Shifting Shadows

Shifting Shadows

Copyright ©2013
Sally Berneathy.

http://www.sallyberneathy.com

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This is a work of pure fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Original cover art by Alicia Hope,
http://www.aliciahopeauthor.blogspot.com/

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Dressed all in black, blending into the cloudy, predawn darkness, he strode onto Analise’s porch. Sliding a credit card through the ancient lock on her front door was easy.

The door opened smoothly, and he stepped inside. An unexpected creak from the wooden floor caused his breath to catch in his throat, but he reminded himself that she
’d be in her bedroom upstairs and the approaching thunderstorm would cover any noises he made. He could take his time and make a thorough search before attending to her.

He pulled a small flashlight from his pocket and methodically explored the downstairs area—all the drawers in all those little tables she
’d placed so precisely, the antique secretary, even the kitchen cabinets—any of the places she might have hidden it.

Logically, she would have put it in the bedroom she
’d turned into an office. But she wasn’t always logical and that failing constituted the core of the problem. She followed her emotions.

Failing to find what he
’d come for, he crossed the foyer to the stairs. The growling rumble of thunder in the distance burst forth in a loud clap, and he halted mid-step, momentarily startled. Just the storm, he reminded himself, irritated that he’d lost control even for a split second.

Moving slowly, carefully, he climbed the stairs, stepping over the boards he
knew would creak. In spite of his effort to be silent, when he reached the landing he saw she was awake and peering out of her bedroom door.

He permitted himself a brief mental curse as
she walked slowly and uncertainly into the hallway. He moved back, deeper into the shadows and waited. He hadn’t planned on this, had hoped to catch her asleep.

But he could be flexible, could change his plans when necessary.

She was beautiful, he thought regretfully as he watched her come down the hall toward where he waited. With her blond hair flowing above the white, gauzy gown that came only to her ivory thighs, she was a bright, almost luminous figure in the darkness.

As she neared
the landing, lightning flashed and he held his breath, fearful she’d seen him. She hesitated, but came on, and he realized she was clutching a glass lamp base in one hand like a club.

He
permitted himself a small, tight smile, admiring her courage. It was a shame it had to come to this.

But he would do what had to be done.

As he moved up behind her, for an instant he had a strange feeling of déjà vu, as though he’d already done this thing. He ignored the silly fantasy and reached toward the paleness of her slender shoulders.

She gasped and whirled toward him, wielding her pitiful weapon. He dodged and pushed gently, just hard enough to
unbalance her.

She screamed once and dropped the lamp. It shattered against the banister. Watching her
tumbling down the stairs, he felt detached, as if she was already dead, as if the act was so far in the past, it no longer mattered.

But when she reached the bottom, he
saw with regret that she wasn’t dead. She was moving, moaning…alive.

With a muttered curse at his failure, he went quickly down the stairs, stepped over her still-breathing body and to
ok a needlepoint pillow from her ridiculous little sofa in the parlor.

She looke
d up at him as he approached, and he thought he saw recognition in her eyes. But that was impossible since he wore a ski mask. He forced the cushion over her face, held her down until she stopped struggling. She was surprisingly strong for someone so slim.

He leaned over and picked up her limp wrist, felt for a pulse, found none and gave a sigh of relief. He had succeeded. It was ov
er. His world was restored to normal.

He replaced the pillow
on the sofa then stepped over her body and hurriedly gathered up the pieces of broken lamp. He didn’t know how long he had before someone might come—that is, if anyone had heard her scream. The noise of the storm had probably covered all sounds, but he was not one to take chances.

He
had to leave now and come back later to find the documents.

The lamp she
’d wielded against him had had no shade, so he went to her room, found it where she’d tossed it on the floor and took it with him. As an added precaution, he moved another lamp around to the side of the bed where she slept so no one would miss or search for the broken one. He complimented himself on his thoroughness, his attention to detail.

He had to step
over her again on his way down and forced himself to take one final look. It really was too bad things had come to this, but she’d brought it on herself, left him with no other way out. For a moment he felt anger at her for making him do this, but anger was a pointless emotion and he refused to allow himself to indulge in it.

For a distressing instant, he thought he saw her breasts rise, as if she was breathing. But it had to be only a shadow. He
’d verified that she was dead. He didn’t make mistakes.

He turned away and left the house, careful to lock the door.

The face that stared at her from the hall looking glass wasn
’t hers.

Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled.
Elizabeth gasped, stepped back, looked away—away from the impossible image.

She swallowed hard, tried to reassure herself. It had to be a mistake—a portrait or a window or…something, something that made sense.

She forced herself to look again. Lightning flashed once more, invading the house, flaring in the frightened emerald eyes that watched her from the glass. Disbelief and panic surged over her, threatened to drown her. Her heart pounded as if it would push out of her chest and fear rose in her throat.

“
No,” she whispered, and the strange woman’s lips moved, speaking the same word.

Tentatively she raised her small hand to touch the dark coil of her hair, to feel
its reassuring familiarity even if she couldn’t see it in the mirror. The woman in the glass raised a long, slender hand and touched the pale, silvery curtain of hair that swung beside the unknown face. She felt the length, the smooth sweep of hair, felt her hand on her face.

The strange eyes widened, and the woman in the mirror screamed and screamed as she slid to the floor, holding her unfamiliar hands over her unfamiliar face.

A minute or an hour later the thunder returned, pounding at her front door. A shout sounded, followed by a thudding noise. Dimly she registered a new threat, forced herself to stop screaming, to face this latest unknown.

The front door flew open, wood splintering from the frame as the lock gave way. A man charged inside. Lightning streaked through the gray morning, briefly turning him into a hulking, featureless silhouette.

“Analise!” he shouted, surveying the foyer, running toward her, where she huddled against the wall.

She felt she ought to know him, but she didn
’t.
He has the wrong face, just like I do,
she thought, and knew that idea made no more sense than anything else.

“
My God, what happened?” he demanded. “Are you hurt?” He reached down to her, grabbed her shoulders with powerful hands.

“
No!” She struggled to break away from his grip, but he held her more tightly, hurting her.

“
Analise, it’s me, Dylan. What’s the matter? Why were you screaming?”

Dylan?
No, that wasn’t the right name. She stared up at him wordlessly, into eyes that glowed darkly from bottomless depths, eyes that, for some irrational reason, she’d expected to be bright blue, not black. He loomed over her, tall with muscles rippling under the dark mat of hair that covered his naked chest and arms and disappeared into faded blue pants.

Thunder crashed and lightning streaked, flashing through the window
s, striking something nearby. She could smell sulfur. She cringed, moving closer to the wall, away from the fury of the storm, away from the repressed fury she sensed in the man.

“
Analise, damn it, talk to me. Are you still asleep? Are you having a bad dream? Did the storm scare you?” He rose, pulling her to her feet. “Come over here and sit down.”

He urged her forward,
toward the parlor of the house where she’d been born, but that room had the wrong furniture. She balked, a whimper of fear rising from her throat.

Without hesitation he picked her up, his warm flesh touching hers where the short, th
in garment she wore didn’t cover her. She should have flinched from his touch, but instead it evoked a warm memory of…something, someone.

She blinked away the irrational thought, struggled against the man, but he held her securely, his arms like a vise, pressing her against the wall of his bare chest.

“Calm down,” he ordered, his voice resonant and almost familiar, compelling her to do as he said. But she couldn’t. How could she be calm when she’d seen a stranger in the mirror, when a man she didn’t know broke down her door and carried her like a lifeless doll? “You’re okay,” he said. “Relax. Whatever happened, it’s over.”

Over?
How could it be over when she was trapped in someone else’s body? She tried to shrink into herself, away from him, from this whole nightmare that had begun minutes ago when she’d awakened at the foot of the stairs.

To add to her confusion, she was totally disoriented. She couldn
’t remember how she’d come to be lying at the foot of the stairs. She must have been running down to greet Papa and stumbled. Mama was always warning her to slow down.

But where was Papa? He wouldn
’t have left her lying there.

Where was Mama? Why hadn
’t somebody come when she screamed?

Please, God, help me
,
she prayed silently as the man carried her through the familiar arched doorway into the parlor that wasn’t hers.

The thunder and lightning were constant now, making the shadows writhe, the furniture seem to take on a life of its own.

“No,” she cried, cringing as he set her on the Empire sofa. That piece of furniture rested in front of the fireplace as it had since she was a child, but the wrong carvings decorated the back, the needlepoint pillow wasn’t one Mama had made, and the blue upholstery had the wrong pattern. It felt solid enough beneath her—soft and smooth—and that wasn’t right, either. The horsehair had always scratched.

The man stepped back, studied her from dark eyes shaded by thick brows.

Tentatively she rested her bare feet on the carpet. It was the same carpet Papa had bought two years ago, yet the pattern seemed to have faded like the petals of a plucked rose left outside in the sun and rain.

The mantel
clock Papa had brought from St. Louis sat in its usual place, but the ticking sounded ominous, each beat taking her further into this unreal world, away from her comfortable, familiar life.

She could see scratch marks marring the surface of Mama
’s favorite lamp table and briefly, irrationally, she worried that Mama would be upset. More importantly, though, the lamp that sat on the table was painted with irises instead of roses.

The whole room looked like everything normal had disappeared, and someone with a faulty memory had tried to reconstruct it.

She shivered. Her head throbbed. What in the name of all that was holy was going on?

“
I’ll get you something to drink.” The man’s voice interrupted her frenzied thoughts. “I’ll be right back. Will you be okay for a minute?”

She summoned all her strength and nodded. If he left, perhaps she could find Papa and
Mama, make sure they were all right, then…

She couldn
’t think beyond that. How could she decide what to do when she didn’t know what was happening?

The man backed out of the room, watching her intently as though he didn
’t quite trust her. Was he afraid she’d escape? A bright flash of lightning lit his face, but not the depths of his eyes or the mask that seemed to cover him, hiding his real face from her.

As soon as he was gone, she forced herself to rise shakily to her feet, to gather her wits about her. First she had to get upstairs, away from the strangeness down here, find her family.

Heart racing so loudly she feared the man would hear, she darted toward the stairs where this horror had begun. Taking a deep breath, she tiptoed upward, avoiding the steps that always creaked. But the seventh stair groaned alarmingly, and she almost sobbed at this latest wrongness.

She darted onto the landing. The
door to Mama and Papa’s room as well as the transom above it were closed. That wasn’t right either. Even with the incoming storm, the house was warm, and the bedrooms would be unbearably hot with no cross ventilation. She touched the glass knob, swallowed hard and forced herself to turn it, to look in.

Her hand flew to her mouth, and it took all her
self control not to scream again. Her last hope of escaping the nightmare drained away, leaving her in total despair.

A
four-poster bed sat where she remembered, over by the window where it could catch the southerly breezes. But it wasn’t the right bed. Mama and Papa’s bed had been replaced with a bed that was similar, but not the same.

The wardrobe and chest of drawers were in their accustomed spots, and if she hadn
’t grown up with that furniture, she might have thought it was the right furniture. It was similar but wrong.

She wrapped her arms about herself and shuddered, a sob crawling up her throat. Even Mama
’s ivory comb and brush set on the dresser was different, and Mama and Papa’s wedding picture in its silver frame was missing.

No one was there. The bed had not been slept in.

In desperation she turned and fled down the hall to her own room only to be met with the same faulty replacements.

That
bed, however, had been slept in. In fact, the covers lay crumpled in total disarray, spilling from the bed onto the floor. She would never have left them like that. She made her bed every morning.

Who had slept in her bed?

Outside the storm raged, swirling against the house. Wind billowed the lacy curtains at her open window, bringing the first chilling drops of rain. She shivered, crossed the room tentatively and closed the window in an effort to shut out the storm. But it was a futile effort. The turbulence inside battered her mind and heart with frenzied pain. She was drowning, suffocating as this unfamiliar world pressed against her. She had to fight a desire to drop to the floor and cry, to wait for Mama’s reassuring arms to pick her up and comfort her.

But she was alone. She had no idea where Mama was. No one was going to rush to her rescue. She had to gather her wits and help herself.

Taking a deep breath, she tried to calm her racing heart, steady her shaky legs.

Maybe the man downstairs had been right, she told herself, grabbing desperately at the possibility. Maybe she
’d had a bad dream, and the image in the looking glass has been part of the dream, obscuring her own reflection. Maybe the house and furniture were the way they should be. She was just having a hard time waking up, seeing things properly. Maybe even the man was somebody she knew, not a stranger.

She forced herself to look around her bedroom, to try to focus, to think, to get things straight. A picture on the polished walnut dresser that did not belong to her caught her gaze. She moved across the room slowly, as if in
a trance, to pick up the colored photograph.

The portrait showed the blond woman from the looking glass, smiling as she stood in front of a shop with the sign
Analise’s Antiques.

This time she didn
’t scream, didn’t sob. She had no more energy.

Exhausted, defeated, she sank onto the bed.

This time she could only accept the fact that she had gone quite mad.

The rain hammered incessantly on the roof, splattered against the window as though trying to force its way inside, but the thunder was losing intensity, rumbling from farther and farther away—as though it realized she was beaten. The storm had won.

“Analise!” the man called. “Where are you?”

Analise
. That was her name, and even as she thought it, she knew it was true, knew she was Analise…knew it as surely as she knew she was Elizabeth Dupard.

And that, of course, was impossible. She must be totally insane.

“There you are.” He appeared in the doorway, filling it, invading it, dominating the room as he entered. “I thought you were going to wait downstairs. Why did you come up here?”

“
I closed the window to keep out the rain,” she said, forcing the words through dry, numb lips.

Remembering her state of undress, she reached woodenly
for the quilt and sheet, pulling them around her as much to put something between herself and the man as to cover her near-nude body. After all, she supposed, lunatics were surely excused for running around in immodest clothing.

He sat on the bed beside her and thrust a glass holding an inch of amber liquid toward her.
“Drink this,” he said, and she wanted to do it, felt an inexplicable urge to please him in spite of the fact that she didn’t know him, didn’t know what he was offering her.

“
It’s brandy,” he said when she didn’t respond.

Brandy!
She’d never had alcohol before, but his dark gaze compelled her. Her eyes unable to leave his, she sipped, choked on the fiery beverage.

“
A little more,” he encouraged gently.

Unable to resist, she drank again.

“That’s good,” he said. “One more.”

And she obeyed as if from long-accustomed habit, as if she knew this person with the wrong name and eyes.

“Better now?”

She wasn
’t, but she nodded anyway.

Mama had been right about alcohol. She must be drunk. She yearned to lay her head on this strange man
’s solid shoulder and spill her confusion, as though the very strength she feared in him could help her.