The Haunted (Sarah Roberts 12)

  The Haunted

  by

  Jonas Saul

  Chapter 1

  The intense rain broke through the violence, the screaming. As Vivian’s consciousness wavered and her eyes rolled back in her head, his fist connected with her cheekbone. With that last hammering crunch, he mercifully ended the pain, the horror, the terror.

  But it was the rain that snapped Sarah back to the present. She sat up straighter in the car, her face wet. She wiped at her eyes, and dabbed at the sweat from her brow, for a brief moment wondering if the roof of the car had leaked.

  “You fell asleep,” Aaron said.

  He was leaning forward at the steering wheel, his hands at ten and two as he guided the vehicle through the deluge that woke Sarah from another one of Vivian’s nightmares. The rain pounded the windshield, the wipers unable to keep up.

  After a moment, breathing regularly again, calmer, Sarah said, “We should pull over somewhere. This rain is crazy.”

  “We’re almost there. Maybe five minutes left.”

  “You really want to go out in this?”

  He snuck a glance at her, then back at the road. “You slept for a bit. I didn’t want to wake you.”

  She looked out the window, then up at the sky. Lighter clouds moved just ahead, the dark, black clouds easing aside. Maybe the rain would subside after all.

  “You were dreaming,” Aaron said. “You okay?”

  “Just fine.”

  “Cold sweats, rapid breathing, high-blood pressure no doubt, and tears when you wake up usually mean fine,” he said. “I should know that by now. Because fine stands for Fucked Interior, Nice Exterior.”

  She stretched out her feet, ignoring his taunt. They’d been in the car for hours now. Coffee was on her mind. Not Vivian anymore.

  “I’ll talk about it, but not now. Seeing what happened to my sister vividly in my mind, like I was there, living it, then waking to talk about it, isn’t going to work for me. Wait until I’m having a good day. Then we’ll sit with a glass of wine and discuss everything.”

  “You never have a good day.”

  She shot him a look. More of a warning.

  “I’m not being pessimistic,” he said. “Just realistic. Since you helped Detective Hirst in Los Angeles, you’ve been taking it easy. No more fighting bad guys. I know. I get it. A much deserved break. Your foot healed nicely and you’ve been working out, training now for over six months. You’re healed and ready for whatever comes in the future.” He slowed the car and pulled to the shoulder. “But there isn’t a day goes by without one or more Vivian memories.” The car stopped. He took her hand. She didn’t pull it away. “I’m worried about you. I mean, how much of her do you take on? And how much do you lose of yourself?”

  Sarah felt another tear threaten to drop and hated the weakness. She had gotten closer to Aaron. Their relationship had deepened, partly because she hadn’t been actively pursuing murderers and rapists, which was Aaron’s preference, and partly because she discovered she really needed him. For the first time in her life she needed something, and that something was Aaron. He was strong when she was weak, right when she was wrong. He was the man to her woman, the yin to her yang. In the recent break she had taken to heal her foot, as her consciousness merged with Vivian’s, her heart had started to merge with Aaron’s.

  Relationships are supposed to be mysterious, intriguing, fun.

  Only Sarah wasn’t ready for mystery or intrigue. She wanted solid facts and grounded details. She was an intellectual who came from a place of logic. Decisions were routinely logic based. Aaron, her first real, long-term relationship, was sitting in the driver’s seat of the car and there were times—many times—when she had no idea what to do or say, and that felt like weakness to her.

  “I’m not losing myself,” she said. “I’m still here.”

  He looked away. The car continued to idle. A large truck drove by, water splashing up along Aaron’s side of the car. Then he turned back to her.

  Before he could speak, she said, “Let’s get this over with.”

  He let go of her hand and pulled the car back onto the road. Minutes later, the rain eased off as Aaron turned down a side road that led to the cemetery.

  Sarah shuddered, a shiver running through her as the headstones came into view. One of them belonged to her sister, Vivian. She rubbed her clammy hands back and forth across her thighs.

  “You okay?” Aaron asked. “You sure you’re ready to do this?”

  She didn’t respond. When the car stopped by the mausoleum, Sarah got out and stood in the rain that had subsided to a soft drizzle. She didn’t need to consult the gravesite directions in her back pocket. She’d memorized them two days ago.

  Vivian was buried two green-grass sections south of the mausoleum. Her headstone wasn’t the kind that stood up. It lay flat, surrounded by others like it.

  Sarah wiped her face, flung her hair over her shoulders and walked. Aaron stayed close, but not close enough to invade her space. She was here to pay her respects, to visit the earthly spot where Vivian’s body rested in peace.

  Her lips formed a half smile at the thought of Vivian resting in peace. There was no peace with Vivian or anyone involved with her. Sarah knew this first hand.

  Mentally, the closer Vivian and Sarah got, the more memories filtered through. Sarah could discern two childhood memories now, some distant, some near, but only one version of the childhood memories were hers. Like when Vivian burned herself on their mother’s curling iron after being told not to touch it. Or Vivian’s first bike at the age of three. Sarah had to wait until she was six to learn how to ride a bike, but by the time she was eight and had a new babysitter, the cop who lived next door, she no longer took an interest in her bike.

  But along with the nostalgic memories came the scary ones, the terrible ones, the nightmares of Vivian’s last hour on earth. For some reason, those memories were the most vivid, the ones planted the deepest.

  Sarah was trying to live with those memories, or to at least cope with them. Maybe they would fade in time. Maybe she would even begin to forget them in years to come. But right now, Vivian’s memories haunted her.

  Enough that she had recently decided to meet with a psychiatrist to help her deal with the unwanted images.

  She paused on the wet grass, her running shoes sinking slightly, the ground still soggy from winter, the warmth of summer still a month or two away. April was the first full month of spring, of things reborn, life anew. It was also Sarah’s birthday. Today, April 22, Sarah turned twenty-six-years old, and she had never paid her respects at her sister’s grave. She had asked Aaron to take the drive with her. He would be heading back to Toronto soon, and she wouldn’t see him until June.

  The headstones close to her read of early deaths, teenage deaths, but also of people who lived into their eighties and were buried with mom, dad, sister and brother. A few of the headstones were relatively small with just MOM or DAD written on them. Others had entire sentences, life achievements etched into their granite or marble surfaces.

  In the distance, two dark mounds depicted sites of recent burials.

  Aaron stepped closer. He touched her arms gently. “Found her?” he asked in a whisper.

  She shook her head and reached for the instructions in her pocket.

  A car entered the cemetery. The dark-colored vehicle turned in and angled away from them, following the cement drive to another grave, another lost loved one.

  The rain had stopped completely now and the sun peeked out through a distant gathering of clouds. Still, Sarah shivered. She had never done anything like this in her life. She had been around death and even caused quite a few, but cemeteries were new to her. />
  With the paper in hand, still folded, she turned and looked into Aaron’s eyes. She saw his yearning, his longing to be there for her, protect her. It was what she loved and hated about him at the same time.

  They embraced. She held him tight while holding back the tears, the wave of emotion. She had gotten to know Vivian in an entirely different way over the past year. It was almost as if they had lived their lives together and now Vivian was gone, buried.

  But Vivian hadn’t gone anywhere. Even though her body rotted underfoot, she was very much alive and rooted inside Sarah’s psyche.

  As Sarah pulled away from Aaron, Vivian’s voice echoed in her head.

  “To the left …”

  Sarah headed that way, the paper with the instructions crumpled in her palm.

  “Slightly to the right now …”

  She hopped between two stones, the ground soft, yielding. The sun reached her now, warming her skin, offering comfort.

  “There …”

  Sarah stopped. She slid the paper back into her pocket. An image of Vivian running out into the sun in the backyard of their house with the garden hose in her hand flitted through Sarah’s mind. Summertime. The sprinkler. Running back and forth under the water. Laughter.

  Sarah looked down at the stone that marked her sister’s grave and let the flood of tears go. She wept for Vivian and the times they would never have together.

  The epitaph read, Life Goes On.

  “This is meant to be,” Vivian whispered in Sarah’s inner ear. “So we could do what we do.”

  “Nooo,” Sarah said, under her breath.

  She dropped to her knees, the wet ground soaking through her jeans instantly.

  “No.” Louder this time.

  She had forgotten the flowers in the backseat.

  Without looking up, she said, “Aaron, could you go and get the—”

  The bouquet of lilies materialized beside her. “Brought them with us,” he said.

  She hadn’t seen him grab them. But she hadn’t been paying too much attention.

  She took the flowers and gently laid them alongside the name Vivian Roberts.

  Another memory surfaced. One of Vivian’s last moments, her last breath. The pain in her face, her chest as her heart struggled to beat and her lungs screamed for air. The pain in her groin as she struggled uselessly against her murderer, her rapist.

  Sarah yelped, dropped her hands to the grass and balled them into fists, ripping grass out by the roots and clumping it in her palm. She ground her teeth together and seethed in silent rage at the injustice of it all. It was one thing to know what happened, to lose a loved one and to keep moving forward. But to have to feel, to almost endure what they endured, was something else entirely.

  How much of her sanity was compromised by these images? Could she continue what she had been doing for the past seven plus years with a traitor for a mind? Before she was shot in the head in Toronto last year, Vivian couldn’t get in at this level. Now Vivian was another consciousness, another being inside Sarah. One that could even control Sarah’s body whether Sarah allowed it or not.

  Until recently her sister had only entered her sparingly, and with massive effort, but now Vivian had made a home inside Sarah’s consciousness. In some respects, Sarah welcomed it because Vivian could just talk now. No more notes, no more pens and papers. But with that came all of Vivian. Even her darkest moments.

  Aaron’s hands found Sarah’s shoulders. She shirked him off. This was between the sisters.

  Sarah lowered to her elbows, breathed in the wet soil smell, and tried to get herself under control.

  “I’m sorry,” Vivian whispered in her head. “There are thoughts I can’t control. But you need to leave now.”

  Sarah’s head snapped up. She wiped her eyes with the backs of her wrists and scanned the immediate area, instantly alert. She hadn’t brought any weapons with her. The gun was back at the cabin she had rented until June.

  Am I being paranoid?

  “What’s happening?” she asked. “Why do we have to leave?”

  “Just go,” Vivian whispered. The lightness of Vivian’s voice floated in her mind, like feathers could talk. “Meet with your doctor. He’ll help. Then we have something to do. Something important.”

  “Why won’t you tell me where that cop is? My old babysitter?”

  Whenever Aaron saw Sarah talking to herself, he backed away to give her privacy. He understood who she was talking to, but she suspected it freaked him out.

  “All in good time …”

  Vivian’s voice trailed off. A feeling of retreat, a withdrawal, whooshed through her. Sarah was alone with Aaron. The feeling was absolute. She took another moment to collect herself, then got to her feet and brushed the dirt from her knees.

  Aaron waited patiently five headstones away. He offered a gentle smile. She nodded that she was okay, then scanned the grounds again.

  The vehicle that had entered the cemetery moments before looked like a Ford Fusion. It was parked by one of the fresh mounds of dirt. Two men in black leather coats stood by the mound, heads bowed. The one who faced her seemed to be watching them. Even though his head was aimed downward, she felt his eyes on her. But how was that possible? No one knew where they were going today and even if someone knew, why follow her?

  She blinked hard, wiped her eyes, and stared at the men.

  They turned from the mound and headed for their vehicle.

  “Did you see those two?” she asked.

  “Yeah? What about them?”

  “Were they watching us?”

  After a moment, Aaron said, “Not that I could tell.”

  The car eased down the narrow road meandering through the plots.

  With one last look at Vivian’s burial site, Sarah blew a kiss and turned away. She linked her arm with Aaron’s as they headed for the car.

  Once on cement, Sarah stomped her feet to remove the residue from the wet grass. In a harsh suddenness, their car alarm sounded.

  Her head snapped up. No one was near the car as the alarm blared. Aaron fumbled for the key fob in his pocket, brought it out and silenced the alarm.

  “How did that happen?” he asked.

  “You didn’t bump the panic button on the fob by accident, did you?”

  He shook his head and stared down at the keys. “They were in my pocket. Until we stepped onto this little road, my arm was in yours.”

  Sarah deepened her voice and tried to emulate Vincent Price. “Maybe it was Vivian or some other ghost wanting to make contact.”

  “Don’t be weird.”

  “What’s weird? My voice or the alarm?”

  “Both.”

  She smacked his arm before he could block it or step back. “Let’s go. I need to get back to the cabin.”

  As they drove the winding lane toward the exit, Aaron said, “I’m going to miss you.”

  “It’s only been two weeks. In six weeks, I’ll come home. Then maybe I’ll visit you in Toronto.”

  “Overall it’s two months. That’s a lot.”

  She opened the car window for fresh air to replace the humid and thick air after the rain. “It may be a lot, but it’s needed.”

  “Isn’t there someone you can see near Santa Rosa?”

  “I don’t want to bump into my doctor, the man who knows what’s inside my head, while buying oranges or bread at the local grocery store. I rented this cabin for two months and set up six appointments with a psychiatrist with a purpose.”

  “I know, you told me. Sartre said something like, ‘If you’re lonely when you’re alone, then you’re in bad company.’”

  “That’s exactly why I need to spend two months alone.”

  “But you’re seeing a doctor weekly.”

  “Aaron. You know what I mean.”

  He pulled out of the cemetery and headed back the way they had come, a smile playing across his lips. “I know, but I can’t be faulted for trying. I’ve been missing you and I’m going to m
iss you. Parkman’s missing you. Your parents are—”

  “Really? Add all the pressure you want. I’ll make it three months. Maybe four. The cabin’s a month-to-month lease. I’ve retained first option. But no problem, just keep pushing.”

  He nodded, that smile still there. When he reached for the radio, Sarah looked forward and saw the Ford Fusion from the cemetery again.

  It was coming toward them.

  The same one?

  Before it passed, she visually confirmed it was the same men from the cemetery. Both wore their leather jackets. Both had close-cropped hair, military like.