Steven James - The Rook

She took a few deep breaths, relaxed, and smoothed some shower gel across her shoulders and then down her arm and over the series of straight ridges on the inside of her right forearm.

She’d given these scars to herself with an X-acto knife and a razor blade during the last year, trying to find a way to let out some of the pain and sadness after her mom died. The blood always grossed her out, but the cutting seemed to help. At least a little.

But ever since October when this psycho serial killer guy who called himself the Illusionist had tried to kill her, all the other stuff in her life hadn’t seemed quite as bad. So, lately, over the last couple of months, she’d stopped cutting-mostly. She guessed that Patrick knew she still self-inflicted sometimes, but he didn’t make a huge deal out of it-which was cool because if he had, she probably would have done it more.

And of course, on the inside of her other arm, she had the scar the Illusionist gave her. That scar bothered her because it brought back memories of that day.

She’d rubbed tons of lotion on it every day, just like the physical therapist had told her to. It was supposed to help the scar go away, but it didn’t work. The scar was still there, and so were the memories.

Warm water poured over Tessa’s head. She lathered shampoo through her hair and let the water rinse out, leaving her hair dripping in straight, black tendrils along the back of her neck.

Memories. Memories.

Of the killer pressing the cloth against her mouth before she could even scream… Of lying tied up as he drove her toward whatever kind of twisted psycho lair he’d built in the mountains…

She ran her fingers through her hair. Time for the conditioner.

Memories.

It all came back to her, then, in a rush. The quiver of hope when she was finally able to cut herself free, and then the satisfaction of jabbing the scissors into the guy’s thigh, and then the confusion as the world outside the windshield started spinning, skidding, and everything was turning at the wrong speed in a smooth wide circle as he lost control and they headed for the cliff.

Snow.

It was snowing that day.

Death and ice and space reaching for her.

Now she was in the shower, a spray of hot water cascading over her head.

Now she was spinning toward the edge of the world, a twirl of snow falling all around her.

In the bathroom.

The front seat.

Standing. Falling. Waking. Dreaming.

Back in the shower, a blanket of steam enfolding her.

Back at the cliff, feeling the impact as they punched through the guardrail. And then she was dropping, plunging into the bottomless day, the snow swallowing everything in the world.

Falling.

And then.

An abrupt smack. Slamming into that tree halfway down the gorge. A strange moment when time stopped to catch its breath, to feel out what it would be like to inch forward again.

Groans next to her. The Illusionist smiling a dark smile, yanking the scissors out of his leg. And then.

Then.

Patrick’s voice floating down to her. That’s when the killer cut her, sliced her arm. And she was bleeding. Bleeding. Fading, watching the melting snow slide down the cracked windshield. The day was crying for her. And she was wrapped in a nightmare, slipping away. Falling again, but in a different way. Falling toward forever.

But Patrick came for her.

He came for her and he saved her. Like a father would, like a hero would, he risked his life to rescue her. Rappelling down, reaching out, catching her just in time.

She’d never thought of him in those terms before that day. As a father. As a hero. But it was true. He cared about her and she cared about him and they were a family. Kind of weird. Kind of screwed up, but still a family.

But it was confusing.

Sometimes she felt like a little girl who wanted to hold his hand, to call him Daddy; sometimes she felt like a young woman getting ready to move out and live on her own.

Caught between two worlds. Drifting. Falling.

Tessa turned off the water and stood still in the warm steam, letting the water drip off her body, her memories, her scars. After a moment she stepped out of the shower stall and wrapped a thick towel around herself.

And then there was that whole bizarre thing last night. That crazy homeless guy had actually killed himself right there, just like that, and if she hadn’t covered her eyes, she would have seen him die.

Falling headlong.

Falling and dying.

Tessa caught sight of her outline in the mirror, a faint reflection, distant and blurred, surrounded by steam and dreams. For a moment it hardly looked real. Just the vague shape of a girl with dripping black hair, faceless, emotionless, obscure around the edges. In a fog.

Her reflection reminded her of looking at a phantom.

An Eidolon, she thought, remembering the phrase from Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Dream-Land”: Where an Eidolon, named Night, On a black throne sits upright…

Poe really seemed to understand the landscape of pain, and she’d walked through it with him since her mom died, reading his poems and stories over and over, letting their stark images soak into her-the raven and the pit and the cask and the thumping heart. Usually after reading something once or twice, she could remember it pretty well, but she remembered some stanzas of “Dream-Land,” word for word.

There the traveller meets, aghast,

Sheeted Memories of the Past-

Shrouded forms that start and sigh

As they pass the wanderer by-

White-robed forms of friends long given, In agony, to the Earth-and Heaven.

Her reflection.

A ghost in the slim shape of her mother.

Sheeted memories of the past.

A phantom lurking in the land of dreams.

Tessa spread her fingers against the mirror. It felt warm against her fingertips, but cool too. She slid her hand across the glass, and her eyes and forehead became visible. But just that much. The rest of her still remained a ghost, wrapped in white, lost somewhere in the misty curls of thick, warm steam.

Caught between two worlds. Drifting. Falling.

A raven unable to fly.

And then Tessa snapped the rubber band against her wrist and did it again and again until the skin was red and raw.

But it didn’t help her feel better at all.

And the drops of water began to trickle down the mirror, as if her reflection were weeping to see her standing so sad and alone on the other side of the glass.

As I sat in the hotel lobby and waited for Tessa, I thought about the man’s death the night before. I’d told Detective Dunn I was going to untangle the circumstances surrounding John Doe’s death.

I intended to keep my promise.

Using my cell phone’s Internet browser, I logged onto the city’s digital video archives and reviewed the videos of the trolley’s departure, but found no images of men with black duffel bags boarding the trolley. So, the two men who climbed into the Ford Mustang were already at the scene when John Doe committed suicide.

I put a call in to the Bureau to run the plates on the Mustang. I also left a text message for the San Diego County medical examiner’s office to see if he’d been able to identify our John Doe from last night, and then I set up a meeting with Lieutenant Graysmith, the head of the SDPD homicide division. I wanted to find out more about Detective Dunn and his interest in John Doe’s death.

I looked around the hotel lobby again.

Still no Tessa.

I grabbed an apple from the bowl at the hotel’s registration counter.

She likes to sleep late, but since we only had a couple of days here in San Diego, she’d agreed to get up by nine, and that was over an hour ago.

After I finished the apple, I checked the time and realized I’d been awake for over five hours. No wonder I was so hungry. I pushed myself out of the leather lounge chair and was halfway to the elevator when I heard heavy footsteps behind me and a harsh, growling voice that I recognized right away. “Morning, Pat.”