by Karina Halle
“I’m his partner,” I managed to say. It was the truth.
“You ever been with a real man?”
Had I not been in such a vulnerable position, I would have laughed. I felt a smiling coming on but I swallowed it with a click in my throat.
“Yes I have,” I said, finding strength in my gut. I looked him right in his beady eyes. “And I don’t need you to show me, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
A flash of hatred washed across his eyes, the kind that made my breath hitch, then it was gone. He straightened up and took a step back.
“I’m not getting at anything girly,” he said, looking suddenly nonchalant. “But I’d still like a coffee, if you wouldn’t mind.”
He turned and went back to the table. I watched him for a few beats, a weird knot in my stomach, until Dex came back into the cabin. A cold gust of wind followed him in and he quickly shut the door but I only felt relief. As he brushed a few flakes off his shoulders and hung up his jacket, he said, “It’s really starting to come down out there.”
I nodded and turned back to the coffee preparations. I wasn’t sure if I should say anything to him about Mitch or not. If I did, I had a feeling Dex wouldn’t take to it very well and it would probably mess up the whole shoot. If Dex didn’t get his ass beaten by the giant bald monkey, he’d at least piss Mitch off and everything would be over. So I decided to keep my mouth shut.
For the time being.
Now it was dinner and while Mitch hadn’t made any moves, his staring was driving into my core, making me feel weak from the inside out. I kept my eyes on the crackle of the flames, allowing myself to be hypnotized by them.
When Dex finally announced that dinner was served, I practically jumped to my feet and scampered over to the table. I would have eaten pig’s brains if that’s what he was serving, but it was just grilled cheese sandwiches with a bit of canned Irish stew. Not gourmet but good enough and I was starving.
Mitch brought the bottle of bourbon to the table, which Dex and I both promptly refused. No way in hell was I going down that road again, especially since I felt like shit for most of the day. In fact, by the time dinner was over, even though it was only 7pm, I was ready for bed.
I quickly did the dishes, then grabbed a bottle of water from the box of food supplies and headed to the room. Dex looked up at me from the couch where he was analyzing footage I had shot. Mitch looked at me too with glazed eyes, the bourbon bottle in his lap.
“I’m turning in early,” I told them. Well, I told Dex. I didn’t want to look at Mitch any longer than I had to.
Dex looked concerned and started to get up.
“Stay,” I commanded him. “I’m just really exhausted. Long day.”
Long hungover day.
He bit his lip briefly, then nodded. “All right, well let me know if you need anything. I won’t be up too long either, just want to get an idea of what we need to shoot.”
I smiled quickly and shut the door behind me.
I immediately ran into the wardrobe. I had forgotten how dark the room was when the lamp wasn’t lit and the night sky was moonless as a steady stream of snow fell to the ground in waves.
I fished a flashlight out of my pants and then proceeded to get into my pajamas in record time. Though it was warm by the door, the closer to the bed – and the window – you got, the colder the room was. It was as iced as the air outside, the walls and window providing no insulation at all. By the time I had slipped on a hoodie and more socks, I jumped under the covers and bundled myself up in them until I stopped shivering.
Lying there alone gave me a chance to think unfettered. I wondered what to do about Mitch and if there would be any further weirdness from him. I figured I’d just stick as close to Dex as possible. Maybe I was overreacting and maybe Mitch would get the hint, but it didn’t hurt to be careful.
Of course, it could hurt to be close to Dex. I still felt flushed at the thought of what I did last night and even more flushed when my mind began to pull up some of the drunken memories and dwell on them. The feeling of his smooth skin beneath my hands, the look in his eyes, the hardness of his cock beneath my pelvis. It was like watching a porn in my head, only I wasn’t the star of it. Drunk Perry was and I winced a few times in disbelief at my actions. Though I was mildly insulted earlier when I found out that Dex had stopped me from going down on him, I was mainly grateful as hell. He was right. I would have hated myself and if he had let me do it, I would have hated him. This was one of the few times where rejection didn’t completely suck and a warmness squeezed around my heart. I didn’t know how I felt about that man half the time, but he earned my trust again last night. I just hoped he knew how to hold onto it.
I was half-asleep in these chaotic thoughts, my mind now focusing on the Beast and the stories Rigby had told us, when a light crept behind my eyelids and I felt someone else in the room with me.
I lifted up the covers and poked my head out into the frigid air. The kerosene lamp was lit and Dex was standing on the other side of the bed with his back to me, slipping on his drawstring pajama pants.
Then he took off his sweater and shirt and bent down to pick up another shirt. His back was bare, the tattoo on his shoulder hard to read but totally visible.
“What’s that say?” I whispered, not finding my full voice in the cold.
He started at the sound of my voice and slowly pivoted at the waist, shooting me a sly look from over his shoulder.
“I thought you were sleeping.”
“It’s too cold for sleep.”
He grinned and turned totally around. “That’s what I’m here for.”
He shoved his arms in the shirt and was about to raise it above his head when I stuck a hand out and pointed at him.
“Seriously, Dex, what does it say?”
He dipped his chin to chest and gave me a long look, his eyes wheeling and dealing. After a thick pause, he said, “All right. But I’m putting my shirt back on after cuz it is cold as balls in here.”
I nodded, feeling a smile spreading inside my stomach and raised myself up on my elbows.
He came over and took back the covers and climbed on in. Then he turned so I could see his shoulder, bringing the covers up to his waist.
Written in the same italic font as the “And with madness comes the light” tattoo on his chest read the new tattoo.
It said: “Within your light, I lose the madness.”
I didn’t know what to think or say so I just took my hand and gently pressed my fingers against the words, tracing along it. He shivered from my touch but his skin was as cold as stone.
“You seen it?” he asked and gave me a backwards glance.
“Yeah,” I whispered, my breath clouding in the air.
“Good,” he said and twisted around, putting his shirt on. He shifted his body under the covers and rolled over to his side, as if he was going to sleep.
I wanted to talk about it. What did it mean? Did it mean what I thought it meant? Was I his light? Did Dex get a tattoo about me? Or was I so far out of touch that it wasn’t about me at all? Maybe it wasn’t about a person. Maybe it was a thing.
“Dex,” I said gently.
He grunted in return.
“Dex, what does it mean?”
Silence.
“The tattoo,” I proceeded. “Within your light I lose the madness. What or who is the light?”
“It’s anything you want it to be,” he mumbled, his voice heavy and obscured by the covers.
“But what is it to you?”
I watched him carefully in the lamplight. His body deflated with one long exhale and I knew he was having a debate in his head over what to tell me, if anything. He always gave you something, just not everything. At least, the old Dex was like that.
He said something so low and so muffled that I strained to hear him.
“What was that?” I asked, leaning forward until my chest was pressed up against his back.
I heard him pull the
covers away from his face and the sharp exhale through his nose.
“You,” he said, voice low enough to vibrate.
I felt frozen on the outside but inside my heart had vaulted.
It was about me.
“Me?” I repeated quietly, my throat thick.
He turned onto his back, and rolled his head to the side to look at me. I was blocking most of the light, so his eyes looked dark and fathomless. Unreadable.
“You,” he said slowly. “You’re the light. You’re my light.”
My chest pinched at his words and wave of warmth flooded me from head to toe. I was no longer cold. I was glowing from the inside out.
I breathed heavily, studying the darkness that was his face. I felt the unmistakable urge to crawl into the space between his chest and arm, to hold him. My eyes dropped to his chest, to the fine patches of hair there and I fought the need to trail my fingers through it.
“I know it doesn’t matter to you anymore,” he went on gently. “But you’ve always been my light. When I’m with you, I lose this darkness, this madness around me. The madness inside me. But I had to go mad to realize that. I had to lose you to know it.”
Within your light, I lose the madness. Dex had gotten a tattoo about me. I was his light. I couldn’t comprehend any of it. It just didn’t make sense.
I looked away from his eyes and at the window that was laced with ice crystals and snow, a light sheen of condensation on the interior. I didn’t know what I was feeling but it was something that made me feel extremely unbalanced, like I was navigating new territory.
He rolled back onto his side, facing away from me and tucking the blankets up around him. “You asked, I told.”
He did. I wasn’t expecting his honesty, for him to be so blunt. I thought he’d skirt the issue or make something up but there he was telling me he got something about me inked on his body. Something about me that would be there for life, regardless if I came back into it or not.
“It’s a beautiful tattoo,” I finally told him, my voice breaking slightly. I cleared my throat then settled back to my side of the bed. I waited, watching him for a few beats. He didn’t say anything else, though I knew he was still awake.
~~~
I woke up to the eerie feeling that something wasn’t quite right.
My eyes sprung open and focused on a greying point on the slanted ceiling. The room was a bit lighter now that it was dark and I guessed that the amount of snow from outside was throwing in light from the window.
The air wasn’t as cold above the blankets as earlier and inside I was nice and toasty. Beside me I could hear Dex’s breath going in and out in the easy depths of sleep. But that wasn’t the only sound in the room.
A low, rough scratch came from the wall behind me, just right of the window and above Dex’s head. I moved slightly to get a better look, my neck craning and ears straining.
There it was again. It wasn’t coming from inside the room, but outside. It sounded an awful lot like nails being run down a chalkboard, only replace the chalk board with a wooden cabin. The sound didn’t even flow smoothly; it stopped and started like a nail was getting caught on bits of wood. It was loud and deliberate and reverberated in my head.
I didn’t dare breath, didn’t dare make a sound, didn’t even swallow. I just listened as the sound slowly repeated itself, starting up high and then making its way down. All my instincts told me that it was probably a tree – when I thought about the view out of the window, I couldn’t remember what exactly was out there. If it wasn’t a tree though, I didn’t know what the hell it could be. And I didn’t want to find out either.
In fact, all I wanted to do was bury my head back under the covers and pray for morning. I didn’t believe in Sasquatch, Bigfoot or some Beast. But I’d seen enough shit to know that there was still plenty for me to be afraid of out there. What if it was a ghost or demon? I knew we were out in the middle of nowhere, but what if Dex’s mom had followed him here and was standing outside the cabin, trailing her fingers down the side of the cabin? Though her fingers would have to be thick long claws to duplicate the sound I was hearing.
So I did the only thing that’s ever worked in these situations.
“Dex?” I whispered harshly. “Are you awake?”
No answer. I poked him in the side. No movement. I contemplated tickling him awake but decided his laughter might scare off the thing making the noise. Not that I wanted it to stick around but I at least wanted him to hear what I had been hearing.
I poked him again. “Dex,” I hissed.
Finally he stirred.
I placed my hand on his arm and whispered, “Be quiet.”
“Be quiet?” he answered back and I had to shush him right away. “I’m half-asleep and you’re telling me to be quiet.”
“There’s a noise outside, listen.”
He held in his breath and we both listened.
Nothing.
“What was it?” he asked.
I shushed him again and closed my eyes, thinking it would help.
Nothing. The scratching had stopped.
“Fuck,” I muttered.
“What was it?” he asked again, his voice drowsy.
“Scratching,” I told him. “Like nails on the side of the cabin.”
He let out a low, short laugh. “Maybe it’s deer. Remember on D’Arcy Island?”
“It wasn’t deer. This was something worse than that.”
“You’re just spooked,” he said with a yawn. “Go to sleep. Or at least let me go to sleep.”
“I heard something,” I said determinedly.
“Then go look out the window and check.”
I really didn’t want to do that. I was afraid that if I looked out the window, the face of a big ugly monster with red eyes would pop up and scare the shit out of me. Yeah, I know that sounds like something that only happens in the movies, but they were a common occurrence with me. And that didn’t make them any less scary.
“Fine,” I mumbled and slowly eased myself out of the covers. I placed my hands on the corners of the window sill and pulled myself up. I kept my eyes closed until the right moment and, after taking a breath of courage, opened them.
It was white outside. The snow had stopped falling with only a casual flake drifting slowly and the sky was lit up glowing grey. I could make out the white-dusted trees nearby and the edge of the outhouse farther off. To my disappointment, there were no trees next to the cabin, nothing that could have made the noise I had heard.
If I had even heard a noise at all.
I lowered myself down to the bed and snuggled under the covers until I was warm again, hugging my knees in the fetal position. Eventually Dex said, “See anything freaky?”
I bumped my butt against his back in response and soon I was asleep.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Holy fuck.”
Dex’s voice rang out from behind the cabin just as I was heading outside to use the outhouse. Mitch was at the llama corral, feeding them their daily dose of hay and grains.
I quickly shut the door and stomped my way through the snow. It was about ten in the morning and the sun was high in the sky, making the snow that had fallen during the night sparkle like diamonds, and feel just as hard beneath my boots.
I rounded the corner, pulling my knit cap down over my forehead and stopped when I saw Dex standing beneath our bedroom window looking at the ground, then up at the window and back down again.
“What is it?” I asked, my pulse quickening.
“Tell me about the sound you heard last night,” he said, his voice trailing off.
I bit my lip anxiously and came over to join him.
Dex was standing right in front of a set of footprints that lay right beneath the window. Footprints that looked eerily like the one Rigby had shown us. And on closer inspection, I realized that it wasn’t just one set of prints but many. They were messy and blurry with snow having blown down their ridges, looking like they were left in
a hurry.
Dex pointed off to the otherside of the cabin.
“They disappear into the forest over there,” he said. He finally brought his eyes over to look at me and they looked startlingly brown and clear in the harsh, snow-blind white of morning.
I held his gaze for a minute, surprised at the sudden way my heart was tingling at the sight of him. Memories of what he said last night, his tattoo, that I was his light, surfaced in my head. Then I broke away. I crouched down to the snow and lightly touched the print. It wasn’t quite as clear as the cast but it was definitely the same shape. About a foot and a half long with a deep, narrow indent at the heel. Whoever – or whatever – left these seemed to have stood in the one place for a long time, then perhaps circled the area before taking off for the woods. Considering the place was right below the window, it probably meant it was the source of the sound.
“I told you,” I said, my eyes focusing and un-focusing on the glittering snow, “it was a scratching sound.”
“Huh,” Dex said. He had stepped forward and was running his hand down the side of the building. I got up and peered at it. There were five grooves made into the rough cabin wall, fresh splinters sticking out of it. They weren’t that deep but they was there. And that was enough.
I suddenly felt sick to my stomach and turned away from the sight, walking a few feet away until I was at the base of a tree. I leaned against it and breathed in sharply through my nose, trying to keep the nausea at bay.
“Perry,” Dex said in quiet alarm and came beside me. I felt his hand on my shoulder, giving me strength.
I closed my eyes. “There was something there last night. While we were sleeping.”
“It could be anything,” he said, though his voice wavered with lack of confidence.
“Anything is still something.” I swallowed back the bitter taste in my mouth and stood up. I don’t know why I was having such a physical reaction to the fear but I suppose fear wasn’t something I handled very well anymore. This was the first time I was met with something terrifying since the whole possession game.
“Maybe this was a mistake,” Dex whispered. His gloved hand went from my shoulder down to my hand and he squeezed it hard, hard enough that I had to look up at him. He couldn’t have looked more worried. “I knew I shouldn’t have brought you out here.”