She referred to an incident that had occurred when she’d first come to Castle Durand with the rest of the Durand managers and counselors for a dinner party. Alice had left the rest of the group upon hearing a gong struck, walking alone through the large ornate home. The sweet, mysterious note had drawn her unerringly. Dylan had found her in the dining room. At first, Dylan had insisted she couldn’t have heard a gong sounding, furthering Alice’s humiliation at being caught wandering around his house alone. Later he’d made up a story about his cook, Marie, being responsible for the mysterious sound. A few days ago Alice had discovered his lie about the gong and confronted him with it, which had eventually led to Dylan telling her the truth about Addie Durand.
“Yes. There really is a gong, but no one has struck it in a very long time,” he said quietly after a pause. “Alan found it at an antique store once while he was on business in China and gave it to Lynn as a gift. Addie liked some of the unusual items he’d bring home from his trips—”
“Like the knight knocker,” Alice said, her voice just above a whisper.
Dylan lifted his hand and then plunged it back into her hair, rubbing her scalp. “Like the knight knocker,” he agreed, both of them referring to the unique brass doorknocker on the entryway door to Castle Durand. “He brought the knocker from a trip to Scotland, when Addie was three years old. Addie took a liking to it because of some of the fairy tales about knights Lynn and Alan read her. But the gong?” he asked quietly, his fingers against her scalp creating a drugging effect. “You can’t guess what it meant to Addie?”
“I have no idea,” she insisted. She fastened on another topic that had been bothering her. “Dylan . . . are you sure that there wasn’t any truth to Matt’s ghost story at the campfire tonight? Are you sure Lynn Durand wasn’t there when Addie was taken?”
She tensed when she felt him sit up slightly in bed. “I’ve told you what happened that day. I was the only one with Addie when she was taken in those woods. Why?”
She hesitated. She shouldn’t have brought it up, but her curiosity had gotten the best of her. “It’s nothing. I just . . . I had a bad dream tonight. It was different than ones I’ve had before, though. Maybe it was just a nightmare.”
He waited intently. She sighed, knowing he expected to hear the details.
“In it, a woman who looked like Lynn Durand was telling Addie to run and hide. She looked kind of banged up, and there was . . . blood on her.” She twisted her chin over her shoulder when Dylan didn’t immediately respond. He cupped her hip.
“It was just a dream,” he said quietly. “That story by the bonfire got to you tonight. Given everything you’re going through, that’s not too shocking. But I assure you, the story that kid was telling is an urban legend, a ghost story that’s been built up and embroidered until only the tiniest part of reality remains. I’ve asked Kehoe to try to quash the telling of that story, but it always seems to resurface, usually with some sensationalized new twist to it. But what I told you is what actually happened,” he said steadfastly. “What you had was definitely just a nightmare. Addie never saw Lynn like that. Never. Okay?”
“Okay. Night,” she said softly after a pause. His mouth covered hers in a brief, hot kiss. She twisted back around and held her breath. Thankfully Dylan remained silent. Still, she sensed his sharp attention on her. He didn’t entirely believe that she wasn’t remembering other things.
Or that she was “fine.”
He should believe her. Alice only had a few ephemeral snatches of memory that seemed to relate to Dylan’s story about Addie Durand. Those snippets didn’t really feel like personal memories at all. It was more like she’d undergone some science-fiction surgical technique for having another person’s memories stitched into her brain. That handful of tiny, jagged bits of memory created a jarring contrast to the billions of other Alice recollections she’d accumulated through the past two decades of her life.
Sometimes, she felt like a computer that had downloaded a virus. What would happen if those fragments of another’s person’s mind—of another person’s world—began multiplying and expanding inside her?
Would Alice Reed disappear altogether?
The thought terrified her in the most primitive way, a way she couldn’t convey to Dylan. It was hard to put it into words.
And there was an elusive feeling that kept mounting in her. A suspicion rose in her that if she tried to communicate to Dylan what that amorphous feeling was, it might take shape and solidify even further.
Maybe the feeling would become tangible memory?
Leave it in the dark.
Addie Durand and Alice may have been joined once, but the rift was complete. They were two separate people now. Alice was a mathematician, after all. Numbers cleaved, they carved out clear-cut, rational, predictable realities. That was how Alice Reed saw the world. She was overreacting in regard to her fear.
Of course you can discover a few interesting facts about Addie Durand without losing Alice. Don’t be so nutballs about this.
Feeling relieved by her self-scolding, she allowed her heavy eyelids to drop. She sent up a silent prayer for dreamless sleep.
*
UNFORTUNATELY, a sound night’s sleep was just not in the cards for Alice or Dylan that night.
She startled awake at the jarring sound of a loud, high-pitched alarm. Before she could utter a single stunned syllable, she felt Dylan leap out of bed.