Chapter Forty
FORTY
MAVEN
Shaky and sweating, I rise from bed and grab my cell phone from the dresser. I have six missed calls from Ronan but no other calls or messages.
It should still be Sunday, but the date on the screen indicates it’s Tuesday.
I’ve lost two entire days.
Disoriented, I look around the room. Nothing seems amiss. But a sixth sense tells me to look inside the dresser drawers.
When I do, I find all my clothes there, neatly folded.
When I look in the closet, the suitcase and duffel bag I so haphazardly packed are zipped closed and standing in the corner. My purse rests on the nightstand, next to an empty teacup.
It’s just after four o’clock. The sky outside is leaden gray, heavy with thunderclouds.
With shaking hands, I dial the museum’s main line. I tell the receptionist who answers I need to speak with Luce Adams, that it’s a matter of extreme urgency. I’m afraid I won’t be connected, that some dark force will stop me from getting through, but to my surprise, I’m transferred immediately.
“This is Luce.”
I almost weep in relief when I hear her voice.
“Luce! Oh thank God, you’re there. You picked up. I can’t believe it. I’m so happy I got through.”
There’s a brief, confused pause. “I’m sorry, who is this?”
I know my laugh sounds crazed. Clutching the phone, I try to keep my voice calm so she doesn’t hang up and call the police on me.
“It’s May. I’ve been trying to reach you.
Did you get my messages? I’m still in Solstice.
Ezra came to see me, and he said I was fired, but I knew that couldn’t be right.
I knew it was a mistake, so I emailed you, but I didn’t hear back.
I’m not sure about the cell service out here, everything’s a little wonky! ”
My crazy laugh makes another appearance. I realize I’m babbling but can’t stop myself.
“You wouldn’t believe everything that’s been going on. I can’t wait to catch you up to speed, but first please tell me there’s been a terrible misunderstanding, and I haven’t been fired.”
The silence on the other end of the line is cavernous. Then Luce says, “You must have the wrong number.”
A feeling of cold dread crackles over my skin, like ice forming on still water.
Nervously licking my lips, I say, “Luce, it’s me. May.”
“I don’t know a May.”
My voice rises. “May Blackthorn. The head of the Entomology Department. The lepidoptera curator. I’ve worked for you for five years!”
Her voice is tight with irritation. “The head of our Entomology Department is Oliver Underwood. I don’t know anyone named May Blackthorn. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to work.”
She disconnects without giving me a chance to argue with her that she’s wrong, she knows me well, she hired me right out of college as an assistant and promoted me four times until finally I was in charge of the entire department, the youngest person ever to hold the title.
Or … was I?
Was I ever really there at all?
Feeling sick, I call the museum again, but this time I ask to be put through to Ezra’s office.
The receptionist informs me the museum doesn’t have an Ezra Scott on staff.
Bile rising in my throat, I close my eyes and swallow it back down. “When did he leave?”
“I don’t have a record of anyone with that name ever being employed here, ma’am. Perhaps you meant to call the Smithsonian?”
The room starts to spin. I drop the phone. It clatters to the floor. When it rings again, I snatch it up, hoping against hope that it’s Luce calling to say she was pulling a prank on me, but it’s Ronan’s number I see on the screen.
I stare at it with my heart palpitating and my sense of reality slowly unraveling, then answer hesitantly. “Hello?”
Bypassing a greeting, he demands, “Tell me you’re all right.”
I close my eyes to stop the lazy tilting whirl of the room. “You remember me?”
“What? What the hell does that mean?”
“Never mind. It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing,” he growls impatiently. “I can tell when you’re upset. You sound strange, and you haven’t been answering my calls. You were supposed to come over to see me, but you never showed. Tell me what’s happened.”
“You wouldn’t believe it.”
“You might be surprised.”
I laugh, but it’s the deranged laugh again, the one where I sound like I should be institutionalized.
“I don’t know that anything could surprise me anymore, Ronan. Really and truly, I think I’ve lost all credulity. In fact, if you’d like to tell me you’re some kind of ancient fire demon who speaks Latin, has an ass fetish, and fucks like a—well, like a demon, I’m all ears!”
There’s a strange beat of silence, then he says tightly, “You need to get out of that house.”
“As a matter of fact, I did get out of the house. I took a nice little walk in the woods earlier, and before that, I went to church. Church of all things! Me! I can’t believe I didn’t go up in a poof of black smoke when the shadow of the cross fell on me!”
I don’t know if it’s my zany cackle or the unhinged tone of my voice, but he can tell I’m completely losing it.
“I’m coming over there to get you and Bea.”
“Wait—let me ask you something. Did you lend me twenty grand?”
“Yes. Why are you asking?”
“Just checking to see how much of my brain has been eaten by rot.”
“Maven—”
“The empty graves!” I shout, panic spilling from every pore, gurgling up my throat to choke me. “Did you hear about the empty graves at Pinecrest, or did I make that up, too?”
“I’m coming over,” he repeats through gritted teeth.
I put a shaking hand to my forehead and close my eyes, whispering, “Is my grandmother even dead? Or maybe I’m dead?
Or in a psychiatric facility? Or maybe I was never born in the first place.
Maybe I’ve been asleep for a thousand years, a slumbering giant buried deep in the bowels of the Earth, waiting for the right alignment of the stars to wake me! ”
Ronan roars, “What the fuck are you talking about?”
I drop my hand from my forehead and open my eyes.
I can feel my pulse in every part of my body, the rushing thrum of blood through my veins.
I feel dizzy and disoriented, dropped out of my own time into another dimension to land on a hostile planet teeming with all kinds of nasty creatures that want nothing more than to dine on my flesh and suck every bit of marrow from my brittle bones.
I don’t know what’s happening to me, but I suspect that whatever’s on the other side of this moment, it will change me permanently. If I even survive it.
I need to tell him the truth.
“I’m sorry for everything, Ronan. But mostly I’m sorry I never told you I loved you. Because I always have. I still do. And I always will. If I never see you again, just know that I’ve loved you my whole life. There’s never been anyone else for me but you.”
Strangled with emotion, his voice breaks over my name. “Maven. I love you, too, baby. So much. So fucking much.”
Hearing him say those words pierces my heart. Then the plaintive wail of a child crying somewhere deep in the house refocuses my attention.
Bea.
“I’m coming to get you, baby. I’m coming for both of you right now—”
Ronan is still talking when I disconnect the call.
I’m about to run from the room when I glimpse the shadow.
Moving sinuously from behind the curtains at the windows, it slithers across the bedroom wall like an ink stain, spreading rapidly until it’s unnaturally long, shifting and spilling onto the ceiling.
Its dark surface rippling like wind over water, the shadow stretches to encompass the entire room, undulating menacingly around the furniture, coiling on the ceiling as if readying to strike.
In the center of the coils, an angular outline of a head is distinct against the pale plaster.
So is the fork in the tongue that flickers out.
I squeeze my eyes shut and chant, “It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real, Maven. You’re imagining it.”
When I open my eyes again after several long moments, the shadow has vanished.
Outside, the howling wind grows louder. The floorboards in the hallway make an unsettling groan, as if an invisible foot is treading on them. Somewhere downstairs, a door slams shut.
My phone rings again. It’s Ronan. I don’t answer, setting the cell atop the dresser and turning to leave the room.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror. Instead of a swarm of flies this time, I see only my normal reflection. Pale face, green eyes, long hair unbound. All the black dye has worn off somehow, leaving my hair its natural vivid red hue.
On the side of my throat are two small puncture wounds, as red as drops of fresh blood.
Around my neck hangs the rosary Father O’Brian pressed into my hand.
With trembling fingers, I touch the tender bite marks first. Then I touch the crucifix dangling at the end of the rosary beads. Both seem real, but the line between reality and fantasy has blurred for me drastically, leaving me in a purgatory where I have no proof of what really exists.
I have no proof I exist.
I might be a figment of my own twisted imagination.
The cry of a child that I hear echo through the house sounds real enough, however, and it jolts me into action.
Running out into the hall, I take the stairs two at a time, calling for Bea.
I half expect to see her in the great room, her nose buried in a book, but it’s empty, the unlit fireplace looking like a gaping black maw of some terrible ravenous creature.
The room is uncommonly cold, full of shifting shadows that slink up the walls in a serpentine fashion.
The sickly sweet scent of something rotting hangs in the air, so potent, it makes me gag.
My panic rising again, I run into the kitchen. It’s deserted as well. On the center of the scarred wooden table sits a bowl overflowing with fresh pomegranates.
According to mythology, they’re the only fruit that grows in hell.