“Run!”
“Aunt Betty, I’m sorry . . . I’m so sorry . . .”
“You’re going to be very sorry.” Dexter had come back on the line; in the background, Aunt Betty was weeping.
Rachel savagely wiped away her tears. “Leave her alone, you bastard. This has nothing to do with her.”
“I disagree. Remember how much Aunt Betty despised me? Remember how she’d meddle in our business?”
“Dexter, please. I’m begging you. Please don’t hurt her.”
“Check this out, sweetheart.”
Suddenly, a thin wail pierced Rachel’s ear. Aunt Betty . . .
Rachel rocketed out of her chair and shrieked at Dexter as if they were in the same room. “Stop it!”
Her aunt’s scream warbled into dry, wracking sobs.
Rachel didn’t want to know what Dexter had done to her. Didn’t want to imagine. Although in her mind’s eye, she could envision it—and it was unspeakable.
“I’m going to find you,” Dexter said. “How’s that song go? Ain’t no mountain high enough . . . ain’t no valley low enough . . . to keep me from tracking your ass down, baby.”
Rachel shouted at him again. But he hung up.
She heard only the indifferent dial tone . . . and her aunt’s screams echoing in her ears.
Chapter 15
It had been a thrill to hear his lovely wife’s voice again. It had been four years since he’d spoken to her, and her fear of him was as profound as ever. By the time he ended their call, he had a huge erection.
Aroused, he turned his attention to Aunt Betty, and finished his business with her. Perhaps due to his excitement, he got a bit carried away, actually. But the smug, meddling old bitch deserved everything he gave her.
He exited the house via the back door. His wife would phone the police and give them his name and description, and he saw no purpose in making himself an easy target.
Snowflakes continued to spiral out of the sky. He walked through tall drifts of snow in the backyard, climbed the chain-link fence, and dropped into the narrow alley. Ahead, the alley emptied into a street that intersected the one on which Aunt Betty lived.
He thrust his hands into his pockets and crossed from the alley to the street, whistling to himself like a man out for a lunch time stroll. He made a left at the corner. His Chevy sat about a hundred yards ahead.
But the mail man was coming his way; a tall, ruddy-faced white guy walking nimbly across the snowy sidewalk.
Dexter calculated the high risk of his situation: a terrible crime has been committed in a quiet community. Someone phones the cops and gives the perpetrator’s name and a description. The cops jump into action, and in their frantic search for leads, talk to anyone who might have been in the neighborhood at the time the crime was committed, in the hopes of getting an eyewitness . . . such as a mail carrier out on his daily rounds.
Dexter wasn’t worried that the Chevy would be traced to him, since he’d purchased it without supplying ID. But it wouldn’t do if some peckerwood mailman saw him getting in the car.
Keep walking. Act as if I have every right to be in this neighborhood, act as if nothing at all is wrong. Act as if I’m invisible.
When the thought slipped through his mind, the phenomenon he’d experienced that morning and yesterday started anew: the darting movement in the corner of his eye. The serpent-hissing noises.
Dexter spun, found nothing behind him. Dammit, what is that?
The mail carrier was drawing near. Crunching through snow. Whistling.
The dancing movements in his peripheral vision faded, and the reptilian hissing ceased, too. Warmth settled over Dexter, as though he were wrapped in a wool blanket.
What’s happening to me?
Although it was a curious sensation, he felt a surprising peace. Whatever this was, it was a good thing. It felt too pleasurable to be harmful to him.
The mail man was at the house ahead. High-stepping through snow.
Dexter nodded and waved, like a friendly neighbor.
The mail carrier did not return the greeting. He didn’t appear to see Dexter.
Well, you know most black folk are invisible to white people, anyway.
But then the mail man strode down the sidewalk on which Dexter stood, and walked toward him and then swept right past him, looking in Dexter’s direction but never registering Dexter’s presence, as if Dexter were merely a tree growing along the edge of the sidewalk.
Dexter stared after the guy.
He had the feeling that something significant had occurred, but he couldn’t grasp what it might be. Or perhaps he did understand, and was unwilling to accept it, for it fell outside the boundaries of what he believed was possible.
The mail carrier had walked past as if Dexter was invisible.
Chapter 16
Rachel called the Zion Police Department and, without giving her name, informed them that Dexter Bates had broken into her aunt’s house and committed a violent crime. She supplied a detailed physical description of Dexter. She even gave them his inmate number, reading it from the record she’d printed off the Illinois Department of Corrections Web site.
The police dispatcher promised to send officers to her aunt’s house immediately. Rachel hung up and rocked back in her office chair, shaking.
Dexter didn’t hurt Aunt Betty. He couldn’t have.
But she could still hear her aunt’s raw scream. Worse, she had an awful knot in the pit of her stomach—a pulsating ball of tangled muscle that she felt only when someone close to her had died. When her parents had passed when she was a teenager, she’d experienced identical sickening premonitions and feelings.
She can’t be dead.
But the Dexter she remembered was fully capable of murder. She knew that better than anyone.
His voice returned to her: I’m going to find you.
Before calling her aunt, she had punched in the code to hide her phone number from Caller ID, but it gave her no comfort. Dexter would bring to bear the same tunnel-vision focus to finding her that he brought to everything else in his life. And he was intelligent, frighteningly so, with a damn near photographic memory, the cunning of a predator—and no conscience whatsoever.
Sooner or later, he was going to discover where she lived. It was as inevitable as nightfall.
The thought of what he’d possibly done to her aunt . . . the fear of what he would do to her, and then, innocent Joshua, was too much for her to withstand. She bolted out of the chair, raced to the bathroom, flipped up the toilet lid, and vomited so violently into the bowl it felt as though her stomach lining had torn loose.
None of the other stylists came to check on her. The music playing out front, and the chattering women hard at work on hair, would have drowned out any noises from back there.
She was grateful for the privacy. She couldn’t share her predicament with anyone. She didn’t dare to put anyone else at risk.
At the sink, she washed her face with cold water, rinsed out her mouth.
The cell phone she wore on her hip rang. Joshua’s cell number appeared.
She remembered her two o’clock doctor’s appointment. He was probably calling her to confirm that she was meeting him.
She let the call go to voice mail. A wave of sadness washed over her that almost drove her to her knees again.
I’m so sorry,Josh, she thought.
She touched her abdomen and imagined the as-yet-unformed heart of their child, beating softly inside of her.
I’m sorry, but I’ve got to protect our baby.
It was time for her contingency plan.
Chapter 17
Parked outside the doctor’s office, Joshua attempted again to reach Rachel on her cell. It was a quarter past two, and not only was she late for her appointment, she wasn’t answering her phone, either.
Was she stuck in traffic and having cell connectivity issues? Or had she lied to him again?
Until lately, he never would have considered
the latter possibility, and it disturbed him to harbor such doubts about her. But he couldn’t help it—her recent behavior had been suspect.
He passed the next few minutes tapping the steering wheel and listening to Christmas music on the radio. Stevie Wonder was singing, “Someday at Christmas,” one of Joshua’s favorite holiday tunes, but the song failed to cheer him.
Something was wrong. He could feel it.
He called Rachel’s cell again. Again, he got her voice mail.
Finally, he called the salon. One of the stylists told him that Rachel had left a short while ago for a personal appointment.
Joshua twisted the radio knob to a station that continuously broadcasted traffic news. In a city such as Atlanta where people drove like bandits, you never could discount the possibility that someone running late hadn’t gotten delayed in a ten-car pileup somewhere.
But there were no traffic snarls on the South side.
Joshua went inside the doctor’s office, identified himself to the receptionist, and asked if Rachel had called to say she was going to be late, or had requested to reschedule. The receptionist was a young black woman with a frizzy Jheri-curl. She eyed Joshua up and down in that appraising manner that black women often did, shook her head, and told him to advise his wife that she would have to pay a twenty-five dollar fee for missing her appointment without giving twenty-four-hours’ advance notice.
“Right, I’ll be sure to let her know.” Joshua turned away.
Back in his Explorer, he called their house, on the remote chance that Rachel would be home. Surprisingly, she answered on the third ring.
“Hey, baby.” Her voice was subdued, as if she had been asleep.
“Rachel, I’ve been here at the doctor’s office for almost half an hour waiting for you. What happened?”
There was a long pause.
“Please . . . come home,” she said. “I need to see you.”
Anxiety crawled up his spine. “You don’t sound good. Is everything okay?”
“Come home. Please.” Her voice nearly broke on the word, “please.”
Something was wrong, but she clearly didn’t want to discuss it on the phone.
“I’m on my way.”
* * *
At home, Joshua found Rachel on the sofa in the family room. Coco lay curled on her lap, slumbering.
Rachel smiled wanly. She wore a red terry cloth bathrobe, her legs folded beneath her, Indian style. A box of Kleenex stood on an end table; crumpled tissues lay on the table, and one was bunched in her lap.
Joshua had been prepared to question her about why she’d skipped her doctor’s appointment, but one at her gave him pause.
“You’ve been crying,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
Rachel gently placed Coco on the floor, rose off the couch, and came to him.
“Hold me,” she said.
Joshua held her. She was freshly bathed, the lemony fragrance of her body wash filling his nostrils. Her still-moist skin dampened the front of his shirt.
But when he felt her trembling, and heard her stifled sob, he realized that her tears, not bath water, were saturating him.
“Baby, what is it?” he asked. “Please, tell me.”
She tilted her head backward, looked up at him. Tears shimmered in her eyes—eyes that held secrets and pain.
A horrifying thought came to him, something so awful he was afraid to put it into words. But he needed to know. “Is there something wrong with . . . our baby?”
She shook her head. Wiped her eyes.
Some of the tension drained out of him. “What is it?”
“Upstairs,” she said. She slipped out of his embrace and went to the staircase, her robe billowing around her legs. Coco scampered after her.
“Rachel? Come back and talk to me.”
But she disappeared upstairs. Why couldn’t she tell him what was wrong?
He went upstairs. Rachel was in their bedroom, standing at the double-windows that overlooked the dense, winter-peeled woodlands beyond the back of their house.
Rachel had dropped her robe to the carpet; she was nude. In the blend of gray afternoon light and shadows, her rear profile was like a luscious illusion.
Joshua felt a warm rigidness stirring in his jeans. With all of the questions spinning through his thoughts, this was hardly the time for sex, but his body apparently had other ideas.
“Do you love me?” Rachel asked in a whisper, her back to him.
“Of course, I love you. I’ll always love you.”
“Will you?” She looked over her shoulder.
“Come on, Rachel.” Joshua sat on the bed, almost squashing Coco; the tiny dog scrambled off the mattress and darted into her pet kennel on the nightstand. “I don’t understand why you’re acting like this.”
“I love you, too.” She moved away from the windows and in front of him. He felt heat radiating from her body, as if she was burning up with some inner flame. “I’ll always love you . . . no matter what happens.”
No matter what happens.
The words, ominous and mysterious, made him open his mouth to ask what she meant. But she put a hold on his questions by pressing her fingers to his lips, buttoning them shut.
Then she took one of his hands and placed it on her hip, as though offering her body to him.
His fingers lay against a long, faded scar that curved from her upper thigh to her hip. It looked as if the damage had been done with a knife. When he’d once asked her about it, she’d told him it had come from an old accident, and had promptly changed the subject.
As if aware of his inspection, she cupped the back of his head and pulled him forward. His lips brushed against her taut stomach.
She grasped his shirt, began to pull it off.
Although Joshua wanted to learn the reason for her sadness, he understood on an intuitive level that Rachel needed this intimacy with him, that it would salve her hurt spirit better than any words he might possibly speak. He would ask her questions about what had happened and many other things . . . but later. For now, he would do only what he had vowed to do on the day they married: love her.
* * *
Afterward, they lay together, tangled in bed sheets. The room was painted in shadows, their slow breaths the only sound in the room.
For Joshua, the post-orgasmic glow was as pleasurable as actual intercourse. As they lay together, enveloped in the warmth of their bodies, they might have been isolated in a cabin in some remote mountain range, sheltered from the troubles of the outside world.
Lying on her side as he lay on his back, Rachel placed her hand on his chest and playfully walked her fingers upward to his chin. Joshua took her fingers and kissed them.
“We need to get together more often in the afternoons,” he said. “This is much better than taking a nap after lunch. Although I could use a nap now—you wore me out.”
During their lovemaking, she’d been especially passionate, and her energy had inspired him to even greater feats of endurance and performance. Joshua’s muscles were limp.
But Rachel’s sadness, whatever its cause, seemed to have faded, for the most part, as though her body had burned it away during their lovemaking. Her eyes were bright and lively again.
“We won’t be able to do this when the baby comes along,” she said. “Hard to be spontaneous when you’ve got a newborn that needs constant attention.”
“We’ll manage.” He gazed at her directly. “Why you were so upset earlier?”
She looked away to the shadowed ceiling. “I don’t want to ruin the mood, baby. We’ll discuss it at dinner.”
“Fair enough.” He rested his head on the pillow. He was relieved that she didn’t want to discuss the subject then. He was enjoying the peacefulness of the moment.
You’re too soft, man. What was all that crap you talked about putting Rachel on the spot and asking tough questions about how she’s been acting lately?
His stern, interior voice was right, of course. There was
much that he needed to speak to Rachel about, from her behavior that afternoon to her recent lies, but as much as those things upset him, he didn’t necessarily want to talk about them.
His tendency to avoid conflict had always been a character flaw of his. Sometimes, he was convinced that was partly why Rachel was drawn to him. She loved him; he believed that. But it was reasonable to assume that she also loved how he never pushed her for answers to hard questions. Someone like her, whom he suspected had never been completely forthcoming about her past, would be attracted to a spouse who never probed too deep.
He’d thought his parents had a dysfunctional marriage, but in a way, his own marriage was equally screwy. That he was aware of it and was reluctant to force changes, however, made him wonder about how firm the foundation of their relationship really was. Was it built on solid ground, or sand? And did he really want a truthful answer to that question?
Rachel bent her arm and propped her hand against her head. “Speaking of dinner, what would you like me to cook?”
He yawned. “I can eat anything. Whatever you want to make is cool with me.”
“I think I’ll go to the grocery store, then.” She sat up.
“Right now?”
“It’s almost four. I want to beat the after-work hordes.”
“Okay.” He yawned again. “I’ll be here. I’m going to take a nap.”
“These hips worked you over, huh?” She rolled off the bed and tapped her bare backside. “Respect the booty, baby.”
He laughed. “True dat.”
He watched her dress in a powder blue jogging suit, Atlanta Braves cap, and sneakers. She came to the bed and kissed him lustily.
“I love you.” She squeezed his hand. “Always.”
“Always.”
She left the room. He turned over in bed, and closed his eyes. He truly was wiped out; he’d slept fitfully the past two nights, and felt capable of sleeping from the afternoon through the following morning.
He never heard Rachel leave. He promptly fell asleep.
The Darkness To Come Page 9