Nightmarish Sacrifice (Cardew) (32 page)

             
But I had been conquered by the overwhelming waves of exhaustion while Cardew had still been awake – gently clasping me in his arms to let me fully perceive the safety he was surrounding me with, and watching me tenderly patronizingly as I was losing my power to the invincible force of sleep...

             
Embarrassed by my display of weakness, I hurried to stand up, and had a quick look around the room while thinking over a hundred of foolish excuses, although I knew he wouldn’t humiliate me by asking for one.

             
A piece of paper on the floor by the door attracted my attention and I quickly reached for it while at the same time hoping and suppressing my dread that it was a note from him; I wasn’t sure that its contents would please me...

             
However, I couldn’t but read the sentence written in Cardew’s own handwriting in large capital letters:

‘IF YOU DO IT ONCE AGAIN, YOU WILL DIE.’

              Gods, what?...

             
Suddenly breathless, I froze petrified with the paper in my fingers, all the expectations of jokes or sensual hints melting away immediately.

             
Was that a real threat?!...

             
My eyes mechanically followed the row again, then once more, but the merciless sequence of words didn’t change, nor the meaning behind it.

             
Oh dear, what had I done!?

             
‘Calm down, calm down –’ I was repeating to myself, and the little sheet was rustling in my hands as they were shaking too severely. ‘Calm down, that’s just a stupid joke... or you’re still dreaming –’

             
But the paper with the scary message was perfectly real in front of me!

             
And Cardew was by no means fond of stupid jokes...

             
Then it had to be true – he would kill me if I repeated something I had done...

             
But what was my so fatal mistake?

             
My steps were dying away in the carpet as I was restlessly walking up and down the room, trying to define which exactly action of mine would appear wrong in my boy’s eyes – I had several suspicions but couldn’t know if any of them was true...

             
I had lied to him – pretended that I had been feeling ill and left for his home town without mentioning anything, then looked for the person who had been his best friend and asked for details of his past he could be not completely happy with; I hadn’t shared with him my nightmares about Odda and was behaving in a rather different way only because I was familiar with the difficulties he had been through in his childhood...

             
Each of those reasons was serious enough to drive him crazy.

             
The only thing I couldn’t explain to myself was why I was still alive...

             
He had been there, lying just a heartbeat away from me, and I had been trustingly asleep and helpless in his embraces – in his protection but as well in his power; he could have easily hurt me in an outburst of rage – hurt me to the point that I would never have the chance to get hurt again...

             
But he hadn’t done it.

             
Had my utter trust in him saved me?...

             
And anyway, there was something completely wrong about that note...

             
Could it be written by someone else, I wondered while turning it in my hands over and over again to make sure that it wasn’t a result of my over-active imagination but reality – nonetheless, I couldn’t doubt that it had been Cardew’s hand that had written the words, I knew his handwriting too well, as we were often swapping notes on the play with various changes we had both agreed on.

             
Then could the words mean something else?...

             
‘If you do it once again, you will die.’

             
No, I obviously suffered from some lack of imaginativeness that morning, as I was seeing no alternative meanings in the written sentence.

             
Biting my lips, I closed my eyes and imagined his voice pronouncing them with a range of many different intonations, but they all sounded unnatural, except for the berserk one; I could almost see his pupils flex with anger, the gray of his eyes casting aside whole swarms of perilous glorious sparks as if its steel had instantly turned into flint.

             
A cold wave splashed onto me to calm down a bit the heated rush of blood in my veins. What if Cardew was being tortured by a split personality and had had a crisis? What if his ‘good’ side had been tender and caring towards me all night, and in the morning his ‘bad’ one had damned that softness as a show of weakness and had regretted it...

             
By habit, I checked whether the door was locked – it really was, but my own key was in the locker – Cardew had obviously taken the spare one from the desk and left with it, locking the door and then tucking the note under it.

             
Why, for heavens’ sake? He could have just left the paper on my pillow.

             
‘Not if he would want you to think someone else left it,’ my bright logic announced victoriously.

             
But this time my heart was quicker to get in the right direction: ‘But who else would I think it had been, given that I know his handwriting better than my own?’

             
“I don’t want to take any more of this!” I decisively pronounced aloud with sudden impulsiveness, and, leaving the note on my pillow, turned my back on it and headed to search the calming influence a lengthy pleasant shower could grant me with.

             
The familiar noisy splash of water and all the aromatic lather forming large bubbles around made me feel safe again, and thus the hypothesis of Cardew playing a joke on me became more believable by itself.

             
‘And even if he’s not, he won’t do anything harmful to me unless I repeat some kind of a mistake,’ I shrugged while repeating that in my mind. ‘If he already knows about my nightmares of Odda and my visit to his town, then I have nothing else to hide anyway –’

             
BANG!!!...

             
The door of my bathroom had been kicked open with a single violent strike, the attack far too surprising for me to react adequately; I only managed to turn round with a jerk, but my feet slipped on the wet floor and I was flung down towards it...

             
I recognized Cardew’s perfume a moment before his embrace wrapped me in spite of all the lather and water covering me, his lightning speed reaction saving me the unpleasant consequences a contact with the tiles would have had for me.

             
What on earth had happened?!

             
I opened my eyes despite the mild biting of the soap and stared at Cardew’s face to guess if he had rushed into my room so as to kill me or for another reasons, and the sight made me petrify: I had never seen that boy like this before – so sincerely worried that he was unable even to try to hide it.

             
“You are breathing!” he exclaimed to my shock, and the utter relief in his intonation made me take him seriously. “You are alive! Oh gods –”

             
“What’s going on!?” I struggled to get to my feet and Cardew helped me up, but it seemed that he was too much occupied with his own inner emotions to answer to my insane questions; his eyes strongly fixed on mine had gone almost completely black with concern.

             
“Has anyone come here while I was away?” he asked me earnestly, not even intending to joke with the ridiculous situation the two of us had found ourselves in. “Did anyone call or –”

             
“No, no,” I laid my palms on his shoulders to calm him down, ignoring the possibility of getting him all wet as his shirt was already in foam anyway. “I’m fine, nothing has happened. Just this note you left me –”

             
“What?!” Cardew was barely taking enough air and his heart was racing nervously, its loud thudding resounding to my palms resting on his chest. “You’ve thought it’s me who sent it?! –”

             
“I thought it was a joke,” I blinked insistently; the lather was unpleasantly sliding down my skin but I couldn’t block it. “I was alone when I woke up and I decided that you –”

             
“Alright, alright –” he raised his hands defensively to give me a sign I could at this stage save myself the explanations; his eyes involuntarily flashed down to my feet and back, and I was amused to see his confusion. “Right, I’ll wait for you outside, sorry that I broke in like this –”

             
“I need just a minute,” I smiled and the sound of falling water reinforced again.

             
The last traces of soap quickly disappeared from me and I hurried to wrap myself in a large towel and step back inside the bedroom; my mind had rejected all the hypotheses I had been capable of thinking up, so I had decided to accept the one Cardew would offer me.

             
He was determining my life and death anyway.

             
“Ah, lovely,” the boy got up from the edge of my bed where he had been waiting for me, and cast me a calmer smile, although I could still perceive the anxiety in it. “I’m sorry I scared you –”

             
“Why don’t you start from the beginning?” I offered and sat on the bed, leaning my chin on my wrist in a gesture hinting that I was ready to listen and accept his point of view without much thought. “I last remember that you were watching me fall asleep –”

             
“Yeah –” Cardew stopped in front of me and fondled my cheek before bending to kiss me tenderly but shortly. “You were so beautiful I didn’t get a wink of sleep during the whole night, I was watching you and thinking –” he smiled and shook his head that he’d rather keep his thoughts a secret. “Well, I wanted to be here when you wake up, so I went out to get you some things –”

             
A quick glimpse around the room reassured me that he had flawlessly remembered my favourite type of coffee, as well as the fact that I didn’t enjoy having breakfast if it didn’t include chocolate.

             
“But when I returned, your bed was empty,” Cardew went on while handing me one of the warm cardboard cups radiating the tempting luxurious aroma of rich creamy golden-black coffee. “And this note here just made me freak out –”

             
“So you do care for me, after all,” I ruffled his hair through giggling but didn’t give him the chance to answer. “The coffee is lovely, thanks a lot. You did startle me when you ran into my bathroom – after all, it’s your handwriting on that note –”

             
“It really looks like mine but I swear I haven’t written this!” the boy shook his head and I nodded that I trusted him before he went on, “I thought that the note was for me – that someone was considering you his girl and was saying that if I again... Damn, I don’t know what I thought –”

             
“It doesn’t really matter now,” I reassured him and stood up after a light kiss on his cheek; his worry for me was touching me deeply but I didn’t want to show compassion not to make him feel as though he needed help. “I have some lectures, but you can wait for me after them so we’ll go to the rehearsal together –”

             
“I’m coming to your lectures, too,” Cardew stood up to turn as I had walked to the wardrobe with the obvious intention to start dressing up. “I’d rather not leave you alone –”

             
“But don’t you have any classes?” I asked while looking for the right clothes; my effect on his studies was obviously far from beneficial.

             
“It doesn’t matter,” he answered shortly and glanced over his shoulder, having heard the door of the wardrobe swing closed. “I won’t leave you alone today... Where did you find the note?”

             
“On the floor,” I recalled while running the comb through my hair and hoping that his ‘today’ was meant to mean ‘from today on’ and would have more lasting influence. “It must have been thrust under the door.”

             
Cardew was shaking his head thoughtfully, I could see him reasoning in tension.

             
“Someone has seen me here –” he uttered, probably without even realizing that he was speaking, and I cast a glance at his reflection in the mirror without letting my worry for him show – I had a better idea of how to distract him from the problems bothering his mind.

             
“Do you want to try?” I blinked naively and offered the comb to him, then shook my hair behind my shoulders to attract his attention upon it, so he wouldn’t think that I was hinting anything about his a bit messy hairstyle. “They say that fondling a cat helps you relax, and as there’s no real cat here –”