Tabula Rasa (9 page)

I swear every single thing Shannon did was like the lead-up to the
climax of a horror movie. Nothing was normal. It was all weird or
paranoid or terrifying. I wasn’t sure I wanted Shannon to continue
being my tour guide for life outside the park. During the drive, he
hadn’t made conversation, and he hadn’t turned on the radio. And
though, by the second hour on the road, I’d desperately wanted to
turn on the radio, I didn’t make a move for it because I had no
idea what he’d do in response.

He’d taken me through a drive-thru where I could have screamed for
help but didn’t, then he’d treated me like a criminal at the rest
stop. I just didn’t know what to expect from him. And I wasn’t
sure knowing would be better anyway. It was Trevor all over again,
just in slightly different packaging and without a colorful
apocalyptic back story.

Shannon turned in his seat toward me. The clock on the dash said
10:48. This probably wasn’t a place that kept a front desk person
all night. There was no doubt a bored clerk inside ready to go home,
annoyed we’d just pulled up.

“I’m going in to get us a room. I’m locking you in the car. Do
not make any kind of scene. Do you see that kid in there?”

I looked through the window he pointed at. A skinny college-aged guy
stood behind the front desk, watching the clock and sending a look of
derision our way. It was exactly the type of person I’d expected to
see.

I nodded.

“Even if you make a scene, you have no way of knowing that kid
wants to get involved in this. Not everybody is a hero. Most people
aren’t. And I’m really good at reading people. He isn’t a hero.
Are we understanding each other?”

If Shannon was so good at reading people, why didn’t he know I
wouldn’t rat him out for killing Trevor? Though in honesty, I
wasn’t even sure I wouldn’t have said something to the police, so
maybe his radar was right on the money. Despite saving me, Shannon
had crumbled apart my entire frame for the world. As terrible as it
had been, it was far worse to know I’d suffered for months for no
purpose and that everything I thought I knew of the world was a lie.
There was a part of me that was angry with Shannon for throwing me
into more chaos and for changing the lens I’d been viewing my life
through.

He snapped his fingers in front of my face. “Elodie. Do we have an
understanding?”

“Yes.”

He unbuckled his seat belt and started to open the car door.

“Shannon?”

“Yeah?”

“If you really don’t plan to hurt me, why are you acting like
this?”

“Just protecting myself. You’re an unknown risk still. You’re
too traumatized and flighty to trust.”

He was right about that, but still.

“You’re freaking me out. Can’t you just act normal?”

“I wouldn’t know where to start.” Shannon got out and locked me
in and went inside to get a room.

Five minutes later he had a key. It was one of the old-fashioned keys
attached to a red plastic ring where the room number was half worn
away.

He drove us around to the back of the motel, parking the car where
the license plate was pointed toward the room instead of where anyone
driving by could see it. It was these little details that kept
reminding me how deep in shit I was now. I didn’t know exactly what
this guy was a pro at, but I knew he was a pro.

I got out and followed him inside. There was only one queen-sized
bed.

“Why didn’t you get a double room?” There were only two other
guests staying around the front side of the motel and none here at
the back. They would have rooms left with two beds. If he didn’t
have bad intentions why hadn’t he gotten me my own bed?

Shannon sighed. “One bed, you’re my wife or girlfriend. Two beds,
and you’re an unknown variable. Two beds invites questions of who
you are to me that makes someone remember me beyond the few minutes
it took to check in. It’s never good to create questions in
people’s minds. If you want to be a ghost, you have to learn that
now.”

I hadn’t said I never wanted to re-integrate into the normal world.
Just not right now. I still hoped I would regain my memory and then
at least have some sense of solid ground underneath me before having
to deal with nosy curiosity.

I tried to remind myself that this guy actually had friends, that he
explored abandoned theme parks for fun. What had he called himself?
An urban explorer? That sounded like some hipster nonsense. I
couldn’t even imagine how that Shannon meshed with this one.

Once inside, I used the bathroom then came back out to the main area.
The place was a bit run down, but clean. Well, clean enough. I didn’t
have a black light to shine on the walls, and I probably didn’t
want one. Sometimes a place just looking clean was enough.

Shannon put the chain on the door and scooted a chair underneath it
like he thought we were going to be under siege any minute. Yet none
of his movement was frantic. It was all calm and calculated, and once
again, I thought he was going to kill me.

“Lie down on the bed.”

“W-what?” Or rape me.

“We’re going to sleep.”

I wasn’t convinced by his explanation, but he’d kind of blocked
me in here. And I’d gone along with most of the steps along the
way. Suddenly something flashed into my head. It was like a memory,
but I wasn’t sure if it was anything attached to my life personally
or just some random bit of general knowledge my brain had held onto.
Don’t let them take you to a second location. Fight like hell to
avoid it.

I kept telling myself this was my fault somehow. I never should have
asked him not to involve the cops. But if Shannon was really bad, he
could have done whatever he’d wanted anyway. As if he would have
called for real help if he were evil. Who was I kidding? This guy had
clearly done evil things. Me not being a target of it... yet...
didn’t change that basic truth.

“Elodie, I’m tired. I want to get on the road early tomorrow. My
house is much nicer than this. You’ll have your own room there.”

Room or basement? Or garden shed?

He started to look impatient. I didn’t want to escalate things, so
I lay down. For better or worse, this was where I was now, and there
was no real way out of it that didn’t escalate into violence. I had
a very strong feeling that if I fought him too hard, that thing in
his brain would click on again and he’d decide I was too much
trouble.

Shannon undid the nylon holding my borrowed pants in place and ripped
it out of the belt loops. Before I could process what he was doing,
he had my hands over my head and tied to the headboard. He could have
used the rope in his bag, but I got the feeling he wanted to move
into and own my space.

The headboard was older and solidly well-made with slats to run rope
through. Maybe Shannon was just super lucky. Or maybe he’d done
this before. Though I was sure, even without such a convenient way to
tie me down, he would have easily figured something else out with
whatever the room had offered him instead.

“Please, don’t do this.” I was crying and blubbering, and right
on the cusp of a panic attack. And despite my best efforts not to
become too much trouble for him to keep dealing with, I struggled,
however vainly. But it was nothing to him and didn’t slow him down
more than a few seconds in his goal.

Once I was secured, Shannon shut off the lights, kicked off his
boots, and lay down on the other side of the bed, turning his back to
me.

“Go to sleep. Things won’t seem as bad in the morning.”

Shannon was a man who obviously knew how to create trauma but didn’t
know the first thing about undoing it. Nearly everything he’d said
or done from the moment we’d met had triggered one fear or another.
He’d kept me on a razor’s edge of anxiety, but somehow I didn’t
think it had been intentional.

Even so, it was well past the point when Shannon’s breath deepened
in sleep before I could find my own fitful peace for the night.

***

The next morning, I had that experience where you wake up in a new
place and forget how you got there. Except for me, this was a bit
more upsetting, seeing as the last time it happened, no memories came
back to fill in the spaces.

I felt my hands tied, panicked, and screamed.

Shannon rolled over faster than I thought a human could move. His
hand clamped over my mouth so hard I was sure there would be a red
hand mark when he removed it.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he hissed.

I whimpered behind his hand.

“If you scream again, so help me...”

I shook my head frantically. What good would that do me? It wasn’t
as if I’d planned to scream in the first place.

He pulled his hand away slowly.

“I forgot where I was, and my arms are asleep, and I freaked out.
I-I’m sorry.”

The sun streamed into the room around the edges of the curtains.
Shannon untied the nylon around my wrists and rubbed them until the
pins and needles sensation faded. It was the first time I’d gotten
a really good look at him.

The castle had been dark except for the fireplace the previous night,
and it had of course been dark outside. It wasn’t as if he’d been
a total visual mystery to me. But there were details you could only
fully catch in the light of day—like the fact that he had the
longest, most beautiful dark eyelashes I’d ever seen on a man. But
somehow they didn’t make him seem less scary or any less masculine.

“What?” he said.

“N-nothing.”

He got up and left the nylon belt or rope or whatever the hell it was
meant to be used for—it was fucking versatile—lying on the bed
beside me.

“If you want a shower, now is the time.”

God, yes, I wanted a shower. I hadn’t had a real shower in months,
and even worse was the fact that I couldn’t remember it when I
actually had.

I was in there a lot longer than he preferred. Probably fifteen or
twenty minutes. Until the water ran cold. It was just such a lovely
novelty having hot water pouring over me.

Shannon banged on the bathroom door. “Let’s go.”

He probably thought I’d climbed out the bathroom window. There was
no bathroom window, but I’m sure it didn’t prevent him from
imagining some way I could still do it. Or maybe he thought I was
fashioning a weapon out of the sink pipe.

I was just turning off the water and pulling back the shower curtain
to get out when he kicked the door in. I jerked the curtain around
me.

“We need to get on the road,” he said as if he hadn’t kicked
the door down. Just a normal day with Shannon. I wondered what his
friends thought of him or if they were just as bad. Maybe they were
all just like him: highly paranoid and shady.

Shannon retreated back into the bedroom, and I got out, dried off,
and put the clothes he’d given me at the castle back on. He didn’t
say another word about either my long shower or busting in on me like
that. Every time he had an opportunity and I thought he was going to
pounce on me and just... take... nothing happened. I was becoming
increasingly convinced that I was right about Shannon not
prioritizing sex.

In a way, that scared me more. I felt sure it was some deeper sign of
sociopathy or something. Like he got all his thrills from the big
death instead of the little one.

We got back in the SUV, Shannon turned in the key, and we were on the
road again. I wondered what he’d used for ID when he’d gotten the
room? Had he used his real information, or did he have fake IDs? Or
had he talked his way out of it, using the kid’s desire to leave
work against him?

Shannon stopped a couple of times for gas, a couple of times for
food, and gave me a few more bathroom breaks. He watched me like a
hawk at each location.

I was about to go crazy without the radio or human speech. You’d
think I would have gotten used to it with all the time with only
Trevor, but there were the chickens. And birds. And sometimes deer
would wander into the park. A few times I sat so statue-still that
they’d come up to me. But it had taken weeks. It had been a game to
see how close one would come. I think six feet from me was my record.
And then a stupid crow had sent it running.

And there had been music in the castle. Ren Fair music, but still.
And at least Trevor spoke to me.

I could probably manage to fit most of my conversation with Shannon
since leaving the castle onto the back of a napkin.

He’d had to make a detour to the airport where his car was parked
and drop off the rental SUV. He carefully kept me out of view of
cameras without making it look too odd, then we got into his car and
continued.

His real car was a shiny black four-door Cadillac that looked like
something you’d drive the president around in. The license plate
said, Georgia. I half expected to ride in the back with a glass
divider between us, but he put me in the front with him. There was no
glass divider.

I could have screamed for help in the airport rental place, and I’m
pretty sure he wouldn’t have been able to stop me. But there was
that luggage with Trevor in it that we were dragging around. What if
I got help but then they decided I’d been an accomplice? There was
also an insane part of me that trusted Shannon, despite all
reasonable evidence that I shouldn’t. There was still a part of me
that wanted to crawl inside his cold dead silence to escape the
scrutiny of the world.

Shannon was a man of utility. He packed the most practical, versatile
things. He drove the most unobtrusive car. He spoke the fewest words
necessary to get his point across. When we got to his house, I knew
it was his because the inside matched everything else I knew about
him.

A little cold. Very minimalist. Clean. Regimented. It was a big, nice
house in an equally nice neighborhood. It wasn’t flagrantly lavish,
but it screamed either upper middle class or,
I’ve got a fuckton
of money, but I don’t need you to know about it.
Considering
all the illicit jobs I’d imagined him holding during our endless
trip, I was leaning toward the latter.