Dark.
Everything was dark. Why was it so dark? The stairwell had been flooded by sunlight, not gaslights, and no one had the power to turn out the sun.
She started to call out to Charlotte, but couldn't.
A memory attack. She was having one. Breathe, open your mouth and breathe. God, please breathe, you need to breathe ...
Couldn't, she couldn't. She'd die for lack of air while surrounded by it. Her body scorched with that painful need. Her back arched against the bed, driving her head into the pillows. Her hands scrabbled uselessly at the bed covers. Tears sprang from her eyes as they opened, catching flashes of purple lightning in the blackened bedroom.
Then she choked out a breath. Dragged in another and another and another. Watched the fireflies — not lightning at all — twirl above her. Wiped the tears from her face.
A thought rattled around and around in her head like the fireflies going around and around the room: Marek hadn't been lying about her being able to breathe on her own again. Being kissed out of an attack had been nicer than waiting for one to end. She sat up, groping for the lamp next to the bed, then switched it on to a low level. Her eyes pulsed and ached from the slightest wobble of the flame. The fireflies hovered restlessly around her. "I'm fine," she told them, voice rusty.
They started turning green only when she hobbled to her desk, but none of them left. Just as well. She would get no more sleep tonight, not that she would have had much time for it left; the clock on the mantel of her small fireplace drew another minute closer to five.
Charlotte and Marek. Elise had dreamt of them both. She drummed her half-asleep fingers on the top of her desk, which woke them a little. Dreamt? No, that was wrong. She had remembered, not dreamt. That memory had come to her unlike the others. Not as a foreign fragment that seemed to belong to someone else, but something she had experienced, something she had lived, something that was hers. Little else felt like hers, down to the very clothes she wore. The same could be said for this room and the things in it.
But why had this memory felt so different? She would ask Marek. He might know.
Her eye caught on a row of four books pushed against the wall at the middle of her desk. They looked like a series of slim leather-backed novels, only novels didn't generally have locks on them. She freed one from the others. On the front was handwritten FALL — 1954. That was this year, this season. The book wasn't a book, but a diary. Its covers didn't budge when she pried at them. Just her luck that she had come across a set of diaries with locks actually worth a damn.
She hunted for the key. There wasn't one among or beneath the other diaries, books, and papers on the desk; or in any of the drawers or underneath them; or under the desk itself. She climbed back into her chair, rubbing at her throbbing legs through her nightgown.
The diaries, maybe they had a clue on them about where the key was. They showed nothing except the seasons written on their fronts: the fall and winter of this year, then the spring and summer of the next. Her forefinger slid down the cover of the fall diary only to snag on the lock. Something bit at her skin. She drew her hand back, wincing. A small piece of needle-like metal protruded from the tiny keyhole of the lock, wet with blood. It sank into the diary. A click sounded.
She touched the diary again, waiting for another trick. Nothing happened, so she opened it and read:
TAKE YOUR MEDICINE.
UP TO 11 DROPS EVERY 7 HOURS.
NO MORE THAN 11, OR EXPECT BAD THINGS.
"Bad things?" she said. "What bad things?" If the diary knew which answer was the correct one, it wasn't giving it.
OTHER VIALS CAN BE FOUND IN THE FALSE BOTTOM OF THE RED VALISE, ALONG WITH ALL YOU NEED. IF YOU RUN OUT, MAKE MORE ACCORDING TO INSTRUCTIONS.
DO NOT DEVIATE.
She flipped the pages to find them blank. The other diaries, which also opened by tasting her blood, were completely empty. The red valise, there might be something in that, wherever it was. But there was no such valise in sight, not in the wardrobe or in the corner of the room or ... Ah, there it was, just under the bed.
Her legs protested as she knelt down to fetch it. The thing was the width of a hat box, but much deeper. Heavier than it looked, too. It took several frustrating minutes before she dragged it out, then several more to open the thing — it had a key in the lock, but the false bottom proved tricky. Inside that concealed compartment were a dozen small vials of silvery medicine cushioned in cotton batting, half of them empty; a folded piece of paper that appeared to be a route to "spider's kitchen," whatever that was; tiny jars and packets labeled with strange or foul things like bone meal, dried blood, and tears of laughter; and a single thin book labeled RECIPES, which proved to be filled with numbered but nameless dishes that no one would eat even if they were starving.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
What had the instruction in the fall diary said? Vials. All that she needed in the red valise. No, these weren't recipes for food, but for ... whatever it was they were for.
She read the recipe book, hunting for another clue. Several entries in, she found one. "Number Seven: Silver in color when viable, intended for pain, healing, and sleep," she read. "This has to be the same as all that stuff in the vials." Could she really make something like that? "One drop per ten pounds of body weight. Hm, that explains the eleven drops." She stretched out her aching legs on the floor, then kept going. "Overuse can result in hallucinations and self-harm ..." She looked to the fireflies still weaving around her. "Is that safe? It must be safe in the right doses. It isn't as it'd be a great danger to me, not when my body can rebuild itself."
They blinked at her in senseless splashes of light. Right, no help there. She should probably stop talking to mechanical fireflies before it started to seem normal. But she couldn't help one more comment. "And it can help me sleep, if I ever have trouble with that."
Elise yawned, because sleep sounded wonderful once more. Searching first for the unnecessary (and nonexistent) key to the diaries, then for the valise had worn her down again. She returned to bed too tired to turn out the light, and did not wake until the sun rose. By then, the fireflies had gone and the lamp had been switched off.
Rambling was strange, but it had its conveniences.
* * *
Dressing in a stranger's clothes. That was what this felt like. She hadn't selected the uniform that she had folded and set aside the evening before, nor had she taken one of its sisters from the wardrobe. It was a Sunday, and she could wear something else when classes were not in session. She had chosen a shirtwaist dress that belted across her middle; its checked emerald and celadon gabardine suited her complexion nicely.
For shoes, she almost settled on a pair of tame brown pumps. Low heels the very color of a fire engine before she could. That shade of red looked almost exactly the same as the dress Charlotte had been wearing in her latest memory. She took them up without hesitation.
Next, she got gloves and a light coat in case she decided to go outside — unlikely, considering her wheelchair, but still possible. All that done, she limped over to her vanity. Her reflection looked as ghost-like as it had in all the other mirrors of this room, but perhaps it could be improved. Makeup sat inside a little box close by, all the expected things that a girl might need for her face. At the bottom of the box rested several sheaves of paper, which she took out. No, just one bit of paper, and several pages that looked as if they had been cut from a magazine. It was an article on how to put on makeup according to face types. The facial diagram with the word "oblong" next to it had been circled multiple times in red ink. On the note was written:
Ellie —
Just follow these instructions and you can go outside without scaring anyone.
Love,
Charlotte
PS — I mean it!
Something halfway between a sob and a laugh worked out of Elise into an all-mad noise. She could not remember much of her life, but the consequences and habits of it still made themselves keenly known. It was as if she had been shoved into a dark room and left to find her way through by touch alone, here banging her arm on a hard-edged sideboard, there cutting the sole of her foot on a broken glass. Every now and again she brushed up against an object, or spied one from the light coming beneath the door that had been closed behind her, and the shape of this half-seen thing triggered in her emotions without rational cause for them.
Looking at this note, her chest and throat had tightened, her eyes had stung, her heart ached, yet she wanted to laugh, too, because the note was perfectly Charlotte according to her intuition, whatever "perfectly Charlotte" meant. She read it a dozen more times until her crazy urge to laugh subsided, then set it aside. There was work to be done. She couldn't disappoint Charlotte.
Making her face presentable took longer than she liked, but going slow was necessary. Any mistakes would have meant wasting more time. When she looked as good as she was going to get, she put away her makeup, then headed to the small table by her wardrobe where she had set her things. After a moment's hesitation, she grabbed her book bag hanging from a hook on the wall. She shoved her gloves into it, put the bag on, and, last of all, slid into her coat. It was light enough to wear indoors. Something in the coat slapped heavily against her side. What could that be?
Rummaging through the correct pocket brought up a thin book wrapped in a piece of brown paper, like a parcel. The words HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ELLIE! were scrawled on the front in block letters. She undid the twine, and found herself looking at another diary. This one had C. C. written on the front.
"Are you Charlotte's?" she said. "You must be, I think. Look at those letters. That's her handwriting, just like the note." She glanced to the lock, which seemed an ordinary one after she dragged her finger down it and no needle came out. Its lock held at her attempt to open it. "Just as well. I wouldn't want to read you even if you were open; the dead should be allowed their secrets."
She placed the diary back in her coat. It felt nice carrying something that belonged to Charlotte. Proof that such a girl had existed outside Elise's head. She went to crumple the brown paper and stopped. Writing covered the half of it that had been facing the diary. Her eyes traced the words at the very top:
SUSPECTS
Below that, it listed Friends, Enemies, and Neutrals. No definitions were necessary when she saw the names in each category. Friends included only Willow, Ash, Ian, and Stella. Enemies had Adesso, Romilly, and several other names she didn't recognize. Neutrals contained twenty or so names, two of which were familiar — Marek and Gerver. Her fingers trembled down this terrible list until she reached the admonition to TRUST NO ONE at the bottom.
She had written this. It was the very cursive she had used when signing forms in the clinic, or taking notes from the books and things that Marek had let her borrow during her recovery. That hand had also been in the fall diary, and the recipe book. But why had she written this?
"It's a note to myself," she said, with sudden clarity, "just like the others." She frowned. "But that makes no sense. Why did I do that? How could I have known —"
There was her answer.
"I knew my memories would be manipulated before they were. I knew." Her gaze fell on the list of suspects. "One of you did that, didn't you?" She grazed her fingers over those silent names. Yes, one of them knew, and she was going to find out who that person was. Charlotte deserved justice.