Keep Me In Sight Read online

  Looks like I’ll have to go straight to the source.

  "Hey, Erin?"

  She looks up at me, eyebrows raised. "Yeah?"

  I shift in my seat. This is called a defining moment. One that I’m not entirely really ready to face, but the chaos in my mind tells me that I don’t have a choice.

  "This is going to sound strange . . . but I’m a psychic, or at least I was before I wasn’t—it’s complicated." Do I need to tell her my whole life story? "But everything came back to me recently. The skill, I mean. I’m kind of getting back into it, and I feel like you’re in trouble somehow. I got that feeling when you dropped off your flyer at my shop. And—and please don’t worry. I want to help you. But I want to warn you, too. I’m not exactly sure what kind of trouble we’re dealing with here, but do you know someone named Dan?" Dan the Man. "Um. Also called Dan the Man?"

  Her head goes back a couple inches; her mouth turns down. "He’s my ex-boyfriend," she says, at last. Then she looks down and continues painting my toes with nonchalance that seems strange. "I’ve always thought psychics were fakes," she says, finishing off my pinkie toe, appraising her handiwork. "But I have to admit that’s pretty crazy that you mentioned Dan. Do you see something?" she asks, looking up at me. "Something about Dan?"

  Screams now. I hear the pumping of the pistons. Faster, gaining momentum. The sound of a train drives into my ears, along with ghostly voices. I’m trying to focus and pick up on something concrete, but she’s staring at me, anticipation glittering in her eyes, putting me on the spot. "You see something," she says, leaning closer. "What is it?"

  Erin’s eyes are glassy. Fixated.

  Chugga-chugga-chugga.

  The tragic squeal of the wheels sliding on the tracks fills my ears, along with urgent voices. I hear the wheels screeching again, and the deafening blow of the locomotive horn. Stop, Dan! Stop!

  Erin looks at me, eyes fathomless. There are no tears in her eyes, only expectation. Is she being brave?

  My fingers dig into the plush armrests. My windpipe aches. I’m trying to pull all the pieces together as they swirl around my mind in a vortex. 9-1-1. Frantic voices. I feel my throat closing down. And screams, I hear screams . . . .

  I push the hideous sounds away. I’m not ready yet. Not yet! I’m closing myself down pronto—tamp it down!—but as the aperture stops down, the screeching metal and screams slip though the opening, filling me with fear.

  "Something is going to happen," I say.

  "What?" Erin asks. "What’s going to happen?"

  And then I’m cold, shivering, somehow feeling the sharp bite of howling wind. Then the train barrels down on me, bright light from the terrible monocle of its headlight, hitting me with the cold hard truth:

  "I think . . . someone is going to die."

  15

  BRYNN

  After my call with Dan, I couldn’t sleep. No surprise there. So I sat up all night, trying to piece this together. Through the long dark hours, I stared into the shadows, trying to figure out what happened that terrible night. Who is lying? And who is telling the truth?

  But it’s over now—that night—and I can’t remember much, except a bunch of disjointed memories and cringe comments that I’d rather forget anyhow. By the time the sun breaks through my useless flimsy curtains, I find myself wondering exactly how much I know about Dan in the first place.

  Turns out, not much at all. I know that I’m in love with him, and everybody says he’s a "good guy." I know the basic facts about him, where he was born, where he went to college. He’s an only child, but he’s not socially impaired. I think Dan and I could probably win a few rounds in The Newlyweds Game, if it was still on the air. His mom is lovely, but distant with me. The topic of his dad also falls into ‘Dan’s black box.’ All I know is that he left when Dan was young.

  I drag myself out of bed, find my way over to the coffee machine, and make a pot, breathing in the invigorating aroma. Then I pour myself a cup, splash in some almond milk, and take a few sips, my mind beginning to awaken as caffeine moves through my circulatory system. Eventually, I’m able to form a coherent thought.

  And then something occurs to me: I’m living in Dan’s dang house, alongside all of his personal belongings. Why don’t I just dig around and see what I can find?

  Seems silly. What could I possibly uncover? An old high school yearbook? Perhaps. Some snaps of his exes? Maybe. Maybe I’ll find nothing. Maybe I’ll find the mother lode. But I have to do something to get to the bottom of this mystery.

  Coffee down the hatch, I start in the master bedroom closet. I’m going to upend this house in my mission to get some answers. Dan keeps his stuff on the left side. My stuff lives on the right, and spillover goes in the spare bedroom.

  I begin by searching every pocket of every item of his clothing. Truthfully, I hate doing it. I hate that this whole situation has driven me to snoop. No, I don’t like knowing very little about his past. But I was okay with it. Now every time a pocket yields nothing, I feel both relieved and disappointed.

  I cinch up my bathrobe, pound some more coffee, and keep going. I’m moving onto the top rung in the closet now where he keeps shoes and boxes and an old X-box game console.

  In a sound and scientific manner, I yank everything off the shelf and start going through the pile, item by item. Bear wanders over and sits down next to the mess, swiping away the first layer with his blonde bushy tail. I shoo him away, so he jumps on the bed instead, watching me.

  I keep looking at Bear, imagining that Dan can tap into his eyesight somehow. "Don’t tell Dan, okay?" Bear tucks away his tongue and pricks his ears.

  There’s a cardboard box filled with knick-knacks, keys, an old spoon, pins, a broken watch, and fridge magnets from far-flung places that I never knew Dan had visited. I find a bottle opener with two big boobs for handles, the name of a "gentleman’s club" emblazoned across the nipples. Is Dan into that? Visiting strip clubs? Thinking of women as objects? This is so far removed from the guy I know.

  Then I find an old boarding pass to Oahu, dated over a year ago. I never knew he went to Hawaii. Well, does he have to tell you every single little factoid about his life? A snarky voice sounds off in my head. No, just the important one, like whether or not he beats up women, I reply.

  The box goes back onto the top shelf, roughly where I found it, along with the rest of Dan’s items. Then I move on. The closet is clear. No bombs in there. So I go to his home office, the second bedroom, where he keeps his paperwork. A large desk with two computer monitors sits under the small window. His file cabinet lives to the left of the desk. I zero in on the file cabinet and find it locked.

  Maybe he keeps the cabinet key in that box I just inspected. So I’m back in the closet, pulling down the box and bringing it into the office. Each key gets my highest level of attention. Each goes in the hole, both sides facing up. Nothing. The final key (of course) attached to a red carabiner slides in smoothly in and unlocks the cabinet.

  Slowly, I pull open the drawer. The top shelf has some reservoirs for pens and calculators. There’s a compass tool similar to the one I used in high school to torment my brother. And there are some unopened letters from banks and investment firms. Goldman Sachs. I had no idea.

  I pull open the lower drawer and scan the tabbed subjects: Investments, Property, Crypto, Etc.

  The first document in the hanging folder marked ‘investments’ is a financial statement, showing a balance of over two hundred grand. I did not see that coming. I always thought Dan was doing just fine on his military salary, not rich, but not poor.

  I knew he played the stock market. In fact, those are the ‘girlfriends’ that he would talk about: Winchester, Moderna, and Soda. But this? I’m amazed. No, I’m not. I’m blown away.

  And I keep going. There are more statements, stuff he’s bought and sold. Funds. Blue chip and whatnot. He owns a second property in Arizona. A rental. And he plans on buying more. There are fact sheets, due diligence, and title
reports. Geez, he’s a busy guy.

  I get to the et cetera file, my fingers flying through the documents. I’m thinking this is going to be unsorted mail, but there’s a flimsy pink document wedged in the far back. It’s one of those ‘customer’ copies, so I pull it out and unfold it.

  It’s a police incident report. My hands are shaking. I’ve never seen one of these before so I start at the very top.

  San Diego Police Department. Date and time recorded. I do a little math and determine that this event occurred two months before we met. Incident Type/Offense: Disorderly Conduct.

  Person(s) involved: Dan and Erin, followed by their particulars.

  My heart twists.

  There’s the location that the incident occurred (an address in Ocean Beach that I don’t recognize), the name of the reporting officer, followed by the narrative:

  At approximately 2319 hrs., I, Officer Cole, and Officer Lippman, arrived at the property and climbed the stairs to the front door, when a voice from across the street called to us. A woman approached with a wireless phone in her hand and told us that she called the police. The Caucasian female, later identified as Tammy Moore, said she lived two doors down and grew alarmed at the screams coming from within the house so she called dispatch.

  I knocked on the front door. Nobody responded. Hearing loud yelling, I took it upon myself to open the door. Standing at the threshold I called into the premises. A white female, later identified as Erin Lazarus, entered the hallway, crying and shaking. I observed red marks on both arms. Her boyfriend, Daniel Evans, was very agitated. We then placed him in the back of a squad car.

  Yes, and? I feel like I’m in a movie theater, on the edge of my seat, and the film cuts to black. I flip the paper over, looking for the rest of the story. I want to yell: Then what happened! But there’s nothing else. A big fat zero.

  Puzzled, I search the file cabinet looking for the rest of the story. But it’s not in there. I then spend the next two hours painstakingly searching the house for the final conclusion, but it’s nowhere to be found. Dan must have disappeared the conclusion of his incident report. Why? Is that because he's guilty of manhandling Erin?

  It’s late morning by now. I sit down on the couch, leg jiggling, thinking this over. The police were called in to help with ‘disorderly conduct’ otherwise known as domestic abuse. The parties involved were Dan and Erin.

  There were red marks on Erin’s arms. The cops, independent and impartial parties to the scene, saw it fit to place Dan in the back of a squad car.

  Because if he did this to me, he’ll do it to you . . .

  And suddenly I feel very ill.

  16

  GIA

  In my hands, I hold a picture of my best friend Melissa taken on a hot summer day, two weeks before she took her own life. It’s the only picture that I have of her; the only one that I could bring myself to keep. The photo is faded and peeling, but I remember that time of my life in Technicolor.

  In the photo, she looks out into the distance, her caramel brown hair pulled around her shoulder. There’s a hint of a smile on her face, her expression wistful.

  She was the mysterious ‘new girl’ in high school recently transferred from out of state, quiet, reserved, and not interested in any high school silliness. Normally, I kept my ability closed down so that I could get through the day, only opening up in certain circumstances, but Melissa had intrigued me.

  During our senior year, we ended up in the same group for debate class, our chairs arranged in a small circle, stating ‘funny facts’ about ourselves.

  My funny fact was our family dog named Poopy Saint Clair. Melissa’s was some goldfish story that I sensed she made up on the spot, so I opened myself up to her true story and saw that, a year previous, she’d endured a brutal gang rape. While she told the group about ‘Goldie’s adventures,’ all the horrifying details of her ordeal emanated from her like a newsreel. With shaking hands, I gripped the plastic seat of my chair.

  An acquaintance of her older brother’s had instigated the attack. Her brother blamed himself because he’d made the introduction in the first place, so he’d wrangled up as many witnesses as he could find and had strong-armed them into testifying, landing the perpetrator and his biker buddies ten years in jail.

  And while justice had been served and the jury found the accused guilty, Melissa never got her happy ending. She’d unraveled shortly after the brutal witness hearing and made her first unsuccessful attempt at taking her life, before moving in with her aunt in California for a fresh start. And by the time she’d finished her funny fact story, I thought I was going to be sick.

  When we first exchanged phone numbers, I heard a soft lilting singsong that I should have heeded all along:

  Keep me in sight, or else I’ll slip away

  Hold me tight, and keep the wolves at bay . . .

  But I didn’t understand the meaning. I didn’t catch the warning.

  After the school year ended and we graduated, our futures lay before us like No Man’s Land. Neither one of us had landed a spot at university, so we were junior college bound, except that Melissa wanted to take a year off and get her life back together.

  It was an unusually hot summer afternoon, the air as thick as soup. Melissa and I journeyed down to Huntington State Beach, the windows down, crisp ocean breezes softening the hard edges of heat. Once there, we parked and hunted between barbecue pits and lifeguard towers for the perfect spot, while music drifted down the boardwalk, the classic tunes of Cat Stevens, singing about wild worlds and moon shadow.

  We laid out for a while and worked on our tans. I watched the water’s edge, where kids played and shrieked, where rushing waves erased sandcastles and doodles in the wet sand.

  Melissa never had very much to say. And that summer she seemed especially quiet. Her talk therapy was stalling. She wanted to quit and try to make it on her own. She had hopes of ditching her "zombie pills," while I’d tried to keep her focused on her future, her hopes, and her dreams.

  We got up and went for a swim, walking down to the lazy break zone. I dove under rolling waves, the brisk temperature jolting me out of my groggy sunbaked haze, while Melissa stood at the edge of the water.

  I spent a few extra seconds underwater, listening to the chirps and popping sounds of the ocean. Listening to the haunting sing-song—keep me in sight, or else I’ll slip away—puzzling over the meaning and why had the song come back after so long a silence?

  We swam and tanned and swam again until the sun sank low in the sky and chilly ocean breezes washed over us. Then we drove back to my house, pleasantly exhausted.

  In my bedroom, soft pink light shone from my bedside lamp, enveloping my room like a warm amniotic cocoon. On my walls hung black and white photos framed with strings of glowing fairy lights. As we sat on my bed, I read Melissa’s future with my tarot cards, and she read mine, even though she was never any good at it. We laughed and teased each other and climbed under my downy soft comforter and talked until we drifted off to sleep.

  That night I dreamed of crashing waves and undertows, tugging on my legs and sweeping me away. I dreamed of hot rushing fear, of numbness and of pain, all the while listening to the haunting song.

  Keep me in sight, or else I’ll slip away . . .

  When I woke the following morning, Melissa was gone. Mom and I called friends, family, acquaintances, and finally the police. The cops found Melissa’s car, abandoned at the edge of a trailhead that led to a particularly treacherous part of the coast. It was a surf break called Smashers because of the way the shape of the land directed two currents against each other. It was a place where deadly rip currents were the norm; the place where Melissa took her life.

  A woman found her limp body washed up in a tangle of seaweed several yards from the blonde strip of sand. The funeral took place on a dreary Sunday. Even the weather, it seemed, went into mourning. I stood at the edge of her open casket, breaking apart. She looked like a life-sized doll, bearing a surre
al likeness of the real, live girl who was no more. Her lips were drawn on too thin with mortician’s makeup, her hair brittle looking, her sunken eyes closed forever.

  It was my fault that she slipped through my fingers. I should have known. I should have heeded the warning. I should have never let her go.

  I put the photo back in a small keepsake box and close the metal lid. The still small voice is back now, and I don’t like what it’s saying. It’s talking about death. An accident, possibly something more sinister.

  But it’s also talking about another chance to save someone’s life.

  A chance that I am going to take.

  17

  BRYNN

  I’m not coping very well. This whole question of Dan’s involvement in Erin’s assault is consuming me like flesh-eating bacteria. Morning, noon, and night, I can feel my body tingling with dread and uncertainty. Not made any better with the fact that I don’t have anybody to talk to. I don’t dare whisper a word to my family. My dad and I only talk about politics and gardening projects, definitely not boyfriend problems.

  My mom would worry herself into a dither and make everything worse. She’s going to take the safe side, and nag me incessantly until I move back home.

  I can’t talk to Dan because he’s at the mercy of his superiors to give him a window to call. Who knows when that will happen again? Contacting him on his cell phone is hopeless. And I can’t talk to any friends, his or mine, because I don’t want them to know about the allegation.

  So I’m left struggling to carry the load of uncertainty all alone. The only person I can turn to is Dan’s mom, Donna. Hopefully, she’ll know something about the police incident. And she’ll definitely tell me that Dan would never ever hit a girl. That alone will take four hundred pounds off my shoulders.