Chapter 8 Memory of Darkness
Memory of Darkness
“Anna.”
I jolted awake, shaking a hand off my shoulder. My heart thundered in the darkness, and my hair hung over my face. Hands pushed the curtain of my hair away, and I saw Nick clearly.
“I…What are you doing here?” I registered that we were in the forest. We stood in the creek, water up to my ankles. I couldn’t feel my feet. It wasn’t raining here; the nearly dry creek slithered around us.
“Gibby was going crazy when I got back. When I opened the door, he ran out into the forest. I was barely able to follow him.”
Gibby paced in the water, barking to the east, then to the west, as if he were trying to ward off some awful predator. The fur on his spine stood up.
“What are you doing out here, Anna?” His voice was full of concern and dread.
“I was…dreaming.” I rubbed my eye with the palm of my hand. Oh God. This wasn’t happening again. Not again.
“C’mon. Let’s go back.”
We walked to the house, and Gibby followed, though he occasionally looked over his shoulder and growled at the creek.
I went inside to rinse my muddy feet off in the bathtub while Nick leaned against the bathroom wall, arms crossed.
His gaze was heavy on me. I wanted to reassure him that I was okay, but I couldn’t offer that. Not really.
“You haven’t walked in your sleep since last year.”
When I’d worked the Forest Strangler case. When I’d remembered my father, and my own demons had awoken. But I wasn’t dreaming of him now. Why was this happening again?
I closed my eyes. “I don’t know what happened. I’m working the case on that boy in the pond.” I told Nick what I’d learned so far, what I remembered, what I dreamed…the singing, the thing underwater. The dreams and memories were different, distinguished by that green flash.
I paused when I got to the pearl tucked beneath my pillow. I thought that might change how he saw me. Maybe he wouldn’t understand. He believed in what he could see and touch, and where I came from…may as well have been the far side of the moon.
And I didn’t want him to leave me. I was afraid I’d scare him again, that he would flee. I’d never opened up to someone like this, and I was so very afraid of losing him.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. I’d promised to tell him the truth, and I did. I told him about the pearl.
Nick exhaled and rubbed the back of his neck. “You know I’m here for you no matter what, right?”
I nodded. We’d promised each other that. I wasn’t sure I totally believed that we would, but I believed we would try.
He came to sit beside me on the edge of the tub. “I’m worried about you. I’ve been thinking, since last fall…maybe we should move.”
I blinked at him. “What?”
“Maybe we should move. Get away from here. Go west or something.”
“What brought this on?” I reached out to take his hand. “What’s wrong?”
He slid his other hand over his mouth. “I haven’t wanted to bother you about work stuff, but it’s not getting better. We’ve got a new guy over the ER. Dr. Floyd. It’s a bad situation.”
I frowned. Nick had mentioned problems at work in the past few weeks. I hadn’t pressed to find out more, and guilt bubbled up in my throat. “Is this about him?”
“Partially. He’s fired my best nurse for taking a too-long break to pick her kid up from school. The guy’s a fucking tyrant. And I don’t think he’s going anywhere. He’s tight with the board.”
“But…” My mind latched onto all the impossibilities. “Your licensure…”
“I can apply to the medical boards of other states to transfer it.”
“Is it that bad?”
“It might get that bad.” The circles under his eyes were deepening.
I’d never known Nick to run away from a fight.
That was one of the things I loved most about him: his tenacity.
Things had to be bad for him to consider leaving.
And I hadn’t noticed. I’d been too wrapped up in my own issues to pay attention to his.
“I’ve built a life here.” At least, I’d built a career. A career built on lies about who and what I was, but a successful one. I couldn’t imagine working without Chief or Monica. And I had this house, perfectly private and owned outright.
Nick pulled his hand away and laced his fingers together. His thumbs warred with each other. “Maybe it’s not you or me or your father that’s so wrong…Maybe it’s this place. Maybe Bayern County is just cursed.”
I stared at him.
“I mean, there are all those stories about haunted places that drive people batshit. I’ve seen some weird stuff in the ER that I haven’t been able to explain.
And you have, too. What if…it’s just this place that drove your father crazy?
What if there’s just weird shit here, and we need to stop trying to fix it and get the hell outta Dodge? ”
My mouth opened and closed like a fish’s. I was shocked that Nick was willing to entertain mad theories of the unseen in spite of his worldview. He was changing…for me.
But I couldn’t explain to him then how I felt so rooted in this place. He may as well have suggested moving to Mars.
“Bayern County has too much history, for you and for me,” he said. I wondered if he was thinking of his mother then. I wondered if this was more the reason he wanted to leave than the tyrannical ER doctor was. If it was ghosts, not the living, that were driving him out.
“I understand.” I thought I did.
He leaned against my shoulder. “Just think about it, okay?”
I couldn’t imagine it. I couldn’t imagine being anyplace other than here, with its twisted roads and its singing frogs and its little brown snakes sleeping under my porch. I couldn’t imagine going somewhere I couldn’t identify the trees, where I wouldn’t be able to find a salamander in a creek.
I was entwined with this land. Wasn’t I?
And if I was…what did that mean for our future?
—
I couldn’t imagine leaving this place, not really.
I’d lived away from Bayern County when I was adopted, and when I was gone for college.
But when I’d applied for jobs, Bayern County hooked me back in.
Maybe it was the familiar whisper of the water maples or the cicada song in summer that drew me back.
Maybe it was the way the land curved around itself in hills and valleys, hiding secrets in shady crevices and around winding roads.
Maybe it was the people. Nick had come from here, after all.
I sat on the beach of Sandpiper Run, a man-made beach along the Copperhead River with truckloads of shipped-in sand strewn along the cleared river’s edge.
The beach was pretty crowded, full of shrieks and sunburns.
Teens checked one another out while small children played with sand toys.
Many adults lay on beach towels and fiddled with radios, sinking into the sand.
A quarter mile down the beach, a knot of people sat conspicuously not dressed in swimsuits.
Curious, I held up my phone and zoomed in on them.
About a dozen women in dresses sat on a blanket with a picnic spread.
Their attire looked very similar to the style of dresses I’d come to associate with the Greenwood Kingdom Church.
I scanned the river. Boys in swimsuits ran back and forth from the water to the blanket, while the girls sat next to the picnic basket.
Leah and her friends were among the girls, with the familiar pearl rings on their hands.
I would’ve liked to spy on the church picnic, but I had a job to do.
I focused on the Girl Scout troop I was volunteering with.
I was one of six den mothers watching over the troop today.
The troop leader was on sunscreen duty, chasing after ten-year-old girls with lotion and bug spray.
Monica was the snack fairy, hanging out under a beach umbrella with a cooler full of water and bags full of granola bars and fruit.
Others tutored the girls for their swim badges.
I was unused to kids when I first started volunteering.
Monica’s niece was in the troop, and she’d pulled me in.
I’d taken it on as something of a science experiment.
I had a pretty good idea of how adults thought and how they viewed the world.
I expected the perspective of children to be utterly alien to me, and I was curious to learn.
But when they spoke, I understood. The girls had a sense of wonder about the natural world that had been dimmed out of most adults I knew.
They could watch a praying mantis eat its mate with the same delight as they watched sparrow eggs hatch in a nest. The girls were surprisingly unburdened by the guilt and fear most adults were saddled with, and I’d been that way, too.
“Feral,” Monica would say, lovingly, rolling her eyes and pulling the girls away from trying to convince a reticent blacksnake to emerge from a hollow in a log.
Feral. I understood that. I hoped they’d carry some of that with them into adulthood.
I think I was a pretty good den mother. I liked spending time with the girls, but I could never envision myself with children of my own.
The idea of being wholly responsible for a small human was, frankly, terrifying.
Children were feral and fragile. I could easily destroy one, as my father had nearly destroyed me.
I never had been able to confront him about what he’d done. I wished I could demand answers. I wished he could tell me what he’d been thinking. I wanted to be able to scream at him. But I couldn’t. He was gone. And I was alone with my rage.
From a distance, maybe I could do some good.
Today, I was the lifeguard. I sat in a folding chair at the edge of the beach, scanning.
I counted the girls’ heads over and over.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen.
I’d made each girl wear a dayglow pink hair clip so I could distinguish them from other swimmers.
One, two, three…