The Waiting: A Supernatural Thriller (32 page)

Evan laughed, a choked sound that he drowned with more wine.

“That was when the fear hadn’t fully taken over yet, when part of me believed everything would still work out all right. That’s sometimes the worst and best quality people possess, you know? To hope in the darkest times. Sometimes it pays off and faith is redeemed, and others—”

Evan swallowed
. A lump was forming in his throat, and no matter how many gulps of wine he took, it wouldn’t move. He knew what it was, and knew the only way to make it go away would be to keep talking.

“Then one day, I knew
. I knew she wasn’t going to get better. She’d had another round of chemo two days prior, and it was painful to look at her, to see how much less she’d become. She told me she hurt and she couldn’t take much more, and I—here’s the selfishness again—I told her she couldn’t quit, not on me and not on Shaun.”

Evan tipped the last of his wine down his throat.

“She told me to go to her bag, that there was something in there she wanted. She was too weak to get out of bed on her own. When I reached inside, there was a bottle of pain pills one of the doctors had prescribed for her when she was still able to be at home. It was almost full, and I remember how heavy that bottle felt, so heavy. She told me it was too much and she didn’t want to suffer anymore. She asked me to help her, to count out a dozen or so into her hand and then get her some water. She told me to pull the bag close to the bed, so it would look like she’d reached down and got them herself after I left.”

A
vein of tears ran down the right side of his face, and he wiped it absently.

“I told her no. I walked out of the room
, and she never brought it up again. I hated her at that moment, for asking me to do it, for getting sick in the first place. But you know what?”

Evan turned halfway toward Selena
, who was perched on the edge of the couch, her hands clasped in front of her mouth, her eyes shining.

“I hated myself more than anyt
hing, for not being able to save her. And then when I couldn’t—for not being man enough to ease my wife’s pain, for letting her suffer.”

Evan’s
jaw trembled, and he knew, if he let them, his teeth would chatter, for he was very cold at that moment—
so
cold. He wiped again at his face and glanced at Selena, who had a hand pressed to her mouth, her fingers long and white.

“So I carry that
, and I get scared whenever someone else comes close. I want to go back and change things, change everything that’s happened, for Shaun and for Elle, for me, and when I realize I can’t, it’s just too much.”

This was as close as he could come to telling her about the clock and his dashed hopes. He turned back to the sunset, only a red smudge on the western horizon now, fading to pink and dark blue where the bruise of night began in the sky.

“I wonder if something in my mind broke a long time ago, if I’ve been crazy for a while, because sometimes it feels like the moorings are coming loose up here.”

Evan tapped his skull. He was
as used and empty as a paper cup in a gutter. Any relief he might’ve had at speaking about Elle’s last request was overshadowed by the guilt of saying it out loud. It was like being condemned in front of a judge and jury.

He
heard Selena rise from the sofa and begin to move across the living room toward the front door. He grimaced and waited for the sound of the knob being turned, but it didn’t come. Instead her hands gently gripped his sides, guided him around to face her. Her eyes gazed up into his, and she touched his face, traced the line of tears, and then leaned in close.

Their lips met
, and heat bloomed within him. First in his stomach, and then lower. Selena moved closer to him, ran a hand down his neck, across his chest, around to his back. Evan wrapped his arms around her, drawing her into the heat between them as her tongue darted into his mouth. She pulled him close, and he let out a small moan as her stomach brushed his growing erection. He tried to draw away then, embarrassed, but she pulled him even closer, ground his bulge against her. Their kiss broke, and she looked at him.

“Take me to your room, Evan.”

His heart did a stutter step, but he nodded and took her hand, leading her across the living room and down the hall. He couldn’t help but glance into Shaun’s room, and saw his sleeping face as they turned to the left. A truckload of shame fell on his shoulders. How could he do this across the hall from his son, whom he’d made with Elle, who was watching now? He could feel her eyes on him as Selena shut the door and came to him, finding his lips with hers in the twilit room.

Evan moved backward until his legs met the bed
. He sat on it and momentarily parted from Selena before she straddled him, climbing onto his lap. She guided his shaking hands beneath the bottom of her blouse, onto the warm, smooth skin of her stomach. He wanted to tear her shirt off, to hear the buttons pop free as he exposed her, but he stopped, a sick ball of guilt burning in his stomach. It churned there, with thoughts of Elle in the same position as Selena so many times before. How she’d come to him in the shower sometimes, nude and smiling, washing him off before kneeling before him. The lace she’d worn on their first night together, and how he hadn’t lasted more than a few seconds. But he’d recuperated quickly, and she’d cried his name over and over again until they were both breathless.

Selena reached down between them and rubbed him through his jeans, but he was already softening. She kissed him again
, but he sat back, withdrawing his hands from beneath her shirt.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, her eyes wide in the low light
, her pupils huge with arousal.

“I can’t,” Evan said, not believing he’d s
poken the words. “I want to, but I can’t, not now.”

S
he tried to read his expression in the falling dark—he assumed to see if he was bluffing, if there was something else there. She slowly slid off him, the sweetness of her heat leaving him, a pang of regret taking its place. He wanted to know her warmth, to slide into it, to bury his face in her cherry-blossom hair and feel himself release inside her.

Evan blinked, feeling himself rise again, desire coming over him in a new wave.
He reached out and held her hand.

“I’m sorry, it’s not that I don’t want you
. I do, very, very much. But it’s still too soon. Do you understand?”

Selena let a long breath out and nodded. “Yes, of course I do.” She smoothed out her blouse and ran a quick hand through her hair. “I suppose I should g
o, it’s getting late.”

“Stay with me,”
he said, holding on to her hand a little tighter. “Stay here tonight.”

He waited for her to pull away or shake her head
, but she did neither.

“Okay.”

Evan guided her around to the other side of the bed, and she lay down on top of the blankets. He did the same, and after a bit of arranging, she scooted close to him, tucking her head against his chest, hugging his stomach with one arm. He put his hand on her waist and pulled her nearer. She sighed, and he could feel her breath, warm through his T-shirt.

The fatigue he’d battled all day collapsed on him at once, a gutte
d building falling in, piling in with the undeniable promise of rest. He tried to say good night but drifted off before he could form the words.

~

Evan awoke sometime in the night, his eyes coming open like shutters thrown wide. He’d been dreaming of something—darkness so black it was solid. He’d tried to walk through it and felt things touching him, quick, intimate caresses that chilled and made him sick with fear. That’s when he’d realized the darkness was alive and nothing but its cold embrace, like a long-dead lover, was there.

He
blinked and rolled over, suddenly afraid that Selena would be gone, but she wasn’t. She lay on her back beside him, breathing softly. He moved closer to her form, feeling her warmth again, and reached out, searching for her hand in the darkness. He found it resting on her stomach and slid his palm into hers, remembering how he would do the same thing with Elle on nights when sleep eluded him. The comfort of holding her hand, even while she slept, helped send him back into a serene rest. Selena clasped his hand tighter, and he scooted closer to her, the smell of her perfume not as vivid as before but still there, somehow even more enticing as it mellowed. Another scent met his nostrils, and Evan opened his eyes, sleep leaving him fully.

Decay.

There was no mistaking the stink. It was the same as the smell from the closet, as heavy and cloying as an open grave. He raised his head a few inches off his pillow and looked at Selena’s profile, her lips parted, her eyelashes long against the top of her cheeks. Evan sat up a little more, and Selena shifted, her elbow bumping his shoulder.

His eyes traveled up and saw
that both her arms were above her head, hands splayed out on her pillow.

T
he hand he held squeezed once. Evan tried to rip his arm back, but the fingers gripped him tighter as he opened his mouth to cry out. His eyes shot to the hand holding his, the rotting flesh almost black in the dim starlight that shone through the window, the arm attached to it snaking into the darkness beside the bed.

“
Uhh!” he grunted, and managed to break his hand free.

The other hand slid away
, and a quiet scuffling sound came from the other side of the bed. A shape rose and stood over them, hunched and broken, its face turned toward him, its outline reminiscent of something ancient, curled in on itself by time. The figure limped across the room, not thin and ephemeral but solid and real. With a turn of its stunted head, it went through the open door toward Shaun’s room.

“No! No!”

Evan sprang from the bed, his yells and the commotion waking Selena.

“What?”

He flicked on the light, drawing back a fist, ready to throw it.

The hall
was empty.

Shaun’s door
was in the same position as earlier, or so it looked. Evan rushed into the room, his fist still held high. The light flooded the space enough for Evan to see it was empty except for the boy and his bed. He slept on, not moving but for the rise and fall of his chest.

“Evan, what’s going on?”

He turned. Selena was standing in the hallway, her hair sticking out in several places, her eyes bleary.

“I, I tho
ught I saw something, someone.”

“
You saw someone? In the house?”

“Yeah, it was there in the room
. It held my hand.” The memory of the thing’s grip made him convulse, and he rubbed his palm on his pants leg.

“Held your hand? Evan, you’re not making sense.”

“It was there, right there,” he said, moving past her and into the hall. He pointed toward the bed, looking at the floor, hoping for a telltale sign of the thing’s passage. “I went to hold your hand, and it wasn’t yours. It was something else. It ...”

His dropped
his head as Selena came closer.

“I think you may have been dreaming,” she said,
touching his shoulder.

“I wasn’t dreaming, I was awake
. I know I was awake.”

“Are you sure? I’ve had a few clients with night terrors that they swe
ar are as real as waking life.”

“This wasn’t a night terror,” Evan said, shrugging off her hand.

He moved into the hallway again and stood, sniffing the air. A faint hint of rot lingered.

“Do you smell that?”

“Smell what?”

“That smell
. It’s like something rotten, spoiled meat. Here, come here.”

He motioned her into the hall,
then pulled her closer to the living room. “Do you smell it?”

Selena raised her face and in
haled a few times. She frowned.

“No, I don’t. All I
smell is last night’s dinner.”

Evan closed his eyes, opened them
, and walked to the living room. He looked at the dark lake, no light on its surface yet, only a black cloth beyond the trees.

“Let me ask you this,” Selena said
, moving to the couch. “Was I the first one you told about your wife, what she asked you to do?”

Evan didn’t answer for a long time
, and then finally said, “Yes.”

“Do you know what kind of stress comes with a burden like that? Keeping it all inside, letting it whittle away at you?”

He didn’t say anything, just let her talk.

“
Releasing something like that can cause stress too, you know. It’s like pulling out a knife that’s been keeping a wound from bleeding. When you do, there’s trauma.”

“Y
ou know, I’d like to believe that, I really would.” His voice sounded strange, far away, not his own. “I want to think stress, the past, is what’s doing this, but I’m not sure, and that’s the worst part. Not being sure is worse than anything else. You’re on a high wire knowing you’re going to fall, but not which way.”