CHAPTER NINE

CRYPTESTHESIA

( — allegedly paranormal perception, as clairvoyance or clairaudience. )

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          ROWAN IS QUICK TO REALIZE EVERYTHING IS BEING FLUSHED DOWN THE DRAIN. He's the one at fault here, obviously, because he's the one who forgets to save the damn Word document where he has been writing the book and forgets to back-up his files like he has been repeatedly told to do. Nevertheless, there's always something incredibly frustrating about realizing you might be losing cognitive skills.

          If that was the only thing holding him back, he wouldn't be as bothered as he currently is. What pisses him off, besides losing hours of work, is losing hours of sleep and he can't blame it on jet-lag—he never did, but, considering he's been in Vofield for over three weeks, it shouldn't even be an option anymore.

          Thus, when he wakes up at three in the morning, unable to drift back to sleep, for the second night in a row, he briefly considers giving up on this whole thing and going back home to New Hampshire. Granted, he has had terrible nights there as well, but it was still home. He should have already started to grow roots in this town, as he doubts he'll be here for a short time if he eventually decides to go through with the book until the very end, but he feels strangely . . . detached from it.

          He doesn't belong in this world. They want to trick him into thinking he does, by playing their little mind games and through their manipulation skills, but he knows better than to fall for it. He once loved a master manipulator, so he knows every twist and turn this road can possibly take. They won't fool him again—she won't fool him again.

           Sighing, Rowan kicks off the sheets and rolls out of bed, wiping the sweat covering his forehead with the heel of his hand as he stands up. Random flashes of light coming from the living room, at the end of the hallway, tell him he must have turned the TV on before going to bed, even though he could have sworn he had turned it off on his way out.

          He doesn't know why he still bothers with watching the news—especially the local ones. They all keep focusing on stupid urban legends, which are nothing but that, while Gabriel insists Rowan himself should be paying at least some attention to what they say, as he thinks some of the mindless blabbering could be helpful. That's when Rowan has to force himself to smile and nod instead of telling Gabriel to write the damn book himself, considering he knows exactly what he wants.

          Luckily, he still manages to keep his mouth shut . . . most of the time. There's a post-it note glued to his whiteboard that reminds him he's doing this for the money and for the money alone, meaning he has to find a way of somehow controlling his impulses before he gets kicked out of the country. Though he wouldn't mind under different circumstances, he refuses to let anyone have the pleasure of ruining his life, especially when he has proven, time and time again, he's perfectly capable of doing it on his own.

          Still. No one ever told him he'd be feeling on the verge of losing his mind over a stupid book he never wanted to write in the first place. He knows just how whiny he sounds, almost child-like, but he can't seem to care enough about the damn thing. He wishes he did, truly, as he knows the quality of his work will suffer from his lack of dedication to it, but no one can force him to be interested in something he doesn't even believe in.

          Rowan is about to grab the remote and turn off the TV when the headline catches his eye for a fleeting moment. It mentions the disappearance of Taylor Morris, a student at Crowcrest, but they only show footage of her parents and the despair on their faces as they beg the audience and whoever is listening to them to speak up if they have any information regarding her whereabouts.

          He sighs, turning off the TV, unable to shake off the feelings of dread creeping up his brain stem. They say she went missing at the beginning of October, two days before Chase slammed his baseball bat against Rowan's leg, which means the vanishing of that ship at the docks wasn't the first event in that famous chain. Already fully awake, Rowan slides his arms inside a loose cardigan, grabs a beer from the fridge—because nothing screams 'I know what I'm doing' like drinking alcohol on his own at three in the morning—and disappears back inside his room.

           His fingers shake as he searches for a working pen in the middle of all the ones he owns. The only one he can find—and the only one of those that doesn't slip from his sweaty hands—is red, and it hurts because Jasper only wrote in red or in black, but he tries to shake those memories away from his mind as he tries to build a timeline.

          "Damn you, Jasper," he groans, failing to draw a straight line on a blank page. "Damn you."

          2016: the wolves came first.

          2017: the thunderstorm came first.

          October 2nd, 2018: Taylor Morris goes missing.

          October 12th 2018: the ship vanishes from the port.

          October 14th 2018: Friday; Isla stops by the apartment.

          October 17th 2018: Rowan learns this has happened before and the events don't necessarily happen in the same order every time. Isla doesn't return the sweatshirt.

          He's beginning to think none of this makes sense. How could someone have gone missing, when Rowan was already here, without him learning about it, considering he stops by Crowcrest almost every day? He can't remember whether Isla mentioned it when she stopped by or not, but part of him wants to believe she didn't. It's not like he wants to insult her intellect, like she told him that night, but it helps him convince himself he's not entirely losing it.

          If she said anything about it, then things have gotten worse a lot quicker than Rowan thought they did, and that scares the hell out of him. Does he really want to admit there might be something wrong with him, even though he's not entirely certain of it? Is there really something inside his brain that has disconnected, forbidding his neurons from correctly transmitting information?

          He reaches out for his phone, resting over his bedside table, and dials the first number he can remember. He also finds himself whispering pick up, over and over again, as if anything could possibly make this better, even just a minuscule bit.

          "Rowan," Isla mutters, in a slurred voice, after the call rang four times. He supports his free hand on the side of his whiteboard, staring at the timeline he has just built, and realizes he can barely read his handwriting. One of the signs that tell you you're dreaming is your sudden inability to read. "It's . . . three in the morning. What is it?"

          "Did you know Taylor Morris had gone missing?" he questions, stumbling over his words, and he hears a rustling sound coming from her side of the line, meaning she has probably gotten up from her bed. It's one of the main differences between the two of them, he thinks; she's considerate enough to leave her room so as to not wake up her roommate, while he wouldn't have done the same for his hypothetical one. "If you did, when did you find out? And did you tell me about it when you stopped by last week?"

          "Slow down." Her voice is a bit louder now and he hears her softly close a door. "Slow down. What the hell are you talking about?"

          Rowan takes a deep breath, with his heartbeat pulsating in his ears and throat. "I got up and found out the TV was on, but I swear I had turned it off before going to bed. They're saying some student named Taylor Morris was reported missing on October 2nd, which means she went missing before the ship. Are you following?"

          "Yes, Rowan, but—"

          "Micah told me, a few days ago, the events don't always happen in the same order, and I thought 'yeah, okay, I have to write that down'. I know I wrote, like, three pages about that and did my research on the order from last year and the one before that. Today, all those pages are gone. I have no idea if you mentioned it when you stopped by, but there's no way you didn't know she had gone missing." He thinks he hears her ask him to slow down again, but she says it in a breath, one he barely distinguishes from the background noise. "I think someone's messing with me. Someone's messing with my head, Isla, I—"

           "I mentioned it, yes, but you weren't paying attention. You were doing this thing you always do, when you're pretending to listen; it was like . . . you were seeing right through me, you know? You were trying to balance a pen between your nose and your upper lip." She briefly pauses, and Rowan knows there's something else she's not telling him—she has always had the upper hand, and she thrives on it. "Maybe you forgot to save the file. You've been working a lot lately, haven't you? No one would even have had a chance to touch your laptop without you noticing it."

          He huffs, pinching his nose bridge, and his eyes scan the whole board, ultimately finding a yellow note, glued to the top right corner. Knitting his brows together, he pulls it down to examine it.

you know who it was

          It's his handwriting, all right. The problem is that he wasn't the one writing it—at least he thinks he wasn't.

          "Isla," he insists, voice quavering. "I think someone was in my apartment."

          "What? How do you know?"

          "The missing pages . . . the TV . . . and I just found a note on my board. It's my handwriting and it says I know who it was, but I have no idea what it means, and I know I didn't write it. I know, Isla." She sighs, and he knows he's losing her. "Please. I don't—I have no one else to talk to. Your father will think I'm losing it. He'll fire me. I can't lose this job. Please, Isla, I need to figure out what the hell is going on." His fist collides with the board, and it wobbles, never actually falling backward, and Isla whimpers, startled. "I need to figure out what the hell is going on with me."

          Isla exhales. "Okay. Okay. Calm down, okay? We'll figure this out. Meet me up at the diner tomorrow, yes? We'll have lunch and try to figure a way out of this; if you can try to find more evidence, gather it all and, if necessary, we'll talk to the police. They're busy with Taylor's case, but I'm sure someone will help you." Isla pauses again. "And, please, try to not call in the middle of the night, okay? Some of us have to get up early to study."

          "Yes, boss."

          She laughs, a bubbly sound that carves into his chest. "Good night, Rowan."

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          ROWAN HAS NO IDEA WHY HE TRUSTS ISLA THIS MUCH, BUT HE DOES. It's blind trust, or so he enjoys reminding himself, especially considering he just knows they won't keep in touch as soon as he leaves the country, but, while he's here, he might as well enjoy it. Either way, having her by his side is strangely comforting, a reminder maybe not everyone is trying to make a fool out of him by slowly stripping him off his sanity.

          There aren't many people he can say that about. Maybe that counts for something, but in whose book? And why?

          Either way, he gets to the diner first, and, miraculously, there's a vacant booth. Even though he's forced to wait for Isla, as it would be awfully rude if he ordered his food before she got here, he still rushes to occupy said booth before anyone else does. There's no possible way of knowing when you're getting a seat when the diner is full and, if Rowan has a chance of avoiding it, he's taking it.

          Brooklyn, once again, isn't here, but he doesn't dare open his mouth to ask another waitress why. Maybe she's busy with college, maybe she simply quit her job or got fired— he doesn't want to think about the latter possibility, as she always seemed too competent for that—but, at the end of the day it's none of his business. The fewer ties he forms in this town, the better.

          He sighs. Isla steps through the doors of the grease-covered diner, looking as out of place as a diamond in the middle of the rubble. The bell by the door chimes and she lowers her hood, with the pouring rain flooding the streets outside. When she sits down, thunder strikes, somewhere in the distance, and everyone knows there aren't that many events left to complete the tale.

          "You look awful," she states, taking off her parka and setting it aside. Rowan shrugs and she leans forward to brush his hair away from his face, attempting to smooth it back. "Let me guess: you didn't sleep at all after I hung up, did you?"

          "That's a minor detail," he mutters, staring down at her hand once she drops it. Her tanned skin is covered in tiny droplets of water. "I'm fine."

          "You didn't seem fine last night."

          Huffing, he dares to look up, knowing darn well she's examining the purple circles marking the skin under his eyes. "Can we not do this? Let's focus on how someone might be playing some twisted game with me to see if they can get me to lose my mind." She tilts her head to the side, like a cat watching a shiny object twinkle. "Is it flattery that you want? Do you want me to remind you you're sort of my only hope?"

          "No. I'm just finding it weird that we almost managed to have a proper conversation."

          "If we did, you'd be forced to admit we're sort of friends."

          "You're the one who has trouble admitting it, not me."

          Though she has a point, Rowan doesn't want to give her the satisfaction of knowing it, so he keeps his mouth shut, even though it pains him greatly to do it. The bell rings again and he instinctively looks up, just to see if Brooklyn has come back to the scene of the crime, but, instead, he's greeted by a tall, elegant blonde, whose heels click against the polished linoleum floors.

          Looking at her is like staring at a ghost—except she's pretty darn real, and she sees him too.

          "Jasper," he murmurs.