The Golden Spiral (10 page)

Along one wall was an open closet filled with hangers of identical fluffy white bathrobes and folded stacks of gray sweatpants and loose shirts. My heart sank at the sight of Valerie sitting passively by the window, wearing a pair of those sweatpants and a plain white T-shirt. Her hair was still short and black, the same as the last time I’d seen her, on the night of the Spring Fling all those weeks ago; the nurses here must be keeping it trimmed. Her face was free of any makeup or expression. Her vacant eyes stared without blinking.

The Valerie I knew, who loved the latest fashions and the brightest colors, wouldn’t have been caught dead in such bland and shapeless clothes.

But that was the whole point, wasn’t it? She hadn’t died that horrible night on the bank—she’d simply lost her mind.

And it was my fault.

If I hadn’t asked Dante to take me to the bank, then Tony wouldn’t have seen the bridge and the door and then Zo wouldn’t have taken Valerie away and then she wouldn’t be here in this horrible place under the care of the unsettling Dr. Blair.

I sat down in the chair across from Valerie and her distant eyes, my legs suddenly unable to support my weight. I reached out and touched the white plastic name band that overlaid the black chains tattooed around her wrists. Somehow the sight of that black-and-white combination made the whole thing real. I swallowed hard and felt a hiccup in my chest.

Was I a bad friend if I wondered whether perhaps death would have been a kinder fate than being locked up in this place?

“You’re not a bad friend,” Valerie said. “And I’m glad I’m not dead.”

“What?” I didn’t think I’d spoken my thoughts out loud.

“I’m glad I’m here at the James E. Hart Memorial Hospital. They take good care of me.” She finally turned to look at me and there, deep in her shadowed eyes, was a flicker of light, but if it was of lucidity, I couldn’t tell.

“It’s good to see you, Valerie,” I said. My voice sounded funny to my ears, muffled by my pounding heartbeat. “I’ve missed you.”

She didn’t say anything for a long time, and I squirmed a little under her gaze.

I saw a flash of color on the wall behind her. “Did you draw that?” I asked, pointing over her shoulder.

Valerie didn’t look where I pointed, but simply nodded. “I like drawing pictures. They help me see what’s real.”

“What’s it a picture of?” I stood up from my chair and took the few steps to her bedside.

Heavy crayon strokes and shapes covered the paper taped to the wall. A line of neon green for the grass, a ball of yellow for the sun, three triangles stacked on a stump for a tree. Standing next to the tree was a man-shaped shadow with dark hair curling up from the head like smoke. The only feature on the blank face was a razor-sharp grin.

My heart stuttered. “Who is this?” I asked, though I feared I knew the answer. I knew that grin.

Valerie joined me. “He watches over me,” she said. “He keeps me safe from prowlers and predators.” She suddenly looked down. “Would you like to play with my dollies?” She plucked the two dolls from the bedspread and sat on the edge of the bed. “They don’t like me having my dollies, but they don’t like me
not
having my dollies more.” Her smile didn’t look quite right. I couldn’t help but think of the bared fangs on a rabid wolf. “They haven’t learned yet that I always get what I want.”

I swallowed and nodded cautiously, sitting next to her on the bed. “I’d love to play with you.”

“Good. I’ll be the Pirate King.” She held up one figure. The doll had dark hair fringed with white and a wide, predatory smile beneath coal-black button eyes. For all that it was a simple rag doll, it looked eerily like Zo. I could see where Valerie had drawn chains around the doll’s wrists with a yellow marker. I wondered about the chains, though—why were they gold instead of black? Maybe yellow was the only color she’d had access to.

“And you can be the River Policeman.” Valerie handed me the second doll and I felt a flush of surprise. This doll also had dark hair and yellow chains inked around his wrists, but his button eyes were silver and his smile was small and secretive. He wore a long blue coat with a sheriff’s star drawn on the lapel. I half smiled at the thought of Dante as a policeman, patrolling the river, on the prowl for lawbreakers.

Then I remembered the ghostly feel of his hand holding tight to mine and the whisper of his voice,
Hurry, Abby. Please.

“What should we play?” I asked, my mouth dry and my mind rough with unwelcome thoughts.

“Oh, I know a lot of good stories. They’re in my head all the time now, but sometimes the endings change when I’m not looking. Stories can be tricky that way. You have to watch them carefully all the time or else they’ll catch you and you’ll never get away.” She clapped her hands in delight. “I know! Let’s play the story of how the brave Pirate King escaped from the bad River Policeman.” She leaned forward conspiratorially. “This is one of my favorites.”

“I don’t know that story,” I said, glancing between the Zo and Dante dolls. I knew, with a sinking feeling in my heart, that this story was not going to be one of
my
favorites.

“Of course you don’t, darling,” Valerie scoffed, and for a moment she sounded like her old self. I glanced up in hopeful surprise, but her eyes held a hard edge of anger. “Don’t be stupid. I haven’t told it to you yet.”

“Oh,” I murmured, my heart quiet. “Right.”

“The story starts with a gunshot.” Valerie slapped her hands together with a bang and I jumped, making the bed bounce a little.

“It’s not a real gun, silly,” she said, giggling. “It’s just the sound I hear in my head when I tell this story. Sometimes it sounds like a door closing and a key turning in a lock. Do you know what that sounds like?”

I nodded. The echo of the door closing behind Dante rang in my ears every moment of every day.

“Then the story sounds like footsteps—running from the beginning straight to the end. It’s a fast story, so I hope you can keep up.” She tapped her toes on the floor, the bottoms of her slippers rasping like sandpaper.

“The Pirate King likes to run too.” She moved the doll’s legs up and down on her knees. “He likes to run through grass and across fields and over bridges. But mostly he likes to run through puddles. He likes to see the splash and the ripples. He even likes to run on the deck of his boat. He built a boat, you know—a fast boat—and sails it up and down the river. His boat is so fast that nothing can stop him. He knows that for a fact so he stands at the front of his boat and laughs into the wind.”

She tilted the doll’s head back with her fingers and laughed. I felt a sick twist in the pit of my stomach as Zo’s laugh filled the room.

“But one day, when the Pirate King was standing high on the crow’s nest looking up at the stars, he saw a strange sight. A River Policeman was sailing behind him in a dinky old dinghy.”

She held a doll in each hand so they were face-to-face.

“‘Stop!’ the River Policeman shouted.

“The Pirate King just laughed into the wind. ‘You can’t stop me. I am too fast for you.’

“‘I’ll follow you wherever you go,’ the River Policeman said. ‘You won’t get away from me.’

“‘Full speed ahead!’ the Pirate King shouted to his crew.” Valerie paused, looking at me with her head tilted to one side. “I think every pirate ship needs a crew, don’t you? I don’t have any other dolls yet, so you’ll just have to imagine the other pirates.”

It was all too easy to imagine Tony and V as rag dolls with matching black button eyes, following in Zo’s footsteps. I tasted acid in the back of my throat. But Tony wasn’t with Zo, I reminded myself. He was with Dante somewhere in the dark place between doors, disappearing with each successive scream. I dragged my thoughts back to Valerie’s story. As unsettling as her words were, I preferred them to thinking about the alternative.

“The Pirate King orders the crew to sail faster and faster, and it seems impossible, but the River Policeman keeps up with them. In fact, it starts to look like he’s gaining on them, that he’ll catch the Pirate King and his crew.”

Valerie chased one doll with the other up and down her lap.

“The Pirate King can’t let that happen. He knows the River Policeman would take him away in chains and wouldn’t let him run free through the grass and the fields and the puddles anymore. So the Pirate King orders his crew to stop and make a stand.”

She paused. I held my breath for the next part of the story.

“The River Policeman climbed aboard the pirate ship and cornered the Pirate King’s crew. But it was a trap! The Pirate King was smarter and stronger and faster than anybody could have imagined. They fought and fought until the river turned black with blood and the stars fell from the sky.”

The two dolls wrestled on Valerie’s lap while she growled and grunted deep in her throat.

“But just when it looked like the River Policeman was going to win—surprise!”

Suddenly, she reached out and tore away the policeman’s eyes, the silver buttons as small and thin as dimes in her hand.

“‘I’m blind,’ the River Policeman shouted. He tried to cry, but since he didn’t have any eyes, how could he have any tears?”

She threw the ruined doll on the floor by her feet and lifted the Pirate King high above her head in victory. “And so the Pirate King and his crew sailed away, off on another adventure, and they left the River Policeman on the riverbank, blind and bleeding and helpless.”

She lowered the Pirate King doll and looked at it fondly. “I love stories with happy endings, don’t you?” She looked at me with a huge smile. “What was your favorite part?”

She didn’t let me answer, which was good since the only word I could think of was
no.
Just—
no.
A unilateral negation of everything that was happening.

“My favorite part is the ending. When the story is in my head, I can see all the endings. And they all end the same way—with a kiss between the king and his queen.” She lifted the Pirate King doll up and kissed the painted mouth with a loud, smacking sound. “I can’t wait,” she sighed and tucked the doll into her arms, rocking it like a small child.

I picked up the blinded doll from the floor with shaking hands. I didn’t want the story to be true, but parts of it were horribly easy to recognize and identify. Was the Pirate King
really so strong? Had he really left the River Policeman for dead? Was that why I couldn’t reach Dante? Was the darkness beyond the bank . . . death? I felt a chill lift the hairs on my arms.

My mouth filled with dust. I didn’t want to be here. I had known it was going to be hard to see Valerie like this, but I didn’t think it was going to be
this
hard. I wanted my friend back, the one I’d known since third grade, the one I’d told my secrets to during late-night sleepovers, the one I’d grown up with. I didn’t know this person sitting across from me.

I wanted to leave and was ready to say so when Valerie leaned close and touched my knee.

“I knew you were coming, darling,” she said. The childish lilt to her voice had fled and she sounded like the Valerie I remembered. A flicker of almost familiar light touched the corners of her eyes. “I told him so when he came to see me. He said he hoped you would. He wants to see you, but he said you’re a hard woman to reach.” She held up one of her chained wrists, and the light in her eyes grew brighter.

“He knows exactly who you are. He wanted me to give you a message. He wanted me to tell you that this is only the beginning. That he’s in charge of the river now. That his gifts are stronger now. That you can’t stop him.”

I looked at the Pirate King doll propped up in her lap, then at the crumpled River Policeman in my hand. Maybe I couldn’t stop him. But I knew I had to try.

“Riddle me this,” Valerie said suddenly, wrapping her fingers around my wrist and turning my hand up. She opened my fist as easily as peeling an orange.

“Made of steel or hair, it can be snapped like a finger or picked like a string. It will stay closed to any but its partner, though it will always open for skeletons. What is it?”

As she spoke, she traced a series of letters on the flat of my palm with her fingertip. It was an old game we’d played as kids. A silent and secret method of communication. The goal was to pose a riddle while writing something completely different from what you were saying; the winner was the one who could answer the riddle
and
recite the secret message correctly.

I watched her finger move fast and sure, tracing out each individual letter; her nail felt like a needle against my skin.

When she finished, she closed my hand around the words she’d written and met my eyes.

“Do you understand?” she asked me.

I nodded, my heart beating hard and fast. “I understand perfectly.” If Valerie was somewhere in there, trying to communicate with me, then I hoped she would recognize the words and finish the game.

“Then speak the words and answer,” she responded.

“It’s a lock,” I said, recognizing one of our first riddles. “A lock made of steel, or a lock of hair. It can be snapped closed, or picked open. It prefers its own key, though a skeleton key can open anything.”

Valerie nodded, a wise and slightly sad smile on her face. “You win.” Then the light faded from her eyes. “Oh, he will be so mad.” She cupped her hands over her mouth and giggled like a child. “But first he will have to find me.” She darted from the bed to the open closet, crouching down in the corner behind the bathrobes. Covering her eyes with her hands, she started counting. “One. Two. Three. Ready or not, here I come.” But she didn’t move or uncover her eyes. “I said—ready or not, here I come!”