Into the Dim Read online

  None of it had touched me. It wasn’t real.

  It took the horrified, wounded look on my father’s face for it to finally break through. I heard it happen, a quiet snap deep inside.

  “Dad?” I choked. “Daddy? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t. It’s just that I—I can’t . . .”

  “I know, sweetie.” He pulled me across the seat to wrap me in his arms. “I know.”

  The tears came then. Because he was right. They were all right. My mother was dead, and I had been so stupid.

  Chapter 2

  I’D LISTENED IN ON THE KITCHEN EXTENSION WHEN MY dad took the call all those months ago. The man from the Red Cross sounded so apologetic. His proper speech and Hindi accent made the words almost soothing. The search for survivors was called off, he’d explained. Explosives had been set to bring down the rest of the dangerous, mangled mess that had once housed the university lecture halls. Anyone still missing was now presumed dead.

  I think Dad even thanked him before hanging up.

  Now presumed dead.

  The phone had tumbled from my hand as the files in my mind blew open and began to flood with images of death by crushing. Death by suffocation. The walls closed in around me as pain blasted through my brain. Unbearable, unspeakable pain. When my father rushed into the kitchen seconds later, I was curled on the floor, screaming in agony.

  I’d had them before. Cluster migraines, the doctors called them. Brought on by my unusual mental “gift,” and exacerbated by severe claustrophobia. They weren’t dangerous, but when my brain—with its photographic capability—took in too much stimuli, it simply couldn’t cope.

  Though the shrinks could diagnose the headaches all day long, they’d never been able to pinpoint the exact source of the horrific, breath-robbing nightmare I’d suffered my entire life.

  After Mom died, the dream had gotten so much worse.

  In it, I’m trapped inside the belly of a great tree. A dank, cold place in which the living wood tries to consume me. Where fat, leggy creatures drop down from the blackness above to roam through my hair and skitter across my face.

  For months after Mom died, I woke up every night, biting back screams, my sheets sweaty and tangled around me. They’d recently subsided to only once or twice a week. Though now when the nightmare came, I stayed awake the rest of the night, too afraid to fall asleep again. Without the comfort of her voice or her cool hand to smooth the hair off my clammy face, the monsters always returned.

  In the end, I did nothing as they lowered the shiny, tenant-less casket into the ground. Back in our own car, Dad pulled up in front of the house, but didn’t get out. His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “I won’t force you to go,” he said. “But Stella and I will be gone for a few weeks. We’re taking a long drive west, then up to Seattle, and the Alaskan cruise is for two weeks. It’s something she’s always wanted to do.”

  I managed not to roll my eyes, but it was a close thing.

  “You can, of course, stay with your grandmother.”

  I blinked at him. He knew I’d rather live in a cardboard box and take showers with the hose than stay with her. A woman who’d never, in all the years I’d known her, shown me one ounce of kindness.

  “No, thanks,” I said, though it left me with decidedly few options. It wasn’t like I had a friend I could stay with.

  Or a friend.

  “Yes, well . . .” He sighed. “I’m sorry, honey, but those are your choices. It’s your call, though I think the trip would be good for you. We can get you a mild sedative from Dr. Miller for the plane ride.” He squeezed my knee and smiled, as if that was the answer.

  A mild sedative. Just the ticket. That would take care of the massive panic attacks that would surely come when I was alone forty-thousand feet above the Atlantic Ocean.

  “I’ve forwarded you the email from Lucinda,” he said as he got out of the car. “I never met her, but she and your mother were very close, you know. Promise me you’ll at least think about it.”

  I snorted. Sure. No problem. I’ll just hop on a plane. Easy-peasey.

  Unlike a normal person, I wasn’t worried about crashing. I’d researched the chances of that, and they were infinitesimal. No. It wasn’t splatting into the ocean and cracking into a million pieces that made my teeth itch. It was being trapped inside that suffocating metal tube.

  As I walked across the porch, the memory zipped into place.

  My mom was a prominent historian and author of a dozen popular biographies. Universities all over the world paid her very well for her lectures and book-signings. She’d tried for years to take me along on her circuit. She’d begged, cajoled, promised me a great time. A little over a year ago, I’d finally agreed. We planned it for months. We’d fly into London and rent a car, and I’d actually get to see some of the historical places I’d spent most of my life studying. I wanted to go so badly, I could taste it. Then, three days after my fifteenth birthday, we went to the airport.

  It was an unmitigated disaster.

  I tried. I tried so hard to make myself get on that plane. In the end, my mother had boarded alone, while I vomited quietly in my dad’s back seat, the claustrophobia-induced migraine splitting my skull in two. After that, no matter how much she begged, I wouldn’t even discuss it.

  Alone in my bedroom, I slumped in my battered desk chair, staring down at the smears of red graveyard mud that tracked across the frayed carpet. The muted clink of dishes rose up through the floor. Below, I could hear the muffled voices of people who’d followed us home. Done with the whole mourning thing, they were busy stuffing their faces with casseroles and neighbor-baked pies.

  She’s gone. She’s really gone. And now Dad is leaving me too.

  But ten hours on an airplane? Impossible.

  The area inside a typical Boeing 747 is 1,375 square feet. The average size of a small house. Not so bad, right? A house. Plenty of room. No big deal.

  But if you’re in a house, you can go outside. You can step out and breathe the air. If you want—if you need—to.

  Panting, I lowered my head to my knees as tiny jets of agony began to pulse across my scalp. An invisible band slowly tightened across my chest as sweat gathered at my hairline and across the back of my neck.

  When black spots appeared at the edge of my vision, I knew I was seconds from hyperventilating. Grinding my teeth, I forced myself to perform the breathing technique Mom and I had practiced over and over, when everything became too much. When the vast quantities of information that never, ever left my brain just kept expanding.

  In . . . two three. Out . . . two three. That’s right, Hope. There you go. Slow and easy. Just keep counting.

  When my breath had normalized, I sat up and turned back to the computer. The subject line in the forwarded email read, “Invitation from your aunt.”

  Aunt. I scowled at the four black letters. Yeah, right. Might as well say “Invitation from a total stranger.” My mom and her only sister had been close, that was true enough. They’d talked on the phone every week. Sometimes for hours. But Mom always claimed her sister was something of a recluse. She never visited. And in all those years, she’d never asked to speak to me. Not once.

  I tapped ragged fingernails on the wooden desk. I didn’t need to read the letter. I’d committed it to memory in that one, quick glance. As I’ve already offered my condolences, I shall not do so here.

  I grunted. Wow. What a sweetheart.

  My gaze snagged on the postscript.

  I also believe there are insights she might gain at her mother’s childhood home which would not be feasible for her to discover in her current circumstances.

  “Insights?” I muttered. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  I stood and paced to the window. Even here, in my own space, I felt suffocated. I shoved the sash open, but the muggy June air only made it worse.

  Frustrated, I slammed it back down. Wrapping a fist in the nubby curtains, I started to jerk them closed, when a b
laze of blue caught my eye. Our neighbor’s massive hydrangea bush.

  I flinched away from the window as the memory sliced me apart.

  The annual Walton Fourth of July picnic was mandatory. Only imminent death excused attendance. That year, Mother Bea had hired a professional photographer, who’d spent the day snapping candids. Twelve, chubby and awkward, I’d spent my day ducking out of them.

  As the sun waned, my grandmother had perched in her favorite wicker chair before a great wall of blue hydrangeas to begin formal portraits. When the photographer called for the grandkids, Dad towed me toward the plethora of cousins. Stifling a sigh, I’d arranged myself near the back. Mother Bea’s perfectly permed gray head swiveled, scanning her progeny. When the photographer raised his huge camera, she gestured for him to wait.

  Without bothering to turn, my grandmother made the announcement. “I’d like for these to be blood kin only,” she called. “Hope, you understand, don’t you, dear?”

  Stung—stunned—it took me a second to get it. After I slunk away, my grandmother ordered the obviously disconcerted photographer to proceed. Several of my cousins snickered as waves of hot embarrassment baked my face. Of course it wasn’t a secret that no Walton blood flowed in my veins. But never before had I been singled out that way.

  Left out that way.

  In the tangerine glow of a perfect sunset, I’d watched the mob of tanned, golden-haired kids cluster around their matriarch. Uniformly big teeth gleamed as they grinned on cue. I stood alone, a pale, dark-haired stain against a gleaming white column.

  My mother’s reaction was predictably fierce, and the next day, after my lesson in Empirical Russian, she’d informed my father that she and I would attend no more family functions.

  My mom despised her mother-in-law and everything she stood for. She would never have wanted me to stay.

  I sank down in the desk chair. Tears blurred the screen as, hands shaking, I typed in the two-word reply.

  “I’ll come.”

  Chapter 3

  I WOKE JUST AS THE PLANE TAXIED INTO EDINBURGH AIRPORT. Dad had been right about the sedative, though I was fairly sure Dr. Miller, a kindly, old-school pediatrician who’d treated my myriad ailments since I was six, might’ve upped the recommended dosage just a smidge.

  The first, lighter round of meds had kicked in just as I boarded and strapped in. Somehow, I had stumbled to the right gate in Atlanta. Then I’d spent the next ten hours passed out, drooling, and—based on the mutters of the disgruntled passengers around me—snoring like a bear with a sinus infection.

  Before I left, I’d tried to research my aunt’s home, Christopher Manor. There was little to find. Only a few faraway photos posted by hikers traveling through the famous Scottish Highlands. And a stern warning that—unlike a lot of other grand Highland estates—it was not open to the public.

  “Your aunt’s right sorry she couldn’t be here to welcome you herself, lass.” Mac, Lucinda’s lanky, balding caretaker, had explained when he met me at baggage claim with a little, handwritten sign. “Urgent business, you understand.”

  All this way. And she wasn’t even here?

  Still drowsy and more than a little grumpy, I hadn’t said much on the long, dark drive from Edinburgh. But when we pulled up the gravel drive and parked in front of the massive, imposing mansion, I couldn’t help but gape.

  Floodlights illuminated five or six stories of golden stone that glowed against the night sky. Square Norman towers stood sentinel at each corner, giving the manor a boxy look. There were no storybook turrets that I could see, but the crenelated tops of the walls and towers made it easy to imagine long-ago kilted archers defending the house against rival clans.

  “The house nestles right up against the mountain,” Mac said as he saw the direction of my gaze. “She’s a right good old girl.”

  I nodded, still mute with awe. I couldn’t tell how far the mansion stretched out behind. But judging by the distance to the hump of the mountain in the near distance, it had to be enormous.

  Inside, the house was dark and silent. Only the soft glow of wall sconces set between grim-faced ancestors lit our way as we trudged up two flights of wide, carpeted steps. The scents of stone, lemon polish, and musty drapes cascaded over us as I followed Mac’s knobby shoulders down a narrow hallway.

  Only a small bedside lamp lit the room where Mac deposited me and my bags. With a groan, he laid my suitcase on a nearby table before pointing out a thermos and covered plate. “My Moira wanted to wait up for ye,” he said. “But I told her we’d be sore late getting in. Still I swear she’ll take a broom to these old bones if ye don’t eat at least two of her famous jam sandwiches.”

  At my very-polite thanks, his grin widened, making his small blue eyes disappear into a fan of wrinkles. “Aw, Lass,” he said, “You’ve had a hard row to hoe. But it’s right pleased we are to have you here. Now, you get yourself some sleep. The others will be rarin’ to meet ye come the morn.”

  Still druggy and exhausted, I climbed up the three wooden steps to the bed and, fully clothed, passed clean out.

  The clack of footsteps woke me the next morning. I cracked one crusty eyelid to see that pearly dawn light now puddled on the floor of my new bedroom, brightening as I watched. Groaning, I glanced at the ornate bronze clock on my bedside table.

  Not even seven, yet. Who the hell is wandering around at this ungodly hour? And in heels, no less.

  I pulled the quilt up to my chin and burrowed deeper into the feather mattress.

  Without warning, the bedroom door flew open with such force, it smacked against the paneled wall. I shot up, heart hammering. Before I could blink, a dainty, elf-faced girl with an upturned nose and short spiky hair the startling shade of a blue Slurpee bounded into the room. In a short skirt and peasant blouse—and sporting the highest platform heels I’d ever seen—the girl scampered up the steps to the bed and settled herself beside me, wriggling like an excited puppy.

  “Cheese an’ rice.” A toothy grin lit her entire, freckled face. It was infectious, and I had to force my own lips not to respond. “I thought you were going to sleep away the morn.”

  My mouth felt lined with cat fur, my brain pickled from sleep. I shoved my hair out of my face and scooted back until I was pressed against the puckered velvet headboard.

  She followed my gaze to the half-open door. “Shh. I’m supposed to let you sleep, but you look fine to me. I’m Phoebe, by the by,” she said. “Mac’s my grandda. You met him last night, I hear. He and Gran help Lu run the estate.”

  “I’m—”

  “You’re Hope,” she said, giving me a blinding grin that went all the way to her hairline. “I know. Everyone knows. We’re so excited you’re finally here.”

  “That’s, um . . . good?” I managed before she hopped to the floor.

  “I’ll put your things away while you get ready.”

  I winced as the bubbly girl began yanking clothes from my suitcase and jamming them into a massive ancient dresser. When a pair of too-large sweats emerged from the jumble, she cocked an eyebrow at me.

  “They’re my mom’s,” I said as I slid from beneath the covers. “I just—”

  “You don’t have to explain to me. I sleep in one of my da’s old shirts. I know it’s nutters, but sometimes I can still smell him. We lost him when I was but a babe. Still . . .”

  Her smile wobbled as she swiped a hand beneath her nose. “It’s pure natty, but I don’t care. Gran and I had a huge row when she threw it in the bin and I fished it right back out.”

  It was so weird to watch someone else handling my things. I’d never had a friend back home. No one to wear my clothes without asking or ruin my favorite sweater or share stories about boys. When I was younger, I dreamed of having a friend like that, but Mom always claimed being around “empty-headed” girls my own age would only distract me from my studies.

  Stifling a groan, I eased out from under the covers and stumbled to the center of the room, taking a first
real look at my new surroundings.

  Holy cow, I’m living in freaking Hogwarts.

  Turning in an idiot circle, I gawped at the shabby opulence. Dusty ostrich feathers topped yards of midnight-blue velvet that draped the immense canopy bed. A high, scalloped ceiling was complete with plaster cherubs. Stuffed bookshelves lined each side of an honest-to-God marble fireplace. I inhaled, tasting book glue and the ghosts of long-ago fires.

  Phoebe cheerfully slammed the last of my things into a drawer. “Pure awesome room, aye? It was your mum’s, you know. Sarah’s.”

  I could see it. My mother as a young girl, curled on the tartan loveseat, strawberry hair tucked behind her ears as she frowned down at a leather-bound book.

  Phoebe tactfully ignored me, humming under her breath as she heaved my empty suitcase over to a closet. I noticed her eyes were an exact replica of her grandfather’s. Small. Blue. Smiling.

  Before setting the frame on a bedside table, she studied the only photo I’d brought. Me and Mom, lying on a bed of autumn leaves, brown and gold bits tangled in our hair as we grinned up at my dad.

  “Gads,” she said. “You don’t look anything like her. Sarah, I mean. You’re exotic, like some gypsy girl, with that dark hair and those great gray eyes of yours.” She tilted her head, studying me. “But then, you’re adopted, aye? Lucky, that. They say I look just like my mum. And you couldn’t know, but that’s pure unfortunate.”

  I couldn’t help but grin at her comically tragic expression. A stud pierced one straight, rust-colored eyebrow, which I assumed meant that beneath the dye, she was likely a redhead. The silver stud winked in the light as she babbled on in an accent so thick, I had to concentrate to understand.

  “I met her—Sarah—when she was here in the fall. She came before . . . Well, she was in an awful hurry then, wasn’t she?”

  “You saw my mom?” The words tangled in my mouth until I almost couldn’t get them out. “But . . . she never . . . I mean, I thought she went straight to India. Are you sure it was last fall? When, exactly?”