Mark Edward Hall

Chapter 13

He stood on the beach alone, breathing raggedly after his run, hands on knees, feeling a terrible weight in his heart. The calm blue surface of the Gulf of Mexico spread out before him, a wilderness he wished he could get lost in. Tiny swells lapped earnestly at the shore. On the western horizon huge thunderheads bruised the sky. Doug bent down and picked up a smooth flat stone, angrily throwing it, skipping it along the surface of the calm sea.

Today had been a day of immeasurable turmoil. He never should have brought Annie back here. He should have stayed in Maine and taken a stand.

But what would that have accomplished? Only delayed the inevitable.

He knew now without doubt that De Roché had made some sort of twisted deal for Annie’s first child. What he hadn’t known, and what he was confused about, was his own connection to it all. The monster he’d seen in De Roché’s mind, the monster he’d seen in Annie’s childhood bedroom, was the same monster that had been haunting him since childhood, the same monster that had taken his childhood friends and killed his parents. Everything was connected in some terrible way and for the first time he began to question his own purpose in the scheme of things.

But how could Annie have known the same horrors he’d known? Unless . . . no, he could not even entertain that notion. But it was too late, of course, he had begun to suspect a connection quite some time ago and in recent years it had been eating at him like a cancer. But deep down Doug did not want to accept it. It would change everything.

Right now the important question was why De Roché wanted Annie’s child? What’s so important about Annie’s first born that men and monsters would do anything to possess it? The dark and sinister fluttering blossomed suddenly inside Doug’s brain, causing a moment of vertigo and paranoia. You already know the answer to that question, Doug. You just don’t want to face the truth. He closed his eyes putting his hands to his head. A miserable groan escaped him.

Doug could not stop thinking about what he’d seen in De Roché’s eyes. He knew what it was, of course, that black and shimmering thing that was sometimes a bird, sometimes a leathery bat-like thing, sometimes a creature that was not quite a man. But Doug understood that it wasn’t any of those things. Not really. Not when you came right down to it and nailed it dead center. Somehow it was a sick combination of all three; an abomination, with something dark and unearthly thrown in for good measure; a collector of children, a soul thief, the devil’s spawn, with a laser beam eye that could somehow look inside you all the way to your soul. Doug had seen him in tragedy after tragedy in the years since a kid named Tommy Ricker had punched his lights out and had unwittingly driven an inoperable bone shard into his frontal lobe. He’d had to live with the bone shard, the headaches, the nosebleeds and the visions of terrible death and disappearance ever since. And he’d had to live with that terrible thing inside him.

The Collector was real and alive. Doug believed this beyond a doubt. And although he appeared to Doug as a ghost, he was convinced that somewhere he existed in the real world as a substantial being, and years ago he had vowed that someday he would find him and destroy him.

Now he was almost certain that De Roché knew about this creature as well. He had seen him in the old man’s eyes. Was it possible that he was linked in some way to De Roché and Annie, and through them, to him? It was a correlation he’d never before entertained. He’d had no reason to. After meeting Annie the visions had stopped. And he’d been so very grateful; he hadn’t wanted to think that her presence in his life had had anything to do with it. Now he could not shake these ideas from his mind. If it was true, if his meeting Annie had been something other than serendipity it would change everything, of course. The thought caused a shiver of dread to work its way through his body.

He needed to think about De Roché right now, as distasteful as it was. He needed to understand the man, his motives, his obsessions. He thought he’d known how far De Roché would go. He’d been wrong. Today he’d glimpsed something he had not been aware of until now: he’d known De Roché was cold and calculating. Now he believed the man was evil, perhaps inherently so. But something was wrong here, something that went beyond Rachael’s murder. De Roché’s empire was crumbling. Doug’s intuition told him that De Roché was a man frayed around the edges, alone and desperate, a man calling in all his debts.

Even so, the question always came back to the same thing. Why did he want Annie’s unborn child so desperately? And what did that terrible creature have to do with it?

Doug was bothered by Annie’s reaction to what he’d said after seeing the fluttering in De Roché’s eyes. De Roché had been staring at him and he’d seen it, and then he’d plucked words out of the air like an outfielder catching a fly ball, words that had shamed and infuriated Annie. Or perhaps they had terrified her.

“You locked her away up there with that . . . thing, didn’t you, Edmund? Annie is on her bed in her room, weeping and rocking back and forth in spasms of fear and grief. She’s hugging her rag doll. She’s young, perhaps no more than nine years old. There is a terrible weight in her heart. She is so lonely, and so . . . empty. You’ve been there with her, haven’t you, trying to console her, trying to explain why it has to be the way it is? Now you’re gone, but in your place you’ve left her with that . . . thing, that . . . that soul thief. That’s what it is, a soul sucker. A godless creature that’s helping you to draw everything good from her. It’s part of some . . . bargain, isn’t it Edmund?”

The implications of what he’d seen had sickened him, had wanted to drive him to his knees. He knew so little about Annie’s life up until the time they’d met; only what she’d chosen to reveal to him, and yet, at that moment he’d seen what he’d seen and he’d caught those words, unsure if they had come from Annie or from De Roché, or from somewhere else entirely. Perhaps the house itself had been whispering them in his ear. Pictures of some hellish tumor at the root of Annie’s childhood came into his mind, so dark and dirty, so evil that it was almost too much for him to bear. Doug hugged his arms around himself, closed his eyes and tried to force the pictures away.

But they wouldn’t go.

What if there was some connection between himself, Annie and De Roché? Something he’d never seen before, or had refused to see in is blind love for Annie. Suppose the old man could put his finger on the wheel any time he so desired, suppose he could actually manipulate people and events through some supernatural means. He certainly had power over his own daughter, the extent of which had been totally lost on Doug until now. He knew Annie had stayed away from De Roché for her own reasons, reasons probably much different than his. Or had they been? Just how much did Annie actually know? How much had she chosen not to tell him? Doug had never pressed her. Why not? She was so fragile and he was so afraid she would break, or probably more to the point, he was afraid she might reveal something he did not want to know.

An earlier self would have rejected all these suppositions as nonsense. Back then he was much more innocent of the world and its strange and complex ways. But Doug had changed. Annie had changed him. In a thousand ways he was more complex than he’d been before he’d met her, and part of him yearned for a return to the innocence and clarity of those earlier times. Love had changed him, but love, he thought, was a mild term. What he felt for Annie was something more akin to obsession, and he knew that De Roché was obsessed as well. That’s why he had been so afraid to bring her back to this place. Annie was the kind of creature that brought out obsessions in men.

Experience, he knew, was made up of endless ambiguities—of motive, of feeling, of cause and effect—and if he was going to win this battle—and he knew unequivocally that this was a game of win or lose, of life and death; maybe a game of honest-to-god good versus evil—he had to understand how those ambiguities worked.

Doug sensed movement behind him and spun sharply, his heart accelerating wildly. But it was only Annie, walking briskly toward him, her head high and determined, the soft, smooth swell of her hips gently undulating with each step. She had something to tell him, something devastating and terrible. He could see it in her eyes, but even more, he could sense it floating around her like an aura. She was about to destroy all they had worked for with a few careless words. Suddenly he did not want to know what she had to say, he was scared shitless of knowing. He thought he might go crazy if he knew.

She melded gently into his arms and held him tightly, trembling.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Annie, I know—”

“No, you don’t—”

“I’m trying to understand.”

“Something snapped. I hit you. I don’t know why—”

“It doesn’t matter, babe,” he said. “It was me. I was an asshole. I should never have said the things I said.”

“No . . . no!” she said. “You saw . . .  you were telling the truth. That’s one of the reasons I love you so much. You always tell the truth.”

Annie was so wrong about him it was almost a joke. He’d never told her the truth about anything; his terrible visions of the Collector and the fluttering things in his psyche that were sometimes birds sometimes bats, but that he knew on some basic level were none of those things; they were more horrific somehow, and prophetic, like they were trying to tell him something about a future not yet reasoned. And the worst deception of all: he’d failed to inform her of her fathers’ desire to possess her first-born child. It was as if he was somehow guilty of collusion. No, he had never been honest about anything with the person he loved most in the world. If she knew the secrets he kept from her she would almost certainly hate him.

“I just get so fucking crazy when it comes to you,” he said. “Sometimes I can’t help myself.”

“I know,” she said. “I know you love me. And I love you. That’s why I have to tell you—”

“—No!” Doug said. “Not now. Whatever it is, I know it wasn’t your fault. You were a child. They did things to you. They used you.” He was so fucking afraid, he realized, more afraid than he’d ever been.

Annie stared at him in bewilderment, tear stains streaking her cheeks. “But . . . how can you know these things?”

“I just do, Annie, that’s all. Sometimes I see things. Bad things. I don’t know why. It just happens. I saw something in your father’s eyes. I saw you and him and . . .”

“Oh, God, Doug, please, yes, I need to tell you—”

“No, I don’t think I can take it!”

“I’m not a bad person.”

“I know you’re not. You’re my angel.”

She nodded earnestly, staring at him in fixed confusion, and Doug could see the swell of relief mixed into all the other emotions. As much as he needed to know the real truth, he was relieved that she hadn’t spoken it. He needed to know it but he did not need to know it at this very moment. He felt deep inside him that coming to grips with Annie’s true past might destroy her and if that happened it might destroy him as well. He held her close, gracing her throat with a lace of gentle kisses.

“Annie,” he said. “I love you so much.”

Her hand moved up his spine to cup the back of his head, her mouth seeking his.

They went down onto the sand and she rolled over to straddle his hips. She reached to fumble with the buckle of his belt. He was suddenly half hard beneath her and trapped. She reached up under his shirt and ran her palms across his chest. His body was solid without being heavy. Silk hair spread out from his sternum and ran down the central groove of his abdomen.

She sat up a little and slipped his jeans down his legs, then his shorts. His cock sprang out and stood straight up. She gently stroked the underside. It responded in surges.

“God,” she said. “I love that thing.”

She leaned forward and her mouth met his.

Gently he coaxed her over and they fell side by side on the sand. His fingers worked at the button on the top of her jeans. She made no attempt to assist, enjoying the look of concentration that he wore.

Now his hands were in her jeans. There was urgency in him and much as she loved to watch his intent she aided the undressing now, raising her hips from the sand and sliding the jeans down. The dark triangle of her sex beckoned. Her thighs and calves were well formed, hard but not muscular; above them her abdomen was flat, elastic, no sign yet of the child.

Doug got to his feet and held out a hand, pulling her up when she took it. Without pausing she slipped her t-shirt over her head, revealing breasts that were full, well proportioned and natural.

He led her to water’s edge, and together they allowed the Gulf of Mexico to gently take them.

Doug pulled her toward him, and as she turned away from him, he put his arms around her midriff hugging her to him, his erection pressing against the softness of her buttocks.

“Mmm,” she said. “I forgot what it was like here.”

He slipped into her from behind. Gently she bucked against him, meeting his thrusts, and they made love in the warm saline bath, locked together as one.

Later he carried her out of the water, her arms and legs locked around him, her face buried against the side of his neck kissing him there. Her lips were hot, and he felt himself stiffening once again. He laid her gently on the sand, stood above her for a long moment, marveling. His cock stood out before him, nine o’ clock.

“Doug,” she breathed as he moved gently down onto her. “Oh, God, there’s so much I need to tell you, so much you don’t know. So much I’m just beginning to understand myself.”

“Shhh,” he said, pressing himself down to meet her thrusts. “There’ll be time enough later.” His cock filled her and they made love for a second time.  “Can’t stop, babe,” Doug said.

“It’s okay,” she said. “Don’t. I want it.”

He tried to stave off his eruption for a few more trembling seconds, the heat of her channel, the swell of her breasts, the beauty of her soul, the confounding mystery of her, all of it and more, filling his senses.

She danced beneath him. “I love you,” she said. “I love you, love you, love . . .”

—–

They lay together for a long time, naked and silent on the deserted beach. Doug lay back, closing his eyes. Sometimes he could see Annie more clearly when he could not see her at all. When he thought of Annie—which was almost all of the time—he saw her as a flawless creature, a sculpture, painstakingly wrought from some magic block of marble by the hands of an immortal master. She was in his mind’s eye now, her skin pale and cool, her body supple and long, like a stretching cat; and her laughter, the ringing of delicate wind chimes; her eyes, the color of each season, changing to reflect her myriad moods. And her mystery, yes, there was so much mystery in her, deeper and more profound than he could ever hope to comprehend.

By contrast, he was just an ordinary man, raised by an aunt in a small and unpretentious house on a village street and sent to public schools. He could never be the god to Annie’s goddess, and lying there beside her naked on the beach he felt strangely like an imposter.

After a while he turned and faced his goddess. “How did you manage to get away from your father?” he asked.

“I told him I was going out to find the man I loved, that you were the most important person in the world to me.”

Doug stared at Annie. “You’d think he’d know that by now.”

“It’s important that he hear it from me.”

A startling yet tantalizing thought struck Doug. “Do you suppose he knows what we just did?”

Annie shrugged giving Doug a careless grin. “He’s got guards posted around the estate, and cameras. I imagine one of his boys has reported to him by now.”

An image of Theo the Greek God came to Doug’s mind, standing behind the row of beach pines with a set of binoculars, perhaps a video camera. “You think someone was watching us?”

Annie flipped her wet hair carelessly back. “Doug, nothing happens here that he doesn’t know about. I don’t care. Why? Do you?”

Doug wasn’t sure how to answer that question. It was too complicated. For obvious reasons part of him did, for reasons much more ambiguous there was a part of him that didn’t.

“Maybe it would convince him of our love for each other,” she said.

Doug sighed. “I don’t think love matters to him. I’m not sure he’s capable of it.”

“He’s stubborn and possessive. He’s used to getting his way.”

“Spoiled is more like it.”

“It’s more complicated than that.”

“Tell me.”

“I don’t know what’s going on in his life now,” Annie replied. “I’ve been away too long.”

“He acts like he owns you.”

“He used to . . . in a way he still does . . . but only part of me.”

“Which part?”

“I’m his daughter. That will never change.”

“No, I don’t suppose it will, but you’ve done okay without him, right?” Doug was grasping at straws, his jealousy simmering just beneath the surface, threatening to boil over. He hated himself for his emotions.

“Tell me your parents don’t still own a part of you.”

It was an evasive answer, Doug knew. He turned away from Annie, staring out at the calm sea. The bruised sky had blocked out the setting sun and a huge shadow moved across the water toward them. He blinked his eyes and for a short moment he was in that long ago place, sitting in the back seat of the car, his mother and father in the front, so excited because they were going to the bank to sign papers for their first home. Then, the moment was shattered forever in a powerful explosion of glass and twisted metal and he realized he hadn’t been there at all. Some sort of terrible magic had caused him to see them die from across time and space.

Doug was hauled back to the present, still staring at the black and ominous mass in the distance. The cloud seemed to be made up of a million black and fluttering wings, all beating together in some senseless and hellish rhythm. He closed his eyes, opened them again and the illusion was gone. He couldn’t deny the truth in Annie’s words. Even in death he felt his parents in ways he couldn’t articulate but wouldn’t change for the world. He never wanted to let go of that.

“He’s alone now,” Annie said. “I’m all he has left.”

Doug turned back around. “He has his boys.”

Annie gave her head a rueful shake. “Something’s changed. I’ve never seen him this way. He’s frightened.”

“He should be. He’s made serious enemies. His wife was murdered before his eyes.”

“Are you saying he deserves what he gets?”

Doug frowned. “I don’t know what I’m saying. You know how he feels about me.”

“I think he’s afraid of death,” Annie said. “He used to think he was immortal. Now I don’t know. ”

“He wants me out of the way.”

“I know how to handle him. We made a bargain.”

Doug searched her face. “What bargain?”

“A little time, that’s all.”

“Wow, he’s gotten to you already, hasn’t he?”

Annie did not reply.

“You’re staying, aren’t you?”

She looked away. “Just until the baby’s born,” she said, her voice a mere whisper. “He needs me, Doug.”

Doug felt like he’d been stabbed in the heart. “Annie, he’s winning. Can’t you see?”

“What is he winning?”

“I don’t know. You! The baby! The game! Don’t let him do this.”

“There is no game.”

“There’s a game all right and you’re playing right into his hands. He has everything he could possibly want here. He’s got his money, his boys . . . his fucking power!”

“Don’t be this way, Doug.”

“You’re making me crazy, Annie.”

“I’ll always be your girl.”

Annie was looking Doug directly in the eye, and in a flash of shocking realization he saw that she knew about her father’s desire for her first born. Doug was as certain of this as he’d ever been about anything in his life. Annie had always known. Perhaps she wasn’t consciously aware of it, but hidden deep inside her DNA was the trigger that had brought her here to this moment in time, the obedient little girl, home to Daddy, giving him what he wants, what he demands. And Doug also knew in that moment that no matter how much he wanted it to not be so, there was nothing he could do about it. He stood up and slipped his jeans on. His face felt flushed and feverish, as though Annie had struck him again, as if he might go crazy any second and strike her. “So that’s what this was all about?”

“What?”

“This little seduction of yours.”

“It wasn’t about anything except my love for you.”

“Oh, balls, Annie. You came here to deliver the worst possible news and like a fool I wouldn’t let you.”

“You don’t trust me,” she said.

“I don’t trust him, for Christ’s sake! And you shouldn’t either. He’s manipulating you and you’re letting him. I don’t even know who you are. I’m not sure I’ve ever known.”

“Grow up, Doug.”

Doug searched her face again. “For God’s sake, Annie, you don’t trust him.”

“Maybe it’s time I started.”

Doug picked her clothes up off the sand and threw them at her. “Cover your tits,” he said. “I don’t want anyone but me looking at you.”

“Doug, don’t.”

“What’s happening to us, Annie?”

She didn’t answer him. Truthfully she didn’t know. She felt those black and fluttering things Doug had spoken of, all around her now, consuming her, and they were real, and furthermore she did not have the power to resist their ugly persuasions. She felt like something inside her was in the process of dying even as her unborn child began to live. She got dressed, stood on the sand waiting.

Doug had walked back down to the water and was standing there, skipping stones over the calm surface. He was her rock, her love, her Adonis. Muscles rippled in his arms and shoulders and buttocks. His beauty and his heart made her ache. “I’m so sorry, Doug.”

“No you’re not.”

“Daddy’s planning a dinner party tonight,” she said. “He wanted me to make sure you knew.”

“Dinner party?” Doug said amazed. “My God, his wife was just murdered.”

“I don’t know what’s going on,” Annie said. “But he expects us both to attend.”

“Can’t he wait until she’s in the ground?”

“He has his reasons.”

Doug did not reply. He just stood there skipping stones. Annie felt like she was dying, drowning in a sea of sorrow. “Are you coming?”

“No,” he said without turning to face her, “I have to think.”

Annie turned and walked back to the house alone.

—–

He walked along the deserted beach deep in thought. He couldn’t help but think the old man had won. But what had he won? Their child? What kind of game was he playing? What kind of game was Annie playing? Surely it was a game. Away from the old bastard, Annie was a different woman, strong, independent and focused on her art. Maybe Doug had somehow made a terrible error. Perhaps she’d never been anything but what she was now. Perhaps their entire life together had been a colossal lie. She had gone from being De Roché’s little girl to Douglas McArthur’s woman, and now it seemed she was reverting back to daddy. In the absence of his wife De Roché would make Annie his woman. Hadn’t he always felt down deep that someday he’d lose her in this way, that everything up till now had all been some crazy yet temporary dream?

For Christ’s sake, McArthur, grow up. You’re being a complete and total paranoid jerk. The girl just lost her mother. You know she loves you. You’re just being selfish. You don’t want to share.

It was late when he started back. The wind had picked up and the sky had darkened. As he approached the house, rain began to fall, a fine, soaking mist, more a wall of liquid fog than rain.

He reached the garden and stood very still in amongst the marble figures there, imagining he was one of them, and feeling like stone. His eyes searched the mansion. Behind a rain-streaked window on the second floor, a vague figure stood, distorted by rivulets of rainwater. It was a young woman—he could tell that much—perhaps a ghost of some long ago resident—and she held a child, rocking it gently in her arms. He squinted trying to make sense of what he was seeing, but it was no use, the distortion was too great. Shivering, Doug made his way out of the garden, finding shelter from the rain under the Corinthian-columned porch. There he stood staring into the garden as the deluge came, his unease a physical weight in his heart. Thunder clapped loudly overhead as lightning parted the heavens.

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