“But if it’s your mother’s love that gives you…not life, but…I don’t even know the word for it…existence, I guess. If it’s from her, wouldn’t you be with her at her home right now?”
“I don’t know the answer to that,” Denny replied. “All I know is that Dad and I can’t exist outside these walls. And we can’t exist in this form for very long after she’s gone. Usually just a few days. But we are together every Thanksgiving.”
“Which brings me to my next question,” Brad said. “Why me? Why did your mother bring me here? How is it that I can see you? And can other people see you? And if other people can see you, why isn’t there more scientific proof of all this?”
Denny laughed at the flood of questions.
“I suspect there are plenty of people who have seen those like us, and they’re living out their days in a nice comfy institution somewhere with lots of colorful meds,” Denny said. “I’m not God, so I don’t have all the answers. All I know for sure is that it’s about the energy. People incapable of loving can’t experience those of us on this side of the veil. I’m not saying that scientists are incapable of love, but they’ve yet to invent an instrument that can quantify and measure it.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Brad replied, starting to smirk. “I saw a Love Meter at a truck stop one time that could measure it for a quarter.”
The humorous remark was the first time Brad had felt anything other than fear and anger since arriving this morning.
Denny laughed again. “Wrong energy. That’s heat. Lots of people confuse heat with love. Just watch a porno some time.”
“And what about me?” Brad asked again. “Why am I here? Why did your mother bring me here? Why didn’t she tell me, warn me?”
“I’m not sure that even God can answer that one,” Denny replied, the smile still playing at the corner of his lips. “As I mentioned, we don’t get the answer key once we reach this side. One thing I can tell you is that, on this side, the ‘why’ is no longer as all-consuming as it is on that side. The ‘why’ isn’t as important as the ‘is.’ That’s why I can’t really give you those kind of answers, or the big ones, like why the world was created and why humans were made and why babies get cancer. I don’t know the answers to those whys. I’m not sure there really is an answer.
“As for why mom brought you here…like I said, my mother is a remarkable woman. I’m not just saying that because she’s my mom. There’s something special about her, something…abnormal is such a negative word…supernormal, I guess. She can sense things, even in strangers. I know she had her reasons, but I don’t know why she brought you here. However, what I said to you last night was genuine. I’m glad she did.”
Brad thought about this, his question unanswered but soothed.
“What about the woman? The one on the dock? How does she fit into all this?”
Denny looked out the picture window at the darkening sky. Dusk was falling, even as the intensity of the storm was increasing.
“I don’t know, Brad. I don’t know who she is or where she’s from. Things outside these walls…they’re beyond what I can know. I’m sorry.”
“Then why was she warning me about him? And how does she know?”
The room suddenly became colder as the topic left the world of energy and love and returned to the more frightening reality of Brad’s fear.
“Again, I don’t know,” Denny answered, the laughter having been dispersed and replaced with genuine concern. “But I suspect that it wasn’t an idle warning. I can sense him out there.”
“Then how do I protect myself? How do I kill it?”
Denny shook his head. “I don’t know. He can’t be killed in the traditional sense, because he isn’t alive in the traditional sense. It’s energy, so it can’t be destroyed. But Einstein did say that energy can be forced to change forms. Light can be changed into electricity and vice versa, heat can be changed into pressure...that’s the best I can offer.”
The final rays of light had dimmed outside, leaving the room illuminated only by the flames in the fireplace.
“This is all so unbelievable. Beyond a nightmare,” Brad mumbled, the last of his adrenalin-fueled energy leaking away like the dissipating light beyond the windows.
Denny stood up and slowly returned to the window, staring out at the blackness that was closing in.
“I know how hard this is to grasp,” Denny said, his eyes never leaving the window.
After a day of unending near-panic, Brad’s overworked mind started surrendering to the growing darkness, his heart rate heading south toward the slow pace offered by sleep. His logic tried to fight the retreat, tried to sound an alarm chime to convince the rest of the body that this was no time to sleep, but the rest of his organs joined in the brain’s work stoppage like a gathering of protesters intent on a sit-in.
Ten minutes later, Denny left his post at the window to return to the sofa. He eased Brad’s body into a horizontal position before gently pulling the knitted afghan from the back of the sofa.
He gently covered his sleeping friend with the sheet of yarn that his mother had created in the winter of 1986, the last tangible creation she had made for the care and comfort of her loved ones before they had gone beyond her reach. The maroon and gold zigzag pattern made an artificial mountain range across the landscape of Brad’s large body, rising and falling in gentle earthquakes created by his deep and slow breathing.
Denny took a final look at the dark window, then looked at his sleeping friend, unable to do anything about either, before heading toward the cold room at the end of the hallway.
Chapter Thirty
A little after midnight, voices penetrated the layers of exhaustion that had kept Brad horizontal for hours. Women’s voices.
Lying on the sofa, the fire barely a glow, he tried to place those voices. First the who, then the where. Sitting up gave him the use of both ears, straining against the darkness.
The voices were barely above a whisper, and involved more giggling than actual words, punctuated by the occasional “Sshhhhh.” It was the attempt at secrecy that prompted Brad to remain quiet instead of calling out.
Not even giving a thought to how the afghan had wound up on top of him, Brad slowly eased out from under the covers. The main room was bathed in red from the dying fire, but with enough light to see the outlines of the furniture and doorways.
A stretch of silence was punctuated by more laughter, more whispers, and more low talking. The sounds seemed to be coming from the direction of the kitchen.
Reaching once more behind the clock that still bore the erroneous 9:20 announcement, Brad found the box of long matches. Taking one from the box, he struck it on the sandpaper lid. The small flame did little to brighten the room, but helped clarify the shapes. Cupping the flame, Brad slowly made his way toward the kitchen, where the voices had stopped, replaced by a sort of low hum.
At the doorway, his eyes adjusting to the feeble light of the long match, Brad strained to see the source of the sound. Beginning at the refrigerator, working his way past the pantry doorway and then the stove, the room appeared much as he had left it.
A gentle movement near the sink caught his eye. Turning to his right, the light outlined the image of two women caught in an embrace while leaning against the counter.
The taller of the two, a honey-colored blonde with sharp features and a long, graceful neck, had her arms locked around the shoulders of the smaller one, a thin wisp of a woman with short brown locks. The light flickered in reflection from the blonde’s green eyes, orbs that were filled with a heat of their own as the woman bent to gently kiss the shorter woman on the tip of her nose, her lips then sliding to the woman’s chin. Finally, her lips found those of her companion, whose eyes were closed in surrender to the bliss of the taller woman’s ministrations. The smaller woman’s lips parted, allowing the blonde’s tongue easy entry into her mouth just as another small gasp of excitement escaped.
While the blonde continued th
e deep, soulful kiss, the smaller woman’s hands drifted from their place around the taller woman’s slender waist, seeking then finding the firmness of the blonde’s curved bottom, first slowly stroking then firmly grasping each perfectly swelled cheek through the denim fabric of her skirt.
“Excuse me,” Brad said, finally finding his voice. “Who are you?”
The girls continued their passionate exploration of each other’s bodies and mouths, oblivious to Brad’s interruption.
One hand eased from around the smaller woman’s neck and began to trace an invisible line from her shoulder down to the pert upward curve of the smaller woman’s left breast, tracing a path that would have followed the straps of a bra had the woman been wearing one, finally circling in a holding pattern around the woman’s aroused nipple poking against the fabric of her white sleeveless blouse.
The kiss continued, two restless tongues taking turns finding the secret places in each other’s mouths while two sets of hands began their own urgent explorations. The smaller woman’s hands continued south, first finding the hem of the denim skirt, then disappearing beneath it in search of more moist and intimate destinations.
The blonde’s hand also became more insistent, leaving the smaller woman’s enshrouded breast and easing inside the unbuttoned collar, traveling downward until finally coming skin to skin with that which she had just finished caressing through the shirt.
The kiss broke as the blonde threw her head back with a barely bridled “oh!” as the smaller woman’s fingers found their mark beneath the skirt, the taller woman’s eyes clinching shut as her hips began a small rotation.
“Disgusting, isn’t it?”
Denny’s voice was calm, just a few steps behind, filled with a melancholy that was probably once rage. Brad turned to face him.
“Your wife?” Brad asked.
Denny nodded, his eyes still focused on the nearly pornographic scene in the kitchen.
“Linda!” he shouted.
The two women suddenly stopped and turned toward the voice, each expressing their own facial version of surprise. The look of confusion on the face of Linda, the taller blonde, slowly changed to something more malevolent as she eyed her former husband.
That defiant look then faded and disappeared into a dry mist as the two apparitions silently vanished into the darkness.
The kitchen was once again empty.
Denny stood looking at the place where the two women had stood, violating the marital vows that he had taken as so sacred, a violation that had happened just moments ago.
And decades ago.
The flame now nearing his fingers, Brad shook the ashy matchstick into extinction, darkening Denny’s already severe face. The two men turned and quietly headed back toward the fireplace, where Brad began the chore of resurrecting the fire with two more logs and a sprinkling of bark. While willing the fire back to life, he had to grab a couple of crumpled newspapers that had drifted close to the hearth and return them to safety behind the half-empty log rack.
With the room once again filled with the flickering light, Brad took refuge in the recliner across from the sofa where Denny now sat, his eyes locked on the dancing yellow and red flames.
“It was over the Labor Day weekend, a year before…that Thanksgiving. We had come up here with another couple to use the cabin. Sort of a last hurrah before the onset of fall. Linda’s idea. Mom and dad couldn’t get away that weekend.”
“You had no idea?” Brad asked.
Denny paused, his eyes continuing to follow the capering lines of the fire as it cavorted behind the first log and onto the second.
“When you’re married to a beautiful woman, you always have it in the back of your mind to be a little bit vigilant, watching for hints or clues that some guy is getting a little too friendly or paying a little too much attention. The longer you’re with someone, the less guarded you become, but you always know the potential is there.
“I never worried about Cal, my friend. We would go hunting together, fishing together. Never a hint of interest.”
Denny stopped staring at the fire and turned to face Brad. “I know it’s a song cliché, but I never saw it coming. Not a clue. I guess it never occurred to me as…an option. Not that I was naive, or a prude, but it just wasn’t something I had even thought about.
“Of course, afterward, all of the signs were there. How Linda and Annie, Cal’s wife, would always team up while Cal and I were off doing what manly men do. They would have ‘sleepovers’ when we were away. I always considered them innocent returns to adolescence. I feel stupid now, but it was one of the reasons I didn’t worry too much about Linda cheating on me with other guys, because Annie was usually tagging along.”
Brad waited, but there was no more.
“Your mom told me that she didn’t know you were getting divorced until after it was over.”
Denny smiled a tired smile. “Can you think of anything more humiliating to tell your mother? Or your father, or your friends? That your wife was fucking another woman?”
He reached down and flipped a stray piece of kindling off the floor and into the fire.
Brad let the thought course through his head, gathering steam as it raced toward a conclusion he dreaded giving voice to, a question with an answer he didn’t want to hear. He had grown attached to Denny, regardless of his dimensional state. Such bonds, whether forged quickly or over decades, often served as metaphorical blinders that allowed close friends to ignore each other's flaws and weaknesses. Poets called it loyalty. Psychologists called it enabling.
In this instance, Brad would have called it illumination. Without the benefit of shared history, it would be the pivotal revelation to Denny’s character, and testament to whether Brad’s trust had been grossly misplaced.
“Now they’re like you,” Brad whispered. “Does that mean you killed them?”
Denny turned and looked at Brad. Or, perhaps in a galactic turn of irony, almost through him as he contemplated and allowed the question to turn through the elaborate road-course of reason. It wasn’t the delay of a materializing lie, but of a journey through a once-explored jungle that had been allowed to return to its primitive state instead of a leisurely trip down a gold-paved memory lane.
“When I found out, it wrecked me,” Denny explained. “But the only person I thought about killing was myself. I took the divorce route because that was the civilized way to deal with it. Or, at the time at least, it looked like the quickest way to ease the pain - like an amputation of a gangrenous limb. In fact, I think a friend of mine even used that analogy.
“But what they don’t tell you is that even after an amputation, the pain will still linger. Sometimes it shows up when you least expect it, without warning. In amputees, they call it ‘phantom pain.’ It’s not fair, because you went through an agonizing process to rid yourself of the pain, but it still shows up anyway. The divorce was quick, but the pain stuck around.
“Like I said before, I went through the divorce in record time. And just like a nurse attending to an amputee’s sutures, I dabbed at my wound with alcohol. Lots of it. I didn’t talk to friends, didn’t return phone messages, just spent a month in the bottle.”
Denny lowered his head, his gaze finding a particularly interesting seam in the hardwood floor.
“When it all came out, Cal disappeared for two months. I figured he was just walking the same isolated path I was, drinking and avoiding. Then one night he just showed up at his house. He walked into the master bedroom and caught Linda ‘comforting’ Annie with her tongue.
“Cal didn’t take the civilized divorce route. He pulled his hunting rifle out of the cabinet and downed them like scattering deer on the hoof while they were trying to find their clothes. The coroner said Linda died with the first shot, right in the heart. Annie lasted a while longer, gut-shot.
“When we used to go hunting together, Cal was religious about not letting an animal suffer. On that rare occasion when he would miss a clean shot, he’d
actually run through the woods for hours to catch up to whatever he had wounded, and finish it off.
“The police said Annie lingered a long time, with Cal sitting right there in the room watching her bleed out. They say that getting gut-shot is about the most painful way to go, because you don’t usually pass out until you’ve about run out of blood.
“After nearly an hour, she finally stopped bleeding. But I guess Cal found out in a hurry the thing it took me months to realize; that the amputation doesn’t always stop the hurting. So he gave himself a 30-caliber pain reliever.”
The crackling of the fire, faltering once again, punctuated the silence, leading Denny to pick up the fireplace pike and prod life back into the flaming wood.
“I didn’t tell my mom right away, waiting for the right moment. Then those moments started flying by thanks to my friend Mr. Cuervo. As for the divorce, they say the wheels of justice turn slowly, but this one wrapped in barely 30 days. She didn’t contest it, didn’t fight for the house or any of the assets. We didn’t have any children, so it was an easy split, legally. I’m not sure I really comprehended that it was truly over until the gavel fell. After I sobered up some, two days later, I called my mom.
“Beginning in the spring, after a winter of being shit-hammered, we started coming up here every weekend as a family.” Denny looked around the room, seeing memories that Brad could only guess at. “At first, it was like returning to the scene of the crime. You saw where I caught her. But with time, everything eventually came around. This place helped heal me. I suspect that might be part of the reason Mom brought you up here.”
The fire hit an ancient knot in the wood with a crack that sounded like a kid’s pop-gun, shooting a spark across the stone hearth and onto the wood floor. Brad quickly extinguished it with his shoe.
Outside, a gust of wind screamed against the eaves, causing the cracked picture window to creak. The sound brought Denny out of his reverie. He turned to face the man in the recliner.
Howl of a Thousand Winds Page 17