Don't Breathe a Word (15 page)

Chapter 17

Phoebe

June 8, Present Day

E
vie’s door had been forced open; the wooden frame was splintered as if it had been hit hard with a battering ram. Phoebe took a deep breath, pushed the door in with her fingertips, and saw that the stairs were dark. She groped around for a light switch. Her fingers found one and flicked it. Nothing happened.

She left the stairway and went back to the Mercury, where she grabbed the heavy metal Maglite from the trunk. Sam had put it there along with a few tools, some road flares, and an emergency silver space blanket. Sam believed in being prepared.

“This would sure be a lot easier if you were here,” she mumbled. If she found out later that he was pounding back beers with some of the guys from work while she was out risking her life to save his cousin, she’d kill him.

“Here goes nothing.”

Holding the flashlight with both hands like a weapon, she made her way down the stairs into Evie’s dark cave of an apartment.

Evie hadn’t been exaggerating. The place was trashed—the same interior decorating team who’d visited her house over the weekend had come to Evie’s. A horrible thought occurred to her: Had she and Sam led them here? What if they’d been followed from their house Saturday night?

However they got here, the scene looked all too familiar. Chairs were tipped over, the upholstery sliced open and stuffing pulled out. The television was smashed. Books and papers were scattered. Phoebe found another light switch and tried it: nothing.

“Evie?” Her voice trembled as she called in just above a whisper. “You here?”

Nothing. Not so much as a murmur. Then, all at once, came a roaring sound from above. Phoebe gripped the flashlight like a baseball bat and crouched down, ready to pummel whatever came at her. But there was only the gurgle of water. Someone in the apartment above had flushed the toilet.

Phoebe gave a weak laugh to comfort herself.

Holding the light out in front of her, she made her way through the kitchen, where dishes and glasses lay shattered on cracked linoleum. Then she moved down the hallway. On the left was the bathroom. The shower curtain had been ripped down, the mirror on the medicine cabinet smashed. To her right was what she guessed to be Evie’s bedroom. The door was opened just a crack. It was covered with red paint—not blood, definitely not blood, Phoebe assured herself. It was rough, slapped on in a hurry, but in a second she recognized it. The same symbol Sam found on their car when they made it out of the woods.

Teilo
, Sam had whispered.
The King of the Fairies
.

Phoebe held her breath and gently toed the door open, swinging her body into the door frame, pointing her light like a gun, secretly wishing it was one.

And what was it she thought she’d see? A fairy? Tinker Bell, she could handle. The bastards behind what happened to them at the cabin were another matter. But she saw no movement, no sign of life, human or otherwise.

The mattress was overturned and eviscerated. Feathers from a down comforter covered the floor like fluffy Christmas snow. Magazines and books were scattered, as were clothes. A small chest of drawers stood empty, all the drawers pulled out and smashed to useless splinters. The sliding doors to the closet were closed, and from behind it Phoebe heard a small thump, then a dragging sound.

Phoebe froze, listening.

Her mind flashed to the sounds she would hear at night as a kid, the scuttling and scraping beneath her bed. She’d lie with her head under the pillow using all of her power to try to convince herself that it was just her imagination. Then, eventually, she’d need air and she’d lift the pillow slowly, telling herself that she’d keep her eyes closed, but she always looked. And he was always there. Standing at the foot of her bed.

There was another muffled thud from inside Evie’s closet.

Cold sweat beaded on Phoebe’s forehead.

She used to think it was her mother’s fault. That he only came into houses with drunk mothers who never checked on their daughters; that maybe it was really her mother he was after and he was just waiting for Phoebe to fall asleep so he could go get her ma.

She told herself that maybe it was all just her imagination. Maybe she was going nuts. One time her ma drank so much, she hallucinated cockroaches everywhere. Maybe it was like that.

But she knew it wasn’t true.

And what did she think now, at thirty-five? Now that she was supposed to know better?

There was another thump from inside the closet and Phoebe’s bowels felt icy.

You’re way too old for the bogeyman
, she told herself.

She raised the flashlight, counted to three, and jerked the door open.

Evie was there, crouched on the closet floor among mismatched shoes, dressed only in bra and panties. She still had on the silver chain with the old key dangling from the end. Her lips quivered, and her narrow face was flushed and wet with tears. She had feathers from the comforter in her tangled hair. Her left eye was nearly swollen closed. In her hands she held a small handgun, which was pointed directly at Phoebe’s chest.

Phoebe moved the light out of Evie’s eyes and cast it back at her own face.

“Evie,” she said in her calmest voice, “it’s me, Phoebe. I’m here to help. Put down the gun.”

There was no relieved recognition in the other woman’s eyes. The gun stayed pointed at Phoebe’s chest, the hand that held it trembling.

Phoebe licked her lips, took in a breath. If Evie shot her now, even if it was an accident, she’d be killing two people. What was she thinking coming here? It wasn’t just her life she was putting in danger. What kind of mother-to-be made choices like that?

“They came,” Evie whimpered. “They said they’d be back.”

“Then we better get moving, okay?” Phoebe whispered. “I’m going to take you someplace safe. Just put down the gun and we’ll get you dressed and be on our way, okay?”

Slowly, reluctantly almost, Evie lowered the gun. She looked so broken there, crouched on the closet floor in her underwear. Bones and tendons bulging out, making her look more like a puppet than a flesh-and-blood person. Phoebe held out her hand.

“I’ve got you,” she said, helping Evie up. “You’re safe now.”

“W
here have you been?” Sam demanded. Then, as she walked through the door, his eyes fell on his cousin.

“Evie? What the hell happened?” he asked.

“Didn’t you get my note?” Phoebe asked, pushing past Sam to get some ice from the kitchen. “Didn’t you play the message on the machine?” She wrapped the ice in a clean dish towel.

“I didn’t see any note,” Sam said. “And there were no messages on the machine. I got home an hour ago, saw the groceries still in bags in the kitchen, ice cream melted, and I was worried sick. I tried to get you on your cell, but you left the damn thing on the kitchen counter. I’ve called everyone we know. I was about to call the cops.”

Phoebe came back into the living room and looked for the note, checked the machine, and saw the message had been erased.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“Teilo,” Evie said, shaking her head. “This is all his work.”

Surely no one had come into the house, taken her note, and erased the message. Phoebe must have erased the message herself by accident. And the note . . . shit, there was no explaining the note. She knew damn well she’d left it there.

“I think,” Phoebe said, turning back to Evie, “that you should start at the beginning. Tell us everything that happened. But here,” she said, handing the ice over, “put this on your eye first. Maybe it’ll get some of the swelling down.”

She hadn’t tried to talk to Evie about the attack. She had grabbed Evie some jeans and a T-shirt and got her out of the apartment and on the highway. Evie rode curled up in the backseat in a fetal position, a jacket over her head. Phoebe heard Evie counting backward from one hundred over and over. She glanced in the rearview mirror to see Evie’s whole body trembling under the jacket.

“I was home. Right . . . duh,” Evie said, hitting herself on the head lightly with the hand that wasn’t pressing the dish towel full of ice to her eye. “I’m always home. I mean, where else would I be?” She was still shaky, but less so. She licked her chapped lips and looked around the apartment with her one good eye, which fell on the aquariums. “What the hell’s all this?” she asked. “Lab rats or something?”

“Phoebe’s menagerie,” Sam explained. “Home of the broken and neglected. A biting hedgehog, a one-eyed snake, and a couple of rats no one but Phoebe could love.”

“No shit?” Evie said, stepping toward the tanks. “You’ve really got a hedgehog in there?”

Phoebe nodded. “I’ll introduce you to him later. In the meantime, you were telling us what happened at your place?”

“Right,” Evie said, taking a seat on the couch. “I was watching some crappy infomercial on TV—you know, do our program and you’ll lose thirty pounds, have more self-confidence, and have beautiful people lined up at your door begging for a date. I was sitting in the recliner and must have dozed off. The next thing I know, I open my eyes and it’s dark. No TV. No lights. And I have those heavy curtains on my windows, so it’s not like much daylight is gonna sneak through there.”

Phoebe nodded, remembering how dark the apartment had been, how none of the light switches had worked.

“And the room is . . . full of people.” Evie’s unhurt eye was wide, panicked at the memory.

“How many people?” Sam asked.

“It felt like ten, but it may have been just three or four. I don’t know. They were moving fast. Really fucking fast. Like otherworldly kind of fast.”

Phoebe remembered how fast the old woman had run, shedding clothes and years until she was young.

“So what? Are you saying fairies trashed your place?” Sam asked.

“No,” Evie said, looking down at her ragged fingernails. “These were no fairies. Not like what we saw when we were kids, anyway. No twinkling little lights. These were people. And they meant business. They clobbered the shit out of me before I could get up from the chair. I barely fought back. I was out cold after the second punch. When I came to, I was still in the chair but stripped down to my underwear. And they had all left. Except for one. I heard this voice calling down from the top of the stairs.
We’ll be back
, he says. And I’m thinking, hell no. Then I guess I must have fainted again or something. When I came to, I called you guys. Then I remembered the gun I keep in my closet, inside my left winter boot. I got it just after Elliot was killed—intended to use it to off myself, but I never had the guts. Pathetic, right?” She looked at Phoebe as she said this.

No, Phoebe shook her head. She wanted to take the other woman in her arms, rock her, find a way to fix what was broken.

“Anyway,” Evie said, chewing on a nail, spitting the little sliver she’d bitten off onto the floor, “I crawled into the closet, found the gun right where I’d left it, and just stayed put. I was too terrified to do much else.”

“Did you get a look at any of them?” Sam asked.

“No. It was dark. And like I said, they all moved so fast.”

“What do you think they were after?” Phoebe asked.

“I don’t know, but whatever it is, they sure didn’t find it. I can’t go back there. Shit.” She put down the towel of ice and glanced over at Phoebe, her eyes frantic and little-girlish. “What am I going to do?”

“You’ll stay here,” Phoebe told her. “With us. As long as you need. As long as it takes us to get to the bottom of all of this.”

Evie gave her a relieved smile, and Phoebe reached out, took her hand, and squeezed it. Evie’s fingers were bony and cold. “You must be starving,” Phoebe said. “I’ll go fix us all some dinner. Make yourself at home.”

“W
hat were you thinking?” Sam whispered when he came up behind her in the kitchen. Phoebe was putting on water for pasta. “She can’t stay here.”

Phoebe couldn’t believe her ears. She set the pot down, turned up the flame. “She’s your cousin, Sam. She’s got nowhere else to go.”

“But we don’t have room. We hardly know her.” This was not the Sam she knew. The Sam who was happy to let old college friends he hadn’t seen in years crash at their place whenever they were passing through.

Phoebe gave him a puzzled look. “But, Sam—”

“The woman is obviously a fucking basket case,” Sam said.

There was an awkward little coughing sound, and they both turned toward the doorway of the kitchen, where Evie stood, leaning against the frame. Her bony shoulders were hunched, her left eye weepy and swollen.

“You’re right,” she said to Sam, her jaw clenched tight. “I’ll go. I can call my mom. Maybe she can drive down and get me.”

“No,” Phoebe said quickly. “You’ll stay with us. We could use your help trying to make sense of all this. You were there that summer.”

She wasn’t letting go of this link to Sam’s past. Evie was the one person other than Sam who might have some actual insight into what happened to Lisa. And the truth of it was, she really liked Evie. She wanted to get to know her, to help her. Evie didn’t have anyone else, and Phoebe remembered all too well what that was like. Before Sam, she didn’t have anyone. Not anyone who could be counted on.