by Rick Hautala
“And who else?” Dianne whispered. A prickly rush of fear coursed up her back. “Who … who else died out there?”
“We all did!”
“She was the first.”
“Rachel was.”
“But we others … we all followed her.”
“And now we’ve been left alone.”
“Forgotten!”
“Abandoned.”
“All alone … now that she’s gone.”
“Who?” Dianne said, her voice trembling louder. “Who’s gone?”
Her voice seemed to fill the darkness, but it didn’t mask the distant wail of a crying baby. Dianne didn’t know how long that sound had been going on, but as soon as she was aware of it, the tingling surges that had been playing up and down her back suddenly intensified. Blood rushed into her head, filling it with a hot, pounding pressure. With a loud, keening screech, she suddenly flung aside the covers and, before she knew what she was doing, found herself straddling Edward. She clamped both hands around his throat and was shaking him.
“Did you do it?” she wailed, bouncing his head u and down on the pillow. “Did you? Huh? You lousy bastard! Are you the one? Out at the mill! Did you do it?”
Grunting loudly, he twisted beneath her weight, thrashing like a roped calf. She tried to hold on and pin him down with one hand while raining heavy blows down onto his face with the other; but in spite of her fury, she knew she wasn’t strong enough to really hurt him. That only made her rage and frustration rise all the higher because right now she wanted to beat him senseless. With a throat-tearing shriek, she continued to punch at his face.
“You tried to hide it from me!” she screamed. “By pretending! But I know! I know that you did it! That you did it on purpose!”
“Hey, c’mon!” Edward’s voice was thick with sleep and confusion. “Jesus Christ, Dianne! Stop it!”
He swung one arm across his body and knocked her aside, breaking the hold she had on his throat. Then he tossed the covers aside and rolled off the bed onto his feet. He staggered, fighting for his balance, and in a flash she leaped off the bed onto his back and started pounding on him again while she screamed into his ear.
“You did this to me! You did it to me on purpose!”
A bright red haze filled Dianne’s vision. For a terrifying instant, she had the sensation that she could see in the dark, that she could see every detail in the room as though she were looking through infrared lenses. Behind her, lined up around the bed, she glimpsed several people, all standing there immobile, their faces expressionless as they watched her.
Edward shook her off his back. She hit the floor with a thump. He spun around to face her and yelled, “What the hell’s the matter with you?” His voice was strangled and congested.
“Just leave me alone! Just leave me the Christ alone!”
He moved toward her, reached out for her, but she sidestepped him, backing away so she could keep the double bed between them. The people she had been so convinced were there in the room had vanished, but she hardly noticed.
“Stay away from me! Don’t you dare try and hurt me again!” she screamed. Her heart was racing high and fast in her chest. “I swear to Christ, I’ll kill you if you do!”
“For God’s sake, Dianne! Snap out of it, will you? What’s the matter with you?”
She heard him but was so caught up in her rage and fear that his words made absolutely no sense. She was swept away with a stark terror of him, and she realized with a terrifying dread that she was no longer even sure who he was. She could see his face, dimly lit by the glow of moonlight, but in some crazy, distorted way, he seemed to be several people all at once. She watched warily as his face shifted into a fast-moving cavalcade of other faces. All of them appeared grim and determined, and she couldn’t help but recall the two stone-faced policemen she had seen in the Model-A in her dream and the group of sober-looking men who had surrounded the old woman with a rope tied around her neck.
“You wanted to hurt me,” she said, her voice low and sputtering with rage. “I think you wanted me to die! That’s why you let me fall off that cliff!”
“Let you—? What are you—? Why that … that’s crazy!”
“Oh no it isn’t,” Dianne said, panting heavily. Her fists were clenched so tightly the palms of her hands throbbed. She wanted to rush at him again and start hitting him, but she knew it would be futile, so she backed away, all the while keeping a wary eye on every slightest move he made.
“Come on, Dianne,” he said, dropping his voice low and taking another few steps toward her. “You must’ve been having one hell of a nightmare or something. Let me—”
“No! It wasn’t a dream,” Dianne said in a low, trembling voice that threatened to break any second. “I know what I saw … out there!”
“Out where?”
In answer, she hiked her thumb toward the moonlit window. “Out there!” she said, her voice winding up a notch.
“For Christ’s sake, calm down, will you? Look, it’s almost four o’clock in the morning! Let me just turn on a light and we can—”
“No!” Dianne shouted, but it was too late. Edward moved swiftly to the doorway. There was a faint click as he flicked the wall switch, and a sudden burst of light filled the room, stinging Dianne’s eyes like a splash of salt water. She covered her face with both hands but, immediately mistrustful of Edward, peered at him through the network of fingers. At first, all she could see was that something was wrong with him; she wasn’t sure what. Then a cold pit opened up inside her stomach when her vision cleared, and she saw a network of dark lines and splotches on Edward’s face.
Blood!
The word tore through her mind like a bullet.
Oh my God, he’s bleeding!
The room suddenly began to spin. Dianne moaned softly as an overpowering wave of dizziness started to tug her down. Her legs felt like wood as she took a single step forward, and then darkness came crashing down around her like a collapsing building.
Edward knew he was bleeding before he wiped his nose with the back of his hand and saw the stringy red streak of blood. Hot pressure throbbed inside his face, and a coppery taste flooded the back of his throat. But he didn’t even consider his own injury when he saw Dianne’s face go suddenly pale and her eyes roll back in her head just before she fell to the floor. She crumpled beside the bed in a slow-motion pirouette like a stringless puppet. He was beside her in an instant, raising her head and cradling it in his lap as he gently slapped her cheek.
“Come on, honey … wake up,” he whispered. His voice was all trembly, and he fought hard to keep his panic down. The light hurt his eyes, and he was still disoriented from being yanked out of his sleep so abruptly, but he was nearly frantic with fear for Dianne as he looked at her, wondering and worrying about what was happening to her.
Why had she attacked him like that? What the hell could have made her react so violently?
His stomach was all fluttery as he sat beside her on the floor, gently rubbing her face. Her skin was clammy. Her breathing came in short, rattling gulps. He kept glancing over his shoulder at the telephone on the bed stand, painfully aware that he should get help, but he didn’t dare leave her. Should he call to Brian? The commotion must have woken him up.
“Jesus Christ, Dianne … Come on … Wake up, will you?” he whispered.
She was still breathing, so he knew at least she wasn’t dead, but what in the hell was wrong with her? She had attacked him for no reason whatsoever. Why would she do something like that? And the things she had said, the accusations … she had been talking like … like she was out of her mind.
“You tried to hide it from me by pretending, but I know that you did it. It wasn’t a dream. I know what I saw out there! You wanted to hurt me. I think you wanted me to die! Don’t you dare try and hurt me again! I swear to Christ, I’ll kill you if you do!”
What the hell could have made her say such things?
As Edward stared down at her, h
is vision went suddenly blurry as tears filled his eyes. He wanted more than anything to take away the torment he knew was raging inside his wife, but he also knew that he couldn’t do it. Whatever was causing it, he didn’t feel confident that he could do anything to change it. How could he when he had to live with his own private torment? Her words, spoken in anger and near delirium, had touched the edges of his own guilt about what he had done to Ray Saunders, and his mind was nearly blank as he thought about how much he wished he could confide in her about it all … about everything, but over the years he had convinced himself that he could never tell anyone. It was the one secret he could never tell anyone!
What snapped him back to his senses was a feathery touch against his cheek. He grunted with surprise and shook his head, startled to see that Dianne’s eyes were open. She was reaching up to him and stroking his face. Her fingers grazed against his upper lip and came away bloody.
“Oh, honey,” she said in a high, whining voice.
“Hey, hey … you just take it easy, all right,” he said, combing his hand through her hair. “You’re gonna be all right now. Just relax.”
“But I … I tried to hurt you,” she rasped.
She looked as though she could barely focus her eyes as she stared at the blood on her fingertips. Tears poured from her eyes and rolled down the sides of her face. Edward was happy to see a faint blush of color returning to her cheeks, but there was also a disturbing glazed frost in her eyes that almost made her look as if she had been stricken blind. The scar line along the edge of her chin was bright red and looked like a line of fresh blood. For a frozen instant, he wondered if he had hurt her, or if she had cut herself.
“I can’t believe … I don’t know what … what I was doing. Oh, God, I hurt you. I—your nose is bleeding.”
“No, it’s nothing. Nothing at all,” Edward said, sniffing as he wiped his nose on the back of his hand. He tried to smile, but the cold ache in his chest filled him with fear—fear both for her and for him.
“Shit, you must’ve been having one hell of a nightmare.”
“No, it wasn’t a … I was just—I—”
She cut herself off and moaned softly as she ran her hands down over her face. When she looked up at him again, her expression seemed a bit clearer, and a faint fluttering of hope filled him even though he knew there were still plenty of unanswered questions.
But maybe she’s going to be all right, he thought. Maybe …
He helped her swing her legs around and sit up so she could lean against the side of the bed.
“Hang on a second,” he said, “lemme get you a glass of water.” Before she could say anything, he raced down the hall to the bathroom and returned a few seconds later with a full glass. She took the glass and drank deeply, her throat making tight gulping noises.
“Umm, thanks,” she said, snacking her lips as she handed him the empty glass.
After a moment of silence, he asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”
She locked eyes with him, and he could see the doubt and confusion still lingering inside her. He wanted to hug her and tell her everything was all right, but something made him hold back.
“I—I’m so scared,” she said, her voice breaking as she leaned toward him, gripping his upper arms with both hands and squeezing tightly. “I … I don’t remember what started it. I think I was asleep or something. I must’ve been, but there was this—this—”
She cut herself off abruptly, and Edward had the distinct impression that she had known exactly what she had been about to say but was holding it back.
“All of a sudden I felt so … I don’t know, so threatened by you … by everything. I was having some kind of dream that I had to—to fight you because of something … something you did to—to hurt someone.”
“You know I’d never do anything to hurt you,” Edward said, sniffing loudly. The lingering taste of blood in the back of his throat almost gagged him.
“No, I know—” Dianne said, shaking her head rapidly. The light in her eyes seem suddenly to intensify. “I know you’d never do anything to hurt me.”
“But you said I did,” Edward said softly, lowering his gaze. “I don’t know if you remember what you were saying when you were shouting at me, but you seemed pretty damned convinced that I was trying to hurt you. Was that part of your dream?”
“No, I—”
“You don’t still blame me, do you—for what happened, when you fell do you?”
“Oh, no, no—of course I don’t,” Dianne said.
Her voice was clearer now, more forceful, but Edward thought he detected an indecisive edge to it, as though she still only half-believed it herself. They sat on the bedroom floor staring at each other until the silence grew uncomfortably long; then Edward took Dianne’s hand to help her up to her feet. She resisted, remaining seated with her shoulders hunched up protectively.
“Wait,” she said, no more than a whisper. “There—there’s something else I want to talk to you about.”
Once again a furtive, frightened look filled her eyes. Edward eased himself back down beside her and, still holding her hand, gave it a reassuring squeeze.
“What’s that?” he asked.
It took a great deal of effort to keep his voice from cracking, and all he could think was: goddamnit, she knows! Somehow, she’s found out all about what happened out there at the mill with Ray Saunders! That’s what she meant when she said that I hurt someone and I tried to hide it from her by pretending! She must know that I’m the one who put Ray into that wheelchair!
“It was … God, I feel so stupid, even saying this, but—you remember when I told you … about what happened when I was a kid … the time my mother tried to kill my father?”
Edward nodded and forced himself to smile reassuringly.
“It just felt so … so—I dunno, so weird that I could block something like that out and not even remember it until I had that first session with my therapist. But ever since then, I’ve been—been worrying about … something.”
“So talk to me about it,” Edward said. “You know you can tell me anything.” He couldn’t prevent the accusatory voice inside his brain from asking why he expected complete honesty from her when he didn’t dare tell her everything.
“I was—” Dianne started to say, but then her voice choked off, and she started to cry. Edward pulled her close and held her, trembling until she could speak again. “It’s just that it’s been eating away at me for weeks, now, thinking how, when she tried to kill him how she … how she looked like—like she was actually enjoying it!”
“Well,” Edward said mildly, “it must have been horrible, seeing that your mother was living in such an abusive situation, and you couldn’t do a damned thing about it.”
“No, no! It’s not that I, like, blame myself or anything. I think I can deal with that, but I’ve been worrying that it might be like, I dunno, like hereditary or something, you know? Like I have a black widow gene or something, and just like my mother, I—I have this subconscious drive that makes me want to—want to…”
Her voice trailed away, but Edward finished for her. “Want to kill me, you mean, right?”
Biting her lower lip, Dianne looked at him, her eyes glistening with tears as she nodded and gasped, “Yeah. I’m afraid that, with all the pressure we’ve been under, I might completely lose it.” She broke down into tears again and, turning toward him, buried her face in the crook of his neck. “Does this mean I’m losing my mind?”
Long after Dianne had drifted off to sleep, Edward was lying awake, bothered both by what she had said to him and by what he hadn’t said to her.
Certainly, he was worried for Dianne, but he was also convinced that she was still suffering from the trauma of her accident and reconstructive surgery, and in conjunction with the medication, it was really messing up her head. She had complained about it enough times over the past month, and Edward felt confident that it was something she would eventually work out. This talk
about a “black widow gene” was, of course, nonsense, pure and simple. Nobody inherits a desire or drive to kill their spouse.
His problem, on the other hand, was deeper and, he felt, more difficult to resolve … if not impossible. If Dianne’s problems were a fresh bleeding cut, then his were decade’s thick, knotted scar tissue. For thirty years, he’d been living with the guilt of what he had done. If anything, the scars on his soul grew tougher with each passing year. So many times over the past thirty years, he had wished that he could have told someone—anyone about what had happened that day, but he never had. He’d never found the courage. His mother had died never discovering the truth even though as a result she had to have her youngest son, Michael, committed to a mental institution. Like everyone else in town, she believed Michael had tried to kill Ray and was too dangerous to have around. It had broken her heart, and the truth that Edward had kept walled up inside him all this time had merely compounded his own pain and suffering by making his mother’s misery his.
But why couldn’t he tell Dianne about it? Why couldn’t he trust his own wife?
The passing storm had stirred up a cool breeze that cut through the summer heat. Tangled emotions filled Edward as he stared out the bedroom window at the slow progression of the waning moon. He thought with deep regret about his first marriage with Sally, and how it had ended in such hatred, such hostility. He was certain much of it was generated by the dark secret he kept bottled up inside him. And now, that same secret was driving a wedge between him and Dianne.
What if Diane was reacting erratically because of his secretiveness? Could what was bottled up inside of him be driving her crazy?
And what about Brian?
It saddened him that they had never had a genuine father-son relationship. Since the divorce, when Brian was four years old, they had treated each other so distantly, almost like strangers. Now that he was remarried to Dianne, he had wanted Brian to stay for the summer so they could try to build bridges between them, but things had gone steadily downhill from the start. Perhaps he should just accept the fact that he was a failure—as a father, as a husband, as a human being!