Rendezvous with Hymera (7 page)

On her toes, she descended the stairs that creaked in protest with every step, and, when she reached the
bottom, she accidentally stepped on Morris’ fluffy tail. Both – woman and cat – let out a strangled yelp, one frightened, the other one annoyed. Clara lost her balance and stumbled clumsily, skipping the last step and Morris rushed aside just in time, before he could be turned into a furry pancake, pasted on the floor.

Hissing and growling in his own language, the furious cat retired on the sofa, watching the intruder
with yellow, hostile eyes, and began licking his flattened tail.

“It’s nice to meet you too”, muttered Clara, massaging the leg on wh
ich she had landed, then headed straight to the fridge, looking for what she needed to make pancakes and coffee.

Morris, hearing the sound that opened the magic box, immediately changed tactics and, rubbing against her
bare legs, tail in the air, issued a
meow
, which signaled he was in imminent danger of starvation.

A pair of amused green eyes looked down, to another pair, golden and full of hope.

“You really are an opportunist, aren’t you?” asked Clara, handing him a finger wrapped in chocolate cream. Morris rapidly cleaned the offered finger with a pink tongue, rough as sandpaper.

The young woman buried her fingers in the mass of fluffy yellowish fur, stroking, scratching, and,
surprising them both, the cat began to purr.

After she applied the same treatment to Tony, who had appeared from the garden, Clara put their food
and water outside.

She checked once again the back door knob, which she had fixed in only a few minutes, then lifted the
massive, bulky box full with her tools and gear – probably used by Colin the night before to brace the door, allowing access outside to the animals – and squeezed it behind the sofa.

With art and efficiency, she cooked a delightful breakfast, consisting of eggs with ham, a few pancakes
filled with chocolate cream and a big pot of coffee. Then she sat on a chair at the bar, with a mug of the hot aromatic liquid in front of her, waiting for her lover to awake, indulging in the meantime with sweet memories of the past night.

Watching absently the creamy layer of foam, Clara succumbed to her thoughts and daydreaming.

Suddenly, without any warning, she felt cold shivers creeping under her skin, like tongues of ice, and had the certain impression she wasn’t alone in the room.

The fluid in the cup began to rotate slightly in dizzying circles. Mesmerized by the movement and almost
paralyzed by the cold that threatened to shatter her bones, Clara froze for a moment. Then, the surreal feeling dissipated and fear took its place.

Outside, she could hear Tony’s rusty growling – punctuated now and then by an almost sinister howl – and
the abrasive sound of his claws while he was struggling to open the door, which Clara was sure had been, in fact, left open.

With her teeth chattering, she rose slowly, and, shaking, moved away from the bar with uncertain steps,
walking backwards. At some distance she stopped, watching horrified with the motionless fascination of a predator’s victim how an invisible hand slightly scratched in the bar’s wood a single message:
FIND ME
.

***

Colin was dreaming of a vast beach with golden sand, which enveloped his bare feet, with the clean and salty scent of the ocean, with waves that met and remodeled themselves in wonderful explosions of sound and movement.

In front of him stood Clara, her hair and translucent dress waving lazily in the breeze. He smiled in
his sleep and put out a hand to touch her, but came awake holding the pillow which emanated the soft fragrance of the siren that haunted his dreams.

Smelling fresh coffee, Colin stretched like a big, satisfied and happy cat.

What time could it be?
He wondered, looking around, confused and sleepy.
And why isn’t my beautiful lover here to give me a morning kiss, maybe even a round of ... morning exercise?

With all kinds of shameless thoughts and a lascivious smile, he rose, pulled on his jeans and turned on the
laptop to find out what the time was and to give Clara the chance to prepare breakfast. At least, that’s what he hoped she was doing.

It was almost 11 o’clock, so breakfast, he thought, was actually goin
g to be a sort of lunch. Out of curiosity, he rapidly scanned the icons on the desktop, and all the folders arranged in alphabetical order.

Only one caught his attention, as it was stranded, placed on the forehead of the black panther with
fierce fangs, which served as a background picture. It was the only file to which she hadn’t given a name, it being automatically named by the program she used. Curiosity fought a brief battle with the guilt of violating Clara’s privacy, but, confirming the proverbial Murphy’s life experience along with human nature, guilt succumbed quickly to curiosity. He opened the file and read, with surprise and admiration, the following lines:

In nameless oblivion I wish I could fall,

And all that I am should drip into void,

All dreams and all hopes, the pain and the sun

They vanish entirely becoming immortal.

I dream to be happy, I dream to forget,

For tears dug their prints right into my soul,

Mistakes, disillusions, my endless bygones,

Completely suppress a spirit in fall
.

What made you so melancholic, my love?
he wondered, with emotion and fascination, feeling the sadness encoded in these verses.

Although he had read more than a few bookcases filled with books, he rarely was drawn to
poetry, preferring specific facts or information about anything.

He didn’t consider himself to be a romantic, but a realist, though not to the point in which he would have
become insensitive or incapable of sharing and creating special moments, especially with a woman. But these two short stanzas revealed to him another wonderful hidden side of the complex labyrinth that constituted the soul of the woman he loved.

With her on his mind, he descended the old stairs and immediately saw her, standing with her back
against the door, with her eyes huge and fists tensed, looking in the direction of the kitchenette.

In three strides, he was beside her, alarmed, sensing the cold and a pressing feeling of fear, a mixture
of sadness and frustration, all these passing through him like a jolting wave of static electricity. He followed the direction of her gaze and saw the message scrawled in the bar’s wood.

Instinctively, he pushed her behind him, blocking her body with his, as if to protect her from an
invisible enemy, but they both felt the tension and icy pressure around them beginning to disperse, replaced by a relative state of relaxation.

“What the hell was that?” he asked without actually expecting an answer. Turning around, he
framed in his hands Clara’s pale face. “Are you alright, baby? What happened?”

Her fingers were numb and thousands of needles and tingles passed through her hands when Colin
grasped them hard, warming them with his palms and carefully tracing the trails of her nails left in her own skin, result of the force with which she had tightened her fists.

Recovering from the shock, Clara wet her lips with the tip of her tong
ue and, looking him straight in the eyes, she asked hoarsely:

“Did you see it too? Did you feel something?”

Colin took her in his arms, nodding, continuing to watch over her head the message inscribed in wood.

“I don’t know what, but I definitely felt something,” he said leading her to the sofa, “and I don’t suppose
you’re the one who took up wood sculpting,” he went on, indicating with his chin in the bar’s direction, while she curled on the couch, with her legs under her.

Colin sat with her curled up in his lap, pushing aside a few blonde strands that overshadowed her face,
escaped from the band which she used to tie her hair. She seemed so fragile in his arms, but he remembered how, a few minutes earlier, she had the look of a warrior, fists clenched, strung as a bow, ready to face something she couldn’t see or understand. Any other woman and even most men he knew would have run screaming, as far as they could, from...

“What?” he wondered. “Paranormal phenomena, poltergeist, ET, what the fuck are we dealing
with?” he continued, frustrated, without realizing he was thinking aloud.

“I have no idea,” she said, shaking her head as a sign of absolute confusion. “I’ve never stopped to
seriously analyze this sort of stuff. I classified them as fables, out loud, at least, though, inward, I have enough imagination and scientific knowledge to know there are things in the Universe which exceed by far our level of understanding. It’s only that, you see, people are afraid of what they can’t understand. They prefer ignoring everything that hasn’t got a logical explanation, that’s the general reaction. And I’m as human as they get,” she went on with a wistful smile. “But even if I want to stick my head in the sand, too many weird things have happened here already. I perceive this thing as a challenge to my mind and character. I have to find out what is going on here,” she added, on a firm, determined tone.

Colin looked at her, smiling, but without managing to disguise his worry.

“Are you sure you don’t want to pack your things quickly and get out of here with the speed of light?” he teased.

“That’s exactly what I want, but it’s not what I’m going to do,” she replied, and the iron will which had
motivated her throughout her life transpired through every pore, every gesture, by the purposeful stance and implacable facial expression.

Colin sighed theatrically, admiring and adoring within himself the Amazon spirit, the courage and maybe
folly that his dream woman seemed to have.

“Well,” he said resigned. “Looks like you’ve got a partner in solving
The Mystery on the Lake
. Maybe after this we’ll write a book together about it. Meanwhile, who do you want to be, Holmes or Watson?”

***

It didn’t even occur to Clara to ask Colin if he was sure he wanted to be a part of the mysterious investigation of the strange phenomena, instead of being cautious and get lost as soon as possible from the
Twilight Zone
– the nickname she gave to the cottage area. It would have been an offense to his character and manhood, as Colin wasn’t the kind of man who would beat in retreat faced with such a situation.

On the coffee table, breakfast had gone cold long ago. They ate in silence, until Clara put down her
fork near the plate, with a jingle whose echo broke the heavy silence.

“We should make a plan,” she said, “but I haven’t the faintest idea what to begin with.”

Colin was gently massaging the bridge of his nose - that place between the eyebrows called
The Eye of Shiva
, where a sensation of dull pain had started to propagate in his whole head.

“Tell me again everything that’s happened since you came here. I mean the things you would catalog as
strange,” he added, continuing to massage, dispersing the stagnant, painful energy.

Clara told him
, as detailed as possible, the unusual episodes without omitting or hyperbolizing anything.

“How well could you describe to me that woman?” he asked.

“Not very well... it was dark and a considerable distance. I remember she had very pale skin, like a specter, eyes so dark they seemed two black holes, and long, blond hair, wavy.”

“If you could remember some details, even minor ones, like the shape of her face, her nose, stuff
like that,” he said, gesturing, “I could sketch her.”

Clara looked at him with wide eyes.

“You can draw? I mean, professionally?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “A man of many talents,” she added insinuatingly, her gaze wondering over his naked, superbly modeled torso. “Maybe you could draw me someday,” she suggested with a feline smile.

He meditatively ran his palm over his cheeks and chin, where the dark and prickly shadow of a
one-day-beard made its presence felt.

“Yeah... But I can think of a lot of much more creative things I could do to you, while you’re posing nude
on a huge sofa,” he said, winking. He pulled her against him and gave her a long kiss, tasting the chocolate pancakes, the coffee, and the aroma of her lips, of which he never could get enough.

Regretfully, they separ
ated from each other. Now that the outline of a plan had started to take shape, each needed to find an explanation – logical or not – of the bizarre events, each felt the need to act somehow.

She rose and, digging through the disorganized library, she unearthed a stack of white sheets and a not
very sharp pencil, which she had discovered during the inspection she performed in every corner of the cabin on the day of her arrival.