Beauty

by Kris Calvert

  “Ray?” I called into the darkness. “Ray?”

  Slipping my feet from the warmth of the blanket, I place them on the frigid wooden floor. A cold chill shot up my spine and I shuddered at the temperature in the bedroom as I watched my warm breath float in the air.

  Following the light cast into the bedroom from the hallway, I called to him again without an answer. I walked the entire second floor hearing nothing but the floorboards groan beneath my feet while searching for evidence of where he might be. Ray had a history of insomnia and I didn’t want tonight’s craziness to spark a new string of sleepless nights.

  I stood quietly in the doorframe of my office and heard it. Faint at first, it sounded as if someone was having sex in the room next to mine. It was coming from Ray’s studio. Quietly, I eavesdropped outside our connecting door and heard the grunting sound again. Placing my hand on the door, I inhaled before opening it, mentally preparing myself for what I might find on the other side.

  It was dark, and a lamp without a shade cast a crazy shadow of Ray as he stood naked in the middle of the room. Drawing furiously with a hunk of charcoal, he was working on a piece attached to the large upright easel he used for bigger projects. “Ray,” I said softly. “Ray, sweetheart. What are you doing?”

  Ignoring me, he continued to labor at a violent pace, grunting with each movement of the thick charcoal against the paper. Coming closer, I glanced at the piece he was so hypnotized by. I stood staring into the face of a strange man—and not just the one on paper. Ray looked to be possessed; his face was tight and sinister. Not the casual and loose man I’d come to love. He seemed dark—like the dark hair and eyes of the subject of Ray’s obsession. I stepped closer. It wasn’t anyone I’d ever seen before.

  “What are you working on sweetheart? Ray? …Ray. …Ray!”

  He turned to me, his face nearly unrecognizable in the shadows. I touched him on the arm allowing my voice to melt back to a loving cadence. “Hey you. I love you, Horatio Huxley.”

  His face softened and I knew him again. He blinked hard, stepping away from me nearly knocking over the lamp. “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “What am I doing?” I said with surprise in my voice. “I think I should be asking you that.”

  Ray looked around the studio and down his body. “Why am I—what’s going on?”

  “I don’t know. I woke up and you weren’t in the bed so I came to look for you. I found you in here. Naked and drawing—him.” I said pointing to the man in charcoal.

  “Who’s that?” he asked stepping away from the easel, taking a full breath to calm himself.

  I joined in and shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  Ray slowly blinked—once in the direction of his latest masterpiece and once to look at me. “Let’s go to bed.”

  I nodded yes and took him by the hand, leaving the lamp to burn for the rest of the night. Arm in arm, we walked back to the bedroom and as soon as Ray’s head hit the pillow he began to snore.

  10

  ELIZA

  When I woke in the morning, I found a note next to my head. It was ten and the sun was trying its very hardest to beam into the master bedroom. Ray had closed the heavy drapes to allow me to sleep as long as possible.

  Come down when you’re good and rested. I’m making brunch. It’s Sunday. p.s. sorry about the sheets.

  I smiled at the note, but frowned when I turned down his side of the bed and saw the streaks of charcoal dust from his late night creative fit.

  Pulling a robe from the closet, I wrapped myself up tightly before searching my sock drawer for something both warm and fuzzy. Pulling on sock monkey socks—a gift from Ray’s sister, I pulled my mop of hair into a bun with a couple twists of my wrist. Rubbing my head again, I promptly moved my fingers to my nose. It was still swollen from my shower last night. I swallowed hard and tried to remember what Brian had said at the closing. The tenant felt like something was there. I knew something was there. What it wanted with me is what I didn’t know. I also didn’t know if I wanted to discuss it with Ray. If I admitted something happened, then that made it all the more real.

  Hurrying down the stairs, I was drawn by the aroma of bacon. “Good morning,” I called as I swung the door to the kitchen as wide as the smile I’d plastered on my face. I dropped it quickly when Ray glared at me over the laptop sitting on the kitchen table. “What are you doing?”

  He rubbed the sleep from his eyes. I could read the muted frustration on his face. “I’m reading your manuscript.”

  I felt violated—as if he’d read my thoughts without asking. “Why on earth would you do a thing like that?” I took a deep breath and tried to remain calm but the bile rising in my throat made me want to do two things: vomit and choke Ray.

  “Have you been reading this, Liz? Have you been editing as you go along? This shit is crazy. You’re not writing a murder mystery.”

  “No?” I asked sarcastically. “What am I writing, Ray? Don’t answer that question because it doesn’t matter what you think. I’m not taking direction from you. You would never change what you were drawing or painting if I came into your studio and told you you were doing it wrong.” My voice became higher the longer I carried on my elaborate scenario.

  “Lizzie, baby…”

  “Don’t baby me, Ray.”

  “Honey,” he said turning the computer around to face me. “I’m not judging you. I’m saying this with all the love in my heart: this isn’t a mystery. This is a detailed account of murders. Not one honey, several—planned and executed—pardon the pun—executed with great detail. There’s no story here. It reads like a grocery list or a very creepy to do list—complete with axe sharpening and how to best distribute body parts in an open grave.”

  “What are you talking about? My manuscript is about a female cop on the trail of a kidnapper. I know my book. I know my plot.”

  “I beg to differ,” he said shoving the computer toward me. “You’ve gone off the rails, babe.”

  “I’ve gone off the rails. Ha!” I scoffed as I began to pace the room. “Do you even remember last night? Weren’t you the least bit concerned when you woke up covered in charcoal dust from your studio? Who’s the guy, Ray?”

  He dropped his head before looking back up to me. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know.”

  “No. And I’ve haven’t sleepwalked since I was a kid. I don’t know why I did it last night.”

  “It was freaky, Ray. I’d had a hard enough time in the shower, then I had to find you naked and out of your mind, drawing in the shadows of your studio.”

  I sat at the kitchen table, shut my computer and placed my head in my hands. “What is happening?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m worried about you,” Ray said taking my hand across the table. “Me?”

  “Lizzie, I came home to find that you’d not showered or slept in three days. You leave me a crazy voicemail and then last night you were singing the same damn thing in the shower right before you started screaming.”

  “For the love of Pete, what is this freaking voicemail? I swear to you, I didn’t call you Thursday night. I would never interrupt your art show.”

  Pulling his phone from his pocket, Ray thumbed through his apps, laying the phone on the kitchen table and hitting the speaker button as he pointed to my name in his message list.

  At first it was just a lot of static, like I’d accidentally dialed him with my butt. I listened through the ten seconds of nothing and just as I was about to open my mouth, Ray held one finger in the air and I heard a voice singing the tune Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. But the words weren’t the same.

  “Rosy rosy, bloody lamb, I know you know where I am. In the dark so cold and black, cut in pieces, wrapped in sack. Close you’re eyes, don’t go to bed. Either way, you’ll end up dead.”

  There was a whimper at the end, and the line went dead.

  We stared at each other for what seemed to be an eternity. I was stunned by the call
, but I knew it wasn’t me. I needed him to be the one to say it first. I looked into his eyes and willed him to say something. I repeated in my head, that wasn’t me. That wasn’t me.

  “Lizzie.”

  “I swear if you say that’s me, I’m going to totally lose my shit on you.”

  “I agree, it doesn’t sound exactly like you. But the call came from your phone. How do you explain that?

  “I can’t.”

  “And how do explain the fact that you were singing the same song in the shower last night?”

  “No! I said the word and slammed my hand onto the old kitchen table. “I didn’t sing anything last night.”

  “No?” Ray said coming to his feet to meet me head on. “Then tell me what did happen in the shower? Because all the hair pulling and body smashing is a little hard to understand, Liz.”

  I backed into the wall, allowing myself to slide to the floor. “I don’t know what happened last night. I don’t know what I’m writing or how I managed to get so many words on paper. After I spoke with you, Thursday night—”

  “The night—the mouse.”

  I looked around the kitchen and up to the cabinet where I’d killed the mouse. “What happened to the dead mouse? It’s not still up there is it? You got it, right?”

  “Liz, the kitchen was in pristine condition. No mess, no mouse. You must’ve cleaned it up yourself and just don’t remember it.”

  I shook my head. “I wouldn’t have touched that mouse. And you know that.”

  “Maybe one of the construction guys got it. Did anyone come into the house to work while I was gone? I know we didn’t have anyone on the schedule—I don’t like the guys coming in and out while you’re here alone.”

  I dropped my head into my hands. “I don’t think I’m alone here. Ever.”

  “What are you saying?” Ray leaned against the wall, sliding down and joining me on the floor, he took my hand from my face, kissed it and placed it in his own lap.

  “I don’t know what I’m saying. I don’t know anything anymore. I feel lost.”

  Ray leaned his head into mine. “Yeah, me too.”

  “We’ve got to stick together,” I said. “You’re the only one who understands my crazy.”

  “For better or worse, I think you might be speaking he truth.” Throwing his arm around my shoulder, he brought me inside his warm body. I felt safe. “It’s Sunday, and here’s what we’re going to do today.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “We’re going to eat some bacon and eggs—”

  “Toast and jam?” I asked interrupting his grand plan.

  “Yes, toast and jam for you. And then we’re going to go up to the third floor and clean out everything that’s been left behind. An empty dumpster was delivered while I was gone.”

  “It was?”

  “Yes,” Ray drug the word out as if he was explaining to a child and continued on, ignoring another event I was oblivious to. “We’re going to fill that mother up with all the shit left behind in this house that’s been stored up on the third floor. The demo team is coming on Tuesday and the walls that separate that entire space are all coming down. I’d really like to make that area my permanent studio. What do you think?”

  I mustered a smile and nodded. “I think we have a full Sunday ahead of us.”

  After two hours of knocking down spider webs and bundling old copies of the Baltimore Sun dating back to God knows when, I was rethinking our Sunday plan. I knew cleaning out the third floor was going to be a pain, but this was ridiculous. Luckily, Ray worked twice as hard and three times as fast. He also did most of the running up and down the stairs until we got a window open on the third floor. This made the direct drop into the dumpster in the garden an efficient part of the plan. “I really don’t remember all of this stuff being up here when we bought the place. Do you?” I asked as I brushed yet another cobweb from the baseball hat I’d worn to keep the creepy-crawlies off my head.

  “Well, we shoved a bunch of stuff we didn’t know what to do with from the first and second floor up here. What we should’ve done was toss it all in the basement.”

  “I don’t like it down there.”

  “I know you don’t but here’s nothing scary about it. I think it’s the dirt floors that bother you.”

  “Honestly, if I was writing a serial killer, I would use that basement as a reference. It looks like every bad horror movie I’ve seen. The pretty blonde gets away from the man wearing an army green jumpsuit he’s stolen from the maintenance man he killed at the asylum. A burlap sack with one eyehole covers his face. She runs through the house and where does she go? Does she go out the door?” I asked as I made a sweeping motion with my arms. “Oh, hell no. She runs into the basement where she finds the mangled bodies of all her friends. She finally gets the grand idea that she needs to get out, only to turn directly into the crazed killer who promptly shoves a machete into her gut. Chicks like that give the smart blondes a bad rap.”

  Dropping a load of boxes by the staircase, Ray turned to me. He was covered in dust and perspiration rolled down his temple. It was cold on the third floor especially with the window open, but he’d still managed to work up a sweat. Hooking his hands in his pants he cocked his head to one side. “Are you about finished?”

  I gave him a wicked smile and batted my eyes, meeting his inviting stare. “Yes.”

  “Good,” he said as he walked to me in measured steps never dropping his gaze. Wrapping his arm around my waist, he pulled me to his body and I instantly became weak in the knees. “You talk too much, Lizzie.”

  Walking me backwards and into an old square table that was the last piece of big furniture in the room, he cupped my bottom, lifting me to sit me squarely in the middle. Pushing his hips into me, he parted my legs and leaned away to look me in the eye. Taking the bill of my hat in his grip, he discarded my cap, allowing my long hair to cascade across my shoulders and into my face.

  “You’re all I’ve ever wanted, Eliza,” he said as he pushed the hair that had fallen into my eyes away, tickling my cheek. “I knew it the moment I laid eyes on you back in college. It was over for me the second you smiled at me and blushed.”

  “I don’t remember blushing,” I said as I felt the heat rise in my cheeks.

  Ray stared through me. I loved the way he made me feel—alive, wanted and full of possibility. “You’re blushing now,” he said as he began to unbutton the old flannel shirt of his that I loved to snuggle in on the crisp fall weekends.

  “I borrowed your shirt,” I confessed as he pushed it over my shoulders and reached for the hem of the Henley t-shirt underneath. “Looks better on you anyway,” he said as he began to kiss my neck, pausing only to pull the shirt over my head to find a tank top.

  With an exasperated smile, I knew he had tired of my layers of clothes. “Sorry,” I whispered. “I dressed for work today. Not play.”

  “Believe me. I’m workin’. Workin’ to get to the good stuff.”

  I giggled and reached for his belt as he tossed my tank top in the pile on the table before reaching between my breasts to unhook my bra. As soon as he was done, I found myself staring at the ceiling.

  “Wait, I want to undress you.”

  “I’m doing the disrobing today,” Ray whispered in my ear. You just lie there and look pretty.”

  Sitting up on my elbows I watched as Ray unzipped his khakis. The weight of everything in his pockets dropped his pants to the floor in an instant and as he hooked his thumbs inside his boxers, I giggled. I loved his masculine, naked body. He made me giddy in all the right ways.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked as he moved into me while pulling at my stretchy yoga pants.

  “Nothing’s funny. I just love you.”

  “Yeah, ya do,” he teased as he gave my pants a final tug, bringing them to rest at my ankles on top of my thick socks and work boots.

  Sweeping my mouth with his tongue, my nipples hardened in anticipation of what was coming. Pulling hi
s t-shirt over his head without direction, Ray’s smooth and streamlined muscles tapered down to a taut, flat abdomen. He was an Adonis—the perfect specimen of a male physique.

  “Don’t keep that warm, dark haven all to yourself, honey,” he said in a harsh rush of breath.

  I giggled again at his comment. “What’s gotten into you?” I asked as I grabbed him around the neck and brought his mouth to mine for an explicit come-and-get-me kiss.

  The hardness of his sex pushed against me and in a fluid response, he surrendered—sinking himself into the warmth of my body. “Yes…” he moaned.

  Rocking in an insistent motion, his breath was warm and erratic against my skin. Gently pulling him by the hair of the head, I brought his face to mine. “I want to see you. I want to look into the eyes of the man who makes me so happy.”

  Suddenly heavy against my body and heaving like a bellows, I looked into Ray’s eyes to connect with the man I loved. “Ray?”

  Bucking and arching in powerful thrusts, he didn’t respond. “Ray?” I asked again as I took his face in my hands and turned it slightly to meet my gaze.

  I gasped. Staring me in the face wasn’t Ray, but a man with dark, greasy hair and drool coming from his slacked mouth. “Fuck me, you feeble-minded cunt!” he shouted.

  Screaming, I pushed him off of me and finished the job by kicking him to the floor with my boots. Jumping from the table, I pulled up my pants, grabbed my shirts and started to run, only to have my ankle grabbed, stopping me in my tracks. “Lizzie!”

  I turned, shoving my head through an inside out and backwards shirt and found Ray on the ground in equal chaos. His pants around his ankles, his once throbbing erection was slowly losing steam. “What in the hell is the matter with you?” he asked wincing at the pain I’d inflicted into his groin.

  “Ray?”

  He said nothing, but rolled to his knees, his pants, his injured balls and ego keeping him from standing. “What the fuck?”

  Still keeping my distance, I looked into his eyes searching for the man I loved.