The Glimpsing

by James L. Black

  “Just tell me what he looks like,” Jack said with an edgy calm.

  “Um… I don’t know... thin, shorter than most men, auburn hair.”

  “How thin? Bony?”

  “Yes. I’d say so.”

  “He had a short beard?”

  “The last I saw him, yes. He’d just—”

  “Was he strange-looking?”

  “What?”

  “Strange-looking! In his face.”

  “Yes. Yes he was. Why are you asking me these things?”

  “I’ve seen him, Gabrielle. I know where he is, why they can’t find him.”

  Gabrielle paused. “Okay. Where?”

  “Here.”

  “What?”

  “He’s in my house, Gabrielle.”

  “Jack, that’s impossible.”

  “It’s not impossible. I’m staring at him right now.”

  Gabrielle briefly entertained the idea that Jack really could see Thomas. She envisioned him looking out of his door, watching as Thomas roamed the upstairs hallway, entering one bedroom after another. That chilled her for a moment, but then the feeling passed. It was replaced with a much more plausible explanation for Jack’s sighting of Thomas. He was sleepwalking again.

  “Jack?”

  “What?”

  “I want you to listen very closely, okay?” There was a degree of nervousness in her voice. “What you’re seeing isn’t real.”

  “He is real, Gabrielle.”

  “No he’s not, Jack. He’s an illusion. It’s all in your mind.”

  “You just described him to me perfectly. I know it’s him.”

  “No, Jack. What I described… listen, it’s just coincidence.”

  “It’s him, Gabrielle. That son of a bitch tried to kill me tonight, just like he killed Holly.”

  “Jack please, listen to me. Thomas McCain hasn’t been seen in ages. There’s no reason for him to be at your house. You never knew him, and he doesn’t know you. Can’t you see that? You’re sleepwalking again. It’s all just a dream.”

  “It’s not a dream. He’s here, Gabrielle. He tried to kill me. And now I’m going to return the favor.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m going to go now.”

  “No, Jack. Stay with me. Let’s talk about it.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about, Gabrielle. He’s as good as dead.”

  Gabrielle’s voice swelled with desperation. “Jack, wait. You can’t—”

  “I’m finished talking.”

  “No, listen, please,” Gabrielle said, now almost sobbing. “I’ll call the police. They’ll be there any moment. But you have to stay with me. Don’t hang up.”

  “The police can’t do anything to Thomas, Gabrielle. But I can.”

  “Jack…” She paused, sighing. When she spoke again, she sounded somber, almost despondent. Her voice quavered just slightly. “I don’t feel good about this. I think something terrible is about to happen. Please, just stay on the phone until I can get you some help. Can you do that for me?”

  Jack considered her words, then narrowed his eyes on the painting. “You know, I think you’re right. Something terrible was about to happen. I can sense it, too. But don’t worry. I know just how to stop it. Goodbye, Gabrielle.”

  Jack removed the receiver from his ear. He could still hear Gabrielle pleading for him to stay on the phone, but he quietly laid the receiver in its cradle. He let it rest there a few seconds, then removed it again and laid it on its side. He then walked over and peered at the painting.

  “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I do know this. You’re going to die tonight. Every one of you bastards.”

  At that, he heard the polite pitter-patter of raindrops as they began to strike the window. He looked outside and immediately saw brilliant flashes of lightening in the dark distance. He then turned back to Thomas, smiling sardonically. The man had been right. A storm was coming.

  CHAPTER 19 – BURN

  Jack stood at the bay window, peering out at the fury of a storm that was undoubtedly the worst he’d ever seen. The rain was falling in tempestuous sprays of water and mist, pushed almost sideways by steady winds of more than 75mph, gusts that exceeded 100mph. The sound it made was deafening. The gale beat at the house, uprooting shingles and mercilessly harassing the two massive trees that sat in Jack’s main yard. Visibility had shrunk to only ten or fifteen yards, making the street lamps that lined the parking loop look like distant beacons.

  Jack peered over his shoulder at the painting, which he had sat upright against a pillow on a sofa. He wondered how such a small and seemingly inconspicuous object could have brought on such a frightening situation, then realized that Janice had virtually predicted it would happen. She’d warned him that the painting might be causing him to glimpse, and that if it was, he could be in grave danger. He now understood that she had been right. The damned thing was cursed.

  Jack turned from the window and casually strolled to the fireplace. He took hold of a black poker and jabbed it inside, stoking the flames. He had spent almost a half hour trying to turn what had been intended as a romantic aside, into a blazing furnace. And to be sure he had succeeded. It both looked and felt as hot as hell.

  Undoubtedly, the painting held even greater horrors. He had already glimpsed two of its entities, and if the pattern held true, the last one, the younger man to Rose’s right, promised to be even more of a hellion than either of his companions. Thankfully, he’d never see the light of day, because in a very short time there would be nothing left of him to see. There would be nothing left of any of them to see. For tonight they were going to burn.

  He racked the poker and then sat down on a velvety couch directly opposite the painting. He put his hands behind his head and then gazed at it meditatively, mentally shutting out the continuing pound and rage of the storm.

  Janice had also been right concerning Portia’s motives. Far from an innocent gift, the painting’s real purpose had been revenge. And why? Because quite obviously Portia knew. It was what brought her to his house that night, what made her stand outside, brandishing that sick smile. Somehow she’d discovered his affair with Gabrielle.

  There was something about the scheme that Jack could almost appreciate. That night she’d played her part so well, feigning that sheepish innocence, becoming gushy and sentimental when he’d at first refuse to take the painting. It was clever. Almost brilliant. Far slyer than he could ever have imagined. He wondered how many of her friends and adoring fans would have thought the woman capable of such deceitful behavior?

  Fortunately for him, Portia’s little plan had backfired. Rose had, for some strange reason, allowed Thomas to depart the painting, and Thomas had wasted little time doing what Thomas clearly loved to do best: commit murder. Whether that barbaric act had occurred in a dream, or a glimpse, or perhaps some weird combination of both, didn’t matter. Jack was on to the game now. No, he couldn’t fathom why Rose would take such a foolish risk. Clearly she had to know that his first reaction would be to immediately destroy the painting, but he could figure that out at some other time. Right now, he had more important business to tend to.

  He stood up from the couch, went to the fireplace, and stoked the flames once more. When he’d finished he turned, addressing all three of the painting’s characters. “It’s time,” he said plainly.

  He began toward it, but as he approached he began to slow. There was something peculiar with Rose’s dress. Its texture seemed different. Most of the detail was gone.

  He bent and picked the painting up, taking a closer look. The dress almost seemed to gleam, as if it was wet somehow. He wondered if the humidity of the storm, combined with the heat of the fireplace might have caused some condensation on the canvas, but then a metallic odor wafted past his nose. It was vague, and yet also familiar. He brought two fingers to the dress, touched it, and then peered at them. Two bright red dots peered back. He rubbed the liquid in his fingers, testing its consis
tency, and then brought them to his nose. He reared in disgust. It was blood.

  There was a sudden moaning throughout the house, as if it was an old and creaky warship. The gale outside had gusted sharply. The rain was now pounding the bay windows so hard that for a moment Jack thought its glass might shatter. He did his best to ignore these things, proceeding toward the fireplace, but then a thunderous clap of lighting struck. It was so loud and so close that the shock seemed to rattle his very bones.

  Then the lights flickered.

  They immediately came back, but seconds later they flickered again.

  He tensed. He took a deep breath, exhaled, then took another step toward the fireplace. He stopped cold as the lights went out completely, came back momentarily, and then went out once for all. Jack Parke found himself standing in a house that had gone pitch black.

  He then noticed something very strange. He could no longer hear the blare of the storm, like he’d passed into the eye of a hurricane. He gazed outside of the bay window, and saw that the trees were still being battered helter-skelter by the wind, that the rain and mist were still blowing by with unrelenting fury, but there was no sound. Nothing. Absolute silence. Except for the soft snap and crackle of the logs burning in the fireplace.

  He looked at the painting, firmly believing that Rose had something to do with all of this. She knew what was about to happen, he reasoned. She knew she was about to burn.

  Now almost gleeful, Jack moved to the fireplace, grabbed the poker, and hurriedly jabbed it inside the fireplace. He then tossed the poker aside. Then he thought he saw something move in the corner of his eye.

  He snatched his head around and gazed out of the bay window, toward the area of the cement pathway. He saw nothing at first, but then thought he could make out a form standing just outside. It was composed almost entirely of shadow. He squinted at it, questioning whether the thing was real or just some illusion of the blustery wind and rain. But then a silent, strobe-like flurry of lightning illuminated the phantasm, making Jack’s eyes widen in amazement. It was Portia. Her hair was sopped and matted to her head, long strands of it crisscrossing her face. Her dress was waterlogged, glued to her body, loose portions of it flailing wildly in the gale. Her right hand was extended toward him, and her face seemed weighed with great pain.

  The crisp smell of smoke drifted past his nostrils and Jack briefly turned away. The poker was lying on the floor, singeing the carpet. He turned back to the window, but Portia was no longer there—if she really had been there at all. “It’s not going to work,” Jack grumbled.

  He kneeled at the fireplace, turned the painting lengthwise, and edged it into the fireplace. He smiled as the flames licked at the frame, waiting anxiously for it to catch fire.

  But then a very sudden and powerful sense of trepidation seemed to explode from his gut. Immediately, unthinkingly, he yanked the painting out.

  Dumbfounded, almost bewildered at his own actions, he put the painting back in. And as soon as he did, he not only felt the sensation return, but almost as if he was standing outside himself, saw the painting once more being removed from the fireplace.

  He reared a bit, confused and astounded. He turned the painting to himself and peered at it dumbly for a moment, and then, as he stared at Rose, realized what was stopping him. Deep within the bowels of his being he knew that he was about to destroy the one thing that could actually bring him Portia.

  But no, he thought, fighting the feeling off. The painting was not good, but evil. Cursed. And it wasn’t only his encounter with Thomas that proved that. Even Gabrielle, although she had no knowledge of the painting and was more than three-thousand miles away, could sense that something strange was going on, could feel the approach of some great and wicked event. And now he sensed it too. Something truly evil was coming. Something horrible. And destroying the painting was the only way to stop it.

  Once more Jack urged the painting toward the flames. But with a swiftness that startled even he himself, he yanked it back again. Summoning all of his will, he urged it toward the flames yet a third time, but brought it back once for all, this time hugging it against his bosom as might a mother her most precious child.

  He couldn't do it. He couldn't make it burn. Because doing so meant destroying Rose. And destroying Rose meant destroying the only opportunity he’d ever have to sleep with Portia.

  Great fear swept over Jack at that moment. He now realized that he had been trapped, caged like a dumb and unsuspecting animal. Rose had offered him Portia, offered him something that she knew he could not resist. And like the proverbial moth to the flame, he was being drawn, knowing the he would burn, but finding its light so warm and sensuous that he simply couldn’t help himself. He had to have Portia, even if it meant his life.

  Only then did Jack understand why Rose had allowed Thomas to murder him. It was because it really didn’t matter. She could play all the games with him she liked. She knew he was never going to destroy the painting because he was too obsessed. It didn’t matter if Thomas murdered him a thousand times over, he’d gladly endure it, as long as he knew he’d someday have Portia.

  Jack stood in the utter silence, and hung his head in shame. Finally he turned away from the fireplace and left the living room. He knew that the next time he slept, he’d see Rose. She’d then become Portia in her face and, carried along by his lusts, he’d do exactly what she wanted him to. Then, undoubtedly, would come the evil: the thing both he and Gabrielle feared most. And sadly, disturbingly, there wasn’t a single thing he could do to stop it.

  Jack moped despondently up the staircase, and passed down the hallway like a shade, like a man resigned to his own death. He entered his bedroom, moved to the gallery, and re-hung the painting, a garland of certain evil. He then brought his hand up, covered his face, and cried. “My God,” he said. “What have I done?”

  He dried his eyes and was about to walk away when he heard a rough click. The painting had slipped from one of its hooks. He reached up, intending to set it right, and then noticed Gabrielle’s picture directly beside it.

  He stared at her, feeling inwardly confused, almost disoriented… and then, as he continued to gaze, a strange euphoria suddenly swelled within him. He immediately identified it as the feeling that had overwhelmed him the night he had caressed Gabrielle’s face; the same that had made him kiss her so passionately before sending her off to Rio. But this time, along with that feeling, came something completely unexpected. A way out. Hope.

  Jack Parke pulled Gabrielle’s image from the wall and carried it with him to bed. He lay there gazing at it warmly, star struck by the feeling that he’d never before seen a more beautiful woman.

  Jack would not let his eyes depart Gabrielle’s face until they’d begun to drift closed in the quiet calm of sleep. And as they did, the sound of the storm slowly crept back in.

  The wind still howled, and the rain continued to pour, but it was clear now. The worst of it had already passed.

  CHAPTER 20 – A NEW MAN

  The eyes of Jack’s face had fallen shut transfixed by Gabrielle’s beauty, but the eyes of his heart remained upon her the entire night. Never once did they let her leave his side.

  For the first time in three days, Jack Parke had had an uneventful night. No entities visited him, either for the purposes of seduction or murder. It was a quiet sleep, a peaceful sleep, one devoid of tossing and turning, dreams or nightmares. It was the kind of sleep from which one awakes a new man.

  He opened his eyes and peered at the clock. 5:30am, the time his body naturally roused him from sleep. Outside, a bluish haze was beginning to soften the black of the eastern horizon, but dawn was still more than thirty minutes away. He reached forward and flicked on the lamp. The bedroom alit in a gentle candle-like glow. He lay back, pulling his hands behind his head and gazing up at his reflection in the mirror.

  He still looked rough. Several days without a shave had left his face scraggly and coarse. There was puffiness around his cheekbon
es but his eyes were clear, showing no signs of the redness that had plagued them.

  He reached beneath a fold in the bedspread and found Gabrielle’s photograph. He peered at it, sighing deeply, smiling.

  It was welling within him again—just staring at her seemed to bring it out—that wonderful sense of bliss, the feeling that had given him hope. Its power, he believed, had guarded him through the night, preventing Rose’s appearance and his certain fall into temptation. Only now he knew what that feeling was. In a way he’d always known. It was love. Somehow he’d actually fallen in love with Gabrielle.

  The signs had been there all along, he supposed, although he’d been blind to them. There were those insistent urges to touch Gabrielle, that odd way that she seemed to bring him comfort. Even the way he had kissed her on the tarmac before sending her off to Rio, with such reckless passion, such sorrow that she was leaving his side, bore subtle testimony to what he was feeling. Of course, he’d sensed that she was different for some time, but he had never been willing to admit that she was so much more, that she was special. Well, he could admit it now. Gabrielle Saltair was the only truly special woman he’d ever known.

  In hindsight, he had to wonder if it had been much more than mere drunken coincidence that had brought him to Gabrielle’s house that morning two months ago. Maybe what happened there was much more than the first step in his sordid plan of revenge. Maybe behind it all, fate was lurking. Maybe destiny. Or maybe it was a greater force than the two of those combined. Maybe it was God.

  Surely Janice would have agreed with this latter interpretation. She would have assured him that this was all part of God’s unfathomable providence. That all the strange things so suddenly occurring in his life: the painting, the glimpsing of Rose, the sighting of the Magnolia tree, and even his dreadful encounter with Thomas McCain, was all part of some greater plan. God had allowed him to fall into Portia’s trap, allowed him to become hemmed in by his own desires, just so He could send Gabrielle to the rescue, just so he’d realize that his love for her was the only way out.