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 wa
ist 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.