The Lakeside Care Center was about as far from the lake as you could get and still stay in Williamsville. It pressed up against a hill in back and was fenced all around in front, presumably to keep the dazed and confused from wandering off on their own. And when we walked in the front doors, well, remind me to shoot myself before I get old. Or maybe crash the bike into a cliff at high speed.
An old woman sat in a wheelchair right inside the door, neatly combed and dressed in a stylish linen pantsuit. A low growl came out of her throat and she rocked, back and forth, back and forth, that constant low sound assaulting my brain at a level that made me want to burst into screaming.
Somebody else was doing precisely that, deeper into the building, with a shrill, "Help me, help me, help me."
Will went cold and remote and I realized that he hated this place more than I did. Of course. His father was here. He probably felt the same about it as I did about the graveyard.
He led me down one hall and into another and stopped outside one of the rooms.
One look at his face, set and white, and I entered on my own, leaving him in the hallway. Mr. Alderson sat in a recliner, a brightly colored afghan covering his lap. His head was tilted back, his mouth open, and he was snoring. There was a smear of tomato sauce on his chin and his white hair stuck up in wisps on top of his mostly bald head. Air freshener halfway masked a smell I didn't want to think about.
He'd been an outside man—suntanned and boisterous, always telling the world what to be and think. Now he looked small and frail. As usual, my perceptions are all wrong. I was standing there feeling sorry for him when his eyelids came up and his eyes—bluer than Will's—stared into mine.
"Well, well, well. Jesse Davison. She said you'd come."
My mouth drifted open.
"Shut your mouth, girl, you'll let the bugs fly in." Feeble, wheezing laughter emanated from him.
I couldn't help edging away toward the door. In that moment, possession didn't sound like an outlandish idea at all, and I seriously wondered if some demon was animating his almost-corpse for nefarious purposes.
"Dad—"
Will must have been listening on the other side of the door. He came in and reached for the old man's hand, but his father leaned back and spat at him. "Stay away from me. Don't know who you are but you've got no business with me."
Heart heavy, I watched Will wipe the saliva from his cheek with the back of his hand, and realized it wasn't the first time. Old man Alderson's eyes glittered with a mixture of malice and confusion. "Where am I? Who is this man? Get me out of here."
He was talking to me, and I answered him. "Lakeside Nursing Home. This is your son, Will, and you live here now."
"Don't have a son. She said you would get me out."
"She who?" But I knew. I knew without asking and was wishing, not for the first time, that I'd never, ever come back to this town.
"Clarice. She said you'd come and that you'd get me out."
"Sweet of her." I pulled up a chair and sat across from him, playing along. "What else did she tell you?"
He grinned, cracked lips gaping over toothless gums, and when he spoke it sounded like a recitation. "For Jesse's ears only. Nobody else in the room."
"Perfect," I said, not turning around to look at Will. "We're alone. Tell me."
Leaning forward, he grasped one of my hands with his bony, crabbed fingers, and whispered loudly, "There are more. Look in the barn."
"More what? Tell me what you know! What was she doing?"
"For Jesse's ears only. Nobody else in the room."
"Mr. Alderson, please—"
"There are more. Look in the barn."
He looked up and saw Will. "Who are you? Get out!" And then, once more, "Can you tell me where I am? What am I doing here?"
His hand was still clamped around mine but I broke away and ran. Yes, I literally ran out of that room and down the hallway, with Will clattering behind me. Outside I didn't stop until I'd crossed the parking lot and had my hand on the truck, breathing the outside air in great gasps and trying not to puke. This time I didn't succeed.
Will gets full points for staying with me until I'd thoroughly emptied my stomach of the last meal and what seemed like ten years of meals before it. When I was done, he said simply, "What?"
I closed my eyes. My family had inflicted enough damage. So even though this time it was not my fault in any way, shape or form, I wasn't going to look at his face while I told him. About the samples in the test tubes, and the way they smelled of memories—summer, and love making, and the sawmill.
When I was done he never said a word, just opened the truck door for me and waited while I got in.
I still didn't have keys to the padlocks on the barn. But Will and I had been kids here, running wild most of the time. One look at each other, and we were off to the lightning tree. The lowest branch was too high for me, but the spikes we'd pounded into the trunk so we could climb it were still there, rusted and nearly invisible unless you knew where to look.
"Careful," Will said, letting me go first. "That branch could be rotten by now."
Using the spikes as footholds and embracing the roughness of the bark with both arms, I worked my way upward. This exercise had been easier ten years ago, but I had some adrenaline going in the moment that fueled my muscles and kept me from the fear of falling. The branch in question was as big around as my thigh, and ran parallel to the open hayloft. Will was right, of course. It was dead wood, and had long been so, its surface marked by a haphazard pattern of holes. The ants had been busy.
Dialing my breathing back to a shallow setting I eased my body out onto the branch, moving slowly and restraining the irrational tendency to crawl madly forward before it had a chance to break. It held, and after a breathless moment of looking down at Will's upturned face below, I got my hands on the edge of the hayloft window and pulled myself up.
A thin matting of old hay still covered the rough boards, but all the bales were gone. Swallows fluttered about in the rafters and one of them dive-bombed me, not at all happy about my presence, but there was no other sound. I pressed my hands over nose and upper lip to stifle a sneeze. And then Will scrambled up beside me and the two of us crossed to the square cut into the floor and the wooden built-in ladder that led down into the rest of the barn.
Nothing moved below. It was near dark, with only a dim light coming in through a couple of windows too high and small to do much by way of illumination. As far as I could see, there was emptiness and dust and nothing out of the ordinary. The only sound was our own breathing and the fluttering of the disturbed birds above our heads. Will and I locked eyes for a long moment. He shrugged, and I swung my feet around to the ladder and made my descent.
What had once been a large box stall—a place to hold a sick calf for a few days, that sort of thing—was now set up with a long table and all of the paraphernalia you'd expect to see in an illicit lab in a TV movie: tubing and beakers and a big pot set on a hot plate.
Meth. That was my first thought. Asshole renters had made a meth lab in my barn. No wonder they'd been wanting to get back in here. I sniffed for the telltale odor of cat piss, but came up with nothing more than a snout full of dust that triggered another fit of sneezing. No cans of paint thinner, no fertilizer, no gas cans lying around. While I stepped closer to check out the apparatus—empty now, with no sign of whatever liquid had once bubbled through the tubes or simmered in the pot—I heard Will moving around behind me, opening feed bins and letting them fall shut.
A squeak of hinges. And then his voice, hushed. "Jesse, you need to see this."
Will stood in the doorway of the old tack room, where we'd once stored bridles and saddles and other paraphernalia connected to the two horses we'd owned. It had been swept spotlessly clean and somebody had built in wooden shelves from floor to ceiling. On three sides these were empty, but directly facing me was an extensive collection of small glass bottles containing clear fluid. Each was neatly labeled in black felt marker.
Will picked one up. "Romantic evening," he read.
"Don't drop that," I warned, as I read labels that said: Sex with a Stranger; Sword Fight; Fist Fight; Tender Moment with Child; Wedding; Car Crash; Playing Guitar.
My skin crawled so hard I checked myself for ants or some other plague of insects but there were none. Will was handling another of the little bottles, but I was already backing out the door. "Put it down, Will. Step away."
He followed my instruction without question. I closed the door and pulled down the wooden latch over it.
"Bootlegged dreams?" Will asked. "Gives the concept of moonshine a whole new meaning."
I felt sick. These weren't dreams, at least not the way the Merchant made them. "So, you don't remember ever playing the guitar?"
He looked at me like I'd lost it completely. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"Just answer me."
"No, Jesse. I've never played the guitar. Why do you go on about that?"
"Because you do play the guitar. Or you did. All the time. You brought it camping. You brought it everywhere. If your hands were free, you were playing."
His eyes remained blank. "I don't understand."
A banging at the door of the barn froze us both into stillness, listening.
A thud. The padlock rattled on its chain. Must be my renters, back to collect the rest of their contraband.
I grabbed Will's hand and tugged him over to the ladder. "Up here. Hurry!"
He shoved me ahead of him and there wasn't time to scuffle with a game of who goes first. When the doors opened my head was up in the hayloft, so I didn't see the light flow into the dark barn, or the sight of blue skies and trees outside. What I heard was a voice saying, "Hold it right there, Jesse, or I blow your boyfriend away."
Before I could react, Will's hands clamped around my ass and shoved me upward, so that I overbalanced and fell flat on my face into the hayloft.
"What's up, Marsh?" Will's voice, down below and out of sight, was calm, but I could feel his heart racing in my own chest, two sets of heartbeats galloping along as one.
"Tell your girlfriend to get down here before I shoot you."
"Jesse doesn't give a damn about what happens to me. You'll need another tactic."
"Do you think I'm stupid?" Marsh raised his voice, calling up to me. "Hey, Jesse—should I just wing him, or get him in the heart?"
Threatening me was one thing—threatening the last person in the world that I loved was another. Fury flooded through all of my fear and washed it away. I wanted to leap on Marsh's head with a Tarzan cry and flatten him. To pulverize his pretty face with my fists or maybe something a little more solid, like a tire iron, but at the moment he had a gun pointed at Will and I was afraid that surprise might make him pull the trigger.
I peered down on both of them from on high, staying out of sight and out of the line of fire, and trying to think of a plan. Marsh was fully clothed and appeared to be sane, but I had my suspicions about that. He had a rifle in his hands and was aiming it at Will, who stood at the bottom of the ladder, blocking my descent.
"Jesse, I know you're up there." Marsh tilted his head back in an effort to see up into the loft but I knew I was out of his sight. I stayed that way. Getting dead myself wouldn't help anybody.
"Send Will up here, and I'll come down."
"I'm not going anywhere," Will said. "Jesse, stay where you are."
"You have something I want. Don't mind shooting your boyfriend if it will help me get it." Marsh's finger looked a little too eager on the trigger, and apparently he'd been joking about the winging thing because he was aiming at Will's heart.
"Leave Will out of it. I'm coming down."
"J, no!" Will hissed beneath me, and an irrational little glow of happiness warmed my innards.
He might be hurt and pissed and disappointed in me, but he still cared. As for Marsh, I had half an idea of what he wanted, which meant there was hope of manipulating him. He'd never been overly bright, and between the two of us, Will and I ought to be able to take him down.