Stillwater

by Maynard Sims

  As one heady sensation merged with another, she felt herself plunging into a black sea of panic. She clamped her arm firmly at her side, dislodging his caressing hand and pinning it. She jerked back from the kiss, shaking her head. “No!’ she gasped. “I can’t do this. I’m sorry. This is wrong.”

  He pulled away from her, retreating back to the other side of the sofa, the confusion on his face giving way to a look of concern. “No, really, it’s fine. I understand.”

  “Do you?” she said hotly. “Because I’m damned if I do.” Tears were stinging her eyes but she fought them back. She wouldn’t cry. That would be the final humiliation.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” he said.

  She glared at him. “No, I don’t want to talk about it! I want you to go.”

  “Oh,” he said, and got to his feet. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I really am. I shouldn’t have pushed…”

  “Just go. Forget this ever happened.”

  “But I…”

  “Go! I can’t be who you want me to be. Go and find yourself a real woman.”

  She couldn’t look at him anymore. She was being unreasonable, unfair and unkind, but she couldn’t stand to see the pity in his eyes. This had been a mistake, a stupid, immature mistake. It was Mirri’s fault, for planting the seed in her mind, leading her to believe she could lead a normal life and have a fulfilling, loving relationship. She was a paraplegic, and she always would be, a cripple, both physically and emotionally.

  She heard the front door close as James Bartlett walked out of her life without another word.

  “Fuck!” she said. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” With each expletive she slammed her hand down on the arm of the leather sofa until the palm of her hand was stinging.

  “Pathetic!”

  The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. It filled the room with low intensity. A woman’s voice, taunting her, picking at her shredded feelings.

  Beth twisted her head from side to side, trying to locate the source of the voice, but it was useless; the room was empty.

  “Where are you?” she shouted. “Show yourself!”

  For a moment there was nothing. And then her wheelchair trundled forward as if someone had pushed it. It stood a yard away from her. She reached out, but before she could reach the arm and pull it toward her, the wheelchair was given another hefty shove, and it moved out of her reach. This time it kept on moving. It was circumnavigating the room, its speed increasing as it moved farther and farther away from her.

  It was heading toward the doors at the end of the lounge, wheels spinning, the whole thing rocking slightly as the momentum increased.

  It hit the bathroom door with a sickening crunch, before pulling back and smashing against the door to her bedroom. As metal hit wood, there was a splintering sound. When it pulled back this time Beth could see the deep gouges made by the aluminum footrests where they had scraped a path across the door.

  “Stop this!” she shouted. “Stop this now!”

  The wheelchair rolled to a halt, and the sound of a woman’s laughter filled the room.

  “You can’t have him,” the woman’s voice sounded again. “What would he want with a pathetic cripple like you?”

  The voice was mocking her, throwing her deepest thoughts, her unspoken anxieties, back at her.

  The wheelchair started to move again, rolling forward silently on well-oiled wheels. Slowly it turned until it was facing her. Then it stopped.

  She stared back at it. The air between seemed to ripple. The chair was slipping in and out of focus. The wine! The thought threaded its way through her mind. She had drunk too much wine, and this was the result. Hearing voices, hallucinations.

  Never again, she thought. Never ever again.

  But the comfort of a rational explanation was short-lived, as she wrestled with the problem of getting from the sofa to her bedroom. She had crutches. They were tucked away at the back of her wardrobe. She hated using them, and wouldn’t be seen dead using them in public, so she hid them away. Now she realized the folly of her vanity. So the only choice now was an undignified crawl across the floor.

  She stared again at the wheelchair parked on the other side of the room. If this was just a hallucination how the hell did it get there? She shook her head, trying to untangle her befuddled thoughts.

  Before she got them unraveled, the chair launched itself at her.

  One moment it was sitting across the room from her, idle and docile, but before she could blink it had halved the distance between them, heading straight for her; wheels skidding across the floor, footrests glinting in the subdued lighting, the aluminum ragged and spiteful from the collision with the bedroom door.

  She was screaming, a pitiful wail, a cry for help. It was all she had left.

  As the wheelchair smashed into her, her scream was cut off abruptly as her body was swamped by a tsunami of pain. She pictured the aluminum footrests slicing through her skin, biting through the bone and severing her useless legs at the ankles.

  A wave of blackness washed in on the tail of the tsunami, deadening the pain and carrying her away from her body. For a moment she was hovering on the edge of consciousness. She seemed to be hanging somewhere between the sofa and the ceiling, staring down at her broken body, tangled in a mess of twisted metal and buckled wheels.

  “Stupid bitch!” a voice hissed in her ear.

  She closed her eyes and the black wave swept her away.

  The lake was still and quiet. Peaceful and inviting.

  Beth was running through the trees. Branches pushed aside as leaves tickled her face. She would have laughed if she wasn’t already smiling, her face lit up from a happy glow that began deep inside her and threatened to bubble and burst out of her like a waterfall.

  The moon was full, shyly hiding behind wisps of cloud that parted like theater stage curtains to let light fall onto the woods and the water. Beth reveled in the sensation of running over the damp earth. Moss and twigs felt soft beneath her bare feet, carpet caresses.

  Above her head the oak and birch stood silently watching her meandering path. If animals lived here they were as silent as the trees that concealed them. Beth might have been the only person in the woods this night, but she wasn’t.

  Water rippled as something entered it. By the time Beth broke the cover of the bushes and stood at the edge of the lake the surface was still. It may as well have been a mirror, gently holding the reflected moon, the stars bobbing lights that made it seem as if the pondweed was on fire.

  Beth stood at the water’s edge and stripped. She was wearing only a white shift dress, cotton, loose and flowing, and it fell beside her as if a resolution too easily broken.

  Naked, she saw her body in the glass of the lake. Slim, pale, perhaps younger than she had a right to be.

  Movement behind her should have caused alarm but it didn’t.

  Then she heard the voices.

  “Dive. Dive in.”

  “I can’t walk…my legs…”

  “Dive and swim.”

  Beth hesitantly walked to the line where water met land and then her feet were immersed. The water was cold but she couldn’t feel it. I have no feeling below the waist, she thought.

  The trees began to move all around her. Birds and animals swarmed in agitation across and over the branches. Broken leaves fell onto the water where they lay like discarded confetti.

  She bent her knees, held her arms in front of her, and plunged headfirst into the black water.

  The darkness engulfed her, and yet she could see everything quite clearly. The waves caused by her dive swamped the grassy banks, picking up her white dress and carrying it away.

  She dived deeper, eyes open, taking in what she saw. There were fish, soundlessly floating by, and weeds, swaying as if flags in a breeze. Then she saw the people.

  They we
re a small group, and they were waiting for her. She swam toward them, the smile on her face getting more relaxed.

  She hovered next to the group of people, her legs tirelessly treading water, her skin alive with sensation.

  “Jessica.”

  She started to protest, to tell them she was Beth, but no words came out of her mouth, they stayed locked inside her head, and after a short while she stopped trying to convince herself.

  They were young men, nude, attractive, bodies glistening with the water of the lake.

  “We’ve been waiting for you.”

  “I came as soon as I could. The wheelchair slows…”

  The laughter came quickly. “Pathetic cripple aren’t you.”

  Beth swam a stroke or two away from them.

  “Teasing.”

  They swam toward her, surrounding her, and began touching her.

  “I can’t feel anything.”

  “Of course you can, Jessica. Let it go.”

  “I’m not Jessica.”

  “You are here.”

  Out of the darkness of the far side of the lake Beth saw movement. White, writhing, squirming through the water.

  The men were holding Beth casually, stroking her skin, kissing her.

  The white figure swam closer and Beth could see it was a female; she might have been a teenager or a mature woman, it was impossible to tell. The men held Beth out to her as if offering her up for approval.

  “She can’t feel anything.”

  “We’ll have to teach her.”

  The woman reached out her hand and placed it over Beth’s face. Soft fingers closed her eyelids and Beth slipped into her own darkness.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Beth opened her eyes to see daylight streaming in through the window. She raised her head from the pillow, only to let it drop back as a sharp pain pierced her temple and started to throb.

  Confusion muddied her thoughts. She was in bed, how did she get here? The bed felt wet; her hands reached out and she touched her naked body. Water, and strands of pondweed.

  Her recollections were hazy. Dinner with James; the woman’s voice mocking and taunting her; the wheelchair smashing into her legs… She pulled back the blanket that was covering her, and her confusion increased.

  She was fully dressed in the clothes she’d been wearing the night before, her legs were unmarked, and the wheelchair was intact and parked at the side of the bed. She wasn’t soaked; the bed was completely dry.

  She closed her eyes, and tried to gather herself, to make some sense of what was happening.

  Her eyes snapped open as the coffee grinder in the kitchen whirred into life. “What the…” Someone was in the house.

  She hauled herself out of bed and into her chair, propelling it across the room to the door. There she stopped and listened. There were sounds of movement from somewhere—cups clinking together, someone whistling tunelessly. Suddenly she was scared. What if it was the young men from last night? Wait, what men?

  “Good morning,” James said, as she opened the bedroom door and pushed through.

  The shock of seeing him standing in her kitchen silenced her. She ran her hand through her tousled hair and sought the appropriate response. “Why are you here?” was all she could manage.

  “I’m making coffee. Want one?” Everything seemed so normal.

  She could only stare at him as she wheeled over to where he was standing. “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “You don’t remember?” he said with a small chuckle. “Can’t say I’m really surprised.”

  “Remember what?” she said.

  He transferred the ground coffee to the espresso machine, and switched it on. Within seconds it was hissing and gurgling. He took another cup from the cupboard and set it down on the counter beside the first. “I think you need a coffee, strong and black,” he said.

  She nodded dumbly. She needed coffee and probably something a lot stronger.

  “Do you remember anything about last night?”

  “Bits and pieces,” she said uncertainly. Which part of last night was he asking about? “Why are you still here?”

  “Do you remember cooking the meal, chili?”

  “Yes, of course I do. Look, tell me what happened, what you remember.”

  He looked at her steadily, thinking that she seemed like someone with a large hangover. “You cooked a lovely meal, we drank wine and I told you what I knew about the Franklins. After the meal you wanted to move to the sofas. We did that, and five minutes later you passed out.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “Why would I pass out?”

  He said nothing but pointed to the four empty red wine bottles on the counter.

  “I didn’t drink that much,” she said indignantly. “Did I?”

  “I’ll put my hands up for one of them. You had nearly finished the Merlot when I arrived. The other two…well, you must have had a thirst on last night.”

  “So how did I end up in my bed?”

  “I carried you there. I tried to wake you when you were on the sofa but you were out for the count, so I carried you through and covered you with a blanket.”

  She looked at him incredulously. She didn’t recall any of this. She wanted to press him about what else had happened, remembering his failed seduction attempt. Did that happen? From his demeanor, probably not. “So why are you still here?”

  “Once I’d settled you down I realized that I’d drunk too much to drive safely so I curled up on the sofa, and went out like a light. I roused at four and checked on you. You were sleeping like a baby. Jog any memories yet?”

  She shook her head. “It’s not how I remember it,” she said, staring down at the floor so he couldn’t see her blushes.

  “Ah, well, yes, I was hoping you’d let me forget that.”

  “So we did…”

  “I wanted to…but you weren’t so keen.”

  “It’s just…” She indicated her wheelchair-clad legs. “I’m not used…”

  “So, coffee?”

  “Please, yes.” She was glad of the diversion.

  “And then I’ll make a move. I should be able to get home and change and still get to work on time.” He filled the cups and handed her one. “How do you feel this morning?”

  “Like Fred is putting Ginger through her paces inside my head.”

  “You look pretty peaky. It would probably be best if you went back to bed when I’m gone. Sleep it off.”

  “I wasn’t drunk,” she protested, and then, out of the corner of her eye, caught a glimpse of the empty bottles on the counter. But was I? she thought.

  He looked at her over the top of his coffee cup. “You’ve not been having an easy time of it lately,” he said. “Moving house, your cat, a new novel…” He didn’t say, “And your obsession with the Franklins,” but she knew he was thinking it. “I don’t blame you for having a skinful. In your position I would have done the same.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Not for saying that, but for taking care of me. That was above and beyond the call of duty. I feel guilty for laying that on you. And…thanks for not taking advantage.”

  He cocked his head, puzzled. “Advantage?”

  “I was out cold when you put me to bed. I’ve known other men who might have seen that as an opportunity.”

  His face clouded. She could see he was holding his anger in check.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to imply that you might—”

  “Forget it,” he said, cutting her off. “I can only think you’ve known some pretty flaky men in your time. You were the worse for drink, and there are rules about that sort of thing.” He drained his cup. “Right, I have to dash.”

  She set her cup down on the counter, and made to accompany him to the door.

  �
��It’s okay. I’ll see myself out.”

  “I’ve offended you.”

  He stared at her for a long moment, but she couldn’t read the expression in his eyes.

  “Go back to bed,” he said and left the house.

  She heard his car start up and drive away. She started to wheel herself back to the bedroom, but at the last moment turned and went to the study instead. Sleep could wait.

  She sat at the computer, typed Bernard Franklin into the search engine and waited for the results. As the screen filled with references to Franklin she scrolled down, opening websites at random, but four screen pages later she was no closer to finding anything out about him. When she started seeing references to Benjamin Franklin she called off the search for him and typed in Dolores Franklin instead.

  The Google screen disappeared to be replaced with a page of photographs, each of them featuring a very beautiful woman in a variety of poses.

  The woman had long, dark hair, alabaster skin, a full-lipped sensual mouth and the most haunting eyes Beth had ever seen. She recognized her instantly as the woman who had stared down at her through the water in the bathroom. She may even have been the woman from her dream last night, the woman in the lake.

  Beth hovered the cursor over a particularly striking image, clicked on it, and the other images faded away, allowing the single image to fill the screen. Dolores Franklin sitting in a high-backed, wicker chair, relaxed, cross-legged, the white satin dress she was wearing slipping back to reveal ten inches of porcelain thigh.

  The back of the wicker chair was large and circular, the edges decorated with mother of pearl inlays that echoed the iridescent sheen of her dress. Sitting at her feet were three young men, all of them good-looking, none of them more than twenty. All three were stripped to the waist, showing their lithe, toned bodies, muscles oiled, glistening in the photographer’s reflector light as they stared up at Dolores adoringly.

  It was a portrait of a woman at ease with her sex appeal, and the power it gave her. Beth remembered what James had told her about Dolores and the young men in town—her acolytes.