The Gifting (Book 1 in The Gifting Series) Read online

  Chapter Twenty

  Discovery

  With hands folded behind my head, I stare at my ceiling, impossibly awake. As if I’d just awoken from ten hours of sleep and chased an entire pot of coffee with a Red Bull, when in reality, it’s past midnight and sleep over the past few nights has been fitful. My after-dinner hike did little to clear my head. I kick off my covers and walk into the bathroom. Even though I don’t have a headache or a cold, I pop two Tylenol PMs into my mouth, take a swig from the faucet, and tuck myself back into bed.

  As I wait for the medicine to take effect, my mind spins with all that has happened since the séance back in Jude. The terrifying voices and the disturbing visions. My parents’ whispered words in the hospital. Moving here to Thornsdale with the Edward Brooks facility down the street and Luka Williams next door. I think about Dr. Roth. I think about Luka’s mom failing both her pregnancy screenings. According to the government, he shouldn’t exist. His mother should have been “cured” seventeen years ago. But she wasn’t and now he’s here, my only proof that I’m not crazy—a boy who claims to have had dreams about me before we even knew each other. Dreams about me leading an army.

  What would Dr. Roth say to that?

  My eyes grow heavy as my mind wanders to my grandmother. A woman who died in a mental hospital. Did she really suffer from psychosis? The last thought I have before I nod off into medicated oblivion is that I wish she were still alive. I wish I could sit across from her and ask her questions …

  I’m standing on the rocky beach in my backyard, a little weak in the legs. A little lightheaded. I blink a few times and he’s there—sitting several paces away, arms draped over his knees, staring out at the waves, his perfect profile obscured by a thick fog. A thrill of excitement simmers beneath a film of lethargy that I can’t seem to shake. I take a step toward him. The movement must catch his attention, because he turns his head, then quickly stands, wipes the rocky sand from his palms, and closes the short distance between us. “You’re here.”

  I squint through the haze. “How long have you been waiting?”

  “A while.”

  “I had a hard time falling asleep.” I cup my forehead with my palm, wishing I could rattle away the fog in the air. It’s as if it’s seeping into my ears and clouding my brain. “I had to take two Tylenol PMs and then I started thinking about my grandma.”

  “Your grandma?”

  I forgot to tell Luka about my grandmother. I open my mouth to explain, but before any sound escapes, he drifts away. I grab for him, but my hand hits nothing but empty air and I’m no longer on the beach. I’m in a room—white and small and barren, yet somehow, the fog has followed me. A woman lies in bed, her hands and feet bound, her long, white hair wild about her face as she strains and thrashes against the leather restraints.

  “Help me.” The woman turns her crazy eyes on me, her voice not a shrill scream, but a rasp that raises the hair off my arms. “Please, help me.”

  I grab the shackles and pull, but they don’t budge. I whirl around, desperate to get help—a doctor or a nurse, somebody with a key who can let this woman go—and come face to face with a man. He has the kind of plain, forgettable features that could make him one of a hundred other men. The only identifying feature is a jagged, white scar that runs the length of his right cheek.

  He wears a pleasant, apathetic smile.

  “Who are you?” I ask.

  He takes a couple steps closer to the woman straining and thrashing in the bed. “That’s the wrong question, Little Rabbit.”

  Little Rabbit? My eyes rove over his apparel—blue scrubs, white coat. He must be a doctor. Which means he must have a key. “You have to let this woman free.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Sadly, she’s no longer my patient and it’s important that I follow orders. Just as important as it is for you to be careful. You don’t want to end up like her, do you?”

  I cast an anxious glance at the thin, desperate woman. “Who is she?”

  He steps closer, his head cocked, a smirk on his face. Like I am food and he is playing. “You mean you don’t know?”

  I look more closely at the woman. The color of her eyes, the slant of her nose, the shape of her chin. It’s all terribly familiar. A gasp tumbles past my lips and I shake my head. She is an older, female version of my father.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “But my grandmother is dead.”

  “Is she really?”

  My attention darts back and forth from the woman in the bed to the man with the scar. “Am I like her?”

  He runs his fingers along the sheet. “That’s up to you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re keeping dangerous company.”

  “Dangerous company?” My thoughts whir. Whose company could I be keeping that could possibly be dangerous? Surely not Leela, and the only other person I’ve been hanging out with is … “You mean Luka?”

  “Continue, and your life will become a living hell.” A smile cuts through his face. “Consider yourself warned.”

  The white room falls away and I am somewhere else. A man sits at a desk, slouched over, writing on a notepad in slow, sad strokes, the air so heavy with hopelessness and desolation that it seeps into my pores. He picks up a gun. A gun. But guns aren’t allowed. It was resting by his note and now it’s in his hand and he sticks the barrel into his mouth.

  “No!” I make to leap forward. To stop him. But the man with the scar is there, standing beside me, and he holds my arm.

  “Be careful, Little Rabbit. People will think you’re going mad.”

  The gun explodes with a loud crack. It ricochets off the walls and rings in my ears and I jolt upright in bed, lungs heaving in the dark, sweat pouring down my back, those final words reverberating through my mind.

  You’re going mad … you’re going mad … you’re going mad.

  I flip on my bedside lamp and grab the journal on my nightstand and write until my hand cramps, desperate to capture everything before it slips away. When I finish, the sky outside my window has gone from dark blue to a pale pink. I sit at my desk and jiggle the mouse on my computer and open a website with local news. Taking a deep breath, I poise my fingers over the keys. The tip of my ring finger presses the S, then my pointer finger reaches for the U, my middle the I, the other the C until the word sits in the search box.

  Suicide.

  Taking another deep breath, I hit enter and several news stories pop up. The one at the top is thirty minutes old. Family Man Commits Suicide in small California town. I click on the link and devour the story. A man, thirty-seven, unemployed. Married for ten years, with two daughters in elementary school. The police were called late last night when a neighbor heard the sound of a gunshot. His wife and two daughters—both in elementary school—were out of town visiting the mother’s family. The police found the man, in his bedroom, dead, along with a note of farewell. There’s a small thumbnail photograph of his face.

  It makes me push back from the computer.

  You’re going mad … you’re going mad … you’re going mad …

  I feel it. To the marrow of my bones. I throw on a sweatshirt and slippers and hurry down the stairs, wild and frantic. Mom pokes her head out from the kitchen, her hair rolled in curlers. “Tess?”

  But I don’t answer. I need air. I need Luka. I need to know what is happening. I’m about to tear open the door and escape into the cool, fresh morning air, but Mom grabs my arm. Her touch reminds me of the man with the scar and that old woman with the white hair and Dad’s nose. “What’s wrong?”

  I whirl around. “Is Grandma alive?”

  She doesn’t have to answer. The truth expands in the blackness of her pupils.

  Cold eggs and overcooked bacon sit in front of me at the kitchen table. Mom—a constant swirl of motion—has not yet changed out of her robe or taken the curlers from her hair. Pete looks from me to Mom to Dad
’s empty seat while the clock on the wall ticks into the silence. First period has already begun.

  I cross my arms, my confusion morphing into anger with each passing tick. I don’t understand why this has to be a big family meeting. I don’t understand why Mom had to call Dad, who left early this morning for work, or why she won’t say a word until he arrives. She should have told me the truth in the foyer. It’s more than obvious grandma is still alive. Pleading the fifth only confirms it.

  A car door slams shut outside and the front door opens. Mom stops her frantic movements at the sink and walks out of the kitchen. I want to follow her, make sure they aren’t coming up with more lies out in secret. But I know they will only send me away. So I curl my fingers beneath the bottom of the seat and ignore Pete, who only has me to stare at now.

  Dad comes in first, loosening his tie. Mom follows, worrying her bottom lip. He scoots out Mom’s chair for her to sit, then takes a seat with a loud sigh. When he meets my gaze, his face is as neutral as Dr. Roth’s. “What makes you think your grandmother is alive?”

  I raise my chin. “Does it matter?”

  Mom and Dad share a look.

  “It’s obvious she is. If she were dead you would just say so. Mom wouldn’t have called you back from work.”

  Pete looks at all three of us with narrowed, interested eyes. If he were a rabbit, his ears would be cocked back. The thought reminds me of the man with the scar. Why did he call me Little Rabbit? And what did he mean when he said Luka was dangerous company?

  Dad folds his hands over the table. “Your grandmother isn’t well.”

  “Isn’t? As in present tense?”

  He nods.

  Pete sits up straighter in his chair, his mouth open.

  I shake my head, confusion completely replaced by a hot anger that courses through my veins. “Why did you lie to us? Why did you say she was dead? Where is she? What’s wrong with her?” The questions come out in quick sputters, so close together it’s as if they are tripping over each other’s heels. I think about the old woman from my dream—her frail, wasted form shackled to that bed. I think about her raspy plea for help and her frantic eyes. “Is she safe? Is she—?”

  “Calm down, Tess,” Dad says. “She’s in a facility.”

  “A facility?”

  “Honey, we weren’t lying about her suffering from psychosis.” Mom twists and untwists a napkin with nervous fingers. “We weren’t.”

  “Why? Why would you lie about her being dead?”

  “We thought it was better this way.”

  “Better? How is this better? Tell me where she is. I want to go see her.” I scoot back my chair, but Dad reaches out and stops me from standing.

  “You can’t see her, Tess. None of us can.”

  “Why can’t we see her? Where is she? And what do you mean, ‘a facility’?”

  Dad slowly releases my arm, his shoulders rising and falling with a resigned breath. “She’s in a home for the mentally unstable.”

  “Where?”

  “Oregon.”

  “For how long?”

  “Fifteen years.”

  “Against her will?” I glare at him, then Mom. Tears pool in her eyes, but I don’t care. I never imagined my parents to be cruel or uncaring. Yet my father has had his own mother locked up for fifteen years?

  “She was delusional, Tess. She had very incoherent thoughts. Nothing she said made sense. She was admitted to a hospital for almost a year. The doctors diagnosed her with paranoid schizophrenia. Your mother and I would visit. She seemed to be improving. But then …” Dad folds his hands again and shakes his head.

  “Then what?”

  “Then she escaped. I was away at work and she showed up at our home while your mother was at the doctor for Pete’s two week checkup. A babysitter was with you. Your grandmother showed up and tried to take you. Thankfully, your mom got home before she could. She had you in her arms and she was babbling like a madwoman. We had to call the authorities. Your mother was terrified she was going to hurt you.”

  Dad’s story hits me like a glass full of ice water to the face. I sit there, in shock, blinking dumbly. My grandmother tried to kidnap me? Why? None of it makes any sense. “I don’t get it. Why did she want me? What did she say?”

  “It doesn’t matter. She had crazy thoughts in her head. She was unwell. By the time the police arrived, she didn’t even know where she was.”

  I look at my brother, who stares at me in the same way he stared at me back in Jude, after the séance—a glimmer of intrigue in his dark eyes.

  “After that, she was admitted into an institute for the mentally insane. We visited a few times, but our visits made the psychosis worse. Every time we saw her, she would …” Dad’s voice trails off. He stares at some spot over my shoulder, his expression far away.

  I lean over the table. “She would what?”

  “It doesn’t matter. She was completely lost by then. The doctors discouraged our visits. When she knew we were coming, she would refuse her medication and her condition would accelerate. So we followed the doctor’s orders and stopped coming. We never told you or Pete about this because it wasn’t your burden to bear. And anyway, it doesn’t matter. There’s nothing any of us can do.”

  “Doesn’t matter?” I push back my chair. “You didn’t see her the way I saw her. She was locked up like a prisoner. She was terrified.”

  Mom’s face pales. “See her? Honey, what are you talking about?”

  “She was in my dream last night.” Mom and Dad exchange worried, skeptical glances. Pete’s mouth gapes even wider. “You don’t understand. She was locked up. She was trying to get out, but she couldn’t.”

  The doubt on their faces makes me want to scream. It’s like I’m slipping away, dropping off into some unknown oblivion, and they are just sitting there watching it happen.

  “You don’t believe me.”

  Mom reaches across the table and puts her cold hand over mine. I want to jerk away from her touch. “Sweetheart, it was a dream.”

  “No, it wasn’t.” The words escape through clenched teeth. “It was real.”

  Dad rubs his jaw. “Tess …”

  “I’m not crazy.”

  “We don’t think you are.” Mom looks at Dad, then at me. “We’re just worried. And confused. We thought things were going well for you this past month. You’ve looked so happy. Leela’s a great friend. And Dr. Roth seemed to be helping.”

  “It was. He was. It was good. But then …” A headache forms in my temple. I close my eyes and dig my fingers into my hair. “I don’t know.”

  “We’ll talk to Dr. Roth. I’m sure there’s some medicine you can take.”

  “Medicine?” The word escapes like a pathetic squeak.

  “If there’s something that can help you with these nightmares, then there’s no shame in taking it, sweetheart.”

  My shoulders sag. Maybe Mom’s right. Maybe medicine is the only way I’ll ever get a shot at being normal. It’s obvious that something is not right in my head.

  “This is a hurdle, kiddo.” Dad cups his large hand around the back of my neck and gives it a reassuring squeeze. “Not an impenetrable wall. We’ll get over this. You’re not going to become my mother. We won’t let you.”

  “Dr. Roth is the best,” Mom says. “He’ll know how to handle this.”

  Dad nods. “We don’t want you to worry.”

  He says it like the choice is simple. Like all I have to do is put it out of my mind and go about my day. Only they don’t know. They didn’t see my grandmother and they didn’t see that man sticking a gun in his mouth. They don’t know that what happened in my dream happened in real life. They don’t know anything.