“Don’t kid yourself, Maria. You come from two totally different worlds and oil and water never mix. But you know what is best for you.”
****
That night Josh sank down on the sofa with a sigh. He loosened his silk tie and started flicking through the TV channels. Maria emerged from their bedroom after having changed into comfortable nightwear. It was late and she was dead tired but she didn’t want to go in an empty bed. She knew that her husband usually spent some time watching TV before retiring. It helped him to wind down.
“I’m glad that dinner’s over,” she said as she curled onto his lap. “Thank you for coming, Josh.” She cuddled against him and soon drifted off to sleep.
He knew that she had reached her limit that night. The whole evening was orchestrated by Freddie and any fool could see right through him. The presence of both Tanya and Rob should have sparked off a heated quarrel which could have completely severed the very frail thread holding their marriage together. But surprisingly, the evening had somehow strengthened that thread. They had managed to overcome the challenge, perhaps they were both too exhausted to argue.
He was positive that both Rob and Freddie were in love with Maria. He had observed them very closely and they had both entered into a complicated medical conversation as they tried to outshine each other and impress her. But she was too intent on studying her husband’s tiny reactions to the stunning actress to notice how both doctors fought hard for a few minutes of her undivided attention. Despite all her glamour that night, the gorgeous Tanya could do nothing to drag the three men’s eyes away from the much plainer Maria. At the end of the evening the actress had smiled and kissed Maria as she wished her goodnight but the pure hatred behind that Judas kiss was truly shocking. Tanya had now joined Rob and Freddie in their quest to break Maria’s marriage apart.
But Josh had no choice but to stop warning her. He will be the first to break the vicious cycle they were in. If he stopped his nagging and started to trust her with Freddie and Rob, she might start to trust him too.
He looked at her sleeping in his arms and his eye fell on the faint white scar across her forehead. The picture of the open wound across the dying girl’s forehead in the five-year-old boy’s dream flashed before his eyes and he felt that familiar sick feeling again. His past dreams threatened to flood out as they often tried to do when he was wandering in his own world, but he managed to stop them from overriding his thoughts. He concentrated hard on the present and lightly placed his hand on his unborn child. He smiled as he felt that tiny ripple of movement. He must have stayed like that for hours because it was past two in the morning when he finally carried her to their bed.
Maria opened her eyes, the sun was peeping in through the curtains; it had been a long and restful night and she had slept like a log. She lazily stretched her hand over to her husband’s side of the bed but it was cold and empty. She woke with a start, it was already midday and he must have left for his next five days of filming. She sprang out of bed. She had overslept when she should have been minding the children. She was abusing of Julie’s kindness too much lately.
She went out into the lounge and heard her children’s hushed squeals of laughter coming from the open library door. Julie never took them upstairs. People went in that room only by a special invitation of the Boss. She herself had never been inside unless he was there too. Not that he minded, he never locked it these days, but she felt that she had to grant him his private space. She eagerly went up the stairs and peeped in. Josh was crawling on the floor, obviously acting out a story. He had this mesmerizing way of capturing the kids’ attention, they absolutely adored him. He was a fantastic father. She watched from the doorway as Jack and the beanstalk came to life. She smiled as she saw him fall down dead, he was the giant now and he had just fallen off the beanstalk. The kids all clambered over him as they pulled his hair and punched his face, trying to bring him back to life, but he did not move an inch. It was an Oscar-winning performance.
“Mummy, mummy help, daddy’s dead,” Emma screamed hysterically.
Josh opened his eyes, “Emma, stop screaming. I thought that we had agreed not to wake mummy up.” Then he caught sight of his wife smiling in the doorway.
“Sorry, I overslept,” she said as she knelt down on the floor beside them. “I thought that you had already left. You’ll be late now, you should go.”
“I’m not going today and don’t worry you didn’t oversleep, I switched off your alarm. You really needed a good rest. I hope that we didn’t wake you up.” He sat up, his raven black hair tousled and standing on end, and his chin all red where Ben had repeatedly slapped him in the attempt to revive him. Right then she loved him more than ever before.
She flung her arms around his neck and started to cry. She hated being so emotional but she could not help it, her pregnancy was turning her into this wreck and he had to put up with her. “You’re too good to me. I really need you to stay here with me forever but I think that you should go. They won’t be too pleased with me, last week I ruined the filming by constantly phoning and this week I am keeping you tied to me at home.”
“Why don’t you come along too, it’s only for five days and Max will be there. You haven’t seen him for a while. That way you can catch up with your brother and watch me at the same time, and I will not have to stop every fifteen minutes to answer the phone. And I’ll stay at home with the kids the following week so that you can work the days you missed out this week.” He laughed as he dried up her tears. This was their new beginning. They had binned jealousy and embraced trust. It was for good this time. They now had this unspoken agreement, she will begin to forgive his past and he will stop asking her to stay at home. He just had to learn to shrug off that uncomfortable irrational feeling of impending doom every time she walked out of the door and went to work with his brother.
Their baby daughter was born two months later. Josh knew that it would be a girl with the same brown eyes and perfect tiny features, just like her mother. He had seen her many years ago in his dreams which had never recurred. He looked proudly at his little princess, his little Sarah.
Fair Warning
She was shivering. She just had her blue cotton shirt on, hardy enough to ward off the icy, damp, musty air of that cellar. Her bare feet repeatedly treaded the uneven rough stone slabs, her movements restricted by the short chain tethering her wrists to the wall. She was desperately trying to squeeze her tiny hands out of their iron constraints. Blood was trickling down her palms but it did not stop that mad frenzy.
“Help me, Josh. You said that you would always come when I called you. Josh, Josh, can you hear me Josh...” she screamed.
The cellar door opened and the weak light coming from above blinded her. She stopped screaming and shrunk backwards, crouching down, hugging her bare knees, fervently wishing that the wall could absorb her. Her fear was tangible. The hooded heavily-dressed man grabbed her ankles and violently pulled her across the uneven floor, making her shirt ride high up to her armpits and her back bleed as it scraped the earth. With the point of a sharp knife he began carving her flesh, using the knife and skin as one would use pen and paper. Blood spurted out and she screamed in agony.
“Please stop, I’m sorry. Forgive me,” she kept begging.
But he was too intent on creating that perfect flawless symmetrical pattern across her cold white skin, his own work of art. The sight of blood drove him in a state of mad passion and he rubbed his hands across the raw wounds, tearing her skin apart.
“I’m cold, Josh. I’m really cold and numb. Hold me, Josh,” she whispered, her breath forming circles of white vapour as it met the frosty air. Her eyelids flickered, once, twice, and then she closed her eyes and stopped calling him. She had long gone unconscious when the hooded man finally lay on top of her.
The tall dark-haired man cried, he cried bitterly for the fate of his only daughter...
Josh felt sick. He rolled out of bed and staggered to the bathroom, immediat
ely collapsing to the floor. He heard Maria rushing in and turning him but his eyes were unfocussed with fear and he could not utter a single word.
She is safe now, she is safe now, he kept saying to himself. How much should he tell her? Will she believe him? He closed his eyes and tried to gather his thoughts.
“Josh, speak to me, open your eyes.”
He cleared his throat, “Someone is going to kidnap you and hurt you really badly. I dreamt it all. You have to do as I say, you cannot go out on your own, I have to be with you all the time.”
“Are you starting that work thing again?” she asked suspiciously. Despite the birth of their fourth child three months ago, she was still working two or three days a week. Josh had stopped voicing his disapproval but Maria knew that he would give up everything he owned just to make her stay at home.
“No, no, no, please believe me, it was so real,” Josh pleaded.
“It’s only a dream, a nightmare, that’s all, forget it. I’m still here with you. You frightened me, I thought that you had a stroke. Let’s go to bed, it is still three in the morning and Sarah will soon need her feed.” She tugged his hand, but he pulled her back.
“This is serious, don’t brush it aside.”
She heard the urgency in his voice. “Can we discuss things in the morning? This is obviously important to you and I’ll do whatever you want as long as it is within limits. You can’t chain me to a wall.”
He grimaced at her choice of words. That was exactly how she would end up if she did not listen to him; chained to a wall. “All right, go to bed. I think I’ll go to the library to wind down.” And he silently went up the stairs and sank down on the sofa. It was time to face reality. He had to open that forgotten room and embrace the dreams. He could no longer dismiss them.
First and foremost, the dreams were real. For a start, he had seen her father in his dreams before he had met her, and this led him to the park. The dreams contained too much detail which eventually proved to be accurate, Rob’s face, her engagement ring, his own wedding and the birth of his children to name just a few. He had not seen everything, such as Ben’s traumatic birth, but what little had invaded his mind was paranormally precise...Right, the dreams were a genuine reflection of what was to come and they were not just a figment of his imagination. That much was definite. What else?
The dreams came whenever they were apart and in fact had stopped altogether after their marriage. So why return now? Perhaps this was a sign of imminent danger.
He focussed on his latest dream. She was chained to a cellar wall. He had had a similar dream way back, she was also chained to a wall and he had seen himself going down the cellar steps and finding her unconscious and bleeding heavily. He had somehow known that she had been pregnant and lost the child. Well, he must make sure that she was not pregnant again and perhaps this dream would never materialize. They were already taking precautions; Freddie’s outburst had scared him and he did not want to risk another pregnancy so soon after Ben and then Sarah. And she was still breastfeeding. So that was taken care of. But what if that point was not relevant? It might still happen anyway, her being pregnant or not.
He focussed again and tried to remember every disgusting detail. The man was hooded and heavily dressed with a thick jacket. The air inside the cellar was frosty and the man had dressed accordingly. Unfortunately that attire obscured a lot of details. And moreover, Josh had not been able to see him face on. But if he were to name the man he would...he stopped. No that was not possible...Rob or Freddie. Ironically they were both very similarly built, they were both back in her life and they were both in love with her and he was insanely jealous of both of them.
What would Maria say if he were to tell her that either Rob or Freddie were about to perform such a horrendous act on her? She would declare him obsessively insane, like she so often did when he had tried to stop her from working with Freddie. She would say that his jealousy had taken him to limits beyond reason whereby he hallucinated that his two rivals were this mad despicable man. And perhaps she would be right. The murderous violent character and lust for blood he had just seen in the hooded man did not quite fit in either of them. He remembered the proper English gentleman, Rob, hovering around her when she was in hospital with the twins, and he remembered Freddie desperately trying to keep her alive the night Ben was born. They were both professional doctors and they would always preserve life rather than end it. No, this man had to be someone else with a similar build to Freddie and Rob and... himself.
How was he going to tackle this? Telling her the truth was not an option. She would never believe him and besides, she cannot know what was about to happen to her, the fear of it will surely kill her. He had to approach it in another way, perhaps conjure up an obsessed fan story. Wait, the man could be someone hired by some fanatic admirer who wanted her out of the way. He had often seen that mad deranged obsession around him. And most of the fan mail he received were indeed outrageously extreme. Could he involve the police? No, that would not work; they would not base their investigations on a dream before it actually happened. He could hire some private detectives to keep twenty-four-hour surveillance on her, they would not ask for hard facts. With a strategy in mind he picked up the phone and hired an entire team of private detectives.
He suddenly felt that desperate need to stay close to her. He went back to their bedroom and watched her deep in sleep, not a single worry troubling her mind. He slipped in between the sheets and drew her in his arms. She yawned and opened her eyes, and smiled as his lips found hers, one long never-ending kiss as though that were the last kiss he would ever give her. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he gently made love to her.
But time never stood still. It was getting late. She had to go to work with his brother, and he had to smile and be fine with that because he did not want a repeat of the jealous tantrums that had nearly finished them off a few months earlier.
“Josh, I’ve got to go now.”
“Don’t go, not today, please stay with me.”
She heard the fear in his voice. “Is this about that dream again? Forget it.”
“I’ll take you to work this morning and you must not leave the hospital grounds. And I will come back for you in your office at the end of the day. I have had some mail from an obsessed fan and I don’t want you to get hurt.”
She panicked, “You should take care of the kids, I can look after myself. Did you report this to the police?”
“The kids will be fine in here with Julie, and I have hired some bodyguards to help out, I hope you don’t mind,” partly true, he was not totally lying yet.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this earlier? You looked fine yesterday, but now you have that frightful haunted look in your eyes that you used to have before we got married.” She leaned over and kissed his eyes. He grabbed her round the waist, pulling her on top of him. “Josh, you can’t possibly have energy for more,” Maria laughed as she slipped out of his embrace. So sex will not keep her there either.
Josh quickly got dressed and waited for her to get ready. They asked Julie to mind the children and they set off. Josh could see the two detectives trailing them, their one aim being not to lose sight of Maria. He felt better, nothing could possibly happen with such close supervision. He started to relax. He parked the car and walked with her to her office. He quickly inspected the room, flicking the curtains aside and looking beneath her desk.
She laughed, “Now that is beyond obsession,” and she threw him out after giving him a long goodbye kiss.
The day dragged on and not even playing with the kids could take his mind off the frightful dream. The clock finally struck six and he left Julie to mind the older children while he took little Sarah with him. He parked the car and cradled the baby close to his chest as he walked to her office. He knocked on her door and went in. Freddie was sprawled across the armchair on the other side of her desk. They were deep in conversation.
“Your personal bodyguard is here,” Fredd
ie said as he nodded curtly. He quickly left the room.
“Did you tell him about the whole thing?” Josh asked her.
“I thought it best to inform him why two big burly men have been lurking outside my office all day.” She hugged him and kissed her little baby. “Freddie is getting married next month and he has asked me to persuade you to be his best man. He wants to put all animosity behind him and you two can start again.”
“Sure, I can do that.”
“You were right, he did admit a tiny crush on me but that is all over and he is deeply in love with Tanya now.”
“Tanya! That’s weird...but anyway, good for him.” He was not totally convinced, Freddie and marriage did not mix well especially with the superficial Tanya. But he did not spare a thought on his brother; he had other things on his mind.
They drove home in silence. Josh sensed that something was troubling her. Perhaps Freddie’s upcoming marriage had disturbed her. She must have got used to him fawning over her.
“What’s bothering you?” he asked when they arrived home. He sat on the sofa with the tiny baby still clinging to his chest.
“I was talking to Freddie about his feelings towards me, which he assured me are all gone now,” she hurriedly emphasized, “and the conversation just led to that night...erm...when I was pregnant with the twins. Freddie said that he had never discussed it with you and I didn’t tell you either. Anna knew what had happened but I never told her that he had proposed. Freddie has a pretty good idea how you came to know about that proposal but he would not tell me how.”
Josh sighed. He really did not need this right now. Freddie was still trying to undermine their relationship, with or without his professed love for Tanya. “Of course he would know! When we were boys we used to set up surveillance cameras in girls’ bedrooms, just for a laugh.”
The Blake Soul Page 19