Dead Ringers: Volumes 1-3, Page 2

  What if Lacey is in real danger, the kind that greeted me back in February? Will she be the next to vanish?

  I try to shut out the music and laughter and focus on the crying. It sounds animalistic, a cross between a cry and a scream. Shivers rack my body. But, wait. The feral noises are part of the soundtrack. The human whimpering seems to be coming from the right and the hall of mirrors.

  Gathering my resolve, I forge on toward the distortion mirrors. A screeching cry reverberates through me. The animal in distress on the soundtrack? It’s getting harder to partition Lacey’s weeping from the manufactured noises.

  There’s another sound, too: Ragged gasps that pass for my breathing. While I’m trying to get myself under control, I reach the first mirror. Staring back at me from two sets of eyes is a short, squatty young woman with a pencil neck and an extra mouth. It’s me. So is the spindly figure in the second mirror who is taller than Shaquille O’Neal.

  Turning a corner, I nearly slam into another illusion of myself. I jump back. So does my double image.

  The crying is more faint now.

  “Lacey.” My shaking voice competes with the music, the animal cries and the never-ending laughter. “Lacey, where are you?”

  No answer. I speed up, past mirrors where I look demented and mirrors that give the illusion that my body has been sliced in half. While I’m deciding which way to go, colored lights flicker on and something jumps out of an oversized box.

  It’s a life-sized clown, its red lips pulled back in an unnatural grin.

  A memory flashes through my brain. I’m sitting in a hard-backed chair with rope cutting into my bound hands and feet. A hood covers my head, effectively blinding me. I feel groggy but know I’m outside, because I can hear the crescendo of cicadas and the nearby wail of some sort of animal, maybe a fox.

  Sharp pain explodes inside my head. Bile rises in my throat, and I fight nausea. The pain is relentless, like something is assaulting my brain. My head jerks back and forward, back and forward, sending fresh waves of agony through me. If it goes on much longer, that will be the end. I can’t survive this. No one could.

  And then, suddenly, it’s over. I slump forward, my head falling below my knees, the loosened hood coming free and dropping to the ground. Fresh air reaches my nostrils. I lift my throbbing head at the same time something sharp stabs me in the right shoulder. The groggy feeling immediately intensifies.

  With every ounce of willpower I possess, I fight the wooziness, managing with great difficulty to turn my head. Through lids growing heavier by the second, I get a glimpse of whatever’s doing this to me.

  Holding an empty syringe is a clown, its face cloaked in white makeup and its oversized nose and mouth painted blood-red.

  CHAPTER THREE

  My eyes drift closed, but I can still see the clown’s taunting grin. Something is shaking me. From a distance, I hear a familiar voice I can’t quite place. The shaking gets harder. My teeth rattle like they sometimes do during the scariest parts of a horror movie.

  “Jade!” says a loud voice near my ear. “Jade! Snap out of it!”

  I blink and the image of the evil clown fades to black. One more blink and the interior of the funhouse comes into intermittent focus, depending on whether the lights are flashing on or off. I’m on the floor, slumped against the cool glass of one of the mirrors.

  Becky leans over me. In the artificial funhouse lights, her face appears as chalk-white as the clown’s. “Are you all right?”

  I can’t make myself nod. I’m not all right. I haven’t been since last summer, when something so terrible happened to me that I buried the memories. Until now.

  Because deep in my gut I know that what I just had was a memory. Even now, I can almost feel the ropes cutting into my wrists, smell the earthy richness of the outdoors and taste the acid rising in my throat along with the dread.

  Becky sticks out a hand to help me up. She’s so small and my legs are so rubbery that I have to anchor my free hand against the mirror so I don’t fall.

  “Come on,” she says when I’m upright, keeping hold of my hand and winding through the maze of mirrors like she’s navigated it dozens of times. Without her guidance, I’d never find my way outside where the ocean air sweeps away some of the cobwebs in my mind. Darkness is encroaching and the lights of the midway are on, the Ferris wheel outlined in a circle of white.

  White. Like the clown’s face paint.

  “I thought someone was dying in there!” Becky hasn’t let go of my hand. Nobody is within ten yards of us besides the guy working the ticket booth while listening to his iPod. “Why were you screaming like that?”

  “I was screaming?” My head hurts, as though somebody took a sledgehammer and tried to split it in two.

  “You were screaming bloody murder. I thought the Widow decided to start with Lacey.”

  Lacey, Hunter Prescott’s young cousin. Had somebody abducted the girl and tied her to that chair? I grab Becky’s arm. “Please tell me Lacey’s all right.”

  “I think so. She came out the exit a few seconds after you screamed.” Becky stares down at my hand on her arm. “Let go. You’re hurting me.”

  “Sorry.” I release her, my mind crowded with questions.

  How had I gotten into that field? Who had tied me to the chair? Why had it felt as though my mind was splintering? How did the clown fit in? And, most importantly, what did he want from me?

  “So what the hell happened in there?” Becky persists, rubbing her arm. “I’ve never heard you scream like that.”

  I wet my lips, trying to process my thoughts. “I remembered something. From when I vanished.”

  Becky puts a finger to her lips. “Shhh. We agreed you wouldn’t talk about that.”

  “But I remember, Becky. It was night and I was tied to a chair in a field.” I concentrate over the pounding in my head, conjuring a mental snapshot. Lining the edges of the clearing were sprawling live oak trees and tall loblolly pines. “I could smell grass but also something damp. The marsh or a swamp, maybe.”

  “Jade,” Becky says with a warning tone in her voice. She doesn’t want me to continue, but she’s been my best friend since kindergarten. There is nothing about me she doesn’t know.

  “At first I couldn’t see because I was wearing a hood. My head felt like it would explode. While I was thrashing around, the hood came loose. Then there was a needle in my shoulder.” I moisten my lips, knowing how she’ll react to what I’m about to say. “That’s when I saw the clown.”

  “For God’s sake, Jade!” Becky drags a hand through her blond hair, and some strands come loose from her ponytail. “A clown? Are you listening to yourself? You actually believe you were abducted by an evil clown who tied you up and injected you with something?”

  Stated that way, it sounds crazy. Yet I didn’t get to that field by myself. “I think it was a sedative.”

  Becky’s blue eyes turn round and troubled. “You’re freaking me out, Jade.”

  I can hardly wrap my mind around the vision myself, yet the life-sized clown that had sprung from the jack in the box uncovered something in my mind I’ve been trying to reach for months.

  “I’m freaked out, too.” I rub my forehead, intensifying my headache. “But it could explain the gap in my memory. Maybe even where I was for those two days when I vanished.”

  “We already know where you were,” Becky says, her voice gentle. “You were skiing in the Great Smoky Mountains with Roxy.”

  “No.” I shake my head, rejecting the explanation the same way I have since I’d turned up dazed and disoriented at the carnival. It’s no secret that Roxy is passionate about skiing. After three years of working at the carnival, that’s the only personal thing I know about her. But we had most definitely not gone on a ski trip to the Cataloochee Ski Area together. “That’s a lie.”

  “Jade, you sent me a text, remember? I know you were messed up about your dad’s conviction, but I still have it on my phone.”

 
“He’s my stepdad.” I never used to make that distinction. He’s the only father I’ve ever known and I call him Dad, but I’m just so damn angry at him.

  “Okay, your stepdad.” She pulls out her cell, navigates to a screen and hands me the phone. “Here, maybe it’ll help if you see the text again.”

  Going skiing for a few days with Roxy, the text reads. Don’t worry.

  Becky hadn’t worried. Neither had Aunt Carol, my mom’s sister. She’d uprooted everything and moved in with my sister, brother and me after my stepdad’s arrest. My aunt received a text from my phone with the same message. Roxy even had an explanation for my temporary amnesia. She said I’d fallen on the slopes. The bump on the back of my head seemed to back up her lie, but I think someone knocked me out when I was walking to Becky’s.

  Even if the blow resulted in a concussion, though, it doesn’t explain my memory gap. It’s typical not to remember the accident. Not so typical to have no recollection of the following forty-eight hours.

  “I didn’t write that text. Someone must have gotten hold of my phone and sent it.”

  “Why would anyone do that?”

  “So nobody would realize I was missing and come looking for me.” I can tell Becky doesn’t buy that explanation. “C’mon, Becky. Why would I ever go skiing with Roxy?”

  “Her father went to prison when she was a kid, too.” Becky repeated the story that Roxy had told everybody. “She thought it would be good for you to get away for a few days.”

  “Roxy’s lying.”

  “We’ve been over this already, Jade. Why would she lie?”

  Maybe Roxy was disguised as the clown. Except that doesn’t sound right. What possible motive could she have? She was involved, though. Somehow.

  “I don’t know why Roxy’s lying.”

  “Do me a favor, okay?” Becky rubs her hand up and down my arm. “Don’t mention the evil clown to anybody. People are already talking. You can’t give them more ammo.”

  I shrug her hand off my arm. “About me being crazy? You think I’m crazy, too, don’t you, Becky?”

  “No! Of course not. I just think...” She pauses and the corners of her mouth turn down. “I just think you’ve been under a lot of stress.”

  “Hey, is everything all right over here?”

  My head whips around at the voice of Maia Shelton, who’s closing the distance between us. Like Becky, Maia has been my friend forever. Unlike Becky, she can’t keep a secret. She spends all her waking hours on the strip, either at her job at the arcade or hanging out at the carnival, collecting the news of the day and then freely sharing it.

  “I heard something about a bloodcurdling scream.” Maia tosses her beautiful black hair, which cascades down her back almost to her waist and is adorned with one of the chrysanthemums she’s taken to wearing. Today’s flower is purple.

  Becky sends me a warning look, then says, “People scream all the time at a carnival.”

  “The funhouse is too lame for screams,” Maia declares, waving a dismissive hand. “So, spill. What’s going on?”

  It’s time I entered the conversation with the truth. Seems to me I heard somewhere it was the best defense. “It’s nothing. I just got spooked by the clown in the funhouse.”

  Maia balances her hands on her curvy hips and tosses her hair again. “Oh, come on. You’re not afraid of clowns. Last year for Halloween you dressed up as that killer clown from the Stephen King miniseries. I can’t think of the name, but you know the one.”

  It. I’d read the book, too. Not his best work.

  “I saw the two of you huddled over here,” Maia continues. “You were talking about something important. I can tell.”

  Becky telegraphs me another silent message to keep my mouth shut.

  “We were talking about the clown,” I say.

  Maia blows air out her nose. “Bullshit! You think I can’t tell when you two are hiding something from me?”

  “What would we be hiding?” I ask.

  “How should I know? You won’t tell me.” Maia huffs out another breath. “Fine. See if I care.”

  She spins on her heel and stalks away, flipping us the bird as she goes.

  Becky waits until Maia is out of earshot before she turns troubled eyes to me. “I’m serious, Jade. You can’t say anything about an evil clown to anyone, not just Maia. If you do, people are gonna think you’re like...”

  Becky’s voice trails off, but I know what she means.

  I can’t afford to let people think I’m like my mother.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  When Becky pulls her little red Honda Fit into my driveway three hours later, my head hurts from trying to figure out the mystery of what happened to me. Not as much as it hurt that night in the forest, though. That pain was extraordinary.

  “You’re like a million miles away,” Becky says.

  “I’ve got a lot of things on my mind.”

  “Things you should never, ever tell anyone,” Becky says. “We’re clear on that, right?”

  “Crystal.”

  She doesn’t need to worry about me spreading tales tonight. My two siblings are too young to understand what I can’t grasp myself, and no way would I tell dear old mom anything.

  I thank Becky for the ride, get out of the car and shut the door. The porch light is on, shining on the hanging baskets of geraniums that make the ranch house appear a little less modest. I use my key and slip inside before the flying bugs surrounding the porch light can follow me. Quickly I punch in the security code on the alarm system my mother had installed before she abandoned us.

  Tonight the bowels of the house are dark. Good. Everybody’s asleep.

  Something brushes against my leg. I cry out and jump back. Yellow eyes peer at me in the darkened foyer. Our black cat Beelzebub and not Jack Nicholson wielding a bloody knife like he did in The Shining.

  “Jesus, Bee. I had a rough enough night without you trying to give me a heart attack. Don’t you know an evil clown could be after me?”

  I strain my ears for the sound of stirring but hear only silence. Slipping off my shoes, I pad barefoot into the kitchen and open the refrigerator without bothering to turn on an overhead light. The cold air feels good on my clammy skin.

  Yogurt or leftover pizza?

  “Like I really have a choice if I don’t want to weigh two hundred pounds,” I mutter.

  But if I gained a lot of weight, it might be tougher for somebody to snatch me off the street a second time. I grab the pizza, head for the family room and turn on a lamp. Light bathes the room, illuminating the empty sofa, the coffee table my stepdad found at a flea market and refinished and the woman in the recliner.

  Her eyes are open and staring directly at me.

  I swallow the scream before it starts. The woman in the recliner is my mother.

  She’d walked into the house without even knocking about a week ago. She didn’t apologize or explain why she hadn’t once in twenty-five weeks given us a call to say where she was. She acted like she’d never been gone, taking my little sister Suri shopping, making Julian whatever he wanted for dinner. After a few days, Aunt Carol returned home to South Carolina.

  “Why are you sitting in the dark?” I demand.

  “I was waiting for you,” she says.

  Her speech is slow and measured, without inflection. It’s impossible to tell if I woke her. She always sounds like that, which I figure is a side effect of her meds. I might feel sorry for her if she hadn’t stopped taking them last year and wrecked our lives.

  “No need for that. I can take care of myself.”

  She says nothing but continues to stare at me. She’s in a long-sleeved flannel nightgown much too warm for a summer night. Her shoulder-length hair is brown with no trace of red, her green eyes are wide set and her lips plump. Supposedly we look alike, but I don’t see it.

  I pick up the remote, switch on the television and sink into the sofa. On screen Drew Barrymore is sobbing into the phone. I instantly recognize
the movie Scream. I’ve seen it a half-dozen times, but anything is better than having a conversation with my mother.

  Long minutes pass. The pizza is cold, but I can barely taste it. The girl on TV is screaming because—surprise—no one ever survives the first five minutes of a slasher flick. I try to ignore my mother, who hasn’t even shifted in her seat. Why won’t she go to bed and leave me alone?

  “Your father left a message on the answering machine,” she announces.

  “Stepfather,” I correct for like the millionth time. My real father took off before I was born. My mom claims she doesn’t even know where he is.

  “He’d like for you to visit him.”

  She makes it sound like they’re divorced and he’s inviting me to spend time with him. Like Maia’s father, who has a million-dollar home with a tropical waterfall pool at the Estates at Ocean Breeze.

  “Have you visited him?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I’ll leave the visiting to you then.”

  On television, Drew Barrymore grasps for her killer’s mask. It’s already too late.

  “I talked to your Aunt Carol on the phone tonight. She said you haven’t seen your father since he was arrested.”

  Not quite true. I’d gone to an arraignment where I’ve since found out hardly anybody pleads guilty. Leave it up to my stepdad to dare to be different. It is true, however, that I’ve never been to the maximum-security prison where the judge sent my stepdad at the sentencing hearing. I haven’t read the letters he writes me, either. They end up in the trash.

  “What’s your point?” I ask.

  “Five months is a long time for a father and daughter to go without seeing each other.”

  My mother was gone for longer than that. My palms hurt, and I realize I’m clenching my hands and the nails are digging into my skin. “Yeah, well, he should have thought of that before he got himself arrested and landed us here with you.”