by Wendy Webb
He pulled back, leaning on his elbow and running a hand through my hair. “Brynn, Brynn, Brynn,” he said. “What am I going to do with you?”
I cleared my throat. “You said something about a movie?”
He reached over and grabbed the remote. We settled on a romantic comedy and snuggled in together, his arm around me. I curled into him, my hand on his chest.
About halfway through the movie, I noticed he wasn’t watching it anymore. He was looking at me.
“Not feeling the love for the plot?” I said, my face heating up.
“Oh, I’m feeling something,” he said, his voice an octave lower than it usually was, deep and rich and seemingly coming from somewhere other than himself. “Just not for the movie.”
We slipped down onto the pillows, and all at once, he was above me, leaning on one elbow, his face inches away from mine. He stroked my hair with his other hand and looked into my eyes with an expression I hadn’t seen on his face before. Intensity burned behind his eyes. I knew what this moment was. And I wasn’t going anywhere.
I hadn’t been with a man other than my longtime partner for more than twenty years. And he had lost all interest in bedroom activities long before I finally left. I couldn’t remember the last time I had danced this dance. And here I was, lying inches away from the most beautiful man I had ever seen, as nervous as if it were the first time. In some ways, it was.
Dominic peeled off his shirt, and I couldn’t help gasping. I had seen his tattoos during our day at the beach, of course, but his illustrations took my breath away at that moment even so. I ran my hands across his shoulders, down his arms, and across his chest, rapt by the intrigue of the stories those illustrations might tell.
He leaned down and kissed my neck, lightly at first but then with an intense power, as though his passion was possessing him. He kissed my lips then with that same power and urgency, taking my breath away.
I lost myself in his intensity, unleashing my own that had been buried for far too long.
Later, we were lying in a tangle of sheets as the fire crackled. Now was not the time for pillow talk. We were both breathless. My entire body was shaking from the inside out.
Dominic dozed, but I was lost in his illustrations, lit up by the firelight. They were intricate and detailed, and, there in the flickering light, they seemed to dance and sway along with the flames. I was mesmerized, completely drawn in, as I curled in next to him, my eyes running along his arms to his chest and his stomach and back again.
But then something didn’t seem quite right. Didn’t I see a lion on his arm before, when we were at the beach? I couldn’t find it now. All of the illustrations seemed strange and new. A new face here, a symbol there. A house. A fireplace.
But it had to have been my imagination. He was completely covered with illustrations, every square inch of skin on his torso, arms, back, and legs. I had been trying not to look too closely at him when we were at the beach—I hadn’t wanted to stare, and I was shy and nervous—so I must have missed the tattoo of this couple, legs and arms intertwined, right? Was the woman a mermaid?
My eyes traveled to an older lady, who was smiling in a rocking chair, a pile of knitting materials in her lap. She looked kind, welcoming. Next to her, two children were running into a field of sunflowers. The image looked idyllic at first, but then a darkness descended over it. Were they running to something, or away from something?
I didn’t know how long I stared at Dominic’s illustrations, trying to find deeper meaning in them. But at some point, my eyes grew tired, and I laid my head on his chest. I was reading too much into it, I thought. I had been so caught up in the book, The Illustrated Man, and knowing that Jason and Gil had given Dominic that nickname, he became a reflection of it, and it, of him. The lines were blurring between the two in my imagination. I knew I needed to crawl out of that rabbit hole. It was just my mind, making connections that really weren’t there beyond the fact that Dominic was covered with beautiful illustrations, just like the book’s namesake. I didn’t really expect those illustrations to come to life and tell me a story as they had in the book. But I didn’t look away for a long while, either.
I shook those silly thoughts out of my head. Dominic was just a man. A mysterious, wonderful, passionate, surprising man. A man who may have come from a sketchy, even dangerous upbringing, a man who had shot his own father at the age of four. A man who was probably guarded and closed and, yes, even afraid because of all he had seen and, perhaps, done. A man who chose to spend his life helping others transform, the way he himself had transformed when he left that little boy who had shot his father behind, along with the life he might have had as a result of that trauma. He was not some character from a sci-fi classic. He was a flesh-and-blood man to be respected and admired for all that he had achieved despite incredible odds.
My eyes fluttered closed. But then they shot open again. Why did it feel so comfortable to be lying next to him in the firelight, as though we had been doing so our entire lives? Why did I feel as though I had always known him, that we had always been here, lying together this way?
“Because we always have been,” Dominic murmured in his sleep, as though he had heard my thoughts.
My breathing slowed as I wrapped my arms around him. Soon I drifted off to sleep and began to dream.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
A jumble of images drifted through my mind. They seemed like photographs, but all of them were moving and vibrating with life, being set down on a table, one on top of the other.
A scene appeared, hazy and blurry at first, and then coming into clearer view. I was in the kitchen of a small, modest cottage. Low ceilings, whitewashed walls, scrubbed wooden floors, a fireplace with a stone hearth where a cast-iron pot hung on a rod over the fire. A heavy table stood in the middle of the room. I could see a couple of doors. One, I knew somehow, was the bedroom. I suspected the other was also a bedroom, but I couldn’t be sure.
I was peeling potatoes in the kitchen for dinner when a man, tall, broad, dark-eyed, and bearded, wearing woolen pants and a dark-wool jacket came through the heavy wooden front door, ushering in a waft of cold, salty air with him. He closed the door behind him and smiled at me, and all at once, I knew he was Dominic. A different face, a different body, a different race. But Dominic all the same.
“Your man has come home,” he said. But his voice wasn’t his own. He had a sort of low-country English accent that, at once, I could barely understand and at the same time knew deep in my bones. He enveloped me in his arms and pulled me in close. My heart did a flip, even though I knew this man to the very depths of my soul. I buried my face in his neck and drank in the scent of him.
“It’s about time you came on home, mister,” I teased him. My voice, like Dominic’s, was my own, but not my own. “Your woman’s been waiting here for you, casting an eye out to the sea.”
He wrapped his arms around me tighter and kissed me, tasting of salt water. “No sea is going to keep me from you, wife,” he purred into my ear. “Not when I have such a fine woman to come home to.”
Then, the scene shifted. We were in our bed, a red floral quilt pulled snugly around us, our arms and legs intertwined underneath it. He was telling me a story about his day, of someone he encountered in town. His eyes were dancing as he told the tale, a devilish look on his face, his voice animated with amusement. I was laughing so hard my stomach ached. I rested my head on his chest and wiped away tears. He was laughing, too. The utter and complete joy between us was real and tangible and living.
This is what it is, I said to myself in my dream. This is what life is for. This is why we are here. To find the person who can bring our souls to life.
The scene shifted again. We were older now. I noticed lines on my man’s face, crow’s-feet around his eyes, testifying to a life lived in laughter. His hair was graying. Salt dotted his black beard. He was still devastatingly handsome; his eyes still danced when they looked at me.
He was outside,
on the cliff, with our young son and daughter, showing them how to tie nautical knots. I stood in the doorway of our home, watching as he laughed and teased with them, underscoring the serious business of tying proper knots with fun and love and humor, ensuring they wouldn’t forget. My heart swelled.
“Come on in for dinner,” I called to them. “The stew is ready!”
The children ran to me. “Now, wash up,” I said to them. “Make sure your hands are clean.”
My husband took me into his arms and quickly kissed my neck. “Yes, milady.”
I slapped him on the arm, giggling.
That scene dissolved, and another took its place. I was standing alone, outside the cottage, which I now saw was a one-story dark-stone affair, two mullioned windows facing out toward the water. It was situated on a cliff overlooking an angry, dark sea. Waves crashed into the rocky shoreline below as rain pelted down sideways. I shielded my eyes from the stinging rain.
The door to the cottage opened a crack, and an older woman with a kind face poked her head outside. “You’ll catch your death, dear,” she called out to me. “I’ve got the kettle on.”
I shook my head. “I cannot leave him. He’s out there.”
“The children,” she said.
“Please get them their supper,” I said. “I’m staying here. For now.”
“If the good Lord chooses to spare him,” she said, “he’ll make his way home to you. He always does.”
“I want to be with him, out here, in this storm.”
I pulled my coat around me, wound the scarf tighter around my head. I walked closer to the cliff, watching the angry sea churn and roil and rage.
At that moment, I didn’t care how cold it was, how the stinging rain was slicing at my cheeks. I didn’t care if I died right there on the cliff. Nothing in my body or in my soul would let me leave that spot, not while my love was still out there in that raging sea.
I fell to my knees, knowing in the depths of my heart what I did not want to know.
Then I was dressed in black, sitting in an old stone church alongside the older woman. She was clasping my hand. My children were seated next to us, stricken looks on their ashen faces. I could see his face in theirs, and my heart bled with the intensity of the grief that was engulfing me.
The pews were filled with people, stoic, serious. I stared straight ahead, feeling dead in my heart. Somehow, I knew my body was empty, my spirit in tatters. My soul ached for the man I’d never hold again.
And then it all went black. The dream was over. My eyes opened with a start, my face wet with tears. I sat up, panting.
Dominic was snoring lightly next to me, and the sight of him hit me like a punch in the stomach. He was right here. Flesh and blood.
I had just lived a lifetime with this man. I had loved him. Laughed with him. Had his children. Had been his widow. But it was just a dream. Nothing but that.
Yet, my heart swelled with joy at the sight of him. He wasn’t gone. He wasn’t swallowed up by that angry sea. He was right here, lying in the firelight, very much alive. I put my hand on his chest, letting it rise and fall with his breathing, and the rhythm of it brought me a sense of peace. All was well.
It wasn’t real, it wasn’t reasonable, but urgent, powerful gratitude washed over me—he was alive. I could touch him, hold him, cherish him.
I tried to shake those thoughts away. It was silly. We were just getting to know each other. We’d only spent a few days together.
I slipped back down next to his warm body, pulling the quilt over both of us, and I couldn’t help but give thanks.
It was like he had come back from the dead. As though I had been given another chance to continue our beautiful life together. But, no. It’s just a dream, Brynn. Just a dream.
I was about to close my eyes when I was jostled awake. Alice was kneeling beside me, on the side of the bed.
“Wake up,” she whispered to me. “This is important.”
She faded from view, and I noticed three straight-backed wooden chairs standing against the wall on the other side of the room near the window. I hadn’t seen those before, had I? Maybe I had missed them. There was a lot going on between us when I had first entered Dominic’s room, and afterward, we had fallen asleep. Perfectly reasonable to think I just hadn’t seen the chairs.
I sat up. No, the chairs had not been there before. I was sure of it. I had been standing in that very spot by the window, awkward and unsure of what to do with my hands, when I first came into the room. There had been no chairs there.
Then I saw the chairs were bathed in a different sort of light than the rest of the room. The light was coming from above, shining down in a delicate shaft. As though they were in a spotlight.
I glanced down at the sleeping man next to me. I considered waking him up, but for what? To ask about three chairs? It was silly.
When I looked back, two elderly women were sitting in two of the chairs. One of the women had white hair, styled in neat curls against her head. She was wearing a cotton housedress with an apron tied around her waist. The other lady was wearing an ankle-length dark dress with a cameo at the neck and sensible shoes. Her dark hair was pulled back into a tight bun.
I didn’t know either of these women, but they were familiar somehow. Strange as it was, their presence was comforting and calming after that unsettling dream. Both of them were smiling at me. I smiled back.
All at once, they grew serious and turned their gaze to the third empty chair.
The air in the room thickened around me. I didn’t like this. I reached down to jostle Dominic.
“Dominic,” I whispered, harshly. “Wake up.”
He was in a deep sleep and didn’t move, despite me shaking his arm. When I looked back to the chairs, the two women were gone. My mother sat in the third chair.
My throat seized up, and tears were stinging behind my eyes. “Mom?” I said, my voice torn to shreds.
She didn’t speak. She turned her eyes toward Dominic’s sleeping form, and then back to me. She smiled and nodded her head.
“Mom?” I squeaked out.
And then she, along with all three chairs, faded away, the shaft of light last of all.
I closed my eyes for a moment and exhaled a breath I hadn’t known I was holding. I wiped the tears away yet again, reaching over to the nightstand to grab a tissue.
Nightstand? Dominic’s bedroom didn’t have a nightstand. Did it? All at once, I realized I was alone in the bed. Dominic was gone. The fire was out. The room was inky black and deathly cold. I shot out of bed and flipped the light switch.
And then I realized I was in room five.
I tried the door. Locked. But I saw the dead bolt was open. The door was locked from the outside? I turned the knob frantically, back and forth, back and forth. Nothing. I started pounding on the door with all of my strength. My hand was aching, but I couldn’t, wouldn’t stop.
“Dominic! Jason! Alice! Anyone! Help me! I’m trapped!”
“There’s no escape, dear,” a thin, wispy voice said.
And then everything went dark.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I awoke to my own screaming.
“Shhhhh.” It was Dominic’s voice, calming and reassuring me. “It’s okay. You were having a nightmare.”
I looked up at him, blinking. My heart pounded hard and fast in my chest, and I was soaking wet with sweat. I was panting and tears streamed down my face, like a child, as though I couldn’t get enough air into my body. I felt like I had just run a marathon.
“Just a dream,” he said, stroking my hair, his voice gentle and low. “Brynn, honey, it was just a dream.”
“It was so real,” I murmured. I looked around, wiping the tears from my eyes. We were in Dominic’s room. Just as we had been. Not room five.
“The good ones always are.” He smiled down at me. “Do you want to tell me about it?”
I nodded. “In a minute,” I sputtered out, the tears taking hold of my voice.
<
br /> I slipped out of bed and headed over to the bathroom. I shut the door behind me and splashed water onto my face, then dried it on a towel that smelled like Dominic. Just this simple act brought me back to myself. I gazed at my own reflection in the mirror. My breathing slowed. It was okay. I was not trapped in number five.
I opened the bathroom door half expecting him to be gone, but there he was, leaning against the headboard, holding two glasses of wine.
“I thought you could use this,” he said.
I curled in next to him, taking the glass. My hands were still shaking. I glanced at the clock. It read 12:12 a.m. Something about the symmetry of the numbers sent a cold chill through me.
“So, what happened in this dream of yours?” Dominic asked.
I told him about seeing my mother and the two elderly ladies.
“It was the oddest thing,” I said. “I dreamed that I woke up. So, I thought in the dream that I was awake and really experiencing what was happening.”
I also told him about being trapped in number five with a creepy old woman. I didn’t say anything about Alice.
“That’s the second time you’ve dreamed about that room,” he said, frowning. “I think we need to ask LuAnn to open it up tomorrow, so you can see for yourself that nothing is lurking in there, waiting for you.”
I chuckled, a little half-heartedly, but when I looked into his face, I could see he wasn’t joking.
“You really think we should?”
“Absolutely,” he said. “The fact that an old woman died there over the winter has you spooked. I always find that the truth, reality, has a way of calming crazy thoughts.” He stopped for a moment and smiled that movie-star smile. His face was illuminated by starlight. “Okay, I just called you crazy. I didn’t mean that.”
This brought a real smile to my lips. “No offense taken,” I said. “It is pretty crazy, isn’t it?”