Chapter Sixteen
The counter top under Daria's fingers was the only thing that felt real to her as she gaped at the shards of the broken mirror, the horrific pleading image of Sandi Griffin burned into her mind. Her dreams of the night before crashed back into her consciousness, stunning the normally cool, collected college student. Sandi's mother Linda was breathing in loud, frantic gasps, staring in fear at Daria. Helen still stood in the open door stunned, staring at the two women.
It was a shaken and pale Helen who finally broke the fragile silence.
"What, what just happened in here? Was, was that, Sandi?"
Linda's fist slammed into the counter, rattling the broken pieces of silvered glass, making both Daria and her mother jump.
"No! It's just a trick! A dirty, damned trick!" Tears ran down her face as she choked out the accusing words. "I've heard all about how sneaky you are, Daria Morgendorffer! All those clever little tricks you pulled on everybody back when you still lived here!"
Daria shook her head in sheer disbelief at Linda's words.
"Linda Griffin, how can you stand there and say that! Didn't you see that, that, whatever that was? I might be cold sometimes, but I would never pull such a raw thing like what just happened at a time like this!"
"Linda, I realize you're upset, and worried about Sandi," Helen said. "But that gives you no right to accuse my daughter of, of, well, whatever just, uh seemed to have happened in here!"
"I've got every right!" Linda shouted, color coming back into her face."Your daughter was just accusing poor Sandi . . . "
"What!" Daria shouted back, unable to believe Linda's bald faced lie.
"It's true! She was blaming my little girl for everything bad that ever happened to Quinn!"
"Griffin, you wouldn't know what truth was if it fell from the sky and hit your head! You just spent fifteen minutes calling your own daughter a worthless disappointment!"
"You lying, little, four-eyed freak!"
"Daria! Linda! Enough!" A red-eyed Helen barked. "That is more than enough out of both of you!"
Linda shouted right back, "You've got no right . . . "
Helen replied in a crisp, clear voice, "Our business here is finished! We are not going to give the local news a cat fight in the bathroom at City Hall to distract them from the real news of our missing daughters! That horrible little man who got elected mayor will just try to use it to wiggle out of doing anything! I want you to both go outside looking concerned for our loved ones! Linda, you know that given the choice between important news, and a scandal, the scandal always seems to win! We do not need a scandal right now!"
Glaring at Daria, Linda replied, "All right, Helen, I'll do this your way, for now, but this is far from over!"
"Daria, please? For Quinn's sake?"
Unable to trust herself to speak, Daria nodded, though she was still furious.
Linda brushed past Helen on her way out, her body tense and stiff, the door closing behind her. Helen looked steadily at Daria and cleared her throat.
"Daria, I know you're upset right now, but please, lets just go home? We can talk there, and I will listen to what you have to tell me, but not here and now, all right?"
Daria looked at her mother and realized again just how much this ordeal was taking out of her. Helen's face was thin and drawn, her eyes reddened, with dark circles under them. Her hand, reached out to her, was trembling. She slowly nodded, and taking her mothers hand, squeezed it gently, before letting go, and taking a deep breath, followed Linda out the door. Helen's gaze followed her, before it shifted back to what was left of the shattered mirror on the counter top. Frowning, she slipped a small camera out of her purse and took several pictures of it, and scooped up several shards in an envelope from her purse before she followed the other two out the door.
The mayor was locked in his office, and the news crews were packing up their gear and pulling out, though the reporters were asking about local road conditions from the chief of police. The outside door opened to let in two figures in thick coats, and Daria heard two familiar voices.
"Like, wow, the police station! I told you I could get you here! My jeeps great in this snow!"
The taller figure pulled off his knit cap to reveal the face of Kevin Thompson, with his straight black hair and square jaw. The former QB of Lawndale High unconsciously flexed his biceps before relaxing, his face serious.
"Hey, Jane, look! There's Daria and her Mom!"
Daria's face lightened as Jane smiled at her. Jane shook her head, her black bangs framing her heart-shaped face, her piercing blue eyes taking in the sight of her closest friend.
"Yo, amiga! What's up?"
"Am I glad to see you! Ah, and you're with Kevin?"
"Get your mind out of the gutter Morgendorffer," Jane chuckled, "we're just friends. All will be explained, and fortunes will be told."
Helen came over to the trio.
"Jane, it really is good to see you," she said. "Can you give Daria a ride home? I'd appreciate it."
Jane's eyebrows went up at the request, but sensing the tension in the room only said, "Sure, Mrs. M! I'm, uh, well, I hope they find Quinn and the others soon."
Helen smiled sadly.
"Thank you, Jane. I really appreciate that. Daria, please come home in two hours? We really need to talk about all this."
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Daria sighed in relief as she settled in the back seat of Kevin's red Jeep. Kevin and Jane climbed into the front seats after her.
"Okay, Kevin, take us to Casa Lane, slowly and safely this time, ok?"
Kevin nodded, and his face serious, focused on his driving. Daria and Jane glanced at each other, but both were hesitant to break the silence. Quinn and the other girls missing were behind Jane's reluctance, and the presence of Kevin was behind Daria's. Daria stared outside at the still falling snow. The cold bit at her through the thin material of the jeeps top. Daria unconsciously compared it to the similar top of Sandi's old yellow convertible. Her always active writers imagination swiftly painted a picture of Quinn's sleeping face, her breathing slowly stopping as her body froze, slow tears crystalizing on her cheeks. She jerked awake with a slight gasp to see Jane holding her hand while Kevin drove, a sympathetic look on her face. They were all quiet until they arrived at Jane's house, and parking the Jeep, went inside.
"Daria, come on upstairs and we'll talk." Jane said, "and Kevin, you know what to do, right?"
"Right, Jane!" Kevin replied. "Watch the sports channel, don't wake up Trent, and uh, don't eat anything in the frig! Got it!"
"Trent's not here right now, he's at a gig in Oakdale, but you got it right, especially the part about the refrigerator."
Kevin smiled bashfully and left them, going into the living room.
Daria's eyebrows had gone higher and higher at this performance.
"You've trained him well," was her only comment as they climbed the stairs to Jane's room on the second floor.
Jane laughed softly.
"Kevin's not so bad, once you get his attention, and let him know you're serious. That Brittany really had him screwed up on how to deal with people. He was moping around like a lost puppy, and I sort of adopted him. His dad is horrified, but his Mom likes the fact that I'm getting him to understand women are not all either babes, or popular and unpopular people."
"How did you get him to not call you "babe?""
"Used a two-by-four."
"Um . . . "
At the head of the stairs they turned into Jane's room, which also doubled as her studio. Painting supplies and clothing littered the place. Several paintings leaned against the walls, ranging from naturalistic to abstract in nature. Jane liked to experiment with different styles of painting. One canvas caught Daria's attention immediately, though. It was still on an easel, partly turned away from where she stood. Daria stopped, staring at it.
Jane looked at her friend uneasily, tilting her head.
"Amiga? Is anything wrong?"
"Jane, that painting you have there, what is it of?"
"Its just a landscape, using some Japanese elements on a snow covered background. I found an old book my mom picked up when she was in Japan, with examples of painting by some old dude named Hokusai, and decided to see how well I could do something similar. It came out pretty good, I think. All this snow, you know, I can't do much right now but art!"
Daria stepped around so she could see the painting clearly. It was quite unlike Jane's usual work, which tended to satirical or abstract themes. It was a quiet scene of a grove of pine trees covered in snow. In the foreground was a paper lantern hung on a post, standing by a patch of snow which seemed unnaturally smooth, as if it covered a path. Two darkly varnished posts stood in the background, topped off with a gently curving crossbeam on top of it, like a gate or door to nowhere. A dim shadow was under the beam, very indistinct, in a white flowing gown. Its long dark hair was all that could be made out of the features of the shadow.
The still vivid memory of her dream the previous night crashed down on Daria. The image of what Jane had turned into burned into her weary, careworn mind. With a choking cry, Daria stumbled from the room. Jane glanced in bewilderment at her painting and chased her friend out the door.
"Daria! Hold up! What's wrong?"
At the foot of the stairs, Daria ran into a confused Kevin, who had started up the stairs at Jane's shout. She slammed into the ex-QB like the offensive line of an opposing team, the shorter woman's shoulders catching Kevin perfectly in his stomach. He went down like a sack of potatoes, a loud grunt escaping his gaping mouth. Daria scrambled over his limp form, but the delay gave Jane a chance to catch up, and she threw her arms around her friend, who struggled briefly, before she dissolved into tears. Jane held on tightly, still confused by Daria's outburst, but sensing Daria just needed to let something out. Daria wasn't crying so much as choking, dry painful gasps from deep inside of her.
A groaning Kevin slowly climbed up off the floor, but one look at Jane and Daria stilled his outburst, and he shuffled painfully into the kitchen, to give the two young women some privacy.
Jane felt Daria slowly stiffen in her arms, and she let go slowly, knowing from long experience that Daria was ashamed of any emotional outpouring. Daria stumbled over to the couch and sank down on the far end, groaning, her head in her hands.
Jane stepped lightly up the stairs, coming back down with a glass of water and some aspirin, which she left on the small coffee table in front of the couch She disappeared into the kitchen, closing the door behind her. Daria recovered to the point of gulping the pills down, the cold water soothing her parched throat. She stared blankly at the figures on the Pigskin Channel, Lawndale's own all football, all the time channel, the sound muted.
I am a rational person. Everything that occurs to us is a result of natural forces acting in a predictable pattern. You understand the pattern, you understand everything. But dreams? Jane and I are old friends, but why would I dream about a woman I've never seen, while Jane paints a picture of her? I can't see the face, but there is no doubt in my mind of who that woman is. The sheer certainty of this belief is frightening! And why the Japanese elements? That archway on Jane's painting is a torii, a Japanese design element, with religious meaning, though few people know that. What do Quinn and her friends have to do with Japan?
I can see me dreaming about Quinn. I am worried about her. We are sisters, even though until I graduated high school, we fought almost constantly. I despised her shallowness, her materialism, her focus on popularity in high school. But we both changed. I learned to appreciate the sacrifices Mom and Dad made for us, the burdens Quinn and I were. She learned to use her mind for study, to read, to understand me, as I slowly learned to understand her, her feelings, her fears.
I am a writer. I have a fertile imagination that I've used to tell gullible people stories they should have known better than to believe. I've written violent revenge fantasy's that have disturbed some people, like my "Melody Powers" stories. Like anybody's going to believe in a James Bond female character who's shooting everybody in sight! But its just my imagination, based on my feelings, things I've read and pieced together.
Other than that weird time Jane and I both thought we met the living incarnations of holidays, living in a dimension reached by a hole in the back of the Good Times Chinese Restaurant,( and I still think that was food poisoning), I've never seen anything even remotely "paranormal", a term I despise. Most weird things are only misunderstood natural phenomena, that people don't observe correctly.
A smile quirked the corner of her mouth
Like Jane Lane, Artiste Extraordinare, and Bohemian, hanging out with Kevin Thompson, the dumb jock poster boy and male chauvinist, and turning him into a decent person. Well, Jane does like to tackle hopeless cases. She tried so hard to get her brother Trent and I together as a couple, and then even tried that time with Tom Sloane and I, though I was not ready for that kind of relationship, even not counting the fact he was her ex-boyfriend! What a mess that was!
Jane sighed in relief upon entering the room, and seeing Daria had composed herself. She hadn't seen her high school friend since Daria had gone away to Raft College in Boston, and missed their two outsiders against the world companionship.
"Its okay now, Jane," Daria said. "Not quite the way we partners in crime planned our reunion, is it?"
"Look, Daria, its okay, I understand a bit of what you're going through. You know my family is generally scattered all over the world at any given time, and Trent and I are never really sure where any of them are, especially mom and dad. We'll hear about a disaster that's close to where they might be, and no matter how far we've grown apart, I still worry a bit. We traveling Lane's will never be as close as you Morgendorffer's are, but you still care about your family members, at least if its something important, no matter how much you might be bugged by them otherwise."
"I had never thought of that before. You've never expressed all that much concern about where your parents, or brother and sisters might be."
Jane shrugged. "I don't obsess about it. Its their choice, and I'll probably do the same thing, once I get out of college. We Lanes are a footloose bunch."
"Including Trent?"
"Trent can't stay awake long enough to get that far!" Jane laughed. "I love that brother of mine, he's been the only real family I've ever had, but I know what he's like. Still, he's already said he might visit us up in Boston."
Jane hesitated, her face sobering.
"Daria, I hate to intrude, but even I can tell something else is going on with you and this business. I never got along well with Quinn. That one time she spent the night at this house drove me crazy. That girl will not stop talking! But I know that you two got a little closer this past summer, and as irritating as Sandi Griffin and her soldiers of fashion could be, I never hated them, just ignored them."
Daria's eyebrows rose steadily at Jane's statement.
"You hate to intrude?"
"Ouch! I set myself up for that one, didn't I?"
"Yes, you did, Matchmaker Lane! But for this one time only, I'm going to ignore it. I really need to talk to the person I trust most about this, and a lot more is going on than you know."
Daria then filled Jane in on everything that had been going on, the dream coming out slowly, reluctantly. Jane listened intently, not interrupting, staring at Daria's face, which was at its most immobile. When Daria had finished, Jane let out a low whistle.
"You know, Daria, if anybody else was telling me this, or if I didn't know that Quinn and company were missing, I'd think I was being put on."
"You believe me?"
"Let's just say I know how your mind works, and I don't think you would be making this up right now. Besides, my sister Penny has told me some freaky stuff that she's gone through in Central America. Nothing quite like yours, but its made me keep an open mind about the unseen."
"I guess that makes you Fox Lane, and me Dana Morgendorffer."
"Well, I am a foxy lady, don't you think, my partner in the X-Files?"
"Jane, can you ever see either one of us joining the FBI?"
"Damn, Daria, I've missed talking to you like this! All of the give and take. But all this talking has jarred loose something in my brain. You remember Andrea Hecuba?"
"The Goth girl? She was alright. Why?"
"I ran into her at Payday, and we chatted a bit. She mentioned she thought something bad had happened to Sandi, but she was called away before she could tell me what. Might explain why things are so tense with Sandi and Linda, and might explain if Sandi's the cause of this, or a victim like the others."
"That's a good idea, but what about the other stuff? Sandi in the mirror, the mirror breaking when she touched it? Not to mention that ghost? The snow woman in a kimono? And my dreaming of her the same night you painted a picture of her?"
"I don't know, Daria, I just don't know. You know how the creative mind works, you sit down and start to write or draw, and things just seem to pour out of it. I don't think I dreamed about this, but I might not have remembered it if I had."
Daria glanced at her watch.
"Its been three hours! Can Kevin give me a ride home? And will you come with me?"
"Sure, Daria. I'm not leaving you in your hour of need. What else are friends for?"