Archive of Our Own ^beta

“You can’t kid me! The asylum, that’s where you’re from, isn’t it? ‘Professor,’ yes, of course — well, I’m not going, see? That old cat’s the one who should be in the asylum. I never did anything to little Amy Benson or Dennis Bishop, and you can ask them, they’ll tell you!”  

 -Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Chapter 13: The Secret Riddle

A dozen shades of pink and red striped the sandstone cliffs of Mt. Kinesava in the mid-afternoon light. Peering upward toward the summit, Amy put a hand above her eyes and squinted against the dazzling sunshine.

Along the southwest side of the mountain, eight climbers clung to the craggy cliffside, scrabbling methodically skyward. Amy twisted her gaze back toward the rock face before her. Her legs burned with a satisfying intensity as she pushed from one roughened boulder to the next, stretching upward to reach each new gradation in the stone. She climbed about fifteen meters up before pausing in concentration, feeling with her foot for the next hold.

"Almost got it!" a voice called. Adam, who'd taken lead on the climb, stood on the ledge about ten meters away, belaying Amy from above. Most mountaineers preferred silence in the trickier moments of a climb, but Adam and Amy both enjoyed the occasional shout of encouragement. It was one of the reasons that she sought him out as a climbing partner whenever they happened to sign on for the same trip.

Buoyed, Amy extended her right leg wider until she found a crack in the rock just big enough to slip her foot inside. The fit was tight, but effective; sliding sideways and upward with the boost from the new hold, she quickly tackled the next few meters up the mountainside. Adam gave her a hand up as she scrambled up onto the ledge, grinning.

"Nice job," said Adam as Amy flopped to the ground, dangling her feet over the side. She unclipped her carabiner and secured it to her harness while bending down to retrieve her rope. Adam pulled a canteen from his pack and sat beside her, taking an enthusiastic swig that splashed down the front of his shirt. "Want some?"

"If you're offering," Amy said. She took a drink and watched, a little amused, as he pulled the floral bandana off his head and wiped away some droplets clinging to his moustache. Adam always dressed like he was on a personal mission to bring back the 1960s. On another man, this style might have been tacky, but on Adam it was almost charming. Suddenly shy, Amy handed the canteen back to him and looked away, gazing out across the landscape.

Around them, the last of the climbers were pulling themselves onto the ledge and packing up their gear. Adam got up to join the newbies, Jake and Ben, a few paces up the plateau; Amy stayed seated, twisting her nylon rope into a loose coil with practiced movements. Pulling her long plait out of the way, she draped the rope to rest over her shoulders.

"Everybody up?" Rich, a tanned bloke in his early forties, was vice president of the Great Basin Climbing Club and team leader on this excursion. Amy gave him a quick thumbs-up as she got to her feet, and the rest of the group also called or gestured in the affirmative. Rich surveyed the seven climbers for a minute . "Alright! It's all hiking from here to the peak. It'll be pretty steep after we cross the plateau, but the hardest work is definitely behind us. Y'all ready to keep going?"

"Let's move!" called Rob, their oldest climber at sixty-one, with his ever-present Midwestern enthusiasm. Ben gave a little cheer in response, and the group hopped to it.

Amy let her pace relax as the eight of them began to hike across the sandy terrain. Around her, bright sunlight imbued red rocks and scrubby plants with the understated beauty of the American West, a landscape that she had grown to love dearly. The other climbers had clumped into pairs just ahead, and she drifted a little behind them, letting the buzz of conversation grow indistinct as she listened for the xylophonic call of canyon wrens.

Maybe she ought to sign on for Great Basin's next long trip, the one that was being planned around the end of January. It would be cheaper to stick with the climbing clubs closer to home, but what the hell. There were always extra shifts available at K-mart over the holidays; she could definitely pick up enough work over the next six weeks to cover her share. Today's climb was the wrap-up of a three-week climbing jaunt, and the weather had been absolutely perfect the entire trip. Even in the desert, consistent sun like this was priceless. Besides, Rich had turned out to be a great planner. Every drive had been gorgeous, every climb challenging and well-paced.

And they seemed like a decent group of guys. Straightforward. Even a bit cheery. Amy kept to herself (and liked it that way), but even so. It was just...nice, she thought, being around positive energy when you were spending time up in the mountains. There's nothing like hearing a snippy comment when you've just been dangling off a cliff.

A peregrine falcon swooped overhead, and Amy felt again the rush of freedom that she endlessly craved. It really might be worth it, she thought, to consider the January trip. Wiping the sweat from her brow, she twisted back a few strands of thin hair that were frizzing out of the front of her French plait. As if the desert sought to ease her discomfort, a soft breeze blew across the trail, cooling the back of her neck. Ahead, Amy could just make out where the steepening mountain tapered out at the summit.

To her left, the low sound of a rattle whispered through the dry grass.

Amy stopped in her tracks.

"Wouldn't you like to come along?"

Not now. Please, not now.

"Why, you look just like Becky Thatcher, from the film."

She mustn't look. She needed to keep walking. And yet, Amy turned her head — slowly, almost unwillingly, as if enchanted —

The soft drip of rain water echoing down a stone tunnel.

— to follow the sound of the rattle, searching through the rustling grass, looking for the hideous patterned back that slid over the sand—

"They find me. They whisper to me."

Not now. Walk forward.

"Why, you look just like Becky Thatcher, from the film. Wouldn't you like to—?"

"Amy?" Someone was doubling back toward her. "Are you alright?"

Amy gasped, sucking in a great gulp of desert air. When she turned, Adam was standing just in front of her, concern in his lined brow. She hadn't realized she'd been holding her breath. "What is it?" he asked. "Everything okay?"

She couldn't speak. Adam followed her gaze to the side, scanning for a problem; he tensed for a moment and then relaxed. "It's okay. It's not a rattler. Look."

When Amy didn't move, Adam put a hand on her shoulder. She dug her nails into her palms surreptitiously, but thankfully, did not flinch. "You see how the tail is tapered at the back?" he said. "It's just a gopher snake." He smiled reassuringly and then continued. "They look almost the same, and the gopher snake mimics the rattlesnake by hissing and rustling the grass to make a similar sound. But this guy isn't venomous at all. There's nothing to be afraid of."

Amy knew what a gopher snake was, but she let Adam speak, gathering her bearings. Unfortunately, he wasn't fooled. He raised his eyebrows. "Oh. I get it. Just not a fan of snakes?"

"They whisper to me."

Not in front of Adam. Not forty meters from the summit. Amy forced a laugh and shook the hand from her shoulder. "It's fine. I was just surprised, that's all. Thanks for the lesson."

"No problem," Adam replied, but his warm expression grew uncertain. "Ready to catch up?"

The snake had disappeared into the desert scrub around them. Amy nodded, and they started up the path once more.

Adam kept pace beside her for the rest of the hike, making small talk about the wildlife, the trail, the historic petroglyphs carved in the rocks at the mountain peak. But Amy couldn't shake her unease. She wiped the sweat from her forehead and felt the marker above her left eye, the cool press of metal on each temple. She spit into the sand and felt the rubber in her mouth. She listened for the wrens and heard the drip, drip, drip of raindrops falling on the sea.

Eventually, they made it to the peak. "Look at that view!" Ben called, as he had on every mountain they'd hiked for the past two weeks. Newbie, indeed.

Rich took charge. "Alright y'all, twenty minutes for pictures if we want to make it down the mountain before night. Who wants to help me look for those petroglyphs?"

The rest of the crew moved eagerly toward him. Adam, after a questioning glance toward Amy, did the same. As he looked back, she tried not to search for the shadow of a boy in his graying moustache, his weathered face. She could always find the boy beneath the man, somehow.

Breathe. Focus. Amy walked to the mountain's edge and sat once more, looking out over the magnificent desert expanse of southern Utah. Ben wore his inexperience on his sleeve, but he was right: the view was breathtaking. The cottonwood trees were alive with autumn colors; the river was a winding stripe below. It was still a cloudless day, and the mountain peaks pressed starkly against the blue expanse of the sky, like chapped hands folding clean linens.

Amy held her own hands up against the sky. Admired their callouses, useful and strong. Felt the plait down her back like a nylon rope, securing her.

By the time they started back down the mountain, she had calmed. The setting sun on her face and the burn of her muscles made her feel — if not confidence, if not joy — soundness. Solidity. The others seemed to have sensed her need for a quiet walk and left her alone. Or maybe they each were finding their own peace, steadied by the ancient mountain.

When they finally reached the bottom, the eight of them meandered back to the car in tired silence. Evening insects hummed as they packed into the van and Rich started the drive toward the motel they'd rented in Springdale, a few miles down the road. The air was dusty and reeked of sweat after a long day of climbing, but Amy didn't think she could risk a shower tonight. Soap and a towel would have to do.

Twenty minutes later, they'd pulled into the parking lot at the Spotted Owl Lodge and trudged into the shabby lobby. Amy blinked as she adjusted to the fluorescent lights.

Beside them, a young receptionist with a bright purple manicure stood up behind the front desk. "Excuse me?" she called, tapping her nails nervously on the counter and zeroing in on Amy in the crowd of men. "Does one of you happen to be an Amy Benson?"

"Um, yeah. That's me," Amy said, walking over. "Room seven-one-three. Why, did you need something?"

"We've had a few telephone calls for you while you were out." Amy's stomach sank. Now? After the day she'd had? "They seemed a little...urgent. I can give you the number to call back?"

She knew the number. "Did the caller leave a message?"

The receptionist grimaced and pressed a notepad into her hand. "Patty took these down earlier, and there's one on the answering machine from lunch. I can play the tape if you'd like."

Amy took a breath and nodded before turning back to the group. Half of them had already dispersed back to their rooms, but a few stragglers had hung back, Adam among them. "You guys don't have to wait," she said. "Just family stuff. I'll head up in a few."

She waited until they had exited the lobby before turning back to the machine and hitting play.

As the cassette began to roll, a man's voice, deep and raspy, crackled forth as she'd known it would. His London accent sounded horribly like home.

"Amy? Are you there? I need you."

A pause. A shaky breath, loud even in the poor recording.

"Please call back. I need you. Amy, it's him. Please. It's Tom."

The cool press of metal on each temple. The splash of pennies in a churning sea. "I've been saving these," said Dennis, grinning, pressing the coins into her hands—

"Someone get her hands!" There was a sharp sting on Amy's palms as she slammed them into the wall, the table, the bodies sat beside her on the long work bench. Laundry fell to the floor in wide swaths as baskets tipped over; the room filled with the shrieks of girls, the strong grips of the orderlies, the unrelenting drumbeat of rain on glass—

Raindrops streaked down the glass of the sweetshop windows, blurring the colorful display arranged invitingly on the sill. A boy peered in through the glass, pale and familiar. "Hello, Tom—"

"Tom swears that nothing happened, Martha. But there's something just not right about Dennis ever since the seaside trip, and little Amy too, and I can't get either of them to speak a damned word—"

"Selective mutism?" The stranger wore a white coat like the other doctors, but his face was more handsome, his accent strange. Amy tried not to look at him. "I'll list it with her other symptoms. Really, Benjamin, I think Miss Benson could be an ideal candidate—"

"You'd make a spiffy explorer, Amy. Why, you look just like Becky Thatcher, from the film." Tom's handsome face seemed earnest, hopeful. "Wouldn't you like to—?"

A razor scraping along her scalp. The cool press of metal on bared skin, like a penny pressed against each temple. Coins for the ferryman—

"This one's myths and legends, and this one's got pioneers, adventurers, that sort of thing. I know you like that." Dennis's smile was still playful where it curved above his stubbled jaw. She could always find the boy beneath the man, somehow. "Got to keep that chin up—"

Fingers beneath her chin, tilting her head up. A marker pressed against her brow bone, leaving a stain of dark ink like a ripple in water. "We'd make the incision just here—"

"It's just here." Tom's voice, slithering out from a crack at the base of the cliff, just big enough for children to slip through. A tunnel. The echo of footfalls, the patter of the rain at the cave's mouth, Dennis's hand in hers—

"Someone get her hands!"  

Deliberate hands, rough with labor. Place the laundry in the baskets. Fold the sheets, drawing inward from both edges, pinching at each side—

A metal disk pressed to each side of her face, kissing the temples. A pair. Cold with seawater, pennies tumbling in the ocean, coins for the ferryman, floating in the air—

The heaviness of stormy air, the darkness of rough caves and heavy eyes—

The tunnel, or the sea, or the shock, or nothing.

Amy woke abruptly from an uneasy sleep.

Pennies floating in the air—

The sky was clear. White starlight splashed across the motel bedspread.

Waves of white linen, pinched together at each side. The ripple of rain on a churning sea.

Stumbling from her bed, Amy crossed the room to where her luggage was shoved haphazardly into a corner. She fumbled for the plastic bottle, waiting reliably where she always kept it, in the smallest pocket of her suitcase. Her hands shook as she twisted the lid. Small white pills spilled out onto the floor. 

She knelt and selected two from the pile in front of her. Swallowed them dry.

Breathed. In through the nose. Out through the mouth.

"Someone get her hands!"  

Amy sat back against the wall, pulling her knees to her chest in front of her. Ran her palms along the rough motel carpet, focusing on its roughness against her skin. Held her breath for counts of four. Listened. Waited.

When the shouting of the past faded back to silence — when she could hear the faint calling of coyotes in the distance, the comforting sounds of the Utah desert — Amy picked up the pills one by one and placed them back into the bottle, counting. Twenty-nine pills. Two hands. Three howls.

Time passed. Eventually she stood, pulling a fleece jumper from her suitcase and zipping it over her pajamas. She wanted to feel the dry air of the desert night, to see the inky purples of a calm November sky.

She should have known that Dennis would call, Amy thought, as she walked through the empty motel hallway and into the lobby. She paused by the rack of yesterday's newspapers, grabbing one off the stack to frown at the headline. Freak North Atlantic Hurricanes Continue; 6 Dead in UK. Even an ocean away, Amy had been rattled by the streak of grim events and strange weather that had dogged Britain through 1978. She could only imagine how Dennis must feel, barricaded in his flat, haunted by delusions, surrounded by the gray rains of a London winter...

She rolled the newspaper in her hand as she stepped outside, crossing the parking lot to the neglected picnic benches across the asphalt. The sky, as it had been on every night of this trip, was stunning. She perched on top of one of the picnic benches, gazing out at the shadows of red mountains faintly lit by the Milky Way. The hum of insects settled over her spirit like dust over hiking boots.

"Amy? Is that you?"

She looked up, surprised. "Adam?"

"I thought it was." Adam was walking toward her. He was fully dressed, as if the night had never fallen, although he'd changed out of his hiking clothes into a paisley shirt and worn jeans. "Mind if I sit?" When Amy nodded, he took a place beside her on the picnic table, following her gaze out toward the jagged peaks. "Smoke?"

He offered her a blunt, which Amy accepted, taking a long drag. "Early riser?" he said gently, "or can't sleep?"

"Can't sleep," she admitted. She was glad for his easy manner, his gaze facing outward alongside hers. "You?"

"Stargazing." He gestured upward. "Beautiful night for it. Can you see that bright spot, over there? That's Jupiter. It'll get brighter at night as we go into December."

Amy hadn't known. She smiled in spite of herself. "I love all the little facts you know," she said, glancing over. "You're never boring, Adam."

"Oh yeah? Sure you don't mind a loudmouth?"

"Nah."

"I'll remember that, for the future." He reached for the blunt and she handed it back, feeling the rough brush of his fingertips. "Think you'll come out with us on the next trip? It's always good to see you. We make a decent team."

"I was thinking about it." She hesitated. But...life was short, what the hell? "I like climbing with you. You're a fun person to hang around."

A grin. "Was that a pun?"

"Oh, my God, no. Screw you."

"Okay, okay," he laughed, "I was just asking. Sue me." They lapsed into a comfortable silence. Feeling bold, Amy put her head lightly against his shoulder. He shifted toward her.

"So," he said softly, "what's keeping you up?"

"It's complicated."

"You mentioned family stuff?"

"Yeah." She paused and looked down at the newspaper, still rolled tightly in her hands. This was normally when she'd start to back away from the conversation, but something — the weed? the stars? the choking memories? — was drawing her out. What to say? "I might need to visit my brother soon."

"Not close?"

"We are and we aren't." Amy gestured for the blunt and took another drag. "We have a sort of...tough relationship."

"Older or younger brother?"

"Older."

"Is he doing alright?"

"No," she said, breathing out. A cloud of smoke dissipated before her. "He's not well. He hasn't been well in a long time."

"Is he far?"

"He lives in London."

"Well, alright, that's a hike," said Adam. "Do you see him much?"

"I haven't seen him in almost twenty years." Amy shifted, leaning further into Adam. He put an arm around her back. "I went back to see him a few times after I first moved to the States, but we've mostly kept up through phone calls." She pinched the corner of the newspaper, crumpling the edges in her fingertips. "Honestly? He calls a lot. I don't usually call back. It's a hard situation."

"I can understand that. Why now?"

Amy unrolled the newspaper, gesturing toward the headline. "All this. Have you seen the news about England recently?"

"What, more?" Adam glanced down, interested. "UK's Ugliest Summer," he quoted, referencing a popular headline after the particularly deadly collapse of a school in Liverpool last July. There had been a string of freak incidents all year: strange accidents and weird murders, unconnected to one another, but each contributing to the steady storm of unnecessary deaths that had terrified the nation all year. "Is he hurt?

"No," said Amy, "he's fine. Well, sort of."

"Sort of?"

"All of this bad news...it scares him. Plays into his delusions." She took another quick drag and blew the smoke out in a gust. "Mine too, if I'm being honest."

She sneaked a glance upward to his face, but it had not changed. Adam remained calm, interested. "What do you mean?" he asked.

Amy sat up suddenly and pulled away. She looked Adam full in the face for the first time that night. "I mean, the headlines set off my delusions too. Headlines among other things." She laughed a little bitterly. "I hate to break it to you, Adam, since we were getting along so well. But you should probably know that I'm completely mad."

He raised his eyebrows, but his expression stayed light. "Oh, yeah?"

"Barking. I mean it."

"Well," he said. "You do like to hang off cliffs for fun, so I can't say I'm shocked." He smiled. "You're in good company, though."

"You don't get it." She broke his gaze and looked down at the splintering wood of the table, bleached by the sun. "You know, I spent three years locked up in a London asylum? In the forties, when I was a teenager." Another glance at his face. No change in his patient expression, his soft eyes. "The St. Dorothy Sanitarium for Disturbed Girls," she continued. "They gave us these horrible treatments all day, and paid for it by taking in work as a charity laundry. The government shut the place down in the fifties when some inspector found worms in the food."

He winced. "That sounds like a nightmare."

"No kidding. Some doctor from New York tried to lobotomize me when I was fourteen."

"Jesus."

"Yeah." They were coming to the end of the blunt, but she didn't give it back to him. Adam waited while Amy smoked. "And the whole story with my brother...it's really messed up. You have no idea."

"What happened?"

"I can't tell you. I've never told anyone, not since I got out of St. Dorothy's." She grabbed the end of her plaited hair and twisted it in her fingers. "Dennis and I might be the only ones left who know."

Adam shifted closer, knocking his knee softly against hers. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," he said finally, "but I'd be happy to listen. It might help. And if I'm being honest...I've been hoping to get to know you better."

Amy paused. In the distance, a pack of coyotes seemed to howl all at once, then fade further back into the mountains. For November, it was a warm night. "Want to come back to my room?" she asked suddenly. "It might be easier to talk there."

Adam's eyes locked on hers and grew intent, questioning. She grabbed his hand and pressed a kiss into his knuckles.

It was some time before they spoke again.

Adam broke the silence, rubbing circles in Amy's ankle where he lay next to her on the motel bed. She was sitting beside him, her back against the headboard, undoing the plait that had grown tangled and running a brush through each section.

"I like your hair," Adam said. "It's different. Most women I meet in this hobby want theirs shorter."

"I like to keep it long." A confession: "I wasn't allowed to, when I was a kid."

"Right," he said, smiling. "Back in London. You know, I was curious about where you were from. Been wondering how you picked up that classy accent."

She laughed richly, all the way from her belly. "Americans always think that. My accent isn't classy at all."

"Bull."

"It's not! I hardly grew up speaking the Queen's English. And I've completely ruined it, becoming an American. My accent is incoherent now."

"What brought you out here, anyway?"

"Oh," she said, a little ruefully. "I got married."

"Oh, yeah?" Adam rolled over and kissed her on the hip. "Divorced, I hope."

"Essentially. We never broke it off legally, but we split after around ten years. He could be dead, for all I know. It wasn't a great relationship."

"No? Why'd you marry him?"

Amy chewed the inside of her lip contemplatively. "It was what I needed at the time. I was young, I had no family — Dennis was in jail then — and I met this bloke, and I just...wanted to get swept up in something. Needed to get away." She shot Adam a grin. "Noah from Nebraska. Regular American cowboy, like nobody I'd ever met before. He was in the army, and had stuck around in England for a few years after the war. We eloped."

He laughed. "Very romantic."

"It was, a little. I don't know if we were happy, but we sort of...fit. He was a little mad because of the war, and I was a little mad because of...being mad...so we understood each other, even though different things set us off."

"Set you off?"

"Well..." Amy grimaced apologetically. "You saw it a little, earlier."

"Snakes?"

"Yeah. But also lots of little things. Boys laughing, sometimes. Coins jingling." She paused. "But, mostly, the rain."

"The rain?"

"Yeah. The sound of it." Amy twisted her fingers together. "Noah couldn't handle loud noises, I couldn't handle weather. I always felt closest to him in a thunderstorm."

Adam rolled over and placed his other hand over hers, stilling them. "I lost my wife," he said quietly. "Car accident, years ago. Slippery road. The rain makes me remember."

Amy linked her fingers through his. "I live in Tucson, Arizona. When Noah left me, I looked in the encyclopedia for the sunniest U.S. cities, and then I just picked up and moved. I haven't had any new delusions since I was a kid, but the sound of the rain...it just brings the old ones right back. I still see things, in the rain. So I avoid it." Adam squeezed her hands. She looked down at his kind and open face. "Did you still want to hear about Dennis?"

Adam nodded, sitting up. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and Amy curled in beside him.

"It's hard to know where to start."

"The asylum?"

"The asylum." Amy took a long breath out. "They sent me when I was thirteen. I used to see things that weren't real. At first, the delusions were sort of harmless — I was a kid, right? I thought it was magic — but then I started to get scared, to get hurt. I'd panic and act violent. So they locked me up." She breathed in, counting. "Sent me away until I got better."

"Your brother, too?"

"No, actually. Dennis used to see things too, but he was better at keeping himself together — at least, we thought so at the time. He visited me, though. He used to bring me things to read, told me stories. Dennis was funny. Just this sweet, charming kid, and he loved to laugh, back then. His visits were the only things I looked forward to. I think it helped him, feeling like he needed to protect me."

Amy suddenly hopped up and crossed the room, rummaging through her luggage. "Dennis is actually the reason I got into mountaineering. He used to bring me these cheap comic books full of stories, like adventurers, and — you see?" She found her wallet and opened it, holding it up in the moonlight. In the wallet sleeve, where others might keep photos of their children, Amy had inserted a faded piece of newsprint, where one could still faintly make out the photo of a woman in a long skirt. "Lucy Walker. Dennis brought me this."

"The lady who climbed the Matterhorn?"

"Exactly." Amy smiled down at the faded photograph. "I used to pretend that she was my grandmother. I think that helped me more than any of the doctors did. To imagine that one day, I could be like her."

"What about your real grandmother? Or your parents?"

"Oh! Oh, no," Amy laughed. "I think I need to start again. We're missing some important details. Did I mention that Dennis isn't really my brother?"

Adam quirked his head in surprise. "No? How does that work?"

Amy put the wallet on her bedside table and settled back against the headboard. "We're both orphans, Dennis and I. We grew up in Wool's Orphanage in London. Neither of us ever met our parents."

"I'm sorry." He took her hands again.

"Don't be. It was a long time ago. Dennis was a few years older than me, and he was...well, he was always the sweetest boy. I caught a bad case of the measles when I was three — almost died — and for a while I was sort of sickly, smaller than the other kids. So, Dennis sort of adopted me as his little sister. He used to sneak me extra dessert, play games with me when I'd ask him, that sort of thing. Stood up for me when the kids got rough. I loved him to pieces.

"And he saw strange things, too. We used to talk about the things we'd seen." She looked out the window, pondering. "Maybe that was what drew him to me. That's sort of where the story starts."

Amy looked over at Adam and took a deep breath. "Dennis and I both used to have delusions, and they always centered around the same person. A boy around Dennis's age, who used to live in the orphanage with us. Tom."

"Tom?"

"Yes. Tom Riddle." Amy shuddered. How many years had passed since she'd last said his name? 

Adam squeezed her shoulder. "What sort of things did you see?"

"Strange things. We used to say that Riddle was possessed." She put her face against Adam's shoulder. "He was a bully. A really cruel kid. He strung up Billy Stubbs's rabbit from the rafters once, stone dead. Dennis and I were convinced that he'd flown up there like a witch and strangled it."

"Jesus Christ."

"Oh, yes. It was quite nasty work." Amy pinched the skin between her forefinger and thumb, just enough to feel the bite, before she continued. "All the kids were terrified of Riddle. He used to tell us he could speak to snakes. He would make hissing sounds and tell stories, and swear that the snakes had whispered all of our secrets to him...He stole things, and they'd disappear if you tried to steal them back...And he fought. A lot. He usually won, eventually. He wasn't a large child, but if any kid got into a fight with Tom, you could bet he'd find some way to go after them later...

"That was what happened to us. To Dennis and I. Tom Riddle had stolen my favorite silver thimble. I was upset, and Dennis told the staff. Tom said he hadn't taken it, but he got in trouble nonetheless, and I think he wanted to get back at us."

"What happened?"

She paused. "To be honest, I don't really know."

"What do you mean?"

Amy wrapped her arms around her torso and breathed slowly, in and out, through her nose. Adam started rubbing circles in her back. "We visited the seashore that year, on our summer outing. I was about six years old. Tom convinced me to wander off with him into the cliffs. We'd all just been taken out to see Tom Sawyer in the cinema — do you remember that film, the one from the thirties? — and I believe I found it a bit romantic, to go exploring in the caves with a boy named Tom. I thought we'd find a pirate's treasure." She paused. "He was a handsome boy, Tom Riddle. He scared us, but...he could also be very persuasive, when he wanted to be.

"Dennis saw us wandering off and followed. He didn't trust Tom. I wondered later if that wasn't intentional, if Tom didn't lure me out on purpose so that Dennis would come too."

Adam was watching her intently. The moonlight cast long shadows over his face. "What happened? Did you get lost?"

"Tom brought us into a small cave."

"And then?"

"He hurt us." Amy dug her nails into her arms. "I'm not sure how."

"You don't remember?"

"I do. But the things that I remember aren't real."

"Amy..."

"They aren't. I remember...impossible things."

With effort, Amy sat up, removing her hands from her arms and folding them together. "The doctors thought that getting lost...that being in pain...must have been a trigger for my hallucinations." She took another slow breath. "The cave was by the sea, and the entire time that Riddle kept us there, I could hear the rain dripping against the rock. When the tide came in, the entire place started to fill up with water. I was certain that we would drown there."

"God. That's horrible."

"That's why I can't stand the sound of rain. Riddle went away to boarding school shortly after that — he only came back to the orphanage in the summers — but the sound of rain...it takes me right back, and I can see Tom's face in the cave again.

"The staff didn't mind so much when I was little," she said, slower, quieter. "I just stopped speaking. But when I got bigger I was louder...and every summer, Tom came back, and he was scarier, and he would taunt us...And I eventually started snapping. And when I started to seem too...disruptive, too abnormal—"

"They sent you to the asylum?" Adam asked.

"Yes." Amy moved to the middle of the bed and turned to face him. She started to twist her hair back into its long French plait, focusing on the methodical movements of her fingers. "I was trapped there for three years while all the doctors made me sane. I didn't go back to the orphanage until I was sixteen. Dennis was grown up by that time — he'd been drafted, of course — so he wasn't there to speak to me when I got back. He wasn't with me when I learned the truth."

"The truth?"

"The truth about Tom Riddle."

Adam raised his eyebrows. Amy said nothing. She looked at the moonlight on the bed and tried to ground herself in the movement of her fingers, twisting and shifting, until she reached the end of her plait. "Adam," she said, and stopped.

"What was it?"

"Adam," she said again. Then she brought her head up sharply and looked right into his eyes. "There was no such boy."

"There was— what?"

"There was no Tom Riddle at Wool's Orphanage. There never had been."

"But— how can that be?"

"He wasn't real. Dennis and I made him up."

"But that's impossible. You just said you knew him for years—"

"It is possible! It's the only thing that's possible! It's possible, because Dennis and I were fucking crazy!"

Adam fell silent, watching her. Amy felt as if a spigot had opened within her. "I thought so, too, I thought it was impossible, when I got back to the orphanage after those three years away. I asked about Tom — I remembered that all the other kids had been so scared of him — but nobody knew who I was talking about. I was terrified. I thought I was losing my mind again. They almost sent me back to St. Dorothy's, the whole thing made me so...deranged.

"But Mrs. Cole — she was the matron — she helped me. Let me look back through years of records. Proved to me in black and white that no Tom Riddle had ever lived there. They didn't have him in the attendance sheets, in the photographs, nothing. He was nowhere.

"That's why I avoid the rain so obsessively. I hear it and I'm back in the cave, and I remember Riddle's face so clearly, and it's ghastly, Adam, it's petrifying...because it's all a figment of my mind. I never saw Tom Riddle. He never existed."

Adam's expression was wary, hesitant. "But Amy...what about Dennis? How could two people have hallucinated the same boy?"

This time, her laugh was bitter. "Don't you see? It was Dennis the whole time."

"I'm sorry?"

"Adam," Amy looked at him again. "Think about it." Adam said nothing, and she went on. "It was Dennis who strangled that rabbit. It was Dennis who stole my things. It was Dennis who hurt me in that cave."

"Oh. Oh, my god."

"I know." For a moment, Amy felt like she might cry. She hadn't cried since she was a little girl. "He never stopped banging on about Tom Riddle, you know — not even when we grew up, not even after I confronted him. The more proof Dennis saw that Riddle wasn't real, the more belligerent he became. To this day, he insists that neither of us was ever crazy.

"But that's a fantasy. I already knew that I was out of my mind. Everyone had told me so for years.

"Dennis had flashbacks, too, and they got worse during the war. He couldn't keep a job. Got into drinking, wound up in and out of jail. He became...obsessive. Paranoid." Breathe in, breathe out, one, two, three, four. "Some government doctor eventually diagnosed him with a split personality. Dennis Bishop was the boy with the big laugh, the one who brought me comic books and extra desserts, and Riddle...must have been some other side of him. A side that liked to hurt things.

"I wonder if he didn't latch onto me for that reason. Maybe Dennis never cared about me at all. Maybe he saw that that there was something wrong with me, and that he could talk me into believing in...in evil magic, into seeing imaginary boys, so he could use me to validate his delusions."

Amy looked up, suddenly nervous. Somehow, she had almost forgotten that Adam was there. "That's the story." He stared at her, intent, and she forced a laugh. "I told you it was messed up."

When Adam spoke again, his voice was low. "This man called you on the phone today?"

"Yeah. It's why I couldn't sleep."

"Why the hell does he have your number?"

"It's complicated."

"How?"

It took Amy a moment to respond. "I don't know. I've never quite been able to be rid of him."

"Sure, you can. Stop answering."

"I do, sometimes. He writes me letters."

"He has your address?" Adam's calm expression was fracturing. "He could just...show up?"

Amy shook her head. "He doesn't leave his flat. He's afraid of everything now."

Adam swallowed. "Amy. I know it's none of my business, but— that seems like a dangerous thing to count on."

"I know Dennis very well. Trust me. He won't come here." She looked at her hands. "It isn't always bad, talking to him. It's...nice, not to be alone. But with everything that's been happening in London, he's been spiraling down and down all year. I don't know what to do anymore. I'm not sure how to help him. That's why I'm thinking of flying out, sometime soon. Maybe for the holidays."

Adam took her by the hand. An urgency entered his voice. "Amy. You don't owe this man anything."

"It isn't that."

"Then what is it? You don't have to go and see him. Let him be upset. Protect yourself."

Through the window, Amy could see the faint light of dawn creeping over the mountains in the distance. She studied each peak, considering how to respond. "Adam," she said finally, turning back toward him. "I'm nearly fifty years old. I've climbed mountains. I've moved to a new continent. And I have been running from Tom Riddle for my entire life. It doesn't matter that he wasn't real. He haunts me. I hear his voice in my nightmares. I see his face every single time it rains.

"I've built my entire life around avoiding the very thought of him. Gotten married, switched cities, made every choice so as to be as far away from Tom Riddle as possible. And Dennis Bishop is the only other person in the world who knows his name." There was a long silence. "That's why I need him. It's why I still talk to him. It's messed up, and it's wrong, but that's why I still call Dennis my brother. He's the only other person in the world who can even begin to understand what I have been through."

Adam considered her. "I'm not sure that's true," he said quietly. "I can't say I've been through anything like what you have, but I've lost people too. I can understand feeling haunted."

"Not like this."

He shrugged. "Then I can listen." He looked at her intently. "Don't go to London, Amy. Forget him. Forget Riddle. Start something new."

"I can't."

"You can." Adam smiled tightly and leaned forward to kiss her on the cheek. "You could come out for Christmas with me if you want. My sister in Vermont makes a mean pumpkin pie."

Amy's felt caught between a smile and a grimace. "Stop talking. Kiss me again."

For a moment, Adam looked as if he was going to say something else. The moment lingered, like a cloud passing over the sun. Then he leaned toward her, the moment dissipated, and the light returned.

A gloomy drizzle hovered over the little seaside town, making it unseasonably cool for early June. Children in gray smocks huddled in small groups along the rocky beach, shouting at the seabirds that pecked and fluttered in great flocks along the shoreline. The five chaperones that had accompanied the children on the trip had disappeared into the handful of shops just off the beach, likely to keep out of the rain. They kept a halfhearted eye on their charges through the misty windows. 

Amy wandered along the beach, occasionally picking up rocks and flinging them out toward the gray water. She meant to make them skip over the top, but couldn't get the motion quite correct, and each one sunk with a delightful plop. Suddenly, the cold ocean rushed up over her shoes and she shrieked in discomfort and delight, running backward to escape. When the wave receded, she followed, running back and forth on the edge of the water.

When she tired of the game, Amy took a seat a few paces back, dropping the remaining rocks carelessly behind her. Pulling off her wet shoes, she gazed out over the ocean, where the tall masts of sailboats and the big, lumbering freighters were visible in the distance. "Let 'em have it to the hilt," she quoted to herself, pulling at her stockings and watching the boats drift gamely on. "Dead men tell no tales!"

Somewhere in her faded memories, the voice of Mr. Jenkins, the geography teacher, reminded Amy that England was part of the North Atlantic — but her heart was caught up in grainy, black-and-white visions of the Mississippi. "And the women are always beautiful too," she quoted again, fiddling with the ribbon in her hair, "and don't they wear the bulliest clothes? All gold and silver and diamond." She dug her fingers into the sand and scraped up a great glob of wet mush, dripping it onto the hem of her smock with great concentration. The fabric sunk under the weight of the little dollops of wet sand, carefully arranged in polka-dots along the edge.

" Hey, Amy!" Amy looked up. Dennis, who had been playing impromptu rugby with the older boys, had broken from the group and was jogging down the beach toward her.  

"Hi, Dennis!" she said brightly. Reaching her at last, he swept his gaze over her wet stockings, abandoned shoes and muddy dress, letting out a bark of his rich laughter. 

"You're all wet!" he said. "What are you doing to your clothes?"

"I'm putting on diamonds," she said, gesturing to the pattern. "For the pirate ships. Look."

"Still caught up on that?" he asked, shaking his head as he followed her gesture out toward the water. He sat down beside her and picked up her shoes, pulling one back onto her foot and lacing them up. Amy had trouble with the knots, so Dennis usually tied them. "Try the other one," Dennis added. "See if you've got the hang of making a bow."

Amy nodded and reached over for her other shoe. "Do you want to play movies with me?"

Dennis shook his head. "We can play movies anywhere. Billy and Joe are going to look for dead fishes." Amy pulled a face and he laughed again, his brown eyes crinkling in the corners. "But I've got a surprise to give you first. Look."

With an eye on Amy's eager face, Dennis reached into his pocket and pulled out two shiny copper coins. She gasped.

"I've been saving these," said Dennis, grinning, pressing the coins into her hands. "Got 'em when the charity ladies came to deliver the parcels at Christmas time. Remember when Eric and I helped carry all the boxes from the lorry? They gave us a tip."

"Are these for me?" Amy asked, staring in astonishment at the two pennies. She had never owned so much money before. Dennis laughed and knocked her on the shoulder.

"They're for us, Miss Greedy. See the sweetshop up there?" Amy looked back at the row of shops on the corner, feeling an eagerness tinged with wonder. Some of the older orphans had jobs and kept pocket money for sweets, but neither she nor Dennis had ever gotten to join them. "I thought this might buy us some liquorice sticks."

Liquorice! At the seaside! Amy began to bounce in excitement. Dennis watched with satisfaction and closed her hand over the pennies. "Would you like to go and buy them for us?"

Amy had never purchased a sweet before. She nodded so fast that the ribbon fell out of her hair. Dennis grinned as he fixed it up. Next, he turned his attention to the mangled half-bow she'd abandoned, straightening the laces until both shoes were well-tied.

"I thought you would," he said. "Why don't you run and buy us the liquorice while I go and see about Joe's fish?" Amy was on her feet in an instant. "Don't drop the pennies!" he called, laughing again. Amy clenched her fist as she headed up the beach toward the edge of the town.

The sweetshop was a tiny building on the corner of the row, but it clearly did the briskest business in town. Amy slowed down, a little intimidated, as she approached the building. A dazzling array of sherbet lemons, chocolate oranges and boxed toffees — surely more expensive than the liquorice — was arranged in the window, like a shrine to some magnificent childhood god. The streaks of soft rain blurred the colors in a way that somehow heightened the effect, making the candies look misty and far away. Amy's mouth watered. She crept toward the window, clutching Dennis's pennies close in her fist. The metal growing warm against her palm.

Another orphan in a gray smock was already there, pressing his face against the glass.

"Hello, Tom, how do you do?" Amy said hesitantly as she came up to the window beside him. She was never certain how she ought to speak to Tom Riddle. Sometimes, interruptions bothered him and he grew terribly mean; at other times, he was charming and polite, and it seemed cruel to avoid him. His finely-boned features reminded Amy of a film star. She looked over with apprehension.

Tom ignored her. He seemed entirely fixated on the candies in the window and, Amy now noticed, on the older children inside. Under the amused watch of one of the chaperones, the teenage orphans stuffed sweets into their bags, freeing themselves of the bounty they'd earned through months of selling papers and sweeping floors.

Tom watched with a strange intensity as the teenagers raided the shelves and approached the register to make their purchases. After another hesitant moment, she decided that he wasn't going to answer her and approached the shop door herself.

"Where are you going?"

Amy turned, removing her hand from the doorknob. Tom's gaze was suddenly sharp upon her. She felt a little frightened and a little annoyed. What right had Tom Riddle to tell her where she ought to go? "Just inside the shop," she said.

"What are you doing there?" Tom asked harshly. "You're not old enough for pocket money. Are you going to steal?  

"No!" said Amy. She was definitely insulted now.  

Tom's gaze turned calculating. He eyed the clenched fist that she held against her stomach. "Did you get some money?"

"No," Amy insisted.

Tom glared. "Tell the truth!" he said, a booming force ringing through his voice. Amy suddenly felt a bit dizzy.  

"It's Dennis's money," she said. Tom's eyes narrowed slightly at the name. "It's saved up from last Christmas. He carried parcels for the charity ladies."

"How much?"

"Two pennies."

"That's all?" Riddle said with disgust. "That'll hardly afford anything good."

"I'm meant to buy us liquorice root sticks. We're going to eat them on the beach together after he looks at the dead fishes."

Tom said nothing as he took this in. Then, with sudden sharpness: "Give me the money."

At this, Amy recoiled. Even through the sudden fog that had passed over her, this demand seemed wrong, absurd. "No. Dennis and I are buying liquorice."  

"Now." Tom reached forward to grab her arm, and she twisted away from his grip, holding the money away from him. "Give it to me!"

"No! It's mine!" Her fist banged against the glass as she jerked back, keeping the pennies locked in her grip. He scrambled toward her hand.

"Hey! What's going on out here?" Millie, the chaperone inside the sweetshop, had opened the door and was glaring sternly at the two children. Tom dropped Amy's arm at once.  

"Nothing, ma'am," he said politely, looking down at his shoes. "Amy and I were only playing. Sorry about the commotion, ma'am."

Millie gave them both a suspicious look, but didn't step out of the sweetshop. She wore a fine hat, and Amy wondered if she didn't want to get it wet. "Play nice," she said, "or you'll wait with the staff the rest of the trip, and get the cane after." Following a murmured acquiescence from the two children, she stepped back inside and closed the door.

Amy straightened her dress and glared at Tom, who was watching Millie through the shop window. She turned once more toward the door.  

"Amy, wait," said Tom. She looked over, and his demeanor seemed to have changed. His posture was calm, his expression almost demure, as he looked back toward her.

"What do you want?"

"Would you like to come and play with me?"

She glowered at him. "No. You tried to steal from Dennis."  

"I didn't mean to," he said. "I'm very sorry." He leaned toward her, looking her in the eyes once more, and she felt the same slight confusion drifting over her. "I won't do it again. Wouldn't you come and play? I've been by myself all day."

Amy had been by herself, too. "What do you want to play? I could play a little, if it's a good game."

Tom's dark eyes did not break their focus on hers. He smiled. "I was going to play movies. Actually," he added, gaining confidence, "I wanted to play pirates."

"Pirates?"

"I thought that I would go exploring! Like to Jackson's Island, or a secret cave." The drizzle began to increase into a full rain, and Amy took a reluctant step closer to get under the window awning. Tom stood beside her; two children ensconced in the small, dry patch of sidewalk.

"You'd make a spiffy explorer, Amy." He took another step toward her, leaning closer. "Why, you look just like Becky Thatcher, from the film."  

"I do?"

"You do." Tom's handsome face seemed earnest, hopeful. "Wouldn't you like to come along? It's hours still before we've got to meet for supper."

It suddenly seemed like a delightful idea. Amy's mind was full of the piano music and dramatic, gray faces of the London cinema. Before she quite knew they had started, she was traipsing down the beach beside Tom, heading toward the water. When they reached the shoreline, they turned, walking along the beach parallel to the sea.

"Amy?" a voice called. For a moment, clarity returned, and Amy turned to see Dennis walking toward her. Tom had crossed them just in front of where Dennis was huddled with Joe and Billy, poking with sticks at something in the sand. The other boys seemed wary that Tom had appeared, but Dennis looked attentive as he came over to join them. "What are you two doing?" he asked, looking from Amy to Riddle. "Where are you taking her?"

"Amy and I were going to play pirate explorers," said Tom. "What's it to you?"

Dennis eyed Riddle with suspicion. He looked over at Amy, and she was suddenly glad that she'd retained enough of her wits to keep the pennies hidden tightly in her hand. "Amy doesn't want to play pirates with you," Dennis said.

"Yes, she does," said Tom. "I found a secret cave over just in those cliffs," he said, gesturing toward them, "and I've been telling all the kids. Amy has been begging me to show her."   

Amy blinked. Had Tom really been to the cliffs, exploring caves? The cliffs were quite far from the sweetshop. But the fuzziness inside her made her feel that it must make some sense, in a way that she couldn't quite understand.

Dennis paused. "We wanted to do something else after I finished with the fish," he said. He seemed reluctant to mention the candy store in front of Riddle.

Tom smiled. His gaze was almost calculating as he stared Dennis in the face. "Something more fun than a secret cave?" The lure of a secret was enticing, and Dennis paused, tempted. Riddle looked back toward Amy, locking his handsome gaze on hers. "Amy, tell him how much you wanted to come."  

"Please, let's go, Dennis!" she said. A sudden enthusiasm had taken her heart. "I've never, ever seen a cave before."

"You can join us, if you like," said Riddle carelessly, starting down the beach. Amy started behind him, but Dennis caught her arm.

"Let's just take a quick look, alright?" Amy nodded eagerly. Ignoring the calls from Billy and Joe, the two of them followed Tom down the beach toward the cliffs. As they walked, the shouts of children and ringing calls of seabirds began to fade slowly behind them.

Amy paused outside the door of the run-down flat, taking in the peeling paint and tarnished numbers on the front. Someone had hung a Christmas garland down the length of the hall, and it seemed to loom over Dennis's doorway, making the threshold appear almost shabbier in contrast with its plastic cheer. Amy took a breath and knocked.

She had landed in Heathrow a few days earlier, but had taken some time to decompress before making a date to visit Dennis's apartment. Even with the good fortune to avoid any terrible storms, it was difficult, after decades chasing Arizona sun, to adjust to the dreary Decembers of London. Walking from the bus stop to her hotel, it had briefly started to pour. Amy had rushed down the city street—

Tell the truth!

—ignoring the visions of coiling snakes and pale, watchful boys flickering in every alley. It isn't real, she'd whispered to herself, leaving the half-moon impressions of fingernails in the tanned skin of her forearms. It isn't real.

In one hand, Amy held a tin of biscuits that she'd purchased in the airport, decorated with holly berries and cheerful bells. In the other, she carried the latest copy The Times, proclaiming several (thankfully upbeat) Christmas headlines. Whatever pernicious luck had been plaguing the nation seemed to have lifted for the holiday: No strange storm or looming fog, no unusual murder or gruesome accident, had been reported anywhere in the UK since Amy had landed last Saturday. The newspaper columnists did not fail to notice, and Amy, to her slight shock, had learned that this was a genuine record for the year. No wonder Dennis had been terrified.

For a moment, no sound followed Amy's quick knock on the door. Just as she began to worry that she'd come to the wrong place, a rustling sound became audible from inside.

He was as different from the boy she'd known as the harvest moon is from the crescent. And yet, despite his age, his pallor, his hunched and too-thin figure — she would know him anywhere.

"Dennis," she said warmly, a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. His eyes searched the corners of her face. "Hi."

"Amy," he breathed. "Thank you for coming. It's...very good to see you."

They teetered on the edge of awkwardness for only a moment. Then, she pulled him into an embrace.

"I'll put the kettle on, hmm?"

Dennis bustled nervously around the kitchen of his small flat, opening and closing the cupboards. He seemed to sigh in relief when he found a packet of tea bags, stuffed into a drawer beside the sink.

Looking around the flat, Amy was glad that she had come. It was clear that Dennis hadn't cleaned in some time, and many of the kitchen cabinets were nearly bare. She noticed with a twinge of concern the empty and half-empty bottles scattered about the living room.

"Thank you," she said, when he brought over two steaming mugs of tea. She opened the biscuit tin and gestured toward them. "Eat up. Airport's finest."

He chuckled and took a bite. "Delicious." They chewed for a moment in silence. "Thank you for coming. It's been hard."

"I've heard." She nodded toward the paper. "I'm glad that the weather, at least, has turned around."

"About time," he agreed — and she felt again the warmth of kinship, of a shared fear. "I don't trust it, though."

"Trust the good weather, in a London winter? I don't blame you. You should visit me out in the desert — much more reliably dry there."

"Can't," Dennis replied matter-of-factly. He wrung his hands. "Can't do planes. Diseases. Terrorists."

Forget crossing the pond — Amy wondered when had been the last time that Dennis had left his flat. Who would have predicted this? Back when Amy had been restrained in padded rooms, and Dennis had still been a boisterous boy, smiling for her and bringing her the comics? She felt grateful for the desert, for the mountains.

"That's alright," Amy said, trying to keep the sadness out of her smile. "With any luck, Mother Nature will be kinder in the new year."

"I don't expect so," Dennis said, his gaze drifting out the window. "Not if Tom has anything to do with it."

Already? Amy felt a clenching in her stomach. Dennis picked up another biscuit and began breaking it into crumbs. "It's him, you know," he said plainly, still looking at the clouds outside. "I couldn't make sense of it at first — these strange attacks on innocent people, this constant wave of horrible news. There was a terrible fog all summer...the things it made me hear, the things I remembered, the way it made me feel..." He turned to look at Amy. "That's how I realized it was him. I recognized the feeling."

Dennis stood and began pacing the flat, an absurd imitation of Holmes. Amy dug her nails into her palms. "It all makes sense now," he said. "These terrible things that are happening. Tom is out there, Amy, I know it. And I don't know what to do. We need a strategy — to figure out how to avoid him. How to be safe..."

He turned back toward her, a hesitation creeping over his face. "I almost called you and told you not to come," he confessed. "You would have been safer if you had stayed away. But you're the only other person who knows...I needed to talk to someone who understood...and, forgive me," he said, with a sheepish smile, "but it's just so wonderful to see you."

"I'm happy I came," Amy said quietly. "It's good to see someone who understands."

Dennis nodded fervently. "Exactly!"

"Exactly." Amy took a breath. "Dennis," she asked, "have you been keeping up with your doctor?"

The relief slid from his face quicker than water down the glass panes of a window.

"I'm worried about you," Amy said. "I understand how hard it is—"

Dennis shook his head, rapidly. "Stop," he said. He started pacing again, more quickly, twitching, wringing his hands. "Amy, please don't do this—"

"I remember what it's like— it's hard for me too, I know what it's like for both of us—"

"Please, not you, not you of all people—"

"Dennis, please. I know how you're feeling, and I don't want you to be afraid of something that isn't—"

"Don't say it!" Dennis shouted. "DO NOT SAY HE ISN'T REAL!" He grabbed the tin of biscuits and turned, as if to fling it against the wall. Amy jumped to her feet and caught his wrist in her hand.

There was a forceful silence as they both took it in: Amy's strong arm, tanned and muscled from mountaineering, restraining Dennis's brittle wrist. She remembered the strong grip of the orderlies, her wasted bird bones. Dennis looked away.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly. She let him go. He wrapped his arms around himself, standing thin and hunched like a sickle. A moment passed before, with painful slowness, he placed the tin of biscuits back on the table. They both sat.

"Amy," he said softly. "Please hear me out." He glanced up quickly, as if to check something in her face. She tried to imitate Adam's neutral, kind expression — and maybe it worked, because Dennis continued. "Please listen. Neither of us were ever mad."

"I'll listen, Dennis," Amy said slowly. She took a sip of his tea and tried to smile.

"I've been doing research," he said. A desperate urgency lurked beneath his careful, polite tone. "And I figured it out. I figured out what happened."

"What do you mean?"

Tell the truth!

Dennis gestured toward the corner of the flat, where a pile of cheap-looking paperbacks and worn newspapers sat on a crooked shelf. "I think it must have been a cover-up. The government. Maybe a foreign government. The scientists, they must know about these strange things he can do...Maybe that's why Tom is attacking now, he's like a weapon..."

Breathe. Count.

"Someone came to Wool's, Amy," Dennis said. "To the orphanage. I tracked down Mrs. Cole and asked, once I got out of jail and I could keep myself together. You weren't there — and you were in the asylum when he came, and I was in the army..."

"Someone get her hands!"

"They keep visitor logs, Amy, and someone came by. A young man. Right around the time that everybody forgot." Dennis leaned close and dropped his voice. "I think it must have been him. Tom. Or someone he's working for. They drugged everybody, maybe. Forged new records. They made everyone forget him."

"They didn't forget, Dennis," Amy said quietly, trying to keep her voice steady. She was here to help him. "They never knew, because Tom was never real."

"You know that isn't true," Dennis said. He was looking at Amy as if she were the lunatic. "I know that you remember. Every kid in that orphanage knew to avoid him. Everyone knew he was strange...everyone suspected what he'd done to us..."

"That's why he disappeared," Amy continued, as if Dennis had not spoken. "Why he went away to 'boarding school,' because he was never really there; he was a hallucination, we saw him when we were stressed, or...or neglected..."

Dennis gained an unsettling confidence as Amy's voice started to falter. "It's been too many years now," he said. "I'm not sure if we could find Mrs. Cole, again — it's been too long. Wool's Orphanage isn't even there, they knocked it down. But I wish you hadn't left, Amy," he said sadly. "I wish you had come with me, to the orphanage. You would understand, then. It was so helpful to go back..."

To go back. Amy stiffened with a sudden revelation. "We should go back," she said.

"I just told you, it isn't there..."

"Not to the orphanage. To the cave."

Dennis stared.

Suddenly, it was Amy who was alight with nervous energy. "Don't you see?  We could prove it wasn't real. We could prove there's nothing there."

Dennis shook his head, eyes wide. "Amy," he said, "you can't do that. It's dangerous...Tom is out there..."

But it was as if he called to her across a great gulf. Amy's mind was sharpening, growing steady with concentration. She heard Adam's encouraging call — "Almost got it!" — as if she were on a mountainside, considering her next foothold. Finding a path up and forward.

Dennis watched her as she left the flat like a man looking at a ghost. But as she stepped back out into the London street, Amy saw a break in the clouds, and at her feet there was a beam of sunshine.

"It's just here."

Tom's voice slithered out from a crack at the base of the cliff, drawing Amy's attention back to the moment. The rain had picked up, and her hair was drenched, flattening her curls. She stood on a rock surrounded by a churning sea. A few feet away, she could just make out the figure of another boy, blinking dazedly and looking around.  

"Dennis?"

"Amy?" He looked over and his eyes seemed to focus. "Where are we? How'd we get here?"

"I'm not sure." Where was Mrs. Cole? Where was the beach? "We were exploring with...Tom. I thought we were going to a cave."  

"This is a cave. I found one." Tom's pale face emerged from the shadows of the dark rock before them. The sky was nearly too dark to make him out, until a bolt of lightning struck the rocks above; for a moment, he was clearly visible within the slim opening. Tom's eyes were alight with an acquisitive gleam, and his clothes were completely dry. "Come inside," he said softly. "Get out of the rain."

Thunder echoed over the rocks, and Amy whimpered. Dennis scrambled across the boulder toward and took her hand. His palm was cold and wet in hers; they had both begun to shiver. Why had they come here? "We can't get across there," Dennis called to Riddle, nodding toward the churning water. "We have to go back. Amy's freezing."  

"Is little Amy afraid of a bit of thunder?"

"I told you already not to bully her."

The spray of salt mingled with the weight of the rain as a wave crashed up against the rock. Tom's voice took on a strange ring. "Bully her? But she wanted to come. We're looking for pirate treasure." Tom looked her directly in the eyes from across the water. "Didn't you want to come with me, Amy? Tell the truth."

"I...yes," Amy said. She blinked and looked about. Dennis stood beside her on a boulder in a wrathful sea. Where was Mrs. Cole? Where was the beach? They had been exploring with—

Tom smiled. "There," he said, shifting his gaze to look Dennis in the eyes. "You asked her. She told you. You can go back, if you like."  

But even if the way back had not grown impossible to discern — even if Amy didn't still know, with a bone-deep conviction, that Dennis Bishop would never leave her alone in this storm — something had changed. Dennis was blinking dazedly again, staring about with a strange confusion, like Eric Whalley before he'd gotten his glasses. Amy tightened her grip on his hand.

"How do we cross?" Amy asked.  

Tom smirked. "Pay your passage." He put a hand out, like a trolley conductor demanding a ticket.

It took Amy a moment to understand. She glanced shamefacedly toward Dennis, but he was still staring blankly at the rocks. He did not blink as the rain ran down his face and into his eyes.  

Slowly, Amy took Dennis's two pennies, the ones that he'd hidden since Christmas, from her pocket. She tossed them to Riddle. Briefly, they soared through the air in a graceful arc toward him, but Amy was only six and had never been athletic. The toss fell short, and the two pennies were lost to the dark water.

"No!" Amy gasped, rushing toward the edge of the boulder and dropping to her knees at the edge. Hadn't she been supposed to buy liquorice root? Dennis would be disappointed...

But something strange happened. The choppy water was suddenly calm as glass. A soft ripple broke its surface, and slowly, the two pennies rose out of the sea.  

This was nothing like the arc of a penny thrown. Instead, the coins made a slow straight line into the air, still dripping with salt water. They hovered for a moment, then drifted horizontally toward Tom. He snatched them greedily out of the air.

For a long moment, Tom gazed at the pennies in his hand with triumph. Then he directed his gaze back toward Amy.

"Get in the boat," Riddle whispered. It should have been impossible to hear him over the din of the storm, but it wasn't. His voice was like a hissing in her ears. There was a hunger in his face.

Riddle gestured toward the water, where a piece of driftwood had come to settle before them. It was the sort of object that a child might call a boat, if he were playing pretend in the London alleys — not something that should have held her weight. And yet, it did hold her, and Dennis too, as they clambered awkwardly atop it.

Amy's mind was as thick and cloudy as the fearsome, extraordinary sky. Tom Riddle's face was the only thing she could see with clarity, but even that faded as they reached the thin fissure in the rock, barely wide enough for a child to slip through. "Follow me," a soft voice whispered, leading them deeper into the cliff. Was it even a boy's speech, or merely an echo of falling water in the dark?

In everything that followed, only the repetitive sound of water would anchor her mind. She held onto it, loud and repetitive and true, amid the strangeness and the terror and the screaming.

Amy grasped the jagged cliffside with one hand and groped downward with the other, feeling for her next hold. One of her nylon ropes was secured to a piton ten meters above, which she had hammered into a crack in the rock, anchoring herself as she climbed further and further down toward the vast ocean.

How the hell had she and Dennis ever found this damned spot in the first place?

Somehow, despite its seeming impossibility, Amy knew in her bones that this was the place. The landscape must have changed, perhaps, in the more than forty years since the two of them had wandered these cliffs, slipping into a hairline fracture in the rocks. Maybe the ocean had grown rougher, closer? Because she felt it, like the ache of muscles working beneath her skin: the buzz of memory, the rush of power. She was close.

It had taken Amy nearly a week to get here. She hadn't been so foolish as to attempt these cliffs in the rain, so she'd waited until a relatively clear day for her first try. The sky had still been a thick and stubborn gray — she had, after all, come to England in December — but at least the plunk of raindrops wouldn't batter her subconscious. She'd needed to keep a hold of herself.

The seaside town was nearly unrecognizable. It seemed to have become a bit of a tourist spot over the years, and the modest storefronts of her memory had been replaced by a row of smart boutiques and international brands, each dressed up for Christmas with rows of artificial lights. The beach had been smoothed, combed free of the rocks that still sometimes appeared in her nightmares. But as she'd walked along the waterline, the cliffs had loomed with an eerie familiarity, guiding her forward.

She had attempted the paths that she supposed she and Dennis must have taken, but found them impassable. Yet even as reason suggested that there must have been some mistake, she grew more certain — and there! Glimpsed from halfway down one of the dark outcroppings of stone: a slim finger of emptiness near the base of a cliff, dipping ominously into the water. She would need to come back at low tide...

It would take an uncommonly good mountaineer to accomplish the task. Amy felt heady with destiny, dizzy with the sudden possibility that her youth had not been wasted. Her body was strong, and so would be her mind. She was meant to do this.

And here she was. It had taken another few days to purchase the equipment that she'd need — her own kit was packed in a closet back in Tucson — but that had been fine, because she'd needed to wait anyway to ensure that the weather would be clear. And with the strange logic of imagined fate, she felt pleased that these necessities had delayed her to New Year's Eve. The approaching year seemed to lurk with promise just on the horizon.

Amy was interrupted in this reverie by a smooth stretch of rock, about three quarters of the way down the cliffside. She paused in concentration, relying on her nylon rope as she searched for the next handhold. Adam's cheerful voice called encouragement in her memory. She thought of his graying moustache — his knuckles, pressed against her lips. The flight to London hadn't been cheap, and she'd lost out on some holiday shifts by flying home; still, she felt the sparkle of possibility. Maybe Great Basin would let her sign up for the January trip if she could pay in installments. Maybe Adam would spot her a bit of cash...if he really wanted to see her again...

Brightening, she found the next handhold and shimmied further down toward the water. The familiar, cheerful burn of her muscles greeted her as she reached the bottom of the cliff, and for the first time, this feeling of satisfaction surpassed — overwhelmed — the anxious foreboding that was always triggered by water, by clouds.

Amy leaned back, supported by her nylon rope. The toes of her boots just barely skimmed the cold water — where was the fear? — as she inspected the dark rock of the cliff, leaving soft ripples in their wake.

It was there. The crack seemed wider than she recalled — it was no trouble for her to swing forward and slip through into the cliffside — but then, so many things about the cave must be different than her strange, false memories implied. She unclipped her carabiner, leaving the rope for her returning climb, and took a few halting steps into the cave. It was too dark to see; she flicked on her headlamp, and a slim tunnel was illuminated in the yellow light of an incandescent bulb.

Amy took a slow breath through her nose, assessing. The regular pull of the sea echoed against each surface of the rock, but despite its echo in her ears, she remained calm. The tunnel was cramped, but not too tight to fit through, and oddly tall: the average adult wouldn't need to stoop. Amy took a few, careful steps forward. She could have sworn that the cave entrance had been tiny, barely big enough for Dennis to squeeze through. An imagined claustrophobia? A mistake, in the dark?

She would walk to the end of the tunnel and face it: whatever was there, wherever they had been.

Amy started forward more confidently, looking around at the cave. It was ordinary. It was almost underwhelming. The walls were damp and strangely smooth — perhaps worn so by the ocean, as Amy was still certain that, at high tide, the entire place would be submerged. She walked about twenty paces forward before following the tunnel around a soft curve to the left. She tilted her head, illuminating the path around the bend as she strode forward.

Amy stopped dead.

The rock was...changing?

She stared. In the sharp light of her headlamp, a roughened wall ahead of her was shifting, as if a century of erosion were being compressed into moments. The rock grew smooth; stalactites shrunk into nothingness. The space opened up, growing wider, taller. A tunnel was growing within the cave.

The shifting of the walls was so awe-inspiring, so terrifying, that Amy didn't notice the slim silhouette standing before her, one pale arm raised — until he turned around.

The man was thin and tall. For an instant, he put his hand in front of his face, squinting instinctively against the light of her headlamp. Then he waved his arm, and the light went out.

A soft hissing filled the darkened space.

Amy froze, searching the corners of the cave. The entire place should have been shrouded in darkness, but as she looked rapidly about, Amy noticed that this end of the tunnel was dimly visible, as though the figure had brought a lamp. There was movement in the back corner. Amy stared in dawning horror as the soft undulations of a long snake crossed the stone floor, coming to wrap around the thin man like the nylon ropes that she had wrapped about her own shoulders. She followed the snake's movements upward until she looked the stranger in the face.

She could always find the boy beneath the man, somehow.

"Tom? Tom...Riddle?"

Amy's odd, Americanized accent seemed discordant, irreverent, as her low voice permeated the watchful silence of the cave.

This man looked almost nothing like the Tom Riddle of her rain-soaked visions from the past, her stormy memories. He was nearly double her height; his eyes were not dark, but gleaming with a strange color that she could not discern; his features were not fine and handsome, but clumsy, misshapen, like a candlestick softened by a flame. Yet she knew him intimately, with a perverse and personal recognition, as if staring at her own reflection. As if tracing the lines in her own face, feeling the decades in her body.

It did not occur to Amy that she might be hallucinating. Years of madness, etched into her by electricity and isolation and restraint, by the unrelenting chisel of near-universal doubt, had been washed away more simply than the tide. Tom Riddle, the craftsman of her nightmares, stood before her. The two of them stood alone in the dark. Everything else ebbed away.

"Tom?"

For a long moment, he stared, head tilted slightly to the side, stiff with shock. When he finally spoke, his voice was high as a boy's. "Amy?" he said softly, considering — looking her directly in the eyes. His face transformed, gained confidence, settled into an expression of amused surprise. "Little Amy Benson," he continued. "Nineteen thirty-eight. I didn't expect to see you again."

"I could say the same to you," she replied, although as she spoke the words she realized that they weren't true. Whom had she been seeking in this desolate cave, if not Tom Riddle — Tom Riddle, and the pieces of Amy's soul that he had stolen, so very long ago?

Still holding eye contact, he quirked his lips up in a slight smile. "Very intuitive," he said, answering she knew not what. "But not quite." He looked around the cave, a strange fondness in his features. "I do believe our time together here marked my first step on the path to that greater power. Marked me, perhaps, with the magnificence of what I would become. That's why I've chosen this place," he said, looking back at her, "to build my fortress. How did you get here?"

"I climbed," she said. She did not feel the strange compulsion that had once forced her to answer his questions honestly, nor did she feel out of control in her fear. She simply spoke. "I'm a mountain climber now."

"Impressive," he said, with an indulgent smile of contempt. "A mountain climber. In many ways, so am I."

A palpable tension rose between them as Amy spoke again. "What are you doing here, Tom?" she asked. "Where have you been?"

He smiled, as if considering a private joke. "Would you like to know my secret?" he asked in a low whisper, stepping closer. He reached into his strange clothing — a sort of black dress, shapeless, like the smocks they'd worn as children — and pulled an object from the pocket. A heavy locket, glinting in the soft light.

Amy raised her eyebrows. "Hiding treasure?"

His answering laugh was almost genuine, roughened somehow with surprise. She thought, with a pang, of Dennis. "I'd forgotten. I suppose that's so." He ran a finger over the locket, observing it in lusty triumph. "A treasure more precious than any gold. This locket," he told her, holding it closer, "is the guardian of my greatest triumph. My true inheritance, the proof of my great heritage, the final repudiation of my filthy father...and artfully, the secret of my power. A power that no sorcerer has reached ever before. The power of immortality. The power over death itself."

A power over death. A boat over the water.

And it was she, Amy, who had been mad?

"For years," he continued, "I have pondered where to hide my horcruxes." He spoke with the strange eagerness of a confessor. "The guardianship of devoted followers is not enough. Each, in time, must be protected by my own enchantments, ensconced in fortresses of my own design...each well-hidden in the least likely places, each impossible to find — and yet, kept with the dignity that they deserve, as monuments to the creator whom they guard and glorify." He waved his hand, and the stone rose to a great height above them, like the walls of a cathedral. "What do you think?" he asked, amused again. "Did I choose well? Do you remember how my life first turned here? How my power will be honored here, buried in this desolate place?"

Amy stared for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice shook in quiet anger. "How dare you?" she asked.

Yes, lives had turned here. Yes, power would be unleashed.

"It was you," Amy said. "You lured us to the cave. You hurt us. You lied for years; you made us lie. Did you know?" she asked suddenly, accusing with her whole heart. "Is that why you went after us, Dennis and me? Did you know that we would see strange things, that we were easy to scare? That there was something wrong with us? That nobody would believe us?"

Riddle lifted his brow, still smiling the same repulsive smile, as if toward a pet or young child. "Was there something wrong with you?" he asked, almost sweetly. "I wasn't aware."

Amy's anger crashed like a wave. "Dennis went to jail," she shouted. "I told him he was insane. That you didn't exist! But he was right all along...you wiped the records, you drugged everyone, you made them forget..."

Riddle appraised her more closely. "I did," he said, "in a way." He tilted his head. "How do you remember?"

"I wasn't there when you did it!" Amy spat. "I was in the asylum! They sent me there because of what you did!" She laughed. "You didn't even notice I was gone, did you?"

Riddle's eyes narrowed. "An oversight," he said, after a pause. "It is of no consequence. I was a boy then, I had only just left school, begun my journey...the Muggles were merely loose ends, unimportant beside my larger goals..."

"Greatness," Amy mocked. "And I might be the only person who even remembers the name Tom Riddle."

"I'm counting on it." The snake, still and watchful during their exchange so far, let out a soft hiss and began to slowly coil its way down Riddle's body. As it moved, Amy heard a pattering echo off the stone behind her, faint but unforgettably familiar. At the entrance of the tunnel, it had begun to rain.

Riddle watched her, continuing to speak. "I've returned here every day for a week," he said quietly. "Thinking. Considering how to defend this spot I've chosen. And today, you return." The snake reached the floor and moved ominously toward her. "A sign of a spot well-chosen — another spoil of a life lousy with destiny. A living reminder of the strength of my magic. You come to remind me that even as a boy, buried by circumstance, hidden by an unworthy father's name, my power flourished above all."

With the beginning of the rain had come the changing of the tides. As Amy watched, a thin layer of salt water spilled forward from the tunnel entrance behind her, wetting her boots. What had once fueled her fear now fueled her rage. Louder than the water, louder than the hiss, she heard Dennis laughing — the rich, warm, strong laugh that had once come so naturally to her older brother.

"Your power?" she challenged. "What power?"

The teasing smile finally left his face. "What power?" he asked. He curled his lip with spite and looked again into her eyes. "The power that has dogged your entire life," he spat. "The power that haunts your nightmares."

Amy took a step forward. The rising water made a mirror of the cave floor, sent soft waves curling beneath her feet. "I am not afraid of you," she said, and it was true. "What power did you show us? The power to drown little boys, to steal from little girls? The power to hurt us, to kill us?" Riddle said nothing. In her mind, Amy saw the vast expanse of the Utah desert, viewed from above. "Don't you realize, Tom? Don't you see how small you are?"

"I am not small," Riddle replied. His fingers tightened around the locket. His snake began to wrap itself around Amy's left ankle. "You are ignorant."

"We're all small, Tom" said Amy. She shook her head, like a coyote shaking off a fly. "You were right the first time. I don't believe that I remember you at all."

"You're a liar."

"Am I?" This time, Amy stared him in the eyes. "I barely remember a boy in a cave. I remember the doctors. I remember the doubt. I remember my nightmares. Do you know what I dream about?" The pattering echo around them grew louder. A storm had come. "I have nightmares about boats. The sound of rain. The only power in this cave, the only power I'm afraid of," she said, kicking out her right foot, splashing what had gathered beneath them, "Is the power of the sea. The power of water."

Riddle's eyes tightened in anger. He stared, not speaking, for a long moment. Then his mouth twisted into a cruel, mocking smile.

"Water," he repeated. "What an interesting idea."

And then he reached into the dark fabric of his clothes to retrieve a long, pale stick.

Regulus Black stayed in the boat for a long time.

He was careful not to disturb the lake as he peered over its side, staring numbly into the black water. Decaying faces stared back from below him, their blank eyes turned upward to meet his own. The corpses floated by in the placid lake, stroking the sides of the boat as they passed with a foreboding gentleness.

He tried not to think of his own face, pale and plain, trapped beneath the clear veil of this calm water. Of the rot that would gray his skin, expose the bones.

There was little time. The Dark Lord might appear at any minute, but he had to— he needed to look, first. Next to Regulus, Kreacher whimpered but did not speak. His distress was the only sound in the smothering silence of the cavern.

Every few moments, as the Inferi drifted, Regulus saw a face he recognized, lit up in sickly green by the soft light emanating from the rocky island beside him. (Regulus could not bring himself to look at the island). The Dark Lord must have only just finished constructing this fortress when he'd requested an elf to test its defenses. The bodies of the Inferi had not yet whitened into skeletons, and Regulus could still recognize the faces of the Dark Lord's enemies, each distorted in a rictus of terror. Wizards and witches whom he'd tortured to death or slaughtered personally on the battlefield. People who had earned this particular desecration by inspiring the Dark Lord's loathing.

The last time Regulus had seen James Potter, Sirius wasn't there.

It had been a fight, great cacophonies of dueling on a city street. A Muggle hospital had been in flames. The heat. The light. Potter against Dolohov, with a red-headed wizard beside him, watching his back; a Prewett, Regulus had thought.

It didn't mean anything. Dumbledore would surely vary his roster. Would surely be a fool to organize his vigilantes so predictably.

And yet.

It was only— it was only that the two of them were always together. (Like brothers, sneered a voice in Regulus's brain). That Sirius and Potter dueled exceptionally as a pair. That Sirius was surely too dangerous a fighter to keep on the sidelines, to waste on sabotage or stealth.

So Regulus waited in the little boat. He looked into the water. Time passed imperceptibly, like the gathering of vapor into rain.

Until suddenly— there!

Regulus's heart was in his throat. He'd spotted something odd amid the sea of robes billowing beneath him: a tight garment with a strange cut, split in the center. Muggle trousers. The sort that Sirius had once liked to wear, when he'd been home for the summer and spoiling for a fight.

But— no.

This victim had been rotting a bit longer than the rest, but that was no obstacle. After his moment of terror had passed, it was obvious to Regulus that this corpse was not his brother's. The shape was wrong. Too petite, too wide. He could almost hear his Sirius's warm, characteristic bark of laughter. "I don't think I'm quite that pretty, Reg."

For a moment, Regulus wondered how this Muggle woman had come to be here. Entombed in this eerie monument to the slaughter of the Dark Lord's enemies.

Another thing he'd never know.

But it didn't matter. His older brother wasn't in this cavern. And if he were, Regulus thought grimly, surely Sirius, with his unrelenting sharpness, would point out that Regulus had wasted quite a bit too much time already on excuses.

Regulus took a deep breath. Turned. Then he stepped out from the boat and onto the island of jagged rock, squinting against its green and dazzling light.