Becca Fitzpatrick: Silence

I opened my mouth, shut it. At last I managed a shocked, “What?”

“The police found you, got your statement, and took you home around two in the morning. That was the last anybody saw you. As for the guy who took you hostage … nobody knows what happened to him.”

Right then, all the threads converged into one. “I must have been taken from my house,” I concluded, working it out as I went. “After two a.m., I was probably sleeping. The guy who held me hostage must have followed me home. Whatever he hoped to accomplish at Delphic was interrupted, and he came back for me. He must have broken in.”

“That’s the thing. There was no sign of a struggle. Doors and windows were all locked.”

I kneaded the heel of my hand into my forehead. “Did the police have any leads? This guy — whoever he was — couldn’t have been a complete ghost.”

“They said he was most likely using a phony name. But for what it’s worth, you told them his name was Rixon.”

“I don’t know anyone named Rixon.”

Vee sighed. “That’s the problem. Nobody does.” She was quiet a moment. “Here’s another thing. Sometimes I think I recognize his name, but when I try to remember how , my mind goes blank. Like the memory is there, but I can’t retrieve it. Almost like … there’s a hole where his name should be. It’s the freakiest feeling. I keep telling myself maybe it’s just that I want to remember him, you know? Like if I remember him — bingo! We have our bad guy. And the police can arrest him. Too simple, I know. And now I’m just babbling,” she said. Then, softly, “Still … I could have sworn …”

My bedroom door creaked open, and Mom ducked her head inside. “I’m going to turn in for the night.” Her eyes traveled to the BlackBerry. “It’s getting late, and we both need our sleep.” She waited expectantly, and I caught her hidden message.

“Vee, I have to go. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Send the witch my love.” And she hung up.

“Do you need anything?” Mom asked, casually taking the Black-Berry from me. “Water? Extra blankets?”

“No, I’m good. ’Night, Mom.” I forced a quick but reassuring smile.

“Did you double-check your window?”

“Three times.”

She crossed the room and rattled the lock anyway. When she found it secure, she gave a weak laugh. “Doesn’t hurt to check one last time, right? Good night, baby,” she added, smoothing my hair and kissing my forehead.

After she backed out, I scrunched under my covers and mulled over everything Vee had said. A shoot-out at Delphic, but why ? What had the shooter hoped to accomplish? And why, of the presumably thousands of people at the park that night, had he chosen me as his hostage? Maybe it was sheer bad luck on my side, but it didn’t feel right. The unknown spun through my head until I was exhausted. If only—

If only I could remember.

Yawning, I settled in for sleep.

Fifteen minutes ticked away. Then twenty. Flopping onto my back, I stared slightly cross-eyed at the ceiling, trying to sneak up on my memory and catch it off guard. When that failed to produce results, I tried a more direct approach. I banged my head against my pillow, trying to knock loose an image. A line of dialogue. A scent that might spark ideas. Anything! But it quickly became apparent that rather than anything, I was going to have to settle for nothing.

When I’d checked out of the hospital this morning, I was convinced my memory was lost forever. But with my head cleared and the worst of the shock over, I was beginning to think otherwise. I sensed, acutely, a broken bridge in my mind, the truth on the far side of the gap. If I was responsible for tearing down the bridge as a defense mechanism against the trauma I’d suffered during my kidnapping, then surely I could rebuild it again. I just needed to figure out how.

Starting with the color black. Deep, dark unearthly black. I hadn’t told anyone yet, but the color kept streaking across my mind at the oddest moments. When it did, my skin shivered pleasantly, and it was as if I could feel the color tracing a finger tenderly along my jaw, tipping my chin up to face it directly.

I knew it was absurd to think a color could come to life, but once or twice, I was sure I’d caught a flash of something more substantial behind the color. A pair of eyes. The way they studied me cut to the heart.

But how could something lost in my memory during this time cause me pleasure instead of pain?

I let go of a slow breath. I felt a desperate urgency to follow the color, no matter where it led me. I longed to find those black eyes, to stand face-to-face with them. I longed to know who they belonged to. The color tugged at me, beckoning me to follow it. Rationally, it made no sense. But the thought stuck in my brain. I felt a hypnotic, obsessive desire to let the color guide me. A powerful magnetism that even logic couldn’t break.

I let this desire build up inside me until it vibrated powerfully under my skin. Uncomfortably hot, I wrestled out of my blankets. My head buzzing, I tossed and turned. The intensity of the buzzing increased until I shivered with heat. A strange fever. The cemetery, I thought. It all started in the cemetery.

The black night, the black fog. Black grass, black gravestones. The glittering black river. And now a pair of black eyes watching me. I couldn’t ignore the flashes of black, and I couldn’t sleep them away. I couldn’t rest until I acted on them.

I swung out of bed. I stretched a knit shirt over my head, zipped myself into a pair of jeans, and threw a cardigan over my shoulders. I paused at my bedroom door. The hall outside was quiet except for the reverberating tick of the grandfather clock carrying up from the main level. Mom’s bedroom door was not quite shut, but no light spilled from the crack. If I listened hard enough, I could just make out the soft purr of her snoring.

I moved silently down the stairs, grabbed a flashlight and house key, and let myself out through the back door, fearing the creaky boards on the front porch would give me away. That, and there was a uniformed officer stationed at the curb. He was there to divert reporters and cameras, but I had a feeling that if I strolled out front at this hour, he’d speed-dial Detective Basso.

A small voice at the rear of my mind protested that it probably wasn’t safe to go out, but I was propelled by a strange trance. Black night, black fog. Black grass, black gravestones. Glittering black river. A pair of black eyes watching me.

I had to find those eyes. They had the answers.

Forty minutes later I’d walked to the arched gates leading inside Coldwater’s cemetery. Under the breeze, leaves twirled down from their branches like dark pinwheels. I found my father’s grave without difficulty. Shuddering against the damp chill in the air, I used trial and error to find my way back to the flat headstone where it had all begun.

Crouching down, I ran my finger over the aged marble. I shut my eyes and blocked out the night sounds, concentrating on finding the black eyes. I threw my question out there, hoping they’d hear. How had I gotten to the point of sleeping in a cemetery after spending eleven weeks in captivity?

I let my eyes travel a slow circle around the graveyard. The decaying smells of approaching autumn, the rich tang of cut grass, the pulse of insect wings rubbing together — none of it illuminated the answer I so desperately wanted. I swallowed against the thickness in my throat, trying hard not to feel defeated. The color black, teasing me for days, had failed me. Shoving my hands inside the pockets of my jeans, I turned to go.

From the edge of my vision, I noticed a smudge on the grass. I picked up a black feather. It was easily the length of my arm, shoulder to wrist. My eyebrows pulled together as I tried to envision what kind of bird could have left it. It was much too big for a crow. Much too big for any bird, as far as I was concerned. I ran my finger over the feather’s vane, each satiny barb snapping back into place.