Burning Books Page 30

  She stared at his earnest face, his direct gaze, mesmerizing even in the midst of an emotionally harrowing moment. Let the truth remain hidden, and we can make whatever life together we choose.

  Then she looked through the railing at her brother below, staring up at her with tortured, anguished eyes, begging for release. Let the truth be known, and we’ll deal with the consequences.

  The moment stretched out in silence. Everyone stood frozen, as frozen as the last of the memories still locked inside a magic book. What kind of life could be built upon lies, upon the torment of her brother’s afflicted mind, upon the bewilderment of the world?

  No kind of life she wanted to lead. The slim book lay heavy in her hands, a psychological weight of choice and consequence.

  Molly opened the cover and read aloud.

  ∞2∞

  Our dearest Molly,

  There is powerful magic in the world, which we stumbled upon through our collecting. A random bookplate in a rare, valuable book that fell into our hands at an auction. We went to the address on Beemer Lane—

  Magnus started violently; Cohen’s finger slipped from the trigger guard to the trigger in response.

  —expecting a bookshop and finding nothing but a warehouse, empty but for three chairs, arranged in a lopsided circle. A man sat in one of the chairs. He motioned us to take the other two, as though he had been waiting for us. He gave his name as Max Wilhelm and said he represented powerful people who wanted to help us. The Augury Group, they were called. They were, he said, people with the power to bend the fabric of reality to their whim. That’s all magic is, he claimed: the manipulation of the natural world.

  We told him what happened to you, how we tried everything we could to help you heal and bring you out of your depression: replacing your broken door, repainting your room, keeping Magnus away, as much as it pained us. Hiring a private detective—one Kevin Kincaid—to investigate and exonerate Magnus. He offered a cure of sorts: potent magic to lock away our tragedy, a magnificent spell to hide outside of time everything since the day you were abducted, all memory of those months unreachable to the entire world.

  The magic required two sacrifices. Only one need be made willingly: our lives to trigger the event and create the falsehood the world would believe was responsible for the missing time. The other sacrifice was what the world would pay for our selfishness. For this was selfishness in the extreme, making all of Earth’s inhabitants pay the price for ending our daughter’s anguish, for hiding the true scope of our son’s mental torment.

  We were willing to make these sacrifices, for we could not bear the truth at which we had arrived, could not bear what it meant to our family. The evidence was solid: Magnus’s prints in Cecily Welch’s car; the necklace he gave Cecily that somehow you obtained after Cecily vanished; his frequent, unexplained disappearances; his obsessive spying on you and Cecily . . .

  We transferred payment—a significant sum that required the sale of some of our most valuable collectibles. A plan was devised, carefully detailed, thorough in every aspect.

  As Molly read, Harvey Cohen backed even farther away from Magnus, his weapon coming to bear solidly upon him. One wrong move, and her brother’s brains would splatter all over the entryway.

  And then you showed signs of improvement, definite steps toward recovery and acceptance. You still insisted you didn’t know who had kidnapped and tortured you, but you seemed, in small ways and hesitant overtures toward your brother, to be exonerating him. You allowed him to move back into our house.

  Your father and I discussed the matter at length, and decided to cancel our deal with the Augury Group. We approached Wilhelm, offering to allow them to keep their fee in full for their trouble. Wilhelm told us there is no cancelling. Once the deal is made, there is only follow-through.

  There seemed to be nothing we could do. Until, a few days after we approached Wilhelm, someone from the Augury Group approached us. He claimed to be the architect of our event. He was very circumspect, cloak and dagger. Think of any spy movie where the characters must never be seen openly meeting, and you’ll have an idea how he first contacted us.

  This man, who will remain unnamed, said the Augury Group was preparing for a major event, a warping of the world unlike any ever attempted and one of which he wants no part. They would not allow us to cancel because they were using our event to cover their own: a permanent memory and data wipe of the last thirteen months. All databases in the world were vulnerable. All people of the world were vulnerable. The cost in lives would be phenomenal. To trigger a magical event like this, it would take hundreds, if not thousands, of lives, including those of several key members of the Group. How could this be accomplished? By harnessing the power of all the deaths caused by the event itself.

  I don’t know how it all works—he was unable to explain it in a way that I could understand, perhaps because I was already skeptical about magic, skeptical that they could do what they claimed they could. But all the disasters that would be caused by this event—the planes and trains and ships that would crash when their computer systems failed, not to mention the automobile accidents and the like once the magic was ignited—would somehow warp reality in a way that would make everyone forget the last year indefinitely.

  Their motivation? Interpol in conjunction with American investigative agencies was investigating the Augury Group for murder and conspiracy to commit murder. The investigation started eleven months before they approached us with their offer, sparked by numerous accusations worldwide regarding the deaths of a great number of the Group’s donors. They were going to blanket the world in amnesia, stealing the last thirteen months—the only memories accessible would be memories from before they came under suspicion.

  The architect of our event wanted to stop them permanently. Since the Augury Group was going to tack their event onto the back of ours, and ours could not be cancelled, he wanted to build into ours a failsafe, a way to unravel the magic and restore the memories if a certain sequence of events occurred. The Augury Group expected him to do something of the sort, and so they are planning to ignite the event when you are with us, so that you can never unravel what they’ve done.

  These books are those events. They are infused with a spell that calls to you, linked to the bookplate in the first edition of To Kill a Mockingbird that you undoubtedly found if you are reading this. The magic will be triggered by Magnus’s desire to change his mental circumstances. We cannot determine if he will choose to better himself, or if he will simply accept and give over to his darker nature, but that is irrelevant. It only matters that he decides one way or the other.

  If you are reading this book, then he made his choice and the magic urged you first to the copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, which then sent you to The Augury Group’s warehouse, where the architect was ready with these books—six for you and one for your brother, but neither of you will remember his. That way, what he set in motion cannot be stopped by second thoughts.

  Now about the books . . . We gave over to the Augury Group the journals we found in Magnus’s boxes—Lee Welch’s diaries—as well as the taped and written police reports of your abduction and attempted murder. The unraveling of the magic releases the memories in stages. Woven into it all is a special protection that hides you from the Augury Group so they can’t stop you from unraveling the spell. Since they tacked their event onto ours, the unraveling of ours will unravel theirs as well. The architect encoded a special alert that will prompt Interpol to return to its investigation.

  There was no stopping our deaths, but we could at the very least make them count in a huge way. We will have a car accident. You will survive it; the architect has given us his assurance that the magic will protect you.

  We did what we did because we wanted to spare you pain. That is our failure. Pain builds character. Surviving your ordeal has the potential to instill in you a deep appreciation for life. We had no right to rob that from you. We had no right to rob your justice.


  So now . . .

  Her eyes desperately grabbed the words in the last paragraph before she read them aloud, reading them twice, three times, four, praying for them to change. Tears fell fast and hard, stinging her eyes, bitter on her tongue as they ran over her lips and into her mouth. A despairing sob clogged the words in her throat.

  “Just read it, Molly,” Magnus said dispassionately. “Read it, and damn us all.”

  Her gaze found Magnus’s, and she found strength in her brother’s horrified resignation. The sob broke free, and the words tumbled out, every bit as damning as Magnus had predicted.

  Molly, you know who tortured you and attempted to murder you. Look at your brother and know that he caused all of this.

  Magnus fell to his knees. Harvey Cohen’s aim followed him down.

  “Hands where I can see them, Magnus.”

  Magnus raised his hands in the air, his eyes locked on Molly as she turned the last page. She broke the connection to look down at the final words, printed on the glued endpaper.

  “Molly, stop,” Cary said roughly. Her tears blurred him, and then they spilled from her eyes, and he came into focus. “It’s all just speculation. Leave it in the past. The world is coping; it can keep on coping. Please. We’re all of us ruined if you finish. I can’t . . .” His voice cracked. “I don’t want to know the truth.”

  She couldn’t bear that all the people of this planet had paid their memories as the price to ease her suffering.

  Holding his eyes, she said clearly, “Molly McKinley.” Nothing happened. Stunned, she looked down at the book. She pressed her finger to the words and tried again. “Molly McKinley.” Still nothing.

  Cary took one step up the stairs.

  “Stay back!” she shrieked, holding up a hand to stop him.

  “Cary, back away,” Cohen warned. The gun now hovered between him and Magnus.

  “The darkness is here,” Magnus said flatly. “I told you it was coming.”

  “Back away now, Cary!” Harvey bellowed as Cary rose another step higher.

  Tears spilled down Molly’s cheeks, rolling off her chin, splattering on the open book. Two on the last page, one on the endpaper. Three. Six. One beaded up on the page and inched its way down the paper, sinking into the fibers slowly. The letters of her name dissolved as the tear soaked into the ink.

  The book burst into heatless flames.

  The world exploded in chaos.

  The memories flooded in, a suffocating tide that brought with it guilt and sorrow and wretchedness, elation and relief. Molly reeled under the onslaught, only peripherally aware of Cohen clutching his head as though in agony, the gun wobbling in his hand as his body trembled; of Cary crying out in horror; of Magnus curling into a ball on the floor, screaming, his arms wrapped around his head, rocking back and forth on his knees; of footsteps hammering up the stairs.

  Then came the calm as everything settled into place. Remembrance slammed into Molly like a knife in her gut. Cohen stood paralyzed, gaping at Molly in horror.

  Hot liquid flooded down her legs. The burning book fell from her hands into the blood puddling at her feet. She touched the handle of the knife jutting from her belly, solid and warmed by Cary’s hand and all too real.

  Shock quaked through her, a violent tremor beginning in her ruptured stomach and radiating outward until even her eyelashes shuddered. Darkness encroached at the edges of her vision. As Molly stared at the knife, at the blood pulsing from her body, the last piece rolled like a disjointed film through her memory.

  The GPS lost his signal shortly into the forest, where the foliage was thick and the satellites couldn’t find their target. She lost the barely visible deer trail three times, finding it only by inspecting both the ground and the trees at shoulder level. Magnus was a decent-size man; he would leave evidence of his passing. She found it in broken branches, trampled ferns, scuffs of newly scraped bark from fallen trees. Deeper she went, deeper, deeper, until she found the shack, huddling in a clump of foliage that mostly hid it. The cracks between the boards of the old building were stuffed with freshly cut boughs of pine that made the structure blend into the forest.

  Her heart pounded fiercely as she approached, stepping carefully to keep from snapping twigs. Her pulse roared in her ears until all sounds of the forest around her were obscured. She placed her hands carefully against the side of the shed, finding it more solid than she had expected. Deceptively, deliberately ramshackle but obviously maintained.

  She put her cheek to the wall. Turned her eye to a crack to look in. Too dark to see more than vague shapes. Cautiously, she crept to the edge of the wall and peered around it. Clear. She moved stealthily along the wall to the next corner, drew in a deep breath to bolster her courage, and tipped her head so that only her ear and eye would be visible if someone were there. Clear.

  Slipping around the corner, placing her feet with care and deliberation, she made her way to the door. Like the rest of the structure, it looked rickety and was disguised with pine boughs. A crude door barricade, made from rusted steel U brackets and a stout tree limb, blocked the door from opening from the inside. He couldn’t have sealed the door behind him, so he must have passed the shack. Either it wasn’t his destination, or he suspected he was being followed. Molly grabbed the branch to lift it as silently as she could, instead finding it wedged tightly into the brackets. Throwing caution to the wind, she wrenched on the limb until she freed it from its steel confines and tossed it aside. A whimper from inside the lean-to paused her hand, then she pulled the door open. It swayed madly on primitive rope hinges.

  Darkness filled the lean-to. She dug her phone out of her pocket and turned on her flashlight app, swinging it first into the corner on her right and then to her left. Clear. She stepped inside. Another whimper, forward and to the right. The flashlight beam wobbled as she brought it around to light the area.

  Her gasp was like a scream in the stillness of the forest. She rushed to the table, her shoes squelching through a puddle. Thick copper air wafted up from the ground. Blood. She was standing in blood. The woman strapped on the table with thick leather bands pulled tight was covered in it, her face turned away and her terrified whimpers muffled by a tight gag. It had dried in thin streams that cascaded over already healed and healing wounds that crisscrossed her bare flesh.

  “Oh my God,” Molly whispered, bile rising in her throat, kept in check behind a knot of horrified revulsion. The woman whipped her head around, blue eyes startled and imploring when she saw that it wasn’t her captor returning but Molly. The flashlight beam hit her full in the face.

  Cecily. Jesus. Had she been here since her disappearance in late July? Nine weeks of slow torture, time to heal, and then more torture?

  Reeling, Molly stumbled back a step, coming up hard against an obstacle. Arms like iron bands circled her, one around her stomach, the other around her neck, cutting off her air. The beam of light spun crazily around the room as she dropped her phone, then blinked out when the phone case shattered and the battery fell out. She clawed at the arm around her throat, and her nails skidded off a thick canvas coat sleeve, finding no purchase. Black spots bloomed in her eyes. The sensation of falling whisked her away from consciousness. Cecily’s muffled sobs followed her down.

  Pain, excruciating waves of it, coiling through her from shoulders to stomach. A warm flood of liquid bathed her, then cold air hit her as the warmth flowed away. A rough finger traced a swirling pattern over her slick, bare skin. More copper scented the air. More blood, this time hers. She tried to bat the hand away as the finger circled her bare breast. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t see. She screamed, tasting the sour gag that had been tied tightly around her mouth.

  A cold line of steel trailed from her shoulder to her hip, then across the soft flesh of her belly. Into her belly. Into her ribs. Into her breast. Fire followed as her nerve endings screamed pain to her brain. Blood flowed, thick and hot, over her hips, down her legs, into her pubic hair. The finger followed
it. Molly thrashed against her bonds. Oh God, Magnus, not this! Please, not this, I’m your sister!

  The next hours were unspeakable.

  He must have thought she was dead, for surely he wouldn’t be so careless as to leave her unbound. It was a logical assumption, one she feared was closer to the truth than not. She had thought herself dead more than once, only to come to bitter consciousness.

  Cecily had fallen silent hours ago. Or was it days? The blindfold blocked all light, making it impossible to track the passage of time. He didn’t speak, and the absolute absence of sound except his movements and their screams created a surreal reality devoid of time. Her arm trembled violently as she raised her hand to the blindfold, searching for the knot. She didn’t waste time trying to untie it, simply hooked her fingers under it and pulled it up toward the top of her head and finally off her eyes. Then she lay still and silent while her eyes adjusted to the gloom.

  Movement caught her attention, then a flash of paleness in the dark room. Bare skin, a dark blotch on his right shoulder that she couldn’t make sense of. His back was to her as he shed his shirt; the torture was over. She’d heard his rustling movements any number of times as he stripped off his blood-soaked clothes. Then she would hear him outside the lean-to, the rustle of clothes as he donned clean ones away from the filth inside.

  Weapons. She had to have a weapon, and he wasn’t likely to have left one within reach. Reluctantly, she pulled the blindfold back on, inching her arm back down to her side where it had been. She was so cold that no wonder he’d thought her dead. Let him think it a little longer. Let him leave, and then she would make her escape, with Cecily if she still lived, without her if she didn’t or wasn’t able to move. She could bring help.

  He paused in the narrow space between the table that held her and the one that held Cecily, crude plywood sheets that had buried huge splinters in their flesh. Then his finger stroked her cheek, so warm against her icy skin it felt like a hot coal. She was too weary to flinch, and so he left her for dead, dropping the latch into place behind him. She pulled the blindfold off, listening to him dressing outside, hearing his footsteps moving off through the forest to the road, letting her eyes adjust to the meager light let in through the gaps between logs. When the forest birds started chirping again, she knew he was gone and it was safe to move.