The Bleeding Season (41 page)

“You’ve been drinking, I can smell it on you.”

“Yeah, a little.”

“You one of those guys who grows a set once he’s had a few?”

“I’m not sure what kind of guy I am right at the moment.”

She shook her head, both annoyed and amused from the looks.  “Look, I thought I made this clear before.  I’m not in the business anymore.”

“I understand that.”

She spun away, walked over to a battered couch and sat down.  Darkness closed around me, the light encircling her as she placed the candle on a rickety coffee table in front of her.  “I was soaking in the tub, chilling out and trying to groove with the rain, and I’d like to get back to it if you don’t mind.  In case you haven’t fucking noticed, it’s nighttime, this is my place and you’re here uninvited
again
.  So I’ll ask one more time.  What do you want?”

I moved closer to her, closer to the flame.  “Why don’t you have any lights on?”

“They turned the electric off.  I’m leaving tomorrow, so who cares?”

Lightning blinked, washing the room in blue for an instant.

“We’re going in different directions,” she said.  “You’re running into the dark and I’m running away from it.  I tried to be cool with you before, I was honest, I told you what you wanted to know, so why are you fucking with me now?”

“I’m not fucking with you, Claudia.  I…”

She glanced at my wedding ring.  “Go home to your wife, Plato.”

“My wife’s not at home.”

Her dark eyes blinked at me through the candlelight.  “What do you think I’m running here, a lonely hearts club?”

“I’m sorry to just show up like this,” I said.  “I just…”

“You just
what
?  Jesus H., you got any complete sentences going on tonight?”  Claudia stood up, holding the towel tight against her chest.  “You think you can just come strolling in here like Joe Stud and fuck me, is that it?  Or you just slumming tonight, out for some cheap thrills?  Wife’s gone and you’re all fucked up, so what the hell, me being a used up old junkie whore and all I’d have nothing better to do than to put my legs in the air for you, right?  Man, what a lifesaver, thanks for coming by.”

“It’s not like that, I—”

“Get out.”  She moved out from behind the coffee table.  “Just get out.”

“I only want to talk.”

“No you don’t.”

I stood staring at her, still dripping like some pitiful lost puppy wandered in from the storm.  I had never felt so ridiculous, and never quite so alone.  “Did Bernard ever come here?” I asked.

She left the candle behind on the coffee table and joined me outside the light.  “Yeah, a few times.  So what?  Why?”

We were standing so close I could hear her breathing.  “Do you ever still feel him?”

She closed her eyes as if hopeful that not seeing me might mean I was really no longer there.  “I don’t feel much of anything anymore.”

“Claudia—”

“Just get out and leave me alone.”

“Drop that wall a minute and let me talk to—”

“It’s a good wall, a sturdy wall.  Been building it for years.  It keeps me safe.”

“It keeps you numb,” I told her.  “I know because I’ve been behind one for years too.”

“Better to be numb than in pain.”

“At least if you’re in pain you know you’re alive.”

“You don’t have to be alive to feel pain.”  Her eyes glistened.  “The dead feel it too.” She walked away and mumbled, “Get out.”  But as she slipped into the hallway she allowed her towel to loosen, and it fell open to reveal her bare back and the curve of her buttocks in the faint candlelight.

I followed her.  The hallway was short and narrow and led first to a bathroom that was filled with lit candles placed around the tub and on the sink and counter.  I hesitated in the doorway, but she was not there, so I continued on to the bedroom at the end of the hall.  A handful of candles burned here as well but did little to combat the darkness.  The only furniture was a bureau and an old unmade bed, the sheets in a heap near the foot.  Over the bed was a framed but faded black and white poster of Billie Holiday.  The floor was bare.  I stood just inside the room, watching the flames play in the night, illuminating what they chose to show me, including Claudia, standing beside the bed and still holding the towel in place in front of her.

Our eyes locked for what felt like hours, and though neither of us made a sound, countless words passed between us.

The towel fell to the floor in a twisting motion and lay at her feet.

An enormous black tattoo began at her left calf, wound upward, wrapped along her thigh and encircled her waist.  It ended just below her navel, where it split in two.  The forked tongue of a serpent, coiled around her, marking her.

Her pale skin contrasted with the dark hair on her head and between her legs, but the tattoo was so dominant it was difficult to look at anything else.  She seemed smaller out of clothes, more petite and delicate, at ease and not nearly so tough.  But the essence of her—the physically weathered essence—remained even in candlelight.  The majority of scars Claudia had collected over the years were internal, but a handful lived in plain sight, material evidence of a brutal past sprinkled across her body.

She radiated a primordial animalism in her movements and stances, and even in her nakedness she possessed a raw and dangerous edge, a kind of unpredictability one might encounter in a tiger just released from its cage.  I imagined her as sexually aggressive and wild, if not outright violent.  Heart thudding, my eyes skulked across her body.  When my eyes finally returned to hers, her face bore a look as alluring as it was defiant.  “This is what you came here for, isn’t it?” she asked quietly.

I nodded.

“Do you even know why?”

“No,” I said.

“I can feel what you think.”

As could I, and it sickened me.  I wanted to take her, to fuck her.  Hard.  I wanted to hurt and abuse her in every way the darkest corridors of my mind could conjure.  I wanted to hear her scream.  And I didn’t know why.  My anger and fear was frothing, bubbling to the surface, and I wanted to take it out on her.  Maybe because others had, maybe because I could, maybe because I imagined it was all she knew.

“I’ve never had thoughts like this,” I stammered.

“Yes you have.  You just keep them bound like all good devils.”

“They’re not me.  They’re not who I want to be.”

“They’re not who any of us wants to be.”

There is instinct, and there is judgment.

I crossed the room in two long strides.  My hands were suddenly in her hair, pulling her into me.  Our lips met, and as I held her against me our tongues entangled and her hands slid up my chest and onto my shoulders, grasping me there with surprising strength before she broke the kiss and pushed me away.  Nearly out of breath, I kissed her again.  She tasted of cigarettes and rainwater.  She cupped my face and looked up at me in a manner I had not until then thought her capable of.  Deep inside her shreds of innocence still remained, vulnerability and need.  “Not so rough,” she whispered.  “Slower…gently.  Like this, it’s better like this.”  Her lips brushed mine, and her tongue softly traced my bottom lip before slipping into my mouth.

Still locked in our embrace, I lifted her from the floor, and the violence and madness left me like blood flowing from a fresh wound.  In its wake lay the simple beauty of passion, of two scared and lonely people pooling their sorrow, trading it in for tenderness, for a chance to be safe and wanted and loved and needed unconditionally and totally, even if only for a short while.

At that very moment, I thought of Toni.  But as Claudia wrapped her legs and arms around me, the thought retreated, leaving us alone.

There, in the dark.

CHAPTER 31

I met Toni in high school and immediately thought she was the sweetest, most beautiful girl I had ever seen.  Cynical even for a teen, the instant and often overwhelming love we felt for each other surprised me, but like most couples that meet and commit in high school, our relationship was very intense.  The highs were amazingly high, the lows amazingly low—a typical stormy romance—and not long after graduation we were forced to make a decision.  Either we stayed together and got married, or went our separate ways as a test of our relationship, and ultimately, ourselves.  If our love was real and meant to be, our theory concluded, then we’d end up together eventually anyway.  Although it was painful for us, we decided the best move was to split up and see other people for a while.  Little did we realize three years later we’d be back together and engaged, and that a year after that we’d be married.  In the time we were apart both of us dated and slept with other people, but since our engagement I hadn’t been with anyone other than Toni.

When I found Claudia I had no idea we would eventually wind up in bed together.  It hadn’t been something I’d thought about or even wanted until that night, and I was certain she had felt the same.  But here we were.  And while I struggled with feelings of guilt and regret, there was also exquisiteness to it, a raw sensuality and honest affection existing for a time amidst a dreamscape of devils and nightmares, an oasis in a desert of shadow.

It ended with silent intensity while rain sprayed the windows.  The candles had burned down to nearly nothing, but lightning still blinked, illuminating the room every few seconds.  Exhausted, we drifted off to sleep, her body draped over mine, head on my chest, breasts crushed against my stomach, our nude forms slick with sweat, warm and wet, entangled from head to toe.

In the night I lost my way, wandered from our sanctuary to the murky borderlands of sleep, where all that was ghastly and unclean waited for me.

I groggily opened my eyes.  Claudia was still wrapped around me, her breath hot and steady on my chest.  The storm clouds had dissipated and the rain had softened, giving way to the moon.  Shadows moved along the walls.  The floor creaked.  I sensed movement before I saw it sweep past the corner of my eye.

Blended with darkness, new moonlight revealed several figures shrouded in black silently circling the bed, dancing around it like part of some ancient ritual.  My muscles constricted in terror.  I tried to sit up but my body remained paralyzed, stuck to the mattress and pinned beneath Claudia.  I tried to call out to her but the words stuck in my throat, and the harder I tried to speak the worse it became.  The figures continued their dance, increased their speed and began to violently convulse.

Claudia’s head suddenly jerked up, her chin in my chest and her eyes alive and wild.  “Ever wonder what happens when you close your eyes?” she giggled.  “What comes awake once you go to sleep?”

I struggled to get her off me but my arms and legs wouldn’t respond, and the more I attempted to thrash about the harder Claudia laughed.

“Get…
off
,” I finally managed to choke out.

“Ever wonder what that odd feeling is you sometimes get in the night?” she whispered, looking over her shoulder only long enough to grin at the beings still circling the bed.  “The feeling that you’re not alone, that there’s something in the room with you once the lights go down and it’s quiet?  We all feel it sometimes.  Like maybe somebody or something is standing right next to your bed?  We all open our eyes and look even though we know we won’t see anything.  But deep down you know you felt something, and it scares you.  Know why?  Because something really
is
 there.”

Suddenly I was able to move, and my arms pushed her away with such force that she became momentarily airborne before crashing back onto the mattress beside me.  I scrambled from the bed, swinging punches at the darkness and releasing a primal scream.  But the shadows were gone.

I staggered across the room, still off-balance, and crashed against the wall.

Claudia remained on the bed, sprawled out on her back.  Snarling whispers filled the room as smoke rose from her body and it began to convulse.  The cottage followed suit, shaking as if from an earthquake.  Terrified, I scanned the room and ceiling, half expecting things to fall on me from above.  I clutched the gold crucifix hanging around my neck.  It had been a gift from my mother just months before her death.  I held it tight as tears filled my eyes.
Do you still believe
?  My mother’s voice, from so long ago…

“Are you all right?”

The sound of Claudia’s voice stopped it all as quickly as it had begun.  I traced her voice to the bed.  She was sitting up, watching me with a confused look on her face.  “Are you dreaming?”

“I don’t know,” I said, voice breaking.

“It’s OK.”  She crawled to the edge of the bed and sat back on her knees.  Her body was still damp.  “Keep the evil in your dreams and nightmares, whether you’re asleep or awake, it makes no difference.  As long as it’s there its bound and you can control it.  If it gets in here,” she said, pointing to her temple, “
it’s
 in control.  Once you let it in your head, or it fools its way in, once it’s there for real, it can do whatever it wants.”

Slowly, I moved back toward the bed, still uncertain of who or what I was dealing with.  “Am I awake?”

“Remember what I told you.”  Claudia opened her arms.  “It’s all deception.”

As I leaned in to accept her embrace I heard a strange cracking sound, like small bones or pencils being broken, snapped in half, cracked and splintered.

Before I could process any of it an appendage burst through her abdomen.  Warm blood sprayed my face, and I threw myself backward to the floor as more jointed and furry appendages burst from her stomach and chest.  Coated with blood and bodily fluids, her body glistened.  With more cracking sounds her back arched and the spider-like legs clicked into position to support the weight of her torso.

I scuttled across the floor to the door, but it slammed shut before I could get to it.  Behind it I could hear growling and scratching.  On the other side of the room Claudia’s destroyed body had transformed into some bloody, writhing and macabre hybrid of human being and arachnid.

Flames appeared, encircled the bed and rose nearly to the ceiling.  The thing that Claudia had become was gone.  Her normal form had been restored, but impossibly, she began to climb the wall like an insect might, scaling it slowly, as if crawling across the floor.  When she reached the ceiling she stopped and looked down at me.