“You don’t have to worry about me now,” she said. “I don’t really need protecting during the day in my own stomping grounds.”
“Look, being careful is…just not being stupid.”
“I am not stupid.”
“I didn’t say—Look, forget it, okay? I think I’m just on edge. Zach will be here, and you like Zach,” he said.
She thought she heard a touch of bitterness in his voice.
“Of course I like your brother. He’s a nice guy,” she said coolly, wondering about the bitterness in his tone. Had he thought she didn’t like him?
He pushed the door open. She preceded him in.
As soon as they were inside, he spun her around and into his arms. At first she felt as if everything within her constricted. She was angry, and she couldn’t help it. She wanted to tell him that she liked his brother, but she had fantasized about him. It wasn’t her fault he had been so distant with her until that last night in New Orleans.
“Hey,” he said huskily when she pulled back and stared up at him. “Hey.”
It wasn’t an apology, but his eyes held the words that he couldn’t quite seem to manage to say.
She melted.
He closed the door, and it was as if they tacitly agreed that they were closing the door on the outside world of fear and sadness that had sucked them into its vortex all day. Her handbag hit the floor, along with his keys, and then their jackets. She forgot that she had ever been angry, forgot whatever had come between them. The natural intimacy they shared came sweeping back with a vengeance.
He picked her up and started to carry her up the stairs.
He bumped into the wall.
She cracked her head and laughed.
He apologized, and she only laughed harder.
They made it to the second floor, to the bedroom. And then, in the combination of hot, wet kisses and clothes flying every which way, he came upon the skimpy skull underwear she had bought and decided it was sexy. He kissed her through the silk that barely covered her, and the feel of his mouth on her in such intimate ways through the fabric was incredibly sensual. She wanted desperately to return the erotic favor, and she explored his skin with her hands, her fingers stroking, and with her tongue. Then he spanned her waist with his hands, lifting her above him, holding her so that she met his eyes, and he groaned, a deep, husky sound that was nearly as arousing as his touch. He brought her down on the length of his erection with an earth-shattering slowness that drove her wild, and they tangled in the bedclothes. At first she was on top, but then he rolled her beneath him and thrust with a rhythm that made the room fade away. There was nothing left but his body, his breathing, his whispers, and the pressure of him inside her, until she shrieked with the violence of her climax and lay beneath him, heart shuddering as he came seconds later, then cradled her in his arms and slid to her side.
They lay there then in a silence that was precious to her, it was so natural. Then, as their damp bodies began to cool, they teased and laughed, trying to straighten out the covers, which had been left in absolute disarray, finally managing to snuggle together beneath them.
It had been a long day, a very long day, and there was no encore.
She didn’t remember trying to fall asleep, she simply was asleep, and at first it was deep and pleasant.
And then she was back in the cemetery, listening to a guide she couldn’t see talk about the witchcraft trials. He was talking about the way the convicted had been executed on Gallows Hill, explaining that none of them were buried here, in a cemetery for those who had died in God’s good graces.
But any cemetery harbored the dead.
And even if it was hallowed ground, the Devil could still sneak in.
And it was there.
The whisper, the shadow, the malice that had come through time to find her.
It was dark, for darkness was the Devil’s realm. And she knew it would claw its way free from the earth with skeletal fingers that dripped blood, but those fingers would not be the yellow-white of natural bone but dark, black and red, the colors of blood and death.
The others were still listening to the guide as he told them about the upcoming Harvest Festival, promised that there would be vendors out on the streets selling apples and cider and soup, dolls made from the corn husks and ceramics to dress a Thanksgiving table.
She still couldn’t see the guide, but she had to make people understand that they needed to get out. That he had led them there because he drew power from the dead and would use that power against them.
And then she saw him, the guide, the evil, the source of the danger. She couldn’t quite make out his face yet, but he was there, a dark figure of menace and malignancy. And…
She knew him.
She knew him, even though he was in costume. A turban around his head, a false mustache and goatee. Makeup accented his eyes, and…she knew he was wearing contact lenses to hide the color, but still, if she just looked closer, she would know….
She stepped forward and was greeted by the sound of laughter, his laughter, swelling in the air and drowning out everything else in the world.
He wanted her to come closer.
He had herded her toward the cemetery before….
And now he was in her dreams, beckoning to her.
She had to stop herself. As much as she wanted to know who he was, she had to stop herself.
She heard a chanting now, rising above the laughter.
“Don’t fear the Reaper
Just the Harvest Man.
When he steals a soul
It’s a keeper, so
Don’t fear the Reaper,
Fear the Harvest Man,
For when he steals a woman’s soul
She’ll go to hell or deeper….”
The other people were moving away, and he was coming toward her. The others didn’t know, she realized. They still thought this was all a performance, part of the festivities.
“Get out!” she cried. “Please, just go!”
He stopped then, angry at her for interfering. He shape-shifted right in front of her. First he was a man, and then he was a demon with horns, the classic image of the Devil: bloodred, his tongue as forked as his long thrashing tail…
Then he was a man again, the stereotypical swami in his turban and long cape flowing as if in the breeze, though the air around her was still, so still.
“You see me,” he said. “You can see me.”
She didn’t know if the words were an invitation or a realization.
“Look,” he commanded, pointing.
And there, in front of her, was the tomb.
The tomb that bore her name.
Dread filled her, but she dragged her eyes away from it to face him again. “You are in my mind. You are only in my mind. You are not real. None of this is real.”
He laughed, a high-pitched sound that assaulted her like a weapon.
“You’re wrong. I am real. And I am here.”
The cemetery disappeared in a sudden fog, and then she was no longer there at all. She was in a field.
Rows and rows of cornstalks stretched out before her.
And there were scarecrows. She knew she had to reach the one closest to her, had to see it, and yet it was the last thing she wanted to do.
“Go to it,” he whispered in her ear.
Because he, too, was there, in all his dark evil.
But she couldn’t go, couldn’t look. Because she knew that if she went, if she lifted her eyes to see, she would see herself. She would see that she had been staked out in the cornfield, a sacrifice to his ego and insanity.
“The queen of scarecrows, the queen of blood,” he mocked.
“No!”
She had to fight it. She had to fight him. He was real, and yet he was not. To best him, she had to fight him in her mind as well as in the real world.
“No!” she said again.
His laughter deepened, and against her will, she found herself moving clos
er and closer to the scarecrow, knowing that in moments she would see…
Herself.
Blinded by the pecking crows.
Dripping blood…
Feeding the harvest gods.
15
“Rowenna!”
At first Jeremy had been disturbed but not alarmed. She had nightmares that tormented her? He understood. He had his own.
When she was just tossing and turning, he didn’t wake her up.
But then her breathing grew shallow. Beneath their delicate lids and long black lashes, her eyes were rolling and in a frenzy.
“Rowenna?” He shook her gently, but when she didn’t respond and he drew her into his arms, she was like a rag doll.
“Rowenna?” He laid her back down, straddled her and shook her shoulders firmly.
She gasped, her eyes flying open, and stared at him in raw panic.
“Rowenna, it’s me. You were having a nightmare.”
She blinked, nodded, then closed her eyes for a long moment. Her rapid breathing began to subside.
“Are you all right?” he asked her.
She tried to smile, but it was a weak effort at best. “I’m fine. That was one hell of a nightmare.”
“What was it about?” he asked, lying down by her side again and taking her into his arms.
She was silent for a moment, and he was certain she was carefully crafting her answer.
“All this,” she said softly.
“‘All this’ meaning…? The body in the cornfield? Mary’s disappearance?” he asked.
She nodded.
He held her closer.
“You know, you have some terrible dreams, too,” she told him.
He shifted slightly. “Yeah, I know. We all have nightmares. Every kid’s afraid of the monster in the closet at one time or another.”
“Your dreams aren’t about a monster in a closet, though, are they?” she asked him.
“I’ve seen a lot of bad things,” he said, shrugging.
She drew away from him, propped herself up on an elbow and stared at him. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” she teased.
He smiled, and realized that exploring the scary realms within their souls was, for the two of them, more intimate than lying together, sweaty and naked, in bed.
“You haven’t really told me yours,” he reminded her.
“You just told me—”
“What every woman in the area is probably having nightmares about right now,” he said flatly.
“I beg to differ,” she told him solemnly. “Every woman in the area did not find that corpse staked out like a scarecrow in the cornfield.”
“No,” he agreed. “But you’re not telling me everything. You were having nightmares before you found that body, weren’t you?”
She inhaled, her eyes on his, honest and wide in the shadows of the night. “I dream of the cornfields, the way I used to see them when I was young. I dream of them stretching forever. I see the scarecrows Eric Rolfe used to make—they were terrifying, and so real. I promise you, one day he’s going to win the Oscar for special effects—”
“If he’s not doing life,” Jeremy interrupted her, his tone deadly serious.
She gave him a scathing glance.
“Sorry. Please, go on,” he urged her.
“There’s not much more. The scarecrows suddenly become real women. Dead. Some of them look at me. And I hear someone talking. He thinks he’s the Devil—but he’s real.”
She spoke the words almost lightly, as if the dreams had no power over her. But he knew she was telling him the truth—and that the dreams terrified her far more than she was willing to admit.
“You know, you’re just falling prey to the power of suggestion,” he said gently.
“Your turn,” she said, ignoring his words.
He arched a brow. “I think there’s more.”
She shook her head, smiling. “I’ve given you pretty much the whole of it. That’s everything I can remember,” she said. “Except sometimes I see the cemetery in my dreams, too.”
“Because Mary was last seen in the cemetery, that’s why,” Jeremy told her.
“Probably.” He could hear the edge of doubt in her tone, even though she was trying to hide it.
He frowned suddenly, feeling a little spasm of unease. “You need to stay out of the cemetery.”
“Don’t worry about me and the cemetery. I’ve known it since I was a kid. I could probably draw you a map of it with my eyes closed. Now. Your turn,” she persisted.
He crooked an elbow behind his head and stared up at the ceiling. “I had awful nightmares after my folks died. I got past those because of Aidan. He kept telling me I had to be strong for Zach. He was the one pulling to keep us all together, so we shaped up fast. The only movies that ever really scared me were the Nightmare on Elm Street series, I guess because they made me realize how helpless we are when we’re asleep.”
“Those movies scared me, too,” she assured him. “I think they scared everybody. What I wasn’t frightened by were all the movies about idiot teenagers who went off exploring the same place where dozens of other idiot teenagers had already been killed. I was never going to be stupid enough to do that.” She got a strange look in her eyes then, and she quickly looked down and traced her fingers in a line down his chest, creating a stirring in his groin.
Was she trying to distract him? he wondered. Or herself?
Neither, apparently.
She was being persistent.
“You had a nightmare last night,” she said.
“I did?”
“And you were talking to someone in the middle of it.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. But I think you do.”
He was annoyed to feel color suffusing his cheeks. At least they were in the dark, so she wouldn’t see.
He felt strange, though, as he opened his mouth and admitted, “Billy.”
“Billy?” she repeated softly, questioningly.
“Well, you know my story already. Billy was the boy who was alive when I reached him. I got him to land, up on the embankment, and gave him CPR. He was alive. His heart was beating, and he had a pulse. I talked to him. I rode with him in the ambulance. I could swear that he looked at me, that he thanked me, that he knew me…and then, at the hospital, he was declared DOA.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
“Being a forensic diver…you see horrible things. You wonder how one human being could ever perpetrate such cruelty on another human being. But there was something about those kids…They never had a chance. They went from one abusive home to another.” He was silent for a moment, feeling the empathy in her eyes. “Hell, according to the psychologists, after what they’d been through, they probably would have grown up to be monsters themselves.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“I believe it can happen. I also believe that we’re all responsible for ourselves. That whatever went on when we were young, once we’re adults, we have to get over it and become the people we want to be.”
She rested her head on his chest. “And what about others?” she asked. “Can we make them into what we want them to be? Should we want to change them, or can we grow to accept that people are different?”
He frowned and shifted, looking down at her, her face averted, the wealth of her silky black hair fanning over him in a way he was afraid he was getting much too used to. Her tone had been wistful and deep, and he knew what she was talking about. She was talking about the two of them, because she was no fool, and she knew that when they had first met, he’d thought she was either a sham or on the mentally unbalanced side.
He touched her hair. “I think we’re crazy if we don’t learn to see the world from every angle,” he told her, surprised at the tremor in his own voice.
And even more surprised that he meant it.
He lay there then, his hand on her hair, her cheek against his flesh. He closed his eyes, knowing he wo
uldn’t sleep again but hoping she would. And that her sleep would be free of dreams.
No matter what, though, dreams or no dreams, he would be there.
Was this love? Could a man fall from “avoid this woman at all costs” into sexual attraction-fascination-obsession and from there into love?
How the hell could either of them really know, when this had all grown so intense at the rate of a speeding bullet?
He lay there for a while, resting, thinking. He didn’t sleep. She did. Deeply and apparently dreamlessly.
He tossed everything he knew around and around in his head. He would talk to Joe on the way to Boston, even though Joe was, like Rowenna, in denial.
Joe didn’t want to believe that someone local, someone he knew, maybe knew well, maybe even had known all his life, could be a psychotic killer.
But someone was.
Jeremy didn’t think he could sleep, didn’t think he did.
But there, in the misty shadows, he saw Billy. Billy, alive and well, a typical kid in jeans and a T-shirt, hair a little tousled. He was grinning, and Jeremy got the feeling he liked Rowenna, approved of her. He wanted to deny that Billy was there, told himself he was just seeing Billy in his mind, imagining him. That if he tried to touch Billy, get up and walk over to him, he would disappear.
He closed his eyes and remembered the feeling of the kid’s hand in his. It was almost as if he could feel it again, as if it were real. As if Billy had lived.
But Billy hadn’t lived.
Billy had died.
He opened his eyes.
And Billy was gone. Misty daylight was creeping in through the drapes. He shifted Rowenna carefully to his side and rose.
As Rowenna began to awake, she stretched a hand across the bed, seeking Jeremy’s warmth.
She touched…nothing.
She jerked up in a panic, remembering all too clearly she didn’t want to be in the house alone. Jeremy’s strange behavior had spooked her. She leaped up, then tiptoed to the door and looked out into the hallway, listening. The house was quiet.
“Jeremy?”
No answer.
Had he already left for Boston? Without waking her up to say goodbye?