Experiment in Terror 06.5 And With Madness Comes the Light (3 page)

My head hurt. Creepy Clown Lady was talking
to me. Telling me my what? My medication didn’t work? She switched
it? Who? Perry? That made no sense.

Clown Lady’s voice continued. “It is for the
best. You need to be yourself. That’s the only way we connect
again. You need to remember me. Remember your Pippa. I know it’s
hard, you don’t want to remember the past. Neither of you do. But
it’s time to accept what happened. What happened to both of you. I
wish my family had let me stay with you, Declan. You needed someone
to take care of you. Someone who loved you like I did.”

Fuck this.

I quickly hit stop and shoved the devil’s
machine away from me. Was I still fucking wasted or what? There was
no way in hell, no way that I could be hearing what I thought I was
hearing. My pulse quickened, the veins in my wrist throbbing as I
tried to wrap my head around it.

I put the earphones back in and pressed play
again. Creepy Clown Lady repeated herself, and this time her words
were sinking in. Not only what she was saying, but how she was
saying it. Her voice. Her accent. Pippa.

My
Pippa.

I was flooded with memories—some horrible,
some wonderful—all of them involving a woman that was more like my
mother than my mother ever was. She had been old then too, but her
spirit was balls out, so much so that I couldn’t place her age. She
didn’t look like the ghostly apparition I had first seen on
Bainbridge Island back in the summer. She didn’t seem like anything
that could have loved and cared for me the way that Pippa did.

She went on, as if knowing how confused
and/or drunk I’d be. “Remember the days we used to spend down in
Central Park? The ghosts that walked among us? I’m one of them now.
But I’m different. Because I was different before. Just like you. I
can cross over when I choose. But I have to be careful. I’m being
watched, we all are. By the soulless ones who keep us here. The
demons.”

Suddenly the ring of a phone—my
phone?—blasted across the earphones. On the tape, I answered the
phone. Perry was no doubt on the other line.

The phone call didn’t disturb Pippa in the
slightest. “I don’t suppose you will hear this until later since
you don’t seem to hear me now. But when you hear this, know that
I’ll be around if I can and when I can. It’s getting trickier to
see you. I’m being watched, as I said. So I need you to stop all
your medication, Declan. It’s time to face what you are. And what
Perry is. And who I am to you. To both of you. Perry, if you’re
listening…ask your parents who Declan O’Shea is. And watch them
carefully. You’ll get the truth that I am not allowed to
reveal.”

The recorder went back to static and fuzz. I
slowly removed the earphones and sat back in my chair.

What. The. Shit?

The room swirled around me as my brain, my
poor drunk and bruised brain, tried to sift through Pippa’s message
and find the meaning in it. It was too much. Way too fucking
much.

My dead nanny was haunting me, and Perry
too. Somehow Perry’s parents knew my real name—but how and why? It
was time for us to face what we were. But what was that? And I had
to stop taking my medication.

My head reeled some more as I recalled what
Pippa had said earlier on. Perry had switched my medication. That
was why I had been seeing ghosts up until recently. That’s why I’d
seen Abby when I had never seen her before. Not since my breakdown
anyway.

That had to be a mistake though. Perry would
never,
ever
switch my meds on me. That wasn’t her style. She
was honest to a fault. Well, apart from the whole telling me she
wasn’t in love with me bit.

Oh god.

I jumped to my feet and brought my hollowed
out book from the shelf. I took out my pills, the ones I had
consistently been taking and really studied them. At first glance
they seemed fine. But one of the bottles had a little bit more in
it than the others did, which didn’t make sense since I always had
to take an equal amount of each.

I cleared my desk and shook out the contents
in neat little piles and then slowly started going through them,
counting each pill, looking for irregularities. The bottle that was
the most full had sixteen more pills than the other ones did. That
didn’t bode well. I picked up one of the small yellow ones and
peered at it—Z over 3926. I’d never examined my pills closely
enough to know if it said that before, so I quickly hopped on
Google.

In a second I learned that it was five
milligrams of diazepam. Valium.

And yet, somehow I couldn’t believe it.
There had to be some weird mistake. Perry would never do that to
me. She couldn’t…she wouldn’t.

I looked at the white pills next. There
wasn’t a mark on them; they were smooth and clean. But that didn’t
seem right either. Those were my anti-hallucinogens, the strongest
you could get. They’d have to be marked. With panic reaching around
me like one bad-ass boa constrictor, I Googled the name of my
medication. It should have R20 0168 on it. Or 7655 or
something.

These had nothing. They weren’t my
medication.

I’d been taking low-grade Valium and a
mystery pill for the last few weeks. My other pills still seemed to
be what they were, but that wasn’t enough to keep me at an even
keel.

Perry had switched my medication on me, for
who knows what reason. She’d seen me freaking the fuck out in an
alleyway, terrified out of my mind. She’d heard me tell her about
the mental institute. She was there to hear it all, my soul laid
bare in complete honesty. She watched me suffer, she discovered my
deepest fears.

And she hadn’t said anything.

For the first time in a while I was able to
ignore the heartache—the extreme, gut-wrenching betrayal—as anger
came buzzing through me like kamikaze pilots. I was mad. I was
livid. I was enraged. Nothing else that happened, nothing that I’d
heard on the tapes, meant anything to me at that moment. All I
could see and feel was that Perry had fucked with my life like I
was some god damn science experiment and lied through her brilliant
teeth while she watched me succumb.

I welcomed the anger with clenched fists and
open arms.

CHAPTER THREE

Apparently, the world didn’t stop just
because you did. Despite the days I spent in an emotional coma,
drinking and smoking my way out of my web of lies, Christmas was
still approaching. I didn’t really notice unless I left the house,
popping in at the shop across the street to get my jugs of
beer-to-go and bottles of wine. The twinkling lights, Mariah Carey
music, and false cheer were like the final nail in my coffin. Life
was going on at its shitastic rate, and yet, there I was, smelly,
barely clothed, and drinking myself to death. It didn’t fit. No one
deserved to feel better than I did. I wanted everyone to know the
endless rage and sorrow that wouldn’t scrub away. It wasn’t fair
that they escaped and I didn’t.

Sometimes I really hated Perry. I’d think
about her and feel nothing but this animosity, this dark fuel that
filtered through my veins like sludge. I wallowed in it, embracing
the hate, dancing with it, for hate was a much more potent and
powerful lover than sadness ever was. It made me feel vindicated
and alive.

But in the mornings, it would fade. Over
time, the anger would subside. And so would the heartache. I was
down to feeling nothing at all. It was brilliant.

Since I’d stopped caring, it made everything
else easier to deal with. I still managed to take Fat Rabbit out
for his walks, but other than that, I just didn’t give a shit. I
thought I was pretty good at it too. Once again, I was ignoring my
phone calls. In fact, I forgot to charge my phone and left it dead.
I didn’t check emails. I didn’t do anything.

Occasionally, I would think about Pippa’s
message to me. I guess I took some of it to my cold, cold heart,
because I stopped taking my medication. If the ghosts came after
me, so what? Who cared? It’s not like I needed to better myself
anymore. Besides, it might be fun to associate with the dead. They
were the only ones who were as unfeeling and empty as I was. They’d
be the perfect companions.

Then there was the whole thing about Declan
O’Shea, which of course was my name until my mother died and I took
her last name, Foray, to remember her by. Or at least remember my
guilt. I finally came to the conclusion that if Perry’s parents
knew who I was, it probably had something to do with the Swedish
Spectre of Clown College. Logic pointed to Pippa being Perry’s
grandmother or relative of some kind. But you know what? Whoop dee
fucking do.

Yes, the no fucks to give stage was
wonderful. I drank some more and ate tons of crap just because I
could. I was sleepwalking through life, and that was good enough
for me.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t good enough for
everyone. Apparently, I had friends and people who worried about
me. I couldn’t keep them out of my bubble for long.

It was two nights before Christmas when
Rebecca and her girlfriend Emily showed up at my apartment. It took
that moment for me to, once again, realize how out of control my
life had gotten. I thought I was just fine, sitting on the balcony
in the freezing cold, drinking my bourbon. I’d eaten bag after bag
of Doritos and was feeling a little hot. That might account for why
I was out there in my underwear. I mean, it all made valid sense in
my head at the time. You’re hot? Take off your clothes and sit
outside in near freezing temperatures. Enjoy the view. Enjoy the
darkness.

I don’t remember all that much, except for
the horror on their faces as I was shoved into the shower. Not a
nice steamy shower to get my cold bones back to a normal state, but
a cold shower that felt like murder on my frozen skin. So much for
not feeling anything. I hollered and yelped as Rebecca practically
assaulted me with cleaning products. Then I was even more helpless
as she dried me off and put jeans and a thick sweater on me.
Meanwhile, her partner in crime was out in the kitchen, pouring out
every bottle of booze I had and throwing every bag of chips into
the garbage.

Oh no, Hulk alert. Not my chips!

“Dex,” Rebecca said, leading me toward the
bedroom. “Pack your bags. We’re taking you with us.”

I glared at her as the waves of anger came
back. Perry’s betrayal, her hand squeezing my heart, it all came
back in an ambush. Everything I was avoiding was still there.

I was too irate and overwhelmed to speak so
Rebecca passed me off to Em, who kept her tiny hand affixed around
my arm while Rebecca started packing for me.

“I know you don’t want us to be here,” she
said, cramming my clothes into a small suitcase she dragged out
from the closet. “I know you want to be left alone so you can
continue drinking yourself into a selfish stupor like the arse that
you are. But you don’t have a choice. You’re coming with us. We’ll
take care of you until you’re back on your feet. I’m not saying you
have to change who you are, but Dex, you, right now, this is not
you. You’ve given up. And the Dex Foray that I know, never gives
up, no matter what life throws at him.”

“Perry,” I whispered, trying to find one leg
to stand on. “She switched my medication and never told me. She
wanted me to see the ghosts. She did that to me.”

Rebecca paused and gave me a thoughtful
look. “And you have every right to be angry. So be angry, Dex. It’s
better than being nothing at all.”

I felt like I was choking. My words came out
hoarsely as I gasped for air, as I allowed myself to feel. “It
hurts more than I know what to do with. I can’t handle this. I
can’t.”

Em squeezed my arm lightly and started
stroking my back. Rebecca sighed and came over to me, placing her
hands on either side of my face. “You’re one of my dearest
friends,” she told me, tilting my head down so she could look me
square in the eye. “I have a pretty good idea of what you can
handle. You’ll get over this, Dex. Perry will too. Whether that
means you’ll be back in each other’s lives, if that’s even what
you’d both want, I don’t know. But she hurt you. And you hurt her.
Even though you’re apart, you’re in this together. You’ll get out
of it together.”

She gave my cheek a light slap. “So buck up.
Put on your big boy knickers and deal with it like everyone else
has to when they get their heart broken. People lie and they hurt
you and they betray you. But they also make mistakes. You haven’t
been the perfect guy with her, Dex. Apart from the way things
ended, she had to be only your friend the whole time you were with
Jenn. She had to love you and suffer because you were too scared to
move on and make her yours. Does it make you feel better to know
that she was probably dying slowly inside, that you were breaking
her heart bit by bit?”

I swallowed hard. I felt better—for one
second. Then it passed, my anger going with it.

“No,” I admitted softly. “It doesn’t.”

Because even after all of this, I still
loved her. Love and hate were two sides of the same coin, and my
coin was destined to land with love facing up. And the minute I
made peace with those odds was the minute I’d start winning.

“Come on.” Em gave me a little tug. “You’re
in our hands now. You’ll be back to your obnoxious old self in no
time.”

I was looking forward to it. My old self
didn’t have permanently orange-stained palms from an excessive
Doritos consumption.

***

Originally, Emily and Rebecca thought they’d
just show up at my place (I’d given my extra key to Rebecca now
that Jenn was out of the picture) and drag me out to a holiday
party. Once they saw my trailer trash state of affairs, however,
their plans changed. I did go and live with them for about a week,
and it was the best thing that could have happened to me. After
falling one too many times, both of them made sure I was up again
and that I stayed up.