After I Dream

by Lee, Rachel

Hell, if Jeff left, she wouldn’t have a life.

  Sick, Callie, she told herself. Very sick.

  Glum reflection followed her all the way to Chase’s house. The walk did her good though, and by the time they reached his porch, she was feeling better anyway.

  “Come on in while I get the book,” Chase said.

  They followed him inside. From Jeff’s demeanor, Callie guessed he would have been glad to stay with Chase the rest of the evening, but he didn’t want to let his sister walk home alone.

  And why not? she wondered. She’d walked around the inlet alone many times after dark. Feeling frustrated and restless and just generally unhappy, she stepped back out onto the porch. The door was open, so she could hear Chase give Jeff the book, and tell him a little about it. She could hear the hero-worship in Jeff’s voice.

  And she hated it. Wanting to get away from it, she walked to the far edge of the porch and looked into the woods.

  Her heart stopped. Two red glowing eyes were staring back at her from the woods. Too high to be a deer, too big to be any animal she knew of in these parts. God, it looked like some kind of monster….

  But almost the instant she saw them, they winked out.

  Something must be reflecting the light, she told herself. She moved, trying to see them again. Nothing.

  Maybe she had imagined it?

  “Jeff? Chase?” Her voice was little more than a croak.

  As soon as she spoke, the lights winked on again, farther back in the hammock, higher up. Then they were gone. Her heart was thundering now.

  “Chase?” Her voice was louder this time. “Jeff?”

  Jeff’s voice came from the doorway. “What is it, Callie?”

  “Come out here, please?”

  “What’s wrong?” Chase asked as he came up beside her. “You sound scared.”

  “I am. I saw red lights flickering in the woods.” She pointed. “Right out there. They looked like eyes, except they glowed. But they were too high and too big to be a deer, or anything else I know about around here. As soon as I called you, I saw it higher up the rise…”

  Chase swore. His hands gripped the railing until his knuckles were white. “You saw it, too?” he asked tautly.

  She looked at him. “Too?”

  “I’ve seen it before. I thought I was imagining it.”

  With that simple sentence, he told Callie exactly what kind of hell he’d been going through. She had to stifle an impulse to reach out to him, as she thought what it would mean not to be able to trust your own senses.

  “Well let’s go catch whatever it was,” Jeff said excitedly. “Do you have a flashlight?”

  But Chase shook his head and Callie said a vehement “No!” at the same instant.

  “Why the hell not?” Jeff demanded.

  “Because,” Callie said. “Because whatever’s out there could be dangerous.” She looked at Chase for confirmation.

  He was still staring into the woods, clinging to the rail, his face as tight as a wound spring.

  “It could be,” he said. “It could be.”

  “But I want to know what it is,” Jeff argued.

  “Well,” said Chase, turning to look at him, “if it’s not a monster from the sea, it was some person who might get really unpleasant if he got caught.”

  “You know how to handle that, Chase. You’re a SEAL.”

  “I don’t go running after unknown dangers in the dark, Jeff. It might just be a prankster, but it could be somebody whose armed with a gun, or worse. It might even be an attempt to lure us out into the woods in the dark.”

  But Callie’s thoughts were running in a different direction. “I don’t think you should stay here,” she said.

  He looked at her. “I’m not going to be run off.”

  “I’m not talking about being run off. I’m talking about staying at our place tonight. We’ve got plenty of room. But whoever was out there… Chase, between this and the seaweed, I’ve got the feeling that whoever is doing this is… well, it’s more than just a prank. A prank happens once. The only kids who live around here live too far away to want to pull something like this over and over again. It’s ridiculous even to consider it, and why would they want to pick on you anyway? They don’t even know you.”

  He nodded slowly and looked toward the woods again while Callie continued.

  “What I saw out there takes some effort. And it must be somebody who knows about your… problem with the dark. Otherwise, they’re expending an extreme amount of effort just to annoy you, and I don’t think that’s very likely.”

  “You’re probably right,” he said. “I’ve been seeing stuff like this and the seaweed on and off for weeks. Some of it I thought I imagined.”

  “You didn’t imagine the seaweed.”

  “No.”

  “And I didn’t imagine those eyes. Lights. They had to be lights. I’ve seen animals’ eyes in the dark, and they don’t look like that.”

  “What problem with the dark?” Jeff asked Chase.

  He hesitated, then said, “Since my diving accident I’ve had a problem with darkness. It… scares me.”

  “Oh.” Jeff shrugged it aside as if it were of no importance. He certainly didn’t look as if his idol had been toppled. “I guess I can see that. It gets pretty dark down there where you were, right?”

  “Pretty dark,” Chase agreed.

  “I got locked in a closet once by accident,” Jeff said. “It was a long time before I could be alone in my bedroom at night without the light on.”

  Callie, feeling a burst of pride at her brother’s understanding, broke one of Jeff’s cardinal rules and reached out to hug him. “You’re pretty special, Jeff,” she told him.

  He wiggled away, looking embarrassed. “Nah,” he said. “But I’ll tell you, if somebody’s trying to scare you at night, Chase, then you don’t want to stay here. Callie’s right about that. Come stay at our place. We can check out the woods for clues in the morning.”

  Chase started to shake his head, and Callie could well understand why. He could hardly like the idea of being protected by a woman and a youth. His pride had suffered enough blows lately without adding another one. Again she felt that tug in her heart, an ache for his pain. She pushed it aside, not wanting to feel anything for him beyond superficial, safe friendship.

  “You know,” Callie said, “the truth is, if there’s some jerk creeping around in the woods, I’d feel a whole lot better tonight if both you and Jeff were there with me. So if you don’t want to come to our place, I’ll just camp on your couch tonight.”

  He startled her with a sudden grin. “You’re a lousy liar, Callie.”

  “I’m not lying!”

  “She’s not,” Jeff said. “I’m not ashamed to admit it. I’d feel a whole lot better if you were around, too.”

  “Why don’t you stay here, then? I’d kind of like to know whether anything else happens tonight.”

  Jeff went inside to read the diver’s handbook Chase had given him, but Chase and Callie remained on the porch.

  “Are you okay?” she asked him. “I mean, with being out here in the dark? You seemed more comfortable when we walked over here, too.”

  He was still standing at the railing, gripping it, and she stood beside him, her eyes scanning the woods constantly for another glimpse of the eyes.

  He spoke. “I learned a long time ago that the only way to deal with fear is to face it. I forgot that for a while.”

  “Don’t give yourself a heart attack.”

  A snort of laughter answered her.

  “No, really, is it getting better?”

  “I’m not sure. I am getting madder.”

  “At what?”

  He looked down at her. “At myself. At whoever is doing this to me. Shit.”

  “What?”

  “My damn hip. It feels like Attila the Hun is jabbing it with a red-hot poker.”

  “Maybe you should sit down?”

  He shook his head. “That’s some
thing else I’m damned if I’m going to give in to.” Although he remembered the nights when the Beretta had seemed like an option. Remembered them with shame.

  Something inside him was changing, he realized. A few weeks ago he’d felt whipped. Now he was getting mad. Mad enough that he’d begun to talk about it. The anger somehow helped ease the embarrassment that usually kept him from discussing his problem.

  “I started having the nightmares when I was in the hospital,” he said. “They weren’t so bad, though. Not as bad as they got eventually. They were just nightmares, and I’d wake up in a cold sweat with my heart pounding. I figured they’d stop.”

  “But they didn’t.”

  “No. They got worse. After I got out of the hospital, it got so I couldn’t even go to sleep at night. I had to stay awake just to avoid the dreams. For some reason they’re not as bad when I sleep in the daytime.”

  “I wonder why?”

  “I don’t have a clue. Anyway, I went home to Tampa, and then… well, it got to be more than nightmares. More than just being afraid to sleep. I started feeling…” He halted, then said, “This is going to sound crazy as hell.”

  “I’ve heard some pretty crazy things in my day.”

  “I guess.” He sighed, and his grip on the railing tightened. “I started feeling like I was being watched. Not all the time, just sometimes. I’d be walking down the street and get the feeling so strongly that I had to go home. Or I’d be sitting in my apartment and I’d be sure I wasn’t alone. I was having a nervous breakdown, I guess.”

  “Mmm.” Callie’s reply was noncommittal.

  “I started seeing a psychiatrist about all this stuff. He said it was post-traumatic stress, that it ought to let up in a few months. He offered me pills to help, but I didn’t want to take them.”

  She dragged her gaze from the woods and looked at him. “You’re not the kind who gives in easily, are you?”

  “No. Are you?”

  She had to laugh. “No. I’m like water on stone, I guess. Drip, drip. So how come you came out here?”

  “Two reasons. One, I thought that if I got away from people, the feeling of being watched would have to stop. I mean, I couldn’t tell myself it was happening because there were other people around. So I figured, get away from people and the feeling will go away. Either that, or I’d at least be able to talk myself out of it.”

  “Did it help any, coming out here?”

  “Not a bit. Anyway, my other reason for moving here was pretty straightforward: face the fear.” Face the fear or die. “It didn’t work. It just seemed to get worse.”

  “That happens sometimes. Worse before it gets better. Your doctor was right though. When post-traumatic stress shows up early, within the first six months, it usually goes away more quickly. Not always, but usually.”

  “Well, what’s going on here is a little more than that, apparently.”

  “You mean the seaweed and the lights in the woods?”

  “Exactly. Two nights after I got here, I saw a shape at the window, a shape with glowing red eyes. It looked something like what I’d hallucinated when I was diving. I ran outside to investigate it, but there was nothing there. And that’s—well, that’s when I started to get afraid of the dark. Started to feel as if there were demons out there. Everything got all twisted up in my head. My accident, the hallucinations I had under the water…”

  She reached out and gripped his arm. “Did you ever describe those hallucinations to anyone?”

  “Sure. To my doctors.” He thought about it. “To my friend Tom, and to Bill Evers, my buddy on the dive. Bill wanted to know what the hell had freaked me out so bad. Poor guy. I can imagine how it felt on his end, watching me go nuts at fifty-seven meters down, seeing me try to pull my helmet off.”

  “Scary.”

  “I’m surprised he isn’t having nightmares after that.”

  She gave up scanning the woods, figuring that the show was probably over for the night. After all, if you were going to gaslight someone, overdoing it could ruin the effect. Still, they kept their voices lowered, so they couldn’t be overheard. Turning so that she leaned her hip against the rail, she folded her arms and looked up at Chase.

  “So lots of people know what you saw down in the water?”

  “A few. I don’t know how many. I see what you’re getting at, Callie.”

  “And?”

  “I’d trust Bill and Tom with my life. Tom’s an old friend and Bill and I dived together a few times. We’re not exactly friends, but you don’t dive with someone you don’t trust. Neither of them would do this.” He sighed and rubbed his hip absently. “I’ve got to sit.” He limped his way to one of the wicker chairs and dropped into it, stretching his aching leg out in front of him. Callie came to sit in the chair beside him.

  “I’ve been thinking about it,” he said presently. “Ever since we both found that seaweed on the porch. I’ve been trying to figure out why anyone would want to pull a prank like that. I even considered the possibility that it was directed at Jeff, but that they got the wrong house.”

  “At Jeff? Why on earth…” Then she understood. “God, that would be cruel”

  “Yeah, it would. But if you link it with the lights, it doesn’t fit anyway. The lights started before Jeff got into all this mess. I saw them a couple, three times.”

  Callie leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees and propping her chin in her hands. The night was so beautiful, she thought, with the breeze rustling the trees, and the water lapping peacefully at the shore. Light from a crescent moon dappled the water.

  “On nights like this I used to sit out on the veranda with my mom,” she said. “When the mosquitoes weren’t too bad. We’d sit together on the porch swing, rocking back and forth, and she’d tell me stories. I can remember the stories, but I can’t remember what she looked like, sitting there in the shadows, talking. I can’t even remember what her voice sounded like.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. He reached out and cupped her shoulder.

  The sensation sent a warm shiver running through her. It was a warning, and she should have jumped away from his touch, but she didn’t. She couldn’t.

  “So am I,” she said. “It kills me that I can’t remember it more clearly. But that’s not what I’m getting at. What I was going to say was that after she died, the evening never felt the same to me again. In all these years, I never sat on that porch swing again. The chain’s so rusty now I’d be afraid to, but it wouldn’t matter even if I put up a new chain. I couldn’t sit there.”

  He squeezed her shoulder. “Maybe if you tried sitting on it, you’d remember more about what she looked like and sounded like.”

  “Maybe. And maybe I don’t want to. Maybe that’s why I won’t. Maybe F m afraid of remembering any more clearly because it’ll hurt.”

  “Could be.” He withdrew his hand and she felt the loss instantly. How could a simple touch be so comforting?

  “Anyway,” she said, “there was a point to all of this.”

  “Which is?”

  “Maybe you remember more from your dive than you think you do.”

  The silence was suddenly profound. It was as if the sea grew still and the night held its breath. Chase didn’t move a muscle or speak for a time that seemed endless. Finally, he said, “I don’t remember.”

  “Maybe someone is afraid that you do. Maybe someone doesn’t want you to. If you doubt your own sanity, or are so distracted by nightmares and terrors, how likely are you to remember anything?”

  “But I don’t remember. Everyone knows that.”

  “Except that you remember the hallucinations you had down there. Everyone knows that, too.”

  He turned to face her. His expression was unreadable, a mask in the yellow glow of the porch light. “Why in the hell would anyone want to do that?”

  She straightened and stared right back at him. “You said it yourself. Ten million dollars in uncut diamonds is a lot of motivation.”

&nbs
p; CHAPTER 13

  “But the diamonds weren’t down there.”

  “How do you know that?” Callie demanded. “Did you check the safe yourself?”

  “Bill did. And Bill said they weren’t there.”

  “What if Bill lied? What if somebody paid Bill to lie.”

  “No.” He stood up quickly, his entire posture rejecting the idea. “I’ve worked with that man on and off for years. There’s no way he’d lie about something like that.”

  “Has he ever had that much motivation before?”

  “Jesus Christ, Callie.”

  He strode away to the far end of the porch and stood with his hands on his hips, his back to her. “Look,” he said evenly. “I know I told you that Bill isn’t a close friend. And he’s not. But you don’t do the kinds of dives I do unless you trust your diving buddy. I put my life in Bill’s hands more than once, and I never ever saw a single thing that would make me distrust him, or think he might lie. And if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be here talking to you right now.”

  She waited a minute, then followed him.

  “Listen,” she said to his back. “Bill’s your friend. I understand that. But look at what we’ve got going on here. You already think that those men my brother was accused of murdering may have been killed by divers going to look for the diamonds. It’s slim, you know it’s slim, you know it’s slim. It’s also a hell of a coincidence, considering that we’re neighbors. But if you accept that, are you going to pile another coincidence on top of it, and say somebody just happens to be harassing you and taking advantage of your fears by tormenting you this way, but it has nothing at all to do with those diamonds? My God, Chase, that’s just too much to be believed. The only way all of this fits together is if it’s all tied to the diamonds.”

  “The diamonds weren’t down there,” he said flatly.

  “Fine!” Callie threw up her hands. “They aren’t down there. The insurance company said they weren’t down there. Anybody who heard about the case would know that. So why would a couple of divers go down there to look for them anyway, unless they knew that somebody lied?”

  He stiffened even more, but he didn’t speak. She was getting tired of talking to his back, and tired of his stubbornness.