Mystery Dance: Three Novels (74 page)

The sun slipped behind the ridges as they staggered back up the trail, both of them weak. They had reached the granite peak of Cracker Knob when Dr. Forrest’s high voice drifted up from the woods. “Oh, Jooolia. Jooolia. He
ooowns
you, Jooooolia.”

Julia looked out over the dark ripples of Appalachian Mountains in the distance, at the black pockets of valleys. In a strange way, Dr. Forrest
had
healed her. Compared to a devil-worshipping lunatic who liked to play with patients’ minds, Julia felt like the most sane and rational person on the planet.

They rested against the rocks, the sky in twilight. Walter fidgeted with his hand for a moment and held something out to her. “This is yours,” he said. “I was keeping it for you.”

The silver ring. She looked at the skull grinning in the moonlight, at the stupid empty eyes that saw nothing.

“Free will,” he said.

She took a step forward and hurled the ring into the deep valley below the rocks. Judas Stone didn’t exist.

She couldn’t tell which of them moved first, or if they simultaneously had the same idea. They embraced, their lips meeting, body heat and the heat beyond that combining. Julia kissed desperately, afraid that each precious moment belonged to the past, was already over and never to be regained. But then Walter kissed her again, and she knew that these moments were hers for as long as she desired.

They finally parted, Julia so light-headed that she had to lean against the rocks again. Neither of them spoke, afraid to break the little magic spell the world had allowed. Walter took her hand and guided her between the boulders under the timeless night.

The wind gently pushed the last scraps of clouds away. The sky was indigo and scattered with stars. The rising moon shone down on the silver forest. They continued through the trees, pushing away the groping branches.

By the time they reached the cabin, Julia was exhausted. They found that the Jeep’s tires had been slashed. The Creeps had wanted to cut off easy escape.

“Looks like we’ll have to hike out,” Walter said.

“Not tonight,” Julia said. “I’m beat.”

“No, you’re not beat. They’ll never beat you if you don’t let them.”

“I am a mountain,” Julia said, with just enough strength left to laugh. She turned solemn and said, “If you let God in your heart, can you ever make him leave?”

“Free will,” he said.

“You’re not still trying to save me, are you?”

“Door’s open when you want to talk about it.”

They went inside the dark cabin, Julia’s hand squeezing the gun’s grip, finger ready at the trigger. No Creeps. She was finished with Creeps, real or imagined. Doors closed and deadbolts thrown. Safe house.

“Want me to build a fire?” Walter asked.

“Yes,” she said, pulling him toward the loft. “Like you did up on the rocks.”

Julia climbed the ladder and scrambled onto the loft. She laid the gun within reach and kicked the blankets aside while Walter hurried up alongside her. Finally, she was ready to trust.

She tore at the buttons of his shirt, burning with hunger. This hunger was deep, reaching further inside her than any fear or panic or hopelessness ever had. This surrender was of her soul, the thing that she and she alone possessed.

Nobody could steal her soul. No demon, no god, no human. It was hers to give as she chose. Of her own free will.

As she reached for the heat of his skin, she wondered how he would react to the touch of her scars.

But it didn’t matter. Wounds healed, scars faded, the past always lost in the battle of forever.

“Jooolia,” he whispered, arousing a last shiver of doubt.

To hell with it
.

She threw herself into the fire.

THE END

Table of Contents

###

DISINTEGRATION:

THE DELETED CHAPTER

ORIGINAL CHAPTER SIX

(
This chapter revealed how Jacob and Renee met and the how their relationship grew in the first year, but since flashbacks weaken a novel’s structure, and I didn’t want to move it to the beginning and take away the intensity of the opening scene, I deleted the chapter. However, it works well as a standalone piece. Maybe a few of you remember the late 1980’s
.)

They had met in Ogre’s Tavern, a seedy dungeon accessed by a set of unstable concrete steps behind a restaurant that changed the nationality of its food with the seasons and the fluctuating economy. Ogre’s was famous for its two-dollar pitchers of beer and the absolute lack of pretense. Patrons were just as likely to see State’s star quarterback knocking down cold ones as to see some bum with fingerless gloves fishing stray butts from the ashtrays. The jukebox was a decade out of date and still played vinyl, but that was okay because Hank Williams, Sr., was timeless and most of the New Wave performers that dominated its play list had long since gone to regular jobs. In Ogre’s, Pat Benatar still sang about love being a battlefield and local acts like the dBs and Let’s Active still elicited their share of quarters.

Jacob had wrapped up university classes early that Friday, skipping Introduction to Mass Media because Happy Hour was still legal in 1989 and alcohol had become a way to obliterate the life he’d left in Kingsboro. The stuff loved him, simple as that. In his brighter and sloppier moments, he convinced himself that it was a perfect symbiosis, the drink and him, a match as natural as Bonnie and Clyde. In the dark hours of vomit and confusion, he didn’t reflect on the philosophical aspects at all.

That afternoon, he wore his Army jacket with the frayed cuffs, because September had brought a misty hint of coming winter. He thought of himself as non-uniform in corduroy pants, loafers without socks, and a Carolina Tar Heel T-shirt. His closet was full of Izod and Dockers, and he was afraid he’d eventually be pressed into those successful clothes. But for now, he wanted to be a poet and didn’t care how low he’d have to go to accomplish his goal. There was plenty of time for selling out later, when the price was higher.

He usually hit the bars with a couple of his co-dependent alcoholic buddies, but on this particular life-changing Friday he was at the bar alone. He didn’t think drinking alone was either anti-social or a sign of alcoholism. The symbiosis required a mutual commitment, and the beer always held up its end of the bargain. Meeting it halfway was the least Jacob could do.

The bar surface was pocked with carved graffiti, the uneven runes dark with mildew and age. “One Life To Live” played on the television in the corner, the sound turned down. The bartender was a chunky woman who looked as if she could lift a full keg over her head and hurl it at anyone trying to run out on a tab. Jacob lifted his face from the beer foam’s hundred staring eyes and checked out the crowd.

The blond he later learned was named Renee was at a table with some sorority girls. Jacob didn’t see her at first, because on his first sweep of the table he was making note of the ratio of people per pitcher. Six girls and one pitcher didn’t sound like good odds. He was lousy at making the kind of small talk that ended up back at somebody’s place. But some primitive instinct always drove him to hunt just as if he actually had a chance at the prey.

Just the way Joshua would do it.

He first noticed Renee when she stood up. She was six feet, most of it long, slim legs that ran from her suede clogs to the high hem of her plaid skirt. She was in typical Sorority Suzy gear, a school sweater, her hair pinned back. What set her apart from her sorority sisters was that her skin glowed, even under those green fluorescents and without the benefit of makeup. And set amid that face were green eyes that moved behind her glasses with quick intelligence, despite the evidence that she’d had a few drinks already. She continually dabbed at the table with a paper napkin, wiping up the beads of condensation from their mugs.

He watched as she bent and mouthed something to the girl beside her, words lost in the sonic chaos of some rowdy Lynyrd Skynyrd. The other girl shook her head and shrugged, leaving the green-eyed, nearsighted wonder to walk toward the rest rooms. The guy on the stool beside Jacob turned and ogled her for an appreciative moment. Jacob downed his beer in two nervous gulps, abandoned half a pitcher to the wolves, and followed the girl.

He was a buffoon, he knew. He wouldn’t have the courage to make a move. All he wanted was a glimpse, or a smile, or maybe get stupid lucky and have somebody accidentally shove him against her. Happy Hour was always crowded and some impromptu contact was expected even when not actively solicited. His palms were sweating and he was ice sober despite four beers. He felt like a stalker.

Like Joshua.

She stopped at the jukebox that stood between the two bathroom doors. Even from twenty feet away the stench of urine from the men’s room competed with the sweet odor of beer and stale cigarette smoke. The sink hadn’t worked in years and served as an extra toilet. When the line was backed up so that the sink was taken, the floor was pressed into emergency service.

But all those assaults on the senses fell away as he approached the jukebox. She was running her finger down the rows of song titles and stopped at one she liked. She dug into her purse and a tampon fell to the floor. She stooped and looked around to see if anyone had noticed. That’s when their eyes met.

Jacob thought it should have happened to violin music, a placid and sweeping concerto by one of those sedate Viennese. Instead it was Lynyrd Skynyrd and ooh that smell and simple, defiant chord progressions. No matter that the band needed some vowels in its name or that a plane crash would one day silence the music. For right now, it was
their
song.

Love at first sight was the kind of thing you could analyze later, which Jacob often did. But during that first sight, there was no room for anything else. His breath reached around his throat like a noose and his heart hammered louder than a rock’n’roll drum kit and his eyes grew so wide that even darkness stung. Two hundred people breaking the fire code in a room large enough for eighty, yet he and she were alone. He was pulled toward her by magnetism as old as the human race and as strange as extraterrestrial gravity.

And then there was the matter of the tampon.

“I’m not going to use it,” she said. “Not after it’s been on
that
floor.”

He wasn’t nervous at all. Crazy. Different. Joshua-like. “What song did you find?”

“‘Crimson And Clover.’ The Joan Jett remake.”

He fished in his pocket. Plays were still a quarter, or five for a dollar. He had seven quarters. He slid them all into the slot and punched the numbers for “Crimson And Clover.” Over and over.

“I have some change,” she said.

“I wasn’t trying to impress you with my big spending.” He grinned, not even caring that his teeth were less than perfect despite the wonders of orthodontia.

He could tell by the almost imperceptible flare of her nostrils that she was as curious and wary of him as he was of her. Her pupils had grown large and her cheeks flushed slightly. The bar lights reflected in her glasses with all the chaos of a carnival.

“You go to State or are you just slumming?”

“Oh, this Tar Heel shirt,” he said, looking down. “Strictly for shock value. I’m a junior.”

“What’s your major?”

“No. That’s too obvious. I don’t want our first conversation to be normal.”

“Okay, then, who’s your favorite writer?”

“Lynyrd Skynyrd.”

She laughed, and the sound somehow cut through the drunken laughter and the rattle of glass. Jacob felt a mild floating sensation, as if he were on a disembodied high. Then he realized why the feeling was so fresh. He was himself. There was none of the usual anxiety that attacked him whenever he was in a social situation. She didn’t know he was a Wells.

“So, what’s the deal with ‘Crimson and Clover’?” he asked.

“Good drinking song.”

“Can I buy you one?”

“I need to be getting back to my sisters. They’re giving me the eye already, and they’re going to give me hell for talking to somebody outside the Greek tribe.”

“I could be Delta Chi for all you know.”

“Maybe so. Isn’t that the gay frat?”

“Maybe I’m gay, then.”

A beefy guy heading for the bathroom overheard him and veered a couple of steps away. She gave her thousand-watt grin. “Then why are you sort of hitting on me when this place is full of good-looking men?”

He thought of what Joshua might say. “Because I have absolutely nothing to lose but another minute with you.”

The Skynyrd died and “Crimson And Clover” came on. “Excuse me,” she said. “I really was headed to the bathroom before I got sidetracked by the jukebox.”

“Use a clean one,” he said.

“Huh?”

“The tampon.”

“Yeah, right.”

He waited for her by the jukebox. The line to the women’s room was usually longer than that of the men’s. Jacob wasn’t sure, but he guessed that the women’s sink wasn’t used as a third-string urinal. He caught his smeared reflection in the jukebox glass amid the neon beer signs and psychedelic glitter of the turntable.

And just who do you think you are, Jakie boy?

Whoever I am, I’m not you, Joshua.

He thought he was very much himself, for the first time ever. Even if he had to pretend to be Joshua to manage it. “Crimson and Clover” had just ended and was starting for the second time when she emerged from the bathroom.

“Nasty in there,” she said.

“You should see the men’s. On second thought, you don’t want to.”

“Do you want to come meet my friends?” she asked.

He looked at the table of sorority girls. Somebody had ordered another pitcher. They all looked full of humor, giggly, teasing. He preferred his drunks to be serious about it. “Not really.”

“I don’t blame you. I need to clear my head. All this smoke is getting to me.”

“Want to go for a walk?”

“For the record, I’m not an easy lay. I’m not totally against sex, but as a general rule I don’t do it with strangers.”