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Amara daubed a canvas bicep with a combination of diluted burnt umber and stood back. The ambient light of the sun had softened under thick, blue-gray clouds, but the bright overhead lights still shone like a clear summer sky.
Too dark. The other men have darker complexions, but he’s pale, much paler. And almost feminine.
She mixed raw sienna, yellow ochre, white, and a hint of blue until the color looked right. She brushed his oval face with gentle strokes, mixed a slightly darker hue, and added dimension and depth to the cheekbones, the temples, and the neck. When she stepped back to eye her work from a distance, she was stunned to see what she hadn’t registered as she’d hovered near her canvas, hypnotized by the intense pull of her work.
She’d painted her husband’s killer.
Her breath shook and quickened. She leaned with her head and arms on her worktable until the hyperventilation slowed. She waited for the voices to ridicule her, telling her she knew him, of course. How else had Thom died? She must have hired him in an alternate state, while the Amara part of her was a suppressed persona. How much of a stretch was the idea of dual personality if she heard voices? But alas, for once, they were silent.
How pathetic am I? They aren’t here, and I’m filling in their gaps by chastising myself and accusing myself of things I didn’t do! Her eyes met the unmoving ones of the young man on the canvas.
Her lip curled up in horror at her behavior. How long until this constant barrage of accusations and inescapable taunting drove her to a padded cell? How long until her mind, made more fragile daily by the nonstop harping and repetitive mockery, snapped and drove her into the streets babbling like a madwoman?
Some days it seemed her breaking point hovered only moments away. The closer that moment came, though, it seemed the resolution within her grew, drove it out, like an exorcist banishing her madness like a demon. That strength was the reason she hadn’t sought professional help. She prayed daily to gods she didn’t believe in that her faith in her staying power was not unfounded.
Turning her attention back to her work, Amara scrutinized the faces. Three pairs of eyes, yet to be tinted, stared back. The painting—a large, thirty-six-inch square canvas—looked like the cover of a reverse harem novel. Still, once she envisaged a straight, black head of hair and robins-egg blue irises on the young man set farthest back in the group, the likeness was undeniable.
If he’s Thom’s killer, who are the other men?
She stepped away from the canvas. For once, she wished she didn’t paint such lifelike images. The muscular men in her work looked ready to move and grow, to step from the tautly stretched cloth into her studio and cross the room, their arms outstretched as if to drag her into a passionate hell.
Stop!
Dropping her palette and brush onto the tarp, she raced to the sink on the far wall, yanked the knob, and splashed her face with icy cold water. The shock of the cold helped, but her heart galloped until she saw stars. She gripped the edge of the sink with white knuckles until it steadied.
A white towel lay on her work desk, and as she picked it up to dry her dripping face, she uncovered a pair of scissors, one she’d recently bought to cut away excess canvas from the frame. She dropped the towel on the floor absently and lifted the weighty scissors. She opened the blades and eyed the canvas. Hours of work stared back at her, and she fought the urge to tear the painting from its frame. With a sob, the sharp blades slipped out of her hand, slicing her left forearm as it fell. The cut burned like acid as it left a thin line of ruby liquid in its wake before clattering on the tile floor.
She lifted her head from the blood. Her eyes fell on the faces of the three men on the canvas. A cog in the wheel of her mind clicked, and her breath caught in her throat. For a fraction of a second, she was certain that was the answer. They were real, and they were somehow...
Somehow what? Invisible and able to get into my head? That makes no sense!
It didn’t make sense, but it felt more accurate than any other notion she’d kicked around for the past twenty years. She didn’t know who had killed Thom, but it wasn’t her. Either there were invisible people—killers—prying into her head and planting thoughts, or she was dealing with a god-awful level of mental health problems and needed serious help. But which was it? Or if there was an option she hadn’t considered?
She stood, grasped the towel from where she’d carelessly dropped it on the floor, and wrapped her injury. Blood soaked through the fabric and tinged her fingers. She stood up, her back straight and resolute, and set off to find the first aid kit and Thom’s book on self-hypnosis.
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MAYSUN HAD KILLED DURING her life as the Balance, but she’d never lived through her victims’ experience after the glaze of death covered their eyes. Throughout her time as the Balance, the aspects of creation and death remained a mystery. Now and then she suspected she saw a divine revelation pass over her victim’s faces as the final exhale passed their lips. Other times, death came without incident, like sleep.
It was almost with a sense of scientific discovery that Maysun experienced her own death. Her body lay in the porcelain tub, peaceful and dreamlike, in its cooling bath of crimson water. She saw without eyes, but not without sensation. It was almost the opposite of life as the Balance: peace and freedom enveloped her, and joy. The sense of being one with the earth and all the tenderness of its creators.
Creators?
Her point of view pivoted until she faced upward and traveled past her ceiling, her roof, and toward the sun. Her spirit quickened, soaring beyond the clouds, shuttling outside space and time and through a brilliant tunnel.
In life, she’d believed she’d fly beyond the stars when her soul abandoned her corpse, but in death, she torpedoed south and west, drawing close to the coast of the United States, then south, toward Puerto Rico. The blue-gray Atlantic hurtled past, white breakers on a foamy ocean. Thick cumulonimbus clouds hovered over her, gray billows gathering, preparing for a storm.
They were in the middle of nowhere, but Maysun saw where she was headed. The Bermuda Triangle.
A peculiar outcropping of land caught Maysun by surprise; a small tropical island with tall, green trees and lush foliage surrounded by a ring of white sand and covered by mist. Twin volcanic peaks protruded over the hazy white film. A sense of serenity enveloped her as she floated toward the mountains and through the clouds. She sensed the moisture and warmth, but without a body, she discerned them without physical touch.
She traveled through the mists and onto the sandy beach, and then she discovered legs stretching below her as she gently touched ground on the powdery sand. Her body had been restored, but by what power, she didn’t know. The air smelled salty and lush, the sun pleasantly hot and bright.
Thick foliage and palm trees in front of her, an infinite ocean behind, Maysun stood on the sunny beach, uncertain how to continue. Sunny beach? What happened to the pending storm? Was her eternity to be confined to a tropical island alone? The sound of the ocean crashing on the shore behind her and the tropical breeze blowing through the trees would not be bad, she supposed, if Amara would be all right.
A childlike giggle emerged from behind the dense bush. Maysun’s brow rose, and she swiveled her head in search of the source.
What was that?
The question was silly. She knew what it was, but not how it had gotten to this extraordinary place. Why would a child be hiding in the bushes on a desolate island with a dead woman on it?
She stepped forward and discovered her light, ethereal body—there, but not whole. As if it was waiting for a divine word before floating away into the atmosphere to eternal rest at one with the universe.
She approached the wall of flora that began where the sandy beach ended. When she brushed the leaves aside, she was surprised to find the sharp-looking edges of the palm plants and tropical shrubs were softer than ordinary and moved under the slightest touch.
Instead of having to tackle her way through a deep jungle, after covering perhaps twenty feet of thick brush, Maysun found herself in a cleared space of grass with the sun beaming down. On either side of her, a level area of grass cut a trail that curved around a skyscraping, lush, green wall encircling the island as far as her eye could see. Before her, a burning sword stood, its tip pointed upward. Though she stood several feet away, its searing heat reached her, and she heard the crackle of the flames covering it from pommel to point. She smelled burning sulfur.
Another giggle erupted, this time from her right. She turned, and a small, chubby body emerged from behind a fat, green leaf. Tiny wings—surely incapable of flight—stemmed from its back. Rosy cheeks bulged on either side of its wide, childlike grin.
“This is what I’m supposed to look like, right?” it asked. It was an androgynous sound, like a six-year-old boy or girl, though the body appeared scarcely out of infancy. Maysun’s mouth opened, but no words came out.
A cherub? They exist? She would have guessed the universe held no surprises after living for centuries as the Balance, but this was most unexpected.
“Or maybe you’d prefer this?” The cherubic shape burst into flames that swelled to a height of around eight feet. A cloaked being—equally androgynous—emerged from the conflagration, clothed in a brilliant white robe. Wide, white, feathery wings spread from where the useless stumps had been. “This is how most folks nowadays think of me.”
Words escaped her. None of this was as she’d planned when she’d taken her life. The mystery of death was more perplexing than she’d ever imagined. She said the only word that came to mind.
“Hello.”
The angel smiled, and the action seemed practiced. The facade of humanity on the serene face chilled her. This being had a depth of awareness that Maysun had never known, even as the Balance.
“Good morning, Maysun,” it said. “We’ve been waiting for you.” Learning that they expected her did not comfort her—if anything, her unease grew.
The angel swept its hand at the fiery sword as if unveiling a work of art behind a curtain. The enormous weapon moved at their command like a boulder rolling to the right with silent, laborious movement. Beyond where the hilt had been, an arbor of greenery in the towering wall arched over an entrance to the world beyond.
“Go ahead,” it said. “This is what you came for, is it not?”
She willed her body to move forward. Do it for your daughter. Do it for her!
As she trod through the archway, she wondered if it was too late to pray.
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IF THERE WAS ONE PERSONAL quality Amara prided herself in, it was her outstanding memory. It didn’t matter if it was a phone number or the shade of green on a Douglas fir. Her memory held it as firmly as a photograph. Now, with the steps on self-hypnosis from Thom’s book committed to memory, she set the book down on the oak coffee table. She relaxed on the suede burgundy couch and stretched out, her head lifted gently by the pillow. After taking a moment to test her position, she sat up, put a pillow behind her knees as well, and settled back down. Better.
She’d read that it could take weeks before self-hypnosis became easy, and she hoped it wasn’t true in her case. Although the voices had been absent for a few hours, it was only a matter of time before they came back. They always came back. And once they did, she’d have a hard time finding a peaceful moment to try this.
Don’t worry about that. Just try it. What’ve you got to lose?
The answer, of course, was nothing. She’d already lost her mind.
She focused on her breathing, not forcing herself to relax, merely allowing it to happen naturally. This step was relatively simple without the voices present to nag and berate her. A residual tension lingered, fear that they’d be back, but she pushed the fear to the back of her mind and told it to shut up.
Once she relaxed, she counted backward from 100, imagining that she sank farther into a tranquil state with each number. Thoughts tried to interrupt, but these were everyday thoughts, easy to ignore and bat away like butterflies, not invasive voices. She imagined her living room was the sea, and her couch was a soft raft as she reclined, afloat in a lazy sun.
In minutes, she wasn’t sure if she was hypnotized, but she felt more relaxed than she had in months—perhaps years.
Instead of trying to discover the source of her voices, an experience she suspected might be too traumatic in her first try at hypnosis, she’d decided she’d try to expose the basis for her painting. Were they classmates, movie stars, attractive men she’d seen in the grocery store? How had these faces eluded her typically flawless memory?
Faces reappeared with vibrant color and equally vivid emotions. She’d seen them all in the twilight before slumber, vivid shadows changing to corporeal forms emerging before she fell asleep and vanished before dawn.
Lean features, juniper green eyes, long, dark hair. A face that would look handsome, if not so filled with fury. Angelo.
Pale skin, black hair, wide turquoise eyes, thin lips. Prominent cheekbones that showed the man the boy might soon become. Perry. His name was Perry.
And last, the foremost figure in her work. The one with the broadest shoulders, the tannest skin. Wavy, black hair, deep brown eyes.
“David.”
Amara jerked up, jolted from her trance by the sound of the thought spoken aloud by an all-too-familiar voice with that telltale accent.
They were there. The men from her painting. The faces from her mind, plus one, a red-headed stranger she hadn’t envisioned before. Why? Who was he? Why did the others feel so familiar when he was a stranger? Had she made a new one up by hypnotizing herself?
Her hypnotic state fell away as her heart set off at a gallop, but she wondered if this wasn’t an alternate state brought on by a botched effort at hypnotizing her deranged mind. The tremors which shook her body threatened to disable her. She pulled herself into a ball like a pill bug, curling into a corner of the couch as if she might back into a hollow behind the pillow.
I’ve done it. I’ve made them real. I can see those hallucinations! Oh, God, I should’ve left it well enough alone. Why’d I do this? What was I thinking?
“You’re—you’re not real.”
David smiled, his teeth large and white, set into a seductive mouth. Romance novel cover quality handsome, just as she’d painted him. He sat at the edge of the wide oak coffee table before her, pried her arm from her chest with his firm hand, uncurled her fingers. With them, he stroked his face slowly, the stubble made her wince as if pricked by a cactus. She resisted the urge to scratch him to see how he responded.
“Do I feel real?” his voice was soft, but demanding. And god help her, sexy.
“You’re not real,” Amara murmured. Her wide eyes stared but refused to focus on what stood before her as she wished them gone, strove to see her world as it had been only seconds ago, before they entered it. God knew how. The front door was only feet away. Hadn’t she locked it? Of course she had.
Her hands touched the rough texture of his chin, the softness of his lips, but she refused to acknowledge it. She tried to pull away, but David clutched her wrist tightly and forced her to continue. “You’re not real. You’re not real. You’re not real.”
The one called Angelo cackled. “Cor, Davie. I think she’s finally gone ’round the bend!”
