Chapter One
The nightmares are always bad this time of year. Especially here. I’d avoid this place for the rest of my life, if I could. Really, there’s only one reason to come back. One reason…and one particular time of year.
My father died just two days after his birthday.
He’d been born sixty-two years ago, in this little village north of Boston.
I was born here too, and up until the summer I turned eighteen, this had been home. Then, if you’d asked if I’d ever planned to leave, make my home somewhere else, I would have laughed.
There had been no other home. This place had been it, the only home I’d ever known, the only one I’d ever wanted to know.
Then it was just ripped out from under me.
Coming back here when there was nothing to come back to just hurt.
Huddled on the bed in the bland, nondescript hotel, staring at the digital readout on the clock, I tried to force myself to stay awake. My eyelids were heavy and my eyes were gritty. Little wonder. I hadn’t slept last night, but I couldn’t avoid it anymore.
Not that I wouldn’t try. I’d fight it as long as I could, but something told me I was about to lose that battle. It was past two in the morning. I wouldn’t last much longer.
I’d read until the words blurred before my eyes. I’d already sucked down so much coffee my belly felt raw.
I couldn’t stay awake. I couldn’t run from the nightmares anymore.
Staring into the blank, mechanical eye of the camera, I signed it out. Circling my hand in front of my chest. Please. My fist on my palm--I darted a look out of the corner of my eye but he was staring everywhere, staring at everybody around us. Looking for any sign of the police.
Not at me. I finished the word. Help. Please. Help .
I’d been begging for help for three days. My grasp of sign was limited. My grandmother had been deaf and I used to be able to sign fluently, but she’d died eight years ago. Use it or lose it, right? That was true even when it came to languages, sign included.
“Hurry up, bitch,” he whispered, moving in until he was practically touching me. I had to fight not to shy away. I didn’t need the reminder, didn’t need him to touch me, threaten me again or show me the gun he’d tucked inside his jacket.
He had my parents.
I fumbled with the card as I pulled it out of the ATM and grabbed the cash.
Two hundred dollars. All I could get from the ATM with the limit. He looked at it in disgust but didn’t take it from me. He wouldn’t. Not here out on the sidewalk, with people passing all around us.
He’d wait.
I shot another look at the camera.
Please. Help.
If somebody didn’t figure it out soon...I swallowed as he caught my arm and started to pull me along with him. It was subtle, the way he did it. Anybody looking at us wouldn’t figure it out right away. You’d have to really be watching to see it.
I swallowed, my tongue thick and dry in my mouth, my legs wobbly from almost a week with next to no food, hardly any water. He was moving too fast and I could barely keep up. My head spun and everything seemed to blur around me.
When I tripped, he jerked me up, his fingers bruising. “What the fuck are you doing?” he demanded.
“I’m sorry…I just…”
Darkness crowded the edge of my vision.
My knees hurt as I hit the ground, but I didn’t even register that I’d done it until a minute later.
“You little—”
“Freeze!”
His eyes came back to me. His voice was a low, ugly whisper. “You just killed them. Bitch. Stupid bitch.”
I swallowed. Would have cried, except there were no tears left. None at all.
I came awake then, a knot swelling in my chest. But my eyes, just like that moment, frozen in time, were painfully dry.
These dreams weren’t like normal dreams. Not like normal nightmares. I’d rather be chased by a maniacal clown, find myself naked in front of a boardroom with only the annual report in my hand. I’d even go back
Similar Books
