Flashback

by Amanda Carpenter

  “Excuse me,” she said stiffly, trying to back away from him and get away from his touch. His hands tightened even more on her arms, though, and for the moment she was trapped. She hissed with pain.

  “Well, well,” Mick drawled, looking her up and down consideringly, insolently. “What have we here? Little Miss Snobbishness, isn’t it? The one who always keeps to herself as if she’s too good for anyone else. What’s happening, little lady, or are you too stuck up to answer me to my face?”

  “You always did have foul manners, Mick, and I can see that you haven’t changed,” she said coldly, looking at his hands with a sardonic raised eyebrow. “Excuse me. I have a lot to do and you’re obviously blocking my way.”

  “Now, now, now,” he chided mockingly, his hands sliding higher to cup the soft flesh of her upper arms. “Is that any way to be neighbourly?” His hands tightened. She would have bruises later. “Surely even you can be nicer than that. Come on, show me how nice you can be, hmn?”

  “Let go of my arms, you bug, or I’ll drop this five pound can of coffee on your foot,” she said, between her teeth, furious at how he was toying with her. He paused deliberately, laughing down at her tight expression, but there must have been some kind of hint in her eyes at how close she was to the edge of her control, for he then stepped back out of her way. He bowed her on past with that same insolent, mocking grin. She just looked at him contemptuously, refusing to show how she’d been shaken, and without another look or word walked right on by.

  She walked on briskly back to the house, smiling occasionally at the different children that shouted and ran around with the wild abandonment that summer vacation invariably brought about. She had just reached the rather long sidewalk to the house when something impelled her to turn around slowly and look behind her.

  A man was standing there some distance away, just watching her, still. She was far enough away so that she should not have been able to see his features very distinctly, but somehow she could. Brown hair, left long at the neck and short on his forehead, fluttered in the breeze and blew across his face. He looked to be in his thirties or thereabouts, and his face was distinguished by two lines running from nose to mouth, carved deeply. Another strong clean line between his brows, sensual lips, and dark eyes completed the face, and she then knew that she was seeing him with her mind and not her eyes. She just stared at him as he stared at her. Then she deliberately turned away and walked quickly to the house.

  So that was their new neighbour, Mr. Raymond, she mused. She’d known almost immediately who he was, and was in fact a bit surprised that if she was that sensitive to him, then why hadn’t she seen him more clearly last night? But then she had been a bit distraught last night, and preoccupied. The vestiges of the nightmare had clung to her mind like an old spiderweb, and she hadn’t been thinking clearly.

  Once inside she quickly and neatly put away the things she’d bought and then, restless and needing some solitude, she ran lightly up the stairs to her room and retrieved her drawing pad and pencils. She would do some sketching today. Her fingers were itching to put something down on paper.

  She called out to her mother as she went out of the back door and then looked around indecisively for a moment. She decided that she would trek over to a favourite resting place of hers. The movement and the solitude, as she headed for the path that would take her towards Mrs. Cessler’s property, helped to ease the tight band of tension that had been holding her in a muscle clenching clamp for the past few days. She was striding through dark blue shadow and bright yellow patches of scattered sunlight as great pine trees loomed overhead. Brown pine needles cushioned the path and covered the ground all around, with lacy light green ferns sprouting in the protecting shade. She wasn’t paying attention to the lush, familiar scenery. She was engrossed in her thoughts, harking back to her ever-present fears, being haunted by that part of herself that set her apart from everyone else.

  The ground angled up, the path leading to higher ground, and she was breathing slightly heavier as she finally broke from the trees and came out in a little clearing that jutted out into a crumbling, rocky cliff that plummeted a good forty feet to uneven, unyielding granite. There were even more pines growing down below. The clearing at the top of the cliff was a good twenty feet in a rough diameter, fairly well secluded and providing an excellent view of the surrounding land. With the attitude of one intimately familiar with both the view and the clearing itself, she threw herself down on the ground underneath a monstrously huge pine, and she propped herself against its trunk while she gazed out over the entire scene, sighing.

  Loneliness. This place was so utterly lonely. She liked it. Nobody ever came this way, situated as it was on the border of their land and the Cessler property. And it was usually a good place to find some sort of peace and relaxation, secluded as it was. But for some reason today peace eluded her. She was too keyed up. Her restless fingers moved, opening her drawing pad to a blank sheet, and her nimble hands picked up a pencil, moving over the page, stroking efficient, quick lines over the white. Her eyes roamed over the view and then clouded over dreamily. She let her mind go free.

  Footsteps on the path. She turned her head sharply at the sound, her concentration broken, her newly attained solitude abruptly shattered. Feeling invaded, she tensed and gritted her teeth, deciding determinedly to stay. Her eyes were stony now and no longer dreaming and soft. She turned back to the view, fingers tight against her pad of paper and her pencil. It snapped and she started with surprise.

  The footsteps sounded closer, and then they stopped close by her. She said without looking around, “Mr. Raymond. Good afternoon.”

  A pause. A bird up in her pine tree chittered noisily. “Good afternoon, Miss Haslow,” he then replied, voice deep, expressionless. “So this is a favourite haunt of yours?”

  “Yes.” Her hands fell to her lap and lay idle. Should she get up and leave after all? The sun was shining but she sensed a darkness in this man that had nothing to do with the day. Her legs tensed, as if she were about to run a race. “If you would like, I’ll keep away after this. I don’t mean to intrude.”

  Another pause, and she heard him move. “A generous offer, coming from someone who has roamed this land for years, and quite a change in attitude from last night. No, don’t bother to get up. I don’t feel I have the right to order you off the property and it wouldn’t be kind if I did.”

  Her hands trembled. “Thank you.” Something was quivering in the air right in front of her, something intangible and ethereal and yet something so real that she would have staked her life on its existence. She sensed that, even as he was speaking to her courteously, his mind was on something entirely different, a vital thing, not having to do with her. His mind was clamped on that something with the tenacity and desperation of a fighting dog. For the first time since he’d joined her, she looked up. “I apologise for my lack of manners last night. I was tired and on edge.”

  “Insomnia does that to a person, I know. Please don’t apologise. As I recall, I was not too bright or cheerful, myself.” He was staring out over the view, his dark head lifted to the breeze as if he were seeking something. The wind gently stirred his hair. She felt rather than saw his sigh and knew that he was relaxing slightly. It enabled her to unclasp her hands, and the tight band around her chest eased also. It was then she realised that it wasn’t her own tension she was feeling, but his.

  Crouching at his feet like she was and staring up at him, she saw how the line of power from the slim curve of his hips to the broader, solid curve of his shoulders was emphasised. She wondered how strong he really was. His head tilted and he considered her briefly, the sun putting his face into shadow and lighting the edges of his hair, and then he sat down beside her, draping his hands to dangle them carelessly from his raised knees. She suddenly wanted nothing more than to escape, but felt unable to get up and leave just yet. She jerked her head around to stare back out over the land. A large black bird soared overhead. She thou
ght that it was perhaps a hawk, but wasn’t familiar enough to identify the kind.

  He was regarding her upturned face. “My first name is David. Yours is Dana, if I remember rightly.” He paused and she nodded silently. Then he continued politely and all the while she knew he was just making sounds. She wondered what devil was plaguing him. “Are you home from school for the summer?”

  “No.” It had come out very short. His eyes sharpened on her. She qualified what she had said and softened the terse reply by saying, “I’m not in college.”

  “So. What do you do, then?” he continued. She wanted to scream at him suddenly. The whole conversation was such a farce, the sounds they were mouthing so meaningless, his interest so false. She could feel just how little he was really interested in her, how she didn’t matter at all to him. That wasn’t any concern of hers, she thought, straightening her shoulders. She’d always dealt with the harshness of uncompromising truth before. She certainly wouldn’t break under the truth now. She didn’t care about him any more than he cared about her.

  She toyed with the broken pieces of her pencils, fitting the jagged edges of the break together and pulling it apart again. “Nothing of importance. I don’t work. What do you do for a living?”

  “I’m a writer. I do freelance work, mostly.” She nodded without interest. She felt his gaze sharpen even more on her and realised that his regard was fully on her now. His interest had quickened. He’d felt her lack of interest in him almost as strongly as she’d sensed his for her, and it intrigued him enough to catch his attention.

  She asked randomly, “And are you working now, Mr. Raymond, or are you on vacation?”

  “Call me David, if you like. I suppose that you could say I’m on vacation. I’m taking a sabbatical from work. I’ve been ill and this is a chance to rest up before getting back into the swing of things.” The blue jay that nested in the huge pine shot past with the recklessness of a dive bomber and then landed in a flurry on a low branch nearby, scolding the bird that was too close to his nest.

  That’s a lie, she thought, and for one heart stopping moment feared that she’d said it aloud. It was a lie, but it wasn’t any business of hers, and she didn’t want to get into an awkward situation with this man, a total stranger. It was time she was leaving. She stood and, having forgotten her drawing pad, saw it fall on to the carpet of pine needles, pages fluttering. As she bent to retrieve it, she was just that split second too late as he reached forward automatically to pick it up for her. His brown fingers smoothed the pages back into place as she murmured a thanks, and he glanced at it idly before handing it back to her. He went absolutely, rigidly still.

  His eyes were riveted on her unfinished drawing, and she felt the shock ripple through him like waves in a pond after a rock has been thrown in, felt it as surely as if it had been her, with the thudding at her own chest and temples. He went totally white, his knuckles tightening on the pad and ruining it. She flexed her fingers painfully. After the first overwhelming wave of shock that had rippled through him, she felt a nameless fear, but this wasn’t coming from him. This was all her own, and she backed up a few steps, eyes huge.

  “Where have you seen this?” The question came out of him with the force of a bullet. She flinched violently.

  “I was just doodling,” she mumbled, shaking. What was wrong with him? What had upset him so?

  “This isn’t the view out there!” he said, from the back of his throat like a snarl, thrusting the picture under her face. “This isn’t an idle sketch!” She looked at her own drawing and moaned aloud, feeling sickened. The landscape she had drawn while idly dreaming there in the sun was totally alien to her and strangely complete, down to detailed work on the foliage. It was like nothing she’d ever seen before. “Where have you seen this?”

  She shook her head numbly, nauseated. “Nowhere. It’s my imagination. I made it up.” It was said hopelessly as she backed away, hardly aware that she did so, frightened by the violence of emotion coming from him. The clearing was too isolated suddenly.

  “You didn’t make this up. How old are you?” He advanced on her.

  “Twenty…” her voice wobbled.

  “You’re too young to have been there.” His own voice was hard, harsh, and she wondered, been where? “Where have you seen this?”

  “Nowhere! Nowhere, I swear it. Look, you can have the picture, I don’t want it. I was just sketching, really.” She stared up at him, having gone white herself, and she saw the darkness in his eyes, the dilated pupils, the aggressiveness to his rock-hard face, the pulse that beat rapidly at the base of his throat. She felt and saw how very dangerous he really was. It invaded her own blood stream and started her own heart to rattling away in her chest, pounding at her wrists and temples. She suddenly tripped backwards, sprawling at his feet. He reached down and hauled her up unsympathetically, his hand hurting where he gripped the spot that Mick had bruised, but she didn’t notice the hurt because realisation was exploding inside of her like a bombshell, prompted by his physical touch. And the sickness grew in her as she realised that the picture was not from her mind but from his, and she covered her mouth with one shaking hand, muttering, “Oh, God.” He was looking an angry inquiry, more like an accusation, and it was more than she could stand.

  She twisted from his grasp and fled.

  Chapter Two

  The plane was landing, hitting the ground with a rough thump and rolling, and then everyone was shouting and grabbing their things and jumping down on to the ground as shells exploded by the runway. Everyone ran for a squat, oblong building that looked as if it had been pieced together with a few sheets of metal, some glue and a few prayers. Dana picked up her duffle bag and ran with the others. It was the heat that hit her the hardest. The heat, after coming from the relatively cool interior of the plane, was like a furnace blast right in the face. It caught at the blood, made the pulse beat like a warm drum in the temples, made one gasp like a beached fish.

  The area looked alien, all greens and browns and strange vegetation, and it was all taken in during that swift dash for the building. She entered with everyone else, and men, dressed in drab olive fatigues, shuffled into some semblance of order while an officer walked up and down in front of them.

  A long, long time passed and the fellow droned on and on and on, and Dana’s head started to ache with the heat and the alienation of everything, and the fatigue, and that man’s endless talking. Then everything changed, and the officer was standing right in front of her, staring at her intimidatingly, but she looked him right in the eye, undaunted, expressionless.

  He suddenly shouted, “Do you believe in hell, lieutenant?”

  “No, sir.” And her voice was deeper, rumbling, and it was at that moment that she knew that the dream was not her own but someone else’s. And it was also then that she knew she was helpless to get out of the dream until whoever it was had finished dreaming it also. She was trapped.

  The officer in front of her/him became leering, evil, his face changing into something horrible and horrifying. “You will, boy. Believe me, you will. By this time next year you’ll be wishing you were out of this place or dead, it won’t matter which, as long as you’re out of this place. ’Cause do you know where this is, boy? This is hell.” And it echoed in her mind weirdly until she thought she would scream. This is hell, is hell, ishellishellishell.

  Dana bolted upright in her bed, rigid and sweating, crying and panting, and she crouched for some time in her bed, muscles quivering from reaction and weariness in the dark night. Then she slowly, achingly dragged herself out of bed after an incurious glance at her clock. It was only three thirty in the morning and she’d only slept around five hours, but she knew that there would be no more sleep—again—for her that night.

  Grey shadows of exhaustion loomed in Dana’s head that morning, as she pulled herself up the stairs to shower. The water she turned on was deliberately cold, and the shock of the icy spray jolted her into a painful wakefulness. She then s
udsed quickly, soaped her hair and rinsed it, and then crept out of the shower cubicle, shaking and gasping. Her fingers were tinged with blue as they sorted through her clothes numbly, and she managed to shrug into her jeans and top, coldness making her clumsy. Then she took her hair dryer and worked diligently at getting the long strands of thick chestnut hair at least partially dry. It fell to past her shoulder blades, and she had to bend forward to let her hair fall over her face in order to dry it. Then she swung her head back and her hair settled with a swirl on to her shoulders, the weight of it familiar, not even noticed.

  Her jeans were loose at the waist, and she grimaced at that, irritated. At the best of times she was slim, and with her lack of appetite lately her slimness had given way to a more angular thinness, her arms looking like fragile sticks and the elbow bone becoming pronounced. Her hips jutted out more prominently. She glanced at herself in the mirror and thought disgustedly that she looked like a store mannequin, lifeless except for a glitter of something in her grey-green eyes that looked a bit feverish, like something stretched tight. That nervous core of tension still was gripping her. The loss of weight hadn’t done much for her face either. The hollows of her cheekbones seemed to her to be too pronounced, and her neck looked too slender to hold up the heavy weight of her head and thick, heavy fall of hair. No amount of weight loss could take away the fullness of her mouth or the rich quality to her glimmering, heavy lidded eyes, but other than those two positive points, she looked almost like a starved cat.

  She would try to eat breakfast today, she decided, after a critical assessment of herself in the mirror. This was getting to be ridiculous.