesiologist!”

All of the commotion is messing with my head. It's like I’m here in the moment but really, not. It's almost like I'm standing off to the side somewhere, but I've been blindfolded and I'm only able to hear and not see.

Open your eyes again! Look around!

I keep yelling at myself, but no part of my brain seems to want to obey.

I wish someone would remove the blindfold. I wish someone would fill me in on the certainty of my situation and let me discover where I really am and not allow me to assume it on hunch.

Someone hovers over me, peering down at me. I can't bring myself to open my eyes, but I can feel their body heat and behind my eyelids I can see their body casting a shadow over me. “Does anybody know her name?”

My angel speaks. “No.” His deep voice is somber. “She had no identification on her. She was dressed in a hospital gown when she was dropped her off. Until we can actually speak to her, we have no way of knowing who she really is, so we've listed her as Jane Doe.”

The person still hovers above me and I swear I can feel his eyes as they scan my face. “What the hell were you running from, young lady?”

I can't say anything, but if I could I'd tell him this; if you spent months in the place where I was, watching people die and fade away into nothing…