The Glimpsing (32 page)

“Well, what would you think?”

“I’d probably think it was all coincidental.”

Portia gave a capitulating nod.
 
“I know it’s hard to believe.
 
It’s probably something only I will ever understand.
 
But, to me, it makes perfect sense: the woman made Collin murder Susanna, because the night I came to his
apartment, that
was exactly what he did to me.”

“Portia, don’t you think this is all just a bit—”

“Superstitious?”
 
She shrugged.
 
“Maybe.
 
But the same thing happened when I gave the painting to Thomas McCain.”

Gabrielle started.
 
“Thomas McCain.
 
You gave it to him as well?”

“Yes.”

“Well, when?”

“I don’t know, maybe a few days after I discovered he was having an affair with Holly Grace.”

“You never told me that.”

“No, I didn’t,” Portia said, and then became silent.

Gabrielle blinked away and began staring around dumbfounded.
 
She mused aloud, “That’s why Thomas killed Holly… because you gave him the painting.
 
She made him do it.”

“So,” Portia said with an almost gloating smile. “You do believe me after all.”

Gabrielle looked at her in amazement.
 
But then she was struck by another, more dreadful realization.
 
She suddenly felt she knew why so many strange things had been happening to both Jack and
herself
, why he’d been having such bizarre dreams and hallucinations, and why she’d been so mercilessly harassed by the premonition.
 
“Portia, can I ask you something?”

“Of course, dear.”

“Did you ever give Jack that painting?”

“Jack?”
 
Her voice reflected a degree of consternation.
 
“No.
 
No, absolutely not.”

“No?”

“No, why would I?”

“Because he’d been unfaithful to you, just like Collin and Thomas.”

“Yes, but I didn’t know that until today, until you told me about the affair.”

“Yes, that’s true,” Gabrielle said nodding to
herself
.
 
She paused, and then blinked back to Portia.
 
“But would you have?”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean if you had known that Jack and I were having an affair?
 
Would you have given him the painting?”

Portia shook her head, speaking solemnly.
 
“No.
 
I wouldn’t have.”

“Why not?”

Portia looked almost hurt by the question.
 
“Because that would also have put you in
harms
way.
 
And I care about you far too much to let something like that happen.”

Gabrielle smiled softly, touched.
 
“I’m sorry.
 
I didn’t mean to accuse you.”

“It’s okay.
 
I can understand your concern.”

“Then… then what do you think happened to Jack?
 
I mean really.”

“This may surprise you, given all the odd things I’ve been telling you, but I actually believe the police on this one.
 
I think Thomas McCain entered Jack’s house, and murdered him.”

“But why would Thomas do such a thing?
 
He didn’t even know Jack.”

“No, but Thomas was an obsessively jealous man.
 
He may have caught wind that Jack and I had dated and, in his madness, decided to kill him as well.”
 
Portia seemed to sadden.
 
“And I also think…”

“What?”

Portia sighed.
 
“Well, I just get the feeling that I’m next.”

“Next?”

“Yes.
 
That Thomas is going to come here and kill me.”

“But why would he do that?”

“Justice, I suppose.
 
I mean I’m to blame for all of this; it was me who gave Thomas the painting.
 
I began his killing spree.
 
And I just can’t help thinking that it’s going to backfire.”
 
Portia turned to Gabrielle, visibly shaken.
 
“He’s still out there, Gabrielle, still killing, still insane.
 
And he’s going to come for me soon.
 
I know it.
 
I can feel it all around me.
 
He’s going to come.
 
Because what happened to Holly and Jack is
all my
fault.”

“Then you can’t stay here, Portia.
 
You have to leave.”

“Where am I going to go, Gabrielle?”

“You can come with me.”

“To your house?”

“To Brazil.”

Portia frowned.
 
“No, I… I couldn’t… that would be—”

“Why not?
 
You don’t have to stay very long if you don’t want to.
 
Just a few months or so, at least until things settle down here.”

Portia hesitated, stared off.
 
“I…”

“It’s not safe here,” Gabrielle pleaded.
 
“You need to leave.
 
If something was to happen to you…”
 
She grimaced, shaking her head as if to banish the thought.
 
“Portia please, come with me.”

Portia looked at her for several moments,
then
her head slowly went into a nod.
 
“Okay.
 
Okay, I’ll do it.
 
I’ll come with you.”

Gabrielle reached forward and hugged her warmly.
 
“Wonderful.
 
We’ll start all over, Portia.
 
Me and you.
 
Together.”

“A new beginning,” Portia said, squeezing her firmly.

“Yes,” Gabrielle agreed.
 
“A new beginning.”

They continued their warm embrace and then parted.

“You’ve got to get packed,” Gabrielle said.

“Oh, I’ll never be able to get all of that done by Tuesday morning.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

Portia brightened.
 
“Well, I am in need of a new wardrobe.
 
How about when we get to Brazil, you help me fill one out.”

“Now you’re talking.”

They chuckled at one another,
then
Portia stood up.
 
“Want to get something to eat?”

“Sure,” Gabrielle replied, standing up as well.
 
“Oh yes, I don’t mean to drudge this all up again, but I was wondering about something you told me earlier.”

“Okay.”

“You said that during your suicide attempt, you’d lost so much blood that you blacked out.”

“Yes.”

“Well, I was just wondering, who found you?”

“Found me?”

“Yes, I mean, who saved you?”

Portia stared.
 
“I’m not sure what you’re asking.
 
No one saved me.”

“Portia, you had slit your wrists, and passed out on the floor.
 
You couldn’t possibly have saved yourself.
 
That means someone else had to.
 
I’m just asking who that was.”

Portia frowned, very peculiarly.
 
It was as if this was the first time the question had even entered her mind.
 
Finally, seemingly in frustration, she shook her head and waved a hand dismissively.
 
“No one found me.
 
I just woke up.”

“In a hospital?”

“No,” Portia said with detectable irritation.
“In my bedroom.
 
I was still lying in my own blood.”

“But Portia that doesn’t make sense.
 
What did you do after you woke up?”

“I took a shower.”

“A shower?”

“Yes, I was an absolute mess.
 
I took a shower, changed clothes, and then started mopping up.”

Gabrielle was incredulous.
 
“Portia, people don’t just slit their wrists, pass out on the floor, and then get up and take a shower.
 
You would have needed hospitalization, probably a blood transfusion.
 
Without it, you would have died.”

“You don’t believe it happened?”

“Of course, I believe it happened.
 
I’m just trying to make sense of it all.
 
You never saw a doctor?”

“No.”

“Never had your wounds bandaged?”

“No.
 
I told you what happened, Gabrielle.
 
There’s no sense going over it again and again.”

Gabrielle went silent, troubled but thinking it best to drop the matter and not risk offending Portia.
 
Then Portia said something that made her skin crawl.
 
“Maybe no one had to save me, Gabrielle, because maybe there was nothing to save.
 
Maybe I died right there on the floor.”
 
She let her eyes drift up.
 
“And who knows, maybe I’m still dead.”

Gabrielle stared, watching bitterly as Portia’s lips stretched into a smile so unsettling that she was forced to look away.

“Come on, I’ll show you where it happened,” Portia said.

“What?” Gabrielle blurted, as if caught off guard.

“Maybe seeing where it happened will help you understand.”

“It happened here, in this house?”

“Yes, just upstairs.” She paused.
 
“In my bedroom.”

Gabrielle turned and glanced toward a lengthy white staircase to her right.
 
When she looked back, Portia had stood and was extending her hand.
 
“Come.
 
I want you to see it.”

“I don’t think… we should, Portia.
 
It’s…”
 
She shook her head violently.
 
“Not necessary.
 
I believe you.
 
I’m sorry.”

“No, but you have to come, Gabrielle.”

“Why?
 
I thought your bedroom was off limits to everyone.”

“It is, but we already agreed.”

“What?” Gabrielle asked, bewildered.

“No more secrets.”

Jack had watched as the darkness—which had covered him for innumerable hours—gradually peeled away, revealing first a barely visible ceiling, and then Portia’s seemingly ominous form from the waist up.
 
Seconds later, he found himself being hung inside what he, at first, believed was an extremely small, deeply shadowed room.
 
Portia had stepped back, folded her arms beneath her breasts, and then gazed at him warmly.
 
She issued a satisfied sigh, and then walked away, disappearing through a door on his right.

He watched her go, peering beyond the door into the room outside.
 
Almost immediately he sensed a certain familiarity with the objects he saw there: a vanity with a great oval mirror, the half portion of a large black bed, the hardwood floor.
 
A few moments later, he realized why.
 
He had been here once before.
 
This was Portia’s bedroom.

He’d then cut his eyes directly ahead, and understood that the small room he believed he was in was actually Portia’s closet, the very closet whose door had once swung open and given him a strange glimpse of Rose.
 
There were no clothes inside; no shoes, no racks, not even a shelf.
 
It was large and spacious, but completely barren.

Jack had spent his first few days in utter denial that any of this was real.
 
A conscious entombment inside a painting was impossibly absurd.
 
This had to be a preposterous, grossly demented dream of some sort.
 
But as he watched an entire night pass, then another day, all the while seeing nothing more than the dark womb of the closet and the bedroom beyond the door, he finally succumbed to the truth.

He had broken then, crying out continually in deep,
soulish
wailings.
 
He would not stop doing so for the next three days.

Resigning himself to his fate, he could do nothing more than peer into the bedroom, watching Portia.
 
He gazed on her night after night as she slept, her face looking falsely
angelic,
her form bathed in pale blue star light, and spied her every morning, watching dismally as she sat up in bed with a stretch and a yawn.

Most of the time, however, she wasn’t even in the bedroom.
 
 
Most of the time there was nothing.
 
No movement.
 
No sound.
 
 
Just the crushing weight of silence, the barren
hollow of the closet, and the restless ache of utter loneliness.
 
It was the simplest, yet most exquisite form of torture he could imagine.
 
The closet was a place of true torment, a living hell where minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, he was harassed by an existence wherein he could not sleep, or dream, or even
close
his eyes.

Strangely, Portia never so much as acknowledged his
presence,
although there were many days he wished she would.
 
She merely carried on with her day to day activities as if he didn’t exist.
 
In fact, she was so incredibly
stoic
about his presence that during the second week of his imprisonment, he had actually begun to wonder if she really knew he was there at all.
 
That suspicion quickly
changed,
however, when on one evening, Portia arose from her vanity, entered the closet, and brought him out.
 
She had taken him into the bedroom, propped him up on something, and then sat herself in a chair directly opposite him.
 
Her face was misted with anger, and when she spoke, she did so with a cruel edge.

At first he hadn’t paid attention to a word she’d said.
 
He was too busy gaping out into Portia’s bedroom.
 
Seeing something different, something fresh and new, made him feel as if he’d awakened from the death.

When he finally had begun to listen to Portia, he realized that she was thoroughly engaged in a tale about a relationship she’d had with a man named Collin Freely.
 
She told of her discovery of his infidelity with a woman named Susanna, the tremendous pain it had caused her, and how it led her to a very bloody and disturbing suicide attempt.
 
That fact had surprised Jack—he could hardly envision Portia doing such a thing—but he was more interested in the way she was telling the story.
 
She kept mentioning Collin by name, over and over, as if she was talking to him face to face.

Collin’s story was followed by a second, this one about Thomas McCain.
 
Just as with Collin, Portia traced the arc of her relationship with Thomas, beginning with their acquaintance at a New Year’s Eve party, up through their rocky romance, and finally down to Thomas’s own instance of infidelity with a youthful wild child named Holly Grace.
 
Once more she did so as if talking directly to Thomas, even chiding the man for being foolish enough to try to sleep with Rose.

When Jack heard that Thomas had slept with Rose it suddenly became clear why it seemed like Portia had been talking directly to Collin and Thomas.
 
She was talking to them.
 
They were here as well, their souls entombed just as his was.
 
They too had been seduced by Rose.
 
They, too, were sharing his same, unimaginable fate.

As he was thinking this, he suddenly heard Portia loudly call his name.
 
 
He snapped his attention back to her, and was stunned to see her glowering at him with those blazing blue eyes.
 
It was clear.
 
She could see him, after all.

Portia had began to ridicule him for the way he had so stupidly believed the painting was actually a birthday gift.
 
She also admitted, not only to knowing about his affair with
Gabrielle long before she had arrived at his house that night, but also to the fact that when she asked if he would like some company, she knew Gabrielle had to still be inside, because why would a lascivious bastard, like himself, ever refuse such an opportunity.

Portia had continued mocking him for several minutes more, then, seeming to have gotten it out of her
system,
she casually took them back to the closet, hung them up, and departed the bedroom.

That had been just yesterday.

Today, Portia had arisen seemingly a little later than usual.
 
She quickly disappeared.
 
About an hour later, he could hear her mulling around in another room down the hall.
 
She soon returned and stood in front of the vanity, where she spent no less than thirty minutes trying on four different dresses, apparently in an effort to determine which would best suit the day ahead.
 
Who gives a damn, Jack had barked at her, issuing a mock cheer when she had finally decided on the white one.

She had sat at the vanity then, picking up a brush and sending it through that lengthy mane of blonde hair.
 
As had been the case since he’d gotten there, she had the odd chore of having to work around a black object protruding from the vanity’s surface.
 
He wasn’t certain what it was, not given the distance, but it looked like a knob or a hilt of some sort, possibly that of a knife.
 
She had grazed it with her elbow twice as she applied ruby red lipstick, but as usual she seemed unmindful of its presence.

Since then he had not seen her.
 
Only once (as best he could tell somewhere around 2:00pm) did she stop back in, grabbing a bracelet from the vanity before racing away.

But now he could hear them, that distant but familiar tapping of her heels as she ascended the staircase; their rhythmic knocking as she descended down the hallway.
 
This time, however, he noticed something else.
 
He listened closer… and balked when he realized that another set of footsteps was following along.
 
They came to a stop just outside.
 
 
Portia was once more about to enter her bedroom, but for some inexplicable reason, she was not going to do so alone.