Dwellers of the Night: The Complete Collection (50 page)

“Good night,” he said, turning off the light.

∑Ω∑

Harker turns to Adrian and speaks. “Adrian Ryan, do you now leave your father and mother to establish your own home with Rachel Huntsmen as her husband, to receive her as your wife, to make a home where she will be loved and cared for as long as God grants her life?” The words roll over in Adrian’s mind:
leaving your parents… establishing a home… as long as God grants her life…
His parents had become monsters. His home had become the dwelling-place of the living dead. And life could be taken at any moment by the blood-thirsting savages crawling outside the church walls. His thoughts almost seem like a hesitation, and Harker eyes him. Adrian bites his lip, grins ear-to-ear, and he looks over at Rachel, whose eyes are demanding a response. “I most certainly and absolutely do.”

Harker seems to breathe a silent sigh of relief as he turns to Rachel. “Rachel Huntsmen, do you now leave your father and mother to establish your own home with Adrian Ryan as his wife, to receive him as your husband, to make a home where he will be loved and cared for as long as God grants him life?”

She looks over at Adrian, smiles back at him. “I do.”

Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

232

He mouths to her,
You’re so beautiful!

She bites her bottom lip, holding back the wanton grin.

∑Ω∑

When he awoke, he found that one of the beds was empty. At first he didn’t know what had happened, didn’t know where he was, didn’t know
who
he was. All he knew was that he was not alone. His face graced the back of a girl’s bare neck, and he felt her hair falling around him. He slowly pulled his head away and saw that they were in the same bed, sharing the same covers, and wearing absolutely nothing. His neck hurt a little bit as he turned and looked at the chair, where two robes had been thrown. He slowly looked back at the dark brown hair, the lavender skin, the soft scent coming off of her. She groaned and turned, rolling over, and when he saw her breasts, he closed his eyes, the memories rushing at him like an out-of-control train threatening to run off a cliff. For a moment he had forgotten it. Upon awakening, he had been innocent. Now the innocence was shattered.

He remembered her gasping. He remembered her groaning.

Oh God oh God oh God

He remembered their bodies together, he remembered kissing her skin.
Oh God oh God oh God

He remembered her wild and crazed eyes.

Oh God oh God oh God

He remembered her biting his lip, biting his ear, he remembered her saying his name over and over as he moved back and forth on top of her.

Oh God oh God oh God

He remembered the feeling of her legs around him, her breasts jiggling. He remembered the feeling of… God, that feeling!

Oh God oh God oh God

He remembered the feeling—oh! that feeling that transcended every feeling he’d ever felt, a feeling that bordered on being high, a feeling that invigorated every nerve in his body. He remembered that feeling and longed for it. He remembered feeling connected, remembered feeling as one. He remembered feeling more spiritual than he’d ever felt before. He remembered
being inside her
.

Oh God oh God oh God

He remembered not doing it once. Not twice. Not even three times.
Oh God oh God oh God

He heard the voice:
You’re a horrible person
.

She began to awake, pulling herself up, the strands of her hair falling before her eyes. He quickly leapt out of the bed and grabbed one of the robes, sliding it in front of him. The sounds of his movement drew her attention; when she saw him she quickly pulled the covers up all around her. She bit her lip and looked at him. He just stared at her. No blame could be thrown anywhere. They were in this together.

She spoke, her voice hoarse. She had been shouting a lot last night. “What do we do now?”

His face burned. “I guess… I guess we go home.”

She was really quiet. “Okay.”

“I’ll get dressed and get my stuff.” He dressed in the bathroom. When he went pee it burned. His entire penis seemed to throb with pain. She felt the pain, too. A feeling of great disappointment, Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

233

great loss, a feeling of great guilt and shame and condemnation and judgment crushed him, weighing upon his shoulders. It was all he knew.

When they checked out, the receptionist smiled. “I had customer complaints last night.”

He winced. “Here. Take the key. Okay?”

She smiled. “Have a wonderful trip back to civilization.”

The trip wasn’t wonderful: it was dead silent. A wall seemed to fall between them. Adrian tried to spark conversation but was unable. What hurt worse was that Kristen refused to look him in the eyes. A few times she started to cry. His heart burned for her. As they drove, he reached over to comfort her, but she recoiled, writhed away. His heart burst, and he retracted his hand. “Sorry,” he said.

She said something through a clenched throat.

It sounded like, “It’s not you,” but he couldn’t be sure.

∑Ω∑

“The ceremony of marriage,” Harker says, “in which you come to be united, is the first and oldest ceremony in all the world, celebrated in the beginning in the presence of God Himself. Marriage is a gift of God, given to comfort the sorrows of life and to magnify its joys. Marriage is the clasping of hands, the blending of hearts, the union of two lives as one. Your marriage must stand, not by the authority of the State nor by the seal on your wedding certificate, but by the strength of your love and by the power of your faith in each other and in God. You can have this kind of home if you continue to recognize God as the source of romance and love and affection, for these are His gifts. With God, you will have everything; without Him, you will have nothing. Now, will you please join hands and, to each other, express your vows of love and devotion.”

∑Ω∑

The entire drive back to campus from their Fall Break trip had been in silence. She had looked out the window. He had based this upon her own guilt at what they had done, and had tried to resurrect some genuine conversation. His heart wept just to feel her eyes, just to hear her voice turned in his direction, aimed beautifully at his heart. When he had looked upon her on their drive home, he had sensed something different about her, something foreign and mysterious.

“I think,” he had said slowly as they navigated the spread carpets of cornfields through Illinois,

“we need to talk about this.” He had looked over at her and saw only the back of her head, for she was staring out the window. The sun was bright, and he could not see her reflection in the window. She did not respond. “Kristen,” he said. He reached out and touched her shoulder. She wrenched away, gently but sternly. His heart skipped a beat at the movement. She craned her neck and looked at him, and he saw something in those eyes that he’d never seen before. He could not place it, but it looked as if a part of her had died, and something dark and foreboding reigned within.

He could not keep his eyes on the road. He reached out to stroke her hair in an effort to get the Kristen he knew so well to return.

Before he could touch her, she said in a defeated and miserable voice, “Don’t touch me.”

His hand hovered before her hair, then slowly withdrew. He swallowed hard. “Kristen…

Please… Don’t think that… I messed up…
We
messed up… I still…” He couldn’t say it, couldn’t get it to come off his lips. He feared it was a lie:
I still love you
. Did he love her? Did he really love her? A Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

234

painful thought sprinkled his mind:
What if she really loved me, and now I took that love she had given me
and abused it? What if she gave me herself—her hopes, her dreams, her aspirations—and I took them and pissed
all over them?
God, he hoped that was not what had happened! “Kristen… God, I don’t know… I’m sorry, Kristen. Please. You know… I’m not like… Not like that.”

A tear appeared in the corner of one of her eyes. “Please…” She struggled for words. “Please don’t touch me… I just… Please. Okay?”

At that moment, his world had crashed down even more. “Okay,” he surrendered. “Okay. I won’t.”

Nothing had changed. For a week afterwards, he didn’t seen her. She skipped the classes they shared together, and she never appeared for lunch or dinner at the cafeteria or coffee-shop. He would often go on walks about the campus, meditating and contemplating and crying out in shame and resolute surrender.

One of her friends approached him and said, “Do you know what’s wrong with Kristen? She won’t come out of her room.”

He feared he knew.
I betrayed her
. “No. No, I haven’t seen her.”

“She’s been different ever since Fall Break. We’re trying to talk to her.”

“She won’t talk?”

She shook her head. “No, she won’t talk.”

He tried to call her several times, but she never picked up. She was never online, either. He would lie in bed at night and wonder, “What have I done? What have I lost?” Then he would feel even worse, because his questions revolved around himself. She was broken and beaten and bloodied because of his selfish actions, and the only sorrow he felt revolved around himself. He was asking,

“What have I lost?” when he should have been asking, “What have I done to her, a beautiful creature of God’s creation, a beautiful child of God?” In those moments of frailty, he felt more alone than he had ever been.

∑Ω∑

Adrian turns towards Rachel, the candlelight illuminating her soft cheeks and vibrant eyes. She moves towards him, and their hands come together, fingers wrapping around one another’s. Both of their hands shake in nervous anticipation. Her face glows like that of Moses off Mount Sinai. Harker says to Rachel, “Rachel Huntsmen, will you repeat this vow to Adrian Ryan, saying after me…”

He speaks slowly, and she repeats, savoring each word: “I, Rachel Huntsmen, will take you, Adrian Ryan, to be my husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward: for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health; to love and to cherish until we are separated by death; as God is my witness, I give you my promise.”

Adrian listens to her voice, tender and resolute, and he recalls their conversation the night before:

He looked at her profile in the starlight. “God, you’re so beautiful.”

She didn’t hide her grin. “You know what, though? I’m so lucky.”

“No, you’re not,” he said. “You don’t deserve someone like me.”

She playfully slapped him. “And what is that supposed to mean, Mister Ryan?”

“It means,” he said, “that you deserve someone so much better.”

She shrugged her shoulder. “Maybe. But perhaps, like God, I am content to call a lower creature my own, and I would have it no other way.”

Anthony Barnhart

Dwellers of the Night

235

He still cannot believe someone such as her would ever—with any real passion—repeat such a vow, promising to hold him for all eternity, to have him in every circumstance;
Of course, she doesn’t
know the REAL you. She doesn’t know about that party with the drunk girl. She doesn’t know about you and
Kristen. She doesn’t know about any of that.

Harker turns to Adrian. “Adrian Ryan, will you please give your vow?”

Rachel eyes him, expecting him to repeat after the minister.

He smiles at her, feeling the beauty of her confusion. He speaks from memory, guided by the rhythms of his heart. “Rachel… From the day of my conception, I have dreamed of this day. Growing up, my daydreams were filled with what this day would be like, who I would be like, what she—

you
—would look like. There were times when I doubted it would ever come. There were moments when I wanted to give up. The moment I felt like there was no hope… At that very moment, you walked into my life, and you showed me that God is real, that God is active, and that God really
is
a good God. I can never doubt the goodness of God, for He has given me you. Even in all that has happened, even in this world that has become our home, God has shined His face upon me. In all my daydreams, in my imaginings of the future, I never came close. When God brought you into my life, He showed me that His plans—His beautiful plans—far outweighed anything that I could have dreamed. I want you to know—and I want everyone here to know—and I want God to know this as well—that I am devoted and dedicated, with both passion and commitment, to hold you close, to comfort you when you weep, to laugh with you when you laugh, to share in all life’s moments with you—the good and the bad. I want you to know that you are always mine, you cannot be replaced, and you cannot be outdone. With God as my witness, I commit myself to being a good husband and keeping you until the day death may separate us for but a time.”

Tears well up in her eyes.

Her throat quivers in emotion.

Emotion floods the room: it is as if, for a moment, the world has rediscovered the beauty can exist, that flowers can poke forth through the ashes, that even in a fallen world bathed in darkness and shadows, romance and love can become a reality between two souls.

∑Ω∑

The next weekend, Adrian was absent-mindedly walking the campus, lost deep in his agony, wandering alone. A voice came out from behind him. He turned. His friend Brian stood in the shadow of the towering library building. “Hey, Man,” he said. “What are you doing out here?”

Adrian’s guard went up.
Don’t give your heart out to anybody, or they’ll take it and stomp on it just
like you did to Kristen
. “Nothing,” he lied. “Just walking.”

“In that case,” Brian said, “can I walk with you?”

“Sure,” Adrian said, defeated.

They walked around the campus in silence. There was no small talk. Adrian knew it was coming but did not resist. Part of him looked forward to it. Brian finally said, “What’s wrong, Man? Don’t lie to me. You’ve totally been not yourself since that trip you took with Kristen. Talk to me. I love you, Man, like a brother. Talk to me.”