FALL FROM PARADISE Read online

  Two thousand two hundred fourteen miles away from my hometown, I was as free as I could get without leaving the country entirely. The Pacific coast now crested the cliffs encompassing my new home, bringing a never-ending ocean smell to my nostrils, reminding me of the fresh life I had chosen.

  The cabbie started to help unload the lone duffel bag I had brought with me but stopped when he noticed I had already slung it over my shoulder.

  My dark auburn hair, once long and flowing, now bordered my face and shoulders. It only accentuated my small features, delicate, as my mother would call them, like some dainty flower dancing in the wind. I had never been that person, that image my mother had of me. My rash decision to chop off my hair did little to dissuade my prognosis. I was my own person, my own entity, and I had realized this long before my self-proclaimed exile.

  After slamming the trunk shut on the cab, I passed the guy a twenty. It had been a ten-minute drive from the airport, but he had done it in silence without trying his best to get to know me.

  I hoped the entire town was the same way.

  I hadn’t come to Middleton to make friends; I had come to disappear.

  The driveway snaked its way up toward the rental house at the top of the cliff above William’s Ferry. I followed the pavement slowly, taking notice of the azaleas and hydrangea bushes along the trailing landscape. The lack of care for the property conveyed that it had sat abandoned for months, if not years. The overgrown weeds and ivy covering the verandas and stone pathways leading to the front door soothed me.

  No one would come looking for me in a place forgotten by the rest of the world. It was perfect.

  I reached the stained glass door, its off-blue color mimicking the ocean a few hundred yards below, and slipped the key into the lock. I was in the house in less than a second, dropping my duffel bag on the entrance rug at my feet.

  For having been deserted for so long, the inside of the house was in far better condition than the outside alluded. A large oak table sat in the center of the foyer, serving as a makeshift dividing point to the rest of the house. To the right, a sitting room decorated to my grandmother’s taste, and to the left, a dining room complete with ornate china on display in a cabinet. Hell, there was enough china and flatware tucked away in the curio that I could host the entire town council given the opportunity.

  Beyond the foyer, a wooden stairwell led to the bedroom upstairs while the kitchen sat even farther toward the back of the house. The old floors creaked as I familiarized myself with the place, moaning their disdain at having new company.

  I slipped through the sliding glass door and stepped out onto the small concrete slab that served as a patio to the backyard where a small fence protected the drunk and careless from plummeting to their deaths. Scouring the overgrown yard for any sign of the previous renters, I found a swing set with enough rust holding it together that I could sit down on its plastic seat without fear of the chains snapping beneath my weight. I closed my eyes and leaned against them, digging my heels into the sand.

  Two thousand miles away and I was still haunted by the sudden spiral of events that had taken hold of my life last Christmas.

  Not long ago I was studying for the Bar exam in Massachusetts though my heart had never been in it. Now I sat here a different person, one that had been torn apart and spliced back together, left to the wolves gnawing at my soul. The life I had didn’t seem like my own. It felt like some far off dream, more surreal than the one I had experienced in the hospital.

  I would never be the same person again. I didn’t even want to be.

  I don’t know how long I remained there, my thoughts lost in the whirlwind, but by the time I finally realized it, dusk had already come and gone.

  The owners of the property had left the place fully furnished. Once I lit the table lamps, the place was awash in manufactured light. On either side of a fireplace which I doubted I’d ever use, was a wall of shelving encased in books, something of a security blanket for a bibliophile like me. My eyes scoured the shelves for anything of interest, the well cared-for tomes a testament to the meticulousness of the caretakers.

  Eventually, I spotted something that shouldn’t have been there.

  My name, clear as day, on the spine of one of the novels.

  Amelia.

  The likelihood of it having anything to do with me was nil, but my paranoia was unending and undeniable, like some caged beast snapping at the darkness.

  Just as my fingertips grazed the cover, I felt something tug me backward, yanking my awareness away, and suddenly the caged beast didn’t seem so crazy anymore.

  Ω

  The first thing I realized upon waking was the fact that the rental house no longer surrounded me, but instead I stood in a wide expanse of white, the four corners of the room indistinguishable. Almost blinding.

  My vision struggled to focus through the pounding in the back of my head. My hands jumped to my arms and legs instinctively checking to make sure that, wherever I was, I had reached it in one piece.

  “Did I startle you?” A warm, masculine voice sounded from behind me, forcing me to turn around.

  It was him, the man from my dream or, more aptly, my nightmare.

  He took a step toward me; I took a concurrent step back. “Who are you?” I demanded.

  Sorrow overcame his handsome features. His haunted blue-green eyes disappeared beneath his wavy mane of hair. “You really don’t remember me, do you?” The innocence in his voice belied his haggard appearance.

  Though I somehow felt sorry for the man, it didn’t change the fact that we were somewhere I couldn’t explain. For some reason, I expected the room to dissolve around us and bring us back to reality, but instead my prison remained.

  “My name is Adam,” he said simply, never once taking his eyes off me.

  “OK, Adam . . .” I cleared my throat and waited. It was quite apparent that I had no control of my surroundings. No hallucinogens in the world would induce me to have a conversation with a winged man who only visited me in my nightmares. “What do you want?”

  He thrust his hand into his pants pockets, once again staring down at his feet, though I couldn’t see them in this white. “I came to make sure you were okay.”

  Had he been real and not a figment of my imagination, perhaps I would have been attracted to him. Any woman would be. He had an innocent sensuality to his rugged frame.

  I caught him staring at me in my peripheral vision as I walked about the room, searching for any sign of an exit.

  “There isn’t one.”

  Once again I felt my insides rear up like a cat hissing in defense. How did he know what I was thinking? Was it that obvious, or could he hear my thoughts?

  The thought of that was more than I could bear. There was no such thing as a mind reader.

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Mia.” He laughed. “But out of respect for you, I won’t do it again if it makes you uncomfortable.”

  “Uncomfortable?” I barked. “That doesn’t even scratch the surface. Why don’t you stop playing games and tell me what you want.”

  “I already have,” he said as he sat down on a wooden bench that hadn’t been there moments ago.

  “Yeah, yeah. Me.” I rolled my eyes. “Like I’m supposed to believe that.”

  He shook his head. “You’re alive, aren’t you? Disbelief will get you nowhere, Mia. You never used to be like this. This whole ordeal has changed you, so much that you don’t even believe what’s right in front of you.”

  I ran my tongue over my teeth, taking a breath to keep from screaming. “I’ve had enough of this, Adam, if that’s even your real name. I don’t know you—I don’t want to know you. I want to wake up from this reoccurring nightmare and be left in peace.”

  “You don’t really mean that, do you, Mia?” For a second I thought I saw his eyes glisten.

  Oh, this was getting ridiculous. I was sick of this crap. “Call me that again, and I will make you regret it.”

&nb
sp; “Have it your way then,” he said, almost quiet enough that I had to lean in to hear him, and then he was gone as if he had never been there in the first place.

  I blinked and found myself back in the den, my hand still touching the burgundy hardback. Instead of my name etched down the spine, it said America with the same ambiguous author’s name scrawled in gold inlay.

  My breath felt ragged in my chest as I backed away from the shelf as if it were poisonous.

  I spun around for anything else out of the ordinary but found nothing. Although, truthfully, I would not have known what to look for in this place. The reassurance, as insane as it was, gave me peace. Peace that would be short-lived as I made my way past the chaise toward the stairwell.

  Sitting calmly on the ornate rug beneath the chaise was a feather, black and iridescent, glistening as if it weren’t really there, but I knew better. I bent down to pick it up, to feel it flex beneath my fingertips.

  I would have liked to say I passed out again, but this time I wasn’t bestowed with such luck.

  Alone in a house over two thousand miles from home, I was losing my damned mind.

  Reality, it seemed, had forsaken me.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Unpacking took all of five minutes as I threw the clothes I had brought with me into the wicker dresser in the upstairs bedroom. The savings account I had drained in coming here would carry me for a few months, but I planned to make my way into town in search of a job as soon as I had closed the last drawer. Though the rent and utilities were paid in full until August, groceries and other necessities didn’t buy themselves.

  Spring in the Northwestern United States was entirely unpredictable. It would rain one day, and then the sun would glare high in the sky the next. I pulled my arms through the sleeves of my hoodie and threw a thin argyle scarf around my neck, more for warmth than style. Stuffing the key into my back pocket, I pulled the door shut and stepped out onto the front stoop, nearly colliding with a harried, gray-haired woman holding a bundle of packages.

  Her eyes widened at the sight of me; she obviously wasn’t expecting anyone. She eyed me warily as I held out my hands to help keep the packages from falling. “Amelia?”

  I nodded. “I assume you’re Mrs. Henry?”

  The older woman beamed. “Yes, indeed. Mr. Henry passed last winter.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I stuttered, always feeling awkward in situations like this.

  For being a recent widow, she seemed to have a handle on her emotions.

  I still couldn’t imagine losing someone I had spent the better part of my adult life with. Perhaps that was why I had remained single all these years. I was never a fan of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s adage: ’Tis better to have loved and lost: Than never to have loved at all.

  Or perhaps it was my own cynicism that kept me from finding anyone.

  “Did you find the place pretty easily?” she asked as she slipped around me and produced the proper key out of a cluster of rings and slid it into the lock.

  Before I could even help push the door open, she already had the brown parchments inside and set onto the table in the middle of the foyer. She turned in my direction, her hazel eyes aglow with delight. “I didn’t know if you had a job lined up, so I took the liberty of purchasing a few groceries to get you started. I hope you don’t mind.”

  I remembered to close my mouth. “No, not at all. Thank you.”

  She smiled again. It was obvious that ever since Mr. Henry had died, she hadn’t anyone to dote over. Apparently this change of pace delighted her. But then again, who could blame her? At this point, we both needed the company.

  We each carried a bag into the kitchen, setting them down on the marble island top in the center. I pulled a bundle of bananas from the paper bag and dropped them into the fruit basket hanging over the counter. “I was actually headed out to look for work when you came.”

  Again, the older woman’s eyes lit up. “I have just the thing if you’re interested.”

  I continued to unload groceries into the cupboard and refrigerator, which took only a couple of minutes since she hadn’t known what to expect. I was thankful for the food none-the-less.

  She was surprisingly hospitable for not having met me before today. “I have a friend who’s in hospice care down in Lake Charles, and she was just telling me about the girls complaining about not having enough help because the administrator hasn’t been able to get anyone to stick around long enough.”

  The look on my face must have said it all. “I don’t know, Mrs. Henry,” I managed to respond. “I’m not sure if I’m really the best fit for that kind of thing. I’m not really a people person. I’m more the work-in-the-background type.”

  Apparently it didn’t diffuse her efforts as she patted my hand gently. “No matter, dear. Everyone dies. It’s not pretty work, but it pays well enough.” There was no dissuading her. She must have been the ox-driver in the relationship. I could see how some men would find her intimidating. Luckily for me, I wasn’t a man.

  When I finished emptying the paper bag, I moved around to the bar stool and sat down. “Well, I’m not a nurse or anything. Don’t you need certifications or licensing to work somewhere like that?”

  She shook her head as she pulled a terrier-shaped post-it from the pad by the phone and jotted something down quickly. “My number’s at the top; the hospice, at the bottom. Ask for Mary in administration. She’ll take care of you.”

  She thrust the post-it into my hand and started back toward the foyer. “Don’t worry so much, Amelia. You’ll like it in Middleton. It’s a good place with good people.”

  And with that she was gone, leaving me alone to question what kind of world I had stepped into. Back on the East Coast, you were lucky if someone held the door open for you, let alone went out of their way like this. With nothing to lose, I too struck a path, but as I did, I couldn’t shake the growing apprehension I felt as I locked the door behind me.

  Ω

  Dusk fast approached as I strolled the sidewalk. The old-fashioned, domed streetlamps turned on as I passed. I could imagine how serene this place might be in the wintertime, my favorite season. Christmas decorations hanging from the posts would bring a festive look to an otherwise dull world. Here kids ran down the sidewalks unaccompanied without parents fearing for their safety.

  I had no idea what had made me choose this place. It was completely opposite of everything I knew.

  It didn’t occur to me how small the town really was until I stopped into a hole in the wall bistro for a cappuccino and was immediately greeted by a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed barista. “You must be the girl renting out the old Henry place.”

  I blinked. “Um, yeah.”

  She beamed at me, and it made my head hurt to think of how far up her eyelids turned. Not just her mouth but her eyes were smiling.

  I felt my soul bristle back further toward the darkness, afraid and on edge over these strange people. I wanted a fresh start, yes, but I wanted peace more.

  “Well, she’s a real old lady,” the girl cooed, obviously happy to have something to gossip about. “Comes by every morning and orders peppermint tea and a cherry scone.”

  I stood there awkwardly with my hands in my jacket pockets, wondering when this woman would stop talking and just take my order. Eventually she caught on. “Well, what can I get for you?”

  “Just a medium hazelnut cappuccino with a shot of espresso.”

  She keyed something into the cash register and then returned her gaze to me. “Any sweets today?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “Just the drink.”

  “That’s three seventy-nine.”

  I dug into my pocket for a five and paid the girl. For another couple of minutes, I stood at the end of the counter and waited for her to finish my drink.

  Over the bar, the news headline on the television mentioned something about the next town over preparing for the annual spring festival. The anchor talked about school board budget cuts for the
fall and a few other menial stories that made it obvious that nothing ever happened in Middleton, Washington.

  Perhaps it was more aptly called The Middle of Nowhere.

  “Miss?”

  I glanced up to find the girl holding out my drink toward me.

  I didn’t even hear her tell me goodbye; my attention was already back on the screen, enraptured by the first actual thing of import.

  “Police are still searching for a white male in his late 20s this evening. Brown hair, blue eyes, somewhere between 6’1” and 6’3”, weighing between 175 to 185 pounds, matching the picture seen here by a local sketch artist. The police wish to question him in regards to several deaths and disappearances linked to patients in local hospitals and hospices around the area. If you have any information on this man, please contact Sheriff Woods or the news station here.

  “At this time there is no reason to believe he is a threat or armed, so if you run into this person in public, do not panic. Call one of the above numbers and someone will direct you to the proper authorities.”

  The sudden scalding feeling on my legs broke my attention, and I realized the floor and I were both now wearing my overpriced coffee.

  It was the man from my nightmares.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  As I wandered in a trance back to the rental house, I couldn’t help but wonder if Mrs. Henry knew about this when she mentioned the job. The strange book and feather had appeared in her library, after all.

  The crackling of thunder and lightning in the clouds sent my footsteps into a hurried pace. I no longer wanted to explore the world outside my new home. Instead, I wanted to tear it apart from the inside. Anxiety welled inside me, stripping my lungs of oxygen as my logic sought to override itself. The possibility of a murderer visiting me in my nightmares was enough to put me over the edge.

  I knew better than to believe anything else, but it didn’t change the fact that my anxiety wasn’t easing. It only increased.

  It was absolute—

  “Madness?”