Constance (Constance #1)(49)
Liminal sunlight filtered grudgingly through grimy, cataract windows. Dust hung in the air like spores from some fetid swamp. The discolored yellow wallpaper showed the faded outline of a dresser that had once been pushed up against it. On a bare metal bed frame, under a white sheet, lay a human body. Or what she guessed was a body, but if it was the original Constance D’Arcy under there, then the topography was all wrong. It looked bloated and misshapen. One foot hung out from beneath the sheet, the ankle mottled an ugly, carotid purple. Covering her nose and mouth with the collar of her T-shirt, she stepped over the threshold.
She reached out for the sheet, promising herself to pull it down only far enough to be certain. But when she recognized the eyes, the same eyes that had stared back at her since the time she was tall enough to see in a mirror, she kept going. Trembling, she pulled the sheet past the lips that had kissed Zhi for the first time; past the swirling tattoos that covered her left arm, now hopelessly distorted and warped by decay; past the hands that had learned to play guitar. Only when she saw the scars lacing across that ruined knee did she let go of the ruined sheet.
And the violence etched into her body was appalling. She had been stabbed, again and again. Deep, frenzied gashes, any one of which should have been fatal, but that hadn’t been nearly good enough for her killer. And there was a killer. That was undeniable now.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” Con whispered, but whether to herself or the body, she didn’t know. Constance Ada D’Arcy was dead.
“Yes, we are,” the body agreed.
Con flinched and stumbled backward. Looking around, she saw she wasn’t in Virginia any longer. This was her old bedroom back in Lanesboro. Mr. Bob, the stuffed bear that had kept her safe during storms since before she could remember, sat serenely on her pillow. Through the floorboards, she could hear her mother downstairs in the kitchen listening to gospel radio.
“You’re not real,” Con said. “You can’t be.”
“Neither are you,” the body replied, except now it was Con when she’d been a little girl. “Do you understand that now?”
Con nodded, feeling the sting of tears on her cheeks. All the things she remembered, this was who had actually done them. Not her. “What happened?”
“We died. That’s all,” the girl explained. “It doesn’t matter how.”
“I’m not dead,” Con said without conviction.
“But you should be. Deep down, you know that.”
God help her, she did. “I’m scared.”
“I know, but it will be better this way. It’s peaceful, I promise. Don’t you want to feel at peace again?”
Con nodded. She was so tired.
“But you have to be quick. This may be our only chance,” the girl said.
“How?”
“There,” the girl said, pointing to the floor by the window. “The broken glass.”
Con picked up a shard, dimly wondering why there would be broken glass on her bedroom floor.
“There was a storm,” the girl said. “The tree outside broke the window. Momma must have missed some of the glass when she swept up.”
That made sense. Bad storms rolled through Lanesboro all the time. Even Mr. Bob was nodding in agreement, and he loved her the most. Con looked down at her wrist.
“You know what to do,” the girl said. “We belong together.”
That jarred Con out of her stupor. She dropped the broken glass. Get out of here. Get out now.
“No,” the girl wailed, although already it was turning back into a cadaver. “You’re not real. You’re nothing.”
Con fled down the hall, the hallucination fading with each step. On the landing, she crashed into a wall, but somehow she managed not to trip and fall down the stairs. She heard something clatter to the ground, but she didn’t stop to see what it was. She burst through the screen door into the sunshine, hoping the fresh air would wash the smell of that room away, but it was in her head now and she would never forget it.
Her stomach kicked again, and she stumbled into the tall grass and retched until her body grudgingly accepted there was nothing left. Then she slipped gratefully to her knees and rolled onto her side. She lay there panting, listening to the lazy thrum of crickets. A red-and-black ladybug climbed halfway up a leaf before flying away. It seemed real enough, but then so had the girl up in the bedroom. Dr. Fenton had said that Con’s condition would worsen, but she hadn’t said anything about her hallucinations turning homicidal. She needed to get back to the car where her pills were.
In the distance, she heard the sound of voices. She was still so disoriented that, at first, she didn’t register them as real. It wasn’t until a pair of men appeared from around the side of the house that she snapped out of it. Both wore boots, green cargo pants, and tactical vests similar to the one she’d found in her dad’s old footlocker when she was nine. Her mother had whaled on her when she’d caught Con wearing it. At their belts were sidearms.
It was her first time seeing him in daylight, but Con recognized the taller man instantly—the driver of the SUV outside her old apartment building that first night. The same one who’d shown up at the Glass House when she’d gone to talk to Jasper. She’d know his cragged, pockmarked face anywhere. How had he tracked her here? She’d only been in Virginia for a few hours. Unless Pockmark worked for Gaddis and this was all part of some elaborate setup.