Stranger in the Mirror [Shades of Heaven] (Soul Change Novel) (34 page)

Marti watched Carl work feverishly to fill in the slanted walls with white insulation, putting up drywall, installing an air conditioner unit. To anyone else, it looked like a man fixing up his home. The implications of what he was doing terrified her. It looked… permanent.

Her best guess was that it was Friday, two days after she’d come here. She had no way of telling what time it was. When the light bulb was off, she could see cracks of sunlight filtering through from the eaves if it was day. Carl seemed to take enjoyment in keeping the time from her.

Rock music from the group Queen pounded through the small area, sometimes hateful and full of power, sometimes oddly whimsical. He played their greatest hits CD on a portable player over and over again, hardly glancing at her at all. That part was good, but she wondered what thoughts rambled through a brain warping more every day. He had lucid moments when he seemed to realize what he’d done. He cried for the son who was not his, even for the baby inside her he was distressing.

There were more moments when his eyes were glazed, emerald crystals, hard and somewhere else. He looked at her, but she knew he was looking far beyond her. He would stare at her for half an hour at a stretch, just watching her, contemplating. Those were the times she tried to roll onto her side to relieve her stiff, aching back. She could only achieve a partial angle, and she felt like a pretzel twist, but it helped a little.

For the last day, he relentlessly worked on refurbishing the attic, closing in a small area with drywall, causing her to gag from the smell of paint. She breathed through the pillowcase while the paint dried, trying to filter the oxygen the baby was getting.

He left her alone for a while, then returned with a tray of food. He fed her well, pasta, fresh vegetables, and juice. He’d even bought super-strength multi vitamins to replace her pre-natals.

“I read that you need your vitamins,” he’d told her hours before. “I’m reading a book about pregnancy, so I’ll know how to take care of you.” He gave her a startlingly genuine smile.

She’d kept silent, fear pulsing through her. Now he set the tray down on a small table he’d brought up. It was a ritual, before he removed her gag to let her eat, he would grasp her chin and force her to look at him. Then he’d smile and remove the gag. This time he leaned over and unlocked one of her hands. She didn’t comment on it, for fear he would realize he hadn’t done that before and lock her back up again.

“Today, I have turkey sandwiches for us and carrot sticks. And this is for you, too.” He held up a glass of some unidentifiable beige substance. “It’s a protein drink. You’re supposed to have one of these every day.”

She wouldn’t have eaten anything but for the baby who needed its nutrition. “What is it?”

“Milk, powdered skim milk, brewer’s yeast, vanilla, a raw egg, half an egg shell, honey, and fruit juice.” At her skeptical expression, he pulled a book out from beneath a legal pad. “Right here.” He pointed to a paragraph on page twenty as though to prove his good intentions. It really was a book on pregnancy.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked, nodding toward the book. With a stiff hand, she took the glass he held out for her. He seemed to be waiting for her to drink before he answered, so with closed eyes and a grimace, she gulped it down. Trying not to think about eggshells and the raw egg, she finished the glass and handed it back to him.

He wiped some residue off her top lip. This was one of his semi-lucid days, she thought. He was there, yet acting as though their arrangement were perfectly normal.

“I want to take care of you, sweetheart. We’re going to be a happy little family.”

She cringed when he touched her belly. “H-happy family? You’re going to keep me here after I have the baby?”

He leaned back in the rocker, putting his feet on the bed. “I’m going to keep you here forever, blood of my heart.”

Her stomach turned, threatening to spew up the ghastly drink. “W-what about having the baby? I’ve got to go to a hospital.” It was a hope that if he didn’t kill her before she had the baby he’d have to take her to a hospital when she went into labor.

Carl tapped the cover of the book. “I’ve got more of these to help. I don’t want you going to some sterile, uncaring hospital. You’re going to have that baby right here, with me helping you every step of the way. Lots of women opt to have their babies in their homes. So much more comfortable.”

She tried to hold onto her own sanity. “What if there are complications? Those women have midwifes to help.”

“There won’t be any complications, sweetheart. Look at you, healthy as a horse. I won’t let anything happen to you, or that baby of ours.”

Ours
. The word stabbed at her. “It’s not
your
baby, Carl. It’s Jesse’s.”

Carl smiled wistfully. “Yeah, Jesse’s a good name for the baby, if it’s a boy. We’ll name him Jesse. He’ll be my son, my blood.”

She shivered. This room was going to be her prison. For
forever
. No, Jesse would come for her, any time now. She had to keep hoping.

As though Carl read her thoughts, he pulled out the legal pad and handed it to her. “I think it’s time you wrote a goodbye letter to your husband. Tell him you decided to leave early, that you won’t be coming back.”

She eyed the pad he’d thrust at her. “No.”

He yanked her hair, jerking her head backward. “I will make your life hell if you don’t.”

“You won’t hurt the baby, Carl. He’s your blood,” she lied.

“I won’t hurt my son, but I will make you miserable. I’ll turn the air off, feed you the most disgusting, albeit nutritious, food I can think of, make you lie there naked…”

As he spoke, her resistance hardened. Until she thought of something. Grimacing, she said, “Okay, I’ll write the letter.”

He smiled, handing her the pad and a pencil. “And don’t think about putting anything in that shouldn’t be there.”

She nodded, but her mind was whirling. Carl dictated the letter to her, shoving her hand into action.

“Dear Jesse. I have decided to leave early because I’m very unhappy here with you. Go on. Write it. I want to start my new life in…where were you going?”

“Oklahoma.”

“Okay, in Oklahoma. I’m sorry I couldn’t say goodbye in person. Signed you.”

“What about the baby? I have to say something about him, since I’m legally kidnapping him.”

He scratched his chin. “I guess you should.”

She wrote:

You know how much I want this baby, enough that I got pregnant on purpose, deceived you, to have one. I’m so sorry to be taking him away from you. I promise to take good care of him
.

She’d never told Jesse how the baby had grown on her, how feeling Eli—yes, she’d even started calling him by his name—inside her gave her both heartache and joy. So that sentence, too, would seem odd. “Can I tell him to say goodbye to his family for me? Since I won’t be seeing them again? He would think it was weird if I didn’t.”

He gave it some thought. “All right, but nothing tricky.”

She was taking chances, and she knew it. It was her only hope. She wrote, “Please say goodbye to Helen, Caty, Billy, and your dog, Caramel. I will miss them all.”

Carl looked over what she had written, and she prayed he didn’t know Bumpus’s name. It was the closest she could come to spelling out Carl’s name, and the wrong name might cause Jesse to look at it carefully. If he paid much attention after all the other words before it.

“Oh, no you don’t,” he said, shoving the paper back at her.

Her heart caught in her throat. “W-what?”

“You didn’t sign it.”

She breathed out silently when he folded the paper and stuffed it into an envelope.

“Fill out his address. I’ll head north a bit and mail the thing today.”

Her hands trembled as she wrote Jesse’s name. Would she ever see him again? Would he ever take her hand so casually and not know how warm it made her feel?

Carl leaned back in the rocker, a smug smile on his face. He made her uncomfortable under his silent stare, the way his gaze swept slowly over her, pausing over her distended belly. His eyes were glazing more, as though he wasn’t seeing her but someone else.

“How are you going to explain having a baby all of a sudden, Carl?” she asked, wanting to break through to the small, sane part of his mind.

He cuffed her to the bed again. “Everybody knows I have a sister out in Texas. She hasn’t been out to visit in a long time, but the folks around here remember her as being wild. Well, she got herself into a little fix. Pregnant, by a married man. What a shame. But her big brother, Carl, will help her out. He’ll raise the baby. No one will know about you, of course. But little Jesse here will become my son. Unfortunately, no one will know he really is of my blood.” He grasped her chin hard. “It would have been so much easier last time, Helen.”

A chill crawled down her body. “I am not Helen.”

“You were once the blood of my heart, but you became the bitch of my heart. You knew how much I wanted you, loved you. But you wouldn’t leave Bernie, not even when you were carrying my child.” His voice became gruff. “You were blindly in love with him. And you never told him Jesse was mine.
My son!
Bernie believed he had fathered that boy, and I watched Jesse grow up hating me.”

“I don’t believe you,” Marti whispered, realizing what he was saying.

“Helen, I knew that boy was mine the moment he was born. I was there, visiting the nursery. You never knew, but I held him a few hours after he was born. He was mine. And when you threw his first birthday party, I watched from outside the house, watched Bernie coddle and hug my son. But Jesse’s eyes, his hair, they were mine. You couldn’t deny it was my son.” Carl’s voice rose. “I won’t let you deny that now.”

She reeled from his words. Helen had told her she’d made mistakes, learned from them.
Before Jesse was born
. Marti conjured up Jesse’s image for the thousandth time that hour and compared it to Carl’s features. There were similarities.

Carl smiled, as if seeing her putting it together. “But we have a second chance, Helen. We have a new baby. This boy will grow up knowing who his father is. We can have that happy family together. You denied me twice, but you won’t deny me now. I have wanted you for so long, lived for you, longed for you.” He fisted his hand at his stomach. “Every time I saw Jesse, it killed me right here. But you ignored me, wouldn’t even take my calls. Even after Bernie died, you wouldn’t come to me. I did it for you, because I knew he couldn’t make you happy like I could. But you still wouldn’t come to me.”

A shard of fear sliced through her.
Did it
. “Y-you killed Jesse’s father?”

Carl shot to his feet, slapping her across the cheek as he rose. “
I’m
Jesse’s father!”

The sharp sting brought tears to her eyes. “
I’m
not Helen! I’m Jesse’s wife, and this is Jesse’s baby!”

Carl turned away and started the CD again, cranking it louder than before. She continued to cry, for everything she’d just heard, for what it all meant. The words to the ballad, “All Dead, All Dead” pounded through her mind.

Hope drained away. Jesse thought she was gone and probably hated her. She wanted to die then, but there was Eli to think of. What kind of life would he have? How would Jesse have turned out under Carl’s parentage?

She shook her head, trying not to think about that. Eli must live, that was all she knew. He might live a normal life, out with other people, going to school. Maybe Jesse would see him one day, and maybe he would know, somehow, that it was his son. Would Carl really name him Jesse? Would she still be up here in this attic, a prisoner of darkness? Or would she be insane by then? Probably, unless Carl let her see Eli a lot. Then she would have a reason to stay sane.

Over the next many hours, perhaps through a long night, she thought about what Carl was insinuating. What he believed. He and Helen had had an affair, and she got pregnant with Carl’s child. Helen. The woman she believed in, the woman who had helped Marti believe in herself.

Marti grimaced as another cramp seized her insides. These were not the Braxton-Hicks contractions she had been feeling for the last week or so. This pain she attributed to something more emotional, more heartbreaking. She felt betrayed, let down. Helen, the woman she thought of as a mother, had cheated on the man she professed to love. How could Marti have been so stupid to start believing she could change?

The sound of the deadbolt turning pulled her from her agonized thoughts. Carl walked through the doorway he’d fashioned in front of the trap door entrance. He looked around with a smile at the eight-foot-by-eight-foot room, painted a cheery pink. His eyes were glazed again, far from lucid.

“I should be done with the bathroom tonight, Helen. Won’t that make you happy?”

She glanced at the bedpan. Happiness was relative. “Yes, that will be nice,” she said carefully.

Inciting Carl’s anger was far too easy. And painful, as her cheek could attest many times. He now allowed her hands to remain free. The gag was gone, too, for a day’s worth of hours now. With the room sealed and soundproofed, there was no need for it. She was biding her time until he finally unchained her legs and let her roam while he was gone. Then she would find a way out of this hellhole.

“You’ll be able to wash yourself by tomorrow. Although I must admit, I enjoyed washing your hair… and your body.”

She tried to blank out those times when he gave her a sponge bath. Twice now, and he took his time, talking about how they would make love when she wasn’t fat anymore. Thank God her size repulsed him. Memories of Jesse telling her how beautiful she was got her through those moments, through all of them.

It seemed like months since she’d seen him, and they hadn’t been on good terms for a week before that. She estimated that it had probably been a day or so since he’d received that letter. He’d probably ripped it up, so furious at her for taking away his son he’d missed her clues.

Her well of hope was drying up. Soon, everyone in Chattaloo would stop thinking about her. They’d forget about her. She pushed away the fear that threatened to seize her.