Page 80 of Breaking the Dark

But Jessica is only half listening to Amber because as she walks, she has remembered something. The image that she’d seen on the sketch in Fox’s bedroom and also on the plaque in the church, she’s seen it somewhere else, and now she thinks she can remember where. She ends the call with Amber and stops on the sidewalk to find the photo Malcolm sent her of the interior of Lark’s bedroom. She zooms in and there—there it is. On a piece of paper pinned to Lark’s corkboard. She opens it up as big as she can get it and homes in on the detail.

It’s Fox’s drawing of the child, the outstretched arms, the rays of light. There are words on the paper too, but they are too blurred to read. She sighs, feeling the crush of tiredness in every atom of her being, but she still has work to do. The Grace Partridge story has broken overnight in the UK. It’s two in the morning over there and all the headlines carry news of the rescue of Grace Partridge and Debra Phipps’s arrest, the intensive police search for Amina Sultanov and Audrey Hill-Lock.

She’s not far from home, but, too exhausted to walk, she catches a cab and as she rides, she reads every article she can find. The word brainwash is used numerous times by the journalists. It’s a word that always fills Jessica with dread. The true meaning of the word is so unbearable to Jessica that it can take her breath away. The washing of the brain. Someone with a virtual sponge, rubbing away at parts of another person’s very essence, obliterating free thought, erasing precious memories, implanting falsehoods and warped truth. All without a knife, without hands even. Just with words. Is there anything more sinister than that, she ponders, the ability of one human being to access another human being’s very essence and do with it as they please? Debra Phipps, for all her unassumingness, is a dangerous woman. She used her ability to control another person effortlessly and brilliantly on Jessica, who has at least some psionic defenses. She can only imagine how she could use that power to control a vulnerable young girl without Jessica’s super-powers. But if Debra Phipps is so powerful, then what is she doing holed up in a scruffy house in the middle of nowhere making roast lamb for Grace Partridge? Why has she kept her there under her control for over a year? What has she done with the other girls? And how does it all fit with what happened to the twins that summer?

She thinks of poor Grace, her pale skin and haunted look, staring up at Jessica and asking her, “Am I real?”

It strikes her that while “Belle” was not real, Grace Partridge is, and so is Debra Phipps. Which means that there are people out there who know both of them in the real world. And some of them must now be reading these news stories and heading onto social media to share their take on the story with the world. She finds something on a UK news site from a “local woman” who says that she is shocked to hear that Debra Phipps who has lived reclusively in her village for so many years could have been hiding such terrible secrets.

“We never saw her, she lived out there with those dogs and had all her food delivered. But by all accounts, she was a harmless old woman. I can’t believe she was capable of such a thing.”

The words “old woman” jar Jessica as she reads the account. Debra is not young, but neither is she old, with her shiny hair and trendy reading glasses. She thinks of Madame Web’s words just now: She is timeless, infinite.…

Jessica messages Elliot in the UK: What does Debra Phipps look like? then switches off her phone as the cab pulls up outside her building.

She stares upward through the window as she waits for her change back from the driver.

The windows of her block glow in all the different colors of people’s lives.

Her windows on the fifth floor sit like dead eyes in between.

Jessica slings her backpack over her shoulder and finally goes home.

She wakes up early the next day, a Monday morning, the city outside loud and urgent. Her eyes take a moment to adjust to her surroundings and when they do, she grimaces. After nearly a week in five-star hotels, her bedroom looks particularly unappealing.

She switches on her phone and sees that Elliot has replied to her question of the day before about Debra Phipps:

My mum used to drop her prescriptions off for her. She said she just looks like a regular old lady with gray hair. She said she’s very small. Wears dentures. Shouts when she talks.

She searches the overnight news reports from the UK about Grace’s rescue, but none of them have a photograph of “Debra Phipps.”

If the woman at the Old Farmhouse claiming to be Debra Phipps is not in fact Debra Phipps, then who is she? And where is the real Debra Phipps?

She sighs and climbs out of bed. In the bathroom she stares at her reflection for a few moments. She did the same thing last night, searching for what had been done to her, her mind full of Webb’s words about the “black light” that someone had shone into her eyes. There is still a dry ache behind her eyeballs, a vague feeling of residual pain. She can’t see anything unusual, but as she stares at herself, deep into the dark centers of her eyes, she remembers looking at the photo that Malcolm showed her of him and the twins, remembers saying how their eyes didn’t reflect the light. She immediately heads back to her bedroom, grabs her phone, stands in the window, and takes a selfie.

She zooms in on the selfie.

She looks hard for the reflection of the bright New York morning in her pupils, the window-shaped squares of light that should be there.

But they are not.

THIRTY-ONE

THE DOORMAN CALLS up to Amber’s apartment. “I have a Jessica Jones here for you, Mrs. Randall.”

Jessica hears a pause and then Amber’s disembodied voice replying, “It’s very early. Can you tell her to come back later?”

Jessica sighs and tucks her hair behind her ear. “Please tell Mrs. Randall that I have news about her kids. Urgent news.”

The doorman nods, knowingly, and relays the message.

A second later, Jessica is riding the elevator to the top floor.

Amber greets her at the door to her apartment, her eyes wide with concern.

“It’s seven a.m., Jessica. What’s going on?”

“Are they here?”

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