The Evolution of Mara Dyer

  “My daughter made it for her and she will go nowhere without it now. She is attached.”

  “Indeed.” The white man wrote something else. His eyes shifted back and forth between the paper and me, until finally, the Man in Blue was allowed to take me outside, back into the smoky sunlight.

  “I have business I must do before we leave,” he said to me. “But as long as you do not lose sight of me, you may explore the port.” He extended his arm along the bustling stretch of land near the water.

  I nodded. He waved his hand, sending me off.

  I ran. I had been confined for too long and I delighted in the freedom. I absorbed every scent—mud and brine, spice and musk—and my eyes drank in the colors of the people and the buildings and the ships.

  I ran until I heard a reedy sound repeat itself in a rhythmic, hypnotic melody. It slowed my steps and drew me to the source.

  An old man sat cross-legged before a basket, blowing on a long stick that swelled into a bulb. People ringed the basket, staring as a snake rose out of the depths, swaying back and forth. The people clapped.

  I did not understand their delight. Did the animal live in the basket? Was it trapped there, to live in the dark?

  I crept closer. I was small enough to push through the crowd without being noticed. I drew nearer until anxious whispers rose to a loud murmur, until the old man stopped his music and shouted for me to get back.

  I understood him but did not listen. What did I have to fear from snakes? I marveled at the animal’s soft armor, at the ruby tongue that flicked out to taste my scent. As I extended my arm out to touch it, it arched its long body back—

  “Stop!” the Man in Blue shouted. My skin stung from his slap. He grabbed my sore wrist and led me quickly away. My arm hurt in his grasp, but after a measure of distance, he let me go.

  “Are you mad, child?”

  I did not know how to answer.

  He softened at my confusion. “You like animals?” he asked, his voice warm, now. Gentle.

  I nodded. Yes.

  His cheeks folded into a smile and his grip on my wrist loosened. He fit his fingers in mine and led me down the length of the port. We came to a stop before one of the great ships, but that was not what stole my breath.

  Hundreds of animals were trapped inside a row of gleaming cages. “Keep your hands away from the bars,” he said, as we passed chattering, screaming birds that beat their wings but couldn’t fly. A sullen monkey, large and brown, gripped the bars of its cage with human fingers. Stared at me with human eyes. A giant snake was tucked into a ball, withdrawing from everything, withdrawing from life.

  The sight refused to make sense. I was born watching monkeys skip through treetops. I was lulled to sleep by the sound of a bird’s call. They did not belong here, in this place of smoke.

  We were not the only watchers. A cluster of jeering boys rattled long sticks along the biggest cage. A snarling tiger paced inside, its orange and black stripes rippling behind the bars.

  The tiger threw its powerful body against the cage, at the boys, but they laughed and danced back.

  “Now,” the Man in Blue said, kneeling down. “You must stay here. The animals will entertain you?”

  Entertain. I did not know the word.

  “I will come back shortly. Do not cause trouble,” he said, then left.

  I edged over to a thin boy with small, darting eyes at the fringe of the group.

  “Help me,” I whispered to him.

  His black eyes considered me warily. Maybe he did not understand? I tried another tongue. “Help me,” I said again.

  “Help you what?” he asked.

  I pointed to the animals. “Get them out.”

  49

  WHEN I OPENED MY EYES, I WAS IN MY brother’s bedroom, still holding the notebook as he knocked on his door.

  “This is kind of backward,” he said, clearly wondering why I was there.

  The contours of the dream-memory-blackout shivered in my mind. I tried to hold on to it.

  “Mara?”

  I blinked and it blurred away. I couldn’t remember where I’d gone.

  “Yeah,” I said, standing woozily. I was still holding the notebook—I couldn’t have been out for long. Maybe minutes? Seconds? I was sweaty, and my clothes stuck to my skin.

  “Did you take the book?” I asked my brother, trying to keep my voice even. “I was looking for it.”

  “The genetics one? Yeah.” Daniel went to his closet and opened it. “Sorry, I put it in here; I didn’t want it to get mixed up with my things. You okay?” He peered at me.

  Fake smile. “Yes!”

  Strange look. “You sure?”

  I hid the composition notebook behind me. Why had I put that in his room? “No, yeah, I really am,” I said, standing up. “Can I have the—”

  “Is that the story?” Daniel said, glancing at the notebook behind my back.

  What story? I looked down at it. “Um.”

  “How’s the assignment going? Constructive? Cathartic?” He winked.

  Ah. He thought it was the Horizons story. The assignment that I invented to get his help. I looked at the notebook, then back up at Daniel. I had no idea why I’d put it in his room or when, but I was lucky he hadn’t noticed it, considering what was inside. My insides twisted. I needed to talk to Noah.

  But my brother was waiting for an answer. So I said, “She’s not possessed.”

  Daniel waited. Listened.

  “Someone else is—there’s someone else with a—a power,” I said. “And he never played with a Ouija board.”

  Daniel pondered this for a second. “So the Ouija board was a red herring.” He nodded sagely. “Hmm.”

  “Gotta go,” I said, darting for the door.

  “The book.” Daniel extended his hand and offered it to me; it dragged down my arm. I smiled before fleeing to dump New Theories and my notebooks in my room. Then forced myself to walk calmly to the kitchen, where I grabbed the phone and took it to my room and dialed Noah’s number with trembling fingers. He picked up on the second ring.

  “I was just about to call you—” he started.

  I cut him off. “I found something.”

  Pause. “What?”

  I couldn’t bring myself to open the notebook. “So, at Horizons, they gave me a notebook to use as a journal.”

  “All right . . .”

  “But I didn’t remember them giving one to me.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “But I just found it in Daniel’s room. The cover had my name. And I wrote in it, Noah. It was my handwriting.”

  “What did you write?”

  “‘Help me.’”

  “I’ll be back tomorrow morning. I’ll come straight to you—”

  “No, that’s what I wrote, Noah. ‘Help me.’ Again and again for almost a full page.”

  Silence.

  “Yeah,” I said shakily. “Yeah.”

  “I’ll try to get a flight tonight—” He paused. I could imagine his face; his jaw tight, his expression careful and calm, trying not to show me how worried he was. But I could hear it in his voice. “There are only two more flights out of Providence today, and I won’t make either of them now. But there’s one from Boston to Ft. Lauderdale at midnight. I’ll be on it, Mara.”

  “I’m feeling—really . . .” I couldn’t finish the sentence. I struggled for words but nothing else came.

  Noah didn’t patronize me by telling me not to panic, or saying that everything would be okay. It wasn’t, and he knew it. “I’ll be there soon,” he said. “And John just checked in with no news. Everything else is fine, so just stay with your family and take care of yourself, all right?”

  “Okay.” I closed my eyes. This wasn’t new. I had blacked out before. Lost time. Had weird dreams. This wasn’t new. I could live with this.

  I could live with it if I didn’t think about it. I changed the subject. “You were going to call me?”

  “Yes.”

&nbsp
; “Why?”

  “I just . . . missed you,” he said, a lie in his voice.

  That brought a tiny smile to my lips. “Liar. Just tell me.”

  He sighed. “The address you gave me, for Claire and Jude’s parents? I cross-referenced it with what Charles—the investigator—found and I went there to talk to them. To see if anything seemed . . . off.”

  I’d been holding my breath. “And?”

  “There was a car in the driveway, so I knew someone was home. I knocked, there was no answer, and then I rang the bell. A man opened the door and I asked if he was William Lowe. He said, “Who?” I repeated myself, and he said his name was Asaf Ammar, which, obviously, is not at all the same.”

  “Well, we know the Lowes moved after—after what happened, right?”

  “Right. So I asked if he knew where William and Deborah Lowe lived and he said he’d never heard of them. Which I told him was strange, because as of four months ago, they were living in that house.” Noah swallowed. “He laughed and said that was impossible. Unamused, I asked him why that would be.” Noah paused. “Mara, he said they bought the house from his wife’s mother, Ortal. Eighteen years ago.”

  I backed up onto my bed. My throat was tight. Sealed so I couldn’t speak.

  “It’s a mistake, obviously,” Noah said quickly. “It’s the wrong address.”

  “Hold on,” I said to him as I carried the phone to my closet. Pulled down my boxes from Rhode Island. Pulled out a notebook from my old history class at my old school.

  Rachel had passed me a note one day, telling me to meet her at Claire’s after school. I handed her my notebook as the teacher droned on, and she scrawled an address inside.

  1281 Live Oak Court

  “What was the address you went to?” I asked him.

  “One two eight one Live Oak Court,” Noah said.

  The address wasn’t wrong. Something else was.

  50

  I TOLD NOAH EXACTLY THAT.

  “Your parents went to the funerals, yes?” he asked. “See if your mother knows anything.”

  I tried so, so hard not to lose it.

  “People don’t disappear,” he said.

  “What about Jude?”

  Noah went quiet. Then said, “I don’t know, Mara. I wish—I wish I did. But John is across the street right now. Nothing is going to happen to you or Daniel or Joseph or anyone, all right?” His voice was strong. “I promise.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut. “Anna died,” I said after a too-long silence.

  “I know.”

  “It wasn’t me,” I said.

  “I know. Hang on, Mara.”

  “My parents think I’m getting better,” I went on. “They said I don’t have to go to the retreat to be evaluated for the residential program.”

  “Good,” he said, sounding calm again. “They’re impressed with you. You’re doing well.”

  “Except for the fact that it’s a complete lie. I’m not getting better. I thought maybe I was but I’m not.”

  “You are not insane.” He barely concealed his anger. “All right? Something is happening to you. To us. I—I saw someone today,” he said quietly. “Some asshole grabbed a girl, twisted her wrist. I thought he was going to break it. He nearly did.”

  “Who was she?”

  “Don’t know. Never saw her before in my life,” Noah said. “But she’s all right. I wouldn’t have said anything except—you aren’t alone in this, Mara. You aren’t alone. Remember that.”

  It was hard to breathe. “Okay.”

  “I’ll be back soon. Hang on, Mara.”

  “Okay,” I said, and we hung up.

  I stared at the phone for five, ten seconds, then forced myself to do something else. I filled a cup of water from my bathroom sink. Drank half. Sat on my bed until Joseph burst in.

  “You coming?” he asked breathlessly.

  I took a deep breath and carefully composed myself. “Where?”

  “Dinner.”

  I rubbed my eyes and looked at the clock. “Yeah,” I said, much more brightly than I felt. I stood up and started to leave.

  Joseph stared at my feet. “Um, shoes?”

  “Why?”

  “We’re going out.”

  I just wanted to go to sleep and wake up with Noah back in Miami, back in my arms. But my parents thought I was getting better, and I needed to make them believe it. Otherwise I’d be sent away for problems I didn’t have. I was taking their drugs, drawing their pictures, passing their tests and it would all be for nothing if I was sent away now. I couldn’t bear that. Not when it would separate me from the one person who believed me. The one person who knew the truth.

  I set the cup down. I put on my shoes and a big, fake smile. I laughed on the outside while I screamed on the inside. My body was in the restaurant but my mind was in hell.

  And then we went back home. Daniel and Joseph were talking, my parents were joking, and I felt a little better, until I entered my room. I drank some more water from the cup I filled before we went out to eat and got ready for bed, trying not to be afraid. Fear is just a feeling, and feelings aren’t real.

  But the disc I found under my pillow that night was.

  My fingers curled around it in the dark. I began to hear the sirens of panic wail in my brain but I forced myself to shut them out. I stood slowly and turned on my light.

  The CD was plain and unmarked.

  Noah’s security guard, John, was outside.

  Maybe I made the disc myself? And just didn’t remember? Like writing in the journal?

  That had to be it. I glanced at the clock: It was midnight. Noah would be on the plane. My whole family was home and in their rooms, if not asleep. I couldn’t vaporize the healthy normal teenager facade by waking them and losing it, so I drained the cup of water, gritted my teeth, and put the disc in my computer. I could not panic. Not yet.

  I moved the mouse and hovered over the file icon hoping for a flash of recognition, but it was just a series of numbers—31281. I double clicked, and a DVD application opened up. I pressed play.

  The screen was grainy and black, and then a flash of light illuminated—

  “It’s supposed to be in here, come on,” said a voice from the computer.

  Rachel’s voice. My mouth formed her name but no sound came out.

  “We could be in the wrong section?” Claire’s voice, from behind the video camera. “I don’t know.”

  I leaned in close to the screen, the air vanishing from my lungs as the asylum appeared. The paint on my bedroom walls began to peel, curl, and flake off around me like filthy snow. My bedroom walls seemed to melt and new ones, old ones, sprang up in their place. The ceiling above me cracked and the floor beneath my feet rotted away and I was in the asylum, right next to Rachel and Claire.

  “What if there’s no chalk?” Claire asked. The light from her video camera swung wildly over the hallway. No focus. No direction.

  Rachel smiled at Claire, and held something up in her glove. “I brought.”

  Muffled footsteps kicked aside old insulation. Another light flashed—it was Rachel, taking a picture. My eyes brimmed with tears and I couldn’t look away.

  “Wait—I think it’s this one.” Rachel smiled wide and a thousand needles pierced my chest. “This is so creepy.”

  Oh God oh God oh God.

  “I know.” Claire followed Rachel into the room, her light resting on an old, enormous chalkboard, covered in names and dates written by dozens of different hands.

  “I told you,” Rachel said smugly. “Wait—where’s Mara? And Jude?”

  The image on screen jostled. Claire must have shrugged.

  I tried to scream but no sound came out.

  “I should get her,” Rachel said, moving out of the frame.

  I gagged. I gasped for air, pushed back the hair from my face, covered my mouth with my hands and kept trying to talk, to tell them, to warn them, to save them, but I was mute. Dumb. Silent.

  “I’ll
go—write my name, okay? Take the camera.”

  Rachel winked. “You got it.”

  I fell to my knees.

  Then she took Claire’s video camera—I couldn’t see her anymore—and pointed it at the blackboard. Scanned all of the names. She began to whistle. Her breath was white steam.

  The sound echoed off the cavernous walls and filled my ears and mind. I crouched on the floor and hugged my knees to my chest, unable to breathe or speak or scream. The scrape of the chalk on the filmy, worn blackboard mingled with Rachel’s whistle and my mind processed nothing else until footsteps approached. The shot swung back away from the board to face Claire.

  “The lovebirds are enjoying some private time.”

  “Really?” Rachel asked. The camera tilted away from Claire. More jostling and chaos, then it pointed at Rachel again. “Mara’s okay?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “Bad girl,” Rachel said suggestively.

  A laugh. Claire’s.

  And then a crack, so loud I could feel it.

  “What was—” A panicked whisper. Rachel’s.

  There was a metallic groan. Then the ringing, successive slam of thousands of pounds of iron fitting into frames.

  “Oh my—” Panting. Screaming.

  Interference and dust clouded my vision and the hiss and rush of static filled my ears. White letters appeared in the darkness that arranged themselves into the words FILE CORRUPTED. Then silence. The image on the screen went black. The scene in my mind went dark.

  But just when I thought the footage was over, I heard the soft lilt of laughter. Unmistakably mine.

  I didn’t know how much time passed. All I knew was that when I screamed again, there was sound but it was muffled. I tried to force my eyes to see, but I was trapped in darkness; there was no floor beneath my feet, no ceiling above my head.

  Because I was not in the asylum. I was not in my room at home.

  I was bound and gagged and in the trunk of someone’s car.

  51

  I DON’T KNOW HOW I GOT THERE.

  One second I was in my bedroom, watching footage from Claire’s camera, hearing myself laugh, struggling to stay grounded and not let the flashback wash me away. And the next, I was covered in shadow as rough fabric scraped against my cheek, as my lungs were stifled by heat.