Elizabeth Stewart - Stray Thoughts (Ellora's Cave)

by Nicole

  “I followed his trail, the stench of him marking every step. I wanted to catch him, keep him from hurting anyone else. Stomp out the evil. Kill him.

  “He was clever, though. I almost had him once but I missed the jump from the fire escape and hurt my leg. I was trying to get home but the police came and were looking for me, not him, so I had to hide under a car for hours and hours until they left and I could get back to you. I never thought he’d actually…”

  She felt a warm, soft touch as he pulled at her tattered clothing, trying to cover her as best he could. “But he won’t hurt you. No one will ever hurt you again.

  “I…I can’t stay,” he whispered hoarsely. “I…I’ve used up everything. All my strength…my time. But I don’t regret it, Sheridan. Not for an instant. I’ve waited a thousand years for you. I can wait a little longer. I found you once. I’ll find you again. I promise. And don’t worry about your writing. You don’t need me to grant your dream. You have the power inside you to make it come true. You always have.”

  The face was growing blurrier, the voice weaker. Somewhere, far away, it seemed she could hear muffled voices and the distant whine of sirens.

  “Good bye, Sheridan.” Soft lips brushed lightly along her cheek. “You won’t remember this talk when you wake up, but know in your heart that everything will be all right now. Everything. I love you.”

  The image and the voice faded away as she fell into the blackness.

  Chapter Eleven

  The police found Brian’s body in the alley under Sheridan’s fire escape. Cause of death was officially listed as a broken neck. In their haste and relief to have the Fairview Heights Rapist case closed, publicly they skimmed over the autopsy report which revealed that his clothes had been “ripped to shreds” and that there were deep scratches and bite marks on his face and body, in many places, right through his clothing.

  “We believe,” Chief Robbins later read from his statement at the televised news conference, “that the rapist entered the apartment through the fire escape window. To facilitate his escape, he left the window unlatched and open a few inches. As he was attempting to rape Miss Phillips, her cat, a large black male, weighing some twenty pounds, returned home, squeezed through the open window and attacked him. Surprised and frightened, the young man tried to free himself and flee. In the ensuing struggle, he accidentally crashed through the window and off the fire escape, breaking his neck. Investigators later searched the young man’s room and found several pairs of black leather gloves like those used in the attacks and a detailed diary of his rapes.”

  The police chief refused all questions from the media.

  Except for a black eye, some bruises and scratches and raw places on her mouth and wrists from the duct tape, Sheridan was physically okay. The doctors insisted that she stay overnight in the hospital “for observation,” whatever the hell that meant.

  As she waited in the Emergency Room to be admitted, Sheridan met Detectives Arnold Thoreau (“no relation”) and Gwen Swift.

  “We know this is a difficult time,” Detective Swift told her gently, “and we know that you’re tired and that you need your rest. We just need to ask you a few questions and then we’ll get out of your hair.”

  “All right.”

  Detective Thoreau took out a small spiral bound notebook and a stub of pencil. Flipping through some pages, he paused and looked at his partner, nodding to let her know that he was ready to start.

  “Ms. Phillips,” she began calmly, “Can you tell us, in your own words, what happened? Take all the time you need to. If you need to take or break or want to continue some other time, we’ll understand. But we would like to get as much of the story, as many details as we can now, while things are still fresh in your mind. You’d be surprised how fast a lot of this will fade.”

  Tears blurred her remaining vision as the horror show began another replay of the attack. It hadn’t stopped since the moment the police had broken down the door and actually saved her. The thought that this nightmare might “fade” hadn’t occurred to her.

  Something soft was pressed into her hand. It was a large, white, man’s handkerchief. Using it to wipe away the tears, she saw the detectives waiting patiently, looking sympathetic and understanding.

  Handing it back to him, Sheridan smiled limply and took a deep breath.

  “I’d let my cat out and I guess I didn’t lock the window,” she whispered. “I was in my bedroom running the vacuum…”

  *

  When the doctors and the police had finally finished with her, a pair of young orderlies took Sheridan’s gurney upstairs to the sixth floor and helped her into bed. It was a nice room, private, painted a bright sunny yellow and with a view of the grounds. A tray appeared but the sight of food made her sick at her stomach and it disappeared as quickly as it had arrived.

  There was a telephone in the room but the nurse said the police had asked that it not be connected and that Sheridan not have visitors for twenty-four hours, to spare her the pressures of the media.

  “Good thing, too,” the old nurse sniffed derisively. “They’re camped out down in the lobby like a flock of vultures. They’d be up here circling if they could. You wouldn’t believe what I’ve seen those idiots do to try and get to a patient. Bribe staff. Impersonate doctors and nurses. One lunkhead even tried pretending to be a window washer and came down the side of the building. You’d think grown people would have more sense.”

  “I would like to call someone,” she pleaded, “a friend. Please. Isn’t there something I can do? A pay phone even.”

  “Sorry. Doctor’s orders are that you stay in bed, no visitors, no phone calls.”

  Seeing her distress and the tears beginning again, the nurse relented.

  “There, there,” she soothed, cradling Sheridan’s hand in hers as if she were comforting a small child. “The doctor doesn’t want you getting all upset and neither do I. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Give me the name of the person you want to hear from. I’ll leave word at the desk that if they call, we can route it to you through the intercom feature of the phone. Supposed to be for in-house calls only, but we’ve been known to bend the rules in a pinch. Bright and early tomorrow, we’ll get the phone turned on and then you can talk to them yourself. Okay?”

  “Oh yes. Thank you. My friend’s name is Pat. Pat Kellogg.” Sheridan quickly rattled off Pat’s phone number.

  “Got it. Now you have to rest.” She smoothed the linen and plumped the pillow and left Sheridan alone.

  As soon as she was gone, the hideous event came screaming back, floods of tears doing nothing to diminish the awful scene or the excruciating details. They did, however, finally exhaust her and she fell into a restless, fitful sleep.

  *

  “Ms. Phillips?”

  Sheridan nodded uncertainly.

  “I’m Karen Webley,” she smiled warmly, handing over a small white business card.

  Karen Webley, M.S.W. Rape Counselor. The last two words seemed to leap off the card and slap her face. There it was. In cold, impersonal black lettering.

  Rape.

  The nightmare was real.

  “I brought you a cup of really bad hospital coffee,” she was saying, placing a white Styrofoam cup on the bedside table. “Mind if I sit down?”

  “Miss Webley,” Sheridan began wearily, “I appreciate you coming. I’m sure it’s part of your job. But please, I’m just not up to talking about it now. It’s too…” She felt the pictures starting up even as she spoke and had to shut her eyes and fight against them.

  “Please,” she answered gently, “call me Karen. And I understand absolutely how you feel.”

  “How could you possibly know how I feel?” Sheridan snarled, suddenly overwhelmed by anger and frustration and misery. “You think just because you have a degree in hand holding that you can come in here and tell me you understand! You can’t possibly know how I feel!”

  “Yes I can,” she countered quietly. “I can understand
because I was raped too.”

  The revelation was like throwing cold water on Sheridan, stopping her abruptly. She stared at the other woman, not comprehending or even believing what she’d just heard.

  “It’s part of the reason I do this. Because someone was there for me when I needed them, I try to be here for someone who needs me. I know you don’t want to talk about it now and that’s all right. You probably need to cry more than anything else. But you will want to talk sometime. And when you’re ready, you have my number. I’m available day or night.”

  “I’m…I’m sorry,” Sheridan croaked.

  “Don’t be,” Webley reassured her. “It was a long time ago. And difficult as it may be for you to believe now, it’s possible to survive even this. I know. I did it. So can you.”

  “I…I…” The words disappeared in a fresh tide of tears.

  Gently, Webley put her arms around Sheridan and held her as she wept.

  “Go ahead, Sheridan,” she whispered. “Let it out. Let it all out. You can’t start to heal ‘til you do.”

  *

  “Sher,” Pat yelped into the phone. “Oh God, I’m so glad to hear your voice.”

  Sheridan could hear the tears in her friend’s voice. It was almost worse than hearing her own.

  “I’m all right,” she whispered back without conviction.

  “There was a special news bulletin on television,” Pat continued, racing her words through the story at break-neck speed. “As soon as I heard, I tried calling your apartment but there wasn’t any answer. Then I made Bruce drive me over there because I was shaking and screaming and the police and the media and a crowd of people were all outside your place and I told the policeman I was your dearest friend and you’d want to see me and they said you’d already been taken to the hospital. They told me it was Saint Luke’s but when we got over there, the nurse told us that you were really at Carver General so we went over there and they told us you couldn’t have any visitors or any phone calls and I started to cry and the volunteer called up there and I told the nurse who I was and she said she’d put me through but only for a minute. Oh God, Sher!”

  The tears flowed in earnest. Sheridan couldn’t do anything but listen in silence to her friend weep. After a few moments, Pat honked, sniffed loudly and took a deep breath.

  “Okay,” she announced firmly. “I am all right now.”

  “Good. I need you to do something for me.”

  “Anything, Sher. Anything.”

  “Go to my apartment,” she explained quickly. “By now the police should be finished with it. Nick will be frantic. Please, go and let him in. I’ve got some leftover meatloaf in the fridge. Warm it in the microwave, no more than thirty seconds, make sure he has fresh water and tell him I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

  “But, Sher,” she answered patiently. “The police will have boarded up the window by now and…”

  “I don’t care,” she shouted. “If it’s boarded up, tear it down! Just get Nick into the apartment. I can’t…won’t…leave him out all night. He won’t understand.”

  “Listen to me, Sher. The police think that Nick…that Nick jumped this guy and that while he was trying to get Nick off him, they crashed through the window and into the alley.” She paused, waiting to see if the significance of what she was saying was sinking in.

  “They didn’t find Nick. Just a small pool of blood that wasn’t human. If Nick was hanging onto this guy when he fell and he didn’t have time to get free…”

  “No!” Sheridan screamed into the phone. “Don’t say that! Don’t even think it! Nick isn’t…he couldn’t be.”

  “All right, Sher,” she agreed, resignation and compassion in her voice, “whatever you say. Just promise me you’ll try to get some rest. Okay?”

  “Okay. Thanks, Pat. And I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right. I understand.”

  *

  Pat arrived the next day as soon as she was allowed in. Seeing her best friend, it was everything she could do not to burst into tears again. Sheridan’s left eye was swollen shut, a huge black and purple starburst mushrooming out toward her forehead, cheek and the bridge of her nose. She was pale as the sheets she was lying in.

  “Oh God, Sher,” she squealed, throwing her arms around her friend. But Sheridan had other things on her mind. Breaking away from her friend, she looked up.

  “You look awful,” Pat murmured.

  “I know,” Sheridan agreed weakly. “I went in the bathroom last night to use the john. I almost passed out from fright when I saw this face staring back at me in the mirror. Doctor says it could have been worse. I didn’t even get a concussion from Brian hitting me. Thank God for this thick Irish skull.”

  “Well at least it’s over and you’re going to be all right. As soon as you’ve got yourself together, we can get out of here. Bruce is waiting downstairs in the car. Since the news ghouls are roosting out front, the hospital let us come in the back way and we can go out the staff entrance.”

  “That’s nice,” Sheridan sighed. “I’m not up to answering any more questions.”

  “Well, Bruce is going back to work but I’m taking a couple of days off to look after you so anything you want, you just ask. So let’s get you back to the house and settled in the guestroom so you can rest. Later, you can make a list of things…clothes, toilet articles…and Bruce will go by your place and pick up whatever you need.”

  But Sheridan shook her head emphatically.

  “I have to see about Nick,” she told Patfirmly.

  “Be reasonable, Sher,” Pat sighed. “I told you. Nick wasn’t there. The window’s boarded up and I checked the fire escape myself. I left the meatloaf though.”

  “He might have been scared by all the police and people and noise and stayed away,” Sheridan insisted. “Then he couldn’t get back in because the window was boarded up.”

  A picture came to her of Nick…hungry, cold, confused…scratching desperately at the plywood, unable to understand where she was. Why she didn’t come home to him.

  “If you don’t want to take me,” she snapped, “I’ll get a cab. But I have to get back to the apartment.”

  “All right, Sher, all right. Don’t get upset. We’ll take you by the apartment so you can check on Nick. But you can’t stay there. Not after…after what happened. You shouldn’t be alone now. You need someone to take care of you.”

  “Pat…”

  “Just for a few days, Sher. To humor me. Please?”

  “All right. Anything to get out of here.”

  *

  Surreal.

  It was the only word Sheridan could come up with as she stood amidst the debris of the battlefield that had so recently been her safe, cozy living room.

  Reddish brown splotches spattered her beige carpet, ranging from dot sized to one almost the size of her hand near the window. Glass from one of the shattered doors of her entertainment center was sprinkled like ice shards on the rug.

  The small brass reading lamp that had stood on her round oak end table now lay on the rug, its cream-colored pleated shade crushed and bearing the dirty print of a large shoe. Discarded bandage wrappers, a short length of thin plastic tubing and even a latex glove littered the area in front of the sofa. Someone had pushed her coffee table almost to the fireplace, knocking over one of the crystal candlesticks, breaking the candle in half and leaving it dangling forlornly over the edge.

  Instead of the expected plywood, a shiny new window admitted the winter sunshine, bathing the room in bright light, only adding to the unreal quality of the scene.

  “I’m sorry about the mess,” Pat apologized as she stood beside Sheridan and surveyed the damage. “I probably should have straightened up when I was here last night but I only just popped in to take care of Nick and…well, I guess I just wasn’t paying any attention.”

  “It’s all right,” Sheridan mumbled mechanically. She had a stray thought that she’d spent a lot of time in the last two days uttering th
ose words to a lot of different people. Idly, she wondered how often she would have to say it before it became true again.

  “Last night,” Pat was saying, “the glazier was tearing out the plywood and getting ready to put in a new window. Said the building owner was afraid of vandals or burglars or just curiosity seekers. Paid him extra to replace it on an emergency basis.”

  Slowly, Sheridan drifted to the window and stared out. The fire escape was empty except for a small plate of drying meatloaf and a bowl of water. With a little difficulty, she managed to get the window open enough to put her head out and look down into the alley. Immediately, she regretted it.

  Directly beneath her, the remnants of a white outline could still be seen on the dirty ground. The only thing she could make out clearly was a foot and a leg, both jutting out at an unnatural angle.

  A wave of nausea rolled over her. Pulling back, she sagged, feeling too weak even to stand up anymore. Pat was at her side in a second, guiding her gently into the bedroom and helping her to lie down.

  “Look, Sher,” she said anxiously. “I told you you shouldn’t come here. That you should let me take you home and put you to bed. So now you lie here and rest. Just tell me where your bags are and what you want me to pack and we’ll get the hell out of here.”

  For a moment, Sheridan tried to focus but could do nothing but stare back at her friend.

  “Okay,” Pat replied finally, “don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.” And she turned quickly for the closet.

  Looking around her bedroom, it was like nothing had ever happened. Everything was exactly as it had been in that last moment before her world had been shattered forever.

  Only the carnage in the living room marked the horror, the terror of what had happened. Only it showed the physical disruption, the pain and shambles that her life had suddenly become.