The Forgotten Girl Read online

  “He remembers something about a dancing girl,” Jackhammer offered.

  “That could be anyone,” I said, knowing it wasn’t. “A scene from a movie. A drunk aunt at a wedding.”

  “Explore it,” the man in the suit said.

  “I have.” I shook my head. It rattled with pain. “It’s too hazy. She doesn’t even have a face, for God’s sake.”

  “We’ll soon see,” the man said. He receded into the seat and breathed deeply. I sensed the tension illuminating his chest, like neon in a plasma globe, that would snap colorfully toward me if I dared touch him. Not that I could, of course. Or would. My fear, already ramped up, created a similar thrum. If we bumped chests, it’d be like lightsabers colliding.

  “I want to go home,” I said. A hopeless statement. It made me feel so small.

  “Some scientists believe,” the man said by way of a reply, “that when we store a memory, we do so multiple times throughout the cortex. It’s kind of like backing up your hard drive. If information becomes lost or damaged, there are ways of restoring it.”

  “Hypnosis,” I muttered.

  “Perhaps,” he replied. “Although the theory suggests we draw upon the backup without being aware we are doing so—our brains instantly retrieving information from the nearest undamaged source.”

  I looked at his eyebrows again, recalling the hypnotists I’d seen depicted in countless movies and comic books, usually with spiraling eyes and mysterious rays emanating from their skulls. See THE GREAT MESMERO demonstrate his amazing MIND-BENDING abilities. They all had stupid names, and they all had the same eyebrows as this dude.

  “Are you going to hypnotize me?”

  “No,” he replied. Another thin smile. “My method is far more … effective.”

  That didn’t sound altogether reassuring.

  “But I would like to avoid that,” he said. “If possible.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I need you to explore your memories, Harvey. The smallest detail could unlock any duplicates Ms. Starling may have missed, and trigger at least a partial recall.”

  “I tried that already,” I said, gesturing toward the muscle standing blandly behind him. “With your goons—your dogs. I’ve got nothing.”

  “I urge you to try again. Try harder.” His upper lip flared. I saw his teeth. Neat and white. “The alternative will not be pleasant.”

  A knife held to my throat would not have been more threatening. I swallowed blood and nodded weakly.

  “Good.” He leaned toward me again, bowed over his bunched fists. “Concentrate on the dancing girl. Explore her. Every minute detail.”

  “There’s nothing to explore,” I said. “She’s dancing. That’s all.”

  “Where is she? A party? A nightclub?”

  “I don’t know; it’s just an empty space.”

  “Is she dancing with you? Are you with friends?”

  “I don’t have many friends,” I said. “I find people to be overrated. Go figure.”

  “What is she dancing to?”

  “I can’t hear anything.”

  “Music is a powerful memory trigger.”

  “There is no music.”

  “Concentrate!” It was the first time he lost his cool. An eruption of anger that had the dull impact of an underwater explosion. I leapt in the seat as much as my binds would allow. Even the hunt dogs flinched.

  “I’m trying,” I whispered.

  “Not hard enough.” He rose to his feet and took a long stride toward me. I pulled away and almost spilled backward. “Last chance, Harvey.”

  His closeness unnerved me. The dice-like clack of his teeth when he spoke. The hollows of his temples, which I could see now, veined with blue and deep enough to cup eggs. He looked like he’d crawled from the pages of a comic book. Not one of the good guys, either. This put me in mind of something my old man always said, that the world had gone tits-up because there were too many supervillains.

  “Go deep,” he implored.

  I shook my head and sniveled. A string of snot glued itself to my upper lip.

  The man retreated. I gazed at that odd red flower as he backed away. His chest crackled impatiently and his nostrils flared. He was hoping for some kind of neural connection—a memory cascade—but there was nothing. If Sally Starling really had removed all my memories of her, she had been incredibly efficient. Only the dancing girl remained, and I began to wonder if that was deliberate.

  “Okay,” the man said. “It’s time to do this the hard way.” His long body affected a precise right angle as he leaned forward. I noticed his flower wasn’t a flower at all, but a cluster of red feathers.

  “The hard way?” I said. Voice like ash.

  He wasn’t smiling anymore.

  * * *

  He looked at the thugs—the hunt dogs—and nodded once. Frankenstein’s Boots broke from the semicircle, left the room. The door slapped closed behind him. I smelled dust and rusty water. I’d thought I was in the basement of some old house, but imagined now an abandoned warehouse with a polluted stream running beside it. The kind of place where bodies were dumped.

  “What’s going on?” I searched the man’s dark eyes, my shoulders rolling as I struggled against the ropes. “I told you everything I know.”

  He nodded, as if he believed me, when clearly he did not. The heels of his fine shoes tapped off the cement floor as he stepped closer. Would he wipe the blood off them himself, I wondered, or have one of the hunt dogs do it for him?

  “Please,” I begged. “Whatever you’re thinking of doing—”

  “I need to look for myself.”

  “What? I … what?”

  “This will be excruciating,” he said. “Not so much pain, but an unfathomable sense of violation. You will cry and scream and plead. It will feel like your brain is being unspooled from the inside out.”

  “No—”

  “Like your mind has been raped a thousand times.”

  “Please, no—”

  “And when I’m finished, you’ll feel haunted, degraded, and shared.” The bird on his brow again. A savage thing, and so close. “The nightmares will never stop.”

  The door opened. Boots entered pushing a wheelchair ahead of him. An oxygen mask was looped over one of the handles. The sight of it silenced me. I blinked in shock. The fear now was beyond scale, shaped like a thing reaching.

  “What are you going to do to me?”

  The man didn’t reply. He took off his gray jacket and placed it carefully over the back of the chair.

  “Let’s begin,” he said.

  Three

  He crawled into my mind. Spider. I felt each of his eight legs tapping and the soft thump of his abdomen along my consciousness. It was, instantly, the most harrowing and invasive thing I’d ever experienced. Ice replaced the marrow in my skeleton. I screamed and curled stiffly at the waist, as if some drawstring connected to my spine had been pulled tight.

  He was cold and slick and plump.

  * * *

  Now, let’s see …

  I heard him clearly, as though he’d spoken out loud. That soft, southern tinge. He was inside me, scurrying along my memories and dreams. I tried to shake him loose—jibbing and rattling in my chair—but he held tight. I envisioned the sole of some gigantic sneaker slamming down and crushing his fat body into the grooves of my brain.

  A sneaker? That’s cute, Harvey.

  “Get out of my—” Blood frothed at the corners of my mouth and I spluttered, drawing deep, gurgling breaths. I finished the sentence in my mind: —FUCKING HEAD.

  He skittered, explored. His many legs stretched, touching neurons throughout my brain, acting as conductors that drew the separate elements of memory together. I tried to thwart him, to imagine a blank brick wall, but he was beyond that. He crawled into the folds of my temporal lobe, stimulating electric impulses, uncovering memories with formidable ease.

  Is this Mom? Why, she’s pretty.

  Fuck you, man.


  She stood in a stroke of sunlight at our living room window, her hair so gold it was almost white. I recall this with unnerving clarity; the day she told me she had breast cancer. The memory shifted to her lying in an eco-coffin made from hand-woven rattan and organic cotton. Her face was a pastel mask.

  The spider burrowed. I jerked and cried out, the cords in my neck announcing themselves like tension wires.

  Get OUT.

  Not until I’m satisfied.

  They’re my memories … MINE.

  Mr. Kinshaw, my science teacher in eighth grade, crying at his desk after calling Jermaine Robinson a “stupid little nigger,” knowing his career was over. Sitting alone in the school cafeteria after someone had pinned a sign—STINK-HIPPIE—to the back of my sweater, and it was Mr. Kinshaw who had removed it. Watching my old man sharpen lengths of bamboo for a Vietnamese punji trap he was building in the backyard.

  Where is she?

  My teeth clattered and blood vessels cracked in my good eye. It felt like I was being electrocuted, but there was no pain, only a stream of cold energy. The chair creaked and scraped across the floor.

  Snapshots of my first guitar; my first kiss; combing Mom’s hair while she sang “God Bless the Child”; picking peaches at Uncle Johnny’s farm; jamming with Steve Van Zandt at a bar on the shore; masturbating in the shower; masturbating in the kitchen; masturbating on a train.

  The spider crawled. He saw it all.

  My memories. My life.

  Blood trickled from the corners of my mouth. The ice in my bones melted and I voided myself, bladder and bowel.

  The spider said, This hasn’t even started to be uncomfortable yet.

  He went deeper.

  * * *

  And he found her. The dancing girl. He groaned with a sad kind of satisfaction and gathered the memory close, as if it were precious, as if it were his.

  There you are. My little bird.

  He crawled into the middle of her empty face and paused there. His fat abdomen throbbed as he worked to recall her features, using his legs to bridge damaged connection points, but to no avail; her face—as she had appeared in this moment—was gone. He assembled a likeness based on the employee of the month photograph Jackhammer had shown me, but it wasn’t the same.

  I know it’s you. I can feel you.

  I felt her, too, and wondered if she was connected to his soul like she was connected to mine. Did our respective—and perhaps opposite—emotions resonate equally?

  The spider scurried along the angle of her jaw, onto her throat, then onto her dress. Another pause as he repaired a damaged connection, and her dress stopped switching color. Blue. It was blue. Recalling this singular detail caused a miniature cascade, and the scene gained greater depth.

  Her dress was blue. Exactly the same color as the sky. We were outside. A clear, hot day. Sound and smell of the ocean. People milling around. Sunglasses and tanning oils. The wooden planks beneath our feet were laid in a herringbone pattern. In the distance, the faded green shell of a building with punched-out glass and a sign that read CASINO.

  Where is this? the spider asked.

  It’s the boardwalk at Asbury Park.

  When?

  I don’t know.

  He delved deeper. His long legs ticked and grabbed, the fine hairs on them sensitive to all brain activity. My eyes looped back inside my skull and I yammered senselessly. I felt the warmth of my body waste but everything else was cold.

  More detail emerged, like an old film being brought into focus. The boardwalk flushed with life: lovers holding hands, people pushing bicycles, joggers wending like fish, their muscles wet in the heat. The dancing girl laughed and threw her arms wide. Her mousy hair caught the merest breeze and flowed around that invisible face.

  You can’t hide forever.

  Aromas of grilled fish, lemongrass, coconut. There was a restaurant to the right with boardwalk seating. A three-piece band, tucked in the corner, played their instruments silently. A slow-tempo number, judging from the way they played, and the rhythmic tick of Sally’s hips.

  What song are they playing?

  I can’t remember.

  You’re a musician. Do you recognize the guitar chords?

  I was looking mainly at Sally when this memory was recorded, but I caught glimpses: C … E-seven … G-seven. Could be one of ten—fifty—thousand songs.

  That doesn’t help, I said.

  His legs curled with agitation. He first explored my brain to see if I was telling the truth, then attempted to repair the damage, hoping the music—such an effective trigger, as he’d already noted—would activate a more detailed cascade.

  But the song, like her face, was gone.

  * * *

  He scurried from my mind in an instant and I screamed, slumped forward. Pressure in my face, like hot dough filling the front of my skull, oozing into the cavities and fissures, cooling slowly. Blood leaked from my mouth and nose. I vomited bile in strands thin as spiderweb.

  * * *

  I wasn’t the only one hurt and bleeding; the man had slumped into the wheelchair. He wheezed and trembled—made weak grabbing motions with his right hand. Boots stepped forward, looped the oxygen mask over his face, turned it on. The man—the spider—sucked long, clean breaths into his chest. The inside of the mask fogged. Blinking my tears away, I saw tiny drops of blood in the corners of his eyes. His face appeared more deeply lined, and his hair more white than silver.

  * * *

  I don’t know how long he sucked on that oxygen, his breathing growing deeper, steadier. Maybe as long as an hour. Time was beyond me. Eventually, he lowered the mask and gestured for Jackhammer to come close.

  “It’s a long shot,” he said, and coughed. His lips were dry, tinged blue. He took another shot of oxygen, then continued: “Asbury Park, New Jersey. I don’t think she’s there, but sniff around. And go gently.”

  Jackhammer nodded. “You want me to go alone?”

  “Is Corvino still MIA?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then no … definitely don’t go alone.”

  * * *

  Jackhammer left with thug four. I prayed it was the last time I’d ever set eyes on him.

  “Can you still feel me inside you?” the spider asked.

  “I can feel where you’ve been,” I murmured. “Your legs.”

  They gave me more water. I drank some of it, but most spilled down my chin. I shivered and ached.

  “I still feel the girl.” The spider’s voice was cracked and whispery. His hands trembled when he moved them. “Nine years later, I can feel the impact—the emptiness of what she took from me. A great famishment of the mind.”

  I shifted my upper body and groaned. My shoulders throbbed and my wrists felt slick, bleeding where the rope had chafed them.

  “She took memories from you,” the spider continued. “But you feel no emptiness. And why? Because she was like a surgeon, operating so precisely and efficiently that you’re unaware of anything missing.”

  I considered this enigmatic girl, blithe enough to swirl in the ocean breeze, dangerous enough to excise entire moments from my life. She terrified, fascinated, mystified me. I wanted to track her down and reclaim my memories. I wanted to run away and never look back.

  “With me, she was a bird—a beautiful, savage bird.” The spider blinked, and a single bloody tear trickled from his left eye. “She clawed away so many memories, leaving me with morsels of everything. Just enough to feel loss.”

  “You’re suffering?”

  “Yes.” He pulled on the oxygen once again. “I am.”

  Good, I thought.

  “She took my power, too. Much of my power.” He wiped his face. Smeared one of the tears. A pink smudge colored his cheek like rouge. “As you can see”—he indicated his weakened state—“I’m not the force I used to be. I’m like a car running on a single cylinder, or a battery at five percent power. As soon as I find her, I’m taking back what’s mine. And more besides
.”

  He was a monster to me. The thought of him with greater power was terrifying.

  “I wouldn’t help you if I could,” I said.

  “You have no say in the matter.”

  I felt him scratching at my mind again. Mockingly. His eyes grew hazy and he cleared them with another blast of oxygen.

  “I would kill you now,” he said. “Split your brain like a tomato.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “You’re a link to the girl, however broken.” Another red tear curled from his eye. “You may be of use to me yet.”

  I shook my ruined head and listened to the cold hiss of oxygen through the mask.

  * * *

  He attacked me again. A final scurry through my mind to ensure he’d left no stone unturned. I found energy enough to scream, and to vomit most of the water they’d given me. Then I drifted to the edge of consciousness, barely attached to who—where—I was, but feeling the spider’s plump body squeezing into my most secret places.

  * * *

  I felt devitalized, picked apart … as empty and faded as the casino at Asbury Park, with my glass shattered and the wind blowing through me. Eventually, I found the strength to gather the pieces of my brain—separated along their fissures, clogged with cobwebs—and slot them together with a watchmaker’s care.

  I opened my eyes. The walls swam into focus first. Too close, too solid. Then I saw the spider, huddled in the wheelchair, his gray suit drooping off his withered frame, his face raglike beneath the oxygen mask.

  One of the hunt dogs—his face a smudge—stepped toward me. The knife in his hand was small but sharp. I clenched my entire body, except for my jaw, which trembled.

  “You might be tempted to go to the police,” he said blandly. “But consider, carefully, what you’ll tell them, and if they’ll believe you. And then look over your shoulder. We just might be there.”

  He stepped behind me, cut my binds.

  I spilled to the floor and stayed there for some time.

  * * *

  I lay in my hot stink as the pain in my head waned to a dull but constant thud. When I looked up, I saw that I was alone in the room. I cried and rolled onto my side. My ribs screamed and my spine fired off a series of explosive cracks.