The Atheist's Daughter (5 page)

A black thought intruded:
You don’t belong here.

Where did that come from?
she wondered.

Pixies and fairies were harmless creatures. Smurfs were just as imaginary and just as sweet. There wasn’t any reason to fear them or their ilk.

Nonetheless, the meadow darkened around her, growing less inviting. Although its creator clearly meant for the scene to appear inviting and friendly, it was born out of artifice. Its very existence was as calculated as the numbers in a banker’s ledger. Nothing true or honest would be found in this place.

The thought reappeared:
You don’t belong here.

Well,
Kristin thought,
where else can I go?

Beyond the roof of the cottage were the woods. A shadow crouched behind the trees. Avoiding the fingers of sunshine streaking the meadow, the black shade crept from tree to tree, moving closer to the cottage.

Closer to me.

She looked away in fright, felt foolish about it, and forced herself to turn back.

There was nothing there.

For the first time, she felt something wet where the needles of grass nestled between her feet. Wiggling her toes, things felt strangely sticky. She wiped a forefinger against the ground, the grass smearing as she touched it. When she looked at her finger, it carried a stripe of green across its tip.

“What
is
this?” She rubbed her thumb over the stripe of green. The color coated the thumb’s pad. She lifted her discolored fingers to her nose.

She liked the odor. She’d lived with it her entire life.

“Linseed oil is why my paints smell the way they do,” Becky told her once. “Once the oil evaporates, the paint dries and hardens.”

There was paint on her finger. Cinnaber Green, to be exact. One of the warmer shades of green, according to her mother.

No wonder things didn’t seem real here. They
weren’t
real. She was standing in the middle of an imaginary setting.

“It’s a landscape,” she said. “‘Afternoon at Holyford Creek’. One of Mom’s paintings!”

The cottage and its rock bridge had never existed in real life. Becky Faraday created it from scratch.

“People love chocolate box art,” she said, the day she started painting it, and she’d been proven right. Displayed in the gallery’s front window, this particular creation was red-tagged for an eager buyer before her latest show had officially opened.

“It’s a dream.” Kristin felt her stomach tighten. For the most part, her nights were blissfully empty of memories. 

She
hated
dreams.

For the first time, she noticed she was wearing a pair of well-worn jeans and a long-sleeved purple top. Protruding from the shirt’s left breast pocket was a black-handled hog bristle paint brush. She pulled it from its pouch.

“A Berkeley Number Seven,” Becky’s voice said from out of nowhere. “Special order and not exactly cheap.”

In front of her was her mother’s easel. A rectangle of brown hardboard sat at the easel’s center mast.

What was I wearing at the start of the dream?
Kristin wondered.
Was the easel here the entire time?

Why didn’t she know?

None of this was familiar to her. It was only one more reason to hate dreams: The Dream Master’s world played by its own set of rules. The rules weren’t fair. Things popped in and out of existence and she had no control over any of it.

She didn’t even get to pick where she was. Holyford Creek? It was her mother’s worst painting. If she stayed here any longer, she’d get sick from its sugar-sweet artificiality.

“You couldn’t stick me in a Davidson print, instead?” she asked the Dream Master.

No answer.

Somehow, she knew she’d never again get an answer to any of the questions in her dreams. She no longer expected one. But one time, years ago, someone
had
responded to her. In her first dream – the first one she remembered, anyway – she was standing barefoot on a beach.

“What are you doing here?” she asked the only other person to be seen, a round-bellied, golden-haired child.

“Playing,” the girl told her.

Around them, gray sand was colored with empty cans and bits of debris. The tiny blonde lifted a handful of sand over her head and released it. For a second, the grains formed the image of a seagull before scattering into the wind.

Kristin was only a girl herself, then. “Can I play, too?”

“Uh-huh,” said the girl. “Only I get to play.”

Suddenly, the stranger reached over and pinched her arm.
Hard.

Crying out, she moved away from this mean creature. “What’s your name?” she demanded.

“The Dream Master,” the little girl said. Giggling, she vanished.

When Kristin woke up, her arm was bruised.

Still playing with me, aren’t you?

She tried to drop the paintbrush but her fist remained resolutely closed. Trying to walk, her feet refused to move. From the waist down, she felt frozen.

Crap.

Atop the easel’s fold-out holder was a painter’s palette. Feeling compelled to act, she held it as she’d seen her mother do, a thousand times before.

Two fresh circles of paint lay on the palette’s melamine surface. The first of the circles was deep red in color. The second oil was stark white and shaped as perfectly as a full moon.

She pushed the brush’s bristles into the white paint then carried its color over to the red. Mushing them together, she created a sloppy oblong of fleshy pink paint.

Not knowing why, she slapped her brush against the hardboard. Flecks of paint splashed over her clothing.

She paused, considering what she’d done. She nibbled at the brush’s nub.

“I like it,” Susannah Guitierrez whispered in her ear.

Shifting her gaze, Kristin didn’t see Susannah or anyone else. Taking her brush, she ground it into the pink oblong. Suddenly angry –
Let me wake up!
– she stabbed at the hardboard. Drops of paint flew in the air, spattering her face and neck.

Touching a finger to one of the globules, it felt as wet as water. Its color seeped beneath the tip of her fingernail, staining it. The paint wasn’t pink as she expected. Under the white edge of her nail, it was a deep, dark red.

The color of blood.

A rasping noise scraped from the sky overhead. The sound grew, metal grinding over metal, becoming so loud and so harsh she cupped her hands over her ears.

Above her, the sky was flawless except for two cotton-white clouds. The upper atmosphere was every bit as perfect as the rest of Holyford Creek.

Abruptly, the rasping noise ended.

“I like it.” This time, the voice came from behind her. Kristin whirled around, finding her mirror-image twin staring back at her.

A lavender bed sheet wrapped around her body, the Kristin-clone smiled. Her teeth were uneven and yellowed from too many years of smoking.

It was the mouth of an older woman. It was Susannah’s mouth.

“I like it,” the clone repeated, each word spoken in her neighbor’s voice.

Kristin caught her breath. Ignoring her twin, she focused on the painting. The rectangle of hardwood had lost the splashes of pink she’d pressed upon it. It waited in front of her, so shiny and white she almost expected to see her reflection in it.

From somewhere in the Cerulean Blue sky, metal ground against metal again. Trying to ignore the building noise, she reached out to touch her painting.

Offering almost no resistance, the hardwood surface folded under the pressure of her fingers. It didn’t feel like painted wood at all.

It felt like – plastic.

Something’s wrong here,
she thought.
Something’s very, very wrong.

Overhead, the sky shrieked down at her.

* * *

“What is it, honey?”

Kristin awoke to find her mother leaning over her bed.

Concerned, Becky said, “You were calling out in your sleep.”

“Bad dream.”

“Monsters? The boogeyman?”

“I’m a few years past the boogeyman, Mom.”

“Sorry.”

“There was this awful noise,” Kristin said. “It kept coming and going. Screeching at me. Then – then I touched some...plastic.”

“Plastic.” Becky straightened up. “Ahhh.” The worry lines on her forehead smoothed away. “It’s past my bedtime.”

“But....”

“Long day tomorrow.” She hit the bedroom light switch and the room returned to darkness. “G’night.”

She closed the door softly behind her.

Kristin kicked at the bed sheet on top of her, shoving it off of the bed. It was lime-green in color, not lavender, but she didn’t want the fabric anywhere near her. Folding upon itself, the sheet crumpled to the floor.

Her mother didn’t understand. How could she? Kristin wasn’t sure she understood, either.

The noise in the dream was unpleasant, yeah, but when she’d thought to cover her ears, it lost its power. The sound hadn’t frightened her.

What
had
scared her was the painter’s board sitting upon her mother’s easel. In dream world logic, its surface transformed into plastic when she wasn’t watching. During its change, the board gained a chemical smell so strong it made her want to gag. Her heart raced when she stretched out a trembling hand to touch its face.

When her fingers pressed the cool, unmarked surface – something inside of it pressed
back
.

What did it mean, anyway? She didn’t know. She only knew that, most times, her dreams came true.

This wasn’t the way the things were supposed to work. She’d read enough books, seen enough television, to know what dreams were like for other people. For them, dreams were pleasant, nightmares were scary, and neither was real.

For that matter, she knew what the world was like for other people. No one ever spoke of seeing a liar’s face melt. No one complained about their own lips fusing together.

She punched at the pillow beneath her head.

What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I be like everyone else?

Why am I such a freak?

Chapter Nine

Birth of a Freak

His hand tightened around the hammer’s grip. “What do you want?”

Standing nearly a foot shorter than the muscular man, the pretty woman brushed a strand of brown hair from her green eyes. “You heard me.”

The man’s powerful shoulders shifted beneath his stained and dirty t-shirt. He frowned, the curve of his lips bringing a hint of menace to his pleasantly-attractive face.

“The sink needs some attention,” Becky Faraday said. “Today, not tomorrow.  It’s leaking.”

“Becks,” the man said, the low growl of his voice softening, “I’m tired. I’ve spent the whole day working on the bookshelf.”

“You did a good job.” Lifting up on her toes, she wrapped an arm around her husband’s neck. She kissed him warmly on the lips. “Fix the faucet.”

Rick Faraday lowered his hammer to his side. “This is supposed to be my day off, you know.”

“Lucky man. You get to spend it with me, instead.”

“Fixing up our fixer-upper.”

“What could be more fun?”

“I could think of a few thousand things,” he said. “Besides, we’re out of plumber’s putty.”

“The hardware store will have more.”

Wearily, he leaned against a sawhorse. Reaching out, he caught his wife at the waist and pulled her onto his lap. “Remind me why we bought this dump.”

Curling one ankle over the other, Becky relaxed against his chest. “It was all we could afford, my dear. Besides, we like it here. Great neighborhood, close to work.”

“You need to quit your job. Seriously. You don’t belong in a bank. You’re an artist.”

“It’s near to your job, too.” She ran her hand through his close-cropped hair. “Plus, the neighborhood is decent and Grove Elementary is only two blocks away. Once she’s old enough, Kristin can walk to school.”

“She’ll need to learn how to crawl first.”

“By then, maybe the kitchen sink will be fixed.” Standing, she tugged on his arm. “Up and at ‘em, Mister Faraday. There’s work to be done.”

Straightening, Rick said, “Did you hear that? The scraping noise?”

“It came from the baby’s room.” Becky’s eyes widened. “Kristin!”

Moving past her husband, she started to run. Rick said, “It’s only a noise, hon.”

Feeling foolish, he followed her.

Entering Kristin’s bedroom, with its paintings of pink hot air balloons drifting across aqua-colored walls, he knew instinctively that Becky had overreacted. Normally level-headed, she turned into an Amazon Warrior when she thought their daughter was threatened.