Barnie stands up behind the desk and stretches for effect. “You know, I think I am. And I should walk the perimeter of the building to make sure there are no unsavory characters milling around. That should take ten minutes or so. Sign yourselves in while I’m gone?” He hands Raley a clipboard and a pen, then walks down the hall toward the restroom.
Stu follows Harper and Ida through the door.
Down a corridor, and through a door at the very end, Harper leads them into a room with chilled cabinets on either side. They have metal doors that open outward, revealing a sliding gurney. She locates the one for the latest victim, but pauses for a moment.
“Ida, are you okay so far?”
Ida gives her a sharp nod but doesn’t speak. Harper wonders what she might be picking up on in there—what auras must surround the cold bodies in the walls.
She pulls the gurney out on its runners. The body is covered in a sheet. She peels it back to reveal the girl. Ashen faced now, a distinct blue tinge to her lips, her eyelids. Stu shifts uncomfortably as Ida approaches the body, extends her hand, and brings it to rest on the girl’s icy skin. Her face tightens with revulsion, but she keeps her hand there, powering through the urge to recoil.
Harper moves back to stand with Stu, to give Ida space.
“I’m still not sure about this,” Stu hisses in her ear. “If we’re caught bringing her in here . . .”
Harper fixes him with a sharp look. “Not now.”
Ida throws her head back, her whole body rigid, one hand on the girl’s forehead, the other arm outstretched at an angle. A deep moan rises from her throat, as if she’s being electrocuted. Stu goes to help her. Harper grabs his wrist. “No. Let her do this.”
The already-low lighting in the room dims even more, and the temperature seems to jump up a few degrees.
The moan rises in pitch. It sounds as if Ida is in agony. “I can’t . . . I don’t believe this . . .”
Harper’s grip tightens. “Leave her.”
The connection is different. A living being has warmth, the reassuring rhythm of its heart, the flow of hot blood through miles of veins. It has the marriage of mind and spirit, united in forming a whole.
Ida relishes such connections. They bring insight, allow her to experience the bond of humanity she has missed out on. Tapping into memory, into feelings. Touching a pregnant woman’s stomach, hearing the hum of the tiny life within . . . all of it a wonder.
With the dead, it’s different.
It is not a merging of psyches, but an electric shock, a charge of energy fusing her to the spirit locked within the lifeless body. The voice howls like the wind: unbalanced, completely open. Pulling her in, forcing her to see, to hear, to feel . . .
Waking in a car. The door opening, getting pulled out under the armpits. It’s dark.
Cold.
The dark sky is heavy with clouds and rain. Her feet drag in the wet earth. She is pulled back through rows of green, and when she is lowered to the ground, her senses come alive. She tries to scramble away, but he has her pinned. His face is a white mask; his eyes float in darkness. She tries to fight, to get loose.
He holds her, hits her. She can feel him wrestle with her underpants, tearing them apart in his fury. She tries to push him back; he hits her again. All she can do is grab at the mud, hold on to fistfuls of it as he breaks his way inside her, the pain radiating up her body despite the grogginess of whatever he injected her with.
Then his hands are around her throat. They are pressing; she pulls at his wrists, but they won’t be moved. His arms are heavy steel, pushing down, crushing her. There is a throbbing light; it pulses, growing stronger, coming, going.
Ida knows this is her only chance.
What’s your name? she asks the girl in the last moments. We don’t know your name. We need to know.
Nothing comes. She is getting pulled back; the connection is coming apart, the fibers holding it in place breaking one by one.
Please. Tell me your name.
The darkness fades; the light creeps in around the edges like a false dawn and Ida hears a whisper. The last sound of the girl’s soul. A final word.
“Gertie.”
The lighting flickers above them. Ida is thrown back, stumbles on rubbery legs, and falls.
Stu rushes forward before Ida can crack the back of her head on the hard linoleum, catching her in his arms and lowering her slowly to the floor. Harper drops to her knees beside her and checks for a pulse.
“She’s okay. Just out cold,” she says. She looks up at Stu. “Now do you believe?”
“This could be an act,” he says.
Harper taps Ida’s face. There’s no response, so she does it again, this time a bit harder, shaking her shoulders. Ida’s eyes crack open, then try to close again. Harper shakes her. “Don’t go back to sleep. Wake up.”
“Huh?” Ida groans.
Harper looks at Stu. “Does this look like an act to you?”
“Could be. People fake being crazy all the time.” He goes to say something else, rethinks it, gets to his feet instead. “I’ll put the body away.”
“How long have I been out?” Ida asks.
Harper smiles. “Seconds.”
Ida groans again, rising to a sitting position. “Oh.”
“What did you see?”
Ida tries to stand and almost doesn’t make it before Harper scoops her under the arm and helps her up. Stu gets to her other side just in time.
“You’re not going to be sick or anything, are you?” Stu asks her as they head for the door.
Ida shakes her head. “I just need air.”
They steer her past the desk. Barnie is just returning from his patrol. “Jesus, is she okay?”
Stu waves him off. “She gets a bit funny around the dead.”
Barnie rolls his eyes. “One of them, huh?”
Passing through the doors to the outside, they are hit by the cool night air. Ida inhales deeply, sucking it in, coming back to herself with each intake.
Harper and Stu let go of her arms and step back to give her space. Ida stands steady, but still looks diminished, as if she’s been drained of energy.
She looks like someone who’s just given birth, like everything’s been sucked out of her.
“Ah, that’s better. I feel like me now.”
Harper asks her again: “What did you see?”
“He gave her something to make her sleepy. She tried to fight him off, but couldn’t. She had dirt, in her hands. Squeezing it as he was . . . squeezing her. She could feel him doing his business, even as she was dying.”
“Anything more? Could you see his car? What he looked like?”
Ida shakes her head. “She was too panicked to notice the car. He wore a hood, a white hood with the eyes cut out. And a belt around his neck. I got the impression he put it on after he kidnapped her. It scared her.”
They walk to the car. Stu is the first to speak. “I have to look at the facts. That’s what I believe in, what can be proved. You could be makin’ this up.”
“Stu—” Harper starts.
Ida shakes her head. “No, he’s right. I don’t blame him for not believing me. But there’s one more thing. She gave me a name. Whether it’s hers or not, I can’t be sure. She said ‘Gertie.’”
“Gertie,” Stu repeats. “No second name?”
“No. That was it,” Ida tells him. “Now, if that girl turns out to be a Gertie, or related to someone called Gertie . . . will you believe?”