All Through the Night (7 page)

“Jean from the video game?”

“I’ve come, Kerry. I’m here. You can see me, can’t you?”

She didn’t know whether to be incredulous or horrified. The chill she felt cut to her bones. Either someone was playing a very cruel joke, or she had lost her mind.

“You
can’t
be here. You’re not real. You’re pixels, hundreds of them.”

“Not anymore. And it’s all because of you.”

Kerry didn’t know what to do. Terror gripped her as she tried to reason things through. This had happened to her before when she tried to escape her problems with sleep. She dropped fast, deep, and dreamed profusely. Wild flights of hope and freedom. Often she dreamed that she was free of the fears and could walk out her front door. This was one of those. It was wish fulfillment, Freudian wish fulfillment. Either that or she’d taken too much L-tyrosine.

“You’re not really here,” she told him. “You’re some figment of my loneliness and frustration, and I’d like you to go.”

“I’m not a figment, Kerry, feel me, pinch me. I’m real.”

“No! Stay there!” She threw up her hands, but he was in the room, at the foot of her bed, before she could stop him.

“No further,” she told him. “
Please
, I believe you.”

Her grandmother’s antique lamp sat next to her bed. She stretched over and tried to turn it on, but the key was loose and the lamp wouldn’t light. Frantically she twisted it again. Maybe she’d shorted out the whole house. But, then, how could the computer be working?

She kept one eye on the man at the foot of her bed as she felt for a weapon. Her vision had adjusted to the dark, but he was still too brightly haloed with light.

Damn
. No electricity meant her curling iron was useless too. She kept it on her nightstand, plugged and ready. Guns frightened her, and the iron got hot enough to sizzle water in less than thirty seconds. She had the scars to prove it. There was a brick stashed under the bed and a baseball bat behind the door, in case of break-ins, but that had never been a problem before this. Her doors and windows were triple locked, and she had an alarm system.

“How did you get in here?” she asked.

“I have no idea. I’m here, that’s all I know. Touch me, see for yourself.”

Kerry’s heart leaped as he held out a hand to her. How could he be here in her bedroom when just this afternoon he’d been the sexy heartthrob on her computer screen, watching her undress? Oh, God!

“You can’t be real,” she protested. “Because if you’re real, then I should be screaming, right? Or calling the police—”

There was a phone on her night table too. She lunged for it, but he was there before she could punch a single number.

The receiver fell to the floor as he caught her wrist. His grip was powerful enough to push her back on the bed and hold her there. Not painful, but firm.

“Don’t do that, Kerry.
Hear me out, please
. I am real, but not in the way that you think. I’m only here because you wished that I would be.”

“I didn’t wish anything of the kind!”

“Yes, you did, just before you spilled your tea.”

She shook her head in confusion. She had no idea what he was talking about, and the sheer strength of his hold was terrifying. She might have been able to see him if it weren’t for that damn blue light. He was close enough. Lord, was he close.

“Try to remember,” he urged. “It’s important. You said something like, ‘Me too, Jean. I wish you were real.’ Do you remember that?”

Someone was crazy, and it wasn’t her. Whoever this guy was, he must have been watching her through the window today. He was a Peeping Tom who spotted her undressing and overheard her conversation with the video game.

“There’s five hundred dollars in my bunny slippers in the closet,” she told him. “Take it and go. I won’t call the police. I won’t scream. I won’t do anything. Please, just take the money.”

He released her arm and fell silent, as though he didn’t know what she was talking about.
As though he wasn’t programmed to respond
. She wanted to throw up her hands. What kind of crazy nightmare was this?

“I don’t want your money,” he said.

She chanced another look at him and thought she could make out the enigmatic features that had graced her computer screen—the same sea-deep eyes and sexy black hair, shorn close but curly. The same strong, handsome, haunted face. Fine details were lost in shadows, but this had to be him. She couldn’t be having a dream this elaborate, could she?

Was it him, Jean, living, breathing, above her?

The comforter had slipped away, exposing her tank top. She took advantage of his retreat and yanked the blanket back, tucking it around her. She’d worn her underwear to bed? That was something she never did. It was much too cold, among other things.

Calming her voice was an effort. “Well then,” she said, “if you don’t want money, what
do
you want?”

“Actually, it’s not that easy to explain.”

“Please!
Try
.”

“All right, but I don’t want you to take this wrong, okay?”

He retreated farther, walking to the other side of the room, possibly to think about what he was going to say. She waited to see if he was coming back, but he hesitated near a white pine shutter console that had been part of her grandmother’s trousseau. The shadows couldn’t hide his expression. It was somber and filled with portent.

“There’s a curse on me, Kerry, and only you can break it.”

She just stared at him. Stared and wished she’d bought a gun for her nightstand. Guns didn’t need electricity.

“Kerry… you’re looking at me like I’m crazy.”

“Duh,” she said softly.

“I’m
not
crazy, believe me.”

“Oh, you’re not crazy, but you’re cursed? Do you know how crazy that sounds?”

“Yes, I guess it does, doesn’t it.”

He smiled and she released a helpless sound. “Oh, God, please let this be a dream. It has to be a dream because otherwise I
really
do need antipsychotic medication.”

“What kind of curse?” She ducked her head. “No, stop, don’t tell me. Don’t say anything! I can’t go there.”

Whatever this was, it was totally outside her experience and she had no idea what to do. She just wanted him out of her bedroom and out of her head. She could hear his voice, reverberating in the lower registers, even when he wasn’t talking. It always made her think of water—of rivers and deep canyons. That was a sure sign of insanity, wasn’t it? When you started hearing phantom music or instructions from above?

Maybe if she shut her eyes he would vanish in a puff of smoke. All she wanted was to wake from this terrible dream that had taken over her life. She didn’t understand what was happening to her. Suddenly, everything was out of control. Her entire world was a flipping TV test pattern. Fear was her constant companion, her only companion, and she was trapped in her own home.

Why was she trapped? What was she afraid of, really?

When she looked up, he was still there, still observing her in that somber, stoic way that Jean Valjean did.

“Oh, all right,” she snapped. “What kind of curse?”

He shrugged. “The kind that gets you imprisoned in a video game?”

He didn’t sound any better at this hocus pocus than she was. “Yes, but who put the curse on you? And why, what did you do?”

“Good questions, but I’m short on the salient details. Given my track record, I’m guessing it has something to do with pride and power, with lack of humility. There are experiences I’ve never had and emotions I can’t feel, and I won’t be free until I’ve felt them.”

“What experiences?” She gave him a wary look as he returned to the foot of her bed. “You’re not here to deliver my fantasy, are you? Because I don’t really want you all over me like a blanket. I have a perfectly good blanket right here. And there are no strawberries in the fridge. It’s the wrong time of year, and as far as belts go, I don’t really find them that fascinating.”

What else had she said? Quick, what else?

Was he smiling? Always a bad sign.

“I was just kidding about all that stuff, okay? Even if it sounded like I meant it, I
didn’t
. It was probably stress or the amino acid I’ve been taking. Brain chemicals, you know. They can make you do and say things—”

His nod was understanding. “You certainly did that. You said things
and
did things.”

“What did I say? What did I do? What?”

“It’s okay. You were fine.”

“No, really, what did I do? It couldn’t have been
that
bad. I remember everything, except… oh, dear… when I was under hypnosis?”

“Except then,” he said.

She didn’t like the dark glint in his eyes. “What? Did I do something terrible?” What could be worse than undressing in front of the computer screen?

So
many things
.

“Did it involve one of the five senses?” she asked. “Touch, taste?”

“I’m not saying anything. You were fine, Kerry. Now, do you think we could finish our conversation about the curse?”

“Not until you tell me what I did.”

“Not until we finish with the curse.”

Obviously they’d reached an impasse. He said he was short on time. Maybe she could wait him out.

Unexpectedly he laughed, and it was a rich, rugged sound. “You have a gift, Kerry. I’ve never heard noises like that before.”

She frowned.

He nodded.

“All right, all right.” A sigh. “Tell me about this curse.”

He sat on the end of the bed, positioning himself in the way that guys sometimes did, with one leg pulled up. Doctors were famous for that pose, news anchors, even cowboys, men of some authority, men with a problem to fix.

“Bottom line?” he said. “There’s an emotion I’ve never experienced.”

“Which one?”

“The one that makes you shudder.”

“Fear? Is that the one you mean?” No wonder he’d been sent to her. Kerry Houston was an expert on shuddering.

“Not necessarily, although fear could be part of it. It’s an emotion that can never be mastered by the human will. I can’t explain it beyond that, but I’ll know it when I feel it.”

Now she was curious. Maybe this was one of those lucid dreams, the kind that were so vivid and real you couldn’t tell them from everyday life. Was that even remotely possible? And if it was, then maybe the dream had something to tell her. It might be her own subconscious, trying to communicate.

“But you do know who put the curse on you, right? Someone had to—a practicing witch, the computer gods, your ex-wife?”

Irony tempered his smile. “I’ve come to believe that you can curse yourself. In fact, maybe that’s the way it always happens with curses. They’re self-imposed and self-fulfilling. But even if that’s the case, I’m ready to change. I want to be free.”

So did she. Oh, yes, so did she.

“Kerry, there was a moment when I thought I saw you peering back at me through the screen, and it was like waking from a deep sleep. There’s a reason that happened to me. There’s a reason it was you and there’s a reason I’m here. I don’t have much time.”

“But why was it me?”

“Because you woke me up, because you wished for me to be here? Maybe you even needed me to be here.”

Because she needed him to be here. How strange that her grandfather had always said that life had a way of bringing you whatever you needed, but you had to ask, and most people never did.

“Kerry… I may be trapped for all time.”

Okay
, she thought,
so maybe this is a dream and maybe it does have something to tell me
. She could certainly use the feedback. Her life wasn’t exactly a picnic in Lover’s Park lately. And it probably wouldn’t hurt to go along with it— with him—for a while.

“I could be stating the obvious,” she said, “but you are here. You are free. Why don’t you just walk out that door and go merrily on your way?”

“It doesn’t work like that. There are things a man has to learn, things that maybe only a woman can teach.”

Her stomach was doing that handspring thing again, and Kerry could hardly contain a sigh. He had her at
things a man has to learn
.

“You know, Jean, I’m not exactly a poster girl for mental health.”

“You’re perfect.”

His voice resonated softly through the dark, tapping at the stubborn barriers that protected her heart. She drew the comforter around her, warding off a shiver.

“What do I have to do?” she asked him.