Clearer in the Night (3 page)

“What’s going on?” I said, my voice trembling. I struggled toward sitting up, and she helped me.

“Here,” she said. She pulled a t-shirt and a pair of jeans out of a bag, and she helped me out of my shredded club clothes and into the clean things. They fit, but they felt stiff, new. “This is going to help you explain things, okay? Just trust me.” She felt solid. Real. And so did my unbroken skin. Had it all been one long hallucination? Shit, had someone slipped me something in the club? No, the tank top that she was stuffing back into her bag was shredded, my skirt was stained dark brown. Something had happened. I wasn’t going crazy. And people were shouting my name. People who were close. And getting closer.

One shout seemed almost on top of us. “Shoe!” I heard. “I found another shoe!” Sophie glanced up, her brows furrowed. “I need to go,” she said. “They’ll find you now. You’ll be okay.”

I grabbed her hand and tried to hold her. “Please don’t go. It’s awful without you. She’s…without you…” I tried to think what else to say, but really, that was the full thought.

She gave me such a sad, small smile. “I’m just a dream, Caitie. Forget I was even here. It’ll be better that way.” She pressed a kiss to my forehead, and then she was gone. Dissolved into fog, vanished into nothing but a cool breeze, leaving behind nothing but rustling leaves and me, my heart hurting so much that I remembered why I usually just tried to pretend that I’d never had a sister.

The yawning emptiness inside of me finally exploded outwards. After more than a decade, it had built up some force. It tore my sore throat, shredded my healed body, and all the pain, the sorrow, the misery I’d been ignoring, it all flooded back in. The formless howl changed slowly into a word—just one. “Help!” I screamed, as loudly as I could. My head was spinning, my body was clenching over in shock and misery again, but I just kept screaming. As I slipped down into the leaves, the blackness closing in again, a tall lanky man that I didn’t recognize burst into the clearing. As the darkness closed in, I reached a hand out to him. “Help,” I whispered.

He slipped down into the leaves, gripping my hand in both of his. He started to say something, but the words disappeared behind the bees in my ears, and I lost his face to the spreading dark.

SUNDAY, JULY 28

The pain came back when he lifted me, and I screamed. Maybe I tried to hit him. Maybe I dreamed it. I faded in and out for a while. There was an ambulance, I was sure of that. Then they gave me a shot of something, and it all got even more confusing. Things got dark. When they brightened up, there were needles going into my arms, and I was freezing cold, but they kept saying how hot I was, and I wanted to laugh at how wrong they were. After that, it got dark again, but it never got quiet. There were always voices, and the things they were saying made no sense. Sometimes they were about me, but more often about hum-drum things, bits and pieces and fragments. “Pie after work” or “can’t believe he” or “I bet she’d like.” Never sentences, never full thoughts, and I wanted to clap my hands over my ears and block out the nonsense sounds, but they were inside my head. I’d need an ice pick to carve them out.

When I thought the voices would drive me mad, there was finally peace. Only the slow, steady thrumming of my blood filled my ears. I dared, finally, to open my eyes. I was back in the clearing, where I’d bled out and been destroyed and maybe put back together. It was glowing, though, absolutely shimmering with light. I looked up, expecting to find the sun out, it was so bright and brilliant, but I should have known from the softness. I gazed up into the moon, and everything else fell away. My lips bent into a smile, and I closed my eyes, my arms opening up to embrace the glow above me. The light pulsed in time to my heartbeat, and I laughed into the sky.

I opened my eyes again, and stood, slowly. I was wearing clothes that fit and flowed around my body. Soft, knit pants that fit without cutting into my stomach, and a loose, flowing blouse that fell over my breasts and down my smooth belly. My hair fell back over my shoulders, and the light glowed on my skin. I looked down; the moon was reflected into the pond in the center of the clearing. Drawn, I knelt down beside it. The water was so warm that it didn’t feel wet; no ripples spread from my touch. The moon lay on the water, perfect and whole. I could slip into it, bathe in the moon. Why not? No one was here to see me naked. And even if they were, who would care, in this place? Who would begrudge me a little peace, a little calm, a few breaths taken warm and supported?

“This is beautiful.”

The reflection shattered and crumbled. I pushed up to my feet, spun, my heart racing. He stood on the edge of the clearing, all tall and dark and ruggedly handsome. It took me a moment to place him, and it wasn’t until his lips spread in a smile, making his dark eyes laugh, that I realized. My stomach twisted at his intrusion. Why was he here? This was my place. I’d been safe, until he came. But that wasn’t all that twisted up my stomach when I looked at him.

“We were dancing,” I said.

“You left before we finished.”

“That wasn’t dancing.”

He might have blushed. Between the softness of the light and the olive cast of his skin, it was impossible to say. I’d been right, though. His eyes were so dark they were almost black.

A smile quirked across his lips. “No, I don’t suppose it was,” he said. He walked toward me and reached out his hands. I hesitated, but I didn’t pull them away before he closed his fingers over mine. A huge wind swirled up and rustled the leaves of the trees; when the wind quieted, there was sand between my toes, and my comfortable pants and fluttery shirt were gone, replaced by a wash of pale fabric that pretended to be a modest dress, and yet left nothing to the imagination. This harem wear wasn’t mine; I’d never put on something like this. But the way he stared at me, all greedy eyes and tension, made me into a roaring wash of wet desire; I wanted him to kiss me. I wanted him to gather me up and press into me. I wanted him to finish what he’d started.

But it wasn’t my want I was feeling. This wasn’t my fantasy. My daydream would have involved a hot fire and a comfortable couch. I looked into his eyes, and all I could see was his want, washing over me and swamping me, blotting out anything I wanted on my own. I tried to pull my hands free from his, and he smiled. He smirked. He was half a breath away from laughing at me. “Oh, Caitie, you are fascinating,” he said. He tugged me hard against his body, and a little gasp of want slipped out of me that contradicted everything my brain was screaming in warning. His hands tangled in my hair, and I couldn’t fight anymore. He was my entire world, his mouth pressing into mine, his hands crushing me against him. I whimpered at the intensity of it, and I opened to him, and begged for more.

He laughed, and picked me up at the waist, spinning me in a circle as easily as if I were a doll. The wispy fabric flew around my feet, a delicate, perfect cloud. I was a beautiful woman in a romantic photograph. Someone should put this moment in a picture frame; I’d live here, in this second, forever. It was so lovely that I barely even noticed the hollow feeling in my belly.

He set me back down on my feet and kissed me again. “You have to do something for me,” he said.

“Anything.” Because it was a dream, or heaven, or a hallucination. Promise the world, what harm can it do?

“Don’t tell them what happened. They’re going to ask. Say you don’t remember. If you tell them the truth, it will sound like you’ve lost your mind.”

“Haven’t I?”

His hands ran down my sides, bringing up goose bumps on my arms. “Do you think so?”

“It doesn’t make sense.”

“Exactly. Don’t tell them about it, they won’t understand it any more than you do. But listen…” He drew me in close to him, his lips pressed against my ear, barely moving air at all. “It was all real.”

He stepped back from me. “That’s not possible,” I said.

“But it’s true, all the same.”

“It can’t be.”

“It is.”

His smile coasted over my breasts, my belly, lower. I gasped and locked my knees against the wave of pleasure. “We’ll talk again. Soon. I promise. I’ll save you, Caitie. I promise I will.”

The light faded from the world, and the blackness overwhelmed me. I tumbled through mist and it clung to me, bringing back pain and confusion and loss. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t focus, but I could sleep, and I let the mist carry me away. To sleep. Perchance.

There was no sand beneath my toes. Or dirt. There were scratchy sheets. These were not my sheets, my sheets were jersey. My bed was covered with a thick down comforter, even in summer. Whatever was on top of me was light, and not warm enough. Not even close.

I dragged my eyes open. They were weighted and swollen, and hauling my eyelids up felt like I was scraping them over sand.

I wasn’t in my room. The room I was in was cold and sterile. The walls were painted with a neutral beige only interrupted by emotionless pictures of too-perfect still life flowers. There was a TV mounted up in the corner, and the uncomfortable bed I was in had plastic, industrial railings on either side. Hospital. The fragmented memories came together, and it was the only solution that made sense. I was in a hospital. There was an IV in my arm. I was sore everywhere. I was bone weary, and when I went to lift my arm and scrub at my sore, dry eyes, it felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.

I’d seen my sister, out in that clearing. My dead sister. After a monster had torn me to shreds. Clear as crystal, I could remember the feeling of its teeth tearing out a mouthful of my guts. But I wasn’t dead. It had killed me, but I wasn’t dead. Which meant that the whole thing had been some kind of hallucination. Some kind of dream. Obviously. Maybe even drugs. I was careful when I went out, but no one’s perfect, someone could have slipped me something. I’d been in a vulnerable state, anyone would know that, and something could have happened. Sure. That explained it all. I’d gotten slipped something, and I’d collapsed, and now I was here.

I pushed my hands into the mattress, trying to scoot up into a sitting position, but the IV in my arm pinched, and I whimpered. A shuffle of movement next to me made me glance into the corner of the room. And there was my mother, sprawled in a chair by my bedside. How very Victorian of her.

“Hey,” I said. My voice sounded like it had wandered through Death Valley before exiting my mouth. I worked up a little saliva and swallowed, then tried again. “Hey, Mom.”

She jerked awake, staring around like she didn’t quite remember where she was, either. I saw the memories cascade back in, and then she turned to me.

“Hi,” I said, as her hands flew up to her mouth and her eyes got wide. “Can I have a drink of water?”

This little, smothered sound escaped from her, and then her arms were around me. My eyes squeezed shut, and my hands, clenched into fists, wrapped around her. I tried to relax them, to smooth them out and fully embrace her back, but that was too much. Too much for now. But I couldn’t stop myself turning my head to the side, pressing my cheek into her shoulder, and inhaling the cloying, sweet, floral scented oil that she ordered online. My heart beat too fast, and it was going to set off a monitor or something, I was sure of it. The IV hurt like hell, but I didn’t care. “Thank God,” she whispered. “Thank God, you’re awake.”

“Yes,” I said, wincing as she squeezed harder. I didn’t seem to be dead, but I was still achy. “And also, very thirsty.”

“I don’t know…” She pulled back, her hands fluttering, and she exhaled, and I smelled it. My heart dropped down into the vicinity of my belly button. I should have thought of that. Whiskey always made her more affectionate. “They’ll want someone to look at you first, I imagine.” She reached down and punched the call button on the bed control. It looked like an ancient picture of a nurse, a little round face with wings on the side of the head, the nurse version of Princess Leia hair. I snickered at it. My ribs throbbed a bit, but not as much as they should have.

“Caitlyn,” Mom said, and then hesitated for a long minute. She took a deep breath, and then sat down next to me. “What happened out there, honey? They said there was no sign of head trauma, no reason for the fever, no idea why you were out there in the first place. Shannon,” here her lips pursed like she’d bitten into garlic, “refused to answer my questions about your new boyfriend, and said I’d better talk to you about it.”