I thought of Ben, dying alone like Alice had, and the tears slippedfree and slid down my cheeks. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cried. “What happened?” I asked her.
“I don’t remember,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. It was fast. My time was over, that’s all. We only get so much time.”
I closed my eyes. This had always been here. Alice, Ben, my parents. Cathy Caldwell and the rest of them. You don’t put your past behind you, no matter how much you tell yourself you do. It sits waiting, patient, until you come back. You never get very far away. Especially when you’re me, and the place you come from is Fell. I would never get far away from this town.
“Tell me what to do, Alice,” I said.
“This is the wrong place to look,” she replied. “You won’t find him here.”
“Then where do I go?”
“You already know,” she said. “It’s all connected. He’s been telling you and telling you. You have to go back to the beginning. The real beginning.”
I had thought Ben’s birth was the beginning. That was why I was here. Did she mean to go back further than that? How? And to where?
My hand was clammy on the stall door, my tears drying on my cheeks. I was running out of time. I could feel it. “Is he my brother?” I asked her.
Silence.
I glanced down. The shoes were still visible under the door. “Alice?” I called.
Silence, and then a whisper. “It’s the wrong question. Be careful, Violet. Three of you went into the house. Only two of you will leave.”
“What does that mean?”
“I have to go.”
“Alice!”
The squeak of shoes on the floor, then silence.
I was cold now. I hadn’t felt threatened when Alice was here, but now a chill crawled up the back of my neck. I stood, pulling up my pants in a hurry, flushing the toilet. I pushed open the stall door.
The bathroom was empty. There was only my reflection in the mirror. My face was pale and my eyes were red. I quickly scrubbed my palms over my cheeks.
I stepped forward and turned on the tap.
There was a cold breath of air, and then Martin Peabody appeared in the mirror behind my shoulder. His tall form was familiar now. In his eyes was nothing but torment.
The edges of my vision went gray. I gripped the counter as the water hissed. I fought the dizziness. I couldn’t pass out again. Not here.
“Sister sent me,” Martin said.
I opened my mouth, but only a strangled sound came out. Humiliation upon humiliation, it seemed. I was not only going to see a ghost while I was on the toilet, but I was now going to pass out on this bathroom floor, alone.
Still, I fought it. I felt my nails scrabble against the hard counter. I tried to make my throat work. In the mirror, Martin’s hand came up. He was going to touch me, like the boy in the storage unit had. He was going to push me, grip the back of my neck the way Sister would, and it was going to be horrible, and I was helpless. This would happen over and over, and I would always be helpless.
Lisette,I thought.
There was a quick wash of sensation from Martin Peabody, as if he had brushed me with his fingertips. The sadness was icy and suffocating, and he had believed with every part of himself that it would never end, that he would feel like this forever. He had believed that to the last moment.
I dropped on weakened legs, falling to my knees, pulling away from Martin. As I went down in a dizzy spiral, my forehead knocked against the edge of the counter. The water was still running.
Not again. Not again.
The room spun. The floor came closer.
Somewhere, a door opened with a bang. Footsteps approached. This was going to get worse. Someone else was coming. There was more than one, there were too many, and I didn’t know how to—
