Finding Alice (Alice Clark Series) (8 page)

“I didn’t.” The words barely trickled off of my lips. Regardless, there he was: my attacker’s eerie, inhuman face staring back at me. The skin where the bruises once were ached as if that horrible night happened only yesterday. I turned away, hoping it would numb the pain; it didn’t. The image stayed burnt in my mind. The attacker wore a chiseled jaw line, not elegant like Cole’s but creepy and sunken in as if he was thousands of years old. His skin was like leather, with eyes set deep and almost glowing. I looked at Cole to find an unusual look on his face. He looked as if somehow, he recognized the face of my attacker. How would that be even plausible? This couldn’t be his actual face; more something I created in its wake to help me through that horrible moment in my life. “Say something,” I demanded with a slight panic to my voice.

“You’re trembling.” I held my hands out and saw he was right. I was. I stuffed them in my pocket and against my will, as if compelled to do so, returned my gaze to that horrifying image I had placed all over my own home. “I shouldn’t have pushed. I’m sorry.” He grabbed my hands out of my pockets and pulled me from the room. He shut the door behind us and I excused myself to take a shower. It’s where I go to think and relax. Until then, I thought it was where I let go of all the bad things that had happened to me but who was I kidding? The only time I ever truly let anything go was in my art.

I climbed into the soothingly hot shower, eyes held shut. I never should have gone in that room. The last few weeks with Cole had felt like everything to me. I feared walking into that room was inviting that monster, and all of my baggage, back into my life and there was no way to make it go away again. I of all people knew there was no such thing as happily ever after. This was only the beginning…of
what
, I still was not sure.

143 Anathema St
. My eyes snapped open. It all started after that dream of the field. I knew in my heart it had to do with Cole, but what or how exactly, I was still not sure. I felt a heaviness against my soul, as if the world was resting on my shoulders. If I was going to figure out what was going on, I’d have to start by finding that field. I was either crazy or it truly was connected.
Now my head hurts.

After the water ran cold, I turned the shower off and wrapped a towel around me. I walked into my room to my jewelry box of feathers. I could see the hinge wasn’t latched. I always latched it. A note was set in front of it with a glass of water and an aspirin.

“Running errands, I’ll be back tonight. Try and get some rest.”

Cole

“Easier said than done,” I mumbled. I picked up the glass of water and played with the pill in my fingers for a moment while studying my unhinged jewelry box. I took the pill with half of the glass of water and opened the box. Nothing abnormal at all, except before today, the box smelled like the feathers kept securely inside were bathed in sand. He had to have taken his feather; it was the only explanation. I shut the box, clasping the hinge properly. At least my feathers were still here. After waking up in a bed of feathers and that first kiss with Cole when the feathers were floating above us only to all disappear, I needed these to actually be in this box. I needed some form of proof for myself that this was all real and I wasn’t going completely insane.

I flopped onto the bed. I didn’t feel relaxed at all; if anything, I felt more anxious. Laying there in silence used to be comforting. Now I felt vulnerable with him gone. I closed my eyes, trying to regain the sense of composure I used to own. I laid in the stillness of myself for what seemed like hours, only to be mere minutes. It was just long enough for my headache to lift a bit. I got up and got dressed in my usual plain Jane wardrobe.
Why must I call it that?

I grabbed my iPod and threw something soothing on: my favorite playlist, that was primarily Breaking Benjamin and 30 Seconds to Mars. I headed to my easel and threw a fresh canvas on it. I let myself go deep into the music, letting go of all I had been through. This was my release, my moment of peace. I ran my hand across my supplies, feeling their calling under my fingertips the way they used to feel before Cole. I stopped on a paintbrush feeling jealous of my charcoal usage over this semester. I plucked it like a string on a viola, deep and haunting. I paid no attention to what colors, or lack thereof, I was grabbing. There was some part down in the depths of my soul that took over when I worked. I never had any idea what I was creating until it was over.

I longed for the taste of dark roast coffee. I set my headphones down, feeling I had taken my work as far as I could for now. It was never done, even when it was. I made a cup of coffee, leaning over it and breathing in the steam. It danced in my nostrils almost as well as the scent of Cole did. I turned back to my painting to see not one cell of a past dream or moment in it. It was my first original piece of work since meeting Cole. My dreams seemed to continuously pour out of me onto my canvases.

This piece was dark and sad, and yet there I was; at least it resembled me. Me…there in the center of this giant canvas with a wingspan all my own. Beautiful wings stretched out as the canvas attempted to confine them. An intense, bright glow was bursting from my chest with such explosion; it must have been the reason for the pain across my face. Shadows of those I could only assume were the people in my life shielded their eyes from me, or my demise. It was amazing. If only I was in fact that strong and glorious.

I finished my coffee with a sense of hope for the first time today. It was short-lived, though, when my brain kicked back on and into overdrive. I opened my laptop on the table where Cole and I had been writing our final papers. Max gave it to me when I told him I was going to start taking classes; such a fatherly thing for him to do. I loved him for it.

I opened the extremely slow Internet and opened Google Maps. I entered 143 Anathema St. I stared long enough to see how to get to it, noticing there were no other functioning businesses nearby and there were wooded areas set both in front of and behind it. I closed the laptop. A part of me was insisting this was a trap implanted into my mind in my sleeping state to lure me into the darkness alone. Against any better judgment, I grabbed my keys, covered up my painting, and wrote a note.

“I swear I rested. I finished my Art Medium project. No peeking! Checking this place out. Wanted to let you know in case I don’t beat you home.”

I paused and stared at the word “home.” It warmed me deep through my bones to think of this as our home.

“I’ll be back soon. The address is 143 Anathema, just so you know where I am.”

Love,

Alice

I laid it on the computer and headed out the door. Two things dawned on me after I had already left. First, I hadn’t written a note since I ran away from Jill and Robert, signed “Jane.” That made my stomach flip into a frenzy of guilt and concern that maybe I wouldn’t return. Second,
I signed it “Love.” Shit.
I tried brushing it off; this may have worked if I wasn’t imagining his breathtaking smile as he read the word. I pressed the pedal of my car to the floor.
Maybe I’ll beat him home
. My heart skipped a beat.

I parked in the street in front of the store. I shut my door and heard the echo of it extend out for what sounded like miles. This was it, a place I swore I had never really been to, looking exactly as it did in my daydreams and my nightmares. I walked toward the field ahead. The familiarity of it caused shivers to travel throughout me. The entire space felt so ominous. At least the daylight was on my side for now. No matter how strong the sun may have been, it looked as if not one single ray was penetrating the eerie woods ahead of me. I continued scanning the space, looking for similarities and differences from my dreams. The colors around me were not as intense as they were in my dreams and I was honestly a little disappointed. It was more like a sepia toned photograph, which was not helping my nerves in any way. I reached the edge of the woods, skimming my foot against the obvious line of thirsty grass and dry dirt. I felt a thumping echoing in my eardrums, realizing it was a heartbeat racing…but not my own. I turned toward my car to find Cole running toward me in a frantic state.

“Cole?” He moved across the field effortlessly. I saw his legs moving but it looked more like he was gliding across the field, like a magnet being pulled toward me. He stopped in front of me, looking out of breath; but you would never have known it when he spoke.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

I stood in shock, feeling his anger race under my own skin. I stuttered, attempting to remember what I was doing there. I watched him take a deep breath; his shoulders relaxed and I felt him begin to calm down. “I’m sorry, but we really should go,” he said as he reached out and grabbed my arm. I pulled it back, staring at this different version of him standing in front of me. He regained his composure again.

“I needed to see if it was real,” I heard myself say.

“We shouldn’t be here.”

“I need to follow this through. Cole, I need you to let me do this,” I pleaded.

“This is not a good idea. I mean the address alone is…” He bit his tongue.

“It’s an address Cole. Why are you in such a panic? Have you been here?”

“Anathema? Jeez, Alice! It means “accursed to evil.” Yes I have. Sort, of anyway.”

I stood stiff staring blankly.
Accursed to evil? Maybe this is a trap. Wait. What does he mean, “sort of?”
I came back to myself and looked at him, realizing he in fact heard me questioning him. He ran his fingers through his hair in newfound frustration.

“I’m sorry, Cole. I forget.” I tried to hide my embarrassment.

“I remember this place from a dream after a story I was told about it.”

“I had a dream about it too. I walked through the field into the darkness of voices and found you on the other side.” He grabbed my hands and placed them on his chest. Our heart beats raced each other’s but in a sense, raced to fall in sync. I could see him searching cautiously for the right words. He kissed my forehead, sending a beautiful electric current through me all the way down to my toes. He let go of my hands and regretfully signaled to enter the woods. I knew it wasn’t what he wanted but there he was, putting aside everything for me. I hoped he wouldn’t have to regret it.
Do not let go of me
, he demanded. I nodded and we entered the darkness.

Stepping no more than ten feet in leaving the light behind us, we disappeared behind the trees. The ground was rough and with every step, I crushed small decaying branches under my shoes, which sounded more like bones breaking. At least, branches were what I was telling myself it was. I could feel Cole all around me like a blanket. Protecting me seemed to override his own desires for survival and safety. He just had this healing energy about him; it tended to make me feel indestructible. I didn’t think that was a quality I should have considered pursuing.

A warning teased in the dark only to be silenced by the feeling that I was being pulled in different directions, all of which were not the way I wanted to go. Then it happened: the echo of the voices—singular at first, at a barely audible note. Cole’s panic flared, trembling the shield he wrapped around us. It was mere seconds before one voice turned into thousands of cries and pleading screams in our heads, almost dropping us to our knees. This time, I couldn’t follow the Cole in my dream’s voice to the river bank. We fell to the ground, groaning in pain. I did this to us. I may have just killed us. Our groans were loud and animalistic.
I can’t take much more of this
. No sooner as I heard our voices in unison did I feel Cole’s strong arms wrap tightly around my waist, pulling me back to his chest. He screamed in agony louder than all of the cries; I heard the faint sound of actual bones breaking and felt the vibration of it as it echoed through him and into me. I couldn’t miss the scent of his blood; it was filled with his smell of sand and water, intensified to an unexplainable degree. He almost squeezed the breath right out of me as I felt him lift me from the ground.

The stench of death in the cold breeze whisked across my face as the last breath of air slipped from my lungs. I gasped searching for more air. His grip finally loosened enough for me to deeply breathe in the fresh air above the trees. I choked on it on the verge of violently. I opened my eyes in shock as we flew over the dark-infested field of the dammed. I looked up at his face, which was practically glowing from the sun reflecting off of his skin. As far as I could see in either direction, glorious, smoky wings pulsated up and down, over and over again. They were more beautiful than I had ever dreamed, and so was he. He looked at me with such sadness as we descended to the river bank that we knew would be there.

It felt like we sat in silence for an eternity. He was angry at me for making him come to this place, more so for forcing him to show me something he wanted no one to know about. There was no denying that my dreaming state was telling me something important, something that was in fact true. I finally stood up, sore but stronger than I ever had felt in my life, and walked up to him. He sat near the water, hidden from me by his wings. Blood seeped from the wounds they caused. I could feel his pain inside me; the heartache was worse than the initial rip as the wings tore through his back. I felt a piece of my soul reach out to him. He sat their silent and hidden, refusing to even look at me. I was so afraid he was disgusted with me. I stood in the water in front of him and grabbed his face between my palms. He turned away but I was stronger than him. I turned him back, kissing him; nothing in return. I stared at him as he watched a single tear betray me as it rolled down my cheek. He softened and wiped it away from my face.

“I put us in horrible danger by doing this,” he said as he glanced at his wings.

“You also saved us. Does it hurt?”

“It did. Not so much anymore. I don’t even know how it happens exactly. I just will them out.” I reached for them curiously and heard a growl from him, similar to a rabid dog. I retracted in fear and his face filled with shame. I reached again and this time he only turned from me, silently. My senses became instantly overloaded as I lightly touched the feathers. I felt them flex under my fingertips.
You are so beautiful. Are you an angel?
He snickered, almost as if that were an insult.
Am I…like you?