Twenty-Three

TWENTY-THREE

I jolt from the memory, gasping, my heart pounding as if I'm sixteen again and running through that forest like the demons of hell are on my tail.

Not demons.

Just my best friend.

One of them, at least. The other lay dead in a clearing.

I rub my hands over my face.

There was no near-death conclusion to that tale, where I reached safety just as Patrice grabbed for me. She never caught up with me that night. I'm not even sure how hard she tried, because after I glanced over my shoulder once, I never looked back again.

The police found her wandering through the forest, raving about Sam and Roddy. Her injuries seemed self-inflicted, including the cut on her collarbone, as if she'd tried to emulate Roddy's suicide.

I don't remember a lot of what happened afterward, only that I was interviewed over and over by the police.

Was I ever tempted to fudge the truth and be absolutely clear that Patrice killed Heather so she didn't escape justice? Yes, but I told the truth.

I repeated what I heard shouted in the woods. I also told them that the voice had been hoarse, and so I couldn't say with absolute certainty it was Patrice. I told them what I heard Heather say.

"N-no. It's me. It's just me. I—"

She did not indicate who she was speaking to. I did not see Patrice in that clearing with Heather. Before her death, Heather never spoke Patrice's name. She only said those three words.

I don't understand.

Twice I heard someone in the woods, but I saw only a shadow. When I ran for help, I stumbled over Patrice. The knife was lying beside her. She reached for it, and I ran. I heard her rise. I looked back and saw her, and I didn't look back again. I just ran.

In the end, all the séance stuff was ignored. Three girls playing a slumber-party game, that was all. If we heard voices, it was other kids goofing around. There was no "bad trip"—an analysis of the mushrooms proved they were just regular grocery-store fare.

Three teenage girls who'd clearly watched The Craft too many times. Three teenage girls who'd been raised during the Satanic Panic. All that nonsense burrowed into Patrice's brain and made her think she'd been possessed, and she'd murdered her friend just like Roddy Silva once murdered his girlfriend.

Susceptible teen girls. Hysterical teen girls. Blame hormones. Blame movie nonsense. Blame Patrice's family history of mental illness. Her mind snapped and, really, people whispered, it was better if it stayed snapped so she never truly realized what she'd done to Heather.

For the next two months, I stayed home, rarely leaving my room. No one expected me to finish the last few weeks of school—they just gave me whatever grades I had and let me skip exams. Then it was off to Toronto. Dad "just happened" to get a job transfer… which I suspect he applied for. My parents let me change my name and whisked me across the country in hopes it would help me get past the tragedy and the horror of what happened.

And Patrice? Well, she was never getting past it. A court found her not guilty because of her mental condition and remanded her to a high-security psychiatric institution.

After that night in the forest, I didn't see Patrice again. My parents made sure of that. I had to return to Edmonton to testify, but she wasn't in court. She wasn't in any shape to be in court.

What happened that night?

Twenty-two years later, I still don't know for sure. Most days, I'm convinced it was exactly what everyone said—Patrice suffered a mental breakdown brought on by the first séance and her subsequent belief she was possessed. After Anton told me that he and his friends were responsible for the "haunting" that first night, it seems even more obvious that everything else could be explained by a psychotic break.

Then there are the nights when I remember something—Patrice's eyes, her expression, her voice, those shadows in the woods, that feeling of something wrong—and I wake up, wondering how the hell I bought the "she just snapped" explanation.

Snapped and gutted her best friend?

There'd been more to it. I have always felt that, as hard as I've tried to believe otherwise. That's why I let myself fall into this bullshit of trying to contact Anton. Because after what happened in that forest, I cannot shake the conviction that there is life after death.

So what do I believe? That the deranged spirit of Roddy Silva possessed Patrice and reenacted what he'd done twenty years before?

Am I even sure it was Patrice who killed Heather? Her hand that wielded the knife?

Of course it was. It had to be.

Shadows in the forest. The crack of twigs. The rustle of dead leaves.

This is why I refused to give the police more than the facts, forcing them to make all the interpretations.

Because I had doubts?

I pull back the memories I just relived. In that moment, kneeling beside Heather's body, even as reason told me Patrice killed her, I hadn't been ready to commit to that absolute certainty.

Shadows in the forest. The crack of twigs. The rustle of dead leaves.

I need to tell you something. A secret.

Hairs rise on my arms, but I rub them hard, bristling with annoyance. What the hell am I thinking? That Anton murdered Heather? That Patrice's injuries weren't self-inflicted? That she'd been attacked and posed with that knife?

But I'd seen her grab it.

No, I just saw her touch it. What if she was only reaching out, getting her bearings, trying to rise, and her hand brushed the staged knife?

I never saw her holding it.

I close my eyes and resurrect the memories. Patrice lifting her head, gaze locking with mine. Her hand reaching toward the knife. Her fingers grazing the handle.

I'd run then.

What if I got it wrong?

It doesn't matter, because it wasn't up to me to interpret. I gave the facts. That's all.

I can hear the prosecutor asking whether it was Patrice who'd shouted that she'd gut "Samantha."

"I thought so at the time."

"You thought so, Janica? You aren't sure?"

I hesitate, panic rising. Am I supposed to say I'm sure? Is that what he wants?

I should say it was Patrice. I was sure at the time.

Was I?

I tell the truth. "The voice was raw, hoarse. At the time, I thought it was Patrice. But if you're asking whether it couldn't possibly have been anyone else, I can't say that."

He'd been disappointed. I'd seen that. But afterward, when I fretted, Mom said I'd done the right thing. Dad agreed.

Tell the truth. Let the police and prosecution make a case. That wasn't my job.

I wish I'd thanked my parents for that advice. I realize now why they'd been so adamant that I only tell the truth, no matter how hard anyone pushed for more. I should not make any assumptions or feel any pressure to say anything I wasn't sure of. Because if I did, and I ever doubted Patrice's guilt, my words would come back to haunt me.

I leave the sitting room. When I reach the living room, the clock strikes five, and I flinch. Cocktail hour. Shit, I really don't want that today.

I glance around, but no one's in sight. Maybe they've forgotten it, too. Good. I swing through the living room, where I left my laptop, and take it outside to a small wooden table and chair in the gardens, close enough to still pick up the house's Wi-Fi signal.

I sit facing the house, so I can see anyone coming out. It'll be dinnertime soon. Jin was grabbing takeout, relieving Mrs. Kilmer of her catering tasks while she searched for her son. I'll keep an ear out for the sound of his car.

I launch my browser. I'm about to start searching for the case when a little voice whispers to open a VPN and put the browser into incognito mode.

Incognito mode? I'm not researching how to make a bomb. I'm looking at a twenty-two-year-old murder case to refresh my memory and see whether I could have missed anything.

A murder case that hit national news. A murder case that involved me under another name.

A murder case that also involved my dead husband, even if the rest of the world never knew that.

I want to dig deep, and I'm not going to feel comfortable doing that if I'm worried about cyber traces showing that Nicola Laughton was researching someone named Janica Laughton, witness to a horrific murder. Nor will I be comfortable typing Anton's name in association with that case.

Am I ashamed of doubting my husband? Yes.

I am further shamed by the little voice that whispers I'd only truly known Anton for the past three years, and even then, how well does anyone know anyone? That voice feels like a cop-out and a betrayal. But the only voice I need to ignore is the more shameful one that whines that all this does no good because even if I found out Anton played some role, he's dead and can't be prosecuted, so I should just let it lie. Keep my good memories intact. Except I can't, can I? Those memories are tainted until I have answers.

"I'm sorry, Anton," I whisper… and then I start typing.

I don't know what became of Patrice. Oh, I know she was remanded to a psychiatric institution. I know that my parents promised to keep an eye on her case and warn me if she was ever released, so we could be prepared.

Prepared for what?

I don't think any of us knew. Would she blame me for testifying? Or would she be the old Patrice, her mind clear, horrified by what she'd done? I couldn't have handled that any better than I'd have handled angry Patrice. I have spent too many sleepless nights putting myself in Patrice's place.

What if I had a psychotic break and murdered a friend?

What if I were possessed by a killer and murdered a friend?

Am I a coward for not wanting to see her again? Maybe. But sometimes, as much as we want to help others, we need to protect our own mental health.

I may have outwardly buried sixteen-year-old Janica, but I spent years in therapy dealing with what happened, the trauma of what I went through and the survivor's guilt of needing therapy when I was the one who escaped.

After my parents died, maybe I should have kept tabs on Patrice myself, but honestly, I never thought of it. It's been over twenty years, and I'm long past the old nightmares where she shows up in my bedroom with a knife. Or where she shows up sobbing that I'd betrayed her.

After Anton confessed to the pranking, we didn't really talk about the rest. He was sorry he'd never gotten in touch afterward, at least to tell me he was thinking of me and what I'd gone through. But sixteen-year-old boys don't do that. Hell, no one reached out to me after Heather died. I disappeared into my bedroom, and not a single classmate tried to see how I was doing.

Anton and I never discussed that second séance. I certainly didn't ask him what happened to Patrice after I left Edmonton.

Now I need to know, even if it has nothing to do with my questions about Anton. I need to know what happened to a girl who'd been my friend.

I find an article from when she turned eighteen and was transferred to an adult facility. There's another from ten years ago, when her parents tried to appeal her sentence and ask for her to be transferred to a private hospital.

According to those articles, Patrice never recovered. In the early days, she'd vacillated between catatonia and psychotic outbursts. Eventually, the catatonia took over, which is why her family had lobbied for a transfer, since she posed no threat in that state. Their request was denied and the trail ends there, leaving her in that secured facility.

As I stare at that decade-old article, I realize it wasn't just one friend who died that day in the forest. It was two. The Patrice I knew never came back, and now, in a secure psychiatric ward somewhere, there is a middle-aged woman living out her days, the girl she'd been long gone.

I will mourn for Patrice later. I might even commit to getting in touch with her parents and saying… I don't know. Giving whatever solace I can offer with twenty years of maturity and distance.

Now I need to dive into the case itself and see what I missed. It happened at the end of the nineties, the era of AOL, when I certainly could have found news on the case, but it wasn't in my face, all the time, as a sensational case would be these days.

I spend the next half hour reading articles from that time and growing increasingly frustrated. They all rehash the same facts and, sometimes, the same rumors and theories that I'd thought were only local gossip. Rumors about Heather bringing back "voodoo" from Cuba. Rumors about Patrice practicing witchcraft. And one rumor I'd never heard, thanks to my parents—that a source claimed I missed a lot of time at my old school because I'd been the victim of a satanic cult. Not that I have CF, which is easily discovered information. Why blame a chronic illness when you can blame the devil?

I can see now why my parents didn't hesitate to let me change my name. According to this so-called source, I'm a satanic-cult survivor who mysteriously—suspiciously?—also survived the bloodbath that erupted when my new friends mysteriously—suspiciously?—got into witchcraft less than a year after meeting me.

Respectable papers leave my name out of it. I was a minor, after all. But of course everyone in the region knew who I was, and it takes little effort to find "Janica Laughton" named as the survivor.

As for what happened to Janica? To my relief, no one seems to have cared. There are no "what ever happened to" blog posts from later years. None on Patrice either. We were huge news at the time, but our story had a definitive and tidy ending. A teen girl experienced a psychotic break and murdered one friend. Her other friend escaped. The killer was immediately apprehended, tried, and convicted. End of story.

I'd hoped to discover that there was more to the case, that the police had evidence I didn't know about. Or that Patrice "woke" and con fessed. That didn't happen. The evidence that convicted Patrice was exactly what I remembered. She was found with the knife that killed Heather. It had her prints on it. Heather's blood was on Patrice. Then there was my story.

Reading those articles, I see how much weight my story was given. According to some reports, I definitively identified Patrice as Heather's killer. One even had me finding Patrice stabbing Heather. That's all embellishment. When I read the trial transcripts, I can see that I said exactly what I remember.

What matters here is that I don't find evidence that proves—beyond any doubt—that Patrice murdered Heather. All the killer had to do was knock Patrice out, wipe Heather's blood onto Patrice's clothing, and put the knife beside her hand.

Those transcripts confirm that Patrice was never able to speak in her own defense. She didn't regain that ability for even a taped interview.

Had it been up to me to defend her? To say I couldn't imagine my friend doing something so horrific?

At the time, I'd been so certain Patrice did it. She'd been in the grip of madness and maybe, just maybe, it was our fault. Our fault for holding a séance that left her convinced we'd released some evil entity. Or our fault for releasing some evil entity, whatever had once possessed Roddy Silva to murder his girlfriend in the same way.

If the court found Patrice not guilty because of her mental condition, that meant she did it… she just hadn't been in her right mind.

I pause, fingers over the keyboard. Then I look at the house. I can hear voices, muffled. Just ordinary conversation.

I take a deep breath and type in the words I've been dreading.

Patrice Jones. Heather Mueller. Anton Novak. Murder.

I get back a string of results with "Anton Novak" crossed off the search terms. Seeing that, I exhale. What did I expect? That he'd been questioned and I never realized it?

My gaze skims over the list of search results. Then it stops on one with Anton removed… but not Novak.

I stare at the preview of that result. It's from a Haunted Alberta blog. When I see that, a shiver runs up my spine, but I push it down. Yes, I'm sure Patrice gets mentioned in local ghost tours, not by name, but as the story of a girl who murdered her friend after conducting a séance.

The post begins by regurgitating the story of Heather's murder. The focus, given the blog title, is on the séance and my testimony that Patrice thought we'd contacted the spirit of Roddy Silva.

The post then switches to telling the story of Roddy Silva, and here I slow down to read. Back when Patrice first told this story, I hadn't been sure it was even true. After it became part of Patrice's murder trial, I'd heard enough to know it was very real.

Before slitting his own throat, Roddy Silva had killed his girlfriend in the same way that Heather had been killed. Samantha had indeed been found in a tree. Patrice's aunt Lori had been with the search party that found her, and Lori had never recovered, being committed to an institution, much as her niece would be two decades later.

The blog takes extra care drawing those parallels. It also dug deeper into the Roddy Silva story. That began as Patrice said, with kids having a bonfire, some of them goofing around with a séance, and then Roddy walked into the forest, with Samantha following.

It is only then that I see why my search picked it up.

Surprisingly, the Silva family continued to live in Edmonton afterward. For this story, we tracked down his younger sister, Mary Novak (née Silva), who refused to give a statement regarding her brother's crime.

I stare at that name. Mary Silva. Mary Novak.

Anton's mother's name is Mary.

I shake it off. Mary is a common name, and Novak isn't un com mon. Still, I scroll through the rest of the article, looking for more, for proof that this is a coincidence. A photo appears. A high-school photo of Roddy Silva, and I find myself staring into his eyes.

Into Anton's eyes.

"Nicola?"

I jump so high I nearly topple the deck chair. Shania stands in front of me, frowning. I slap the laptop shut.

"Yes?" I say, a little sharply.

"Jin's back with dinner," she says. Then she eyes me uncertainly. "Is everything okay?"

When I give a curt nod, her eyes shutter.

"Sorry," I say. "I was just…" I rub my temples. "There's a lot going on, and I'm not handling it well."

"Not handling what well?" She frowns. "You're doing awesome. There's been some weird stuff, but Anton really seems to be trying to make contact and… Nic?"

"Hmm?"

"What's wrong?"

"Wrong?"

She peers at me. "I mentioned Anton, and you flinched." She pauses, as if working it through. "Do you think the ghost isn't him?"

"No, it's just… something else."

Her jaw moves, as if she's chewing the inside of her cheek. "I'm not going to pry, Nic, but you know I'm here, right? For anything you need to discuss?" She eases back, looking self-conscious. "I'm here. That's all I'm saying."

I rise and squeeze her shoulder. "I know, and I appreciate it. Now let's get dinner."

Over dinner, I decide to confide in Shania. She really is the right choice. Jin is too close to this and to me, and I'm not eager to tell him what happened twenty-two years ago, especially if he might consider it a secret Keith didn't trust him enough to share. I'd rather keep the details to a bare minimum, and that's awkward with a good friend. I'm sure as hell not talking to Cirillo. I'm already nervous that he'll dig up my past. More fodder for his funding.

After dinner, there's a break before the next séance. Cirillo slips off to prepare for that, and I ask Shania if she'll walk with me. Jin takes the hint and offers to do the dishes, which doesn't quite seem fair when he picked up dinner, but when I say so, he's quick to reassure me.

"There's a reason I offered to get dinner," he says. "I am seriously low on my espresso quota so I hit a coffee shop for a double shot. Now I need to work off the caffeine."

I smile. "Okay, but tomorrow, you're chilling."

"Er, actually, that's another reason I'm being so helpful. I need to head back to Toronto tomorrow for an emergency meeting I can't do over video chat. Is it okay if I take your car?"

"Sure," I say. "Do you want to just stay and come back Friday with Keith and the kids? Tomorrow is our last full day here."

"It's also our last séance," he says. "I want to be here for that. I should be back by dinner, but if I'm not, I need you to promise you won't start without me."

"Keith's rule?"

Jin shrugs. "Keith's request, and my agreement. Shania is a good kid, but she's a believer. You need someone to join you in playing skeptic."

"Fair enough. Okay then. Enjoy the dishes, and I'll see you in an hour or so."