The Glimpsing (38 page)

Janice gazed up at Portia, and then just as slowly, just as methodically, also stood to her feet.
 
She looked Portia in the eye.
 
“Jack Parke is missing, Portia.
 
And I believe you and that painting have something to do with it.
 
So, if I haven’t been clear to this point, allow me to be so now: I’m not leaving this house until I see that painting.”

Portia’s face seemed to drain of all emotion.
 
And then without a single word, she stepped past Janice and slowly headed to the staircase.
 
She stepped onto the landing, put a hand on the rail, and then looked back at Janice.
 
“You want to know if Jack is in my
painting?
 
Fine.
 
It’s right this way.
 
Upstairs.
 
In my bedroom.”

Janice watched as Portia began ascending the staircase, a cold, monotonous tapping of her heels signaling every step.
 
Janice made her way over to the landing.
 
She stepped onto it,
then
peered up the staircase.
 
Portia was still moving away, her form now marred in a surprising amount of shadow.
 
Janice slowly began up the staircase herself, but about a third of the way up she felt the descent of a very dark and dramatic presence.
 
It was thick enough, real enough, to make her freeze.

She peered up the staircase once more.
 
Portia was standing at the top gazing down on her, an awful smile seeming to slit her face from ear to ear.
 
It made Janice shudder; she rushed a hand to her chest. Portia then made a slow, almost eerie turn, and disappeared down the hallway.

Janice stood there frozen, suddenly fearful of proceeding.
 
She turned slightly and looked back to the landing.
 
The urge to leave was overwhelming, but she could not do
so.
 
All of this was anticipated, she reminded herself.
 
Opening Pandora’s Box was sure to bring forth untold horrors, but she had to stay strong.

She peered back up the staircase.
 
She forced a foot up another step, then another and another, until they were moving by themselves again.

Just two steps from the top, feeling another rush of something dark and disturbing, she stopped again.
 
She leaned forward just enough to see down the hallway.
 
It was long, plush, and surprisingly dim.
 
Portia was standing before a large door, staring up at it as if it were a giant.
 
Janice grimaced, fighting a gut reaction to back away.
 
She then cautiously crept up the remaining stairs.

Portia slowly wheeled her head around, peering at Janice from down the hall.
 
“It’s in here, Janice.
 
In my bedroom.
 
Just beyond this door.”
She paused, then, turning back to the door, whispered hauntingly.
 
“I can’t wait for you to see it.”

Now the darkness was almost palpable.
 
It filled the hallway with a haze so black that Portia’s form seemed to darken even further.
 
A chill knifed through Janice’s body.

“Come,” Portia urged, extending her hand.
 
“It’s just inside.”

Janice’s mouth moved but nothing came out at first.
 
“I… I can’t… I shouldn’t have…”
 
She couldn’t finish.

“What’s wrong, Janice,” Portia said with an icy calm.
 
“Don’t you want to see?”

Janice began shaking her head nervously.
 
“No,” Janice said, her voice wavering slightly.
 
“I don’t.
 
I need to leave.”

“But you have to.
 
You have to see, Janice—or else you’ll always wonder.”

“No,” Janice said breathlessly.
 
“I won’t wonder.”

“I think you will, Janice.
 
I think you’ll always wonder.
 
And then you’ll come back.
 
You won’t stop until you see it.”
 
Portia turned her head back to the door.
 
“So now I’m going to show you.”

In the distance, Janice watched as Portia slowly reached forward, grabbed the door knob, and pushed the door open.
 
A violent shudder
 
passed
through Janice as she watched Portia’s form wash over in an eerie red tint.

Portia turned.
 
“This way, Janice.
 
It’s just inside.”

Janice impulsively turned and gazed back down the staircase, barely containing her urge to flee.
 
Then she heard what sounded like a hard and fast knocking sound.
 
Looking up, she was startled to see Portia marching furiously down the hallway.
 
Before Janice could react, Portia reached out, grabbed her wrist, and with striking force, jerked her forward.
 
Janice’s knees struck the ground, forcing her to cry out softly.
 
Then, before she knew it, she was on her backside, Portia now dragging her with great ease down the hallway, back toward the bedroom.

Janice tried to resist, kicking wildly with her feet, trying to dig the soles of her shoes into the floor to slow her progress.
 
“Please!” she gasped.
 
“Please!”
 
But Portia’s grip only tightened, becoming so painful that Janice’s protests became a loud, malformed wail.

Portia brought her to a stop just outside the bedroom doorway.
 
She let go of her wrist, and Janice immediately cradled it with her other hand.
 
Later she would discover three of its bones had been broken.

“Turn around, Janice.”

But Janice could only look up at Portia in horror, her tear-stained eyes silently pleading for mercy.

“Turn around,” Portia repeated.
 
“It’s there, on the chair.”

Janice left her back to the bedroom, refusing to look inside.
 
She sobbed miserably.
 
“Please, don’t hurt me.”

“You came here to see the painting,” Portia sneered.
 
“Now turn around and look at it!”

Janice hesitated, then, fearing reprisal, slowly and very anxiously turned her head around.
 
What she saw sent her eyes bulging and her mouth flying wide open.
 
She quickly scurried out of the doorway, pinning herself against a wall.
 
There her face seemed to disintegrate, strained beyond recognition with tears.

Portia stepped forward, knelt, and then, with a voice suddenly devoid of its former harshness, she said:
 
“Go home, Janice.
 
Go—home.
 
Don’t say a word about this to anyone… and don’t ever come back here again.”

Janice would not.
 
She struggled to her feet and hurried down the hallway, still clutching her shattered wrist.
 
Twice she looked over her shoulder to make sure Portia was not following.

Portia stood there listening as Janice frantically descended the staircase.
 
When she was certain the woman had exited the house, she turned back and stared into the bedroom, which was a gory marvel so brightly bathed with Gabrielle’s blood that Portia felt like kneeling in awe.

She slowly made her way inside, moving toward the rear window.
 
From the doorway, it looked as if she were passing into a giant heart.
 
The vanity’s chair had been turned around, and Portia’s formerly white dress lay strewn over its back, stained beyond recognition.
 
In the chair itself, perched perfectly upright, was the painting.

Arriving at the window, she reached a hand up and parted the curtains.
 
She stared through them, spying Janice’s car just as it was screeching forward.
 
The woman was trying to wheel around the cul-de-sac, but was so panicked that she drove too fast.
 
She rammed a tire over the curb, making the car wobble wildly,
then
almost struck a mailbox before finally getting the car back onto the street.

As Janice sped off into the distance, Portia became melancholy.
 
“I’m going to miss you, Janice,” she whispered somberly, then pulled her hand away, and let the curtains drift shut.

It was another two weeks before things began to take on a sense of normalcy again.
 
News of Jack Parke’s disappearance slowly made its way out of the headlines, as did the equally mysterious vanishing of rising actress Gabrielle Saltair.
 
The city-wide manhunt for Thomas McCain, Jack’s supposed murderer, ended without his discovery, and Janice, badly shaken by her encounter with Portia, was hastily preparing to relocate to her home state of North Carolina.
 
By now even Portia’s bedroom had been sanitized of all traces of the evil that had occurred there, and once more brandished its matchless splendor.

Tonight, it was unseasonably cool.
 
Portia had closed the bedroom window but the curtains were parted, giving view to a black and starry sky.
 
She was now sitting at the vanity, her face brilliantly illuminated by its array of lights.
 
She wore a strapless black dress that showcased her goddess white shoulders and long legs.
 
She was spreading rouge to her face, preparing to see a Broadway show with friends from out of town.

Jack watched sullenly from the closet.
 
Looking at her reflection in the vanity mirror, he could not help but marvel at how beautiful she was.
 
Everything about her suggested gentleness, innocence; she seemed almost incapable of anything immoral.
 
But then he looked away and gazed into the dim depths of the closet, at the corpse postured so awkwardly there, and saw the evidence of just how vile and vicious a monster she really was.

The repugnant horror of Portia’s villainy still haunted him to this day.
 
Each time he peered out the closet door, he could still see the phantom of Gabrielle stumbling back into view, a blood-stained hand pressed to her ribcage; could hear the crash of her hand colliding with the vanity’s mirror, and feel his crushing grief as she fell to the floor.
 
Never would he forget Portia standing over
her, that
soiled blade in hand.
 
Never would he forget Portia rolling her onto her back, and straddling her immobilized body.
 
And never, no never, would he ever forget Portia swinging the stiletto, the bloody eruption that followed, and the peculiar way it splattered Portia’s white dress.

And yet in some ways, what followed that moment was much worse.

He had spent several mournful hours in the darkness of the closet.
 
When Portia finally opened the door, he was immediately accosted by the sight of the woman backing her way
in,
dragging Gabrielle’s brutalized body in tow.
 
Gabrielle’s dress was tattered and badly stained.
 
Deep wounds, so numerous they seemed uncountable, scarred every inch of her flesh.
 
The stiletto, still moist with blood, had been laid on her belly.
 
She had already gone stiff with rigor mortis; her left arm jutted weirdly up, as if going for a handshake.
 
 
The worst part of it was her eyes.
 
They had gone milky white in death, and were cutting so severely into the corners that Jack found himself looking away.

Portia had positioned Gabrielle’s body against the wall opposite him.
 
She had tried to sit it up straight, but being too stiff, it kept leaning over.
 
She eventually let it do so, leaving him a disturbing bird’s eye view of Gabrielle’s corpse slumped into a corner, those cloudy eyes cutting in a stiff diagonal toward the floor.
 
The stiletto was left teetering on Gabrielle’s thigh.

Portia had then left the closet and gone to take a shower.
 
He could remember the eerie silence that followed her departure.
 
Alone with the corpse, he could peer at it only briefly before it became too much to bear.
 
He tried to find relief by looking out into the bedroom, but even then, the corpse played in the periphery of his vision.

It quickly became clear to him why Portia kept the closet empty.
 
It was actually a temporary holding place for her victims.
 
But not only that, it was also a torture chamber, a place where he, being unable to turn away, would be forced to gaze on the mutilated corpse of his lover.
 
And that was exactly what Jack did, day after day, hour after hour, minute after mind-numbing minute.
 
The only thing that saved him, the only thing that got him through, was the knowledge that sooner or later Portia would have to remove the corpse and dispose of it elsewhere.

However, after more than five days in the presence of the corpse, he finally realized Portia’s depraved plan.
 
She not only wanted him to see the corpse, she wanted him to see it rot.

It was an evil too great to comprehend.
 
Soon Gabrielle’s skin would become leathery and sag.
 
Her cheeks would grow sunken, and her body increasingly skeletal.
 
A great stench would fill the closet, giving rise to the flies, and their maggots.
 
And slowly, gradually, what was left of her once lovely face would be ground away, until what gazed at him from the back of the closet was little more than the hollowed eyes of a skull.

In the days that followed, however, Portia’s plan did not unfold as she had intended.
 
While she busied herself with the laborious task of sanitizing the bedroom of Gabrielle’s blood, a small wonder was taking place within the closet.
 
Even in death, Gabrielle was proving herself special, for after more than a full week there, her body showed no signs of decay.
 
And although continually seeing her slumped so awkwardly in the corner, those milky eyes boring toward the floor, scarred him in a way that he could never fully express, he still drew some comfort in knowing that for once Portia was
not having her way.
 
Daily she had been entering the closet to check Gabrielle’s condition.
 
And daily she’d been turned away, clearly frustrated at the lack of progress.

But earlier today, just as the light in the closet was fading with dusk, Jack had noticed something that made him sick with misery.
 
It was a cascade of bluing near Gabrielle’s temple.
 
It was finally happening, he then realized.
 
She was beginning to turn.

Jack turned his gaze back to Portia, who was now drawing on eyeliner.
 
He wanted to despise her, wanted to hate her with every ounce of his being, but he could not, because he simply had not the strength.
 
The very thought of the horrors he was about to endure left him weak and defeated.
 
Portia had broken him.
 
She had won once more.

Just then he was startled by a bulky rattle, like an object falling to the floor.
 
He snapped his eyes back inside the closet, automatically gazing at Gabrielle’s corpse, from which the sound seemed to come.
 
The dark shadows of the closet made it look even more ghastly than usual, in particular those discomfortingly milky eyes, but nothing seemed unusual.
 
Or did it?
 
The stiletto, he realized, had fallen to the floor.

That was odd.
 
There was no movement of air in the closet, no vibration of any sort that could have made the knife fall—at least that he could sense.
 
Noticing movement, he shifted his gaze back out to the bedroom.
 
Portia was approaching. Apparently she’d heard the noise as well.

She entered the closet, moving immediately to the corpse.
 
She peered down, seemed to search for something… and then found what she was looking for.
 
She kneeled and picked up the stiletto.
 
She then cast her eyes on the corpse.

“You didn’t do that, did you?” she chimed playfully,
then
began to stand.
 
But almost immediately she stopped.
 
Something else seemed to have caught her attention.

She slowly brought the stiletto up, slipped it beneath a lock of Gabrielle’s hair,
then
lifted.
 
Portia had noticed it too, it seemed, the deep blue discoloration at Gabrielle’s temple.
 
She smiled, moving the tip of the stiletto along the length of the bruise.
 
She then turned and looked up over her shoulder at Jack.
 
“She’s finally turning,” she said, then turned back.

At that, Jack felt a hot flash of anger—but that quickly turned to outraged alarm when he saw Portia raising the stiletto high into the air.
 
He watched distressed as she swung it in the corpse’s direction.
 
It struck
solidly,
precisely where he could not be certain since Portia’s body was shielding his view.

“Let’s see it you can move that,” Portia said.
 
She then stood to her feet and departed the closet, taking a moment to cast Jack a wink as she passed.

When he looked back to the corpse, he was relieved to see that Portia had not actually stabbed it, but had plunged the stiletto into the floor nearby.
 
It had sunk there down to the hilt, looking just as stiff and immovable as it once had in the vanity.

Then he noticed something else as well, something that sent a chill roaring through his being.
 
It was the corpse’s milky eyes.
 
They now seemed to be gazing straight ahead.

Again Jack seethed with anger.
 
This was Portia’s doing, he thought, a pernicious joke no doubt intended to frighten him.

He shot a hot gaze into the bedroom, expecting to see her whirled around at the vanity, grinning sickly.
 
But Portia was sitting there quietly, her left hand extending toward a brush.
 
She took hold of it and began running it through her hair… completely oblivious.

He turned back to the corpse, but immediately regretted doing so.
 
He was startled again, once more by something in the corpse’s eyes.
 
Their milky hue, it seemed, had completely disappeared.

He wondered if it was an illusion, the result of the weak light creeping in from the bedroom and the fall of the closet's shadows.
 
Instinctively, he tried to turn his head in an attempt to change the angle of his eyes, thinking that in doing so the
milkiness
might return.
 
He could not.
 
Instead, he brought all of his focus on the corpse’s eyes, straining hard to see if there was even the slightest hint of their former hue.
 
After gazing for almost a full minute, he still saw nothing.
 
He was about to give up and write the whole matter off as just another byproduct of the corpse’s impending decay when he saw something that made him convulse with fear.

The corpse actually blinked.

It happened so quickly, and shocked him so badly, that he could have sworn that a loud, harsh sound had accompanied the movement.

Almost in a plea for help, he shot his gaze back to Portia.
 
But she was still tending to herself, now smoothing on lipstick, as oblivious as ever to everything taking place in the closet.

Slowly, very fearfully, he brought his gaze back to the corpse.
 
For a moment nothing happened; it merely sat there slumped into the corner, its eyes gazing out deadpan into the space of the closet… and then, with a fluidity that struck him as both beautiful and strangely eerie, the corpse actually leaned itself out of the corner and sat up straight.

Jack cried out wildly, but the sound was inaudible.
 
He was suddenly convinced that his time with the corpse had taken its toll, that the thing now moving against the rear wall was not some trick of Portia’s, but the spume of his own deteriorating psyche.

Then he went stark still, for he now realized that the corpse was peering up at him.

Aghast, he peered back for several unbearable seconds.
 
Then he saw one of the strangest things he’d ever witnessed: the corpse’s mouth slowly became a grin.
 
“Don’t be afraid,” it said in a whisper.