Darling (23 page)

Thick fingers of shadow caressed the contours of the nymph’s form and he had to shake off the feeling that her smile grew wider.

He stepped past her and looked around. Where had the man gone?

His nerves ignited when he realized the man could have only gone one place: he was hiding behind the statues.

Dennis fumbled in the pocket of his jeans for his knife. There was only one reason that someone would hide from him. He had never been mugged, but he had heard enough horror stories from friends on campus to never go out without a pocketknife on his hip.

He took a step forward and tried to focus his eyes on the deep black pooling between the statues and the wall. He stilled his breath and tried to listen for footsteps or clothes rustling.

There was nothing. It was dark and silent.

God, I hope it’s not someone being a prankster. He could imagine Mike jumping out and yelling
Boo
—and plunging his knife into the poor bastard’s stomach.

He heard a low moan. Froze. Listened. No, it wasn’t a moan. It was humming. But whoever it was didn’t hum a tune. It was one, low monotone, building slowly in volume.

The lights flickered to life. He almost laughed. It had been an electrical hum as the timer kicked on.

He ducked behind a statue on his left, but no one lurked in the narrow path between the wall and the sculptures. The right side was equally empty.

What the hell?

He stepped back onto the sidewalk, looked behind him, looked to the building. Nothing.

He slid his knife back into his pocket. Had he imagined it?

No. He had seen someone walking down the sidewalk.

They must have gone back into the building. That’s the only explanation. They went back inside and he was so lost in his own head that he never heard the door open and close.

He’d been explaining a lot of strange things away lately. His mind refused to grasp that fact. Instead it swam by and traveled far downstream into his subconscious, where it went to work with every odd sight and sound he had experienced recently, eroding the dam of his confidence even as his rational mind moved on to other topics. Deep inside he knew fear—fear of the building, fear of the land it rested on, fear of the very night itself—but his mind clutched to logic like a heroin addict whose stash was threatened. Reason was incredibly addictive and he wasn’t prepared to give it up.

He marched through the courtyard and to the front door. He paused as he pulled it open. He had a powerful feeling that someone stood behind him. Watching him. Waiting.

He looked back. There were only the statues, now bathed in dull yellow light, standing in their usual places. The floodlights had packed the shadows away into different crevices, giving the impression that the statues had changed positions. Their heads had turned ever so slightly toward the front door. Their mouths were smiling as always, but their lips were slightly parted. Fingers had shifted in his direction as though they pointed at him, laughed at him. He could almost hear their giggles.

He took a deep breath and shook his head. He was being paranoid. He was all worked up and now his imagination ran away with him. He laughed in an attempt to break his own tension and stepped inside.

Halfway to the elevator he heard a low, faint chuckle. It chilled his blood, and again he tried to shake it off. Rationalize it. How many apartments were on the hall? Someone laughed at the newspaper or a television was turned up too loud. That made sense. He could hear Mike’s chortle all the way from the elevator half of the time.

He stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for his floor. Nothing strange was going on. He just needed a hot bath with some Epsom salts and an hour or so of quiet to clear his head. That’s all.

He told himself he was fine and didn’t even bother questioning why he pressed the
DOOR CLOSE
button over and over until he was safely guarded by the elevator’s sliding barricade.

* * *

Eileen’s phone rang and she dove across the room for it. Her evening had been spent half-watching television as she pored over the previous week, searching in vain for some clue as to what was going on. She and Dennis hadn’t spent any quality time together. They had shared lunch one day when she had ambushed him at work, but there had been no intimacy shared with one another. She had promised herself it wasn’t a problem and so felt ridiculous for flying across the room for the phone.

“Hello?”

“Eileen.” She was expecting Dennis and the feminine lilt threw her off guard.

“Kirstin?”

“What’s up?”

If Eileen had ever been forced to rank her friends, Kirstin would have been given that coveted title of Best Friend. The two had known each other since eighth grade and had gone through all the major ups and downs of being a teenage girl together. Since then they had been inseparable—when they weren’t dating someone. In fact, since both of them had started their recent relationships they hadn’t spoken much. Eileen put the last phone conversation at three weeks earlier.

“What are you doing tonight?” Kirstin asked.

She thought for a moment about Dennis. “I’ve got no plans.”

“Great! Rick’s brother is in a band—”

“Rick?”

Kristin laughed. “Yeah. Rick.
Rick.
The guy I’ve been seeing for half a year now?”

“That long already?”

“Yeah. Strange, huh?”

Eileen wasn’t an overly sentimental woman and definitely not one to keep track of trivial things like the anniversary of her and Dennis’ first kiss. She tried to count off how long they had been seeing each other, but the time frame of their first date eluded her. So she counted from the time they first slept together, which was roughly the time he first moved into that awful building.

She was surprised that it had only been three months. Three months and it was already becoming strange. Had he truly been avoiding her? She chastised herself for the paranoia, but the feeling clung to her like the summer humidity. He’s just had a rough week, she told herself. Nothing to get upset about. It doesn’t reflect on us at all.

She wasn’t entirely convinced.

But she had made the decision to let him have a couple of days without her nagging him to see her. She had too much pride to follow him around like a lap dog, after all.

“So,” Kirstin went on, “anyway, Rick’s brother is in a band and a bunch of us are heading down to the Strip to watch them play. Wanna come?”

“Why not?”

When Eileen finally hung up the phone, she stared at the screen and wondered if she should call Dennis. She decided against it and rushed out to meet her friends.

The bar was heavy with smoke and Eileen, Kirstin, and her friends spent most of the evening dodging the frat-boys that frequented the place. Rick had showed long enough to say hi before announcing he had a six-thirty class the next morning and leaving. The group of girls had laughed and joked and caught up with one another by the time the band filed on stage. Rick’s stocky brother waved at their table and picked up his guitar.

The rest of the band took their positions and Eileen’s eyes were drawn to the tall, thin drummer. He wore a black T-shirt and blue jeans. A pair of black-rimmed glasses sat on the bridge of his nose and his hair was meticulously sculpted into an early morning mess. She knew him, but couldn’t quite place how. Wasn’t his name Jason?

Of course. He lived in Dennis’ building. He had helped her carry groceries up one night.

The thought of Raynham made her nervous. Despite Dennis’ protests, her nightmares had conspired with the television documentary they fought over to push her into the campus library one afternoon. She had looked up Camp Opey and, though an exact geographical location had eluded her, she had pinpointed it to the area of Emory Highway and was positive that the photographs she had seen were taken on Raynham’s hill.

She had always been interested in the paranormal, but had never taken it seriously. It was fun to exchange ghost stories with friends, but she hadn’t ever considered the implications. Logically, she knew that she was being silly. It embarrassed her and she hadn’t told anyone about her research. But what she had read was so awful that she couldn’t help but connect the dots in a purely illogical fashion.

An old schoolhouse had sat on the property and, sometime during the Civil War, had become a base of operations for a small Union detachment to interrogate important prisoners. The base quickly expanded into a small fort and a series of rough tents as more and more Confederate prisoners were shipped in.

As the war had dragged on, official oversight of the prison ceased to exist. Disgruntled Union soldiers took out their frustrations on their Confederate prisoners by starving them, beating them, and forcing them into hours and hours of relentless labor without sleep. As the months dragged on, the abuse became outright torture. Prisoners were armed with dull, rusty knives and forced to fight to the death. Legs and arms were amputated for no reason other than amusement. Men were forced to dig ditches, knowing full well that they would be shot in the gut for target practice when they were done and thrown in.

The prisoners slept out in the open, shackled to one another. When one died or was killed, the corpse was left chained to the living. Toward the end of Camp Opey’s time as an active prison, the prison guards would starve the Confederates for over a week and then feed them their own dead.

The prison was dissolved shortly before Lee’s surrender and the atrocities buried with the tortured Southerners until after the end of World War Two, when historians discovered diaries and letters from Union soldiers who had been stationed there.

If souls did linger after death, if pain could have long lasting effects on the environment, how could such a place not leave an imprint behind? Her mind flirted with a connection between the camp, the thousands of deaths during its days as a tuberculosis hospital, the mysterious doctor and his octoroon mistress, and her nightmare. She couldn’t quite connect these things. Each seemed like a separate story, a different explanation offered for different haunted houses in different horror films.

She sat it all aside for the moment and took a drink from the fruity concoction that Kirstin had ordered. The band, while far from amazing, was much better than most of the ones that played around campus. When they finished, the quartet made their way around the bar, sipping from beers and chatting with the small crowd. One by one they made their way by the girls’ table, thanked them for coming, and flirted.

When Jason walked over with a beer in his hand, he made a show of doing a double take. “Eileen?”

She laughed. “You remembered.”

“How could I forget?” He pulled up a chair. “How have you been?”

“Good.”

Kirstin chewed on a straw. “You guys know each other?”

“Jason lives in the same building that Dennis lives in.”

Jason took a swig of his beer and glanced around the room. He smiled and waved at someone. “You still seeing that guy?”

As far as I know.
“Yep. Still together.”

“I sensed some hesitation there.”

Kirstin shook her head. “Not Eileen. She’s loyal as—”

“A dog?” Eileen smiled.

Kirstin kicked her foot under the table. “I was going to say ‘an angel’ but, now that you mention it...”

Jason bought the table another round. The conversation continued, the girls exchanging themselves for the band’s members periodically as everyone made their rounds-all except for Eileen and Jason. Her because she wasn’t so much into the bar scene anymore and him because she stayed seated. It was obvious to Kirstin, who shot Eileen looks all night, but Eileen never thought much of it.

Rick’s brother had suggested that everyone trade numbers at the end of the evening and she didn’t think twice about exchanging with Jason. On the car ride back to Kirstin’s, however, the girls were relentless. Eileen shrugged it off, but she couldn’t help wondering what might happen should things with Dennis get worse. She felt guilty, both toward Dennis for thinking that whatever was going on was anything more than a temporary rough patch, as well as toward Jason for instantly relegating him to the bench, ready to spring into action should Dennis sprain an ankle.

When she walked through the door of her apartment, she saw that the voicemail light on her phone was blinking. She played the message, anxious to hear Dennis’ deep, radio announcer voice. Instead it was Jason, telling her how much fun he had had talking and wishing her a good night.

She slumped into her couch and deleted it. She tried to put it out of her mind and watched TV, waiting for Dennis to call. Sometime after three she put her phone on the charger and went to bed.

* * *

Mike lay on his side and watched Margot’s breasts rise and fall with every breath. He was filled with nervous energy. He wanted to run up and down the halls, to laugh and yell, to wake her and do it all over again.

The light from the bathroom dripped onto her cream-colored flesh. He marveled at how it pooled onto the slight paunch where her abdomen met her pelvis, how it trickled down into the scruff of recently shaved hair and up into the shadow of her breasts. Her face and thighs were firmly drowned in shadow and so his eyes lingered on her torso. The sight of it thrilled him more than he ever could have imagined. Had he just experienced that hot flesh pressing against him? The sweat that glistened over both of them was evidence enough.

Still, the idea was so strange to him. He had just slept with this woman. He had ran his hands and his mouth all over that smooth skin, her hands and voice guiding him to where he needed to go, until they had collapsed into each other, retreated, and collapsed again. Watching her eyes close and her teeth press against her lower lip, hearing her gasp and sigh, feeling the muscles of her body clench—these things had seemed like a dream.

He wanted to rub his hands over her again, but wasn’t sure if he should. Would it be rude to wake her, or would she be flattered? Had she even liked it? She seemed to, but he wasn’t sure. It could have easily been an act on her part, a miming of the actions and sounds that he would have expected in order to placate his ego. Could she do such a thing?