The Glimpsing (5 page)

What happened next was prompted by one part impulse, one part revenge, and one part because he simply knew that he could.
 
He reached up and began toying with Gabrielle’s hair, twirling it in his fingers.
 
She gazed at him confusedly,
then
brushed his hand
away.
 
She questioned him as to whether he was still drunk.
 
He was not.
 
He knew exactly what he was doing.

He reached up again, this time caressing her cheek with the back of his hand.
 
This brought a sharp blush—or was that anger.
 
She made a more dramatic attempt to push his hand away but he abruptly grabbed her neck, pulled her face to his, and began to kiss her.
 
He could feel her shoulders tense in surprise, the tug of her body as she tried to pull away.
 
The struggle became furious, but he would not let go.
 
He knew she wanted this.
 
He knew it, even if she didn’t.

Still she kept trying to retreat, trying with desperation to pull away.
 
But each attempt was growing weaker than the last.
 
He could feel it.
 
Finally, her body relaxed and her mouth parted.
 
She began kissing him back, feverishly,
then
climbed on top of him.

Later that day, he had returned to Portia’s house and put an end to their relationship.
 
Portia seemed completely stunned that it was happening, and seizing on that Jack did his best to make it hurt, smugly chiding the woman for holding so tenaciously to her antiquated morals.
 
He’d hoped she would break down, or perhaps beg him not to leave, but she did none of those things.
 
What she did do, however, was perhaps no less satisfying.
 
A single tear, long and clear, had fallen from her eye.

As much as he’d enjoyed seeing that, Jack had intended to deliver an even harsher blow.
 
His plan had been to have a brief affair with Gabrielle, perhaps one or two weeks depending on how good a lover she turned out to be, then either force her to reveal the relationship to Portia, or, if she was unwilling, do so himself.
 
Either way the pain he’d inflict on Portia was sure to be spectacular, no less spectacular than the suffering he’d endured the last four months.

But to this point, the plan had not worked out as intended.
 
That one or two week affair with Gabrielle had now extended out to two full months.
 
And, irony of ironies, it had nothing to do with how good a lover she was.
 
It was because for some unfathomable reason he had taken a liking to Gabrielle.
 
There was something about her.
 
Something he simply could not pin down.
 
Something different enough to make him delay his plan.

Still, whether he wanted it to or not, his relationship with Gabrielle could not remain as it was.
 
Sooner or later their affair would have to be made known to Portia.
 
Sooner or later she would have to serve her intended purpose.
 
Revenge.

Jack moved forward, leaving the painting propped on the dresser.
 
He went to the bed and crawled in.
 
Gabrielle unconsciously dragged an arm lazily over his chest, clutching his side.
 
He cast a final glance at the alluring red of the woman’s dress, then closed his eyes and fell fast asleep.

Weeping.
 
Soft constant weeping.

It was that sound that lifted Jack from the depths of sleep to the shallow waters of near waking.
 
What brought him out completely was a loud and heavy thud.

He bolted upright.
 
For a brief, baffling moment he actually believed he was back in Portia’s bedroom, poised once more to encounter the haunt in her closet.
 
Seeing a darkened and distressed version of himself in the mirror opposite the bed, however, he realized he’d only awakened into the murky environs of his own bedroom.

His heart was pounding violently.
 
He felt groggy and uncertain.
 
He wondered if the sounds he’d heard, both the weeping and that damnable thud, had merely been the product of some dreadful dream.

Turning to his right and looking down the hall, he noticed hazy light pouring out of the bathroom.
 
Shadows stirred inside, and the sound of a faucet began.
 
He looked down at the sprawling mess of covers beside him and realized Gabrielle was not in bed.
 
He peered toward the bathroom again and grumbled, “What is she doing down there?”

Jack reasoned that a bad dream had likely upset Gabrielle.
 
She’d hurried off to the bathroom, where she was now running water on her face, trying to clear her mind.
 
That seemed like a reasonable enough explanation for the weeping he’d heard, but that jolting thud...?

He scanned the bedroom’s darkness, searching for a possible cause.
 
He looked at the gallery, thinking one of the pictures might have fallen to the floor, but all were in their places.
 
He checked both dressers, peering at the painting momentarily.
 
Nothing seemed out of place.
 
He considered the two floor-to-ceiling windows directly across from the bed, the large mirror that rested high between them, the wet bar in the corner and its sizeable wine rack.
 
All was as it should be.
 
He recalled that the sound had seemed extremely close, almost as if it was right on top of him, but maybe it hadn’t been as close as he imagined.
 
Maybe Gabrielle had knocked something over in the bathroom.

Satisfied with that explanation, his head thumped back to the pillow.

Sleep was just washing back in when something moved before his mind’s eye.
 
It was the painting.
 
Something about it was wrong.

He sat up and looked at it.
 
A frown formed on his brow.
 
What he’d missed before was now obvious.
 
The red was no longer there.

Perplexed, he hopped from the bed and made his way to the dresser.
 
He removed the painting and scrutinized its canvas.
 
It was true.
 
His eyes were not deceiving him.
 
The red really was gone.
 
But not just that, the woman herself was gone.
 
It was as if she’d never been painted there at all.

He turned and leaned back against the dresser, contemplating.
 
He raised the painting a bit, studying it vigorously.
 
The faces of the two men had changed too.
 
Their disconnected, distant looks had now become distressed grimaces, their eyes slouching,
their
mouths crimped like two sullen scarecrows.

He smirked, thinking he now understood what was happening.
 
It was a grand joke, and he had been made the butt of it.
 
Portia’s little painting, as exquisite as it seemed to be, was really just a gag, the missing woman being its hilarity-inducing punch line.
 
Jack’s smirk became a reluctant grin, finally a smile.
 
“Very clever,” he chimed, amused.
 
“Very clever indeed.”

Jack was about to put the painting back when he was halted by what he thought was a strand of red fabric extending off the top of the frame.
 
He considered reaching up and pulling it away but quickly realized the material was not something on the frame, but on the floor in front of him.
 
Gradually he eased the painting down, and as he did so, the red slowly lengthened.
 
Arms joined it; the bow of hips became visible, finally a pair of bent legs and bared feet.
 
It was a woman, lying on her side in front of his bed, clad in a vivid red dress.
 
Her eyes were slightly parted—as best he could tell in the dimness of the room—but her gaze was frighteningly stiff, directed eerily into the floor.
 
She looked dead.

Jack felt a bulge of dread, as hard and heavy as a steel ball, thicken in his belly.
 
He turned, sat the painting back on the dresser and, looking back, grimaced, horrified at the thought that there actually might be a corpse in the middle of his bedroom.

He took two very cautious steps forward, paused, sucked in a deep breath, and then forced himself on.
 
He knelt before the woman and reluctantly pressed two fingers to her neck.
 
At that her mouth
yawed
open, making him shudder badly.
 
He took another deep breath, settled himself, and kept feeling for a pulse.
 
Nothing.
 
He rolled the woman onto her back and placed a hand firmly to her chest.
 
He closed his eyes, waiting with desperation for the slightest tremor of a heartbeat.
 
After an eternity, he got something: a single hard throb that came with such force that it almost made him lose his balance.
 
Several seconds later, another followed.

A wave of relief passed through him.
 
She was alive, albeit barely, but she was alive just the same.
 
She was probably some leftover from his party, he thought, the friend of a friend who had gotten drunk, passed out somewhere, and had been left behind by her equally inebriated friends.
 
And just as likely, she was the reason for the thud that had awakened him.
 
She’d probably been wandering around his bedroom, still drunk, when she tripped, struck her head on something, and clomped rather loudly to the floor, where she now
lay
barely hanging on to life.

He slipped his hands beneath the woman and picked her up.
 
Her body sagged hopelessly as he carried her, arms dangling, her mouth bucking open.
 
He had expected to struggle with the dead weight but she was very light, strangely so.
 
He carefully laid her on the bed, seated himself sideways on its edge, then looked down the hall and called Gabrielle.

He waited anxiously, expecting her to suddenly emerge from the bathroom.
 
She did not.
 
The light still radiated from within, but the shadows had ceased.
 
He called again, this time louder. “Gabrielle?”

Only a return of heavy silence.

He was about to call again when he heard a soft voice whisper: “She’s gone.”

Jack jerked around toward the woman.
 
“Where?” he said, more from surprise than anything else.

“You sent her home,” the woman said softly.

Jack reared a bit, confused not only by the woman’s proclamation about him sending Gabrielle home, but her ability to speak while in such poor condition.
 
And there was something else, an even greater oddity.
 
The woman’s voice was strikingly familiar.

He looked away, reached over and flicked on a lamp.
 
He turned back, and was stunned by what he saw.
 
There, looking up at him with soft, slightly dazed
eyes,
was Portia Childress.

Though not as he had ever seen her before.

Her hair, normally long and golden, was now short and extremely dark.
 
Her complexion seemed paler than usual, and her eyes, normally a crystalline blue, were now, somehow, as black and barren as coal.

“Portia?” he said weakly.

She blinked at him once, and then turned her head away, as if not certain he was even real.

“Portia!” he repeated harshly, trying to rouse the woman from her seeming stupor.

She lazily rolled her head back.
 
“No,” she said.
 
“Not exactly.”

Jack bristled.
 
“What is this?
 
What the hell are you doing in my bedroom in the middle of the night like this?”

She rolled away again, this time showing him her back.

“Answer me!”

“I had to see you,” she whispered, though still not turning back.
 
She brought a hand to her temple.

“What’s wrong with you?
 
Are you drunk?”

No reply.

“How did you get in here?”

“You brought me,” she said, her voice still not above a whisper.

“Listen Portia, I’m not in the mood for—”

She cut him off.
 
“Why did you do it?”

“What?” Jack said, confused.

“Why did you do it?”

“Why did I do what?”

“My bedroom.
 
Why did you enter it?”

“What are you talking about, Portia?”

She only rolled back halfway, looking at him with those drowsy eyes but nevertheless with enough force to convey she knew he was trying to hide the truth.
 
And he was trying to hide it.
 
He knew very well what she was referring to: the night he had entered her house, went upstairs, and violated her bedroom.

He sighed heavily.
 
“So, that’s what this is all about.
 
I broke in to your bedroom… and now you’re returning the favor.”
 
He chuckled incredulously.
 
“Not exactly something I would ever imagine you doing, but I guess turnabout is fair play.”

She finished rolling back toward him,
then
asked with an innocent, almost childlike inquisitiveness: “Why were you there?”

He paused,
then
said smugly, “I’d been drinking.”

“I know that,” she whispered.
 
“But what did you want?”

“Who says I wanted anything.”

“You wanted something, Jack.
 
Don’t pretend.”

He shrugged.
 
“What does it matter?
 
I left, didn’t
I
?”

She paused, her face reflecting a sense of suddenly greater interest.
 
“But why?
 
What made you leave?”

Jack got a bright visual of the red blush and eerie face he’d imagined in the closet.
 
“Let’s just say I… came to my senses.”

“I see,” the woman said flatly.

Jack stared at her, musing for a moment.
 
“How did you know I was there?”

“I saw you,” she said, as if this should have been plain to him.

“What do you mean you saw me?
 
You couldn’t have.”

“I saw you then just as clearly as I see you now.”

Jack chuckled.
 
“You were in bed.
 
You were asleep the entire time.”

“Oh, I wasn’t watching you from the bed, Jack.”
 
She paused.
 
“I was watching you from the closet.”

Jack stared, blinked… and then a pimply rash of gooseflesh broke out on his back.
 
It was her, the thing he’d imagined in Portia’s closet.
 
Only he hadn’t imagined it at all.
 
She was
laying
before him.