When I entered Beth’s mind, I found myself standing on the same beach as before, only this time in the middle of the day. The sun hung overhead and bore down on the sand beside my feet. I felt its warmth even though I knew it wasn’t real. It’s funny how the brain plays tricks on a person. It can make you feel like you’re experiencing the inauthentic as easily as it can make an actual event routine and emotionless.
I saw Beth sitting near the shoreline. Luckily, she was at least wearing her one-piece swimsuit. I walked over to her, and she looked up at me. Her hair and suit were completely dry, but tiny drops of water covered her arms and legs. Yet again, the mind had its own agenda. In this case, it chose what part of reality it wanted to carry over into the unconscious and which part it wanted to discard.
“I come in peace,” I told her.
She motioned to the ground beside her. “Sit down,” she said. “I want to tell you something.”
I did as she requested. “What is it?”
She sighed. “I want to apologize to you.”
“There’s no need.”
“Yes, there is. I acted way out of line. You were just trying to help me, and I made a complete fool of myself.”
“Well, I could’ve definitely handled it better.”
“You handled it fine. I shouldn’t have called you an ‘asshole’ either. You’ve been nothing but kind to me. I think I’m just scared.”
“Of what?”
“The truth.”
“About the attack?”
She nodded. “But not just that. The truth about my engagement. The truth about my condition. The universe has a way of changing everything at once and we don’t get a say in the matter.”
“Well, unfortunately, a lot of things are out of our control. I find that it makes the most sense to focus on the things we can. I spoke to your mom before I came back.” I decided, under the circumstances, to not mention the fact her dad had been admitted to the same hospital. “She’s been reading to you every time she visits.”
She smiled. “She used to read to me when I was kid. She said it was to help calm me down. Honestly, I think it was as much for her as it was for me. Did she say anything about me?”
“She wants you to wake up.”
“If only it were that easy.” She stood up and brushed the imaginary sand off her backside. “Where do we need to go now? Back to the elementary school or the house with the light in the upstairs room?”
I stood up beside her. “I think that, when you’re ready, we need to revisit the night you were attacked.”
“I told you. I can’t remember that night.”
“Maybe there’s something that could help trigger your memory.”
“Like what?”
“The days leading up to it. How far back can you remember?”
She thought for a moment. “I remember going to work. I’m not sure what day, but I know we had a meeting.”
“Take us there.”
She concentrated, and our surroundings quickly transformed into the inside of an art gallery. We were standing among several paintings and a few sculptures, one of which depicted a monkey flying an airplane with the phrase “The Future Is Yours” carved across one of the wings. Beth moved toward one of the paintings. It was of a young woman standing near the ocean and looking out at the water.
“I don’t remember that one,” she said.
“Your unconscious may have created it,” I said. “Let’s try to keep it as close to reality as we can.”
Just then a man with six arms and a third eye in his forehead walked into the room. He danced around the room, occasionally belching and emitting a green dust from his mouth. A gorilla stormed in and tackled the man to the ground. The animal ripped a hole in the man’s chest and confetti shot out of his insides and into the air. The gorilla laughed and clapped its hands.
Then they both disappeared.
I looked at Beth. “Or not?” I said.
“Sorry,” she said. “It’s a lot of pressure.”
“Well, now that you got that out of your system, where was the meeting you mentioned?”
“In our conference room. Follow me.”
She led me through the gallery to a set of offices in a separate hallway. Along the way, I noticed a security guard standing near an unusual and particularly ornate work of art. It looked like life-sized origami but with crystals set into various points of its structure. In its center, there was a glowing blue orb. The security guard nodded to me as we passed him and entered the office suite.
“That’s one of our most expensive pieces,” Beth explained. “It’s by an artist from Paraguay. It’s worth seventy thousand dollars.”
Before I could comment, a woman wearing a gaudy, yellow blouse accosted us. “Oh my God, Beth!” she said. “Where have you been?!” She grabbed Beth by the arm and took her away from me. “They’ve been waiting for you!”
Beth turned to me and shrugged as she was dragged toward a conference room in the middle of two individual offices. I stayed close behind. The woman in the awful blouse opened the door to reveal a group of half a dozen formally dressed people sitting at a long table. They turned to face Beth as she was practically shoved into the room. I slipped in after her and the woman in the shameless attire shut the door behind her. Another woman in a slightly more tasteful, brown pantsuit at the end of the table frowned at Beth.
“We thought you’d never show up,” she said. “Do you have the proposal ready?”
Beth fidgeted. “Almost,” she said. “I mean, I’ve got a couple of tweaks to make, but it should be done by Friday at the latest.”
The woman sighed. “I’m afraid that won’t do, Elizabeth. I called this meeting today solely for this purpose. Now present your proposal or face the consequences.”
Beth twirled her hair. “I guess I’ll just have to face the consequences then. What are they exactly?”
The woman laughed. “It’s quite simple. We’re going to suck every last drop of blood from your nubile, young body.”
As it turned out, the six-armed freak and the confetti hungry primate wouldn’t be Beth’s only diversion from reality. The woman opened her mouth and fangs shot out from her top teeth.
The others also sprouted fangs. An older gentleman in a suit grabbed hold of Beth and threw her on top of the table. They started ripping at her clothes, one of them trying to tear off her shirt while another tugged at her pants.
She looked at me and forced a smile. “A little help?”
I sighed and willed a wooden stake to appear in my hand. I stabbed one of the vampire-art aficionados through his heart. He exploded into a patch of red pixie dust that rained down onto the floor. The rest turned their attention away from Beth and toward me. Two came at me furiously. I stabbed one of them, but the other sank his teeth into my arm. I didn’t even react. I just impaled him too. They both turned into magic sprinkles like the first one.
Beth freed herself from the others and willed a stake of her own. Together, we fought off two of the remaining three and skewered them both. The woman who initially chastised Beth was the last one. She leapt on Beth’s back and screeched like a wild banshee. I hurriedly speared her from behind, and she exploded all over Beth. The ground was now covered with the enigmatic, mystical powder.
“Nubile, young body?” I teased her.
“Leave me alone,” she said, brushing off pixie dust. “I read a lot of vampire books as a teenager.”
“Evidently fairy tales as well. So, what actually happened at the meeting?”
“They gave me an extension, but they were really snarky about it.”
“I see. So, what’d you do afterwards?”
“I went home to my apartment.”
“Take us there.”
She nodded and, seconds later, we were standing in the living room of her apartment.
A few classic paintings decorated the walls. “Starry Night” by Vincent Van Gogh and “Persistence of Time” by Salvador Dali occupied spots perpendicular to a Monet and a framed piece I hadn’t encountered before. I moved closer to it to see that it was a painting of a young woman sitting on a city bus while other shadowy, faceless figures filled seats around her. She seemed sad as she stared out of the window.
“I like this one,” I told Beth. “Is it real?”
“Of course, it’s real,” she said, plopping down on the couch. “I painted it.”
“Really? How long ago did you do this?”
“About six years ago.”
“Any others?”
She shook her head. “Not since that one. I guess I just gave it up.”
“That’s a shame. You’re very talented.” I noticed a tan leather suitcase by the door and motioned to it. “Were you going somewhere?”
She stared at the luggage curiously. “I don’t think so.”
Even though I knew she went to her parents’ house that weekend, I needed her to make her own connections. “So, what did you do when you got home?”
She sighed. “Well, I was pretty frustrated about the meeting, so I…” She saw her cell phone lying on the coffee table. “Called Bobby to vent.”
“Go ahead and call him.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah. Maybe something in your conversation sparked what happened next.”
She laughed. “Alright.” She picked up the phone and dialed a number. She waited.
“He’s not answering.”
“Did he answer that day?”
“I don’t know. Wait. It’s his voicemail. Jesus, I hate that voicemail.” She ended the call and threw the phone onto the coffee table. “Now I remember. I left a message, but he didn’t call me back.”
“So, what’d you do next?”
“Let me think.” She ruminated. “I wanted to get out of the city…so I decided to visit my parents.”
“Thus, the suitcase.”
“That’s strange. Why was it already by the door when I hadn’t remembered going yet?”
“Sometimes the mind leaves clues without us realizing it. We need to be on the lookout for others. They could be helpful.”
Beth’s baggage wasn’t my first encounter with an object popping up inexplicably. An inmate I worked with by the name of Stuart Lansinger provided that experience for me.
Convicted for the first-degree murder of his girlfriend, Stacey, Stuart consistently denied any wrongdoing. Stacey worked at the pastry shop that Stuart owned and cheated on Stuart with Tommy, the young, handsome man that worked the counter.
When Stuart learned of the affair, he became angry and Stacey disappeared two days later. The remains of her mutilated body were found in an apartment complex trash bin by a couple of garbage men. All signs pointed back to Stuart, who had no alibi and, in his state of rage, carelessly left his DNA all over poor Stacey. He had been in prison a year before he agreed to work with me.
My dream visits to Stuart’s subconscious took place either at the pastry shop, at his home, or in transit between the two. For a while, he tried to convince me of his innocence. And then the body parts started showing up. A severed leg suddenly appeared on his living room couch. An unattached arm fell from the sky and hit his windshield as he was driving us along an imaginary road. The pinnacle came, however, when Stacey’s decapitated head appeared on display at the pastry shop between a plate of raspberry kolaches and a basket of blueberry muffins. Unable to stop the pieces of Stacey from appearing, Stuart inevitably broke down, admitted to the murder, and started the long road to rehabilitation.
“So, do we go to my parents’ house now?” asked Beth.
“Let’s not go straight there,” I replied. “I’d like to see if anything significant occurred on your way.”
“How do we do that?”
“We start driving.”
We went downstairs and to her car. I thought about the convertible we rode around in before compared to her compact, economy four-seater. As nice as the previous vehicle was, it was important to relive the events leading her to attack as close to how they really happened as possible. We drove away from the apartment complex and onto the interstate. So far, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
“Is there anything in particular you’re looking for?” she asked.
“No. We won’t really know what it is until we see it.”
“Of course.” She looked down at her gas gauge to see that it was close to empty. “Damnit. I’m almost out of gas. Wait. I can just refill it with my mind.”
“Not if you stopped for gas in reality. We need to follow your path exactly as—”
“Okay. Okay. I don’t see how this is supposed to help. I’ve made this drive dozens of times. I’m sure nothing interesting happened.”
She took the first exit off the interstate and stopped at a gas station. She got out of the car and retrieved a fuel dispenser. She placed the nozzle in the filling inlet and set the hose to flow independently. She peeked in through the open door at me and shrugged. An old pickup truck pulled up to the pump next to ours. A man in his middle to late sixties got out of the truck holding a map. He wore a fuzzy flannel shirt and blue jeans with holes in them.
“Excuse me, young lady,” he addressed Beth. “Do you know how I get to Highway 42?”
“Well, if you keep heading north, you’ll run right into it.” She walked over and pointed to the map. “See. This is I-75. Forty-two runs parallel but intersects…” She pressed her finger on a specific spot. “Here.”
“I’ll be durned.”
“You should get a GPS.”
“Oh, no. I’m not much for technology. So where are you headed?”
“To my folks’ house for the weekend.”
“They live off of Forty-two?”
“No. South off of I-65 just outside of Columbia.”
“Well, they’re lucky to have such a friendly and helpful daughter.” He smiled at her. “You have a safe trip now.”
Beth smiled back at him and walked to the car. She nonchalantly removed the nozzle from the inlet and returned it to the holder. She got in the car, started it, and was about to drive away when she saw my face. I believe my expression was a mixture of total disbelief and immobilizing shock. I tried to hide it, but once my jaw fell, there was no pulling it up again. She didn’t seem to understand why I would have such a reaction.
“What is it?” she asked.
I finally broke out of my paralysis. “Seriously?!” I said. “You just told a man you’ve never met before exactly where you’re going! Did that actually happen?”
“I don’t know. So, what if it did?”
“Really? Didn’t your parents ever teach you about ‘stranger danger’?”
“I grew up in a small town, Max. Everybody knew everybody.” She started driving. “Besides, he was harmless.”
“You don’t know that!”
She got back on the interstate. “Trust me. I think I’d remember if some old man beat me senseless.”
“Not necessarily!”
My thoughts went back to Leonard Feister, who, despite fabricating the whole story, fit the age range for someone who could’ve matched the timeframe between the first murder and Beth’s attack. I didn’t tell her that though. Even though it wasn’t real, I couldn’t risk her turning into the crimson creature again and veering off the road head-on into a semi. Not only would it cause a setback, but I wasn’t particularly keen on even pretending to crash on the highway.
“Look, all I’m saying is it wouldn’t hurt to be more careful,” I told her. “The world’s a dangerous place. Not everyone can be trusted.”
“You see, that’s exactly the kind of attitude I want to avoid. I want to believe that most people are inherently good and not develop some unhealthy paranoia just because there are a few psychos out there.”
“There are definitely more than a few.”
“It doesn’t matter how many. I refuse to be controlled by fear.”
There was no way I would tell her, but she reminded me of Katie again. I remembered taking her to kindergarten and walking her to the front door every day. And then one day she asked if I would drop her off so she could walk herself. For some reason, the idea scared the hell out of me, but I let her. She got out of the car and started toward the school. She turned and looked back at me to see if I was still there and then continued. She tripped and fell on her knees, but I let her get up on her own. She looked back once more and then went inside. It’s a frightening feeling when your child goes out into the world alone.
“There’s no use arguing about this,” I said, realizing I was sounding too parental. “You’re an adult. You’re entitled to make your own decisions.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“So, has anything triggered a memory yet?”
“Including the old man at the gas station?” she jested.
“Definitely.”
“Nope. It’s all still a big blur.”
We continued driving until we were out of the city and entered rural Kentucky. She took the same route Linden and I did going back and forth from the farmhouse to the hospital. I wondered how Edward was doing. I still wasn’t ready to tell Beth about him, especially since we were getting so close to the night of the attack. Everything was going fine until we turned down a two-lane highway between two fields. Beth’s hands trembled. She pulled off on the side of the road and put the car in park just as the rest of her body began to shake violently.
“Beth?” I said. I reached toward her but was met with a static electrical barrier. It felt like the one surrounding the “retirement” hotel except it was invisible. “You have to try to calm yourself down.”
“I can’t,” she said. Her face started to morph into pixilated fuzziness. “I don’t understand what’s—”
Before she could finish, her mouth, nose, and eyes disappeared and merged with a random pattern of tiny dots that swirled around beneath her hair and above her neck. Still vibrating fiercely, she put her fingers to where her lips used to be in attempt to stop whatever was happening to her. Her hands were sucked into the whirling insanity that had become her face. Her arms followed, and she let out a muffled, metallic scream.
Not knowing what to do, I leapt toward her but bounced backward off the transparent force field and slammed against the car door. I watched in horror as the rest of her body inverted itself and got pulled into the inexplicable vortex. Her feet were the last to go inside. Once they were gone, the matrix broke up into a thousand pieces and then vanished completely. Beth had departed.
Not knowing what to do, I got out of the vehicle and began searching for her. I looked underneath the car and in the trunk. I walked out into the field on the side of the road where she had stopped, calling for her along the way. After a few minutes, I felt like I’d been there before.
And then I found her and realized why. Lying in the tall grass, bruised and bleeding, Beth was where they discovered her the morning after the attack. Her eyes slowly opened into tiny slits, and she saw me standing above her.
“Max?” she said weakly.