Cast a Pale Shadow (9 page)

She broke the kiss. "We're free, Nicholas! Now they'll never get us back." The wind whipped the words from her, and they splintered in echoes down the ravine. She stiffened her fingers and slipped them free of his, and they parted.

"Doreen! Doreen?" He realized with the jolt of awakening that he had spoken her name out loud. His heart still thumping in his ears, he pulled himself upright and blinked away the remnants of his dream. God, Doreen! He shuddered with the memory. Why had he dreamed of her after all this time? The sky lightened outside and the hall bustled with early morning activity. He thought a walk and maybe a smoke in the parking lot would dispel his foreboding.

No one could blame him for what happened to Doreen. No one could have stopped her. No one. Nicholas paused in the doorway to look once more at Trissa. No, it would be nothing like Doreen this time. He would not let things get beyond his control. He was older now. But was he wiser?

Over the months he had learned to adjust his gait to the altered state of his foot since the loss of his frostbitten toes, but when he was weary or too absorbed in his thoughts, his limp became pronounced. Tonight, it was aggravated by stiffness from his hours slumped in the chair so that his walk down the hall made a clump and drag sound he was, at first, unaware came from him. When he realized it did, his spirits sagged further.

A cigarette and the walk would not be enough. He was faced with a decision that would require a half a pack, a quart of strong coffee, and some serious pacing. His determination to be with Trissa when she awoke evaporated as the memory of Doreen gnawed at him.

"Crazy is not wrong, only different." Doreen often told him. "They lock us away because we scare the bejeebers out of them," she would declare as she picked at a lock with a hairpin. Doreen had the skill of Houdini, if not the speed. And Nicholas was confident that with practice that would develop. She was only seventeen. "The locks take the place of the inhibitions that keep them bound but that we lack. Open sesame!" The tumbler would turn and the door would fly open and they would be off, hand in hand, down the stairs and free.

Nicholas did not remember his beginnings at Edgewater. It seemed his conscious life had begun the day Doreen found him there. "I can get you out of here, Nicholas. Come with me." She took his hand and they escaped that day for the first time. Lying in the aromatic cedar woods, with glimpses of sparkling, blue Lake Michigan winking at them occasionally through the trees, they discussed life and death and craziness.

"How old are you, Nicholas?"

"Fifteen, I think." Or newborn with your touch, he could have said. Age had no real meaning for him.

"Never follow a statement of fact with a doubt," she said, "Even if you have one. Don't give them the satisfaction. If you think you are fifteen, then you are, no matter how long you have actually lived. Me, I prefer to think I'm seventy-one. A reversal of digits does no one any harm. And it's an age no one else aspires to, I imagine. Unless you're already seventy, that is."

"But why so old?"

"Wisdom. It comes with age. Wisdom is the most important thing in life. Except death. And being seventy-one puts me closer to both of them."

Her dark eyes snapped and sparkled at him. Was it honesty or mockery he saw in their depths?

"Does the word make you nervous?"

"What word?" he asked, dragging his own eyes away from the hypnotic depths of hers, casting them up through the trees, anywhere but down at her.

"Death."

"No. Why should it?"

"Exactly."

There was silence except for the whisper of the wind.

"Fifteen is very young. Wouldn't you rather be eighteen? Or eighty-one?"

"I don't know." Her questions seemed like traps to him, nonsense delivered with such puzzling fervor, that he wished he had the answers she wanted. "I'm having a hard enough time dealing with fifteen, I suppose."

"Oh well," she shrugged, "I was just wondering." She sat up and studied him earnestly. "Have you ever had sex, Nicholas?"

"Yes," he said, his voice sharp and tight. If this was the acid of memory he felt rising in him, he preferred forgetfulness.

"I mean," the look in her eyes made him think she understood the volumes behind his one clipped syllable, "not forced? I should have asked have you ever made love?"

"No."

"You're not afraid to, are you?"

"We can't. Not here."

"Why not? We're crazy. We can do anything we want, and who's to blame us?" Her eyes no longer laughed at him as she drew him closer and taught him to kiss in a way that left him breathless. "It's almost like death if you do it right."

"Kissing?" His voice embarrassed him by cracking on the word.

"No, sex.
Petit mort,
they call it. Little death. That's why I'm not afraid of it. Death, I mean."

"I don't understand."

"I'll try to show you. But it doesn't always happen. Not with me, anyway. It requires a special magic. We might have it, we might not."

They didn't find it that time, the first, or any of the other times when they escaped the confines of Edgewater to seek the edge of the world. He learned much later that, for all her boldly aggressive passion and pretended knowledge, that first time had been hers as well, not forced. Before Edgewater there had been another place for her, a place with locks not so easily breached, a place where the screams of an eight year old girl -- "emotionally disturbed" she confided in Nicholas, "It's the polite term for crazy" -- were dismissed as tantrums and no one cared to learn their cause. She remembered only the sound of the man's key grating in the lock, the smell of him, Vitalis and old cigarettes, the smothering weight of him, and the pain.

Yet, Doreen had still believed there could be magic. She read to Nicholas about it from books with well-thumbed pages where the hero's eyes smoldered and his experienced touch set passion's blaze in the damsel's most secret places.

Though Nicholas listened attentively and was willing to learn, he found himself as confused by what was said on those pages as what was left unsaid. The hero, always the suave, tender expert, knew what to do and when to do it. While Nicholas, the fumbling, not-quite innocent, had known only mechanics and obedience and to do what he was told or suffer the consequences and to feel the bitter shame that his debasement brought unwanted pleasure along with the pain. He had never known magic, only conclusion and release.

"Slow down. It's not a race," whispered the ever-patient Doreen. "There's supposed to be a certain grace to it once you get the rhythm. You have to learn control. Romance, think romance."

But how could she expect grace from a fifteen year old? How could he achieve control when every hormone in his body screamed against it? How could he think romance when he had the instincts of a rutting animal?

"It's all right. It will take time. To surrender to the magic, you have to get over the past. Who was it that forced you? Who were you with?"

He couldn't tell her. He shouldn't remember. He refused to remember. It was a memory that only came in nightmares. My father. My sister. She'd hate him if she knew. Doreen would feel only disgust and loathing if he told. And he couldn't bear it, for the sad thing was he loved her.

"Love?" Her laugh was like crystal shattering when he made the mistake of saying the word. "You're hallucinating. It happens when you're crazy."

In the end, her patience failed her. She must have despaired of finding her little death with him and escaped to find the real death she may have wanted all along. The winter had closed in on Edgewater, snow and wind buffeting the woods and fields around that gothic bastion, whipping Lake Michigan into icy fury, locking them in more effectively than any bars or keys. And Doreen chafed against her restraints and went a little bit madder. "Danger. It's danger that we need, just a taste, just the edge. The tower! If we could get into the tower!"

The tower was bolted and chained, and he didn't believe she could ever break those locks. He refused to go with her. He was afraid they'd be caught.

They didn't let anyone see her when they took her away, but he had seen. He was the one who saw her first, far below the open tower window, crushed and broken, red and blue against the blinding white of the snow.

Lighting another cigarette with the ember of its dying forerunner, Nicholas sank onto a cold concrete bench in the outdoor smoking area. He wondered if Trissa was awake yet. He'd seen the breakfast carts wheeled off the elevators thirty minutes ago and already some empty trays carried back to them to wait their return to the kitchen.

He had probably lost his opportunity to be with her, to offer a warm hand of reassurance when her eyes opened to another morning on this earth. It was a morning she hadn't wanted to see, wouldn't have seen if he hadn't bought it for her. He wondered if she would thank him for that. Or curse him. Why couldn't just the rescue be enough to free him from Doreen's ghost? But it wouldn't be. He had known that all along. There was still more rescuing to be done. The damsel was still in distress. Since Doreen, he had made himself recognize the signs.

*****

Trissa was not alone when she woke. The rustle of sheets and the creak of the bed next to her as it was readied for an arriving patient had roused her. She had watched in fuzzyheaded silence, trying to let her confusion dissipate with her wakening memory.

"Are you awake, Sweetie? Do you need some help getting up?"

"Yes, please," she said meekly as her efforts to sit up made her head buzz and spin.

"That's okay. Take it slow." The nurse's aid offered her amply padded arm and shoulder to lean on, guiding Trissa off the bed to the bathroom. "Now, don't be shocking yourself by looking in that mirror. It's all bruises; they'll fade. No stitches, no broken bones. From the looks of you, you came off lucky."

Despite the warning, Trissa could not keep her eyes from straying to the mirror when they passed it on their way back to bed. She gasped at the battered waif staring back at her. Her oversized hospital gown gapped at the neck revealing the clear outline of fingers there, her father's fingers. All the panic of last night flooded back, bringing tears and dizziness threatening to swamp her. She clutched tighter to the aid's arm and her knees turned to jelly.

"Whoopsie! I've got you." The capable woman reacted quickly to her unsteadiness and had her swiftly and gently tucked back into bed. "You just rest a bit, Honey. We'll get you some breakfast and take another look at you. We won't let you go until Dr. Edmonds says so. Don't worry. He's one of the best. And, of course, with Moira on duty," she smiled and patted her name tag, "You've got the best of the best looking out for you, too. Meantime, I'll see if I can find that hubby of yours. He was glued to your bedside all night. He's got to be around here someplace."

Her mind still swirling with memory, Trissa did not catch the meaning of her words until she had whirled out the door.
"My hubby?"
she puzzled after her.
"Hubby?"
She was mistaken. She must be thinking of another patient, another room. Yet the word brought back another memory from last night. The doctor shining his light in her eyes, then probing her with questions as he poked and pressed her body.

"Does that hurt?"

"No."

"How about here?"

"Oooh, yes."

"Mm-mmm. Do you feel dizzy or lightheaded?"

"A little."

"Are you married?"

The question was delivered with the same clinical brusqueness as the others, and before she had considered the oddity of its inclusion, she answered it. "No... Huh?"

A nurse had arrived then with a tray of instruments and pulled the curtain tightly around the examining table. The bright lights made her head swim and she closed her eyes against them. "Trissa, the nurse is going to help you get ready, I'll be back in a minute. We'll be finished soon and then you can rest."

She saw his kind smile when she squinted up at him. Yet it did not unpucker the frown on his brow. She moaned a little and slipped out of full consciousness when the nurse shifted her body on the table, draping her with sheets, and lifting her legs into stirrups. She remembered thinking hazily
my back must be broken
.
They're putting me in traction
. Her mind muddled over what that would mean to her so that when the doctor returned she mumbled to him, "What about midterms? How will I ride the bus?"

He gave her his half-faced smile-frown and said "Everything will be all right, Trissa. We'll take good care of you." He disappeared below the drapings but his calm, reassuring voice continued. "You may feel some discomfort. It will be better if you try to relax." She tensed when the cold steel touched her but she felt only brief, gentle pressure and he was finished. "Okay, Mrs. Horton, we're done here." Immediately the nurse set about removing her feet from the stirrups and Trissa sobbed with relief.

"There, there, it's all over now," said the doctor, pulling off his gloves and frowning at her.

"It's not broken then?" she whimpered.

A look of faint shock mingled with his smile-frown, "What?"

"My back? I thought my back was broken."

The doctor chuckled incongruously, "No! Oh, no. You have a concussion that we will have to keep an eye on. You lost consciousness for some time and are still feeling the effects." He never took his eyes off her as he scratched notes on his clipboard chart. "And you are heavily bruised, especially on the thighs, stomach, and lower back. Your face is bruised and scraped as are your arms." He clicked his pen closed and handed the chart to the departing nurse. "Trissa, I have a policeman waiting outside. Do you feel up to talking to him?"

"A policeman! Why? What have I done?" She thought of her father maybe bleeding to death after she had fled him, and her mother coming home to find him. "I'm sorry," she cried. "I didn't know what...."

The vehemence of her reaction obviously startled him. He placed his warm hand on her wrist, as if to take her pulse at first. Then he released his gentle pressure and stroked her arm as one might soothe a fretting child. "No, no, Trissa, you haven't done anything. It wasn't your fault. You were the victim. But we need your help. We have to get this man--"