Finding Alice (Alice Clark Series)

by Andrea DiGiglio

  “You wear jeans to bed?”

  “Sometimes,” I said. No I don’t but I’m covered in bruises.

  “I don’t care. Be comfortable so you can actually get some sleep.” I draw the line at wearing jeans to bed.

  I let a quiet chuckle slip and smiled as I headed back to my bathroom. I carefully slid out of my jeans, attempting to not put too much pressure on the bruises but to no avail. The Band-Aid idea would have worked best here. I slipped on some comfy pajama shorts and took one last look in the mirror, regretting it seconds later. I exited to the bedroom to find Cole in my bed under my blanket, his pants on the floor next to it. “This is not how I thought this night was going to end up,” I blurted out. He laughed.

  Me either, I heard him say in my head. Hearing his voice in my head was like listening to my favorite song. I climbed into bed; he lifted his arm and I snuggled under it. I was surprised at how soft his toned body was, soft and wonderful. He rested his arm on my side, causing me to flinch at first, but it didn’t take long for the pain to dull. I looked up into his amazing eyes and knew he saw me past all the scars and all the bruises. We laid there silently for a long while. “When are you going to tell me what happened?” he asked, breaking the silence.

  “It’s just so unbelievable, but I guess at this point, anything is possible. I was at work and it seemed like a pretty normal night. I covered a Tuesday shift for Max. I did my usual clean-up and I locked up and took the trash out. As I walked to throw the garbage in the dumpster, I just felt like I was being watched. I threw the last bag in and heard a voice right next to me. It reminded me of that time in class.” I shuttered at the memory. I looked up at him for some sort of response. He only nodded and waited for me to continue, brushing my hair from my face. “This voice was eerie and menacing. I started to pick up the pace toward my car. Once I got to the car, I felt his grasp on my arm.” I leaned to show the giant hand mark left from that first contact. “He grabbed me and turned me toward him right into his fist.” As I said that, I felt Cole’s embrace tighten protectively. “I have no idea what he wanted or who he or it even was. His hood was pulled down past his chin; I never got a look at his face. At some point, I think the adrenaline kicked in and I fought back. I think I got a few good shots in.”

  “So what happened to your car?

  “I kicked him into it,” I laughed.

  “Nice. We can talk about this later if you want. You need to get some rest. I’m sure you haven’t slept well in days.” I thought about arguing but he was right. In all honesty, all I wanted was to curl up in his arms and drift off to sleep. With one hand, he spun my back to him and pulled me tightly into his chest. He took his leg and wrapped it around mine. I had never felt so safe in my entire life. I looked at the closed window and smiled at the ocean breeze rushing across me. I closed my eyes and let him wash all my pain away. Nothing could have been more perfect, more unbelievable.

  CHAPTER 6

  I reached out and ran my hand along the edge of the bed. My eyes felt weighted shut; my body felt as if I was stumbling down a dark hallway, lost. I felt myself beginning to wake up while rubbing my eyes, demanding they open. The pain I felt so few hours before came crashing back and my eyes opened with a force. I looked around to find myself alone. I held back the urge to cry and cautiously pulled myself to a seated position. It seemed that I hurt more so now than just days ago when this happened to me. I took a deep breath while I ran my hand through my hair. I heard a creak in the hallway and froze. The smell of robust coffee and hazelnut filled my nostrils and the pain lessened slightly. The door swung open and I had no control over the smirk plastered across my face. “Good morning,” Cole said.

  “Morning.” He nodded to the two gray stone coffee mugs steaming in his hands. I looked at the coffee and then took a side glance, noticing his pants were still next to the bed. Boxers. I sighed and he smiled, almost blushing.

  “I would have made breakfast but all you have is coffee and creamer,” he said.

  “Breakfast of champions.” He laughed and nodded in agreement. We sat on the edge of my bed half dressed, sipping coffee together in silence as if that was our life…as if that was our daily ritual. It felt like home to me. I knew nothing about him but some part of me felt as if I’d know him an eternity. I felt his hand lightly touch mine and I bathed in his cure. I no longer cared how or why what we did happened; it just did; and that sounded pretty perfect to me at that moment. I wrapped my fingers through his, feeling the fire crawl up my arm until it reached a soothing and electric pulsing. I wondered if he felt it too. I turned and looked at him to find him staring right through my eyes. I tried to speak but nothing came out. I let go of his hand but the intensity I felt from him didn’t subside. I tried to stand and noticed he already was as he took my empty coffee mug and set both down on my desk.

  He glanced at the jewelry box almost as if he knew what was inside of it. He sat back down next to me, closer than before, and took my hand again. I tried to speak; again, nothing. I felt completely frazzled but somehow strangely calm and relaxed as I stared into his amber eyes searching for words. He took his other hand and placed it gently against my face. I closed my eyes and he pulled me closer. For the first time, I felt our hearts racing each other. I opened my eyes, inches from his face as I inhaled and held my breath. The room stood still as I had seen many times before; the only sound I heard was our hearts echoing in my ears. I studied him, memorizing every part of him so I could keep that moment with me always. I closed my eyes and exhaled, releasing the ocean wave’s cool scent I had just sucked into my lungs.

  I felt the room catch up to me as his lips touched mine. His kiss consumed every inch of my being. It was intensely gentle with just the right amount of raw, rough passion. I could live in that moment for the rest of my life. We fell back onto the bed and a cloud of dark feathers flew into the air above us, hovering. His arms tangled around me as I ran my hands down his back. I don’t think I could have felt any closer to him than I did in that moment.

  My bruises had faded to nothing more than a painful memory, one that no longer seemed to matter to me when he was near. Sometimes I wondered where Cole used to call home. The last few weeks he had slept at my house, in my bed. Just the thought of me cuddling up to him each night was filled with more happiness and love than I ever could have imagined. I had gone my entire life, until now, alone. Then we started sharing so many moments, it was almost painful when he was gone. It was as if a piece of me was broken away until he returned.

  Over the last few weeks, we had lived in this tiny bubble as if protected from the outside world for this temporary time frame. We no longer had to be in the same room to feel each other’s presence. If I focused hard enough, I could hear his heart beating when he pulled into the driveway; feel his breath on my skin when he was gone; hear his voice, no matter how much space was between us, clear as if he was right there whispering directly into my ear.

  After the first kiss, it was like our souls began to intertwine; and when it became more than that, our souls fully intertwined and it felt as if we each took a piece of each other. I had never felt so connected to him, to anyone, as I did now. When he was gone, I always felt such a longing for his return. When he was there with me, we lay silently with his arms wrapped strongly around me in the still of the night; nothing could be greater than that. With all the good we had a chance to grasp, we both knew in the back of our minds that something was coming. I felt his concern like a fog, seeping into my lungs and weighing me down. Still, being with each other made us believe that somehow, we could survive whatever darkness was coming for us, together.

  We sat there at my rickety table working on our final papers for class, playing footsie like children. Sometimes I would switch and work on my final for my Art Medium class while he pretended to work on his paper, as if I couldn’t feel his eyes all over me.

  We lived off of coffee for the most part, though he seemed to be partial to breakfast. He would say, “Not eati
ng breakfast is like wearing jeans to bed: wrong on so many levels.” When I woke up, my nostrils would flare with confusion over the new scents mixing in with the aroma of coffee beans and his own delicious smell. I’d found a new appreciation for breakfast and companionship. Just that morning, I’d had eggs Benedict for the first time and I had to say it came in a close second to his lips. All those times I felt I truly was meant to be alone, that it was safer for not only myself but for others, still taunted at me; but it was no more than a faint whisper of warning. I glanced over at him; he was lost in his train of thought, burying his pencil almost through his paper. I knew he felt my gaze the same as I did his. There was a laptop directly in front of him but he always said he liked the way it feels to write free-hand.

  “How is that coming along?” he finally asked.

  “I don’t even know. She has such high expectations from my previous work, but that was before…”

  “Before us?” I nodded, followed by a sigh of frustration. His forehead wrinkled and I knew he was thinking carefully about his next statement. “Too bad you can’t chop that wall down in your spare room. Maybe she would accept photographs?”

  “What are you talking about?” No sooner than the words left my lips did a flash of my drunken day of recovery scraping charcoal across my wall whiz through my mind. “Oh, I haven’t even been in there since that day. I completely forgot. Wait, you went in there?”

  “No. You asked, or should I say, told me not to. I only saw an unusual paint job through the crack of the door. Why don’t we check it out?” He grabbed my hand, bringing it up to his mouth for a gentle kiss that looked more like asking for forgiveness; or at least that’s what I thought asking for forgiveness would look like. By the time I went to say no, he already had his hand on the doorknob, opening it to a room that once felt empty but bright. My eyes widened as I gasped in shock at the giant mural coating my wall. “I thought you didn’t see his face?” his voice trembled as he asked.

  “I didn’t.” The words barely trickled off of my lips. Regardless, there he was: my attacker’s eerie, inhuman face staring back at me. The skin where the bruises once were ached as if that horrible night happened only yesterday. I turned away, hoping it would numb the pain; it didn’t. The image stayed burnt in my mind. The attacker wore a chiseled jaw line, not elegant like Cole’s but creepy and sunken in as if he was thousands of years old. His skin was like leather, with eyes set deep and almost glowing. I looked at Cole to find an unusual look on his face. He looked as if somehow, he recognized the face of my attacker. How would that be even plausible? This couldn’t be his actual face; more something I created in its wake to help me through that horrible moment in my life. “Say something,” I demanded with a slight panic to my voice.

  “You’re trembling.” I held my hands out and saw he was right. I was. I stuffed them in my pocket and against my will, as if compelled to do so, returned my gaze to that horrifying image I had placed all over my own home. “I shouldn’t have pushed. I’m sorry.” He grabbed my hands out of my pockets and pulled me from the room. He shut the door behind us and I excused myself to take a shower. It’s where I go to think and relax. Until then, I thought it was where I let go of all the bad things that had happened to me but who was I kidding? The only time I ever truly let anything go was in my art.

  I climbed into the soothingly hot shower, eyes held shut. I never should have gone in that room. The last few weeks with Cole had felt like everything to me. I feared walking into that room was inviting that monster, and all of my baggage, back into my life and there was no way to make it go away again. I of all people knew there was no such thing as happily ever after. This was only the beginning…of what, I still was not sure.

  143 Anathema St. My eyes snapped open. It all started after that dream of the field. I knew in my heart it had to do with Cole, but what or how exactly, I was still not sure. I felt a heaviness against my soul, as if the world was resting on my shoulders. If I was going to figure out what was going on, I’d have to start by finding that field. I was either crazy or it truly was connected. Now my head hurts.

  After the water ran cold, I turned the shower off and wrapped a towel around me. I walked into my room to my jewelry box of feathers. I could see the hinge wasn’t latched. I always latched it. A note was set in front of it with a glass of water and an aspirin.

  “Running errands, I’ll be back tonight. Try and get some rest.”

  Cole

  “Easier said than done,” I mumbled. I picked up the glass of water and played with the pill in my fingers for a moment while studying my unhinged jewelry box. I took the pill with half of the glass of water and opened the box. Nothing abnormal at all, except before today, the box smelled like the feathers kept securely inside were bathed in sand. He had to have taken his feather; it was the only explanation. I shut the box, clasping the hinge properly. At least my feathers were still here. After waking up in a bed of feathers and that first kiss with Cole when the feathers were floating above us only to all disappear, I needed these to actually be in this box. I needed some form of proof for myself that this was all real and I wasn’t going completely insane.

  I flopped onto the bed. I didn’t feel relaxed at all; if anything, I felt more anxious. Laying there in silence used to be comforting. Now I felt vulnerable with him gone. I closed my eyes, trying to regain the sense of composure I used to own. I laid in the stillness of myself for what seemed like hours, only to be mere minutes. It was just long enough for my headache to lift a bit. I got up and got dressed in my usual plain Jane wardrobe. Why must I call it that?

  I grabbed my iPod and threw something soothing on: my favorite playlist, that was primarily Breaking Benjamin and 30 Seconds to Mars. I headed to my easel and threw a fresh canvas on it. I let myself go deep into the music, letting go of all I had been through. This was my release, my moment of peace. I ran my hand across my supplies, feeling their calling under my fingertips the way they used to feel before Cole. I stopped on a paintbrush feeling jealous of my charcoal usage over this semester. I plucked it like a string on a viola, deep and haunting. I paid no attention to what colors, or lack thereof, I was grabbing. There was some part down in the depths of my soul that took over when I worked. I never had any idea what I was creating until it was over.

  I longed for the taste of dark roast coffee. I set my headphones down, feeling I had taken my work as far as I could for now. It was never done, even when it was. I made a cup of coffee, leaning over it and breathing in the steam. It danced in my nostrils almost as well as the scent of Cole did. I turned back to my painting to see not one cell of a past dream or moment in it. It was my first original piece of work since meeting Cole. My dreams seemed to continuously pour out of me onto my canvases.

  This piece was dark and sad, and yet there I was; at least it resembled me. Me…there in the center of this giant canvas with a wingspan all my own. Beautiful wings stretched out as the canvas attempted to confine them. An intense, bright glow was bursting from my chest with such explosion; it must have been the reason for the pain across my face. Shadows of those I could only assume were the people in my life shielded their eyes from me, or my demise. It was amazing. If only I was in fact that strong and glorious.

  I finished my coffee with a sense of hope for the first time today. It was short-lived, though, when my brain kicked back on and into overdrive. I opened my laptop on the table where Cole and I had been writing our final papers. Max gave it to me when I told him I was going to start taking classes; such a fatherly thing for him to do. I loved him for it.

  I opened the extremely slow Internet and opened Google Maps. I entered 143 Anathema St. I stared long enough to see how to get to it, noticing there were no other functioning businesses nearby and there were wooded areas set both in front of and behind it. I closed the laptop. A part of me was insisting this was a trap implanted into my mind in my sleeping state to lure me into the darkness alone. Against any better judgment, I grabbed my keys, covered
up my painting, and wrote a note.

  “I swear I rested. I finished my Art Medium project. No peeking! Checking this place out. Wanted to let you know in case I don’t beat you home.”

  I paused and stared at the word “home.” It warmed me deep through my bones to think of this as our home.

  “I’ll be back soon. The address is 143 Anathema, just so you know where I am.”

  Love,

  Alice

  I laid it on the computer and headed out the door. Two things dawned on me after I had already left. First, I hadn’t written a note since I ran away from Jill and Robert, signed “Jane.” That made my stomach flip into a frenzy of guilt and concern that maybe I wouldn’t return. Second, I signed it “Love.” Shit. I tried brushing it off; this may have worked if I wasn’t imagining his breathtaking smile as he read the word. I pressed the pedal of my car to the floor. Maybe I’ll beat him home. My heart skipped a beat.

  CHAPTER 7

  I parked in the street in front of the store. I shut my door and heard the echo of it extend out for what sounded like miles. This was it, a place I swore I had never really been to, looking exactly as it did in my daydreams and my nightmares. I walked toward the field ahead. The familiarity of it caused shivers to travel throughout me. The entire space felt so ominous. At least the daylight was on my side for now. No matter how strong the sun may have been, it looked as if not one single ray was penetrating the eerie woods ahead of me. I continued scanning the space, looking for similarities and differences from my dreams. The colors around me were not as intense as they were in my dreams and I was honestly a little disappointed. It was more like a sepia toned photograph, which was not helping my nerves in any way. I reached the edge of the woods, skimming my foot against the obvious line of thirsty grass and dry dirt. I felt a thumping echoing in my eardrums, realizing it was a heartbeat racing…but not my own. I turned toward my car to find Cole running toward me in a frantic state.