The truth will set us all free.
Chapter 7
I’m lost again.
Whitley is so large that I find I’m perpetually lost. Somehow, I find myself outside of Eleanor’s study today, and I hear her voice coming from within.
Reaching out to grip the doorknobs, I pause because she doesn’t seem happy. With the door already cracked, I can hear the words loud and clear.
“She’s not well, Eleanor,” Sabine says in her creaky voice. “She needs rest and solitude, I fear.”
“Then she’ll get it here at Whitley,” Eleanor says impatiently. “I don’t see the reason for your concern.”
“She’s lost everything,” Sabine offers. “And you don’t offer her anything but shelter. Perhaps if you would just tell her…”
“Tell her what?” Eleanor snaps. “Remind her that…”
“Haven’t you heard it’s impolite to eavesdrop?”
Dare steps around me, studying me curiously. He’s handsome, he’s enigmatic, he’s in my personal space. He also doesn’t want me to hear what they’re saying.
I take a breath. “What is everyone hiding from me?” I ask him bluntly.
He shakes his head. “It’s nothing.”
It’s everything. I feel it.
“I need to know,” I insist. He stares at me.
“You’re here to recover, Calla. To rest, to come back to yourself…”
“But you said that I’m not safe,” I remind him. “Shouldn’t I know from what?”
He’s uncomfortable now, and his dark eyes seem to shimmer. “So much has happened to this family. You don’t need to think about it right now. You’re just going to have to trust me.”
I wish I could.
“This is madness,” I whisper.
“We’re all a bit mad, I suppose,” he quotes Lewis Carroll for what, I assume, is a lack of a better answer. My fingernails dig into my palm because I’m so frustrated.
“I love you, you know,” he offers, and his face is suddenly gentle. “God, I hate this, Calla.”
He walks away, like standing near me is painful.
I do the only thing I can do. I retreat to my room, where I’m alone and no one is watching. The room is lonely and quiet, and I can’t take the silence.
“Finn, you’d hate this place.”
Of course there’s no answer, but it makes me feel better to talk to him, to pretend my other half is still living, still making me whole.
I picture his face and he laughs.
“You’re such a goof, Cal,” he tells me, his pale blue eyes twinkling. “You were always the better half. You don’t need me.”
“That’s dumb,” I reply instantly. “I’ll always need you. I’m probably going to never stop talking to you, ok?”
He rolls his eyes and stands in the moonlight. “Fine. But there’s going to come a time when I stop answering. Because eventually, you have to let me go, Cal. For your own good.”
“Don’t tell me what my own good is,” I scowl, but he laughs, because that’s what Finn does. He laughs and he makes every situation better.
“Stay with me,” I urge him. “I feel so alone.”
He nods and he sits on the bed with me, and he watches me while I settle down to sleep. He hums, a song without words, a song that’s familiar, but I can’t place the name.
“Sleep,” he tells me. “I’m right here.”
So I do. I sleep while the memory of my dead brother watches over me, because that’s the only way I feel safe.
But even then, my dreams plague me.
“One for one for one.”
The whispers seem to come from the corners, from the shadows, from the halls. “One for one, Calla. One for me, one for me.”
It cackles and hisses and I run around the corners, into the dark.
As I escape, I realize something and skid to a halt.
I left Finn behind.
They have him now.
No.
No.
I have to go back. I turn, but I can’t move. My feet are enmeshed with the ground.
I hear him screaming and I force myself to move, but I’m suddenly stopped by Dare.
He grabs my arms and restrains me, his arms like steel bands, not letting me go.
“You can’t help him now,” he tells me somberly, his black eyes glistening. “I’m sorry.”
My screams wake me up and Finn is still sitting on the side of my bed.
“Are you ok?” My brother’s voice is anxious, and the moonlight shines onto his face. “You’re just having a dream. Wake up, it’s ok.”
I nod and grab his hand and he grins.
“Was it the bogeyman?”
I try to smile back, but the feeling of terror and loss is still too great.
I nod instead. “Yeah. The bogeyman.”
It’s a private joke, because Finn and I have always said that there’s no bogeyman in the entire world that we’re scared of since we sleep in a funeral home.
But my dream…. It preyed on the thing that does scare me, the thing that has always scared me the most.
Losing my brother.
But that already happened, and I survived, and I’m still here.
But the fear still owns me, because I can’t let him go.
“I’m fine,” I tell him confidently. Because it was just a dream.
Just a dream. The worst already happened.
He nods and starts to get up, but I tug at his hand. “Stay.”
Because maybe it was a dream, but it was so real.
There is understanding in my brother’s eyes and he curls up next to me without a word. There are no words needed, just his soothing presence. Real or not, he calms me and I’m not ready to give that up.
It’s not long before Finn’s breathing is soft and even and I know I’ve imagined him into sleep.
I watch him, the way his chest pulls deep breaths, the way his mouth is slack. The way he’s my other half and I have no idea what I’ll do without him, even though I know I have to try.
My chest is still aching from the dream, my heart still skipping beats. I’ve never had such a real nightmare before. It rattled me to my core.
It made me never want to sleep again, for fear of having the same dream again.
So I climb from my bed and roam the halls of Whitley.
Something about this house disturbs me. It’s as though there is darkness in its heart, as though it has a soul, and it wants to absorb mine. I realize just how crazy my thoughts are, and I fight to suppress them.
Treading lightly, I quietly pad over the marble until I get to the massive glass doors of the library.
I only hesitate a moment before I open them and head outside.
I don’t know why.
I just know that I need some air. I need to be away from the pressing confines of the house. Something in here stifles me.
It’s not until I’m halfway down the path to the stables that I realize I’m barefoot. I’d walked from the house without any shoes.
What kind of lunatic am I?
I’m just turning to go back to the house when two headlights appear down the driveway. They shine into me, illuminating me through my nightgown, exposing my every line and curve. I wrap my arms around my waist, attempting to conceal myself in vain. But the car, a dark Porsche, doesn’t stop. It rolls past me toward the garage, and as it passes, Dare’s dark eyes stare at me through the driver’s window.
It must be 3 am and he’s only just now getting home?
Where in the world has he been?
But with a sinking heart, I know that it’s not my business, because I told him I wanted space. Because he’s an adult and he can come and go as he pleases and this is what I wanted.
It starts to rain so I pick up the pace, but it’s a wasted effort. By the time I make it to the gardens, it’s pouring, and I have to stop in a gazebo to wait it out. The wet winds blow across the moors, howling in a hauntingly chilling moan, and chills run up and down
my spine.
I’d thought living in a funeral home was creepy. This estate makes that seem like child’s play.
Shivering, I huddle under the roof, the wind cutting through my wet nightgown.
What was I thinking coming out here?
“You know, most people wear shoes. And clothes.”
Dare lunges beneath the roof for shelter, soaked from head to toe. Unlike me, he’s fully clothed, but exactly like me, he’s completely wet.
“It’s not doing you a lot of good,” I point out. “You’re soaked through.”
He shrugs as he leans against a column, barely out of the downpour, shaking the water from his hair. He’s long and slim, and something about him reminds me of a deadly cobra, coiled to strike.
“It’s ok. I won’t melt, trust me.”
He examines me, his eyes as black as night. “What are you doing out here in the middle of the night, anyway?”
I think I see amusement in his eyes, amusement laced with concern, but I look away before I can be sure. This situation unsettles me, puts me on edge...wakes up every nerve ending.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
I don’t see the need to tell him that I was sleeping, but that a bad dream starring him woke me. No one needs to know that.
“You should go see Sabine tomorrow,” he tells me, his words helpful but his tone bored. “She’s a master at herbs. She’s got a tea that will put you down for the count.”
Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me. Sabine, with her tiny twisted body and her dark mysterious eyes… it seems right that she would dabble in herbs.
“Ok. Maybe I will.”
Dare studies me, his eyes sweeping me from head to toe, watching my teeth chatter for a couple of minutes.
“If I had a jacket, I’d offer it to you.”
His words are quiet in the night, and offering a jacket is such a gentlemanly thing to do.
“Don’t look so surprised,” he chuckles. “I may not be as nice as you, but I have manners.” He straightens his body out, opening his arms. “Come here, Calla.”
To his warmth.
To his strength.
I want to.
I want to.
But I shake my head, determined.
Dare’s eyes cloud, and his arms drop back to his sides.
He pushes away from the column and approaches me, his long body lithe and slender. I gulp hard as he steps toward me, closer, then closer.
For a brief moment, I feel like prey and he’s the hunter, until reality hits me and I know that he would never want to hunt me. I’m night and he’s day. He’s whole and I’m broken.
“You’re going to catch your death out here,” he tells me, his voice gentle now, and this whole ‘I need space’ thing is killing me, killing me, killing me.
I wonder if it’s killing him, too?
“Come on, follow me,” he tells me, pushing ahead. For some reason, I do as he asks and I allow him to lead me through the gardens, up the paths, into the house and to a huge laundry room. He opens a cabinet and pulls out a large soft towel. As he turns to me, he pulls it around my shoulders.
“You’re not used to the rain here,” he tells me as he rubs my arms briskly. “Don’t go out at night again. You don’t know what’s out there.”
I don’t bother to remind him that Oregon rain is just as bad, that both places are wet and gray and dreary, and that I’m used to it. I don’t ask him what’s out there, because I don’t want to know. Not yet.
“I… um.” I fall silent. “Why are you being so nice?” I blurt. “I’m not being very nice to you.”
“You’re doing what you have to do,” he tells me, a strange look in his dark eyes. “Things aren’t what they seem here, Calla. Don’t forget that and you’ll be fine.”
And with that, he walks out, leaving me alone in the room with a wet towel in my hand.
I make my way back to my room, through the quiet halls, and as I pass the windows, it feels like something growls.
Something waits,
Something sleeps in the dark.
I don’t know what it is.
But it knows me.
Of that, I am certain.
Chapter 8
I’m so lonely.
I know I’m here to mend, to fix what’s broken, to remember what I forgot.
But being alone is lonely.
I write my dad another letter, and give it to Sabine.
I’m fine, I assured him in print. I lied but maybe he won’t know that.
If Whitley holds any answers, I certainly haven’t found them yet.
Picking up my medallion, I find myself whispering.
“St. Michael, protect me. Protect me from what I don’t know. Guide me to what I need to find.”
I drop the necklace back into my shirt, and the metal is cold on my skin. The coolness reminds me of Finn, of how he isn’t alive, and I’m devastated all over again.
Every time I remember, it rips the band-aid off.
Being without him is excruciating, and it hits me at the strangest times.
There are hours until dinner, so I creep through the halls, intent on distracting myself, on discovering something. Anything.
I find an old nursery, with two bassinets and a creepy rocking horse. Its wooden eye watches me lifelessly as I idly stare around the room.
The walls are pale yellow and old, the floor is gleaming hardwood, the ceilings are high. There are chandeliers even in here, in a place where children were supposed to flourish.
But the toys are scarce and the formality is abundant.
The silence is unnerving.
A nursery without babies is haunting.
“This was your mother’s nursery,” Sabine says from behind me. “And your uncle’s.”
“Were they close in age?” I ask because I know nothing of my own family.
She nods. “But they weren’t close. Dickie was troubled and your mother was not. Are you homesick, child?”
Of course I am.
And of course I’m not.
Home was frightening.
But I still miss it.
The nanny smiles, her teeth dark.
“Come with me, then,” she urges, and I do.
We climb into an old pick-up truck and we drive for what seems like hours.
But eventually, eventually, we pull to a stop and we’re by the coast, and the sun sparkles on the water.
I peer into it, and I’m unprepared for the relief that flushes through me at the sight of the sand and the water.
“It looks a bit like the pictures your mother sent me,” Sabine says quietly. “From your home in America. These are the Seven Sisters Cliffs, and I thought you might like it here.” She hands me a basket, containing a blanket, my book, and some water.
“I have shopping to do at a few local farms. I’ll be back here in a couple of hours to retrieve you.”
I nod, touched by her thoughtfulness, and guilty that I hadn’t expected it from her. Her truck leaves me alone, and I’m so small next to the ocean.
I walk up and down the beach, my feet sinking in the damp sand.
The foam slides back and forth and I skirt it, heading away from it to the jagged white edges of the cliffs.
I’m at home here in this rugged place.
I’m at home on the edge, where any minute I can fall.
I climb and climb, and when I’m on top, I stare down at the world.
I’m big and it’s small, and the ocean is my buffer.
I spread my blanket, and open my book, and I lose myself in it.
I lose myself in a world that isn’t mine and for a while, that’s for the best.
I suck in my breath at the end, when Jane finally saves Mr. Rochester.
She saves him from loneliness and despair.
Is that what Dare needs saving from?
I drop the book in the basket and lift my face to the sun.
It bakes me, warms me, soothes me.
It’s when my eyes
are closed that I see them.
The visions.
The memories.
Finn shouts.
Glass breaks.
Tires skid.
The water pounds the shore.
Metal bends and shrieks.
“Are you ok?” Dare asks, and his voice is afraid.
He wasn’t supposed to be there.
I can’t get away from that fact.
But I can’t, for the life of me, figure it out.
I can’t come to the truth.
A wall stands in my mind, blocking me,
Protecting me.
But I can’t be protected forever.
I have to tell you something.
It’s new.
A new memory.
From before the accident.
I startle, and focus.
Calla, I have to tell you something. You won’t understand. Please just listen before you decide I’m a monster.
My breath… it won’t come, and I try and try to inhale, and I try and try to remember more.
But that’s all.
Dare’s face is gone.
He’s afraid he’s a monster, and maybe he is.
I don’t know.
But being here, in the wind and the air, perhaps even at Whitley, is freeing me to remember. Everyone was right, the answers are here.
I feel it.
I just don’t like it.
The water crashes below me and it’s like a lullaby or a song, until it turns into sort of a snarl…then my name.
Calla.
It’s a whisper carried on the wind.
I open my eyes, and someone is staring at me.
The boy in the hood.
He’s on the edge of the water, his feet buried in the foam, and I can’t see his eyes.
I hesitate, then lift my hand.
He’s in my mind.
But why?
Is he a memory?
He cocks his head and I’m not afraid, and then he walks away into the sunlight.
Chapter 9
“Calla!”
It’s Dare shouting, and when I look, he’s standing below on the beach.
His pants are rolled up and there is sun in his hair.
I smile before I can stop myself,
Because even though I shouldn’t,
I want him.
I want him now.