Touch Me in the Dark

by Jacqueline Diamond

  Ian shook off the sense of drifting into semi-consciousness. He worked furiously to capture the contrast between Angela’s partial nudity and her pristine garb, afraid that if he let this vision slip away, he might never find it again.

  The light outside dimmed beneath January clouds, casting the room into sepia tones. Ian’s rational mind noted that he should turn on his artificial lights, which were daylight-balanced.

  No, he couldn’t stop. Feverishly, he worked on. He saw beyond Angela’s small round breasts to the fat and tissue within, and suggested them with blurs of pigment on the canvas.

  The dizziness began in the center of his brain, swirling outward in waves. From far away, Ian heard Angela ask if he was all right.

  “Seizure,” he managed to say. He’d warned her about his condition when they made the appointment.

  Ian sank backward. He grabbed a corner of the scarred table to steady himself but his hand slipped. The room vanished, although he knew it must exist somewhere, and, lost in a deep pouch of fog, he imagined himself being guided onto the couch.

  He blinked. The dizziness eased. “How long was I out?”

  “A minute or two.” Angela laid a cool rag against his forehead. “I’m sorry to use a paint rag, but it looked clean.“

  Ian pressed the cloth harder against his brow to soak up the heat. “You have a good head in a crisis.”

  “I’m glad you warned me,” Angela said. “That wasn’t too bad. I mean, you weren’t thrashing around on the floor or swallowing your tongue.”

  “Did I rearrange anything?” Ian’s temples were throbbing. He decided not to move until the pain receded. “Sometimes I do.”

  Angela glanced toward the center of the room. “That’s funny,” she said.

  “What is?”

  “You dropped your paintbrush on the floor. Now it’s on the palette.” She indicated the color board, which lay on the worktable beside the easel. “I don’t remember picking it up.”

  Either her or she must have moved the thing, Ian thought. At least, he’d always assumed he made the changes himself while he was in a seizure, because there was no other rational explanation. “Some people believe we have a ghost. Crazy stuff.”

  “Who knows?” Angela moved to where she could view the painting. “Gee, I didn’t expect you to take that approach.”

  “How bad is the damage?” Ian asked, before remembering that of course Angela hadn’t been able to see the canvas while he was working.

  “I’m not sure it is damaged,” she said. “I can’t tell.”

  Rising shakily and ignoring the pounding in his head, Ian approached. There were no slashes or smears, but the picture had changed.

  Instead of Angela sitting on the arm of the couch, Sharon waited there, gazing with feral eyes toward a blur along the edge of the canvas. Not really Sharon, however, despite the auburn hair and green eyes. Instead of softness he sensed in her, the bare breasts and stomach showed the tautness of a wild animal in human form, and there was a hint of sharpened teeth beneath the curl of her lip.

  “Isn’t this what you painted?” the model asked.

  “Not exactly.” A dryness in his mouth stopped him. He went to the sink for a glass of water before continuing. “I’m sorry to have involved you in this. It must seem very strange.”

  “I might think you were just trying to freak me out, but you don’t strike me as a practical joker,” Angela said. “Also...” She stopped, her lips pressed together.

  “What?”

  She nodded as if giving herself permission to trust him. “When I was helping you to the couch, I saw something go by. A whiteness, out of the corner of my eye. I think I felt something brush my arm, too, kind of like a spider web.”

  Ian let out a long breath. “No one’s reporting anything like that before as far as I know.”

  “I’m part Native American. I believe in a spirit world.” Cautiously, Angela added, “Does this ghost hurt people?”

  “I don’t think it poses any danger to you,” Ian said. “I wish I could be sure about Sharon.”

  At last he’d articulated the uneasiness shadowing his mind. In the past few days, in addition to the seizures, there’d been other worrisome phenomena. The face in the TV set, followed by a fire; his sketch, slashed while he was unconscious—everything focused on one person. On Sharon.

  As if Bradley weren’t content to have murdered his lover. As if he wanted to harm her look-alike, too.

  Apparently untroubled by her still-naked breasts and midriff, the model took another look at the painting. “You’re brilliant, Ian. I’d like to work with you again. While you were painting, I felt like you were capturing some essential part of me. But I think Jane is making a mistake. This woman you’re obsessed with, that’s who you should paint.”

  She was right. He had to paint Sharon in the flesh. And wasn’t sure he had the right to ask that of her.

  Chapter Eight

  “I’m afraid that terrible business happened before my time. Before I arrived in Fullerton, at least.”

  Millie McKenzie, local historian and retired librarian, sat on a flowered couch in a modest living room crammed floor-to-ceiling with bookshelves. Additional volumes lay stacked around the floor.

  Only a slight accent hinted at Millie’s British origins. She sat straight but not stiffly in her linen slacks and peasant-style blouse. Beneath silver hair, her blue eyes were as lively as a girl’s.

  Even if it were possible to find the police report after so many years, the police department didn’t release records to the public, Sharon had learned when she called. Her next step, she’d decided, was to check historical records.

  At the library that morning, she’d flipped through books about political scandals and historical oddities, but none of them mentioned the Fannings. There was also microfilm of newspapers from World War II, but Sharon couldn’t locate any stories about the Fanning murder-suicide. The records might be incomplete, or perhaps the police and press, in that more discreet era, had hushed matters out of consideration for the family. Fortunately, the local historical society had provided her with a phone number for Millie.

  “You know, I never thought of being a historian in England, where things go back so far and the records are exhaustive,” she explained. “But in Orange County, I discovered, people don’t see themselves as having a history, or at least they didn’t fifty years ago when I started, and as a result they made little effort to preserve it.”

  “As I mentioned on the phone, I’m particularly interested in the Fannings,” Sharon said.

  “I came over when I got married in 1949, so the murder was before my time,” Millie noted.

  “Didn’t you hear anything about it?” Sharon pressed

  “People used to mention Susan Fanning as an example of what can happen to girls with loose morals,” Millie said. “But we were busy enjoying life in the postwar years. I suppose we all became a bit complacent, aside from perhaps worrying a bit about the bomb. Perhaps if there’d been an unsolved mystery, we’d have taken more interest.”

  “Bradley’s sister believed the whole truth never came out. I wish I knew what she meant by that,” Sharon said. “I was hoping you’d come across something in your research.”

  “After you called this morning, I flipped through several self-published books, the kind of personal histories the library doesn’t have,” Millie said. “I couldn’t find any mention of the Fannings. It might have caught the public’s imagination if there’d been a trial, but there wasn’t.”

  Sharon had been so certain she could turn up details that would help Ian. “How about ghosts?” she asked, grasping at straws. “The Fanning house is supposed to be haunted. Any tales about that?”

  “Orange County has a pathetic dearth of ghost tales,” Millie said wistfully. “We don’t have the large stock of them that you find in England. Oh, dear, I’m forgetting my manners! Would you care for a cup of tea?”

  “That sounds lovely.” Outside the p
icture window, a yellowish-gray cast turned the day murky. The weather report called for a storm to arrive tomorrow, Sharon remembered. She could use a hot drink.

  Leaning forward, Millie poured Earl Grey tea from a china pitcher into delicate cups and handed one to Sharon. The rose-ornamented porcelain teacup was so fragile she hesitated to take it.

  “Don’t worry,” Millie said, noting her reaction. “I’m getting on in years and I have no children. My husband died a few years past, so there’s no one to leave these things to. I prefer to enjoy them now.”

  “It’s beautiful.” Sipping her tea, Sharon sat back in her tall armchair and regarded the racks of books, many with faded leather bindings. They contained an unimaginable store of knowledge, yet none, apparently, could tell her what she needed to know.

  “You haven’t explained what this is all about,” Millie said. “I don’t mean to pry, but I’m curious why you’re so keen on digging up the past.”

  “The situation’s a complicated, but I’ll try.” Omitting a few personal details, Sharon sketched what had happened—her resemblance to the woman in the painting, Ian’s renewed seizures, the Ouija and the fire in the television. “I gather there’s something unresolved.”

  “Sounds like a lot of ‘mights’ and ‘maybes,’“ Millie observed tartly. “Although a fascinating bunch of them.”

  “I suppose so.” Sharon stretched her shoulders. They ached if she were carrying a heavy weight. “Oh, and then my sister and I visited the family’s old church and I met a retired pastor who knew Susan. He didn’t think much of her, I’m afraid. By coincidence Ian was there, and he showed us her grave. No one knows where Bradley’s buried.”

  A wrinkle formed on Millie’s forehead. “That does jog a memory. Hold on a moment.” She stood, skirted a pile of books and switched on a row of spotlights. From a shelf, she retrieved a notebook and flipped it open.

  “What’s that?” Sharon asked.

  “I’ve taken notes over the years, at lectures and so forth. A lot of local history hasn’t been written down, but people share their memories with the historical society.” Millie continued turning pages. “Most of this is rubbish, but... Oh, here we are.” She frowned at a page. “I attended a talk on graveyards.”

  Sharon tried not to hope for too much. “Yes?”

  Millie squinted at her handwriting. “There used to be a memorial park in Anaheim that was dug up to make way for some hotel or other. There always seems to be quite a lot of building going on.” She flipped a page. “Here! There was a dispute about a man named Bradley Johnson.”

  She scarcely dared breathe. “What about him?”

  “Let me see.” The historian mumbled to herself for a frustrating length of time before saying, “Oh, yes. The bodies were to be moved to a large municipal cemetery in Santa Ana, but a family member, his sister, objected. She wanted Mr. Johnson interred closer to home.”

  “What was the outcome?” Sharon doubted this could make any difference now, but at least she’d stumbled across a new piece of information.

  “She couldn’t find a place in Fullerton to put him,” Millie said. “Here’s the odd part. After the caskets were dug up, while they were waiting to be transferred, your Bradley disappeared.”

  “His body or the coffin?”

  “Both, apparently. The man’s sister denied knowing anything about the matter, and the casket was never found.” Millie shut the notebook, careful to avoid creasing the pages. “You’re quite right after all. There is a mystery.”

  Bradley’s sister was Bella Gaskell’s mother. Maybe she and Pete did know something, after all. “I’ll look into it. I know someone from the Johnson family.”

  “That isn’t all,” Millie murmured. “I’m remembering, now. What a fascinating talk that was.”

  Sharon waited.

  “A year after the hotel was built, it burned to the ground,” said the historian. “The guests claimed they heard hollow laughter, as if a madman were trapped inside the walls. The police looked into the possibility of an arsonist, but the problem appeared to be a short in the wiring. Just a coincidence about the laughter, I suppose.”

  “Yes,” said Sharon. “Thank you so much.” After a few more minutes of polite conversation yielded no further clues, she walked out into the gathering gloom.

  That was strange about Bradley’s body disappearing. Still, the most likely explanation was a prosaic one, that his sister had simply buried it in her backyard. He might not have been the only unstable member of the family.

  That possibility didn’t make her feel any more comfortable about living close to the Gaskells.

  The rain held off, although Sharon felt the coming storm hanging oppressively in the air. Her uneasiness was intensified by the fact that Ian had gone out somewhere and missed dinner. Subconsciously, she’d been anticipating hearing him discuss his painting session with Angela, which had been scheduled for this afternoon

  Well, what happened between them was none of her business, Sharon told herself. She wasn’t involved with Ian. It might be best if he found someone else. But she didn’t really believe that.

  After dinner, Jody retreated to watch her favorite TV game shows. The Gaskells, who never ate with the others anyway, were at the movies. Sharon cleaned up the burritos she’d fixed while Greg wiped the table a bit too strenuously, leaving trails of water.

  The interview with Millie echoed through her mind. When she’d come up with the idea of investigating the house’s history, Sharon had pictured herself putting together clues like a character in an Agatha Christie novel. She’d never dreamed she would turn up such an unsavory twist as the puzzle of who had taken Bradley’s coffin, and where. So far, she hadn’t mentioned the subject to Jody and wasn’t sure she ought to

  “I miss my friends,” Greg said as he tossed the sponge into the sink. “What day is this?”

  “Tuesday,” Sharon said.

  “They’re back at school already.” He plopped onto a chair, the picture of childish distress. “I wish I was.”

  “College Day School goes back a week late,” Sharon said. “You don’t have long to wait.”

  “I’m bored sitting around here.”

  Sharon reflected guiltily that she’d spent so much time on this business about Susan that she’d neglected her son. “How about a few hands of Go Fish?”

  “Okay, I guess.”

  They spread the cards on the table. Their apartment upstairs felt cramped, and Sharon was glad to have the run of the house. Besides, she liked the kitchen’s warm, lived-in feeling.

  The only interruption came when Karly phoned to set up a rehearsal for tomorrow evening at the church. “I tried to schedule it during the day, but they’re holding some kind of seminar until five o’clock,” she explained. “If you like, you can bring Greg here. Mrs. Torres is watching Lisa and she said she’d be glad to have him, too.”

  “I’ll take you up on that,” Sharon said. “He could use a change of scenery.”

  When he got sleepy, they went upstairs and Sharon read him a few chapters from a book. He could read for himself now, but he enjoyed hearing her voice. After prayers, Greg snuggled into bed with his teddy bear clutched under one arm.

  In the tiny living room, Sharon didn’t feel like watching TV, although Jody had loaned her one. She took out Karly’s piano music and began familiarizing herself with the rhythms and chords, tapping out the notes to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s music on her knee.

  She didn’t hear any sounds to indicate the Gaskells had returned. When they did, she supposed she ought to interview them, since that was the logical next step. As Bradley’s niece, Bella should know where he was buried if anyone did.

  Ian hadn’t come back from his evening’s outing, either. She wished she knew what had happened with Angela. The answer probably lay in his studio, in the form of whatever work he’d completed today. Although he never locked his door, she had no right to invade his privacy to satisfy her curiosity

  Sharon was thum
bing through the current TV Guide when someone knocked. Curious, she went to the door.

  Angela stood there, looking apologetic. “I’m sorry to disturb you,” she said. “Ian doesn’t seem to be home. While I was changing, I dropped a credit card out of my pocket. At least, I hope I left it here.”

  Sharon tamped down the suspicion that the card might have fallen out under more strenuous circumstances, such as making love. She was not going to torment herself with jealousy. “Just go on in.”

  Angela made a face, suddenly looking more like a teenager than a self-possessed young woman. “I don’t feel right about it.”

  “I don’t have any authority to go in there, either,” Sharon explained.

  “You’re his cousin, aren’t you?”

  “Several times removed.” She glanced toward Greg’s bedroom. He must have fallen asleep or he would have popped out by now to see what was going on.

  “I just want a witness,” Angela said. “In case anything turns up missing. One of my friends had that happen on a modeling job. She found the door open and went back in to get her pantyhose, and the next day the people accused of stealing a diamond brooch. Eventually they found it under the couch, but there was a nasty scene. They even called the police.”

  Sharon wouldn’t have hesitated if she hadn’t just gone a few rounds with temptation herself. On the other hand, she couldn’t in all fairness make Angela leave without her credit card.

  “Well, I don’t suppose Ian would mind.” Stepping into the hall, Sharon led the way to Ian’s studio. He’d left a lamp on low, bathing the room in an ethereal half-light.

  “This place is kind of creepy,” Angela observed as she hurried toward a freestanding screen.

  “You might say that.”

  Cloths covered both easels. Sharon felt both relieved and disappointed.

  “Here! Thank goodness.” Angela returned, displaying a card. “I stuck it in my pocket after I got gas.”