Darkling I Listen (45 page)

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A
pparently he was drinking again.

His head hurt like hell and his body felt like he'd been run through the baler. Memory, of course, was not an issue. He never remembered the drinking. Or the sorry behavior that went along with it. In years past, he'd simply wait for the phone to start ringing, sit for a confused half-hour and listen to tales of his previous night's escapades. Or, worse, pick up a newspaper or turn on the television to see his name or photograph before his bleary eyes. The dread and humiliation would sink like lead in his chest and stomach, and he'd promise himself to get help—again—even as he walked directly to the liquor cabinet and, with shaking hands, poured himself a glass of false courage and dignity.

But lying in bed that morning, he looked at his hands and found them steady. And when he thought of what he needed most at that moment to stop the ache inside him, it wasn't Chivas.

It was Alyson.

God, he missed her. The pain of it made him groan.

He showered. The hot water beating on his head and shoulders was of little help in alleviating the lethargy of his body or his head as he waited for the shaking, concentrated thirst for booze to assail him. Yet, it didn't, and an infinitesimal flicker of hope winked inside him. By the time he toweled off and dressed, he felt stronger.

Downstairs he found Betty in Bernie's room, sitting in Henry's chair. The curtains were still drawn against the day, the lamps unlit. Bernie remained in her bed. She hadn't been bathed yet, or fed. Or, by the smell of it, had her soiled garments changed.

Betty stared at the television where a televangelist, surrounded by a choir, gyrated across a stage.

Are you ready? I said,
ARE YOU READY?
He is coming. Yeeeees, praise Jeeeesus. The Resurrection is forthcoming. The Coming is now. Now. Noooow! Hallelujah!
ARE YOU REEEEADY?

"Yes, yes, yes," Betty chanted softly, smiling and nodding.
Brandon
flipped on the overhead light. Betty's head turned, and she gazed up at him dreamily.

"What the hell are you doing?" he demanded.

"They don't know." She giggled. "They haven't a clue. Can you imagine their reaction when they learn the truth?"

"What truth?"

She stood still smiling. "The Lord said to Samuel, 'The Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.' Would you care for some breakfast?"

Something was
definitely
wrong with this picture.

Brandon
walked to the television and slammed his fist against the Power button, cutting off the televangelist in mid-howl. Then he moved to the window and flung open the curtains, spilling a wide band of sunlight over Bernie's bed.

From the kitchen came Betty's humming.

Closing his eyes,
Brandon
did his best to contain the streak of anger that made his head pound all the harder. A vague memory of last night began to tap at his brain: Betty and Deputy Conroy returning from Betty's apartment. Deputy Conroy apologizing for putting Betty to so much inconvenience. Conroy continuing to stand in the kitchen door, studying Betty, then Brandon, before apologizing again and leaving.
Brandon
had trailed him to the door, watched as the deputy drove off in his patrol car, and
Brandon
had experienced
…
what? Not fear, exactly. Perhaps disappointment that Conroy's search of Betty's apartment hadn't turned up a clue that would justify the troubling doubts and suspicions that had nagged at him the last days.

The idea that Betty Wilson was Anticipating was absurd. And while her behavior since Henry's death had been odd, it could certainly be attributed to the same shock and grief that made him wander the house like a lost soul, listening for the sound of Henry's voice, imagining a presence that was no longer there but certainly real enough to make him turn, look, reach out for the strong, steady hand that had always been there to pick him up when he stumbled. Reality had been warped, time and space disjointed. He awoke every morning feeling more and more like a boat that had slipped its moorings and drifted out to sea with the tide. His thoughts were
…
aimless. If he thought at all. Even that was an effort. He slept. He drifted. He slept. And in between there were the vast black holes of nonexistent memory.

Brandon
walked to the kitchen. "I don't want breakfast," he said to Betty's back. "I want you to take care of my aunt. That's what I'm paying you for. To take care of Bernie. I can get my own damn breakfast. I'm not helpless. She is."

Betty partially turned, an egg in one hand, a skillet in the other, looked at him with the same pleasant, albeit unconcerned, smile on her mouth. "Of course. Whatever you want, Mr. Brandon. You're in charge now." She put aside the egg and skillet and returned to Bernie's room.

He left the house through the back door. He needed fresh air and space—needed a few minutes to get control of his mounting frustration and irritation. The old house had become as confining as the prison cell in which he'd rotted for three years, a relic that was little more to him now than a faded souvenir of what once had been a child's utopia. He realized as he stood there, looking back at the clapboard house with its neat blue shutters, that it hadn't been the farm, the barn, the animals that offered him sanctuary from Cara's madness; it had been Henry and Bernie. They could have lived in a penthouse in
Manhattan
, and he would still have found respite from his nightmares.

After days of dismal weather, the bright daylight made his eyes ache. The temperature had warmed significantly, melting the ground frost and turning the dirt and grass along the path into a semi-spongy mire that made slurping sounds as he continued to the barn.

Hay scented the old building. Dust motes danced in the streaks of sunlight that found their way through the gaps between the weathered gray planks of the loft. A rabbit scurried from between two bales of pale green hay and bulleted into a copse outside the barn door.
Brandon
sat on the bale, elbows on his knees, and stared at his feet.

Suspicion followed by reason squirmed again in his thoughts.

There was absolutely nothing that could link Betty and Anticipating. And no matter how he might desire to place the blame for Henry's death on some anonymous stalker, he couldn't get around the fact that recently Henry had been extremely forgetful, not just with the handling of his medicine, but other things as well. Like believing he'd filled the boat motor with gas a few days before their last fishing trip.

And the vandalism? Why shouldn't he believe that Betty was home that night, as she
always was, preferring
her solitary existence to that of socializing at the Yamboree?

So where the hell was Anticipating?

He'd expected to hear from her by now. The last days he'd snatched mail from Betty's hand and shuffled through envelopes: big ones, small ones, first bills,
then
condolence cards—then the manila envelope with the return address Pine Lodge Motel. Black-and-white photos of Henry and Bernie at the Yamboree had spilled into his lap, and for an hour he'd sat staring at them with a sort of morbid fascination, as if Henry had suddenly materialized, allowing Brandon one last opportunity to burn his uncle's face into his memory before dissolving again into oblivion.

But no word from Anticipating.

He lay back on the hay, moved his face into a pool of sunlight, and drifted. He felt drained, like the character he'd once played in a movie—a young man who, night after night, was being relieved of his blood by a vampire girlfriend. The director had been an idiot, and the movie had never seen the light of day, thank God. No doubt it would turn up one day on Showtime or HBO, and everyone, thinking it his latest endeavor, would shake their heads and exchange banter like
So this is what Hollywood's Hellion has come to.

Well, what do you expect from a man who cozies up to sheep?

Brother, did his career crash and burn!

He never had talent. Got by on his looks for too long.

*

Brandon
? Brandon, son,
wake
up. I have to talk to you. Wake
up,
quick
. I don't have long
…

Raising his head, squinting from the sunlight in his eyes,
Brandon
focused on the figure standing in the barn door. A man's figure, limned by eerie light.

"Henry?" Surprise and gladness rushed through him. And relief. Yes, tremendous relief! Henry's dying had obviously been a dream. A nightmare.

What are you waiting for? Why haven't you gotten the hell out of here? Returned to
L.A.
with Al? What are you waiting on?

"Bernie—"

Is gone,
Brandon
. Gone. She's here with me. That's not Bernie. Not that bag of bones lying helpless in that bed. Get the hell out of here while you still can.

His eyes flew open, and
Brandon
stared toward the barn door—heart beating his chest wall like a prizefighter on a punching bag. The euphoria he'd experienced when looking into Henry's eyes vanished with crashing despair as he realized it had been nothing more than a dream. Fresh sadness filled him, and for a moment the raw, pulsating grief and hysteria that had consumed him the night of Henry's death whip-cracked through him, robbing him of breath and strength. He lay on the hay that he and Henry had sweated to bale in September, his hands pressed into his eyes, his throat convulsing as he tried desperately to fight back the sorrow.

*

Betty stood
with her back to the door and the phone pressed
to her ear. Her knuckles looked white and knobby as she gripped the receiver, listening. "Yes, I'll tell
him,"
she said in a monotone, then slammed the receiver so hard a sampler on the wall pitched to one side.

"Who was that?"
Brandon
asked, closing the door behind him.

Her head whipped around, causing her red hair to fly about her shoulders. Green eyes glared at him. "A.J. Farrington, that's
who
. Can you believe it?"

"Alyson?" For the first time in days he felt a smile touch his mouth. Then he sobered. "Why didn't you call me?"

"And have her upset you again? It'll be a cold day in hell before I allow that woman
to
hurt you again with her deceit and harlot's seduction. Vile, vile creature! A serpent of evil. I knew it the moment I first saw her. She led you down the road to damnation, as so many others have. They used you. Fed on your soul like starving jackals. Satan is very, very crafty these days, sir."

She smiled and pointed to the plate of food flanked by a glass of orange juice.

He sat and stared down at the scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast. He drank his orange juice, forked the eggs, put down the fork, and sat back in the chair. Fresh irritation gnawed at him, and in his mind's eye he saw Alyson standing before him.
She doesn't like me. Betty doesn't like me.

Betty scrubbed a butcher knife in a sink of frothy, steaming water, humming to herself.

"I intend to marry Alyson," he said to Betty's back.

She continued to scrub and hum.

"But you already knew that, didn't you, Betty? Henry told you—"

"Foolish man. Foolish, foolish man to encourage such a woman. And to have invited her into this house
…
what was he thinking? How am I expected
to
fulfill my duty when I'm constantly confronted by these imbecilic actions? Oh, well, we all have our burdens to bear, don't we? They are there to test us. To make us stronger. To define our faith. His disciples were constantly forced to prove themselves, weren't they? I wonder how well they would have handled the sins and temptations of the twenty-first century."

Brandon
shoved the chair back and stood. He dug a pack of cigarettes out of the kitchen drawer, along with a lighter,
then
moved down the hallway to the shadowed living room, sat in the rocker next to the lamp table and extension phone.

He knew in that very moment that the black holes of his memory the last days had not been caused by boozing any more than the aimlessness of his thoughts had been caused by depression. The soothing tongue of sedation slithered through his blood, licking at his consciousness. The last days he had attributed the lethargy to exhaustion—his body's need to rest and heal from its shock and grief. He'd simply closed his eyes and fallen
…
fallen
…
fallen…

Shaking his head,
Brandon
blinked and tried to focus on the phone. He would fight it, the dark hole opening under him. His hands fumbled for the receiver, but the numbers blurred.

"What are you doing? What the
hell
are you doing?"