by Margaret Way
The moon was so bright, the air was luminous. He hated what he was watching, yet perversely he couldn’t look away. There was his beautiful Mallory offering herself up to Blaine Forrester. Bodies asking questions, bodies seeking answers. Forrester had his. He was kissing her as though he owned her. He had his Mallory pressed against him. Hard, so hard. He had never seen anything like it. Mallory was responding in a way she had never done with him. Not ever. Not once. No passionate kisses had he ever received from Mallory.
Jess was the needy, passionate one. Poor violently improper Jess. He loved her and he loathed her. The more he loathed what they did, and the less he was able to get out of it. He was desperate to free himself of the wicked gratification and go into the light. Mallory was light, the goodness of her was inspiring to him. He had been able to overcome his shameful addiction while he was with Mallory. Then she left him to his fate. God, how often had he wished his twin had been a brother? A million times, ten million times? What was the weakness in him that Jess wore him down every time?
“You traitorous bitch, Mallory,” he muttered, strong hands clenched tight, teeth grinding in impotent rage. Only he loved her just the same. He had thought of his feelings for her as Pure Love, when he knew in his heart women were the root of all evil. Men did well to fear them. Wild chattering was issuing from his mouth. He pressed his fist against it. It was like having the heart ripped out of his body seeing Mallory surrender like that. Boundless grief. There were real tears—tears of hatred—standing in his eyes and running down his cheeks, unchecked. He didn’t have a bloody handkerchief anyway. He was furiously, murderously humiliated. Mallory should have been his. She would have saved him. She was the Light. He was desperate for the Light. What was his purpose in life without Mallory? He didn’t have one. Mallory had been so nearly his salvation, only Kathy got in the way.
He had snapped when they arrived back at the bungalow, totally pissed off with Kathy. He had torn strips off her, heading after her and calling insults outside her locked door. He couldn’t believe Kathy had actually shown some guts, though she had looked terrible, deathly pale.
Gradually his heartbeat had calmed. He started to wonder what the hell had gotten into him, apart from his screwed-up life. Kathy wasn’t responsible for it. Not really. Kathy was a victim. It was he who had to fight out of this terrible situation they were in. Despite all Jess had claimed—vehement as usual and so bloody convincing—he wasn’t all that sure Kathy was harming their child. If Kathy loved anyone, it was Ivy.
He had knocked on the door a few hours later begging Kathy to come out and get something to eat. He had prepared a ham salad. He had apologized for his behaviour but she had ignored him. Hours later again she was still locked away in the bedroom. It made it easy for him to exit the bungalow, quietly and unseen.
Mosquitoes were making a feast of him. He flailed at them wildly. He shuffled back an inch or two, his shoes crunching up dried leaves and fallen twigs. A giddiness was in his head. Could they have heard? Bloody hell, Forrester had. Just his luck.
He couldn’t cope with Forrester right now. Forrester was the big man. Worse, he couldn’t cope with Mallory’s knowing he had been spying on them. Was there no end to the humiliation? He suddenly saw with appalling clarity he was a pathetic bastard. The knowledge gutted him. What had he turned into? When had it all started?
He knew exactly when it had started. Was it even a medical condition? Genetics? They were programmed to be of one mind? Only he truly believed it wouldn’t have started, only for Jess. Jess had taken him down the dark tunnel. Catastrophe didn’t always happen overnight. In his case it had been a long progression....
Jess barged into his room where he was lying on his bed leafing through one of his father’s boating magazines. She was crying fiercely. He could see it wouldn’t be long before she was out of control. She had been like this for at least a year since they had turned twelve, the violent mood swings, her stomach-turning spitefulness. She was sobbing her heart out, hiccupping with the force of it, while she denounced their mother as a Judas, a cruel bitch, who had accused her of turning into a hateful person and bullying the kids at school. He had wanted to say she did, but he just couldn’t. His love for his twin was all consuming.
She had thrown herself on top of him, thrashing wildly, then unbelievably she had turned temptress. She had begun moaning into his mouth he was the only one she loved. She had stunned him. He couldn’t fight her off. His head was spinning. It had shocked him her kissing him on the mouth, her body on top of him grinding into his penis. It was shocking but so exciting. It was almost as natural as breathing. Him and Jess. She started to pull at her clothes, exposing her delicately pink-tipped breasts. They were white as milk, unlike her tanned limbs, that were twining snake-like around his. He didn’t stop her. Why didn’t he stop her? He was shamefully aware of the tumescence in his adolescent body. Why didn’t he stop her? To this day he didn’t know.
Blaine’s hearing was eerily good. His head snapped in the direction of the rustling sounds in the underbrush. His voice cracked out, “Who’s there? Come out.” Without hesitation he moved off in the direction of the bungalow that was nearly obscured by the trees. “Wait here,” he called to Mallory over his shoulder. It was an order. The weeping casuarinas were perfect cover for any stalker. There was only one stalker that came to mind. Jason, who was living such a tangled and tainted life.
Near bent in two Jason fled in a running crouch, screened from view by the thick swirl of acacias. Now he knew how it felt to hit rock bottom. His eyes were so filled with tears he could hardly see a thing. Once people had liked him, even respected him. Not anymore. He had become an outcast. All of his own making.
Mallory opened her mouth. Shut it again. She knew full well who was spying on them but she was concerned by what Blaine might do. She knew he had a daunting temper when aroused. She ran after him. “Let it go, Blaine,” she implored. “If it was someone, they’ve vanished into the night.”
“More like back to the bungalow.” Blaine wasn’t about to be easily persuaded. “No need for you to worry. I’ll go over and check exactly who’s at home.”
“Oh, don’t. Please don’t. It would only stir up more trouble. Let’s go back to the house.” She grabbed onto his unyielding arm, but it was clear he wanted to investigate further.
“Mallory, you know someone was watching us, most likely that lunatic, Jason. Chances are both he and Jessica are psychotic.”
She was pitching all her strength, but it was as nothing. “Forget them. Remember me. I’ve had enough for today, Blaine. I beg you. Let’s go back.”
Abruptly Blaine left off. “Jason has to be dealt with.”
“Absolutely. In the morning.”
“This is not acceptable, Mallory.” There was steel in his voice. “I’ll back off now as it upsets you, but I’ll be having a little chat with Cartwright tomorrow. He’s making himself very unwelcome. If what his wife claims is true, nothing will change the path the twins have so perilously embarked on. God only knows what the consequences will be.”
The answers to all Mallory’s questions were falling like a dead weight into place.
* * *
Later that night, they came together in a great tumult of emotion. It was proof if they ever needed it of the powerful chemistry between them. Moonlight streamed into Mallory’s bedroom through the wide open French doors, roaming the walls, haloing the ceiling. Even the air, laced with the fresh salty scent of the sea, was alive with spangles.
There was something incredibly erotic about their shared nakedness; bone on bone, the texture of skin on skin, musculature rippling and coming into play as they turned and twisted this way and that, touching, kissing, exploring every crevice, every contour, with each passing moment, fanning the flames. Her hair fell around them, thick, heavy, and lustrous as sparks ignited. At the same time she felt a tremendous languor. If they hadn’t been lying on her plush, high bed she surely would have sunk to the ground.
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br /> My God! My God!
Sensations piled up. Spasms that had begun as tiny began to build in strength, causing her back to jerk up off the bed, building towards a climax so powerful she had little hope of controlling the pace. Her eyes were shut tight against all her inner tremors, her fingers digging into the flesh of his broad shoulders.
“Mallory!”
His voice was ragged with desire crying out for release. Their lovemaking had become a kind of frenzy, with no barriers. She had no option but to go with it, her body fused to his in the darkness, her long, slender legs wrapped tightly around him. She was his. Heart, body, and spirit. It seemed crazy now she had resisted him for so long. She had no idea tears were streaming down her face.
Afterwards, she slept deeply and dreamlessly within the curve of Blaine’s arm and shoulder. It wasn’t until hours later that she arrived at a luminal state between sleep and waking. A huge pair of hazel eyes in a lifeless, bone-white face were staring down at her, wrenching her completely out of her sleep.
Her warm blood turned to ice. Her involuntary little cry was thin with dread. She would never become accustomed to the images she saw, images that were part of her and her psyche. All her life she had been dreaming of the ghost of her mother. There were ghosts. She was convinced of it.
She sat up, full of a tearing sadness. Dreams, she knew, were powerful intuitions trying to fight their way to the surface. Her hand moved blindly to Blaine. His breathing was quiet and steady. He was lying on his side, one hand curled over her lower body. He was there. She needed him. Now more than ever.
“Blaine, wake up!” She was aware of the trembling in her limbs.
He didn’t mumble in his sleep, or turn away. He snapped to attention like a soldier. “Mallory, what is it?” He sat up, fully alert.
“I heard something.”
“What?” He strained his ears. Heard nothing.
“A cry for help.” Mallory was close to tears. Her intuitions had steered her successfully through life. She had to follow them.
Blaine suppressed all urges to tell her she’d been dreaming. His attention was drawn to the quality of the air in the room. It should have been warm, yet it was so cold his skin was reacting to a sharp drop in temperature.
“It was a woman’s cry,” she said.
“Mallory, it must have been a bird.”
She drew in a long sibilant breath. “It wasn’t a bird.” She could feel her heart banging against her rib cage like it wanted to escape. “Believe me.”
“Right, I’ll check.” Blaine was out of the bed, quickly pulling on clothes. He was there for her no matter what. Too much grief had fallen over Mallory’s life. “That blasted alarm system can be a pain, but if anyone came close to the house it would have gone off. You stay here.”
“No.” Mallory too was out of the bed, searching for something easy to pull over her head. “I felt the cry in my soul.” Swiftly she knotted her hair, reaching for the first footwear to hand.
Blaine was well aware he was humouring her, but Mallory was such a highly sensitive creature he was prepared to let her have her head.
“What time is it?” Her voice was muffled as she pulled a kaftan over her head.
“God knows. Can’t be all that far from dawn.” He glanced out at the lightening sky. He too was experiencing foreboding. Something was wrong. Either that or he was galvanized by Mallory’s mood.
Downstairs, he deactivated the security system. They went out into the night, moving in accord along the face of the cliff. Their path was accompanied by the sound of a billion chirping insects. The moonlight was ultra-bright, cutting a silver swathe from the sea to the stars. Blaine played his torch into the shrouded parts of the heavily scented garden.
“Down on the beach,” Mallory said, as though she possessed knowledge he didn’t. “The steps will be fine. There’s plenty of light.”
Alarm bells were ringing in Blaine’s head. “What are we looking for, Mallory?”
“Someone is down there,” she said, with certainty.
Who, exactly, he wondered, but made no attempt to ask. His job was to protect her. She might have been following marks on a map, so totally involved was she with getting to her destination. Indeed it seemed to him her manic energy couldn’t be contained. There had to be some explanation for this. What was she doing guiding him through this illuminated night?
The powerful beam of the torch lit the rock steps. Both of them held firm to the iron handrail. Certainly Mallory knew things he didn’t. Mallory had powers he had to consider he might well lack. They reached the strand line, moving through the stands of pandanus. Mallory with her kaftan flowing around her resembled a goddess following a spectral image. A few feet head of him, she stopped short, standing as though transfixed. He watched as her hands rose prayerfully to her mouth. He too came to a halt, feeling out of his depth. What was going on here? God knows what truth was going to burst on him. He heard Mallory’s stricken gasp.
“Blaine, over here.”
He had excellent night vision, and besides that, the moon was very bright. Still he could see nothing. All he could see was Mallory moving like a wraith into the patch of darkness beneath the cliff’s overhang.
“Blaine!” she called again, her voice so raw it broke his heart. “It’s Kathy.”
A fierce dread drove him on.
Mallory was down on her knees, chanting over and over, “Kathy, Kathy, Kathy, I’m so sorry.”
Blaine’s heart was flailing about in his chest. He had seen death, but this was too much to cope with. He moved to get a clearer view of the small broken body. A hideous indignity. The skull had been split on the rocks. The pool of blood around it was as black as ink. Kathy was lying on her stomach, one leg drawn up, the other at an odd angle. Her head was turned to the side, her cheek pressed into the sand. They could see dark runnels down her chin and on her pitifully thin neck. Her right hand was lying beseechingly palm up. The fingers of the other hand were wedged under a rock.
He sank down on his knees, beside Mallory, waiting for his heart to settle and his stomach to stop lurching. There was a sudden haziness to his vision. Here was little Kathy Cartwright.
The night that had been so beautiful mutated into something terrible.
“Where is God in all this?” Mallory asked raggedly, overwhelmed by despair. “Where does He get to when He’s needed? Kathy, what chance did you ever have? Broken and never mended. I’ll carry the memory of this for the rest of my life.”
“Don’t, Mallory, don’t.” Blaine brought her gently to her feet, keeping a tight hold on her. “I’ll take care of this.”
* * *
The police, paramedics, and a doctor, once alerted, were on the scene in a remarkably short space of time. The yellow and black helicopter to Mallory’s blurry eyes resembled a mechanical bumblebee. It was almost full daylight.
“Did Kathy plan it?” Mallory asked sadly.
“She couldn’t cope,” was all Blaine could find to say. He too felt drained.
Sometime later at the house, the officer in charge told them Kathy Cartwright had left a note in a bedroom of the bungalow. He had spoken to her distraught husband, who had refused a minister, a cup of strong tea, a stiff drink, or the comfort of friends at the big house. He had thought that a bit odd but made no comment.
“Suicide, poor thing,” he murmured with gentle respect. The battling Burches were well known in the town. Everyone knew Kathy Burch Cartwright and her tragic story. It was a suicide just waiting to happen.
There was the expected autopsy. Another violation, to Mallory’s mind. Neither alcohol nor drugs were found in Kathy Cartwright’s blood, only the remains of a light meal in her stomach. Mallory hoped that would put the record straight. The childlike handwriting on the suicide note was confirmed as hers. The body was released. Kathy Cartwright had committed suicide. A great many were saddened. Few were surprised.
* * *
The funeral was a grim affair, made all the more so
because it happened on a dazzlingly blue and gold day. Kathy Cartwright would never live through another such day. Her burly, handsome brothers, Declan and Sean, turned up as bodyguards flanking their mother, who may or may not have been intoxicated.
Mallory let her eyes rest on the woman the whole town had once sympathized with, the battered wife who couldn’t or wouldn’t break away from her abusive husband. Kathy’s mother looked like hell, as well she might, wearing a dress that was too small. What make-up she had applied had gone for a slide down her face in the heat, pooling around her jawline. She was still a pretty woman. No sign of the father, not that anyone cared. Danny Burch had been steadily dying of alcoholism, gallstones, cirrhosis, haemorrhoids, lung cancer, take your pick, for the past twenty years. Against all the odds he had survived, even if everyone had mentally buried him.
The Cartwrights attended at the church and at the graveside, with the exception of Ivy. Ivy’s immediate situation had been resolved. She was living with her paternal grandparents and had been left in the care of their housekeeper for a few hours. It was an astounding sight to see Jessica Cartwright at the gravesite in floods of tears. Jessica at her best was a good-looking woman, but she appeared to have lost all ability to make herself attractive.
“It’s my fault,” she kept crying, tugging at her blonde hair. It wasn’t clear whether she was trying to tame it or pull it out by the roots.
“Now you don’t see that every day,” Blaine said in disgust.
“She should stow the forgiveness thing.”
“Or get bound over for breaking the peace. Grief manifests itself in many different ways, but this is bizarre. Sure she’s not possessed?”
“Jessica considers herself quite sane.”
Jessica was still crying out like a lost soul seeking redemption.