Page 48 of Remain (one-of-a-kind)

Wren stood in front of the bathroom mirror, wondering where her glass of wine had gone.

She could remember bringing it upstairs and setting it next to the sink; she could even recall taking a sip, so where was it?

She scanned the area around the tub, thinking she’d perhaps set it on the floor while she was adjusting the water temperature, but it wasn’t there. And why wasn’t the water running?

I must be losing my mind, she thought. She supposed she’d left the glass of wine in the kitchen, but when she concentrated, even the memory of pouring it seemed hazy. Odd, given that she had no problem recalling every detail of her afternoon with Tate, and afterward she’d gone to the festival…

Hadn’t she?

The more she tried to revisit the evening, the more slippery her memories became.

Much of the last few hours was blank, and the images that she managed to dredge up were static, like snapshots in their brevity.

At the Monkey Tears show, she’d seen the petite lead singer clutching the microphone with both hands; she could picture the dreadlocked guitarist hunched over her shiny red Fender during her solo; she could even remember a brief sighting of Griffin striding toward the stage; but that was it.

Stranger yet, those three recollections had a fuzzy quality, as if they had happened not tonight but rather long ago.

She really wished that Tate had come with her to the festival, because talking with him might help fill in the blanks. She hadn’t seen him downstairs; his bedroom door stood open, and she wondered where he was. Perhaps he’d gone off with Oscar somewhere.

She wanted to apologize to him for the way she’d left.

Except, right now, she couldn’t exactly remember how their afternoon together had ended.

One minute, they were lying in bed, but the next, there was nothing.

She couldn’t recall saying goodbye or getting dressed, or even driving to the festival.

Come to think of it, she couldn’t remember the drive back home either.

She frowned, raising a hand to massage her temples.

Everything felt so jumbled right now. Not just her memories from earlier tonight, she realized, but even those from the recent past. Only Tate stood out with clarity.

Her conversation with him about his sister, and his peculiar expression while he watched her search for the puzzle piece, were indelibly etched in her mind.

She could easily reconstruct every game they’d played and the laughs they’d shared when she taught him to cook.

Every moment of their soul-baring discussions in the parlor was within reach, but if you asked her what else she’d done lately, she’d be hard-pressed to describe anything at all.

Right now, she wasn’t even sure if she really had spoken to Nash the other day, because that, too, felt like eons ago.

For that matter, when was the last time she’d seen Reece or Louise? Or any of the other guests?

A prickling sensation interrupted her reverie, and as the hairs on the back of her neck began to rise, she had the uncanny feeling that she was no longer alone in the bathroom.

Whirling around, she saw nothing, but her heart continued to race.

When she looked down, she saw that her glass of wine had magically reappeared on the counter; directly opposite lay the clothing she’d just been wearing.

She was now naked with only a towel wrapped around her.

This isn’t real. This can’t be happening—

But she knew she wasn’t dreaming. If anything, she felt intensely awake, more lucid and alert at this moment than she’d felt in a long time. In the mirror, she caught a reflection of the bathtub, and the hairs on her arms began to rise.

Come see…

The bathtub beckoned to her. Indistinct whispers urged her forward, and despite the dread seeping through her limbs, she couldn’t stop herself.

She took a step toward the deep well of the tub, dread turning to fear as she lurched toward it against her will.

Leaning over the edge of the basin, she saw legs and gasped.

Her eyes traveled up the length of the torso, and she knew at once there was something wrong with the body.

It was gray and mottled and swollen, and when her gaze finally reached the face, recognition slammed her like a closed fist. She stumbled backward in shock.

Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God…

The back of her head exploded in pain, and she screamed, instinctively reaching for the wound. Doubling over, she stared at the viscous slick of blood on her fingers. She screamed again.

Then, inexplicably, the pain evaporated, and her fingers were clean, as though it had all been nothing more than a momentary nightmare.

The towel was gone, and she was once again fully dressed.

Only the terrifying corpse remained, and despite her revulsion, she found it difficult to look away.

An unsettling curiosity arose within her, drawing her gaze back to the battered figure.

Her eyes roamed over the distended limbs and bluish lips.

While she stared at the body, new memories began trickling in.

Initially, a few disjointed flashes, like rivulets through a crack in a dam; then a growing stream of terrible sequences, chaotic and loud; and finally, a deluge of violent scenes, each more brutal and horrifying than the last as they built toward a sickening conclusion.

I died—

She felt like retching, but even her reflexes were frozen in shock.

She stood unmoving as the truth began to take hold, settling like a blanket of snow on a shattered landscape.

Time stretched out, suspended while she tentatively explored this new reality, examining it from every angle.

As she began to reconcile the dissonance and agitation she’d been experiencing, a glimmer of understanding emerged.

She hadn’t been able to name the restless, out-of-kilter sensation that had plagued her for so long, or understand why the intertwining of past and present had felt so confusing, so wrong.

Now, the answer to all her questions was clear.

As astonishing as it was, it somehow made sense.

I’m here, but I’m not really here.

And Tate, sweet Tate. Had he known all along?

She thought back on his careful overtures, the times he had held back when she could tell he wanted to do and say more.

She had thought him merely a gentleman in word and deed.

She understood now that his deference signaled what he knew, but he’d been trying to protect her from the knowledge.

When she looked in the mirror, there was no surprise now at her lack of a reflection. Gone, too, were the waves of confusion and panic; in their place was a shadow of wistfulness, if not yet grief. There was still so much I wanted to do, she thought. I’ll never visit the great cities of the world.

She took a seat on the edge of the tub, no longer afraid of or repulsed by the cloudy-eyed body in the water.

As she studied the details of her physical remains—the tendrils of hair spreading like seagrass around her shoulders, the crooked left pinkie toe she’d broken while riding her bike, even the chipped red nail polish on her index finger—she tried to picture that self, undamaged and whole, strolling down the winding streets of Paris.

She realized that lately in her fantasies, she had unconsciously pictured Tate by her side, holding her hand as they meandered together.

There would be no journeys with Tate, and somehow, that realization hurt almost as much as everything else she had lost combined. He was supposed to be The One, she thought. The One for her.

Looking around the bathroom, she sighed.

Some part of her had been trapped in this room, the part she’d closed off from herself, the keeper of the terrible memories of what had happened to her that night.

As she stared down at the bruised, bloody figure in the tub, Wren knew that this being was a part of her as well, and that it was time for them to leave this place behind—their memories, impulses, emotions dark and light—reunited at last.

She closed her eyes, and Tennyson’s words came to her like an elegy:

Twilight and evening bell,

And after that the dark!

And may there be no sadness of farewell,

When I embark.

When she opened her eyes, the figure in the water was gone, the tub dry and pristine.

Standing, she moved to the door without looking back.

· · ·

As she stood at the top of the staircase, she caught the unmistakable smell of smoke, and she wondered if Tate had returned and burned something on the stove.

When she strained to see into the darkness of the foyer below, she saw the walls lit with an eerie, orangish glow.

She watched as shadows leapt and lengthened against a rapidly brightening backdrop, and with cold dread, she knew at once that the smoke was not the product of a cooking mishap. The house was on fire.

Her first thought was of Tate. Please let him be somewhere safe, she prayed, and as she rushed down the stairs, frantically peering into the darkened rooms on the main floor, a growing sense of panic engulfed her.

When she looked out the window near the front door, her worst fears were confirmed: Tate’s car was parked out front.

He was somewhere in the house. But where?

Smoke was beginning to billow out of the kitchen, and Wren turned, plunging through the stinging clouds, afraid to find Tate battling the fire, or worse, overcome by smoke.

She skidded to a stop in the kitchen, confused.

Standing over a flaming cast-iron pan, its contents ablaze as he waved it below the kitchen cupboards, was…

Reece?

She watched in speechless horror as Reece uncorked a bottle of cognac with one hand and doused the lower cabinets with alcohol. Now the cabinets on the far side were burning, the flames reaching toward the ceiling.