She had a gift few were aware of: she knew things. Sometimes she knew before events happened. Sometimes as they were happening. And the knowledge always began with the same twisted feeling in the pit of her gut.
The problem was that she never got the complete picture—and sometimes this made her desperate, especially when she intuited something that was so dangerously close to home . . . like she was now.
She walked around the house until she found herself outside the girl’s bedroom window and wondered if she was asleep. Peering at her watch, she realized it was nearly half past three in the morning, so she figured Allie was.
A warm breeze tickled her neck, making the hair on her arms and legs stand on end. She pulled the robe tighter against her body and walked back to the house.
CHAPTER 16
TEN MINUTES LATER, Allie jackknifed to a sitting position. She gathered her breath, trying to get her bearings.
Something had awoken her again. She stole a look at the doorway. To her relief, it was still empty. She glanced at the bedside clock: 3:40 a.m. The brunt of the storm seemed to have passed and now the branches outside her window were swaying in the wind, casting long, eerie shadows on the bedroom’s walls.
With the moon shining through the bedroom window, she could make out the soft outlines of some of the clothes hanging in the closet. She groaned and peeled back the covers.
Something wasn’t right. She couldn’t put her finger on it . . . but she didn’t think she should stay long enough to find out. She was too smart to believe that Miss Bitty was only trying to help her. No one in their right mind would go out of their way so much to help her. Besides, she didn’t belong here.
Although she had no idea where (if anywhere) she belonged, she knew it wasn’t in the old woman’s squeaky-clean house, living some charade until everyone figured out who and what she really was. Even if the woman did have good intentions, it would only be a matter of time before she realized she didn’t want her around, and Allie didn’t think she could handle more abandonment.
Allie went to the window and pressed a palm against the warm glass. She was pretty sure she knew her way home. She used to know the woods like the back of her hand, having gone on adventures with her brother as a kid.
She went to the closet, pulled on the new tennis shoes, and packed a few of her new things into the backpack since the old woman had stored away most of what she’d come with. Then, back at the window, she carefully pushed the screen out of the pane.
Hopping out, she darted across the backyard and disappeared into the murky woods.
Allie sat on the cement steps that led from the back door of her childhood house.
Although the late-night air was warm, she shivered as she stared in the direction of the pond at the edge of the property. As a little girl, she had spent many years swimming in it and running along its grassy bank. That was, of course, before she realized that several human bodies were decomposing beneath its smooth surface.
Unfortunately, she’d learned about them the hard way.
It had been a scorching afternoon. She was out shooting water moccasins with her brother’s pellet gun and had just pulled off her tennis shoes and begun wading in the cool water when she noticed the first one: the pale, bloated body of what appeared to be a man. He was floating on the surface less than a yard from her. But just as she began to scream, a hand gripped her shoulder.
Her mother’s hand.
“You will keep your mouth shut if you want me to love you,” the woman warned, her teeth clenched tightly. She pinched Allie’s shoulder hard, then let go and waded into the murky water, toward the body. She called over her shoulder, “And don’t you dare even think about judging me. Because you’ll turn out no different than me, Allie Cat. Wait. You’ll see.” Then, as though it had been an afterthought: “Of course, things will be even harder for you . . . with that strange little face of yours.” She grimaced. “How I made such an ugly child is beyond me.”
Allie tried to shake off the memory of her mother’s words. Words she thought about much too often.
She hadn’t been inside the house yet. She wasn’t ready. It had taken her thirty minutes on foot to reach the house and having traveled through wet, tree-filled ravines, she had ruined her new shoes.
An early-morning breeze kicked up, rattling a loose windowpane in the kitchen. She was still staring at her mud-splattered shoestrings when a sound came from the pond. She froze and listened closely. She heard it again: a woman screaming. Gooseflesh rising on her arms, Allie jumped up. Pulling open the screen door, she hurried through the kitchen and down the hallway.
Back in her brother’s musty room, she crawled into the bed and curled into a tight ball. Trembling, she wondered, not for the first time, if her mother had been right. She was becoming just like her, wasn’t she? She was starting to see things . . . hear things. Things she honestly doubted were actually there.
I’m losing it.
And I’m all alone.
An intense loneliness washed over her and she suddenly wished she were back at the old woman’s house. Tears filled her eyes as she finally accepted the fact she was out of options.
She wouldn’t be able to live in the house without electricity and water. She had no skills to offer an employer . . . and she could never go back to selling herself.
Something clattered in front of the house. Allie stiffened and strained to listen but couldn’t hear anything.
A few minutes later, the wind started screaming on the other side of the window. Allie’s thoughts shifted to the many nights she’d lain in the very same bed, cocooned beneath the blankets with her brother, trying not to hear the violent weather inside the house.