“Gaaaa,” I yelled, sitting up so fast I should have hit him in the face. He sat back on his heels, apparently anticipating my physical reaction to his nearness. My head was pounding again, but nothing like it had been before. I could live with this. Now, what exactly had happened? Oh, yeah, he opened the door from the outside and said something about my great-grandfather. In a rush of adrenaline, I crab walked backward, putting some distance between us and likely flashing my cookies in the process. He stayed squatted on the balls of his feet, watching me.
“Are you going to listen now?” he asked, voice much calmer, brogue much less pronounced now that he wasn’t upset. What a shame. About the brogue, I mean.
“Listen to what? You confirm that you’re a maniac? Got it in one, Bahlin.” I crouched back against the bed, wedged into the side rails as if they could provide me with some type of protection. It was obvious, even to me that I was thinking clearly.
“Did you not get my message then?” he asked, standing and walking over to the desk.
I cringed back even further, nearly shoving myself under the bed.
“I’ll take that as a no.” He sat in the chair and dropped his head in his hands.
“What note,” I whispered, voice flat, eyes wide. I should have made for the front door, but in my panic to get away from him I’d put myself almost as far from it as I could have. Dumb, dumb, dumb. And then I remembered the two pieces of vellum-like paper that had come into my possession: one left in the car and one left here at the hotel.
As if reading my thoughts, he said, “I left a note for you at the front desk.”
“I got it,” I said quietly. “I just haven’t opened it yet.”
“What? Why the hell not?” His eyes flashed strangely in the lamplight as he shoved himself to standing and towered over me.
And it was then that I decided that if this lunatic was going to threaten me, I was going to give him a fight. I wasn’t going to get killed my first day in a foreign country and become a statistic so easily. No, I was going to at least make him bleed. I shot up off the floor like I’d been launched from a catapult, and he took a fast step back. But not fast enough. My upper cut caught him on the chin, snapping his head back. The pain blossomed in my hand as if I’d hit a brick wall. I’d never hit anyone before and the satisfaction was gratifying in the face of my determination.
“Bloody hell, woman.” He recovered before I could do more than turn to make a break for the door, and he grabbed me from behind. His arms were like steel bands wrapping around me and lifting me up off the floor. I’m no petite wallflower, so his strength was evident. I struggled, cursing him as actively, violently and creatively as I could. I kicked and struggled, but it was no use. He held me as if I were no more than a big load of laundry. It was humiliating.
“Stop,” he commanded in a cajoling voice, and for a moment I felt like obeying him. Yeah, that passed pretty quickly.
“Up yours.” I kicked some more, managing to wiggle an arm free, and I swung it down and back as hard as I could. Contact. He dropped me like a bag of grain, going to his knees and cupping his groin protectively, knocking the chair over as he went down. He bellowed with rage and was already getting up as I got away.
I sprinted across the room and went straight to the first open door I saw, the bathroom. I locked myself in and, breathing like a racehorse, I sank to the floor.
“Damn it all to hell, this is not happening,” I said, gasping for breath. There was nothing in the bathroom to shove under the door handle, so I turned around and set my back against the door itself, bracing my feet against the marble floor. I grabbed the telephone and called down to the front desk.
“Guest services. How may I help you?” came a pleasant voice over the receiver.
“Call security. There’s a strange man in my room and I’m afraid he’s—”
“Open the damned door, Maddy. Now,” Bahlin yelled.
“Ma’am? Do you require assistance?” asked the voice, now concerned, on the other end of the line.
“Screw you, Bahlin,” I screamed at him, panting. “I’m calling for security.”
He laughed, a dark and threatening sound. “Good luck with that, Maddy. Open the door, girl, or I’ll be in there with you in a heartbeat.”
“Ma’am? I’m sorry. I can’t call security on Bahlin. I can only assure you that, unless provoked, he won’t hurt you. Thank you for choosing the Pemberton. Have a nice evening.” And the cultured front desk voice hung up on me.
What the freaking hell? What kind of hotel had I checked into?
I dialed back, and the same voice answered.
“Send security now you coward. You better get someone up here before I come down there and—” Click. He hung up on me.
I threw the phone across the bathroom only to have it careen back when the cord drew tight. Now I felt like the idiot. I sat there breathing hard and thought about what the front desk clerk had said. I wondered if punching Bahlin in the ’nads counted as provoking him? I was going to go out on a limb and say yes. And since I’d been advised he wouldn’t hurt me unless provoked, and I had deduced he’d been provoked by my person, I was in deep shit.
“I’ll ask yeh one last time, woman,” Bahlin growled through the door. Uh oh. The heavy brogue was back.
Stalling, I called out, “What about the note? What’s in it?”
The answer was an extended silence, and then I could hear him moving about the room.
“Where have you hidden the damned thing?” he muttered. It sounded like he was going through my things. “Ah ha. Here we are. What’s this?” I heard him pull the chair back into its upright position. He groaned when he sat down. “I doubt I’ll be able to function properly for a week.” There was the rustling of heavy paper, then total quiet.
I sat with my back to the bathroom door, listening to him first mumble to himself and then sit in silence. How had this happened to me? First the recurring nightmares, then my delusional experiences at the stones, then the notes left in my car and at the desk, then the morning’s strange dream, and now the evening’s even stranger reality. It was all so farfetched it was unbelievable. But then, the notes were solid. I’d touched them. The dream was real. I’d recognized Bahlin and known his name. The man was real. I’d felt him. Using modus ponens, if this was tangible then it must be believable. Ergo, it was very believable. Wait. I was using logic to make sense of this? And where the hell had I come up with modus ponens? I began to shake. First the imaginary events at the stone circle and now this. I was losing my mind.
I heard footsteps approach the door.
“Maddy,” Bahlin said softly, a complete change of character from only moments before. “Maddy, open the door. Please.”
I didn’t respond.
“Maddy, I will open this door, but I would prefer you do it yourself.”
I stood, my muscles shaking from adrenaline overload and the fear of my apparent break with reality. I turned and put my hand on the bathroom door handle. If I believed what was happening, then I knew Bahlin could open this door. Even if he couldn’t use telekinesis, he’s strong enough to force his way in. I turned the door handle, pulling the door open and jumped back. He was leaning against the door jam, eyes closed, arms at his sides. I took a quick step backward, wondering how I would defend myself in such a small space. Hair gel to the eyes? Then I realized he was holding both pieces of vellum in one hand.
“You went through my pants?” I shrieked, realizing where he had to have found the papers.
“You weren’t in them so don’t screech at me,” he answered, never opening his eyes.
I stood there, not sure whether to push past him and retrieve my clothes or stand in front of him, indefinitely, in my borrowed bathrobe. I chose clothes.
“Uh, excuse me for a moment.”
He didn’t move.
“Seriously, Bahlin, I want to put on some clothes before we talk about whatever was so important to you that you felt justified in breaking into my r
oom, accosting me, and then digging through my pants.” I turned to the side and squeezed past him; he moved back a small step. I retrieved the clothes I had intended to put on earlier—jeans, navy T-shirt, underwear, socks. I went back into the bathroom and started to shut the door.
“Leave it open,” he said quietly.
“No,” I answered, equally quietly. “I’m closing it. I won’t lock it, because that appears to be a useless means of keeping you the hell out. But I won’t leave the door open. Get your jollies somewhere else, asshat.” I shut the door in his face, and he didn’t stop me.
I dressed in record time standing wedged in the space between the edge of the bathtub and the hinges of the door. I’d chosen to leave my shoes out in the room because I figured if I took them, Bahlin would assume I was going to try to run. Good assumption. While I was in the bathroom I finger-combed my hair but skipped make-up. What was the point?
I walked back into the room and found Bahlin sitting in the desk chair again, leaning with his head back, eyes closed, hands folded across his stomach. He appeared relaxed if you didn’t look too closely, but the tension radiating off of him killed the superficial impression. I sat on the edge of the bed farthest from him and closest to the front door. That he wasn’t forcing the issue about me sitting closer to him was a good thing. It gave me a sense of control of the situation, however false it might be.
“I’m ready to read the notes,” I said softly.
His eyes opened to slits and shifted to look at me. The rest of him stayed very, very still. “They’re here on the desk.” It was an open challenge to get near him again.
“Fold them back up and toss them over here.” I wasn’t about to get within an arm’s reach of him without being forced, so he could toss the papers over.
“Afraid?” he asked, sitting up and looking at me in a predatory way.
“Cautious,” I replied. “I don’t know you, yet you’ve starred in a dream of mine, then you’ve shown up here and basically assaulted me. So yeah, consider me cautious.”
“Why not try for the door then, sweetheart?” he asked in a snarky tone.
“I have a feeling you’d do some freaky telekinesis crap, and I’d be stuck anyway.”
“Smart girl.” He folded the papers up and, standing, leaned over a part of the bed. I stood and moved away from him, taking a couple of steps toward the door. But all he did was toss the papers toward me and sit back down.
I edged to the bed in small steps, watching him like a field mouse watches a predator circling the sky overhead. But he only sat and settled in the chair, waiting, it seemed, for me to open the two notes.
“Open mine first,” he ordered, and I looked at him. “Please. It’s the one with the wax seal.”
I picked up the note, lifting it in unspoken question. He nodded and I broke the seal, opening the note. Written inside the heavy paper, in flowing script was the following message:
In the lobby
7:00 p.m.
I looked up at him and couldn’t help but smile.
“You expected me to take this seriously? This is stalker material, and I haven’t been here long enough to be stalked. Or to know anyone that would inspire me to respond by showing up.” I snorted, dropping the note on the bed.
Bahlin stood up and growled, literally growled, from deep in his chest. “You do not get to mock me for trying to make this easier, nay safer for you. I made a promise, and I’ll keep it.”
“What promise, Bahlin? We don’t know each other, you are completely unfamiliar to me, and no one knows me here, so there’s no promise you could have kept.”
“Read the other damned piece of paper and we’ll discuss it.” He dropped back into his chair with amazing, unnatural grace for a man of his size.
The hair on the back of my neck began to stand up and the skin underneath got hot. I suddenly didn’t want to open the other piece of paper, but I’ve never been a coward (see above regarding the strange man with the aching balls in my room). I reached across to pick it up and open it. I must have been too tired yesterday to notice that my name was on the outside in small, neat print. I began to unfold the sheet of paper and time slowed to a crawl. I could see everything in slow motion, even Bahlin standing up from the chair as he moved minutely closer to me. Inside was a family tree, drawn carefully and in great detail, with the Niteclif name at the top. I looked at the tree, beginning with the bottom, but most of the names flashed by my eyes without meaning until I came to my name nearest the top, and all by itself, on a defined limb. “Madeleine Dilys Niteclif” was written in, with my date of birth and an open-ended date for death. I raised my eyes and looked at Bahlin, the question evident in my gaze.
“Look three generation down, and read carefully as you go,” he said softly, almost with compassion. Strange.
I saw the names of my parents. Then I saw my grandparents’ names, no surprise. Then I saw my great-grandparents’ names. There was no surprise here, either, since my mom had been an amateur genealogist. Then I looked closely at my great-grandfather’s name: Aloysius S. Niteclif, more famously known as… What the hell? Sherlock Holmes. Wait. Was he telling me my great-granddad was a famous 19th century fictional detective, not a real person? Why was he on my family tree? I knew Aloysius Niteclif as my great-grandfather, but no way was he some fictional icon. That was so far off the crazy scale that it had come back around to probable. No way was this even remotely—
Bahlin interrupted my internal ramblings, my thoughts scattering without pattern or reason. “Aloysius Niteclif was a great man, a great detective, in our world. But he became disillusioned with the constant battles, the killings, and he wanted out. So he met a mundane man that he liked and respected, and they struck a deal. This mundane man was an author, and he would write Aloysius’s memoirs as if they were fictional tales with human characters and human mysteries. In return, Aloysius would give him a peek into the world of the supernatural. It worked well. Three men ended up immortalized, and Aloysius was able to purge his conscience without fear of recrimination.” He paused to look at me. “Do you understand what this means?”
I was sitting there, the family tree hanging from my fingertips. Did I understand? Of course I did. Bahlin was a certifiable nut bunny. Oh good. How was I going to get out of here without—
“Maddy? Your middle name. What does it mean?” he asked, speaking slowly like he was trying to talk me off a ledge.
“I don’t know,” I muttered, looking at the family tree and seeing nothing but that name.
“In Welsh it means genuine and your last name, Niteclif, is a Welsh derivative of detective. It’s a play on words. You are, quite literally, a genuine detective.” He paused searching my face for reaction. “I’ll ask again. Do you understand?”
“Understand?” I looked up at him. The family tree drifted from my fingers to the floor. Let him down gently, I thought to myself, but the words were out of my mouth before I could stop myself. “Understand what, Bahlin? That you’re off your medications? That the men from your cinder block institution are looking for you? That I understand. This—” I waved my hand at the fallen family tree, “—this is nonsense. I cannot be related to a fictional character—”
“Whose stories were based on the real life of your great-grandfather.”
I got up and began pacing the small area from the bed to the front door, nine strides forward and nine strides back. I never considered I could just leave once I reached the door. I was overwhelmed with this information, hungry for any sense of belonging now that my parents were dead. My parents… I spun to face Bahlin. “Did my mom and dad know?”
“Your father knew, as you’re a direct descendant on his side. I spoke to him shortly before his death about disclosing your relation to Aloysius and its implications for your future. Your mother, as a genealogist, suspected something was off kilter in your history. But your father said they had never discussed it.”
“There wasn’t time,” I whispered. No time before they died
. My heart ached. I missed them so much. And I wanted to talk to my dad now, to find out if this unknown man’s wild claims held even a grain of truth. I was so hungry for family that a small part of me hoped he was being truthful. He claimed he was a connection to a past I thought I had lost, someone who could share the sound of my father’s voice with me.
Bahlin stood and walked slowly toward me, treating me like a skittish horse, hands out to show he was harmless, movements slow and precise, eye contact steady but non-threatening. I stopped, staring at him.
“Maddy?” he asked. “Are you okay?”
I held up a hand toward him, palm out and fingers pointed up in the universal sign for stop, and he did. “No, I’m not okay. This is cruel. You’re not well, Bahlin—” I began, but he interrupted me. Again.
“Maddy, this is all true. I swear it.”
“Stop. Interrupting. Me.”
“I apologize. Go on with your previous thought,” Bahlin said, shoving his hands in his front pockets. He looked contrite. Apparently he was going to let me work this out on my own. He sat on the edge of the bed nearest my current position, which was standing close to the bathroom door.
I rolled my shoulders, then returned my thoughts to the family tree. “If I’m a direct descendant of a fictional character—albeit one whose stories were based on fact—what does that make me?”
“Maddy, what have you done since you came here?” Bahlin’s eyes burned with curiosity. He shifted on the bed, drawing one knee up so he could turn to face me.
“I’ve rented a car, driven to Stonehenge… Stonehenge. I made a wish, a wish that my reality would be altered…” Surely not. I mean, seriously, I made a wish as in star light, star bright, that kind of thing.
“You wished for an altered reality, sweetheart, and you got it.” Bahlin looked almost sympathetic. He didn’t move, but sat there watching me work out the details of what I’d done.
“So my wish, it changed everything?” I wracked my brain, thinking back to the stone circle and the compelling need to wish for a changed reality. I remembered the spinning night sky and the wind breathing a strange phrase through my mind. Could it mean…surely not.
Legacy: The Niteclif Evolutions, Book 1 Page 3