Chapter Eighteen

“I’m sorry,” I said to Zane after he stripped down to his undershirt and boxers and handed me a cup of tea. “It’s been a strange night.”

“It’s been a long day for both of us,” he said, sitting next to me on the bed. He ran a hand through my hair. Smiled. Kissed my mouth. He tasted salty, boozy from the beer.

I sipped the weak tea. The warmth of it was comforting, though, as I handed Zane the cup and closed my eyes.

He set it on the nightstand and took my hand. “Do you feel like talking?”

Balls of hail smacked the window. I felt a chill, shivered, and shook my head. “I don’t know how to explain anything without sounding foolish.”

“It’s not foolish,” Zane said. “It’ll take time for the nightmares to go away.”

I struggled to open my heavy eyes. “I thought moving would solve everything. But I can’t stop thinking about my father. I see him…everywhere.”

“It’ll pass,” he said, pausing. “There’s something I have to tell you, David. I’m also trying to cope with a few things myself. I’m still waking up in the middle of the night, scared and worried about you.” A pause. “But I think moving into a new home will help us get through the past.”

I nodded, weakly. “Change isn’t easy.”

“It never is. But moving into this new neighborhood and environment will help change our perspective.” He held my hand, squeezed it. “We’ve been through more than most people,” he said. “It’s going to take time to move on, but we will. We’ll do it together.”

I slipped my fingers through his. “I can’t stop thinking about that incident six months ago. My gallery. Madame Petri and Mr. and Mrs. Alders. They’re all back. I saw them tonight. I felt something in the house with me. I heard footsteps and somebody whispering.” I didn’t mention the incident with the young man at the bar this evening. I shuddered at the ghastly image of seeing him swinging from the living room fan. Eyes white, rolled skyward, bluish skin around the neck. And that odd smell: yeasty…burning. The air…ice cream cold.

Zane leaned down and kissed my forehead. “Do you want to see Dr. Rolland again?”

I shook my head at the name of my mental health counselor. I recalled the small, nondescript room we sat in for a month, a tiny window overlooking a quiet pedestrian-busy street. The rosy smell of the flowers Dr. Rolland kept on his immaculate desk, yellow spring tulips as bright as the light of the sun slipping into the room, warming my face.

His monotone voice, like an English professor I had in college, pulled me into a hypnotizing daze. The slow, steady rhythm of his voice, the way he spoke was relaxing, asking questions, reminding me to “Quiet your mind. Stay calm. Breathe deeply.”

Ignore the voices. Don’t let them in.

David!

His thick wire-rimmed glasses reminded me of my father when I spoke about that time in my past, a violent, tortured childhood. The time I’d awaken to a bed drenched with urine and sweat. Another nightmare: hearing a door shutting, and raised voices, my mother agitated, pleading like a small, scared child.

It was the smell of those aromatic flowers in the tall white vase on his desk I recalled the most, like a good Emily Dickinson poem, or Van Gogh portrait. Like the heat on my face when my father stood over my bed, mute, glaring at me in the dark. The weight of his presence was jarring, overpowering. I fingered through the catalogue of names in my mind, those in my dreams, feeling squirrely and edgy with time. My father, my mother, and my aunts and uncles who couldn’t save me. Me: alone…lonely. Frightened…lost.

“It wasn’t that long ago,” I said aloud, mostly to myself. “I don’t know if I want to go back.”

“But Dr. Rolland helped you work through your difficult times, and the nightmares.” Silence. A pause. Then, “Just think about it. ”

I closed my eyes to the thin, gaunt face of Dr. Rolland, the brown, mousy beard he kept trimmed and neat. His handshake when he greeted me was firm and welcoming. Hard. Dry. Not like mine, always damp, unstable. Dr. Rolland was a good listener. Caring, like my mother. When he smiled, it made me feel strangely safe. Protected from the shambling ghosts of my past.

I felt less anxious when I visited and talked to him twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays. He brewed me tea, oolong and jasmine green. “Anything you talk about here doesn’t leave this room.”

Something about client confidentiality, he said. I believed him. Felt reassured.

Until I managed to fuck myself and ruin everything when I started talking about suicide.

I didn’t talk to Zane about what I shared with Dr. Rolland, but after that horrible period with my gallery going up in flames and the deaths of Madame Petri and Mr. and Mrs. Alder, my life felt hopeless. I couldn’t eat for weeks. My sleeping habits had changed dramatically; I’d awaken, alone, sitting in front of the TV at night, thinking of killing the life I had shared with the only guy I really cared about. I thought it was the end of the road. My happiness was buried in the past. I didn’t want to go through life feeling that way. Being visited by my dead father. No!

I felt partially responsible and guilty for Mr. and Mrs. Alders’ deaths too. Their murder-suicide was not their fault. Not really. I didn’t disclose what I had seen at the Alders’ residence that night with Dr. Rolland.

During our sessions, I didn’t disclose Zane’s investigation and everything that had transpired when Zane and I went to the Alders’ residence after I received the cryptic call from Cheryl. I never compromised Zane’s future as a police officer. But somewhere in the conversation between Dr. Rolland and me, I made things worse when I started talking about killing myself. He told me whenever somebody was in danger he had to report it to the police.

I asked him not to. I told him I was all talk and no action. I only wanted him to hear my side of the story. He wrote everything I said in his notebook anyway. Made me feel uneasy. That he’d report everything I said.

To keep it safe and the authorities out of my business, I kept my mouth shut about the strange goings-on at Madame Petri’s psychic shop, where the nightmare began. During our month-long talks, Dr. Rolland asked me how long I had been thinking about suicide. I played naïve.

All I could think about was the image of the elderly man in the painting at Madame Petri’s Spiritual Crossings, one of the other reasons for seeing Dr. Rolland in the first place, besides the persisting nightmares.

The man I befriended during one of my readings with Madame Petri, the man who turned out to be the embodiment of my father, I couldn’t explain what I saw, heard, or felt because I didn’t understand how my father could have been resurrected, after all of these years, even if I did believe in the afterlife. Of course, I thought Madame Petri had summoned my father through her psychic readings, her white crystal ball. But after that reading, before I ran out of the shop into the rain-swept night, it was the voice of the dead, my father’s voice, which had crept into the following weeks and months of my life. Whatever Madame Petri had seen in her crystal ball had made me a believer. Death and the afterlife had been etched into the dark map of my brain.

Looking back, if I had confided in Dr. Rolland about any of this, he would have thought I was certifiable; he’d have no choice but to refer me to the mental ward at the local hospital. So I stayed on script, talking about the main reason for returning to therapy: losing my art gallery, not sleeping at night, having recurring nightmares. All of it was true.

I remembered the month of therapy when Dr. Rolland asked me how I felt about art and what it meant to me. I had talked minimally during our sessions about my passion for art and maintaining a small local business, oftentimes struggling to make ends meet. I didn’t want to rehash those dreadful moments. Seeing Madame Petri’s face, or my father’s, or Mr. and Mrs. Alders’ transported me back to those dark places. After everything Zane and I had been through in the last five months, and waking up drenched in sweat from the nightmares, I told Dr. Rolland I didn’t want any more to do with the art world.

He thought a fresh start would mark “a new beginning” for both Zane and me.

I agreed. But I said, “The past has a way of creeping back into our lives.”

Zane’s deep, husky voice shook me from my musings. I looked up at him staring at me with a defiant expression. “It’ll take time,” he said again, squeezing me in his strong arms. I buried my face in his chest, the heavy scent of sweat and body odor from the long day’s work clinging to my nostrils.

He kissed the top of my head and stood. “I need a shower,” he announced, as if he had read my thoughts.

I wasn’t complaining; in fact, I liked the scent of Zane: that stimulating, sharp smell of dedication, hard work, and testosterone-driven man. “Are you going to be all right for a little while?” he asked.

I nodded, sat back in the pillows.

When he disappeared into the bathroom and shut the door behind him, my gaze drifted to the open window. The sound of the wind wailed in the tops of trees in the backyard. Branches scraped the sides of the house like fingers scraping a blackboard.

My eyes were heavy and tired and I started to drift off, thinking about the first day Zane and I moved into the new house.

I remembered the stark stillness, how quiet the entire white clapboard house was for the first five months. Neighbors were close, but everyone kept to themselves. Said hi in passing. Minimal connection. No intrusion. It was fine with me.

Then something shook me from my daydream. Startled, I opened my eyes. Looked around the room. My heart pounded, pulsing hard. As if startled by a noise.

I sat up in bed, my voice catching in my throat, ear cocked to the door. The bedroom door was half closed. The black gap of darkness beyond the room beckoned my full attention.

I stared at the slit in the doorway, the rush of blood pulsing in my head like a crash of waves. Turning to the closed bathroom door, I had the urge to call out to Zane.

I’m being ridiculous. There’s nobody in the house but us.

There was no body hanging from the fan in the living room, or yellow eyes glowing in the dark.

I listened, concentrated harder.

Dead silence.

Too quiet, not even the sound of the neighbor’s dog barking.

The wind had picked up, I noticed, thrashing at the windows. Like an intruder climbing across the roof, I waited. The billowing wind, or was it a scream?

The shower was still running, and I could hear Zane singing out of tune. Then I heard a noise out in the hall, the floorboards groaning at the top of the stairs. I tensed, my damp hands gripping the comforter in fistfuls.

Another floorboard moaned in the room, close by. I looked to the closed closet door across the room. Glanced over the edge of the bed at the floor, and up at the bank of windows.

Tense, I threw the comforter off me and got out of bed, scrambling to the floor and curling up in the corner. I waited a few seconds. Poked my head up over the side of the bed, and stared across the orange-lit room to the bedroom door.

My heart was beating wildly, my thoughts frazzled.

There was a strange buzzing in the air, like raw electricity. My skin prickled from the nervous energy emitting from the dark thoughts tumbling around in my head. It was the same feeling that I had experienced downstairs, seeing the young man hanging from the living room fan.

Eyes shined brightly in the shadows like a cat’s, and I shivered. The map of my skin was peppered with goose bumps.

I heard the shower turn off. Zane stopped singing. I looked to the closed bathroom door, wanted to scream. I waited.

No movement beyond the bedroom.

Then something beneath the bed skittered across the hardwood floor.

I was too scared to scream. What came out was muffled, a soft puff of air like someone had stuffed a handkerchief in my mouth to strangle my voice.

I pulled my knees to my chest and clenched my eyes closed.

There was a single knock on the bedroom door: heavy, foreboding, looming threat.

I gasped, not loud enough for Zane to come running out of the bathroom.

I shouldn’t have opened my eyes.

A burnt, leathery hand crept around the doorframe, its sharp nails tapping against the side of the door. A pale face appeared, staring at me from the disturbing darkness; its feline yellow eyes were blinking.

It was Madame Petri’s face gawking, her red blood lips curling into a sneer. Her face was burned beyond recognition, but those eyes! Flesh hung on her face like melted wax. She had black holes where her eyes used to be, before the fire. Before she unearthed my dead father’s soul from the painting.

Her mouth hung open, jawless.

I shook my head. Hot tears filled my eyes. “You’re not real. This is all a dream.”

It whispered my name. “David.”

I shook my head violently, closed my eyes.

I heard the bedroom door close, floorboards whine, and a cold draft slither through the room, stabbing me. “You’re not real,” I said. “You’re not real.”

Something moved next to me under the bed, rattling, hissing.

I felt my face flush, tingle. My throat tightened. “Leave me alone,” I said. “You’re not real.”

The temperature in the room was cold, below zero. I wrapped my arms around myself, shivered. My jaw trembled, teeth chattered.

Something was breathing next to me: decaying smells wafted like gaseous, poisonous vapors.

My stomach churned. I wanted to vomit. I smelled smoke. Singed flesh. I heard people screaming. I pressed my hands over my ears, blocking out what I could of the horrible sounds.

It moved slowly, slithering past me, skittering up the wall behind me. Above me, sharp claws scraped the pane of glass. A cold wind blew into the room.

Finally, something in my throat was released, and I screamed.

The door to the bathroom slammed open, and Zane ran into the room. I could hear him breathing hard, panting, and yelling my name. He found me on the floor, hunched against the winter wind blowing at my back. I was rocking back and forth, making gibberish, nonsense sounds.

He knelt beside me, reached for me with cold, damp hands. Hugged me. “I’m here. It’ll be all right.”

An empty promise I knew he wouldn’t be able to keep.