sign of anyone or anything out of the ordinary. The rain chose that moment to stop entirely, and through a thin curtain of white amid the dark clouds above, the light of the sun poked through, illuminating the neighborhood.
Nothing.
That was it, the last straw. This was enough. He had to know. He'd had his fill of these half remembrances and partial sightings and nebulous portents. He wanted to know about the House. He wanted to know what had happened to him there and what it had to do with Margot and Tony. He wanted to know why he couldn't remember his past. He wanted to know what the hell was going on.
He'd talk to Margot about it, call a psychiatrist tomorrow, one that specialized in hypnosis and regression therapy.
Her insurance had to have some type of mental health provisions. He could say he suspected that he'd been molested as a child. Hell, he could just tell the truth, explain what he'd been seeing and hearing and thinking, and he'd have no problem finding a shrink willing to uncover the dark secrets of his past.
He didn't have to go to a psychiatrist, though.
It came back on its own.
All of it.
Laurie Laurie dug through the box of her parents' photographs looking for a clue, trying to find some documentation of her previous life, some hint of her pre-adoptive days.
Josh sat next to her on the floor, sorting through additional piles of pictures, attempting to help her reconstruct a past that neither of them knew anything about.
She stared at a photo of herself and Josh at Disney land, waving and smiling in front of It's A Small World.
She was adopted.
It shouldn't have affected anything, but it did, and already she felt distanced from Josh, not as close to him as she had been before. She'd give anything in the world to bring back her old feelings, but the knowledge that they were not really related had completely changed the emotional dynamics of their relationship, and she felt simultaneously as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders and as if she were floating off into space, her tether broken.
She had to bear in mind that it was only her feelings that had changed. He had known all along, so his perception of her was exactly the same as it had always been.
He loved her like a sister.
She felt guilty that she was allowing the concrete sciences of biology and genetics to affect the fragile nature of her own feelings and emotions.
'Hey,' Josh said excitedly. 'I think we have something here. Look at this.'
He scooted next to her on the floor, handing her an old black-and-white photo.
Their parents were standing with her biological parents.
In front of the house.
It was everything at once, in one picture, and she stared at it dumbly, taking it all in. There was the forest behind the house: old growth redwoods, holding in darkness.
The Victorian mansion: black gables and shuttered windows and wraparound porch, retaining even in the photo the aura of spookiness she so clearly remembered.
In front of the house, on the circular dirt drive, were her parents.
All four of them.
The ones who had brought her up, the only parents she knew, Josh's parents, were smiling for the camera, their flowered paisley clothes loud even in black-and white, a large trunk on the ground to the left of them.
On the other side of the trunk, unsmiling, wearing formal clothes and equally formal expressions, were her real parents, her biological parents.
She looked closely at first her mother's face, then her father's, then back again. She recognized the faces now, but they engendered no response, triggered no emotion within her. She didn't know what she'd expected-- some cathartic rush of long pent-up feeling perhaps--but she wasn't prepared for this detached, objective reaction. As she stared at the photo, her feelings were for her other parents, her adoptive parents, and for the first time since she'd learned what had happened to her, she was glad Josh's parents had adopted her, glad she had not grown up with this sober, grimly humorless couple.
She looked over at Josh, and once again he felt like her real brother.
She focused her attention on the photograph. It was all familiar to her, everything in the picture, and, despite her lack of feeling for the man and woman who had brought her into this world, the relentless curiosity about her past and compulsive thirst for self-knowledge that had been driving her for the past several days, ever since she found out she'd been adopted, had not abated at all.
If anything, those impulses were stronger, and her desire to know what had happened to her, why she'd been adopted why her parents had been murdered --was a palpable hunger, almost a physical need. She felt strongly that whatever had happened at that house, whatever cataclysm had destroyed her family, was connected with the dreams she was having now, with the girl.
Dawn.
'Do you know this place?' she asked, pointing at the photo. 'Do you know where it is?'
Josh nodded. 'I remember that house.' He thought for a moment, turned to her. 'Do you?'
She shivered. 'How could anyone forget it?'
'It's on a vortex,' he said.
Cut out the New Age crap, she wanted to tell him, but something kept her from it.
'Of course, we didn't know what that was back then.
Especially not me. I was what? Four? But even I could tell there was something . . . powerful about that house.'
'You mean it was haunted.'
'Is that what you remember?'
She nodded.
He took the photo from her. 'That's how I remember it, too.'
'Do you know where it is?' she repeated.
He stared at the picture. 'I was pretty young, but I
know we were traveling around northern California for a month or so. I can't recall if we were on a vacation or just bumming around--you know how Mom and Dad were--but we'd stopped in this small gold-rush town somewhere in the Sierras. I don't remember the name, but I'd probably be able to pick it out if I saw a map or something.'
She smiled at him, punched his arm playfully. 'And you were only four years old? That's pretty impressive.'
'I grew up to be an under achiever.'
'So what happened?'
'We stayed in town for a day or so, then we went out to visit these people. They might've been friends of Mom and Dad's or maybe someone in town told them about them. I can't remember. All I know is that pretty soon we were driving down this winding little road through the forest, looking for these people who sold lamb's wool blankets. We passed through a clearing where there were people selling juice and fruit from a little roadside stand, and Dad bought me some blackberry juice. That part's pretty clear. Then the next thing I remember is being at this big giant house in the middle of nowhere.' He tapped a finger on the picture. 'This house.' He frowned. 'Come to think of it, I think they might've been friends. It seemed like they knew each other from somewhere before, because they greeted each other like they were old pals.'
'Did you stay there?'
'Oh, yeah. For several days.'
Laurie shook her head wonderingly. 'How come I
don't remember any of this?'
'That's the funny thing. I don't remember you either. I mean, you must've been there, but I
