Stranger With My Face

  “Just what?” I asked more gently.

  “Just that I never expected them to take her this way. I never even got to say good-bye.”

  “I know.” I paused, trying to think what to say next. “Do you want to come upstairs for a while? We’re finished eating. Dad’s in one of his storytelling moods tonight.”

  “No thanks.” But he made no move to leave.

  There was something more wrong here than just his discovery of Helen’s transfer. I couldn’t pinpoint what it was, but I could feel the vibrations of some concentrated emotion.

  “Let’s walk outside,” I suggested.

  “It’s cold.”

  “It’s always cold. We don’t have to stay out long.”

  I didn’t wait for him to answer, but went to the closet and got out my jacket and put it on. When I turned back he was still standing in the same position. The scars on the right side of his face were mottled and ugly under the glare of the overhead light. I remembered how he’d looked the first time I’d seen him gunning his motorcycle down Beach Road. One of the summertime girls had been seated behind him, squealing in excitement, with her arms clasped tightly around his waist. He’d glanced back at her, laughing, shouting something I couldn’t hear over the roar of the engine.

  I wondered how long it had been since the last time he had laughed.

  “You’d better tell your parents where you’re going,” he said gruffly. “They’ll want to know to come looking if you don’t come back.”

  “Why wouldn’t I come back?” I asked.

  “Your friend Helen didn’t.” He opened the door as though offering me a dare.

  “You’re being ridiculous.” I stepped out past him into the night.

  Jeff followed me out and pulled the door shut. We stood without speaking while our eyes became adjusted to the dark. Gradually the world began to grow lighter, and I realized there was a moon, a thin sliver of one, slicing through the edge of a cloud. The air was clean and cold, and the night was still.

  “There wasn’t any moon for Helen,” Jeff said, echoing my thoughts. “It must have been pitch black in that park. Why the hell would she have gone there?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Nobody does.”

  “Her mother’s figured it out, or thinks she has.”

  He began to walk, and I fell into step beside him. The path along the side of Cliff House was so familiar that my feet knew it by heart. It was Jeff who stumbled, and I took his arm to steady him.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “She called me earlier tonight. That’s how I found out about Helen. She said they were getting her out of here, away to a ‘safe place’ where I couldn’t get to her.”

  “Mrs. Tuttle said that?!” I exclaimed. “But it’s not true at all! They’re taking Helen to Duke because there are specialists there who can help her. Mr. Tuttle told me that himself.”

  “Mrs. Tuttle thinks I did it,” Jeff continued. “She thinks I was with Helen in the park.”

  “She can’t believe that,” I said, outraged. “The cabdriver must have a record of the trips he made that night. He knows whether he carried one passenger or two. If the facts he gave didn’t fit with your story, the police would have followed up on it.”

  “She said she warned Helen about me. She said the moment she saw me she knew I was going to be bad news. ‘But I couldn’t stop her,’ she said. ‘Helen was sorry for you. She was trying to be kind, and then you attacked her.’”

  “Oh, Jeff!” I tightened my hold on his arm, aching for him, wishing that somehow I could absorb the pain. “She didn’t mean that. She just needs to blame someone. Helen didn’t go out with you for any reason except that she liked you.”

  “I shouldn’t have let her go home alone.”

  “It made sense. You had no way of knowing she wouldn’t go straight into the house.”

  We reached the end of the path. Cliff House stood solidly behind us, a great, dark hulk, and before us lay the rocks and beyond them the sea. The moon kept playing at the cloud’s edge, sending sparkles of silver to reflect in the pools in the rock hollows, and the sea made a sighing sound as it moved rhythmically in and out of the mermaids’ caves.

  “You don’t go out there anymore, do you?” Jeff asked suddenly.

  “Out on those rocks?” I was disconcerted by the abrupt change of subject. “I never have. I told you that.”

  “Don’t give me that, Laurie. I saw you there myself.”

  “No, you didn’t,” I insisted. “Really.”

  “I know what I saw,” Jeff said. “I know what you look like by this time. You were either there in person or using astral projection.”

  “What?” I was so startled that I dropped his arm and stepped back to stare at him. The moonlight came from behind him, and I couldn’t make out his expression. “Why did you say that? What do you know about projection?”

  “Nothing personally.” He seemed surprised by my reaction. “Helen used to talk about it sometimes, that’s all.”

  “What did she say?” I demanded. “What did she tell you? Why would Helen have talked about something like that with you?”

  “Hey, calm down, will you?” Jeff said. “I didn’t mean anything. I was just talking to be talking. It’s an interest of Helen’s, not mine. I don’t even believe in it.”

  “Something had to make you bring it up!”

  “I was reading about it today, and the word stuck in my mind. Helen picked up some books about it the night she had her accident. I ran out of things to read and started leafing through one of them.”

  “She bought them the night of the accident?”

  “That’s what made us late,” Jeff said. “We were headed for the movie theater when we passed this secondhand store with books in the window. Helen wanted to go in and look. She said she had a friend who was into that sort of thing. She bought a couple, and by the time we got to the theater the movie was half over, so we stayed for the next showing. I was carrying the books, and with all the confusion of finding a cab and everything, I forgot to hand them to her.” He paused. Then realization dawned. “Oh, I get it now. You must be the ‘friend.’ Do you want me to bring them over?”

  “When you’re through with them. I can wait if you’re in the middle of reading them.” My attempt at nonchalance came too late. After my previous reaction it sounded absurd. At least, though, we were past the subject of Helen’s injury and Mrs. Tuttle’s phone call.

  “I was just skimming through it,” Jeff said. “I hadn’t planned on reading all of it. Maybe now I will, though.” There was a moment’s silence. Then he said slowly, “You did go onto those rocks one evening, didn’t you? It was about a month ago around dusk.”

  “No,” I told him. “I didn’t.”

  “I wasn’t serious when I asked you that about projecting. It was just meant as a joke.”

  “I know that.”

  “I did see you. Or I thought I did.”

  “I’m sure you did think that,” I said. “Look, Jeff, there’s no point in discussing this. You don’t believe in astral projection, and I don’t blame you. I couldn’t accept it either, until recently.” A question occurred to me. “What were you doing here the night you thought you saw me? There’s no reason for anyone to come out this way unless he’s coming to Cliff House.”

  “I walk here sometimes because you live here,” Jeff said.

  It wasn’t an answer I expected.

  We didn’t talk as we walked back toward Cliff House, but halfway there his hand found mine and closed around it. It was a warm, strong hand, and I felt no desire to draw my own away.

  When Lia came that night there was something different about her, something stronger and more intense. She wasn’t the same person who had lingered at my bedside on previous nights to give me reassurance through the turmoil of my dreams.

  “It’s time,” she said.

  “Now? Tonight?” Of course, I planned to learn to project. Somehow, though, I had tak
en for granted the fact that I would be the one to say when.

  The decision was suddenly not mine to make.

  “It’s simple,” Lia assured me. “You have the ability. You are from a people who have a heritage of spiritual power. Our mother could travel anywhere she willed herself. She learned in early childhood. I taught myself to project when I was seven. If we who share your blood can travel in this manner, you should be able to.”

  “I’ll try.” There had been a time when I had almost done it. The night I had slept at Helen’s and had focused home upon Cliff House. Had that been projection, or a form of dreaming?

  “Before you start,” Lia told me, “you must concentrate on your destination.”

  This I knew at once. I would go to Helen.

  “Cast your soul into space,” Lia directed. “Lift away from your body. It’s a sudden thing. A leap. You must disconnect from the physical and spring to the astral plane.”

  She made it sound so easy! I knotted the muscles of my mind, and, with all my mental strength, I shoved upward.

  I will myself—to go—to Helen!

  For an instant I thought I had accomplished it. Then, with a rush of disappointment, I became aware of the weight of the blankets upon my body and realized that I was in exactly the same position that I’d been in before.

  “It didn’t work,” I said to Lia.

  “Were you thinking in words?”

  “Well, yes. I guess I was. How else do you think?”

  “Erase them,” Lia told me. “Words nail you to the earth. You must lift, not with your mind but with your soul.”

  I tried to do this. I pictured Helen, flat and far in a hospital bed. Her head was bandaged.

  Helen—I’m with you—Helen!

  With that, I was into words again, and back at Cliff House. Helen was far away.

  Helen! The very name was a word.

  “Erase them!”

  “I can’t think without words,” I protested.

  “You can,” Lia said. “What if you had been born deaf and had never heard a human voice? You would still be able to think, wouldn’t you? It is a different kind of thought. Pure. Free of restraints. Just lift—and go!”

  “I’m trying.”

  Despite myself, my mind insisted on articulating. I am in the hospital. I am entering the room. I am with my friend.

  “Erase the words!”

  “I can’t!”

  But I continued to try until my mind became numb with exhaustion and I couldn’t think anymore.

  I tried again the following night, and the night after that. Each time the results were the same. I began to feel as battered as though I had been hurling myself against a concrete wall for hours on end. As my frustration mounted, I became irritated, not only with myself, but with Lia too.

  “Why can’t I do it? You made it sound so easy!”

  “Before you can move, you must detach from the physical body.”

  “But how?”

  “Let go! Release your hold on the earth! Let go of the words that are tying you down!”

  There was something in her voice that was like anger. Why? I wondered. What was it to Lia if I did or didn’t learn to do this? She could leave her own body at will. She was free to travel where she wished. Why did it matter so much to her that I be able to?

  Lying on my bed with my eyes squeezed shut, I could feel the vibrations of her anger reaching to engulf me. They rolled over me like icy waves, and I shivered, unable to comprehend what lay behind them.

  “Try again, Laurie,” Lia urged. “Try again.”

  “I am trying!”

  I no longer knew if it was myself or my sister whom I was trying to please. With all my strength I concentrated upon willing myself across the miles. I could see a building like a hospital, and in my mind, I moved toward it. I entered through the front door and was in the lobby. Somewhere close by in one of the rooms off a corridor on a floor above, my friend was lying in a stark, white bed.

  Helen! The name flashed into my mind, and I was in my bed again.

  “I’m back,” I whispered.

  “Back!” Lia was contemptuous. “You never left. To think about a place is not the same as putting yourself there. If you really wanted to—”

  “I do want to!” For some reason I was beginning to feel frightened by Lia’s insistence. I liked her better before when she was gentle and supportive.

  “If you want to, then do it!” The command seemed to fill the room.

  “I’m tired.”

  “Tired or not, you have to keep trying. It is the only way!”

  And so I tried, and failed again. This time I knew I would fail, for I had no remaining energy. Lia must have finally realized this, for she withdrew. She didn’t tell me she was leaving, but I felt her presence evaporate, and a sense of peace came over me. My tension vanished, and I slept.

  The next day was the twenty-fourth of December. Our tree had been up and decorated for over a week, but Neal and Megan were still finding new things to hang on it. Meg spent the morning fashioning a long looping chain of red and gold construction paper to twine around the overloaded limbs, and Neal sat at the kitchen table, gilding the largest member of his starfish collection to go on top of the tree. Dad turned off his computer and honored the occasion by making cookies, something he does every now and then because he has a sweet tooth. Mom, who had completed the oil for Natalie’s parents the day before, devoted her morning to helping Mr. Coleson select a frame.

  I wrapped my gifts for the family (Meg had wrapped hers the instant we got home from our shopping expedition) and was placing them under the tree with the others when Mr. Coleson came down the stairs from Mom’s studio and paused at the doorway to the living room.

  “How do you like it?” he asked, displaying his purchase as proudly as though he had painted it himself. “Your mother thought the natural wood would be most effective, and after trying it with some of the more ornate frames, I came to think she was right.”

  “It’s lovely,” I agreed appreciatively.

  The frame they had chosen was a weathered gray with the deeply grained look of driftwood. The sea in the painting was also of varied tones of gray dotted with whitecaps, and in the foreground a child in a yellow T-shirt, looking from the back very much like Neal, leaned against a porch railing that might have been constructed from the same wood as the frame.

  “I think so too.” Mr. Coleson beamed down at the picture possessively. Then, in a friendly manner, he asked, “How have you been, Laurie? We haven’t been seeing much of you lately. You’re coming to Natalie’s caroling party tonight, aren’t you?”

  “Oh—no—I don’t think I’ll be able to make it,” I said awkwardly. “In our family we usually stay home on Christmas Eve.”

  “That’s refreshing,” Mr. Coleson said. “Sometimes I wish Nat weren’t quite so social. It’s party, party, party all through the holidays. That’s how young people are, I guess, but sometimes it seems to be almost too much of a good thing.”

  “I like parties,” volunteered Megan, who was sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace, gluing her chain together. “I’d go to every single one.”

  “That’s how Natalie feels,” Mr. Coleson said good-​naturedly. “Well, Merry Christmas, girls!”

  “Merry Christmas,” Meg and I responded with different degrees of enthusiasm.

  After Mr. Coleson had continued on down the stairs to take the painting to his car, Meg turned to me in bewilderment.

  “Why aren’t you going? I bet Dad and Mom would let you. I heard them just the other day talking about how you never go anywhere anymore.”

  “I’m not going,” I said, “for the simple reason that I wasn’t invited.”

  “Then why didn’t you say that?”

  “Mr. Coleson was trying to be friendly,” I told her. “I didn’t want to embarrass him.”

  “Did you not get asked because you and Gordon broke up?”

  “Probably,” I said. “They
were nice to me because I started going out with him, and now I guess it’s over with all of them. Don’t worry about it, Meg. It doesn’t bother me. I’ve got other things on my mind these days.”

  “It would bother me,” Megan said. “Nat Coleson is just plain stinky. If I were you I’d call her and tell her that if she’s going to act like that—”

  Her sage advice was interrupted by the ring of the phone.

  Meg dropped her paper chain next to the glue bottle and scrambled hastily to her feet.

  “I bet that’s her right now, calling to invite you! Maybe she just couldn’t reach you before.”

  “I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you,” I said wryly.

  The phone stopped ringing abruptly as Dad picked up the extension in the kitchen. A moment later his voice rang up the stairwell. “Laurie? It’s for you!”

  “See? I told you!” Meg exclaimed with satisfaction.

  “I still don’t believe it.” I crossed to the wall phone and picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

  “Laurie?” The male voice took me by surprise. For one instant I thought it was Gordon. Perhaps Crystal had fallen through on him, and with a party tonight and no date, he was going to try to pick up the pieces of our old relationship.

  Then the voice said, “I’ve got those books for you,” and I realized it was Jeff.

  “Did you read them?” I asked him.

  “Yeah. They’re weird. At first the whole thing sounded crazy, and then I hit this part about tests they’ve been running at places like the Stanford Research Center. There was this guy named Swann. Have you heard about him?”

  “No,” I said.

  “The scientists at the center did a lot of experiments using him for a subject. For one of them they’d have him lie down, and there would be a platform suspended over him up near the ceiling. There were a lot of different objects on it, and a side railing sticking up so they couldn’t be seen from below. Swann would project himself up there. His body would stay on the bed, but the ‘second self ’—that’s what the author called it—would float up to the platform and look over the rail. Then it would return to the body, and Swann would sit up and draw pictures of the stuff up there.”