Touch Me in the Dark

by Jacqueline Diamond

  By eight o’clock, Jody reported that the tenants still hadn’t returned to claim their goods. Sharon began to weigh the possibility of going to a hotel. Greg balked, even when she pointed out that a hotel would get the Disney Channel on TV. He didn’t want to be dragged around town, he complained. He didn’t want to leave at all, and he’d only agreed because they were going a block away.

  Soon he was stamping one foot, on the verge of a full-blown tantrum. Ian peered in. “Hey, sport, I had a late night and I’m turning in early. I can hear you howling all the way down the hall. How about giving a guy a break?”

  “I won’t go!” Exhaustion had overcome Greg’s earlier self-control.

  Sharon’s eyes met Ian’s over her son’s head. Both the males in her life were worn out, she realized, and so was she. They’d had a very long day.

  She didn’t want to drag her screaming son to a hotel. At this point, she wasn’t even sure she could face hauling him a block and trying to get him to sleep in a strange bed.

  With the Gaskells gone, the house no longer felt so threatening. Although she doubted she would ever again feel comfortable here, she could tolerate the place for one night. Tomorrow, whether or not their new apartment was vacant, Sharon would remove the two of them first thing.

  “All right, we’ll stay,” she said. “But we’re leaving directly after breakfast. No ifs, ands, or buts.”

  Greg subsided long enough to retrieve his pajamas from the luggage and brush his teeth, while Ian retreated down the hall. But as Sharon finished reading her son a book, he began to grumble again. “I want the soldiers.”

  “What soldiers?”

  “Ian said I could have the soldiers in the attic,” he told her. “I forgot about them. I want to take them with me.”

  “Fine. We’ll get them in the morning, okay?”

  “Promise?” he demanded.

  “I promise.”

  The boy began his nightly ritual of nuzzling his teddy bear. As he snuggled into his pillow, his gaze shifted to a distant spot and at last his eyelids drifted shut.

  Sharon’s muscles complained when she stood up. Ian had the right idea. She was going to lock the door and go to bed early.

  Tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough.

  Eating dinner alone in a fast-food restaurant, Pete downed his hamburger untasted. Bella hadn’t roused since that one cryptic comment in the morning and he was worried about her. Although the incident had happened before they met, he couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that her father had never recovered from his initial breakdown.

  The nurses and orderlies had moved through their duties with a crisp professional manner he found irritating. To them, Belle was just another mental patient. To Pete, she was the special person he had loved for half a century.

  He returned to the hospital. After checking his name against a list, the nurse let him into the locked room.

  His wife lay staring into space. “Bella?” he said. “Can you hear me?”

  No answer.

  Afraid to shake her for fear she might become violent again, Pete sat down with his newspaper. He’d read the whole thing already but he hadn’t worked the crossword puzzle yet.

  The only writing instrument he found in his pocket was a pen. Working the thing in ink seemed like an act of arrogance. He was debating whether to go out when an aide, a woman in her sixties with a round and sympathetic face, wheeled in a cart. Her name tag read Martha.

  “Excuse me, could I borrow a pencil?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry. We’re not allowed to bring sharp instruments in here.” She took out a towel and a damp cloth. “I thought your wife might feel better if we gave her a sponge bath. Just her face and hands.”

  “That’s kind of you.” The gentle contact might rouse Bella. “I don’t suppose you know how long people usually take to snap out of something like this.”

  “I’m not a doctor.” Martha talked soothingly to Bella as she wiped her. After a moment, she addressed Pete again. “I’d say there’s no way to predict.”

  At least she was willing to venture an opinion. He decided to push his luck. “They haven’t given me a diagnosis. Have you heard anything?”

  “I’m not supposed to give out medical information.” She stroked Bella’s hair back from her temples.

  “I’m not asking you to make a diagnosis,” Pete said quickly. “Maybe they don’t have one yet. But I missed seeing the doctor this afternoon and I thought maybe there was something she meant to tell me.”

  Martha’s mouth worked as if she were trying to make up her mind. Finally, she said, “Well, I did hear one of the doctors suggest that a séance might trigger some latent tendency toward schizophrenia. But that was only one possibility.”

  “Schizophrenia. That scares me,” Pete admitted. “I’ve heard people never recover from that.”

  “Sometimes they do,” Martha said. “You never can tell. There are some new medications that work fairly well, too.”

  “What causes something like that? Is it hereditary?”

  “The illness does run in families, I guess.” The aide patted Martha’s cheeks with a towel. “I’ve worked in this field for nearly forty years, and theories about schizophrenia change about as often as hemlines. I’ll tell you one thing, though.”

  “What’s that?” Pete asked.

  “I don’t remember seeing anyone your wife’s age develop it for the first time,” she said. “Usually it’s young people, anywhere from early adolescence up through their twenties.”

  “Well, this can’t be senility. That doesn’t come on all of a sudden,” Pete said. “And she wasn’t taking any drugs. The doctor asked about that.”

  “Maybe she had a shock.” The woman washed Bella’s hands, careful to clean between the fingers. His wife would have appreciated that, Pete thought, and then caught himself up short. He had no business thinking about her in the past tense. She was right here. “You never know how people will react to a shock.”

  After the aide left, Pete started wondering whether the doctors knew what they were doing. Could something be physically wrong with Bella? The séance and the attack on Sharon might have triggered a stroke. No, the stroke would have had to come first, to explain why his wife went berserk. On the other hand, he’d never heard of a stroke affecting anyone that way.

  If she wasn’t better by morning, he was going to insist on one of those tests that used initials. An MRI or a CT scan.

  Feeling better for his resolve, Pete angled his chair against the wall and settled in to take a nap.

  Ian awoke at eleven-thirty. Although his body protested a need for more rest, his mind came fully alert.

  He wanted to examine the paintings he’d begun on Friday. Today, he hadn’t even lifted the dust cloths.

  Clicking on a gooseneck lamp, he uncovered the first easel. The clawed bush snatching at Sharon’s naked body resembled a hungry predator. Why had he painted a scene with such menace? Ian wished he knew whether there was any difference between the subconscious impulses that drove every artist and the ones that had triggered this work.

  He couldn’t stop thinking about the séance and the way someone else had taken him over. Had the same spirit inhabited Bella when she attacked Sharon? If so, could it manipulate him the same way?

  He uncovered the second painting. Another Sharon, another threat, this time from savage toys springing to life. There was a little girl in danger, too. Did she represent Greg? What was going on here?

  Grimly, Ian unveiled the canvas with the struggling figures. A large man partly turned away from the viewer was forcing Sharon toward a cliff. As he studied the scene, the attacker’s muscles seemed to ripple and the head to tilt.

  This had to be an illusion bred of fatigue. He rubbed his eyes and took another look. The figure had twisted toward him. Even though the face still wasn’t fully visible, Ian recognized the man with a start.

  He knew this spirit well. It had been his unseen companion in one way or another a
ll his life, although for a long time he’d believed the presence was benevolent. In recent months, though, Bradley had taken him over during his seizures and, last night, in the middle of the séance.

  The face leered at him malevolently. Impressions poured through Ian’s brain so fast he couldn’t longer sort out what belonged to him and what was his grandfather’s. He knew he had to fight, but how could he? Bradley wanted to come back, all the way back, and Ian didn’t know how to stop him.

  Just as abruptly, he felt the presence leave. What a tremendous relief. Safe. He was safe.

  Then Ian saw by the clock on a side table that only minutes remained before midnight. The anniversary was about to begin.

  Where the hell had Bradley gone?

  Bella awoke soon after midnight.

  Hearing his name spoken aloud, Pete rose through clouds of sleep to find himself sitting in a chair beside her bed. His neck ached.

  “Peter,” his wife said. “The anniversary has begun.” She sat so straight that her back formed an almost perfect right angle to her legs.

  “Let’s not dwell on that.” He wished his wife would forget this damn business about ghosts and murders. “The important thing is for you to get well.”

  “The important thing is for me to get out of here,” Bella corrected. The gaze she dropped on him was imperious.

  He shook his head. “Not tonight. You’ve been committed by the police.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with me,” she said.

  “You tried to stab Sharon Mahoney.”

  That gave her pause. “I’d forgotten,” she said in a small voice. “Oh, I’m sorry. There’s something wrong with me, isn’t there?”

  Her helplessness tugged at Pete. “Please tell me what’s going on. You said earlier that I needed to understand.”

  Bella caught his arm. “Listen, he’s here with us right now. The spirit. He has to make us understand because no one else will listen.”

  Pete drew back in dismay. “The same spirit that ordered you to kill Sharon?”

  “No, no!” Bella’s voice rose to a near shriek. “I misunderstood him. Listen to me! This is vital. If I can’t go back tonight, you have to!”

  “To the Fanning house?” he asked. “Absolute not.” The only thing that would accomplish was to get him arrested, too.

  “You must!” Irritably, she brushed a strand of ropy hair from her forehead. He wished Martha had washed Bella’s hair was well as her face, because she’d always been fastidious, even at her most eccentric. “Quickly!”

  “To do what?” Pete asked.

  “To kill the beast.” Bella’s jaw jutted forward until she looked almost masculine. All sign of weakness had vanished. “The evil woman must be stopped.” She sounded harsh, not like Geraint but like the voice that had issued from Ian last night.

  No use trying to reason with her, Pete saw. The police and the medical staff were right. Even Bella had admitted there was something wrong with her mind. “You know I can’t.”

  The hand squeezed his arm so hard Pete thought the bone might snap. “Yes, you can,” said a cruel voice that belonged both to his wife and to someone else. “You must.” He found himself staring into the relentless eyes of a being he knew instinctively was Bradley Johnson.

  In her dream, Sharon was visiting Niagara Falls with Jim and Greg. She lost sight of them at the lookout point and was searching through a crowd of tourists when a massive figure caught her arm.

  Mist from the falls obscured his face, but she knew he was going to push her over the edge. Trying to struggle, Sharon couldn’t make her arms and legs move. The wind carried away her screams, and the crowd vanished. She was going backwards, backwards toward the roaring water and a sheer drop.

  Once, as a child, she had fallen backwards into a large bird of paradise plant. That was the way the railing broke, crumpling like vegetation, with a sharp edge of resistance.

  Down, going down.

  She awoke in the middle of a scream. Moonlight fell in patches, intensifying the darkness of the room. The blackest place was right over her, in the shape of a man.

  Her throat clamped shut. She couldn’t make a sound.

  “It’s me.” Ian’s voice. Thank God. “I heard you screaming.”

  “I had a nightmare.” Sharon sat up and turned on the lamp. She blinked into the painful brightness. “It was awful.” As her wits returned, she said, “How did you get in?”

  “I still had the spare key,” he said.

  She made him out more clearly now. Although the bedside clock read 12:05, he was dressed in jeans and a paint-smeared shirt. The glare from the lamp didn’t seem to bother his eyes, so he must have been awake.

  “Were you painting?” she asked.

  He nodded. “I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. I guess going to bed early wasn’t such a good idea after all.” Ian favored her with a crooked smile. “I’m glad you’re all right.”

  “Me, too.” All Sharon remembered was falling. She felt better now, though, with Ian here.

  When he leaned down, she raised her face to meet his kiss. She knew this man had the power to make her forget everything else, and she wanted to.

  As their mouths met, his hands slid down her peignoir, smoothing the thin material back from her shoulders. Life pulsed through Sharon as she inhaled the blend of masculine scents that emanated from Ian.

  The unshaven contours of his jaw and cheeks made her hungry to touch the unseen hollows inside his hips. Eagerly, she helped him lower his jeans and work open his shirt so she could run her hands across his skin.

  Wonderful tingles of hot awareness transfixed her as his lips moved down to her nipples. His dark hair, almost unbearably intimate in its softness, brushed her chest and his tongue traced her cleavage. He moved down to explore her stomach and traced the sensitive curve of her thighs until Sharon could no longer hold back.

  Her fingers found his shaft, large and ready. When his strokes completed their connection, turning them into a single creature, nothing else existed, nothing in the world.

  The rhythm intensified, desire oiling his passage in and out of her body. Arching deliriously against him, Sharon exulted in the play of skin on skin. She wanted this to last forever, and when he removed himself to poise over her, breathing hard, she missed him beyond measure.

  “More,” she whispered.

  “Are you sure?” he teased.

  “I mean now!” she commanded.

  Ian clasped her buttocks and fired a path deep into her. They were floating, soaring, twisting, melting until he crested with an exultant shout and orgasmic waves lifted Sharon outside herself.

  “Oh, God,” Ian murmured when the peak had passed. “You were created for me, did you know that?”

  “I think I have a clue,” she murmured, lying against him so that her length took the measure of his size and strength. Tonight, her emotions whispered of love, and yet still she knew him so little.

  She wondered briefly if they might have awakened Greg, but there was no stirring from the boy’s room. Thank goodness for her son’s habit of sleeping soundly.

  They must have dozed, but a nagging worry brought Sharon back to the surface. The clock showed 12:48.

  Sharon thought she heard a noise in the hall, like slippered feet passing by. There shouldn’t be anyone walking around upstairs with the Gaskells gone, she thought uneasily.

  Troubled, she donned a robe and a pair of canvas slip-ons and went out. Her front door stood ajar. Had Ian left it that way?

  In Greg’s room, moonlight fell short of his bed. When she felt the covers, she found him missing. There was no sign of him in the bathroom, either.

  The noise she’d heard must have been Greg, wandering in a sleepy daze. He did that sometimes under stress. In Williamsville, soon after Jim died, she had discovered her son in the basement, sound asleep on the cement.

  Sharon hurried into the hall. There was no movement and no response when she called his name. She was about to wake I
an and launch a search when she noticed the studio door wide open. Maybe Greg had wandered in there.

  She stepped into Ian’s apartment. “Greg?” No response. Calling again, she moved through the large room. A gooseneck lamp illuminated an easel to one side. From the corner of her eye, Sharon glimpsed someone staring at her, and swung around sharply.

  It wasn’t a man, only a painting, but the face seemed to track her as she approached. This was the face she’d come to know from the painting in the attic and from her TV screen and from Ian’s transformation in the mirror—Bradley Johnson, lip curled, anger gleaming.

  Sharon recognized the scene with a start—two figures fighting beside an abyss. The woman was her, naked and terrified, on the brink of falling. The dream rushed back. Although she couldn’t recall the details, her instincts told her that this had been the scene and this was the man who’d tried to kill her.

  Now that she inspected more closely, however, she could see that it wasn’t quite Bradley. The nose was narrower, the cheekbones higher, the eyebrows straighter.

  Sharon knew that muscular body, and not from any painting. She could almost touch the tapering waist and the sharpness of those hips. She knew how his mouth would feel on her breasts and how he would thrust into her as if he had been waiting for this moment across the decades.

  Who exactly had she slept with tonight?

  Pete had to resist. Whatever demon had taken possession of his wife must not be allowed to influence him.

  Wrenching her fingers from his arm took all his strength. He hated being old. Although he’d never been an athlete, in his younger days there’d been an undercurrent of vigor that had ebbed over the years. He’d thought from time to time that he should exercise, but he never had.

  Now it was too late.

  “I’m going to call an orderly,” he said. “You should be sedated.”

  “Wait!” Bella sat up and reached for him, but he jerked away. “I’m not asking you to do anything wrong.”

  “I’m not sure you can tell the difference,” Pete said bitterly. “I’m not even sure who you are.”