The Lurking Man (9 page)

She cleared her throat, made her way into the kitchen, and opened the refrigerator. She needed to rid her mouth of the taste of vomit and grabbed a beer out of the door and cracked it open and finished it in one long gulp.

She dialed home and sighed at her thoughts. No matter how she tried to twist it, this was her fault. Maybe it was time for the truth. And maybe Wilson would be more understanding and appreciative of her new approach.

“Hello?” Wilson said, and sounded like he had just awoken.

“Wilson, it's Cailean.”

“Cailean . . . why are you calling here so late?”

“I want to speak to Beau.”

“It's eleven o'clock and he's sleeping.”

Cailean looked at the window where the shade was hung up and realized that the streetlight made it appear as though it were dusk, not late at night. All sense of time escaped her.

The clock on the stove blinked.

“I think I lost the power or something. The storm probably pulled down some power lines. All of my clocks are blinking,” she said, and made no attempt to hide her own disappointment.

Silence often gave way to the awful moment when she had to contend with the voice of reason and she didn't want to hear it.

“Did you hang up? Are you still there?” she said.

“Yes, I'm here.”

“You sound mad. I'm sorry.”

“I'm past being mad at you, Cailean.”

She could understand that. Her word meant nothing.

Having a streetlight in front of her house after she had awoken from binge drinking had proven to be troublesome on more than one occasion.

“The streetlight in front of my place is really bright,” she said and didn't mean to say it out loud. She really wanted another drink so she would have something in her mouth and she wouldn't be able to say anything stupid.

“You were drinking again like I suspected. I can hear it in your speech.”

“No, I wasn't drinking when I spoke to you this morning. I didn't start until after we hung up the phone. I fell asleep and just woke up.”

“I know you probably passed out. You drink until you can't stand, and yet again I'm telling you the worst part about it is that you couldn't stay away from the bottle for one day.”

“I tried,” she said and got another beer. It would continue to help calm her nerves and offset the headache. She drank eagerly. “I decided I would be completely honest in this phone call with you—you deserve it. I feel bad enough that I don't need you compounding it with accusations.”

“I appreciate you wanting to tell the truth, I really do. But why do you always get the guilty conscience afterwards and never before?”

“I don't know, but I would like to start changing that. Emerson and I got into this really big argument this morning after you and I hung up the phone.”

“I stopped caring about what happens between you and Emerson a long time ago.” He breathed into the phone, his anger tangible. “You two deserve each other. What I care about is Beau and you've hurt him again.”

“I know I did and I'm sorry.”

“You don't owe me the apology. I've actually come to expect this from you. But I suppose there is still a side of me that hopes you find peace and it allows you to heal. I cannot believe the damage that man did to you as a child. I'm sorry you were molested, Cailean, and that he broke apart your family. I hope that man got what he deserved when he met his maker.”

“Thank you, Wilson, I needed to hear that, to know you still cared,” she said and began to cry.

“I just wish you never brought him with you into our home,” he said.

“Yeah, me too,” she said and had to shake the menacing image of Mr. Hagen from her mind's eye. “But I think what happened that day is something I will forever struggle to escape. I want you to know that I intended on coming to see Beau, but Emerson insisted that he come with me. I didn't want him to and it turned into this whole big thing.”

“And it was so bad you needed to dive headlong into another bottle? Do you think your son really cares about that?”

The beer that settled in her belly felt good, but she needed more to reverse the effects of the hangover. She took another beer out of the refrigerator.

“I know it,” she said. “I'm not dumb.”

“No, you're not. And that is what I don't understand about you.”

She popped open the can and drowned her desire to tell him off. This honesty approach opened her up and now,
she realized, she was becoming his punching bag. “I'm going to stop by in the morning to see him,” she said.
 

“I would prefer you didn't. You've done enough.”

“I'm going to.”

“Please don't, I'm not kidding.”

“Neither am I. My mind is made up. I'm coming.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever. And I wouldn't think about telling him that you were planning on stopping by because you would only disappoint him again. The sad thing though is that I feel like it is really me that's doing it to him because I'm the one that keeps telling him that you're coming.”

“I don't want you to tell him,” she said. “I want this to be a surprise.”

“I said I don't want you here. You can't be trusted,” he said.

No amount of beer could take away the pain of that truth. But she didn't see the reason for him saying it.

“This is why we can never get along, Wilson. You never give me a break.”

“I can't. I'm trying to protect him from the person that keeps hurting him.”

She ran stiff fingers through her hair. “No, it's because you accuse and judge me all the time and it doesn't help. There are ways for you to protect him without being so callous towards me.”

A great silence wedged itself between them. “I can't emphasize it enough. I don't want you coming here,” Wilson said. “I want you to understand that I have never accused you of anything you haven't done. I have sympathy for what you went through, but that was a long time ago and you chose to drag that around with you and you've allowed it to hurt us.”

Cailean remembered that she wanted to speak in truth with Wilson. She wanted to tell him what really happened that day in the lily field. If she did, that might lift a tremendous burden off of her shoulders. But that truth would forever remain a secret—no matter how badly it ate her up inside or destroyed everyone around her.

“I'm sorry, Wilson, I really need to hang up now,” she said. “I am going to come by tomorrow whether you like it or not.”

She disconnected the call. 

Chapter 10

 

 

STABBING PAIN

 

 

The past.

 

Sariel stood close to Cailean and watched her with unwavering interest. She had been kneeling on the kitchen floor for the past half hour, swigging from a cheap gallon of vodka that now rested at her side.

“I am worthless,” she muttered. “I don't even see the point in trying to continue on.”

Although the words were garbled and hard to decipher, he understood them perfectly. Long ago, when this woman was just a girl, a man that was suffering terribly and needed his help in moving on brought him to her. He had spotted Cailean from a distance and was compelled to see up close what had made him so curious. What he discovered confounded him.

Often he would return to her and continue his study to try to discover what had been afflicting her. The idea that she had been born soulless weighed heavily on him, but after careful inspection, he could see traces of it within her physical form. It was trapped and wanted out of her body in the worst way.

And now as he stood before her, he watched the same struggle continue on.

She grumbled some other words, but they were slurred and indecipherable. She swayed and stumbled and Sariel moved out of her way, careful not to make contact.

 

 

She used the kitchen counter to hold herself upright and she stared at the clock.

Wilson had gone to the hospital to bring Beau home. It had been several months since the accident, and over the past several weeks he had made great progress.

“I can't face him,” she said. “How can I ever look him in the eyes when I know what I did to him? I can't live with that.”

She shimmied along the counter until she reached the knife rack. Selecting the biggest knife out of the holder, she tried to focus her eyes on her reflection in the stainless steel refrigerator. It was blurry and messy like her entire life.

“Worthless,” she snickered.

With a steady calm, she stood upright, put the knife into her wrist, and dragged it up her forearm, zigzagging the blade as she worked it all the way to the bend in her arm. The massive cut left a gaping slit that gushed blood. She staggered around the kitchen and watched the blood spill out onto the floor.

“Look at all the blood,” she said, amazed.

Switching the knife into her other hand, she struggled to hold it. The ligaments in the hacked forearm weakened her grasp tremendously and she managed a much shallower cut in the other arm that started at her wrist and also stopped at the bend in her arm before the knife slipped out of her hand and clattered across the floor.

She looked at the knife, angry that the job remained incomplete.

Exposed meat and hewed tendons pushed their way through the jagged gashes.

“I guess it will have to do,” she said and shrugged. She began to dance and spin around and swing her arms aggressively. The blood flew in strands all around the kitchen. Droplets dotted across the floors, cabinets, and ceiling and she was like a painter fixated on her canvas, desperate to finish the picture.

She slipped on the slick floor and landed on her back. She hit her head hard and stared at the ceiling. Open-mouthed and dizzy, she moaned in both satisfaction and pain.

 

 

Sariel stepped forward and looked down on her. Her breathing was shallow and she was already slipping in and out of consciousness.

“I am near,” he said. “I know you can't see me, but you can hear me now. You long for my touch, but I won't give it to you yet. You are not meant to die this day, but soon you will. And when you do, you will wish you remained here in your misery.”

He sat down next to her and studied her some more. To his surprise he glimpsed what had eluded him for so long. It was ugly and territorial and it made him apprehensive to be so near.

“You must leave her when it is my time to take her,” he said and lifted his chin and listened. The sound of someone approaching the home made him stand and watch. Wilson entered the house through the front door.

“Just in time,” Sariel said and was pleased he would be leaving soon. He wanted to be as far away from that thing as he could.

He watched Wilson and how he looked at Cailean as he tried to figure out what he was seeing.

“Oh my God!” Wilson said, and ran to her side. Rendered motionless by what he saw, Wilson stared. Sariel could hear his thoughts that were filled with disbelief.

“Move it,” Sariel said, and clapped his hands. “You don't have time.”

Wilson sprung into action. He picked up the phone and called emergency services.

“Nine one one, what's your emergency?”

Sariel could hear the words of the operator as if the person were in the room with them.

“Please, send an ambulance! There's blood all over the place and my wife is on the floor. I don't think she's breathing!”

“I've dispatched the ambulance, sir. Don't hang up the phone. Are you sure she's not breathing?”

“Yes. I don't know, I can't tell. Just send an ambulance!”

“They're on their way,” the operator said with a constant calm to her voice. “I need you to find out where the blood is coming from.”

“I think her wrists. I can't tell . . . there's so much of it. I see a knife on the floor.”

“I need you to get a towel and apply pressure to the wounds,” the operator said.

Wilson dropped the phone and Sariel watched him run around in a panic. Wilson gathered towels and wrapped her wounds. He pressed down on them and whimpered.

“Stay with me, Cailean,” Wilson said. “Help is on the way.”

He wiped his eyes, painting his face with her blood.

“Beau is still in the hospital and he's going to be there a few more days,” he said. “They're concerned about some swelling that formed around his spine. I need you here to help me through this. How could you do such a thing?”

Sariel circled them and Cailean's tortured soul reached out to him. He backed away and shook his head.

“I cannot help you yet, Cailean. But soon I will come. And when I do, I will offer you a chance to escape the madness that is your life.”

Chapter 11

 

 

CREEPING DEATH

 

 

Present day.

 

“Was I molested by the old man that was chasing me in the field?” Cailean said, and her eyes grew wide with the question. “Is he the reason why I was so dysfunctional?”

The reply Sariel gave her was silence. It had become inappropriate and it had lost its effectiveness. He showed her these things and yet wouldn't elaborate when she found herself closing in on the answers.

The unmistakable hiss of his labored breathing kept a slow, deep rhythm and she knew he was listening, waiting for her to give up on her inquiry.

“I did mean what I said to you before. You are the bastard I suspected you to be,” she said.

Sariel didn't reply to her provocation and the ongoing quiet made her restless. It had instantly reverted back to being worse than anything he could say or do to her.

“That's OK,” she said, and tried to hide what she felt. “You don't have to tell me because I already know. I could see the look in his eyes when he grabbed my ankles. He's a damn pervert and I was afraid of him because I knew what he was capable of doing. Right now I can feel the touch of his cold, pruned hands on my skin and it's making me sick.”