Fearscape (24 page)

“
Don't touch me.”

Val gouged at his hand, yanking at the same time. She heard him hiss. Then his fingers closed around her wrist and he gave a vicious tug of his own — she felt the pain ricochet up her arm, spurring the neural equivalent of an echo chamber in her shoulder socket — as he brought her arm behind her back.

Ms. Wilcox had managed to get to the phone, which Gavin evidently hadn't had the foresight to tamper with. She was calling the police. They would be here in three minutes. That might not be soon enough. Val snapped her head back, hitting him in the forehead and eliciting a growl. Behind her back, the pressure on her wrist tightened to where she feared the bones might snap.

He didn't speak right away, though she felt his rapid breathing stir her sweat-soaked hair. “I am trying to make this as civil as possible, but you are forcing my hand, Val.”

He paused.

“
Unless this is what you want, of course. But somehow I do not think this is the case, anymore than a fox, half-mad with fear, gnaws at its own limbs by preference when caught in a steel trap.” She shuddered at the terrible appropriateness of that analogy.

“
Come with me,” he said, “and I will teach you things the likes of which all men dream but none dare. You're as bestial as I, my dear, in your own artless way — but you need a hunter just as I need my quarry. Freedom quickly grows stale on the tongue without the added spice of imprisonment, and you'll never want for anything, as long as you submit to me in all ways.”

Words tumbled from her lips like blocks of ice. “You're insane.”

“
Is that a no?”

“
It's a go to hell!”

“
Then what if instead of going after you I went after someone you hold dear? Would you resist me then? Or would you play my way in exchange for their well-being?”

Val stiffened.

“
You would. You would, wouldn't you? Interesting. I'll be sure to keep that in mind.”

She jerked as if his words had been a physical blow. “Don't you dare! Leave them alone you — you — you
bastard
. Leave them alone or — or I'll
make
you leave them alone.”

“
So fierce,” he said approvingly, “And so protective. Yes, I think I like this side to you.”

“
I mean it!” Desperation rendered her voice shrill. “This isn't a game. You can't do this to people. You can't play with them like they're pawns.”

“
That's where you're wrong,” he said calmly. “I can.”

And he pulled her back by her chin and kissed her on the mouth, which was still open with shock. Once she had sufficiently recovered her senses she bit him. He bit back harder, and she felt his tongue sweep the inside of her mouth to lap at their commingling blood. Val gagged and tried to pull away, only to gasp as pain flared down her shoulders at the renewed pressure on her arms.

“
You can't win against me — and you're only going to hurt yourself, doing that.”

She could see Ms. Wilcox approaching. “He's crazy,” Val choked out to her, “he thinks he's an animal — he drinks people's
blood
. Please, you have to tell someone — he's sick.”

And Val saw a strange expression flicker over her teacher's face; she was in no state to put words to it, but it frightened her. Gavin's grip tightened on her wrists, making her gasp, but he didn't speak.

“
Tell her, you bastard,” she sobbed, “tell her about the
savanna
, and the killings. Tell her everything.”

“
I have no idea what you're talking about,” he said softly. “Poor Val.”

“
What does that mean? What are you doing?”

Before he could answer, he was yanked off her by a member of the Derringer Police Department — a tall, robust black man who made no effort to be gentle. And then Val felt Ms. Wilcox's hands on her shoulders, her voice in her ear asking her if she was all right. But all she could taste was the blood, and all she could see were those eyes.

And then everything went black.

Epilogue

The entire situation created quite the scandal for both the school and Val's family. Gavin's trial was the biggest thing to happen to the small town in years, and highly publicized. There was no escape. Val spent the entire summer in her room.

Right before the trial began, the Kimbles received a check in the mail for an extravagant sum of money. Though signed, it was clearly from a sock puppet bank account, as was the return address of the nameless card tied to the red roses which accompanied them. There was no question in anyone's mind who they were from — or why.

Val's mother pleaded with Val once more. She begged her daughter to take the witness stand and testify against the man who had betrayed her. But the thought of standing in a big room crammed with people telling them what he'd done while he
looked
at her the entire time, secretly reveling in her misery — well, that was too horrible to even contemplate.

Her mother cried, and threw a plate against the wall. She then set fire to the roses, snapping the stems and singing the card, and then sent the mess back to the return address.

Val's refusal to testify came as a huge blow for the prosecution. So much of the evidence was based on her word alone that there was hardly enough to build a case without her testimony. She knew this because she had happened across the trial while channel-surfing, and sat, frozen, when the camera panned to the object of her many nightmares.

He was wearing a three-piece suit and sporting a bit of designer stubble, and looked so handsome it hurt. Val stared, stunned and heartbroken, as he sat there, with a studied attempt at solemnity, while his lawyer brought up his academic scholarship, his acclaim among the chess community, and his living alone, on his own, paying his own bills in age when most teenagers still couldn't calculate a tip.

By contrast, the lawyer portrayed her as a raving lunatic. He claimed that Val had built a delusional adolescent fantasy around his client, and then gotten violently angry when he couldn't live up to her expectations. The fact that she hadn't appeared in court to make her case, he argued, seemed very suspicious, especially when paired with her family's silence.

Ms. Wilcox had agreed to testify, as had Beatrice Cooper, but neither of them had helped much. Ms. Cooper hadn't seen Gavin chasing Val, she only knew that Val had been deathly frightened — traumatized, was the word she used — to the point where she had practically been rendered mute. Could it have been possible that Val had been running from an imaginary terror? Ms. Cooper conceded that yes, she supposed this was possible, albeit unlikely.

Ms. Wilcox's testimony was even worse. She claimed that the situation in the art room had just “seemed” wrong, which the defense pounced on, ultimately boxing her into a corner where she was forced to admit that Gavin hadn't actually hurt her, and that Val's behavior had been rather erratic and odd. She recalled an incident a few weeks before when Gavin had, concernedly, told Val she was acting “strange.”

(I can make you feel whatever I want)

That was the final blow.

He planned it
, she thought.
He planned it all.

Gavin ended up winning the criminal case. The charges were dropped, the lawyers paid. A couple weeks later, a “for sale” sign appeared in his yard. Other scandals received their fifteen minutes of spotlight and infamy, and the incident between Val and Gavin was gradually forgotten.

That is, forgotten by everyone except Val.

▪▫▪▫▪▫▪

Val grew from a wiry, bright-eyed fourteen-year-old to a slender, solemn seventeen-year-old, Her hair darkened from orange to brown, and her once-prominent freckles began to fade. People who never noticed her before suddenly began to take notice, to take a second look — and she withered a little under each double-take.

Because every time someone got close to her, she felt his warm breath on her face, his hands on her skin, his voice in her ear — like slow-acting poison he remained latent in her blood, killing her slowly from within. When he had left town, it seemed he'd taken a piece of her with him.

(Can you feel the ties that bind us? Can you feel them tightening? Because I can, and they're so tight that I can scarcely breathe.)

She would never be the same.

For nearly three years, she remained isolate. Eventually, during the summer before her senior year, she agreed to go out with James — and this quiescence was due more to weariness than any real affection. He had asked her out for the first time just a few months after the incident. Repeat requests were made, periodically, every few months or so. Each time, it was harder to say “no.” She was so torn up inside that such devotion, even if it was misplaced, made her feel obligated.

So one day, she said “yes.”

James might have been disconcerted to know how often Gavin occupied his girlfriend's thoughts (because the answer was far more often than James himself did). Sometimes, thinking about the dark-haired man with the eyes of ice made her cry. Sometimes she would lie still and stare wide-eyed at the ceiling. Other times, though — well, she didn't quite know what she felt, only that the sheer, cutting intensity of it was like a silver dagger in her breast.

Because in spite of what her parents, the therapists, the school, and the policemen, and all her friends said, she was still very much afraid. Because they had not had him speaking into their ears with that deep, gravelly voice that seemed to transcend all reason. They had not felt the determination in those hands. They had not seen the cruelty in those eyes.

If they had, they would know as well as she did that he would come back for her one day.

And, as she had with James, Val lived in constant terror of the fact that this time she might not be strong enough to say “no.”

▪▫▪▫▪▫▪

I buy a red rose every morning, and every night I consign it to the fire.

One rose, for every day they keep us apart, ever rising anew from the smoldering ashes like a vengeful phoenix that has just tasted blood.

One rose, to symbolize the fluid shift from beauty to detritus, from love to hatred.

One rose, as fresh as blood spilled on snow — but still nowhere near as lovely as you.

Someday you will blossom, and when that day comes I will find you. And then, my wayward beauty, we will play a different kind of chess. A variant with people, instead of pawns. A variant of love and war, of life and death. Because I know what makes you burn now — what makes you fight. I know you aren't quite as good at resisting me as you would like to believe.

You can choose to see me as your prison or your pasture. Either way, you will wear my bridle. But I warn you now — my expectations are higher; I hope, for your sake, that you can say the same. Because I've decided that if I can't have you, nobody else shall, either.

I'm waiting for you.

Acknowledgments

There are so many people I'd like to thank that I'd probably run out of paper if I tried, so I'll do my best.

McQuinn: For plying me with facts about legal proceedings and criminal trials. You have the right to remain awesome!

Louisa: For making a cover that displays as much beauty and talent as she, herself, possesses.

Kendal: For
beating me over the head about
enlightening me on the difference between “nauseous” and “nauseated,” and other niggling little errors
, such as why using ellipses warrants years of painful suffering in grammar hell
.

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