Lisa Gardner - Live to Tell

He set me on the pavement. Run, my head commanded, even as my legs crumpled and I fell against my captor. Andrew was strong. I remembered his stories of running six miles in soft sand. Now he hefted me easily onto his back in a fireman’s hold. I tried to kick out with my legs, but couldn’t get any momentum.

With me in place, Andrew trudged toward a large house I didn’t recognize. He pushed open the front door and strode into the darkened foyer.

“Honey, I’m home,” he called out.

Upstairs, I heard a woman begin to weep.

Memory is a funny thing. My entire life had been defined by one episode, that until today, I’d assumed lasted no more than forty minutes. In my memory, my father was holding the gun. In my memory, my father shot himself, instead of me. In my memory.

Andrew removed my gag. I opened my mouth to scream, and he pressed a finger over my lips.

“Shhh, don’t forget about Evan and his mother and father. Surely you’d like to save one family.”

I closed my lips and stared at Andrew. We were upstairs, in a pink ruffled bedroom that clearly belonged to a young girl. I didn’t see any sign of her, and the bed was made, so I was hoping that meant she was no longer around, or maybe this room had been staged for my benefit. I wasn’t sure, and the not knowing kept me silent.

I studied Andrew, a mouse pinned by a cat, desperate for a glimmer of escape.

“What do you mean?” I asked. My mouth felt cottony from the gag. I couldn’t get enough saliva to enunciate clearly. I licked my lips, but it didn’t help.

Andrew set the flashlight between us. I’d grab it and bash it against the side of his skull, except my hands remained tied behind me. He’d released my ankles, allowing us both to sit cross-legged on the floor. I had my back against a wall of dark windows. He had himself situated between me and the bedroom door.

I didn’t hear crying anymore. The house had gone eerily quiet, the silence freaking me out more than the noises had. Bad things happened in places that were this hushed.

“Evan is an old soul,” Andrew stated.

This sounded like the Andrew I knew, so I nodded.

“He feels too much, is saturated by the negativity of this world. Other, crueler souls haunt his dreams. They seep into his waking consciousness. They encourage him to do bad things, such as kill his own mother. It’s a terrible way to live, such a young boy, fighting a war nobody else can see.”

I’d heard this spiel before, so I nodded again.

“He’s not the only one, Danielle. There are other souls caught in a horrible abyss. They cannot return to this world for a fresh set of experiences, nor can they journey to any other plane. They are trapped in the black hole of unfinished business. This is the Hell writers such as Dante described for us. It is a horrible, horrible existence, Danielle, for it has no end. Old, sensitive souls trapped for eternity.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but I nodded again. Gag was gone. Ankle bindings were gone. If he’d just release my hands, I might have a chance of winning this.

“People fear death. They’re bound by primitive notions of Heaven and Hell. But that assumes we exist only in one dimension. Once you accept that souls are capable of moving among many spiritual planes, then you understand the greater truth of our existence. Physical death is nothing, merely a blip on a soul’s radar screen. Ozzie and his parents-they’re not gone; they’ve simply moved to the next set of experiences. Ishy, Rochelle, Tika, and baby Vivi. Again, not destroyed, just set free from an unfortunate corporal existence.”

“You killed the Harringtons and the Laraquettes?” I exclaimed in horror.

“I enabled them to move on to the next plane of existence,” Andrew corrected.

“Oh my God. And Lucy, too?”

“I’ve already explained to you that she’s happier now. You know what happened to her here. Surely you can understand it’s been better for her to journey on.”

“You hanged her?”

“She saw through me, straight into my heart. A powerful soul, that one. So I waited until it was late, and the unit lightly staffed. Then I simply led her out of the ward. She followed willingly. Again, she’s much happier-”

“You sick son of a bitch!” I interrupted hotly. “You had no right! Maybe Lucy followed you through the doors, but what about when you entered the radiology room? What about when you tied the knot in the rope? You murdered her. You violated the choice she made to exist on this plane of being. How could you!”

Andrew glared at me. “You’re not listening-”

“You weren’t even poisoned, were you?” I interrupted again, pissed off to the point of recklessness. “That was just a little charade to get you away from the unit. You’re a fraud. I knew it!”

“Quiet!”

“Fuck you!”

Suddenly, Andrew wasn’t sitting across from me. Suddenly, he loomed over me, his face inches from mine, the fury in his eyes threatening to drill me to the floor. I wanted him to be crazy. I wanted to see a rabid light shining in his gaze. Instead, the determination in his face frightened me to the core.

“You will believe. You will visit the interplanes, you will open your mind and open your heart. Or you and everyone in this house will die. Are you paying attention yet, Danielle? Are you listening to me?”

Wordlessly, I nodded. His blue eyes were burning, burning, burning. He was on fire with something. Faith, I thought. Mad faith.

When he spoke next, his words were clipped and direct. “I’ve hidden a gun in this house. It contains four bullets. I know where it is, and the person who killed your family knows where it is. Now we’re going to have a race. Whoever finds the gun first gets to use it. To be fair about it, I’ll give you a ten-minute head start. You may waste time searching for a phone, if you’d like. The phone service has been disconnected, just as the electricity has been terminated. Also, this house was set up by Evan’s mother to contain him twenty-four/seven. The locks are key-in, key-out, and there’s only one key that works.” Andrew lifted a chain around his neck, to reveal the single key.

“Finally, before you resort to smashing windows or other such nonsense, understand that you’ll be deserting Evan; his mother, Victoria; and his father, Michael, who did me the favor of showing up at the hospital. When the ten minutes are up, I will shoot them. I doubt you can break a window, race to the neighbors’, and summon help before ten minutes expire, particularly as your hands will be tied for the duration of our little race. Continue your policy of denial and people will die. Face your past, open your heart, and you have a fighting chance. You’ve driven me to this, Danielle. But I’m trying to be fair about things.”

“You want… you expect me to find my father’s soul on the spiritual interplanes and ask him about the hidden gun? I’m supposed to… talk to him?”

Andrew tilted his head. “What do you fear most, Danielle? That he won’t offer to save you? Or that he will?”

“You’re insane.”

“An explanation that enables you to continue your policy of denial. Let me give you a hint: Who saved you that night, Danielle?”

“Sheriff Wayne.”

“How did he get there? You never left your room and your house was located miles from the nearest neighbor. Who heard the gunfire? Who called nine-one-one?”

I stared at him blankly, not getting it.

Andrew sighed, shook his head at me, then rose to his feet. “You focus too much on the corporal world, Danielle. You hate yourself for not saving your family’s lives. I want you to fight for their souls. You don’t know the truth of that night. You refuse to see what you can’t accept. And in doing so, you’ve damned them all, especially my father.”