The Haunting of Anna McAlister (2 page)

Anna opened the bathroom door. Tom looked both concerned and tired. One glance at Anna’s body made the tired part disappear. “You look like a lobster,” he couldn’t believe his eyes. “A cooked lobster.”

Anna was going to thank Tom for his usual sensitivity, but had other things, fleeting things, fleeing things on her mind.

“Did you see anything, Tom? Anything at all?”

“When?”

“When you came out of the bathroom.”

“No, all I saw was you having a bad dream.”

“Nothing else?”

“No, what else was I suppose to see?”

“I guess nothing,” Anna pushed by him and back into the bedroom.

“You were mumbling something before I woke you up. I don’t know what you were saying. I think you might have been speaking French.”

A quick shiver shot up Anna’s spine. For a brief instant she remembered the voice clearly. “I don’t speak French.”

“I guess you do now.” Tom said. “At least in your dreams.”

“I had the worst nightmare,” Anna walked through the room and sat on the edge of the bed. “It was so real.”
 

“That’s one of the good things about waking up.” Tom stretched and yawned.

“Yeah but, like I said, it was so real. It was like I could feel it, smell it. I just wish I could remember it.” Anna said as Tom jumped onto the bed and pulled her down next to him.

“Fuck it, Anna,” Tom said as he snuggled up against her. “It was just a stupid dream.”
 

As usual, Tom’s snuggle started to take a definite turn toward the sensual. “But I must say that your French was incredibly sexy.”
 

Tom tried to speak with a French accent. He thought he sounded like Maurice Chevalier. Anna thought his attempt sounded more like a combination of Pepe Lapew and gargling. She had to laugh.
 

“Stop it,” she jokingly pushed him away, but he came right back.
 

“French. . . the language of love,” he gurgled.

“Not the way you speak it.” Anna hit him with a pillow. “Now go to sleep, Renee.”

“Yes,” Tom continued to try to sound French. “I am no longer Tom. I am Renee. . . your mad Parisian lover.”
 

Tom hoped he would eventually turn Anna on, instead she turned over, said goodnight and tucked her knees up to her chest.
 

Why did I call him Renee?
She dismissed the thought with a quick,
why not
?
 

From behind her, Anna heard Tom humming Thank Heaven for Little Girls, as he slowly drifted off to sleep. She smiled and closed her eyes.

That was one hell of a dr
eam, Anna thought before falling back asleep herself.
I hope I can remember it better in the morning.

Chapter 2

Anna woke up tired. Her mouth hurt and her lips were swollen. While she had never experienced real violence before, she was sure that this was what it felt like to be beaten up. She remembered being sick, showering forever and having the most horrible nightmare. She could recall little else, her mind was too preoccupied with the pain in her body.

She groaned loudly and tried to get up. She groaned again, and this time made it to her feet.
Getting old, girl
, Anna thought.
And you’re making the noises to prove it.
 

Ever since Anna had turned 35 last August, she had caught herself making involuntary noises at the simplest of movements. Getting out or into a car, bending over to pick up something as massive as a pencil, or even just standing up from a sitting position were occasions that seemed to call for a quick groan.
 

This morning, no movement was simple or without an accompanying ache. As Anna walked toward the bathroom, every part of her body throbbed and demanded that its pain be recognized above the rest. It was no longer unusual for Anna to wake up with various physical complaints, but the old “Gee I must have slept funny,” sure didn’t begin to explain how she felt now.

“Tom, what did you do to me last night?” Anna whispered to herself. She tried to remember if she had fallen for any of Tom’s “special requests” the night before. “No,” she shook her head. “I didn’t have
that
much to drink.”
 

Any unusual nocturnal activity that resulted in injury or embarrassment usually had its root in something Tom wanted to try, in his words, “Before we get to old to try anything new.”

Anna groaned again, this time more loudly and on purpose. It didn’t make the pain go away, but it helped to express it. She also hoped her cry of distress might awaken Tom, and he could offer a bit of sympathy and to make the coffee.
 

Oh yeah, right
, she thought, knowing full well that her chances of waking Tom were about as great as waking the dead. In fact she had several times in the past checked to see if he was still breathing as he slept.
 

Once Tom fell asleep, almost nothing could wake him up. He had slept through a hurricane when they were on vacation in the Bahamas. Only one part of him rose when Anna tried to wake him with a sex act as an experiment. A simple moan, or for that matter an outright scream had no chance what so ever of waking Anna’s sleeping beauty.

Anna added a slight yelp to her litany of groans and walked quickly to the bathroom, determined to brush the worst morning breath of her life from her mouth. She also felt an overwhelming need to shower again. Anna smelled the skin on her arm.

“Whoa,” Anna said out loud, quickly pulling her arm away from her nose. She smelled, somehow, stale. A little like an old closed up country store with sawdust on the floor, or a moldy room that had been locked up for a long time.

Anna’s shower lasted no more than ten seconds, the water and soap stung her still raw skin, like a million tiny needles hammering into her with incredible force. Brushing her teeth lasted only a little longer, before her tongue again began to bleed.
 

What the hell happened?
Anna thought while rubbing cream over her body, and, despite the pain, finishing off half a bottle of mouthwash to disinfect her wounded tongue. Only then did she look at herself in the mirror. She shivered at what she saw. Anna thought she looked like something between an anorexic drowned rat and her mother.
 

Anna’s deep auburn hair was a tangled stringy mess from last nights soaking and towel drying. The blue of her corneas was surrounded by the red of countless broken blood vessels. Her usually beautifully sculpted face and somewhat Romanesque nose looked puffy, and there as a small but apparently deep cut on her left ear. Even her body, upon which she had spent countless expensive hours trimming, toning and torturing at a nearby health club, looked decidedly unhealthy. There were shallow bruise marks that went from her breasts to her navel, and then down to just above her pubic hair.
 

Anna again pledged her revenge upon Tom, while continuing to examine herself in the harsh bathroom light. The girl voted in high school as the one with the perfect face and perfect figure was currently a perfect mess.
 

“If they could see me now,” Anna smirked, remembering her girlfriends and girl enemies. “They’d all love it.”

Anna attempted to regain a somewhat human appearance with the assistance of several different brushes, eye drops, concealer and whatever else she could find in her makeup kit and medicine cabinet. She thought her body looked as bad as, if not worse than her face.
 

Anna quickly put on the old triple extra large football jersey she kept hanging on a hook on the bathroom door. She had kept it as a souvenir from an old boyfriend, and found it came in very handy after a shower or as a nightgown. It stretched down almost to her knees. She had told Tom that it was her brother’s, and had told her brother to lie if asked. Anna looked in the mirror one more time. She moaned twice before heading back into the bedroom.
 

When she saw Tom lying on the bed, peacefully sleeping the early morning away, she was moved with emotion. “Shit!” she said. The son of a bitch looked great. He used no foundation, no wrinkle cream, no tweezers, no pulling, no shading, no covering and he looked as good as he always did, which Anna thought was pretty damn good.
 

His dark curly hair never seemed to need brushing. His skin was smooth and tan. His muscles were well defined, and at 6 foot 2, Anna thought he was a great match for her 5 foot 9. Anna would watch him in his sleep and marvel at his youthful beauty. She often called him her Adonis.

“Fuck you!” Anna half-snarled and half-laughed. Right now she would like him to look a little more his age, which was 5 years more advanced than her own.
 

“What?” a sleepy voice yawned from the bed.

Even his voice sounded sexy and gorgeous. “Nothing, honey,” Anna said while leaving the bedroom. “You mother fucker,” she whispered.
 

“What?”

Anna quickly closed the door and made her escape. She half walked, half stumbled down the steps. Even the bottom of her feet hurt.
No,
she thought.
This isn’t like being beaten up from the outside. It’s like being beaten up from the inside.

“Stop it, Anna.” Anna addressed herself. “Face it, you are just getting old.”

It was only 6:30 in the morning. The first gray light of dawn was just starting to break the darkness in her kitchen when Anna walked in, mad for coffee and in desperate need of Advil.

She didn’t wait for the coffee to pass through the coffee maker and fill the pot. She slid a cup under the caffeine rich stream as soon as it started to pour. When the cup was half full she replaced it with another. She took two Advils with the first sip and one more with the second.
 

The coffee was strong and the Advil seemed to help. As soon as Anna started to feel a little better she tried to remember her dreams from the night before. But, the more the morning lit the room, the more distant the previous night’s events seemed. Soon Anna’s mind tired of the search and found a new focus.

“My music boxes!” Anna slammed down her coffee cup on the table, causing some to spill over the top. She ignored the mess and walked quickly to her dining room. “I can’t believe I forgot about my music boxes.”

The day before, Anna’s “Craziest thing I ever did” had arrived. It had been packed tightly in about 20 feet of bubble wrap, a billion of those little Styrofoam packing thingies and a 4 foot x 3 foot reinforced cardboard box. It took Anna and Tom five minutes to cut the box open and get through the packing material before they reached and removed a highly polished oak chest which reflected back their faces as clearly as any mirror.
 

Tom had laughed when he saw it. “You paid $2,000 for a Barbie coffin?”

Anna had ignored his comments, although she did find the thought of Vampire Barbie, complete with a broken mirror, pet bat—Binkie, and a bucket of pretend Ken blood, to be somewhat amusing.

There was a key taped to the top of the chest. Anna quickly peeled it off, unlocked and opened the lid. She found that the interior was divided into twelve deep red velvet compartments, each covered by a velvet panel. Each panel was secured on all four sides by tiny red satin ribbons. She had carefully untied all 48 ribbons before quickly lifting each panel. When she was done, Anna gasped at the sight before her. The only word that could somewhat adequately describe what she saw was, “Wow!”

Anna and Tom looked down at the tops of 12 antique music boxes. Each was hand carved or painted. One was pure black with a single red rose in the center of its cover. Another was white with raised carvings of a cat on a window ledge. Others were in various shades of wood from teak to mahogany, each with its own painting, carving or design. They were all polished to the point where the light in the room glittered off their surfaces and reflected around the room.

Anna had purchased the music boxes, sight unseen, at an art auction at a local dealer. Stacy, the media buyer at the advertising agency where Anna worked, had forced her to go along. She had no intention of buying anything, but when the auctioneer said a music box collection was the next offering, she couldn’t resist the temptation.

He described the boxes in detail. They were all French and at least 100 years old. He said the collection was made available through an exporter in Paris who was working on behalf of the anonymous owner.
 

The bidding began at $1,000. At $2,000, Anna was the only one with her arm still raised.
 

“Sold to the beautiful woman in the third row,” The auctioneer had brought down his gavel. “For the bargain price of $2,000.”
 

Anna was going to say “Wait! I was kidding! It was all a joke!” But, for some reason, she didn’t. She couldn’t. She didn’t want to. Later, when she was writing the check and scheduling delivery, the auctioneer told her that the collection was worth at least three times what she paid, but that the seller was in a hurry to complete the process as soon as possible.
 

Anna was excited, until the auctioneer suggested they discuss it over dinner and drinks. She then could no longer be sure whether his words were truly informative, or goal oriented, with the goal being to get her onto his auctioneer’s block.