All The Dark Places

15. She Dances Every Night Now

     The Journal. Green leather and a yellowed leaf on the cover. A grown up's thing that belonged to a little girl. Rosalind could not stop thinking about it, dreaming about it. Felicia had predicted the fall of cities. What else might she have predicted? Scott did little but sleep. He disappeared in the daytime, hiking out to the forest and not coming back until well after dark. She did not ask where he went. He was distant and lost in his thoughts. He came back each night exhausted and unwilling to discuss what might be happening to him. 

     She tried not to pressure him, but she worried so much that he was losing his mind. She felt him shake in his sleep, crying. She brought him tea. She covered him with blankets and once, she even sang to him, but he did nothing but shake. And so, the journal. She had to find it because she could do nothing else in the wee hours of the early morning, when the sun peaked up just enough to illuminate the rooms of the castle. The Yearlings' suite was just as they left it; the same silk blouse tossed over the back of a chair. The same expensive gold watch laid out as if it were a simple trinket. She searched through every place the journal could have been left. It was possible -even likely- that Felicia took the journal with her to the hospital, but she had to look. She had to try at least. Pulling clothes out of a chest of drawers, she moved aside a neatly folded stack of Felicia's clothing and saw the green leather leaf of the journal's cover. She snatched it up, feeling guilty about invading the child's privacy. This was too important for privacy, she thought. 

     Sitting on the elaborately carved canopied bed, she flipped through pages. Many of them were bubble scripted notes about music, a boy in school who picked on her too much and her best friend, a ginger haired girl named Katie Watkins, who she glued a photo of in one of pages. Photos of the Yearling family Christmas were taped and glued with careful little script underneath, too careful for such a little girl. It was the shining picture of a perfect family. Martin with Felicia, fishing from a bridge. Thessaly with Felicia at the Science Museum in London. Martin and Thessaly together, his arm around her, only in that one, the smiles looked forced. Another of the Yearling trio together; a Christmas gathering, glittering Christmas tree behind them and a stack of neatly wrapped presents. 

     Again, Thessaly Yearling looked annoyed, and Martin looked like he was faking a smile. Only Felicia's face lit up with a genuine smile. Felicia certainly had a charmed life; horseback riding lessons, ballet classes, private school, a French tutor who's photo she pasted in and circled with a heart and the name "Henri" in pink marker. Felicia was starting crushes early. It was the month of February that she found among the pages drawings in bright colored pencil. The first was a drawing of a spidery creature resembling the thing that had bitten Scott. Felicia had drawn the creature with the words "bug thing" above it and below it the stick figure body of a man lying down. 

     The next page was a list of description: 

Little blue eyes like bug lights 

Does it have lots of eyes? 

It has too many legs 

Not a bug at all 

Made of metal but like a jellyfish thing 

It makes Katie scared

 It doesn't make me scared at all 

      So, some little girl named Katie had seen one of the creatures too, and Felicia had seen one as early as February, five months ago. Why wasn't she scared of these things? An eight-year-old girl with no fear of an alien being? The very thought of that crept through her and chilled her skin. Had Felicia been bitten? 

     Another page had a diary entry; 

--- I see the dark lady in my dreams. Her eyes are so green. She knows everybody's secrets. She watches them swing from the trees, and no one sees her cry. There are marks on her arm, and I can't count them all. Bloody holes that reach all the way down to the bone. In my dreams, her arms are like bloody meat, and I wake up screaming and daddy stays awake with me because I can't sleep.---

      The dark lady? She closed the journal and slipped it into the pocket of her skirt. She would have to study it more later. The sun was over the horizon, and it was time to plant more in the garden. She had too much to do. It occurred to her that from now on, every day would be like this. She went back to her room to stash the journal away and change into work clothes. She had no actual work clothes, but a pair of pale blue cotton shorts, and white tank top served well enough in the heat. She had borrowed a pair of hiking boots from Ivy Bracks. 

     She braided her hair back in two braids at the side of her head to keep the curls out of her face. I must look ridiculous, she thought, looking in the mirror. The beautiful lace evening dress she brought for the party she would likely never get to wear. The party had not happened and never would. For a while, she lamented the loss of that part of her life. To be so close to a new kind of success and then be lost in tragedy felt like a slithering worm in her stomach. Then, Alain. It was too much to even think about Alain. She would not allow herself that the pain. She feared that if she thought about him at all, she would cripple herself and never recover. She could not afford to be emotionally crippled at all, and that might last forever. Alain now existed in a constant low hum of aching in her heart. She felt it physically, like a fist slowly constricting the muscle. She looked at the pile of dry goods that she, Scott and Noel had stashed away in an armoire. 

     There was a decent lock on the door to the suite, but anyone determined would be able to get past that fairly easily. Especially Noel. He seemed a shady sort of person. Like you, her guilty conscience said in a whisper. She shook it off and went about securing some of the goods in different parts of the room. At least if someone found some of it, they would be less likely to find all of it. This seemed petty and silly, but she realized, necessary. She took a plastic garment bag from the armoire, the one that held her lace evening dress, and stuffed bags of flour, sugar, cornstarch and oil into it, securing it closed with the zipper. She took a roll of duct tape she got at the hardware store and spent a half an hour wrapping the huge sack with tape. She made a flap over the top so she could open it later to retrieve supplies. It would offer protection from the rain. 

      Opening small plastic containers in the kitchen, she took out a small supply of sugar, flour, oil, starch, spices and dried fruits; the supply she would ration for herself and Scott for a week. She took out a container for Noel and rationed his for a week. She braided a piece of twine into a thicker rope and secured it to the sack. She opened the window looking out over the lake and saw the edge of the roof, jutting out four feet from the wall. Anyone looking up would not see that ledge, only the lip of the edge. Taking the duct taped sack, she climbed out the window. Balancing precariously on the ledge, she looked down and felt dizzy. She had never been fond of heights, and she reminded herself that if she fell and broke her bones, there was no one to help her, no ambulance to rush her to the hospital. She carefully edged around the window to a deep corner of the roof, almost a pocket. Perfect, she thought. 

     She knelt down to secure herself better and push the sack across the ledge to the pocket in the stone work. She stood up and edged herself back to the window, wincing when she saw Ivy Bracks down below, looking up at her. Ivy smiled her knowing smile and waved. Not knowing what else to do, she waved and then ducked her head and climbed back into the window. Jesus, I am that kind of person, she thought, not liking this self-introspection one bit. On the other hand, the Bracks family had pigs, chickens, and a private garden. They were far better off than she was. The community garden would make her feel right again, like a decent human being. She grabbed garden gloves Toby lent her and headed out to the garden.