by Ava Delany
“Good morning.” He held out a hand toward her. “Come in.”
“Sit down, have a waffle, and we’ll chat a bit. We didn’t get much of a chance last night.” Delia gave Brie a patient smile. “I want to get to know Ian’s new girlfriend better.”
Brie looked at Ian, then back to the woman who adjusted her thin glasses, and then mumbled to herself, “Yeah, I guess I would be now, wouldn’t I?”
“I’m so glad you’re here, dear.” Thin arms went wide, and before Brie knew it, she was locked in Delia’s embrace.
She smelled of lavender and cookies. Just what a mother should smell like.
Brie hadn’t realized for a long time how much she missed her mom. A moment in Delia’s arms made her remember what having her mother was like. Her heart melted, and she smiled.
She spent the next twenty minutes chatting about her life and trying to choke down the waffles in spite of her negative appetite. Ian rolled his eyes every time his mother snuck waffle bits to Buster. Brie had to tell him about what she’d seen in her dream, but how could she do it in front of his mother? Delia had a gift too. Did that mean she would understand?
“I…” Brie hesitated when the attention of the room was on her. What exactly could she say about her flip. She didn’t really understand it. She glanced at Delia. “What are you doing today?”
“I’ve got to go to the supply store and pick up more tubes of black and red. I feel I’ll need them.”
Ian nodded. “Good, we’ll go down to the art supply store. I’ll buy the paint, and you can paint for me.”
Delia met Ian’s gaze, but didn’t speak, and Brie wondered exactly what Ian had told her about the previous night.
<><><>
Moments later, they piled into Ian’s truck, heading toward the Arterium. Ian had never been happier to pull into the parking lot of an art store in his life. Soon they would have some answers.
They left Buster in the front seat and went into the Arterium, which looked like Venice Beach had come for an extended visit to the interior of the quaint store.
A mural covered the ceiling—a poor rendition of an artist’s hand holding a dripping paintbrush over a canvas. Armature art, given to the store by loyal customers or painted by the staff, decorated the walls. Supplies of every variety filled the shelves throughout the store. His mother moved to an aisle full of paints, holding one of the small baskets the employees stacked near the end caps. Brie waited, fidgeting from foot to foot.
He knew exactly why. Watching his mother shop for oil paints was like watching a fisherman trying to find the perfect bait to catch a prize fish. She stared at the tube, reading every word on it. Then she opened the cap and smelled the paint as intently as a wine connoisseur would smell the cork of a vintage wine bottle. Next, she put a small amount on her fingertip and smeared it around. Finally she wiped her finger on a piece of canvas.
Ian leaned into Brie. “When I turned fourteen, I asked her why she did that,” he angled his chin towards his mother. “She said ‘you should insist upon perfection in everything that truly matters to you, Ian. Otherwise you’re just average.’ Good advice, I guess.”
Brie nodded and shifted again.
Ian hated to see her nervous, so he crossed to the next aisle. He picked through the books, showing paintings to her to ease her tension. A book filled with Monet’s water lilies, another holding Botticelli’s ladies, and a third containing Titian’s beauties made a neat pile in moments. He flipped to a self-portrait of Picasso sans ear.
Bright color caught Ian’s eye. A man in a clown costume drifted down the long aisle perpendicular to theirs. When Ian turned from the art book, he caught a glimpse of the man’s face before it went behind the high shelf. The make-up, at least he thought it was the make-up, made the painted face appear to have giant yellow teeth covering half of its large head. The red paint around the lips gave a snarling effect to the clown’s visage.
Ian shook his head. His imagination must be running away with him.
The clown passed by again on the other side. The make-up definitely made a fierce, growling sneer, but the eyes were what bothered him. The eyes seemed to be hollow black holes with a thin line of red at the edges of where the whites should have been. What kind of children’s party would call for such a hideous mask?
Ian’s heart began an irregular pattern, and the hair rose on his arms.
He glanced around, listening to a tube of paint drop back onto a stack. His mother must have found one she hadn’t liked for some inexplicable reason. Brie stood by him, seeming oblivious to the strange costume.
Ian took a deep breath to calm himself. Instead, his palms became clammy and then damp. Several large containers of paint stood on the top shelf beyond the row of books where he stood, shaking and sweaty. A bottle with the words written in blood red on the label drew his eye. Swallowing hard, he studied it for a moment. A large clawed hand moved up to close around the container. The hand appeared to be skeletal with a grayish-green hue. Like the old monster movies he’d seen as a boy. The claws extending out from the fingertips—no, that was wrong—the claws the fingers tapered into, looked razor sharp.
The book fell from Ian’s shaking hands and landed on the floor with a loud thump. He stared at the claw as it closed around the bottle and drew it off the shelf. His own hand moved involuntarily to the spot where his gun waited, concealed between his jeans and his back.
“Ian?” Brie’s voice echoed in some dim place far away.
His mother!
The thought shot through his mind like a bullet. His mother stood right next to the monster thing.
Time to end this. He had to catch the unsuspecting beast off guard and kill it, before it could kill him or anyone else. Ian flew around the corner. He slipped, tripping on his neat pile of books. Groping at the shelves, he tried to stay on his feet, but lost the grip on the gun in his waistband. He skidded, grabbing blindly at the clown, and fell in a mass of books and tumbling paint bottles.
Ian jerked back his fist, ready to pound the thing before it could claw him to death.
“Wait, please! I have money in my wallet!” Still clutching the bottle of blood red face paint, the small man with his big cherry wig and bulbous nose began to sob.
Ian froze. In his blind panic, he hadn’t noticed the man beneath him was just that: a man. The paint generously circling his lips looked like an ordinary clown’s smile, aside from the gush of tears, which washed rivers of scarlet down his cheeks and chin. His gentle blue eyes didn’t even hint at the blackness Ian had seen. They looked…kind. Red wig quivering, he yanked his wallet out and held it open to Ian, offering his money in exchange for his safety.
No greenish yellow teeth, no black hole eyes, no claw-like hands. How could he have been so abysmally stupid?
Ian rolled off him and sat up.
“Sorry, man.” He shoved a hand through his sweat-moistened hair. “I thought you were someone else.”
The little man still sat there, holding his wallet open to Ian, tears streaming down his face, and holding the bottle of blood red face paint in the crook of his arm. When Ian didn’t move toward the money, his unfortunate victim got up and raced out the door, clutching the bottle.
Ian glanced around. Everyone in the store gaped at him. Even his mother, who stood above him, her basket filled to the brim with paint choices. Two large smears of paint just over her lip gave her the appearance of having a moustache above her wide mouth. She held out a hand to him—the same fingers which had unknowingly applied the paint. If his heart weren’t still hammering in his chest, and if he weren’t so embarrassed by his irrational behavior, he would have laughed. It seemed like a daffy cartoon duck had come out from one of his childhood cartoons and painted a mustache on her.
Brie came to his side, eyes wide, and extended her hand as well.
“Sorry.” He nodded to the woman behind the counter, who gawked at him as though he’d just shot her dog. “I’ll pay for the bottle he took.”
>
Ian picked up the bottles and rose under his own power. Everyone in the store continued to stare at him, as the man had done. He wished he could yell at them and make them stop, but this was his fault. Perhaps he deserved a lot more than just the embarrassment and guilt that came with jumping a harmless birthday party clown.
Things slowly returned to normal in the store, and Brie helped him clean the mess, her hand occasionally brushing his comfortingly. He stood there while his mother walked to the register to pay for her purchases, but the saleswoman must have informed her of her unorthodox makeup because she rushed off toward the restroom at the back of the store.
After righting the books, Ian grabbed a Louvre compilation with the Mona Lisa on the cover and walked up to the register. Brie at his side, he paid for the book and the bottle of paint his victim had taken.
“Really sorry about the scene.” He waved a hand toward the aisle where he’d grappled the unsuspecting man. “I tripped.”
<><><>
Ian sat in the car, waiting for his mother to exit the store. He could never remember blushing before in his life, but he was sure he was now. His cheeks blazed. What an idiot.
“Black hole eyes…toothy jaws…” He turned toward Brie, crossing his arms. “I wonder if the Psych major working on her Master’s degree would still have gone on a date with me if she knew I was a certifiable nut. Then again, maybe it makes me even more appealing. You can psychoanalyze me.”
“Exactly. You’re going to be my thesis statement for my doctorate.” She lifted an eyebrow and smirked.
“At least I’ll serve some useful purpose once I’m chained to a wall to keep me from attacking entertainers on their way to children’s birthday parties.” How could she keep trying to improve his mood after what he’d done?
“Oh, it won’t be so bad.” Brie’s grin deepened into a smile. “I’ll just get you a dog collar. You can come with me wherever I go.”
He uncrossed his arms, placing them on the wheel. “I guess it wouldn’t be so bad.”
“Of course I’d have to call you Spot.”
“Okay now, I draw the line at Spot.”
“How about Sparky?” Brie leaned in, wiggling her eyebrows.
Ian shrugged. “Maybe, but you’d have to show me an awful lot of affection for that to work.”
She ran a hand through his hair and kissed his cheek.
“I missed you last night, Sparky,” she purred in his ear.
Thoughts of the clown, the door, and the black hole eyes fled. In their place came visions of what he would have done last night, had his mother not been so old fashioned as to faint dead if he’d slept in the same room with his girlfriend. He turned toward her, taking her arms in his palms, and pulled her to him. Brow furrowed, she stared at a spot on the dash.
Ian let her go. “What is it?”
“I just realized something.” She placed a finger to her lips. “I’d been dismissing them as strange misfires of my gift, but now I realize what they mean.”
Ian’s brow matched hers. “What? What happened?”
“I’ve been having the strangest flips lately. I visit a woman reading a novel. At first I thought she would be in trouble, but then the flips became mundane.” Brie twisted in her seat as much as her belt would allow. “But the most recent one seemed the most mundane, until the novel said what you were doing this morning.”
“What?”
“I knew you would be in the kitchen having waffles with your mother.” She glanced up at him. “I thought it was a strange coincidence, but I just remembered something else. Once, there was a thing in the shadows. A set of black hole eyes. They seemed to suck the light out of the room. I’d convinced myself it was imagination, but…”
She shuddered, and his reply caught in his throat. A black BMW waited in a parking spot near the door of the art store. The inside of the car sat bathed in shadows from the steering wheel to the back. Hands, or claws to be more specific, closed on the steering wheel. The BMW’s engine revved.
Ian’s gaze flew from the car to the store where, rearranging several bags in her hands, his mother prepared to open the door of the Arterium.
“It’s going to get her.” Ian hit the ignition button. Stomped the gas. The truck’s tires squealed.
“What? Who?” Brie’s voice pitched high, and she grabbed the seat to steady herself.
From behind him, Buster barked like mad. The truck sped toward the Arterium. Ian’s heart pounded in his ears and turned Brie’s screams into a low hum as his mother stepped away from the door. Buster bit at Ian’s coat, tugging on his shoulder.
The BMW drove past his mother, not even swerving in her direction. It passed in front of the truck, and the shadow, which had seemed to cover the inside of the car, lifted just enough for him to see the two black hole eyes sucking the light, despite it being daytime.
Brie’s foot kicked at his ankle. Ian blinked. He was still barreling down the row of cars at full speed, heading straight toward his mother.
And the entrance to the very big, very solid building.
Ian stomped the breaks. Nearly stood on them. The truck screeched to a halt and the smell of burning rubber offended his nostrils. Pale as the canvases she clutched to her chest, his mother stood near the hood of the truck, tremors wracking her slight frame.
“Oh God.” Brie panted in the seat beside him. The door clicked and harsh retching began.
Either he was going crazy, or he was in real trouble, though he guessed it meant trouble no matter which way it ended up. The monster had tried to make him run over his mother. He had to get his mother and Brie somewhere safe. Until they were, he posed a genuine danger to both women and maybe Buster too.
“Mom, get in.”
His mother’s color changed—white as milk to a sallow green. Like an automaton, she moved to the passenger side and climbed in the back. Buster whined and nuzzled her neck.
“Are you all right, dear?”
He ignored her, punching up his bank in his i-com and transferring five hundred credits to his mother’s account.
“I don’t know what happened back there, but after what you say you saw in the Arterium, and what happened a second ago, I think I should drive,” Brie said.
“I agree. You seem a little overwrought.” The calm and understated sentence was a stark contrast to the fear shining bright in her eyes. She must have thought he’d lost a few sandwiches on the way to his picnic. And Brie was right, she should drive.
“What did you see in the store?” His mother gazed at Ian, when he climbed into the passenger seat. Buster leapt into his lap. He forgave the forbidden action, knowing Buster must be sensing the anxiety.
He turned to look at his mother’s worry-drawn face.
“I’ve transferred five hundred credits. When we’re done, I want you to take Buster and go away for a while.”
Buster whined and snuggled deeper into his lap as though he understood Ian’s words and didn’t want to be left behind.
“Don’t tell me where you’re going, I can’t know. You’re in danger if you stay around me.” He waited for her barrage of questions and protests to begin.
“What are you talking about? I am not going anywhere. Not until you tell me what happened back there. Don’t tell me the silly story from this morning had something to do with this.”
Ian fisted his hands in his hair. “I’m not sure. Maybe I’m nuts, but something was going to get you back there. Or maybe nothing was. I don’t know. All I know is, you aren’t safe around me, either of you, and I have to do something about it.”
“I’m not going anywhere either. Not even if you do tell me what this was all about,” Brie said. “But you better start talking.”
He couldn’t let them get hurt. He’d only ever had his mother. Together they’d weathered the lonely years while women came and went because he couldn’t share his secrets. Now he had Brie too, who was not just special in the same way he was, she was extraordinary in so many more ways. He
couldn’t lose either one of them. Not when he might be the one causing it.
“I don’t even know what to tell you. It all happened so fast. You have to go so I can figure this out. If we can’t talk about this like adults, I’ll settle it like a child. I’ll wait until you aren’t looking, and I’ll take off. It’s simple but true; you can’t get hurt if you don’t know where I am.”
“No. Don’t do that. I’ll paint, and we’ll talk when I’m done.” She eyed Brie and asked in a barely audible whisper, “Should we drop her off somewhere?”
Ian shook his head. “It’s okay. She knows.”
His mother’s eyes widened. “All right then. We’ll talk when I’ve finished my painting.”
“And then you’ll go?” Ian asked.
“If there is a reason.” She nodded. “I do know a place. I’ve wanted to visit there for ages.”
“Glad to hear it.” He’d begun to worry. If by some miracle he was able to get her to leave, she would follow him in a rented car. Now he just had to convince Brie to go, once he had the information he needed from her. Something in him made him think it would be harder than convincing his mother.
Chapter Seven
The Vision
His mother held the paintbrush, her fingers flying across the canvas. The frenzied disassociation he’d come to recognize as her own form of premonition reminded him of the conversation he’d had with Brie in the truck before he’d nearly killed them all.
Brie walked into the room, hair wet and pulled back in a bun. Ian turned to her and smiled. She looked beautiful, even in the baby pink sweats and plain white t-shirt they’d stopped to buy her on the way to his mother’s house.
“Tell me more about what you’ve seen in your premonitions.”
“I’m not clairvoyant. Premonitions are like seeing the future, which isn’t exactly what I do.” She took his hand and walked to the overstuffed sofa. She sat, propping her feet on the matching ottoman. “I live other people’s experiences. I’m able to see what they see, hear what they think and say, and sometimes I can know what they know, but only for the short time while I’m in their head. For instance, Andrea has a Felix the Cat clock. It was a gift, and though she hates it, she can’t bring herself to get rid of it. And she has some really weird rituals about reading.”