Replica (Replica #1)(105)

“One or two?”

“Just one.”

The receptionist briefly lifted her eyes but they only went to the money before dropping back to the magazine, seemingly exhausted. “Room’s forty-five a night.”

“It says forty out front.”

“Rates went up.”

“Don’t you think you should change the sign, then?”

There was a plastic fern in the corner, cheap blue wall-to-wall carpeting on the floor, a gun at their backs. Gemma felt the same way she did when she was dreaming—so much was true and familiar and then there was always some weird element distorted or inserted, a talking bird, the ability to fly. Finally Harliss forked over another five-dollar bill—Gemma caught herself nearly offering to pay before remembering that Harliss was kidnapping them—and they went bumping and jostling again back into the sunshine. Room 33 was on the second floor, up a narrow flight of cement stairs covered in graffiti, at the far end of the open-air corridor. Not that they could have shouted or banged on a wall, anyway. They appeared to be the only guests at the Super 8.

The room reeked of stale cigarettes. Once they were inside, Rick Harliss bolted and chain-locked the door and drew the blinds. For several long seconds, it was dark enough that Gemma saw bursts of color and patterns blooming in the blackness of her vision. Then Harliss turned on the lamp, its shade yellowed and torn. He sat down on the bed. He removed his gun from his pocket and Gemma drew in a breath. But to her surprise he placed it in the bedside table, on top of the Bible, and closed the drawer.

“I told you,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt you. Sit.” He gestured to the second twin bed. “Come on, sit,” he said again, raking his fingers through his thinning hair, so it stood up. Gemma remembered that he’d been handsome at one point. Strange that time could do that to a person, just work like a hacksaw on them.

Gemma and Pete moved to the bed together, as if they were tethered by an invisible cord. Once they were sitting, they were separated from Harliss by only a few feet of space, and Gemma noticed the cheapness of his jacket and oiliness of his skin and the way his fingernails were picked raw, and found herself feeling not scared of him anymore but just sorry for him. She realized in that second she actually believed he didn’t want to hurt them. She was sure he wouldn’t even be able to if he tried.

“I told you,” she said, speaking gently, as if he were a child. “We know even less than you do. That’s why I came down here. Because I didn’t know anything. Because I was in the dark about Haven.”

“Huh. That’s funny.” Harliss laughed without smiling. “I’d think you’d have wanted to know all about it.”

Gemma’s hairs stood up. She felt in the room a subtle shift—an electric stillness. “What do you mean?”

Harliss looked up at her with those sad-dog eyes. “Well, that’s where they made you, isn’t it?”


Turn the page to continue reading Gemma’s story. Click here to read Chapter 13 of Lyra’s story.





FOURTEEN


SHE WAS DIMLY AWARE THAT Harliss was still talking. She felt as if a hole had opened inside of her and she was dropping into it.

Made there. She’d been made there.

Just like that girl on the marshes . . .

Gemma wasn’t the original. She, too, was a replica.

Impossible, she wanted to say. She remembered all those baby pictures with her mom in the hospital. Could they have been staged? No. No one could fake her mother’s look of exultation and exhaustion, the sweat standing out on her forehead, the look of bewildered joy. Impossible. But she couldn’t make her voice work, and it was Pete who said it.

“That’s impossible,” Pete said. He was staring at her and she turned away, too numb even to be embarrassed. He sounded horrified. Why wouldn’t he be?

“. . . took me a long time to put it together,” Harliss was saying. “I had nothing else to do, sitting there in state for twelve years. Not saying I didn’t deserve it. I did. I used to do work around your house, you know, before they brought you back from that place. But I was all banged up. Got hooked on the shit they gave me for my back. I was out of my mind half the time.”

“You’re out of your mind now,” Pete said. “It’s not possible.”

If Harliss heard Pete, he gave no sign of it. He was still looking directly at Gemma. “My ex-lady used to do some cleaning. Your mom was in real bad shape then. Real bad. She’d just lost her baby. SIDS. That’s sudden infant death syndrome, you know. Poor thing was only six months old.”

Gemma’s heart stopped. “What baby?” she managed to whisper. She’d never heard her parents mention another baby.

But Harliss just barreled on. “Aimee—that’s my ex—used to say it was funny, all the money in the world but still you can’t buy your way out of that. When Aimee got pregnant with Brandy-Nicole, your mom would just sit there with her hand on Aimee’s belly, trying to feel the baby kick. She started cutting out articles, you know, how Aimee should be eating, how she was supposed to be laying off booze and cigarettes. Even bought us some stuff, a crib and a stroller, some baby clothes. You could tell she was all broken up. Your mom said she couldn’t get pregnant again. Something about what had happened when the first was coming out.”