Nightmares from Within (16 page)

After several long seconds, he eased his hold on me, slid his arm out from behind me and used it to brush the hair out of my face. Affection lit up the features of his face and I found myself lifting up to kiss him. He kissed me back for several seconds before pulling back just a fraction and running his nose along the side of mine.

Then he said something so touching any chance of protecting my heart disappeared entirely. “All day long, all I kept thinking was how badly I wanted to get back to you. All the bad things I saw, all the darkness, none of it matters when you’re around. All you have to do is smile and I’m able to forget the bad and remember how beautiful the world can actual be. You give me that.”

I ran my fingers through his unruly blond hair and looked him in the eyes, hoping he could see the importance of what I was about to say. “You give me normal. No one has ever given me that.”

He kissed me again before replying, “I’m quickly realizing that I’d give you just about anything if it made you happy.”

His body left mine, and before there was a chance of being affected by the cold, Jordan pulled the comforter up and tucked it around me then went to the bathroom to take care of the condom. I was almost asleep when I felt the bed dip as he climbed in. His arm hooked around my waist and he pulled my back flush against his chest then let out a contented sign. “Never get enough, Crimson.” He whispered into my hair before sleep took over both of us.

Two weeks. For two weeks things between me and Jordan had been fantastic. I hadn’t had any more visions or nightmares in that time and I was blissfully happy. I should have known it wasn’t possible for the good things in my life to last.

“Are you sure there isn’t anything I can help with?” I asked as I sat at the breakfast bar in Jordan’s kitchen watching him make dinner. We usually stayed at my place but he had called earlier that day to ask if I could come over so he could cook for me. I wasn’t about to pass up a free meal. I just hoped he knew what he was doing in the kitchen.

“Nope,” he said as he strained the pasta over the sink before turning back to the stove top. “Just sit there and look sexy.”

I glanced down at my outfit, a Benny’s Diner t-shirt, blue jean shorts and my running shoes. I wasn’t exactly dressed to the nines. Add to the fact I didn’t have any makeup on and my hair was in a sloppy ponytail and I was really starting to second guess Jordan’s judgment.

“Stop looking at yourself and thinking I’m crazy,” he said without even turning around to face me. In the past couple of weeks he’d become even more in tune with me than he was before. It was almost scary how well he could read me.

“Get out of my head, freak.”

He turned and gave me a wink. “Stop making it so damn easy to read you.”

“Whatever,” I grumbled. “So what are you making me anyway? And is it going to give me food poisoning?”

He turned and threw a piece of chopped carrot from the salad at my head. “It’s angel hair pasta with chicken Pomodoro. And I’ll have you know that I’m an excellent cook.”

“Ahh, did I offend that delicate male pride of yours?”

He dropped the spoon he was holding on the countertop and started for me. Just before I was able to jump off the stool and make a run for it, his arms banded around me, effectively pinning my own arms to my sides as he began to tickle my ribs.

“Stop! Ah, Jordan!” I squealed as I laughed uncontrollably.

“Say I’m the best cook in the whole world,” he demanded.

“You’re the best, I swear! I didn’t mean it!”

He finally stopped tickling me, but I was still laughing and out of breath when he moved his hands from my hip up to cup my cheeks. “So beautiful,” he muttered more to himself than to me. I turned my face into his palm and planted a kiss in the center of it before looking back into his hazel eyes. I didn’t think I’d ever get enough of looking into them.

I opened my mouth to tell him how special he made me feel but a sharp, splitting pain rushed through my skull knocking me off balance. Jordan caught me before I hit the floor but my purse hadn’t faired so well. I’d knocked it over and the contents scattered all over his floor.

“Christ. Taylor, are you all right?”

Not now. Please not now.
I chanted in my head over and over. I didn’t want Jordan to witness me having one of my visions but I wasn’t going to avoid it and risk not seeing the victim I was supposed to help.

I squeezed my head in my palms, trying to control the stabbing pain pulsing through it as I stood up. “Excuse me,” I groaned as I stumbled to the bathroom and locked myself in.

“Taylor!” Jordan pounded on the bathroom door trying to get in. “Baby, are you okay? Let me in.”

“Just a second,” I called weakly. The last thing I needed was for him to bust the door down. “It’s just a migraine. I’ll be out in a minute, I promise.”

All I could do was hope that I’d placated him for as long as it took to see if I could make out who was in the vision. The pounding on the door stopped so I lowered the toilet seat, dropped down and closed my eyes. I inhaled and exhaled slowly as I attempted to calm my mind and open up for the vision to become clearer.

Dark hair flooded my sight as the woman’s image started to form more clearly. She was on the ground, struggling with someone. I could feel the terror coursing through her veins as if it was my own, but unlike the other visions there was something other than terror the woman was feeling. It was almost like…determination. She kicked her leg as hard as she could and connected with her attacker’s body, causing him to release her long enough to let her go. I still couldn’t make out her face but I watched as she climbed to her feet and ran blindly in the hope of finding a door. The door she found looked like it was made of heavy steel, and I felt as she struggled to push against its weight. There was a set of bare wooden stairs right outside the door, but before she was able to start climbing, her attacker grabbed her hair and spun her around.

Oh God. No!

I watched as Cassie’s face came into perfect focus, right before her attacker raised his arm and plunged a knife into her chest.

Romance, who loves to nod and sing,

With drowsy head and folded wing,

Among the green leaves as they shake

Far down within some shadowy lake,

To me a painted paroquet

Hath been –a most familiar bird—

Taught me my alphabet to say—

To lisp my very earliest word

While in the wild wood I did lie,

A child—with a most knowing eye.

Of late, eternal Condor years

So shake the very Heaven on high

With tumult as they thunder by,

I have no time for idle cares

Though gazing on the unquiet sky.

And when an hour with calmer wings

Its down upon my spirit flings—

That little time with Lyre and rhyme

To while away—forbidden things!

My heart would feel to be a crime

Unless it trembled with the strings.

“Nooo!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. Not her. Not Cassie. Seconds later, the bathroom door came crashing open, sending splintered wood flying across the floor. Jordan stood there with wide eyes, panting heavily as I began to cry uncontrollably. I jumped off the toilet and flung myself at him in desperation. I needed his help. He was the only one that could possibly help me stop Cassie from being killed.

I wrapped my arms around his neck and tried to calm myself enough to talk as he lifted me into his arms and carried me into the living room. “Jesus, Taylor. You’re scaring the fucking shit out of me. What the hell is going on?”

He sat on the couch, still not letting me go as he turned me to straddle his lap and took my face in his hands. “What’s happening? Please, talk to me.”

My heart was beating at such a fast tempo because of what I’d just seen and what I was about to do. Odds were, Jordan was going to think I was certifiable after I told him the truth, but I had no choice. He was my only chance.

“I’m going to tell you something and I need you to listen before you talk, okay?”

He looked leery but nodded anyway. I reached for my locket and squeezed it so tightly it cut my palm, drawing blood but I couldn’t let it go. “When I turned seven I started to have these…visions. I saw one of my classmates being abducted and murdered, but when I tried to tell my teacher, she accused me of lying just to get attention. I went to the principal and even tried telling my parents, but they all blew me off saying I was being irrational. I tried to confront the girl and tell her what was going to happen but she thought I was crazy and told her parents that I threatened her. They came up to the school to talk to the principal and it became this huge thing.”

I paused to suck in a breath before pushing forward. “The principal and my teacher told my parents that maybe I needed psychiatric help, so they found the most expensive doctor they could and forced me to go see him. They didn’t give a shit about me really; they just wanted people to think they were getting their poor daughter the help she needed.”

“What happened to the little girl?” Jordan asked in a hushed voice.

I dropped my head, not able to make eye contact as I told him. “A month after I had the vision she was kidnapped while she was playing in her front yard. They found her body three days later.”

I felt Jordan’s whole body stiffen beneath me and when I finally looked up I couldn’t make out the expression on his face, but deep in my gut, I knew nothing good was going to come from telling him the truth.

“Why are you telling me this now?” he finally asked after a silence that lasted way too long.

I pushed past the knot in my throat to tell him the rest of it. “I’ve been having visions and dreams of women being murdered but they haven’t been clear. A few weeks ago I had a vision of a blonde woman being chased by someone. It was Samantha Turner.”

Jordan took his hands off me and ran them through his hair. His demeanor had changed in such a way that I felt the need to put a bit of distance between us. I slid off his lap toward the end of the couch and he did nothing to stop me. “Taylor, it was probably just some sort of nightmare. You must have seen something on the news about Samantha Turner having gone missing and it probably just manifested itself into a dream.”

The desperation was building back up again and the terror I recalled feeling from each of the women as they struggled against their attacker was so intense I felt as if I would choke on it. “No, Jordan. That’s not what happened. I saw her. I saw her being chased then I dreamt about how she died.”

“That doesn’t mean anything…”

I cut him off the only way I knew how. The poems left on the women’s bodies were never released to the public so there was no way of knowing what the poem was.

“I am not yours, not lost in you,” I started. “Not lost, although I long to be. Lost as a candle lit at noon, lost as a snowflake in the sea…”

I let my voice trail off when his eyes grew huge and he jumped from the couch. “How do you know that poem, Taylor?”

“It came to me in my dream about Samantha,” I whispered. “I told you I saw how she died. She was stabbed to death.” It wasn’t a question. I already knew the answer. I just needed him to realize what I was saying was true. “She had a cut on her cheek that went all the way to the bone and another the length of her stomach.”

Jordan became erratic as he crouched down in front of me. “How the fuck do you know all of this, Taylor? Who told you?”

“No one told me!” I yelled. “I saw it. She was bound to a mattress in a pitch black room. He toyed with her before he killed her.” I started to cry again as I recounted the gruesome details of that dream. I needed him to believe me. “He tortured her and terrified her. He forces all of the women to tell him that they love him before he kills them!”

“ENOUGH!” Jordan bellowed. He grabbed hold of his hair and pulled in frustration while sucking in deep breaths. “Taylor,” he started, the distress evident in his voice. “I need you to tell me who gave you all this information. None of this was released to the public. If someone’s leaking information that is supposed to be confidential it could seriously jeopardize this case.”

“I already told you how I know! I’ve seen these murders. You have to believe me, Jordan,” I pleaded. “I saw Sylvia Garcia being strangled to death. I saw Samantha Turner being stabbed. I saw him tell each of them that he’d let them go if they just said that they loved him. I felt their fear as they said the words and when he screamed that he didn’t believe them right before he took their lives!”

He was pacing the living room frantically, mumbling incoherently. “Jordan,” I cried. “His next victim is Cassie. I know the poem he’s going to leave folded up in her hand.”

“No,” he shook his head violently.

“Yes, Jordan.” I began reciting the lines from memory. “Romance, who loves to nod and sing, with drowsy head and folded wing. Among the green leaves as they shake far down within some shadowy lake…”

“Stop! Just stop,” he demanded. “How could you possibly know that?”

My shoulders drooped and my head fell into my hands. He wasn’t going to believe me. He wasn’t going to help. I didn’t hear him fall to his knees in front of me so I was startled when he reached for my face and held it so aggressively I flinched in pain. “Do you know him?” His voice caused my skin to break out in goose bumps. “Do you know who the killer is, Taylor?” he asked as he gave my head a shake.