JAX’S HAND WAS WARM. IN SOME OTHER CONTEXT—SAY, ONE IN WHICH he was not gripping Sibyl’s upper arm quite so securely, or one in which her wrists were not bound with twine from a bale of hay, so tightly she could feel it cutting into her flesh—she might have found his touch reassuring.
The moment he’d come up behind her and tied the blindfold over her eyes had happened so quickly and fluidly that Sibyl, for a flash, thought the lights might have gone out in the barn. When he spoke, his voice was so changed from the inflected, theatrical swing he’d been using that Sibyl thought she was being abducted by someone else altogether. She had cried out to him for help: Jax!
The new voice, his real voice, was deep and measured, a voice of authority. A voice for issuing orders.
“You will do everything I say. Follow every instruction. You will not speak except to answer my questions in the briefest, most direct fashion. If not—” Sibyl felt the tip of something at the back of her neck. Its sharpness was so pure she hardly felt the pressure, only a faint pinch, followed by an itch.
She recognized the sensation. As a child, she’d been to the doctor exactly once, when a fever had gripped her for almost a week, her nights trippy with weird, fragmented dreams, the days long and melted. Her throat hurt. Her head itched. Finally, her mother drove her to the walk-in clinic an hour away in Shastaville, complaining under her breath, as if she were being supremely inconvenienced. Sibyl was eight at the time, or so her mother told her, rehearsing the facts in the crowded waiting room. “May fifth, nineteen seventy-four. You got that? YOU GOT THAT?” The doctor was kind but harried, a man who was probably in his fifties but who seemed ancient to Sibyl. He took her temperature, listened to her heartbeat. Parted her hair with his fingers and peered at her scalp. Murmured “Jesus.” From the way he shifted his gaze from Sibyl to Amity Crabb, wife of the Supreme Reverend Crabb of Harmony Church, his grimace shifting to accusation, Sibyl understood the doctor was displeased with her mother. She had felt a flare of defensiveness, an urge to protect her mother, when the doctor asked to have a word, alone, with her mother in the hall.
When they returned, her mother’s eyes were cast to the floor and stayed there as the doctor explained gently to Sibyl that she had strep throat and lice, and that it was very, very important that she take the medicine he was prescribing her. Also, she must allow her mother to comb lye through her hair for five days straight to get rid of the bugs. “Are we clear, Deborah?” the doctor said to Sibyl, but he kept his eyes trained on Amity. “Are we clear, Mrs. Crabb?”
Her mother said yes in the tight, clipped way she answered Sibyl’s father when he told her to bring him a drink.
“And I want to take a blood sample before you leave.”
The doctor pricked her finger, and she felt the stab, followed by the itch of freed blood.
Now she felt that same sensation at the back of her neck as the man who was not Jax said, in his new voice, “Feel that?”
A whimper flew from her lips. “Yes.”
“That’s a knife. A very sharp one. As long as you follow my instructions exactly, we won’t need to use it.”
Her eyes burned, and she felt tears leak into the fabric of her blindfold.
“Are we clear, Deborah?”
Time collapsed. She was back in the doctor’s office, the doctor blanching with concern and disapproval, saying, “Are we clear, Deborah?”
Sibyl said yes. She was clear.
“Very good,” said the man who was not Jax. “Come with me then.” He tugged Sibyl forward, and she took a step. Then another. Her wrists were jammed together. Her eyes useless.
They were near the barn doors. She smelled the night air—jasmine and sage and the brine of the sea far below the canyon.
She wanted to run, fling herself forward, reach that fresh air.
“Step lively now,” said the man.
Sibyl stepped. They had walked past the doors. They were still in the barn. A door creaked. The ground crisped under her feet. She was walking on straw. The door creaked again, and she knew where she was. Her chest clenched.
He was putting her in the goat stall; the gamy, intestinal scent of the animals was unmistakable. She gagged, then fought to control herself, forcing long breaths of the fetid air into her lungs, willing herself to adjust.
When she was sure she would not vomit, she said softly, “Who are you?”
The man chuckled. “Such a subjective question, isn’t it? Who is anyone, really?”
Sibyl’s toe caught something on the ground, and she lost her footing. The man caught her by the elbow. “Easy now.”
He placed a palm on the top of her head and pushed gently. “Sit and stay.”
She dropped to her knees, the straw damp and sharp. Beneath her right shin, she felt a soft mound of mud flatten and cling to her skin. She winced at the mushy feel of it, realizing with dismay that it was probably not mud, but goat shit.
She felt the man’s elbow press into the center of her back, holding her in position on the stall floor. His breath became louder, and she heard a grunt, then a ripping sound.
Tape. He was tearing tape with his teeth.
He exhaled, and she heard the soft thud of something dropped into the straw. Then his hands were on her hands, maneuvering her wrists so they pressed together, and she felt the tape winding around them.
“No,” she said, pointlessly, knowing it was already too late. “Please, don’t.”
He finished taping her wrists, then he slid his hand beneath her right arm and threaded something strap-like under it. When she felt the sensation of leather closing around the soft flesh of her triceps, she knew exactly what he was doing: tying her up with the shank Twyla used to lead the goats when they were too stubborn to move on their own. Sibyl felt a stab of guilt over not bothering to use the shank earlier today, for merely yelling and kicking at the blameless animals instead of guiding them.
Where were the goats? she wondered suddenly.
The strap was very tight now; Sibyl’s arm was flush against the metal grate of the stall door, nearly immovable.
“Stay quiet,” the man told her. “Don’t try to go anywhere, or you’ll just hurt yourself. I’ll be back soon.”
“Please, wait,” Sibyl pleaded, terrified of being left alone this way, her vision blocked, her bound arm throbbing from lack of blood flow. “Don’t leave me like this. Tell me who you are.”
The man gave a short, bitter laugh. “You know, that’s a great question. I’m not entirely sure who I am. Funny, it’s a feeling I’ve had ever since I can remember.”
“Then tell me who you think you are,” Sibyl begged, desperate to stall him.
The man went quiet. She heard him breathing.
“I have an idea,” he said finally. “Why don’t you tell me who I am? Isn’t that your thing? Telling people what they don’t know? Using your visions and whatnot?”
“I—I.” Her voice quavered. “I can’t just do that, on command. It’s a process. You would have to—”
“Cut the shit,” the man snapped. “I don’t have time for this. I’m already late. But let me leave you with one little clue. Something for you to chew on ’til I get back. Fodder for your process, if you will.”
Her panic swelled. Was she going to die here, wrists bound, kneeling in goat shit? “When are you coming back?” She choked back a sob.
“Quit being such a crybaby, sis.”
“What?”
“You heard me. I’m asking you to get it together, sister. Just sit here like a bump on a log ’til I get back. Is that too much to ask? And when I’m back, well, then we can finally get to know each other.”
Before she could form an answer, he taped her mouth shut.
“Make any noise, sis, or Debbie, or as you prefer, Sibyl the Seer, and I promise, you’ll feel that knife again. Except next time I won’t go so light. Okay? Don’t answer.”
Sibyl did not answer.
She sensed him standing up and heard his steps as he moved across the stall, the straw crunching under his feet. The latch to the outer stall door slid open with a soft metal clang, and he was gone.