Ravenous Ghosts (22 page)

To think, he had been struggling to come up with excuses to avoid this.

He crawled on all fours to the table and raised himself up, his heart hammering in his chest, saliva leaking from the corner of his mouth. "Christine…I don't know what to say…" It had been so long since they'd all been together for a meal, but now things were right again, even if he had done a lot of the work himself. He would never say that of course. It might upset the perfect mood. And he wanted nothing to upset this meal. Not when everything was so perfect.

He looked down the table to where Rosemary and Basil sat. The children stared silently back and he was almost overcome with love.

So perfect.

At last.

"I love you," he told Christine as he took her hand, brought it to his lips.

And began to eat.

THE DE
FENSELESS

One day I recalled an argument I'd had with someone years ago. The heated exchange had ended with the other person (I honestly can't remember who it was) saying: "You'll never be anything but miserable because it suits you to be that way." Although I didn't generally consider myself a miserable person, I did tend to slip into moods that I'm sure would have sent a psychiatrist running for his prescription pad, but it was the memory of that mystery opponent's parting shot that gave me the idea for the following tale.

Gina stood by the window, eyes indistinguishable from the rain-tattooed glass for both were shadowed and both were wet. She stood and she waited. Waited for an answer to an impossible question:
Why me?
There would be no answers proffered and of this she was very much aware for she had led a life keeping the secrets of others with just the briefest glimpses of happiness in between and had grown to live with disappointment.

As Kyle had disappointed her. She had thought him strong, brave, so different from the others he could only be the part of her she was missing, could only be the part that made her whole, could only be
hers
. But again, she was forsaken, left to pine more for her lack of sense than her penchant for selecting erroneous suitors. And it was raining. Of course it was, because it never stopped raining in Harperville. She was sick of the sight of it trickling down her bedroom window and yet it held her gaze, almost hypnotizing her. Would it matter if the clouds lifted, for what was there to see up there that she hadn't seen a thousand times before? Nothing but an uncaring sky thrown like a smothering quilt across a city of indifference, with her nothing but a mote lost in the folds.

Damn you Kyle, you selfish son of a bitch! How could you do this to me?

But for this much at least, there was an answer, and it whispered across the darkened plains of her mind, barely stirring the reeds of her resistance:
Because sooner or later everyone does. You are a planet without gravity orbiting a cold dead sun. There is nothing to hold anyone to you and no brightness to look toward. You are nothing. You are empty. You are alone.

She shook her head, only slightly and this was as much of a denial as she could muster. There was, after all, nothing she could say in her defense. Whatever caricature of herself she had been until now, the rain and the misery had finally washed away the pretense, leaving her raw and exposed to the needling of her callous conscience. She could not pretend her life had meaning anymore. Not when the hub of her existence had left nothing behind him but a melodramatic suicide note and an empty vessel to grieve for his passing. A shell, devoid of anything but self-pity and self-loathing for the violation she had let herself fall victim to for so many years.

She pressed her forehead against the glass, her hair bunching up into an auburn wave frozen against the magnesium glow of the streetlight shining through the window. The glass was cold but she did not mind. The ship in her mind sailed a colder ocean, casting out a net made of broken dreams and dragging up the memory of his face. Kyle. So understanding, so familiar with the razorblade edges of her world. So willing to walk through the black flame of her pain with her. So willing to listen. And now dead. Gone. Lost to his own weakness.

Her eyes focused, snagged on an incongruous shade in the gloom below the streetlight, blurred by the streaks of rain but most definitely a figure. A man. Head tilted upward, he appeared to be watching her and for the briefest moment, a cerulean spark of hope coruscated across the barren field of her dismay. But no…Kyle was dead and the only ghosts she believed in were those of happiness, when they lingered tauntingly beyond the reach of those who
'd lost them. She watched, unmoving as a smear of darkness separated from the shadow beneath the light and waved.

Surely she was dreaming, for such a gesture implied a familiarity she did not have with anyone but the dead now. Curiosity bade her open the window and she did with a measure of caution, wincing at the immediate assault of the rain through the narrow wedge of night she had admitted. Peering into the nest of shadows gathered like lazy snakes beneath the streetlight, she saw that it was indeed a man and he was waving at her. But it was not Kyle. She chided herself for entertaining such absurd and impossible notions but did not close the window, now more curious than ever to see who was hailing her.

"What do you want?" she called, leaning over the sill just enough to allow a straight line of wetness to paint itself across her T-shirt. Ordinarily, she might have worried about her father hearing her, but he had returned from the Twisted Oak Tavern hours ago and she knew nothing short of a tornado would wake him from the saturation of his drunk.

The figure responded, a muffled burst of words that were scrambled by the wind.

"What?" Gina cried.

She saw the figure cup his hands around his mouth and this time she heard the words:
"Are you Gina Lewis?"

Answer. Don
't answer. Yes or no. How wise was it to reply to a question like that from a shadowy figure basking in the darkness? After brief consideration, she decided that with nothing left to lose in her pitiful excuse for a life, a reply couldn't hurt. "Yes. Who are you?"

"
My name is Dan Newman. I got a letter from your boyfriend. He told me to come find you."

* * *

Gina was used to climbing down the trellis next to her window, had mastered it in fact as a necessary escape route from the terrors that frequently invaded her bedroom. But she had never climbed it in such ferocious weather and now she was beginning to worry, the wind biting at the exposed skin of her wrists and ankles, whipping her hair into her eyes and struggling to pull the trellis from the wall, forcing her to lock her fingers on the thin wooden ledges as rain pelted her face.

Below, Newman had moved away from the streetlight, was now almost directly below her, his face a long pale smudge in the murk of wind and darkness. "Are you okay?" she thought he said and called a "Yes" even as she cursed and lowered herself another rung on the trellis. It was crazy.
She
was crazy to be sneaking from her bedroom at this time of night to meet a man who could be a killer for all she knew…or cared. And of course that was it. What could a murderer take from her that she hadn't already lost? Her father had taken her innocence, her soul, and Kyle had taken her hopes and dreams with him into the earth. No. There was nothing this guy could take from her now.

Her foot slipped from the rung and her nails scratched painfully against the wall as she righted herself and gasped into the rain. Newman had moved closer. She took a deep breath and steeled herself against the relentless hammering of the storm. Soon, she was close enough to jump and Newman moved away to allow her room to do so. She landed on the soggy earth with a grunt and straightened herself, pulling the wet hair from her eyes and regarding Newman with undisguised suspicion.

"How did you know Kyle?" she asked and he raised a finger to his lips. From what she could see of him, he appeared handsome, if a little gaunt and wiry.

"
Not here," he said and reached a long-fingered hand out to her.

She hovered, then grasped it and allowed herself to be led through the wet streets.

"Where are we going?" she called once and "to Devlin Woods. Out of the rain. I have something to show you," he called back.

She almost stalled at that, felt her resistance tug a little of the speed from their passage, but then relented.
Nothing left to hurt me
, she told herself and followed Newman away from her dark and silent house on Barker Lane, through the rain-swept streets of Harperville and up into the dark phalanx of trees that was the outer ring of Devlin Woods.

* * *

Devlin Woods was and had been for as long as Gina could remember, a miasma. But amid the gnarled trees and tangled vines was a place she had once called her sanctuary. A small, battered shack, little more than sheets of corrugated metal held together by steel wire and topped with a few layers of ragged tarpaulin, sat in a far corner of the woods. It was hidden from prying eyes by a veritable wall of brambles, upon which raspberries were rumored to grow, though no one had actually ever seen any.

It was here she had found peace. It was here she had found Kyle. And lost him to himself. Without him, the shack was nothing more than a shell, haphazardly thrown together, a shelter against the rain and little else. Gina could remember when she had thought it a fortress.

She stopped at the bramble wall and tried to corral the uncontrollable shivering that wracked her body. She was bitterly cold, water trickling down her back, freezing the skin. "Why are we here?" she said, suddenly angry with Newman for presuming to have her trust and refusing to offer her any explanation thus far. "What do you want from me?"

Newman seemed startled by her attitude. He raised a hand to placate her.
"Easy, I promise you it will all make sense soon. We do need to get out of this rain though or we'll catch our deaths."

She huffed her disapproval, ignored the hand he held out to her and walked ahead of him, the carpet of pine and fir needles squelching beneath her feet. The black mass of brambles was taller than both of them, and in the filtered light from the city below it looked like a wave frozen in the act of breaking, spiked tendrils clambering for release within an all-consuming whole. Gina, feeling suddenly and inexplicably hemmed in, skirted the network of vicious thorns and hurried toward where memory directed her.

The shack was like an oasis in the hostile night, feeble amber light flickering through the cracks in the structure as the wind struggled to extinguish a candle someone had left lit inside. A rectangular stretch of heavy fabric had been nailed above the doorway, a small chunk of wood laid against the bottom to keep the wind from tearing it off and it was here that Gina found herself, moving the wood and quickly ducking inside. A steady squishing at her back told her Newman was following.

Inside, she was surprised to see four thick towels stacked on top of a folding chair. A bundle of newspapers lay to one side of them casting a thick block of shadow, courtesy of a large hurricane lamp balanced precariously atop a small drawerless cabinet shoved against the wall behind them. It was not particularly warm, but it was dry despite the impatient drumming of the rain on the tarpaulin above her head. Newman bustled in and promptly turned his back to her as he folded the makeshift door at the bottom and set a short but heavy piece of wood on top of it. Satisfied that it would hold, he exhaled and straightened as much as the low ceiling would allow.

In the light of the hurricane lamp, Gina saw she'd been wrong in thinking him handsome. He might have been once, she realized, but now his cheeks were sunken as if he were biting the inside of his cheeks, shadows nestled comfortably in the hollows. His eyes were bright, feverish but in an unhealthy way, almost manic in their intensity. His thin jaw worked soundlessly as he watched her taking a seat on the stack of newspapers. To her relief, she saw no desire in those eyes and that let her relax a little. She scooped up a towel and slowly began to dry her hair.

"
The towels were a nice touch," she told him. "Not quite the Holiday Inn but appreciated all the same."

"
It's the least I can do for dragging you up here on such a terrible night."

"
Are you going to tell me
why
you dragged me up here on this terrible night?"

"
Yes," he said and surprised her further by reaching behind the folding chair and producing a red thermos, which he shook before him with a wry grin. "Coffee?"

"
You're kidding. What next? Is there a hairdryer behind that chair somewhere?"

He chuckled.
"This is the extent of the luxury I'm afraid."

She offered him a smile, slowly letting her guard down.
"Then I'll take a coffee. Scaldingly hot sounds good right about now."

"
You got it." He unscrewed the cap of the thermos, used it as a cup and filled it almost to the top with piping hot coffee. She accepted it gratefully, nodding her thanks and taking a tentative sip, just enough to scorch her tongue. Another, longer drink and she could feel it running down inside her like hot wax, settling comfortably in her stomach. She draped the towel over her shoulders and looked back to Newman. "So?"