Heart Of Darkness

by Maggie Shayne

  “I think it’s time to call it a night, hon. Where are you staying?”

  Frowning, but capitulating, Sara told him the address on Oak Street, and he knew right where it was.

  “I don’t understand any of this,” Sara said. “Why would I ask him something like that? Sierra’s mother went back to India.”

  “Did she?” David shook his head. “I don’t know. You know, I only met the woman a few times, but she seemed totally devoted to Sierra. Seems odd a woman would leave her teenage daughter behind. Maybe we need to look into that. Maybe Frank Terrence abused the woman, giving her no choice but to leave. Or something.”

  Sara looked at him, and he saw so much in her eyes, so much he wanted to explore, to know. But he had to avert his own, to focus on his driving.

  “He wasn’t…what I expected,” Sara said at length.

  “No?” Curious, he looked at her as he drove. “What did you expect?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I thought he’d be overweight, unkempt, unshaven, dirty, with a beer in his hand.”

  He nodded. “That’s exactly how I remember him. He’s pulled himself together, apparently. But yeah, you just described him to a T, the way he was when Sierra was still alive. It’s uncanny how well you nailed him.”

  She frowned in thought.

  “It’s like I have some of her memories,” she said softly. “God, maybe this reincarnation stuff is…real.”

  He looked at her. “Maybe it is.”

  They didn’t speak again for the remainder of the drive. Not until he pulled the Jeep into the driveway of the attractive house where she was staying.

  “Friends of yours live here?” he asked her.

  “My roommate Nikki’s parents live here. But they’re on vacation.”

  “So it’s just you and Nikki.” Why was he doing this, he asked himself? Was he an idiot?

  “Nikki’s still in New Hampshire. She’ll be here tomorrow night.”

  “Oh.” He shut the engine off.

  “I want you to come in, David.”

  He turned, looked into her eyes and nodded, because he was helpless to do anything else. Her lips pulled very slightly at the corners. Not a smile, but as close to one as she could probably manage tonight.

  Then she opened her door and got out, and he opened his and followed her.

  Unlocking the house, she went inside without looking back. David went in, as well, and tried to feign interest in the house’s decor, looking around as if it mattered to him, seeing nothing but Sara.

  “This way,” she told him, and she started up the stairs.

  Frowning, he remained at the bottom, looking up at her as she ascended. “Sara, I don’t know if—”

  She turned quickly, looking down at him. “You said you’d been dreaming, too.”

  “I have.” God, she was beautiful.

  “If you’ve been having the same dreams I have…” She let her voice trail off.

  “Similar dreams, maybe—”

  “But not the same ones?”

  He tipped his head to one side. “How could they be?”

  “How could any of this be?” she asked. And she came down a step. “I’m wearing gauzy white. You’re not wearing anything at all. It’s outside, and it’s raining. The ground is wet, but we don’t seem to notice. We just sort of tangle ourselves up in each other, and we’re kissing like there’s no tomorrow, and—”

  “Okay, okay.” He felt everything she described as if it were happening then. And he felt more than that. He felt stunned, because she was describing the exact dream he’d been having, night after lonely night.

  She came down another step. “If you’ve been dreaming it, too, then it must mean—”

  “It could mean anything, Sara.”

  “Pakita says we’re soul mates. What if she’s right?”

  “What if she’s not?”

  She shrugged, coming down one more step, standing now just one step above him, putting them at eye level. “What if it doesn’t matter?” she asked. She slid her hands over his shoulders, interlocking her fingers behind his neck. “Right now, David, I need someone’s arms around me. I don’t think I’ve ever really needed that before, but I need it now. It may not be very politically correct or logical. But I need it, and you’re here, and I think you need it, too. Can we just leave it at that, and not worry about the rest? Just for tonight?”

  He didn’t answer, because she pressed her lips to his. The kiss caught fire, and he felt himself nodding, wrapping his arms around her. He slid his palms down her back, over her hips and thighs, and then pulled her legs up around his waist and climbed the stairs. She wrapped her body around his like a spider monkey, clinging as they made out in motion. At the top of the stairs, he muttered, “Which way?” against her lips, his entire body ablaze.

  She wriggled her hips against his, tightening the grip of her legs around his waist, and tipped her head slightly. He moved in that direction, up to the first door. She took one arm from around his neck to reach behind her, twisting the doorknob and pushing it open. David carried her inside, and they collapsed onto the bed.

  He no longer thought about what he was doing. They’d taken this beyond thought. There was only feeling now. Desire, passion, longing. It felt, for all the world, like a longing that had been with him his entire life. And it felt far above and beyond his teenage crush on Sierra, or the regret he’d felt about her death all this time. This felt like more.

  It felt, he thought, though it scared the hell out of him to think it, like destiny.

  CHAPTER TEN

  SARA HAD NEVER FELT anything like what she was feeling with every touch of this man’s hands, and mouth. The bedroom was dim, but not pitch-dark. Still, they were enfolded in soft shadow as they tumbled to the bed, tugging at each other’s clothes until they were both naked, their limbs entangled, their lips questing, asking and receiving, offering and giving.

  She felt things in disjointed bursts of sensation. His hairy calf brushing over her smooth one. His fingers sliding over her arm, and then her belly. The hardness of him pressing against her thigh.

  And then pressing inside her. Just that naturally, just that easily. They moved as if there were one mind operating both of their bodies, coming together, pulling apart, but not too far, and coming together again. They clung and moved and strained, and their sounds were soft and desperately hungry.

  She couldn’t believe the feelings, the passion, and then the utter bliss as sensation exploded in every part of her. She cried out his name, sinking her fingers into his shoulders as her entire body trembled in release.

  He held her to him, rolling onto his side, pulling her against his chest, wrapping his arms around her, kissing her hair. As her senses began to operate normally again, she heard wind moaning in the night beyond the house’s walls, and wet snow falling gently against the windows.

  She closed her eyes, and thought about saying something. But there were no words that could have told him what she was feeling just then, and she was afraid that to speak at all would break the spell.

  So she didn’t. She just lay there, falling asleep in his arms.

  But her dreams were far from the peaceful bliss she’d felt with David. In her dream, she was a young girl, cowering in her room as she heard the sounds of raised voices, and then of hands striking flesh. Her parents, fighting. He was hitting her again.

  It was nothing she wasn’t used to. It was nothing she hadn’t been through a hundred times. She knew to stay put when it happened. She knew to stay quiet, to wait until her father left in a rage before she went out to tend to her mother’s cuts and bruises. She knew not to tell.

  But this time when the blows stopped and the house went silent, and her father’s pickup roared away, she slid from her bedroom to find that she was alone. Her mother was nowhere to be found.

  DAVID SPENT AN HOUR trying to make some kind of sense out of all that was happening, or even any of it, but there didn’t seem to be any rhyme o
r reason that he could find. And the sex between him and the beautiful young woman in his arms was more confusing than anything else.

  She wasn’t Sierra. Even if her whole reincarnation theory were true, she wasn’t Sierra. He knew that. He wasn’t confused about that.

  This pull she exerted on him wasn’t his old high school crush resurfacing. But it didn’t feel like something new, either. It felt old. Older than either of them.

  And he didn’t understand that.

  Eventually, realizing Sara was sound asleep, David slid out of the bed, moving carefully and trying not to wake her. He felt around the floor, locating his clothes, pulled on his jeans and then padded barefoot into the hallway and down the stairs, extracting his cell phone from his pocket on the way.

  He wandered to the kitchen while dialing, opened the cupboards in search of a snack. Randy answered on the third ring.

  “Hey, pal, it’s me.”

  “Dave? Where the hell are you, we’ve been worried sick!”

  “I’m still with her.”

  “Her?” And then, “Oh.”

  “Look, how is Brad?”

  “He’s going to be okay. So who is she, Dave? What does she have to do with Sierra?”

  “She looks like her.”

  There was a long pause, as if Randy was waiting for more, and when only silence ensued, he said, “And?”

  “I don’t know. I…I don’t know.” He heard Sara moving around, coming down the stairs. She was wearing a filmy white nightgown and robe when she reached the bottom. He recalled seeing them hanging from the bedpost like ghosts, and he shivered. “Sara?” he called.

  But she didn’t respond. And Randy was talking again. “The doc said Brad’s arteries were so clogged, this could have happened at any time. And the longer it took to happen, the worse it would have been.”

  “Yeah?” He’d returned to his hunt for a snack. “Cindy get here yet?”

  “She’ll be here in the morning.”

  “Great.” David heard the wind get suddenly louder, and felt a wet breeze sweeping through the house. “I’ve gotta go, buddy. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  “But…what did she say? Why is she here?”

  “I’ll fill you in tomorrow.” He disconnected as he stepped into the doorway, giving him a view of the foyer and the front door standing wide open, rain spattering inside. “Sara?”

  He pocketed the phone, pulling on his shirt, rushing to the open doorway. A warm front had moved in, turning the snow to rain. Sara was walking down the road, her feet dragging in the slushy rainwater. “Sara!”

  But she didn’t respond. David quickly stuffed his feet into his shoes, and, wishing for a jacket, he ran out after her. But she’d vanished. He couldn’t see her anywhere. Frantic, he rushed to his Jeep, opened the back, and retrieved a flashlight. Then he got into the front and started it up, driving up the road in the direction he’d last seen her. He put the window down and aimed the flashlight out into the rain-soaked night, calling her name. “Sara! Where are you?”

  Eventually, he caught a glimpse of something white, far in the distance. Disappearing into the town’s densely wooded area far from the road.

  He pulled the Jeep over and got out, taking the light with him and racing through the woods. “Sara, please wait!”

  But she didn’t. Still, a glimpse of her told him which way to go, and he was moving a lot faster than she was. So he caught up to her soon enough.

  She was kneeling on the wet ground, pawing through the snow to the dirt beneath.

  “Sara!”

  But she didn’t respond. Not until he went up to her and put a hand on her shoulder. Then she sucked in a loud gasp, and her head shot up fast, eyes wide and terrified. She stared up at him, blinking through the raindrops. “David? What—what are we doing out in the rain?”

  He crouched down in front of her, clasping her shoulders. “I don’t know. You led me out here. You were digging in the dirt.” He nodded at her hands.

  She looked down at them, at the icy, wet earth coating them, shaking her head slowly. But then she stopped, and looked at the ground again. “I think…I think someone’s buried here.”

  “What?”

  “I think it’s my…Sierra’s mother. Tamara.”

  “Jesus. Sara, what makes you think—”

  “I dreamed…but I wasn’t me, in the dream, I was her. I was in my room, listening to them fight. To him beating her. And after he left, I went out to see if she was okay, but she was gone. She was just gone. The next day he told me she’d gone back to India. But I knew he’d killed her. I knew.”

  David swore under his breath.

  “It took me a while to figure out where he would have put her body. But then my cat got sick, and I wondered if she might die, and I remember thinking about the place in the woods where we always buried our pets.” She looked around. “This place,” she said. “I came out here with a shovel—I was determined to find my mother, to find the proof. But he saw me leave, and he followed me. And I knew I was right when I found a spot of freshly turned dirt. But he saw me digging, and he starting yelling, and he sounded like I’d never heard him sound before. I thought he was going to kill me, too. So I ran.”

  David nodded slowly. “You ran. You hid out in the old Muller House.”

  “Yes.” She looked at the ground. “But I never found my mother.”

  Lifting his head, he said, “I have a shovel in the Jeep.”

  “Get it, would you?”

  He reached out for her hand, and she took it, and let him lead her back to the Jeep for the shovel. Then, in the rain, she held the flashlight while he dug in the spot she indicated, the spot where Sierra had been digging sixteen years ago because the earth had been freshly turned there.

  It didn’t take long. The first bone gave itself up easily, only about six inches down. It was white, with bits of pink satin clinging to it.

  Sara dropped the flashlight. “Mommy,” she whispered.

  And then there was a horrible sound, a wet smack, and David was falling facedown in the dirt.

  “David!” she shrieked, lunging toward him, but then freezing in place when she saw Frank Terrence standing there, a shovel in his own hands. She shook her head as she backed away. “You killed your wife,” she said softly. “That’s why Sierra ran away.”

  He held her eyes. “How did you know to come here? To this spot?”

  She stared straight back at him. “I remembered we used to bury pets here.”

  “Remembered?”

  “Buttons, that odd little dog with the watch-eye. Gretta, the beagle. That ugly old stray cat we called Bob.”

  “How do you—”

  “Why did you kill her? Why?”

  Frank shook his head, then suddenly lunged at her, shovel flying. It connected with the side of her head, though she tried to duck the blow, and Sara saw stars. And then she sank into blackness and more.

  She was back there. She was back in the past on the last night of her life. Hiding from her father inside Muller House. She’d been there for a week, and so far no one had found her. But it was only a matter of time. She knew that.

  But that night, she’d been distracted. That night, David had come, along with his four best friends. They’d been moping, and drinking on the front lawn, and she’d been watching them surreptitiously, wishing she had the nerve to go out and speak to David. She’d been drawn to him for the longest time.

  And yet, she didn’t. She just remained inside and watched him, yearning and wishing and dreaming.

  When the boys tossed the homemade firebomb through a window, it frightened her. She’d jumped, and panicked, rushing to put it out. But the thing had flickered and died all on its own. She’d seen it happen, and then she’d laughed to herself at the ineffectiveness of their brilliant, drunken notion. Thank God it hadn’t worked, she’d thought.

  And then she’d heard her father’s voice behind her, saying, “This couldn’t be more perfect, could it?” He was pour
ing gasoline from a can, and when she saw him, he tossed some of the fluid in her direction. Then he hurled the empty can at her and it hit her in the head, sending her to her knees.

  “I didn’t mean to kill her.” The man’s voice was almost a whine. “She hit her head on that damned Kwin Yon statue she was always—”

  “Kwan Yin,” she whispered, seeing it in her mind’s eye, porcelain white and beautiful.

  But Frank didn’t seem to hear her. “It was an accident. I’m not going to prison for an accident. But I will, if I let you live. I will.”

  She was vaguely aware of him striking matches and tossing them into the pools on the floor. The gas caught and blazed up with a powerful whoosh! And Sierra shielded her eyes and backed away. Her father ran for the back door, and she saw his foot go through a weak spot in the floorboards. Flames rose between her and escape, and she cried out for help.

  Frank jerked his leg out of the hole in the floor. It came out shoeless, with a bleeding cut in his calf. And yet he turned, and limped away, not even looking back. Leaving her surrounded by fire. Leaving her to die.

  Sierra retreated up the stairs and headed to the window, but the boys, seeing the flames, had turned tail and run. It was too far to jump. She ran back into the hallway, choking now on the smoke. But the stairs were engulfed, and there was no way out. And then the smoke overcame her, and she fell to the floor, David’s name on her lips.

  As it was again now. She moaned David’s name and opened her eyes, waking from the nightmare only to find there was no waking from it.

  She was no longer in the past. This was no longer a memory or a dream. She was in the old Muller House—Sierra House—now. And it was burning, just like before. She was on the second floor, lying in the hall, choking on smoke. And David was lying close beside her.

  She crawled over to him, shook him to try to wake him up, gasped for air and tried not to feel the cloying heat as the flames rose from the ground floor and began creeping up the stairs toward them.

  “David! David, please wake up!”