“You should have called. I would have picked you up,” Uncle Jim said.
“That’s okay. It happened last night while we were … ah … doing Yoga exercises in Robyn’s room, and I didn’t want to leave so early.” I smiled with false innocence.
Uncle Jim helped me to the living room sofa, fussing more than necessary. His experience as a veterinarian made it easy for him to diagnose my injury as a mild sprain. Still, they tried talking me into seeing the doctor, but I won the argument after promising to keep my leg elevated and keep the bag of frozen peas that Aunt Rachel had wrapped in a towel on the swelling.
Once I was settled on the sofa, propped up against the cushions, the remote all to myself, Aunt Rachel left the room to make me something to eat. I was starving. I hadn’t eaten anything since lunch at school the day before. A short while later she came back into the living room carrying a plated grilled cheese sandwich and a glass of milk, then disappeared into the study to grade some assignments.
I knew Sammy had to work and assumed Justin had taken her, and Uncle Jim had gone to the animal clinic. That left me alone. Mindlessly, I flipped through the channels on the TV. My focus was on one thing only: Marcus and the pendant. Well two things, but these two things seemed connected.
I sifted through the events of the night before. Every detail was vividly etched into my mind as if it had been recorded there waiting for me to hit playback. The image on the TV became a blur while I was back on Skull Island with Marcus. We’d spent the night together, and now he might never speak to me again. You blew it, Brooke.
Barely able to keep my eyes open now, I went up to my room. Once there, I took off the pendant. Immediately, I felt its absence like a hole cut out of my chest. The metal turned cold in my hand. A cool ache flowed through my palm and up through my wrist into my arm, stopping at the spot where Maggie had touched me with her icy fingers almost a week ago. I sat the pendant on the table and hobbled to the bed.
After propping my leg up on a pillow, I lay back against the cushions. Between the twin aches of absence inside and on top of my chest, mixed with the icy pain in my arm and my sore ankle, I was convinced I was falling apart.
My eyes wandered to the window and beyond the trees to the rooftop of the Ravenwyck. If I hadn’t been so tired I would have gotten up and closed the curtains, but as I stared across the distance to the creepy Inn, I drifted off.
As I dreamed of eerie glows coming from dormer peak windows in the night, and shadowed hands reaching out to grab me, I heard a ringing in the distance. It grew louder, and I realized it was a phone.
At the same time as my eyes flew open, I lurched forward on the bed and stifled a scream. Sunlight streamed through the window and across my bed, bringing warmth with it. I ran a hand through my hair. The phone rang again. After the third ring, I picked it up and looked at the display. “Oh crap,” I said when I saw it was the Knights’ residence. What did Evan want? I almost put the phone back on the receiver, but something compelled me not to.
“Hello.”
My voice was slightly shaky from the nightmare. There was silence on the other end, and then the most soothing of all sounds caressed my ear, bringing a smile to my face.
“Hi.” Marcus hesitated and then said, “I’m sorry about earlier. I shouldn’t have left like that.”
My heart still throbbed, but in a different way. He was apologizing for leaving me at the boathouse. The empty feeling inside of me vanished.
“How’s your ankle?”
I gave it a quick glance. “Uncle Jim says it’s just lightly sprained. No bruising, and the swelling’s almost gone.”
“That’s great. Um, listen, I need to talk to you. Can I come over?”
My hand flew to the birds nest on top of my head that was my hair. “Yeah, sure,” I said breathless.
“Okay, I’ll be there in a few minutes. Bye.”
“Bye.”
I hung up the phone and jumped out of bed, wincing when I put pressure on my foot. There were so many things I had to do and so little time in which to do them. First, I grabbed the pendant off the table—it was warm. I put it back on and hobbled to the washroom to brush my teeth. My hair was hopeless, so I gathered it into a ponytail and put a little makeup on. Then I remembered I was still wearing the same clothes I’d come home in, so I grabbed a clean pair of jeans and a T-shirt and hurried into them.
I checked myself in the mirror as the doorbell rang. The rushed make-over would have to do.
Chapter Twelve
Marcus stood on the front porch, framed by the red trim around the door. His dark hair glistened with moisture from a recent shower. He wore a light blue T-shirt with our school name on the front, and a picture of a soccer ball below. His hands were stuffed into the front pockets of his jeans. I was left breathless in more ways than one.
“Hey,” he said with a slight grin.
“What’s up?” I grabbed my jacket off the hook and stepped outside.
His grin faded. “There’s something I thought you should know.”
Why did I have the feeling this conversation wasn’t going to be a happy one? I couldn’t name one remotely happy moment, Marcus notwithstanding, since the day I’d arrived here, so why should this moment be any different?
“Let’s sit down.” I gestured toward the porch swing. “Gotta keep the ankle up. Doctor’s orders.”
He nodded and sat beside me.
My plan was to rest my foot on the railing, but the railing was too far from the swing.
Marcus must have noticed because he patted his leg and said, “Here, put it up here.”
I turned sideways, accepting his offer, laying my injured ankle across his lap, leaving the other one dangling.
He rested one hand on my leg and began to play with a cluster of frayed threads that dangled from the hem of my jeans. All previous thoughts flew from my head.
Marcus was looking over the railing towards the road when he began. “This morning in the woods, you asked me if I’d had any weird dreams lately.”
I stared at him intently now. He stared straight ahead.
“Well, I have.”
“What are they about?” I asked quickly.
Marcus hesitated. His fingers let go of the threads and his hand flattened out on my leg. He angled his body to face me. “You, actually.”
A tiny bubble of excitement edged with a pang of fear burst inside of me.
“Last Saturday night, I had a dream. I can’t really remember it, but it seemed like I was in a different place and time—a very old place, maybe ancient. The double spiral symbol had been scratched into the skin of my arm.
“In my dream it looked like a series of raised scars, like some sort of tribal marking. I don’t know why, but when I woke up, I felt a strong urge to have it tattooed on me. That day, last Sunday, Evan and I went to the tattoo shop in Salem, and I came back with this.” He gestured toward his arm. The tattoo was hidden under his sleeve. He lifted his hand from my leg and raked it through his damp hair.
I unclenched the inside of my cheeks from my teeth. “The day I arrived in Deadwich,” I said low. “How weird is that?”
“Humph, not as weird as the other dreams.”
“Others?”
He nodded, the muscles in his jaw clenching as he did. I was more intrigued now then he had probably realized.
“Every night since, other than last night, I’ve dreamed about you. You were in distress.”
“Yeah, that’s the new me, the damsel in distress.” I pursed my lips and let him continue.
“Wherever I saw you in the dream, darkness surrounded you. You tried to run from it, but it wouldn’t let you go. It was the same, night after night. You were alone in the dark, crying out for help. Then I came into the dream bringing light with me. I was offering it to you … like a gift. I surrounded you with it, pushing the darkness back, but not completely, just enough so there was a perfect balance of both.”
I must have looked shocked because
he leaned closer to me and said, “Are you alright? You look pale.”
Ignoring his concern, I snapped my mouth shut and found my voice. “And did you call me Claire?”
His eyes widened. “Yes.” Then a look of realization swept across his face. “You mean … .”
I nodded. “Yup. You called me Claire in my dreams too.”
“So you’re Claire, and we’re having the same dream?”
“Uh huh. Only mine are much worse. They feel like nightmares and end like yours. For as far back as I can remember I’ve had them every time I’ve slept in Deadwich, but never with you in them. Not until now.” I swung my leg off him and sat up straight.
“My dreams I was telling you about when I was little,” Marcus began, “they’re the same ones. I’m surrounded by light, but there’s darkness all around me and, of course, I’m calling to Claire.”
“It’s just so weird. We’ve essentially had the same dreams all our lives, only slightly different, and now they’re coming together to make one dream, if that makes any sense,” I said.
“Perfectly.”
Some supernatural power was messing with me, and I didn’t like it, even if it was connecting Marcus and me together in some twisted way.
“This place is too weird,” I said.
“It hasn’t always been.”
“Before I came, you mean.”
Marcus didn’t comment. We sat quietly, engrossed in our own thoughts for a few minutes while I pushed the swing back and forth with my good foot. Sometime during our conversation the lawn mower up the street had stopped, and I could almost hear Marcus breathing.
“You know,” I said suddenly, as if I needed to defend my sanity. “I would never admit this to anyone else, but my life has been pretty normal up until now. Other than getting into trouble a few times and being sent here against my will to live out my sentence, nothing unusual ever happens to me, I swear.”
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t implying that you were the cause of all the weirdness.” He leaned forward to get up. “I should leave. You need to keep your leg up.”
“No!” I blurted.
He hesitated on the edge of his seat. No way could he leave now. Not after the huge secrets we’d just shared with each other. “Please, stay.”
He relaxed his body, but didn’t sit back.
Despite everything, this felt like an intimate moment between us, and I wanted it to last.
“I wanted to tell you something.” I stopped pushing the swing. “What you saw in the boathouse. Well, I wanted to tell Evan that he was delusional. That we were never a couple, but I was in too much of a bad mood, and my ankle was throbbing.” My voice had picked up an angry tone midway through the sentence. “And then he hugged me, and I felt bad.” My expression softened. “Then you walked in. I’ll talk to him the next time I see him.”
“It’s your choice,” he said simply.
What did he mean, it’s my choice? Was he offering himself as one of my choices? Was he asking me in some subtle way to choose between them? There was no choice. It was him, but I still didn’t have the guts to tell him so. I broke into a sweat and shrugged out of my jacket.
“Well, I’d better get to work before Maggie puts a curse on me or something,” Marcus said suddenly.
“What? What did you just say?”
“I said, I—”
“No, I heard you. You said ‘curse’. Why did you say that?”
He sat up straight and looked at me strangely. “It’s just a joke, Brooke. The whole North Shore jokes about Maggie being a witch.”
My body went numb, all but one spot. My arm where Maggie had touched pulsed with pain.
“Brooke, you’re pale again. What’s wrong?” When I didn’t answer he grabbed my shaking hands. I looked over at him and tried to speak.
“She’s a witch,” I said, my voice barely audible.
“It’s just a local myth. There’s no such thing as witches.”
“I don’t feel very good,” I mumbled.
I rested my elbow on the arm of the swing chair and dropped my head into my hand. The sudden hum in my head threatened to drown out the neighborhood noises, but I concentrated on the car that was driving past and Aunt Rachel’s tinkling wind chimes until the humming stopped.
“Can I get you something? Are you going to faint?”
“No, no. I’ll be fine.” So, that was it. It had to be. Maggie was a witch! I lifted my head from my hand and let it drop to the backrest of the swing. “Geez, you must think I’m whacko.”
“Brooke.”
It was then that I realized our hands were linked together, resting in the small space between us. Out of shyness, I was careful not to move a muscle of that hand. I turned my head to look at him.
“I don’t think you’re crazy. What I think is that something strange is going on—”
“It’s more than just strange.”
“Right, it’s definitely something bizarre, and somehow we have to figure out what it all means. Have you told anyone else?”
I shook my head. “You?”
“Well, my parents know about the ‘Claire’ dream of course, but not the ones I’ve had since you moved here.”
He lifted his hand from mine. Cool air replaced his touch. I wanted to grab it back, but didn’t.
“Can I see the tattoo before you go?”
I wanted so badly to touch it, and I wasn’t going to let another opportunity slip by. Before Marcus could push his sleeve up, I lifted my hand and pushed it up for him. My fingers were so close to it they trembled. I held the sleeve up with one hand and lightly brushed my fingers over the still-raised spirals. The pendant within the confines of my T-shirt grew warm against my skin. I let the sleeve drop, but kept my fingers on the tattoo. With my other hand, I reached inside my T-shirt and pulled out the pendant. My skin tingled ever-so-slightly where the spirals touched it.
Marcus jerked his arm away from my touch.
“What?” I asked, curious.
He looked at me strangely. “Did you feel that?”
“You felt it too?” I asked.
“Just now when you touched my arm; it felt like some sort of mild shock.”
I held the pendant out to him and put my hand on his tattoo again. He took the pendant from my hand.
“Wow, the same thing. I feel it.”
The hint of a smile played up one corner of his mouth.
We discovered that when one of us touched both his tattoo and my pendant at the same time, a mild current flowed from the symbol into us.
I pushed his sleeve back up and rubbed over the tattoo gently with my thumbs. Before I knew it, both my hands were circled around his biceps. The muscle involuntarily flexed under my touch. Then I became aware of a new sensation between us—a sensation that electrified every cell in my body.
I lifted my eyes. Marcus stared at me. Our faces were close. My cheeks warmed. I let my hands drop to my lap. Marcus let the pendant drop to my chest, leaving it hanging on the outside.
As the moment grew awkward, a sharp caw jump-started my heart. We both turned toward the sound. A huge black bird landed in the oak in the front yard. We both stared at it. It stared back.
“I’ve seen that crow before,” I whispered.
“That’s not a crow,” Marcus said. “It’s a raven.”
“Oh. No wonder it’s so big.” And then I remembered something that made my skin prickle. “Last night, before you found me in the well, I saw it again.”
“How do you know it’s the same bird?”
“I don’t know, it’s just a feeling.” I shuddered.
Marcus stood, taking my jacket with him. He leaned over the railing, waved the jacket toward the raven, and told it to go away. At first the bird protested by beating its wings and squawking sharply, and then it conceded and flew off over the rooftop of the house across the street.
With his back to the railing, Marcus looked at me. “It’s gone now, and I really do have to get to work.”
“Yeah. You’d better go before Maggie turns you into something.” I laughed, while trembling on the inside.
He held my jacket out to me. I took it, both our hands lingering close together a few seconds.
“I’ll see you Tuesday,” he said, letting go.
“Oh right, Monday’s Labor day.” That sucked.
“Don’t let this, whatever it is, freak you out too much.” He got up and walked down the steps then turned to look at me. “Remember, we’re in this together, and we’ll figure it out together.”
I watched him walk away. He turned at the end of the driveway and waved. I sat holding the pendant, watching him walk down the street, until the neighbor’s shrubbery hid him from view. Then I listened to his footsteps fading on the asphalt.
I sat for some time pondering over our conversation. I knew one thing; I had to find out more about Maggie and who, or what, she really was.
When I awoke the next morning, sunshine streamed through my bedroom window encompassing me in its warmth. The soothing press of the double spiral reminded me of its presence around my neck. I reached for it and opened my eyes.
For the first time since I was little, I’d slept a peaceful, dreamless sleep in Deadwich. The only downside was, I hadn’t dreamed of Marcus. I wondered if he’d had his ‘Claire’ dream.
Chapter Thirteen
By the Tuesday of my second week in Deadwich, my ankle felt good enough to walk on without limping. After the long weekend, I was almost as nervous as I had been on my first day at school, but for different reasons. I wanted to see Marcus. Even to just see him from a distance would help the empty feeling that had returned. Also, I wanted to have it out with Evan. I had promised myself I would tell him the truth; just give it to him straight. The thing was, I’d never broken up with anyone before, and I was angry. To me, the thing between us wasn’t even a relationship yet. We hadn’t even kissed! But I decided to treat it as if it was a real relationship—because Evan obviously thought it was, and dump him as gently as possible.
I stood on the school grounds with Sammy’s group of friends, excluding Megan—which suited me just fine. She absolutely hated me now and didn’t try to hide it. We’d picked up a replacement for Megan, anyway. Justin stood close to Sammy now. I was glad she’d finally gotten over Evan.