The stairway was so narrow that I was able to trail my fingers along the opposite walls as I made my way up, the stairs creaking beneath my every step. At the top, I paused. The room was wide, almost as wide as the house, with a sloped ceiling and white-washed walls. A double bed stood in the center under the highest part of the ceiling, with a six-paneled floor-to-ceiling window behind it facing the water. The only other window overlooked the beach to the north. The furniture was sparse—a wardrobe, a desk, a bookshelf filled with haphazardly shelved cloth-covered volumes.
In any other circumstance, I would have loved it. But right then, I wanted nothing more than to go home. I missed my room. I missed my desk and all my things. And being away from home, away from my mom’s wallpaper, her kitchen utensils, the artwork she’d arranged so carefully in the living room, was making me miss her even more.
It’s only temporary, I reminded myself with a deep, fortifying breath. But I knew the first thing I’d be unpacking was the framed picture of the two of us.
Turning around, I headed downstairs to get my stuff. As I passed by the open door to Darcy’s room, she tugged her hood from her hair. In the back of her head was a huge blotch of blood, all dried into her tangled hair.
“Darcy! Your head! It’s still bleeding!” I gasped.
She whirled on me, her green eyes flashing as she attempted to cover it up again. “It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine,” I said, a chill running through me.
Out of nowhere, a flash overtook my vision. A pale hand in the silvery moonlight. A distant hoot of an owl. A tumble of bloody black hair over a smashed-in skull. But when I blinked, the vision was gone. It was just a nightmare, I reminded myself. I pressed my hand onto the nearest wall and tried to breathe.
“Rory? What is it? What’s wrong?” Darcy asked, alarmed.
“Nothing,” I said, looking away, avoiding her eyes.
“That didn’t look like nothing. It looked like…you got the exact same look on your face as when you had—”
“The flashes,” we both said at the same time.
I swallowed hard and sat down next to her. My heart pounded with panic, and I tried to do what my psychiatrist had told me to do all those years ago—focus on what was real, focus on what was here. There was a gray smudge on my sneaker. A big black knot in the wood plank under my foot. A cuticle torn on my right ring finger. These things were real. This room, this seat, and Darcy. They were here.
“I knew it!” Darcy exclaimed, her face lined with concern. “It’s happening again? Since when?”
“I don’t know. Just…that was the first time,” I said. “I’m sure it’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
But even as I said it, my stomach was tied in knots. After my mother had died, I went through months where I’d get flashes every day. Vivid visions of her coughing up blood or moaning in pain or crying out for my dad. But they weren’t just memories. It was as if I was transported back to the moment I’d seen these things happen and I was there all over again, reliving them in pure 3-D. My father had taken me to a psychiatrist, who had diagnosed me with post-traumatic stress disorder, and after a few months of therapy, the flashes had slowed, then finally stopped. But now, apparently, they were back. And I was flashing on the worst nightmare I’d ever had.
“You sure?” Darcy asked me.
“Yeah. I’m all right,” I said, standing up again. The room spun for one split second, but I forced myself to focus and breathe. “I’ll be right back. We have to clean you up.”
“No. I can handle it. You should sit,” Darcy said.
But I ignored her and headed for the bathroom. I was too glad to have something to do—something to distract myself from that flash. I found a washcloth in a linen closet behind the bathroom door and ran the water in the ceramic sink until it turned warm. Then I splashed some water on my face and gave myself a bolstering look in the mirror for good measure. When I returned to Darcy’s room, she was sitting on the window seat, waiting for me.
“Do you want me to do it?” I asked.
She didn’t say yes, but she also didn’t throw me out of her room, which I took as a positive sign. Instead, she brought her feet up on the plaid bench cushion and turned to look out at the street. Tentatively, I touched the wet cloth to the wound. She winced.
“Does it hurt a lot?” I asked.
“Just get it over with,” she answered tersely.
I cleaned up the blood and was relieved to find that underneath it all it was simply a superficial scrape. When I was done, I brought her leather hobo bag over to the bench, knowing she would want to work on her hair. She rummaged through it until she found her brush and started to detangle the ends.
“We should walk into town and find those guys,” Darcy mused, pulling the ends of her hair around to study a stubborn knot. “If we’re going to be here for a while, we might as well make friends.”
I turned my profile to Darcy and stared at the hardwood floor. Three dark knots in the wood grain formed a wobbly smiley face.
“How long do you think we’ll be here?” I asked quietly.
Darcy shrugged, working on her tangles. “I’d say it’s a bad sign that they’ve been chasing him for ten years.”
“Yeah,” I said, my heart folding in on itself. “I guess he’s pretty smart.”