Fearscape (20 page)

Recent events, however, have made me feel entitled to a bit of stolen pleasure. I received a letter today from Her, asking me when I planned to visit. I was most displeased, as I thought I had made it quite clear that I had no intention of returning to New Jersey.

However, Anna-Maria is getting married and this event appears to require my attendance. She is my least favorite of my sisters. There is too much of our bitch mother in her. Any man foolish enough to open himself to her claws is well deserving of his fate. I may have to go.

I watched her — Val, not my sister — from the shadows beneath the bleachers. Empty cups and cartons and stubbed-out cigarettes littered the ground at my feet. There was something exquisite about the darkness, the rot, when juxtaposed against Val running through the rain. Something real. It was true, what I'd told her before, about disliking posing.

She acts differently around me. Tentative, skittish — almost fearful. It's very amusing and not at all like the woman I have come to know from the track field: fierce, determined, confident. Despite her mild temperament, this hidden side to her leads me to suspect that she will be a ferocious lover when I manage to get her into my bed.

I can easily imagine her nails digging into my shoulders, the bite of her teeth in my lip, her breathy screams —

I unbuckled my belt.

This is why I watch from the shadows. Not out of shame, but so I can watch, observe, and do as I please. Unseen. Unheard. But very much a part of the background. I would be lying if I said that the prospect of caught didn't amuse me a little. Among other things.

Oh, Val.

▪▫▪▫▪▫▪

I had her in my net for a few precious moments. She was very ambivalent towards imprisonment, which did not surprise me. However her continued wariness towards me in spite of my efforts did. She is more perceptive than I gave her credit for, and I cannot but respect her all the more for it. She trembles just like a butterfly when she is in my arms.

▪▫▪▫▪▫▪

She slammed the covers closed. There was more, but she was unwilling to go on. She'd had enough. More than enough. She looked at the sketchbook with dread. Her hands were sweating. She wiped them on her shorts, causing the fabric to darken, and flipped through the pages.

A wave of dizziness crashed over her as she recognized her own face staring out at her.
Oh god.
She dropped the sketchbook back in the drawer and replaced the bottom. She
couldn't remember how to breathe. Those drawings were not the imaginings of a sane man.

“
Val?”

It was like something out of a horror movie, hearing his voice echo through the hall. She heard a knocking sound, just a few doors down, and covered her mouth to stifle a scream when the bathroom door opened and then slammed shut just as quickly. His footsteps were moving down the hallway with purposeful precision.

He knows
.

Val pinched the journal beneath her arm and headed for the door to the adjoining bedroom. She closed it quietly behind her, struggling to keep in the loud sob threatening to bubble straight past her lips. It was an irrational thought, for an irrational situation.

Reality, for Val, had swiftly become a nightmare.

As the office door opened a horrible thought occurred to her.
Did I close the drawer?
She honestly couldn't remember — reading the journal, and its contents, had wiped her mind so clean as to render it a blank slate. Papers rustled. Val's nausea grew. She hadn't heard him open the drawer.
Oh, god, then he knows. He knows I know.

And he would kill her to keep his secret. No. Not kill her. Not right away, at least. Images from the sketchbook flooded her head.
Worse
.

“
I know you're nearby, Val.”

She stared at his bedroom closet.

“
You have something of mine.”

He was toying her, like a cat with a mouse. Enjoying her terror, basking in it. Well, she wasn't going to wait around for him to find her in some nightmarish game of hide-and-seek. She bolted for the closet and had only just slid the door closed behind her when the office door burst open.

Something behind her jangled as she nudged her way towards the back. The muffled vacuum of the closet amplified the sound into a startling gong. She reached out automatically to still it, and inhaled sharply when she realized what it was she was holding. Handcuffs. Metal handcuffs.

Her back hit the wall and one of the coats fell on her, smothering her with the sandalwood scent of whichever aftershave or wash he was so fond. Beneath the coat she quivered, hugging the journal to her chest.
He's completely
insane.

The closet door opened. Clothes were shoved aside and light flashed on the other side of the coat as the contents of the closet were bared to unseen eyes. Val didn't breathe. She wanted to check, to ensure her entire body was covered, but to move would mean death.

Please, please, please —

She screamed when she felt herself being lifted into the air, coat and all, and then again, with a renewed sense of fear when he yanked the coat off her head and she realized where she was. “You seem to have lost your way,” he said mildly, though there was nothing mild about the expression on his face.

She backed away and jumped when her back brushed against the wooden headboard. Gavin watched her for a long, terrible moment and then picked up the journal which had fallen from her numb fingers. He thumbed through the pages, an odd smile on his face, before tossing the book aside. It hit the floor with a hollow thud that made her jump again.

“
Or perhaps not,” he said, inclining his head in her direction, “perhaps you were looking for something — something specific.”

“
I don't — ”

“
Let's not play games, Val. We both know that you read the journal — but you never stopped to consider the fact that I might want you to find it.”

She stiffened. “I didn't read it.”

“
Then why are you so afraid? I've given no sign of wanting to harm you. In fact, I've taken great pains to produce the exact opposite impression.”

It took her a moment to speak. “Please don't hurt me.”

“
Don't look at me like that. It won't help your situation.”

“
I won't tell anyone. Just let me go, and I'll never tell a soul.”

“
You have such soft lips, you know — and a beautiful mouth. Your first kiss was very pleasurable indeed, though that kiss in my living room was a vast improvement. If you manage to do better still, I'll let you go right now.”

“
That's all?”

She wanted to believe, but didn't in the slightest. It sounded too good to be true and experience had taught her that this was most likely the case.

“
What if I refuse?”

“
You wouldn't like it,” he said.

Val thought of the handcuffs in his closet and believed him.

Chapter Thirteen

Such a simple thing, a kiss.

Yet in the state of hypersensitivity brought on by fear, in which she was as painfully aware of her body and its surroundings as a creature comprised solely of raw skin and nerve endings, a kiss seemed like a very large price to pay.

Extortionate.

Would a man, even an obsessed man, go to such lengths for a mere kiss? Even Val in all her childlike naivete couldn't bring herself to believe this, however much she wanted to.

“
Well?”

Her breathing sounded too loud. She had never been more aware of her own fragile mortality.
You've kissed him before
, she reminded herself.
Lots of times. He's not any different.

But she was. And now she knew his most intimate thoughts and had found, to her horror, that her romantic idealization of him as the tragically misunderstood artist was just that: an ideal, now shattered, with reality gleaming through like sharp slices of mirror reflecting light. He was ruthless, cold, and he wanted her to be like one of the lifeless butterflies in the collection behind his glass cabinet.

An inanimate plaything.

A possession.

A prisoner.

“
I'm waiting,” he said, regarding her through half-shut eyes.

She had come into the garden expecting summer roses and had instead been caught in a bank of twisted, thorny frost-iced vines.

“
Just one kiss?” she confirmed, breathing out a little when he nodded. “And you'll let me go?”

“
Quite.”

Val's arms shook. She leaned in and pecked him feebly on the mouth. His lips still tasted like coffee. “You're not trying.”

And that was when she understood: she was intended to perform the work herself.

An image of a butterfly in a killing jar popped into Val's head, fragile wings straining against the cloyingly sweet miasma coating the delicate membranes with a thin layer of poisonous crystals. Like rime. Or frosted sugar. Not all poison was bitter — some of the deadliest poisons in the world tasted sweet. They were that much more dangerous because of it.

Don't think about that
. Turning this situation into a carnival of horrors wasn't going to help. She closed her eyes and covered his mouth with hers. He remained still as a statue, though when she nudged at his closed lips with her tongue he opened his mouth.

She wrote her prayers for salvation in his mouth, with the tip of her tongue, and he made a low sound in the back of his throat that did not necessarily sound like displeasure, though it didn't sound pleased, either. He had yet to reciprocate, and the thought that he might prolong this infinitely until he deemed himself completely satisfied shot into her head.

Evil bastard
. She hated him, for the first time. Well and truly hated him. He had her trapped, and he had carefully planned each and every bar of the prison she now found herself in. She channeled that anger, molding herself against him and holding onto his neck to steady herself wishing in her heart of hearts that she was strangling him instead.

His arms wrapped around her waist automatically and his mouth began, at length, to move against hers. Vertigo wrapped around her brain in thick, shimmering mist as he rolled over so that she was on top, dizzied from the fear, the danger, his effects on her body.

Especially his effects on her body.

“
That was nice.”

“
It was?”

“
Very.” His hands slid onto the shallow indent of her waist with easy familiarity. “But where do you think you're going?” he inquired, as she swung an unsteady leg over the side of the bed.

“
You said I could — ”

“
I don't believe I you permission to leave,” he said, and his grip tightened in emphasis. He twisted his hips then, knocking her off-balance. She found herself straddling him. “If you recall, I said your efforts on this occasion had to be superior to the last.”

“
I kissed you,” she said, “Just like you wanted.”

“
Your technique is flawless but last time you looked considerably more appealing. If I hadn't known I was going to have to give you back ….” His eyes darkened and he shook his head. “Suffice it to say that it will be a difficult act to follow.”

“
You're not going to let me go, are you?” Her voice was hoarse, even to her own ears. “How long to you intend to keep me here? And don't lie to me!” Val knocked his hand away from her when he tried to touch her, blinking back tears. “You're so sick, I don't even want to look at you, let alone
kiss
you — all those things you —”
Drew
, she had been about to say. But then she remembered, he didn't know she'd seen his sketchbook. “ — Said,” she finished weakly.

“
You're welcome to try again. Or try things my way.”

A chill filled her. She gritted her teeth, trying to block out the images that rushed at her, in charcoal and watercolor, tinged with passion and violence. “Once more,” she choked.

“
We'll see,” he said mildly.

And that decided it. She leaned in again, and his lips parted in anticipation — and she headbutted him. Hard. He let out a roar, like a wounded bull, but his grip on her waist loosened. She must have surprised him; she had surprised herself. Val scrambled off him and ran, clutching her own throbbing head. She heard him clambering after her.

Something hard jagged into her shoulder. It was the wooden banister. She remembered the knife with the broken handle and produced the little blade just as he was upon her.

“
She has claws.”

“
Stay back.”

“
I wonder, what else does she have?”

“
Stay back,” Val repeated, accompanying the command with a jab.

His hand shot out, serpent-quick, to deliver a sharp undercut to her wrist that made her drop the blade in a spasm of pain. She started to bend to retrieve it from the floor but Gavin kicked it aside as he took a step forward, and Val had to veer backwards to avoid his grab for her.