Stranger With My Face

  “It’s true,” I agreed. “I don’t have friends anymore. I don’t really know how that happened. It was my own doing, wasn’t it? I mean, I let them all go.”

  “Because she was absorbing you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, confused. “Lia didn’t actually do anything.”

  “Except to me,” Jeff said. “She tried to kill me, remember? And what about Helen?”

  “You think Lia caused Helen’s accident?” The moment I voiced the question, I knew the answer. The surprising thing was that I hadn’t realized it much sooner. “Of course she caused it. She lured Helen into the park that night. She got her there the same way she got you out onto those rocks.”

  “By being you,” Jeff said.

  “Yes, by being me.” Suddenly I was shaking. I was colder than I had been in the underground cavern. The full horror of the situation swept over me, accentuated by my own utter helplessness.

  “What is she going to do next?” I asked. “How can I predict or stop it? I don’t know where she comes from. There’s no way to find her. I don’t know what she’s after or what her plans are. She comes and goes when she chooses, and I don’t even get to see her unless she wants me to.”

  “After this long a time, you’ve got to have found out something,” Jeff said. “Is there any pattern? When does she visit you?”

  “Whenever she wants to. In the afternoons or in the evenings. When I’m in bed at night.”

  “What about mornings?”

  Had she come in the mornings? I tried to remember. She had never been there in my bedroom when I awakened. Nor had there been instances at school when someone accused me of having been somewhere that I wasn’t. The people who had reported such instances—Gordon, Natalie, Mary Beth, my brother and sister—had all seen the person they thought was Laurie Stratton during the later hours of the day.

  “Jeff, I’ve thought of something,” I said slowly. “I don’t know if this means anything, but Lia didn’t know about Mrs. DeWitt.”

  “You mean Edna DeWitt from the village?”

  “She cleans for us Thursdays. Once I mentioned her name to Lia, and she didn’t seem to know a thing about her.”

  “Mrs. DeWitt works mornings?”

  “Half-days. She leaves by two. She likes to be home when her children get out of school. A couple of times she’s come on other days also, like when it was time to do a big project like spring cleaning, but those were mornings too.”

  “So we do know something,” Jeff said with satisfaction. “We know that whatever Lia’s physical life may consist of, there’s something in it that keeps her busy in the mornings.”

  “Maybe she goes to school,” I suggested.

  “That’s definitely possible. She’s exactly your age, so she should be a senior. What else can you come up with? Did she talk a lot about one specific area of the country?”

  “Our mother moved to Gallup, New Mexico, when she left the reservation,” I said. “That’s where the agency was that I was adopted from. Lia never mentioned them moving again, so when our mother died and Lia was placed in a foster home, we can probably assume it was in that general area.”

  “So you’ve got a place to start from.” Jeff was beginning to sound excited.

  “To start from? What do you mean?”

  “If Lia could find you here on Brighton Island, what’s to keep you from finding her out in New Mexico? You’re one up on her. At least you’ve got a pretty good idea of what part of the country she’s in. When she went searching for you she was coming out of nowhere. When your parents adopted you, they were living in New York City.”

  “I can’t do it,” I said.

  “Why not? You did it once, didn’t you? Now you’ve had the experience, a second time ought to be easy!”

  “If I did manage to leave my body, I wouldn’t know how to direct myself.”

  “You could learn, couldn’t you? Lia did.”

  “What if she doesn’t let me?”

  “How can she stop you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “That’s the thing—I don’t know anything. Helen didn’t want me to try it. The whole idea scared her. She seemed to think that it would be dangerous.”

  “But you’ve done it,” Jeff said. “And nothing awful happened. In fact, neither of us would be alive now if you hadn’t gotten help. The dangerous thing would be for you not to try to get control of this—this—gift, or whatever you want to call it. If you don’t, you’re at Lia’s mercy, and if what she pulled last week is any indication, there’s not going to be much mercy to spare.”

  “I don’t understand why she hates me,” I told him helplessly. “‘We are the two sides of a coin—’”

  “The dark and the light side.”

  “Coins aren’t made that way,” I said.

  “But people are.”

  We sat quiet, both thinking about what that meant.

  Then Jeff gave a short, wry laugh. “Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. I got them both, right? A face split down the center. Which side is Lia after, the good or the bad one?”

  “I hate it when you talk like that,” I said. “And I hate it when you think like that. It doesn’t matter. I told you that before. It doesn’t matter, Jeff.”

  “You said that because you thought we were dying.”

  “And you said you loved me just because you thought we were dying?” I threw the challenge back at him.

  “Yeah, I guess I did. If I even said it. I don’t remember it.”

  “You said it.”

  “I was in shock, right? I was delirious. I might have said all kinds of crazy stuff, but it didn’t mean anything.”

  “You said you loved me,” I said.

  “You didn’t hear me right. A guy with a face like mine doesn’t go around saying that. What kind of girl would want to hear it? She’d have to be an idiot.”

  “There are a few idiots floating around.”

  “Like who, for instance?”

  “Oh, stop it, Jeff Rankin.” Suddenly I was so angry and frustrated, I wanted to hit him. “What you said, you said. What you meant, you meant. Do whatever you want to about it. I wish I’d never come over here.”

  I was halfway to the door when he called out, “Laurie?”

  “What?” I said without turning.

  “Come back a minute.”

  I had stopped in mid-flight, and now I turned slowly to face him. I stared at that face, that comic-book face, that was just as he had described it. It was sad, and it was awful, and it was brave, and it was beautiful, and I loved it.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I was lying,” Jeff said quietly. “I do remember. I remember everything.”

  “And?”

  He grimaced. “Don’t torture me, Laurie. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said. It was that simple.

  I went over and put my arms around him, and he pulled me down onto his lap on top of that wretched cast, and it was like sitting on a log. And we both started laughing. And he kissed me.

  It was the end of one chapter of our relationship and the beginning of another.

  On New Year’s Eve, Darlene Briggs threw a party. To my surprise, I found myself invited. It seemed that Tommy had bragged enough about his involvement in the rescue mission that everybody on Brighton Island was dying to pump me for details.

  “Can I bring a date?” I asked when Darlene called to invite me.

  “I don’t think you’ll need to, Laurie,” she said. “You may not have heard, but Gordon and Crystal broke up over Christmas. He’s going to be coming alone, and he made a big point of asking me if you were invited.”

  “And Crystal?” I couldn’t help asking.

  “She’s not on the guest list. It’s just too awkward. She’s never really been one of the crowd, you know. She got included in things because she was dating Gordon.”

  “I understand,” I said. I did understand, all too well. “I don’t think I can make it. I have a date already.
But thank you for inviting me.”

  Jeff and I saw the New Year in at Cliff House playing Monopoly with my parents and the kids. It was one of the nicest New Year’s Eves I’ve ever had.

  New Year’s Day was quiet and pleasant without much happening. Family life went on as usual, with Dad at the computer and Mom up in her studio preparing a canvas for her next painting. Mrs. Coleson had been so delighted with her Christmas present that she wanted a second oil framed identically so they could balance each other on either side of the fireplace. Meg went off to play at a friend’s house, and Neal and I dismantled the Christmas tree and packed away the ornaments. This was a chore I usually found depressing, but this year it was almost a relief to officially place Christmas behind us and close the book on a season that had been more traumatic than joyful.

  I can’t pinpoint the exact time it happened, but somewhere around the middle of the afternoon I began to have the sensation that someone was watching. The feeling was not unfamiliar, but I had been without it for a week and had begun to dare to hope it was gone forever. There had been no sign of Lia since the day before Christmas. Things had changed since then. I was no longer trusting and no longer isolated. Jeff and I were a team. There were two of us, united. That knowledge should have been enough to cause Lia to draw back and reconsider the wisdom of continuing her invasion.

  While Neal was carting the boxes of ornaments down to the storage shed, I called Jeff.

  “She’s here,” I said without elaboration.

  “Have you seen her?” he asked.

  “No, but I sense her. It’s like an aura.” I struggled to find the words to explain it. “The first day she came, back in September, I felt her presence, but I didn’t know what I was feeling. I told Mom, ‘Someone’s been in my room,’ even though nothing had been disturbed. It’s the same thing now, this feeling. It’s like a soft, continued sound your ear doesn’t register. It fills your head, but you can’t hear any noise.”

  “If it wasn’t for this cast, I’d come over,” Jeff said. “There’s no way I can walk that far on crutches. Dad’s not here, and I can’t keep asking your dad to drive me places.”

  “He can’t,” I said. “He’s writing. And it’s not like you could do anything, anyway.”

  “You know she’s there. That’s the best defense you’ve got,” Jeff said reassuringly. “You have a handle on things. You know now that Lia’s an enemy. She can’t lure you or trick you, because you’re on to her. And there’s nothing she can do physically. She’s not there physically.”

  “She’s somewhere physically,” I said. “That’s the part that scares me. She could be thousands of miles from here or right around the corner. What if she is close by? What if one day she appears to me, and I think it’s just her shadow self, and she’s real?”

  “That would be bad news,” Jeff agreed. “And that’s why you’ve got to find her.”

  “Helen told me—”

  “You can’t hide behind Helen, Laurie. Things were different then. Helen gave you the best advice she could, but there wasn’t any way for her to know things would get this far.”

  “I can’t try while she’s here,” I said desperately.

  “No, of course you can’t. But in the morning—you’re safe in the mornings.”

  “How do we know that?”

  “We can’t know anything for sure,” Jeff said. “We can just do our best with what we have to go on. Try in the morning, Laurie. Promise?”

  “All right, I promise.”

  Was it my imagination, or was the room filled suddenly with silent laughter?

  Somehow, I got through the remainder of the afternoon and the evening that followed. We ate an early dinner, and the kids fell into bed soon afterward, exhausted from having stayed up the night before to see the New Year in, and groaning with thoughts of school the following day. Mom went to bed with a book, and Dad went back to his computer. Quiet settled over Cliff House, and with that quiet came the nightmare feeling that soon it would be broken by something I didn’t want to hear.

  But this didn’t happen. Lia didn’t appear to me that night. I lay awake for hours, rereading the books that Helen had bought for me, trying to absorb as much information as possible. Both books referred to something they called the “astral cord,” which serves as a connection between the free-floating astral self and the body. This cord, as they described it, works like a magnet, losing strength as the astral self pulls farther and farther away and regaining it when the soul-self moves closer. “In the immediate proximity of the body,” one book said, “the tug of the cord becomes so intense that the two selves are rejoined with what one subject described as ‘a sharp click’ and another as ‘a jolt.’ The astral cord remains intact no matter how far it is stretched and can be severed only by death.”

  All this made sense to me when I reviewed my own experience. It had been when I had returned to the cavern to look in on Jeff that I had been jerked forcibly back into my body. On recalling the situation, I doubted that I would have been able to resist if I had wanted to.

  So at least I know that I can never be lost, I thought. No matter how far I go, I’ll be able to follow the cord back. It was a comforting realization. The worst of my fantasies had been getting so far from Cliff House that I wouldn’t know how to return.

  I read on and on until the words on the page began to become blurred and meaningless, and then, half fearfully, half defiantly, I reached over and snapped off the bedside light.

  The room remained still and empty. The darkness was gentle.

  I closed my eyes and, with a sigh of relief, slid into sleep.

  I awoke very early. The light of the sun was barely starting to filter up from the underside of the earth and send streaks into the sky to reflect in the water. I lay in bed, gazing out through the glass doors and watching the clouds turn from gray to lavender to pink to rose in readiness for an explosion into morning.

  It’s time, I thought. I gave Jeff my promise.

  I had promised I would try, but I hadn’t promised results. I had tried so often before and gotten nowhere that I had little confidence that this attempt would be different. Still, I did know now what I was trying to do, at least. I knew how it felt to release my hold on the earth. I didn’t have to imagine, I could remember, and when I closed my eyes in concentration I was returning to a realm in which I had already been.

  I was there on the bed; then, I was over it. The thing happened so quickly it was like flinging myself off the end of a diving board. I took one great leap, and was free.

  Beneath me lay the motionless figure of a dark-haired girl who seemed to be sleeping. I gazed down at her with little interest. That is my body, I told myself, but it could have been anyone for all the emotion it aroused. Then I was higher, over Cliff House, looking down on the rooftop, and higher still so that the whole of Brighton Island lay spread below me. I was over water, and then over clouds; I saw the edge of the sun curve over the eastern horizon, and I was traveling faster than it was. If I kept rising, I would be above the sun and beyond it, moving faster and farther until I became a part of the great, incredible forever that lay past everything.

  But that was not my destination.

  I was going to Helen.

  I had wondered how I would find her. I need not have worried. It simply—happened. Just like the flight from my body had happened. I was drawn instinctively to where I wanted to be.

  I was in a hospital corridor. Not too quiet a corridor. One set of nurses was moving in, and another set leaving. People were checking charts and hunting up raincoats.

  “Terrible weather out,” one incoming woman commented in a soft, slow drawl, and another, preparing to leave, said, “What can we expect in January?”

  I was among them, but no one could see me. My father had told me once about a comic book he had read when he was a boy that had been one of the springboards that had led him into fantasy and science fiction.

  “It was called Invisible Scarlet O’Nei
l,” he said. “There was this girl named Scarlet who could press a nerve in her wrist and make herself invisible. Then she’d go running around, eavesdropping and playing practical jokes and catching criminals. I was fascinated. My own wrist was one huge bruise from all the digging around I did trying to locate that nerve.”

  Now I was “Invisible Scarlet.” How incredible that these people did not see me when I was so definitely there!

  I moved down the corridor, glancing through open doors into the rooms of strangers. Most were sleeping, but there were some who were awake. One man was staring out his window, and an elderly woman had her TV on. I was so occupied with looking for a splash of carrot-colored hair against a pillow that I didn’t see the two orderlies until they were on top of me. I jumped aside, but not quickly enough to avoid the bed they were wheeling. The edge of it swung into my hip and passed through it. I felt nothing, and the men continued to walk at the same rate of speed, taking the bed on down the length of the hall and through swinging doors at its end.

  A moment later a nurse came hurrying toward me. This time I made no attempt to move out of her path, and we passed through each other as though one of us were made of air.

  A door to my left beckoned. I couldn’t have said why, but I knew without a doubt that the room beyond was Helen’s.

  I’d found her at last! I moved through the doorway to stand beside her bed.

  Helen was lying on her back with her arms at her sides. Her eyes were closed, and she was thinner than I remembered. Her breathing was slow and steady, and her face was pale beneath its freckles. I don’t know what it was I had expected—bandages—a respirator—but I was surprised by the normalcy of her appearance. She might have been sleeping, instead of in a coma that had lasted for weeks.

  I’m sorry, I thought. Helen, I am so sorry! I’m the one who brought Lia into your life. You tried to warn me. It isn’t fair that you have to suffer.