Shadows Lost: Lost #3 (The Lost) Read online

  Shadows Lost

  By

  Melyssa Williams

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to real events, locations or people are used fictitiously. Names, places and events are the products of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is purely coincidental.

  ©Copyright 2013

  Melyssa Williams

  Cover Design by Genesis Kohler

  Cover Photography by Christin Szczeniak – Cloudy Day Photography http://www.cloudydayphoto.com/

  All rights reserved. This book and its parts may not be reproduced or copied without the author’s permission. The author may be contacted at www.shadowsgray.com

  1.

  I miss a lot about my old life, the life before my sister, Rose, I mean. I miss Prue, my adopted grandmother, left behind in London. It seems everyone I love gets left behind eventually. I miss her cantankerous ways, her reminiscing, the way she knew me better than anyone else, even her dreadfully wonderful, frightening, messy, creative, questionable cooking. I miss my coffee shop drinks – shallow of me, I know, but I do – the smell of sticky syrups that were used to flavor lattes and mochas, the chocolate, the roasted beans, the sound of the espresso machine. I had an idea for a new concoction, a Baklava Latte, something with honey and cinnamon and maybe a pat of butter on the top. I miss my guitar, and I also miss being able to play music on tiny devices that plug into my ears, allowing me to mute the outside noise. I wonder if I could still play the chords to my favorite – Luke Dawes would say depressing – songs. The calluses on my fingertips from the strings are completely gone now, and I miss them too. I miss spray cheese and cars. I miss cars fiercely actually. I am beginning to really hate walking. It’s completely overrated.

  I miss bubble baths, fragranced with cucumber and melon or lemon and sage, and my old monogrammed washcloth. Yes, it was monogrammed with someone else’s initials, but I didn’t care. It was mine, and I’ll never see it again, and I mourn its loss like a tiny death. I miss my old clothes, in spite of them being unfashionable, especially my tie-dye and my overalls, and I miss my Garfield cat mug that I used to drink coffee out of.

  I miss Emme the most. Sometimes I dream of her at night, and I wake angry, because it isn’t a nice dream, and Emme deserved to be the star of a lovely dream, not a nightmare drenched in blood. I dream that we are taking her cold, dead body out of the house, dressed in her pink dress, her favorite color, and she sits up and beckons to me to follow her with a crook of her pale, white finger. She is ghostly pale, and blood seeps through her bodice, and when she summons me, I cannot withstand her. How can I? If her dying request is to see me dead with her, I will give in. I can see straight through her to the other side of London, the side she lived in, the side she walked the night streets of, the side that ended up killing her. I can see straight through her to the phantoms in the street, swirling through the air and wailing horribly: mostly young women, desperate and murdered. Her red hair blows around her face though there is no wind in the house. I wake whimpering, my heart hammering, my hair sweaty around my face. I’m terrified that she’ll speak in my dream someday, and I know I couldn’t bear that because I know what she’ll say. She’ll ask me why I let my little sister and Jack kill her like they did. I always struggle to wake myself before she can speak, and so far, I’ve succeeded. One night at a time.

  Africa is hot and dusty, though beautiful in its own right. It’s a dismal time to be a lady in a desert, though I’d wager it is a dismal time to be a lady at all in 1888. I’ve abandoned all hope of a corset – evil things, corsets – and have taken to wearing wide-legged, men's pants. The Africans find me bizarre anyway, so it hardly matters to them how I dress. I’d like to think if I slipped into something prettier, Israel might approve, but he’s so busy with Dr. Smythe and the new clinic that he hardly notices me, and he’s never been one to care what I look like anyway. At times like this, I suppose that’s a bonus, since I look like a gangly teenage boy who hasn’t quite grown into his legs and whose voice hasn’t changed yet.

  I almost miss Dad’s drinking. It’s a terrible thing to admit to, but his drying out period is nearly harder on us than it is on him. He’s so melancholy that everyone hates to be around him; even Bea has had it with his moping, and she’s the gentlest one of our bunch. Yes, your eldest daughter is a pant-wearing heathen, I want to say to my father, and yes, your youngest daughter is pals with a serial killer, and your wife was murdered, I know, I know, but it’s time to focus on the positive. If I could find one, a positive that is, I’d point it out to him. It isn’t as though I want to hand him a scotch and soda or anything, but I wish they made a patch or something, something to wean him off gradually, because the cold turkey approach is a slow, slow killer.

  I miss some of the lightheartedness that used to be, in my old life, my pre-Rose life. Now she’s gone, or to be more precise, we’re gone, but her shadow remains, lodged in my head and my dreams and my heart. She blackened everything in our lives with her darkness, like a cold wind of black that blew out a candle. Most light engulfs darkness; isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be? I don’t believe that anymore. Some blackness can overpower light – Rose is proof of that. She has a special kind of darkness in her. I can’t be sure of whether we will ever see my sister or Luke Dawes again, and as a result, I am constantly watching my back. I wonder if I’ll ever stop.

  Israel has thrown himself into his work. I can see that this is his pattern, and I suppose it’s not a bad one. I wish that there was more time for me, but even I can’t be so selfish. How can he make it better anyway? There’s nothing he could say or do that would remove the last year from my life. So, he works, he and Dr. Smythe, and I help, and I practice my Chinese with Lu, the good doctor’s wife, and I help with Joe, Emme’s son. As far as Lu and her husband are concerned, I am Israel’s wife, a lie that began in London.

  This has made things a bit awkward.

  “You can take the bed tonight. I’ll take the floor,” I offer to my not-husband. I help him with his boots as he yawns so big he looks like he could swallow me whole, and I’m hardly a dainty size. He is even more exhausted than usual because we’ve had a break in the weather – it’s October now, but the season known as The Long Rains was extremely difficult – and they’ve been working nearly around the clock.

  “No, it’s okay, Sonny. You take it.” He rubs his eyes with his palms. In the dark of our bedroom, his black hands blot out the whiteness of his eyes, and he nearly disappears. In the last few months, he’s taken to my nickname, which previously only my dad had ever used. I like it, except when he’s romancing me, and then it’s just odd. I told him that, and it made him laugh. Fine, he said, when I’m whispering tender nothings in your ear I’ll only call you Sonnet.

  “Rock, paper, scissors?” I pose with my hands ready. He’s so tired that he’ll be slow, and I can anticipate his moves. He’s nearly always scissors anyway. I think it must be the surgeon in him.

  Sure enough, I win – or more to the point, I let him win because I choose paper – and I tuck him into the bed. Some nights, with the new development between us, the tension in our room is palatable. A lighthearted kiss turns breathless and full of promises I’m not ready to cash in on, not quite when things are so new between us, but tonight I could be tucking in a teddy bear or a kitten for all the desire that unfolds. He is asleep before I even say goodnight. A swift knock on our door makes me roll my eyes. My dad does this every night, just a reminder to his not-son-in-law that he’d better be behaving himself and a reminder to me that I’m still his little girl. You’d be surprised at how much an anticipated knock can be like a douse of cold water. I toss m
y pillow at the door in rebuttal.

  I know I need to fall asleep as quickly as possible, of course. Being Lost, we don’t mess around with insomnia, not if we’re with someone we’d like to stay with. A constant worry in our lives is the fear of being left behind or going on ahead without our loved ones. As a result, the Lost can sleep pretty much anywhere, anytime. Ever see a homeless person, napping at a bus stop? He may just be trying to get out. When all else fails, and we have trouble sleeping, there’s always the Nightfall pills. Invented by some Lost genius out there with a restlessness problem, they’ll knock you out quickly enough. We’re all so tired here in Africa that none of us are using them at the moment, but we each keep a steady supply. Sleeping together becomes an art form: me, Iz, Dad, Bea, and Joe, all sleeping at once, never without the others, not even once. Once is all it takes; just ask my sister Rose. Leaving her behind one night when she was just a child was hardly intentional, but she won’t forgive us.

  Even so, tonight I find my mind wandering. I think about Rose and Luke and wonder where they are now. Have they stayed in London? Are they still in old man Tate’s house, eating cake, sipping imaginary tea, and throwing dishes? Did they realize we’d slipped away after Emme’s funeral? We had only traveled continents, not centuries, not yet (please, God, anytime), and I can almost feel them near me. It makes me shiver, and not just with fear, but with a sense of foreboding. Though I’d like to assume we are done with them for good, I can’t be sure. If Rose is still determined to exact her revenge on us, she’ll find us soon enough. She did before.

  With that disturbing thought, I firmly shake my head, find Israel’s hand beneath the blanket, pull it down so it dangles off the side of the bed and I can hold it, and, with the practice of someone who has perfected it, will myself to sleep.

  ***

  When morning breaks, Israel is already gone, and though I’ve lain in bed sleepily, I don’t fall back asleep. Travelings usually happen in the dead of night, which makes waking at different times acceptable for the most part, but still.

  The mornings in Africa are best when it comes to the weather; the deluges and downpours will start in the afternoon. I’m used to having our room to myself to get ready for the day. I’d love a bath, but I make do with splashing some cold water on my face from the pitcher on our bedside. I also miss deodorant if I haven’t listed that in my long list yet. I ponytail my hair low enough that it won’t cause a problem with my wide brimmed hat and change out of my white nightgown and into a pair of trousers. I can’t stop yawning this morning, though I slept all right and mercifully didn’t dream of Emme. Her loss is a physical thing to me, and I wince every time she comes to mind, which is at least a hundred times a day.

  Breakfast is usually spent with Bea and Joe, and this morning is no different. They are already up – Bea sipping tea and Joe bouncing off the walls – when I come down to the eating area. Our home, if that’s what it is (the name doesn’t fit yet), is a boarding house for tourists. Israel says this will be Nairobi someday soon, less than a decade from now, but for now it’s just a village in Kenya. I try to close my eyes and picture it as a bustling, modern capital city with telephone poles and internet connections and hotels and cars and buses, but my imagination fails me. Already I’ve tumbled into the past and acclimatized to it. Of all people, I should be perfectly able to picture it modernized, but I simply cannot. Right now, the people look at us with distrust, though we are only here to help them – well, and escape from my sister – and I hope we won’t stay too long here. It’s one place I won’t mind waking up and being gone from in the long run.

  Our boarding house mistress is a young woman named Asha. She’s a startlingly beautiful widow, independent (especially for this day and age), and she doesn’t care for me a fig. I know this because she told me so. If I thought things were awkward in the bedroom, it’s nothing compared to the awkwardness I feel around Asha.

  She nods to me, the way she always does, and continues stirring something in a pot for her guests. We aren’t really considered guests anymore, just boarders – the difference between the two I am not entirely sure I grasp – and about a month ago she left us to our own devices when it came to meals. This has left us to scrounge around for our breakfasts and lunches and has put me in the position of cooking supper for my pretend husband. He likes this arrangement even less than I do. I can’t cook.

  “Auntie Sonnet, I defended our whole house from lions last night!” Joe says with his mouth full of porridge. He tells me this nearly every morning.

  I ruffle his messed up hair fondly. “Did you? Well, I certainly appreciate that. I wish you would have chased off the elephants too, though. I had three of them in my bed, and it was so crowded!”

  Joe laughs and spits porridge everywhere. “That’s incredulous, Auntie,” he says. My father has been teaching him new vocabulary words, and he enjoys peppering his sentences with them whenever he can. Joe is only seven, but he can speak like an old professor when he puts his little mind to it.

  Only seven. Suddenly, I remember his sixth birthday, over a hundred years from now. We were in America, and I was working at the coffee shop with my boss, Micki. Emme had come in and taken me shopping with her for his birthday gift. That was the day I realized she was Joe’s mum, not his sister, like she pretended to be. That makes Bea his biological grandmother, not mother, but she always filled the latter role, and now, with Emme dead and gone, she always would. Just a year ago. Feels like lifetimes ago. All our ages are a bit in question, especially since our travel to London when Rose pulled us there. Somehow we missed a couple of months. Later, I realized we had missed my birthday. I’m nineteen, nearly twenty now, I think.

  “You’re incredulous,” I reply, mildly. “Now share your porridge, if you please.”

  “Make your own.” Joe guards his bowl, the way I knew he would, and bares his teeth, growling.

  “Oh, ho,” I shake his own spoon at him playfully. “Who’s the lion now?”

  While Joe immerses himself in method acting by practicing his roars, I finish up the last of his breakfast. Bea is staring into space, the way she does frequently these days, and I hate to interrupt her thoughts, though if they’re sad, and I’m sure they are, perhaps it would be a kindness. I study her face for a moment; she has prematurely aged a bit in the last year, no small wonder. Her smooth face has slipped a bit, like butter left out on the counter. I long to lift the corners of her mouth like I would do if Joe were upset to make him laugh. I go ahead and speak though I’m not confident she’s even listening to me.

  “Israel asked me to get some things. Well, he asked me the other day, but I forgot until now. We could ride the train and make a day of it if you aren’t too busy.” I make a show of scraping my bowl clean though there’s nothing left to scrape. I’m uncomfortable around Bea these days, though she’s the closest thing to a mother I’ve ever had, beside Prue, and since her and my father are somewhat involved with one another, she could be my stepmother someday. Even so, or because of those things, the guilt I feel for her only daughter’s murder never leaves my mind, and I can’t help wondering if she blames me for Emme’s death. Now she’s left with her grandson to raise by herself, and I feel as though it’s entirely my fault. If I hadn’t become obsessed with finding Rose, if I hadn’t pursued her, maybe she would have left us alone.

  Bea looks up and focuses on me, just for a moment, long enough to reply. “They’re doing the ribbon cutting ceremony today, remember?”

  Oh, yes. I had forgotten about that. Though the clinic isn’t really finished, it’s finished enough to start seeing patients, a few at a time, while the rest of the building goes up around them. Israel and Dr. Smythe are excited to get back to practicing medicine, leaving the carpentry and such to their hired laborers. Though Israel once confessed to me that he hated being a doctor, the usefulness he feels when practicing makes him whole again. Having traveled centuries through time and space and back again has given him an edge in the medical world, and
he plans to use his knowledge to perhaps save those who couldn’t be saved before. He’s much nobler than I am, and I’m proud of him. My only contribution to the world seems to be bad fashion and a lunatic family that I try to keep out of the general population. And I typically fail at the latter.

  “Oh, mercy, I forgot!” I smack my forehead, making Joe chuckle. “I should probably wear a dress; make myself look more professional like?”

  Bea has already dismissed me in her mind and is no longer listening. Resting her chin in her hands, she is staring into space again. Asha bustles by, and I can nearly feel the iciness as she passes me. I don’t know why she dislikes me, but I can guess. Israel is handsome – alright, he’s what more modern girls would call very fine – and I’m a white nobody. I don’t think she appreciates me taking him off any other eligible, more compatible, girl’s hands. But then again, that’s just a guess. Maybe I’m paranoid.

  “Are you going to at least comb through this lion’s mane of yours?” I make a show of giving Joe a Mohawk, sliding his carrot-colored hair through my palms. He is in desperate need of a haircut, but he won’t sit still long enough, and truth be told, the only person who has ever cut his hair is Emme. I wonder if he’ll ever cut it again, and if we’ll have a male version of Rapunzel on our hands soon.

  “Stop it!” He swats my hand away and smoothes down his ruffled hair. “I like it the way it is. I gotta go! I’ll see you there!” He speaks in exclamation points all the time at this age. Everything is exciting for Joe.

  We’ve given him entirely too much freedom here, I think. He comes and goes without so much as a by-your-leave, and no one is making him do lessons or keeping him accountable for anything. Dad is teaching him big fancy words, but that’s about the extent of his education and nurturing right now. I make a mental note to start him on his letters and numbers soon, if I can broach the subject to Bea without insulting her parenting style. I remember being a little Lost child; I was taught my letters by a silent monk in a Spanish monastery. I remember practicing my handwriting in the dim light of a candle while he inscribed sacred texts and illuminated manuscripts. I wish I could give that to Joe, but I’m sure he’ll get his own unorthodox education all in good time. Who knows where we’ll wake up next?