Helen slipped her naked body into the old-fashioned pedestal bathtub. Its depth allowed her to slide her shoulders below the waterline without having to raise her legs too much to compensate for her height. She had poured some of Helena’s Epsom salts into the water while it was running, and the muscle soothing effect was beginning to loosen the tension knots in her back. She closed her eyes and breathed in the steam rising from the water. It was like a mini-sauna and she was enjoying every minute of it.
For a few moments, she forgot about the situation in Troy. For a few minutes, she imagined she was floating in the aquamarine waters off Cozumel. She had been there once, on spring break with her high school class. It was a carefree time in her life; away from her mother and not yet a mother herself.
She took a sip of the Pinot Blanc wine from the glass she had rested on the soap holder on the wall. That was the bad thing about the design of old-fashioned tubs, no ledge to put anything on. The wine was room temperature, not really the way she liked it, but she wasn’t going to follow Helena’s suggestion and throw an ice cube into it. That would be uncouth. She also vetoed using a plastic wineglass, despite Helena’s protest that “she’d be sorry if it went crashing on the mosaic tile floor.”
She imagined feeling the waves of the Atlantic Ocean rolling over her chest with her every breath. For a moment she almost thought she could hear the hired resort musicians playing wooden flutes in the background, their tropical notes lulling her to sleep.
But it wasn’t the beginning of a wonderful fantasy. There really was water smacking her in the face. She sneezed as the salted water went up her nose. The melodic wind instrument was actually a wind of a different sort. It was more of a whistle. And it was off-key.
She tried to scream, but a hand reached around from behind her neck and covered her mouth, muffling her attempt.
“Helen, I’m going to remove my hand now,” the voice said. “Do me a favor and keep quiet. We don’t need to go and wake the dead.”
She nodded in agreement, tricking him into thinking she was submissive, just before sinking her teeth into him, hard enough to break the skin. “You bastard!” she gasped, after releasing his hand from her jaws.
“Don’t go there, Helen,” he sighed, “we all know who is and isn’t a bastard in this house.” He looked at the puncture mark on the fleshy part of his palm. “Do you know how many germs are in your mouth? That was borderline barbaric of you.”
Helen took what was left of the wine in her glass and flung it at him. “Here, pour a little alcohol on the wound if you’re so concerned.”
“I see you’re still a firecracker,” he laughed. He reached for a hand towel and wiped the wine from his black jacket. “If you’re in the mood to share your booze, I could murder a double malt scotch,” he said, putting the lid of the toilet seat down so he could sit next to her.
“Willie!” she said, her throat holding back a quiver as she uttered his name. “What the hell are you doing here?” She had hoped she would never see this man again in her life, and here he was, making himself at home in her mother’s bathroom.
“Oh, so now you’re talking to me,” he said. “I tried calling, I tried emailing...really Helen, you’re not very good at keeping in touch. How long has it been? Five? Six years?”
“I don’t know.”
“Liar.”
“What were you doing with Ellie?”
“I’m fine, Helen. Thanks for asking. And you?” he smiled. “She’s a lovely girl. A lot like you in so many ways. Stubborn as hell, yet somehow beguiling.”
Helen’s eyes were burning with fury.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that. I didn’t lay a hand on her. I just took her on a little road trip.”
“So I heard. You scared the hell out of her. You are such an asshole.”
“That depends on how you look at it. I did what I had to do. She needed to see her destiny.”
“No one needs to see his or her destiny, Willie.” She felt his eyes peeping below the bath water.
“You still look pretty good, Helen,” he said. “You’ve been working out.”
Helen immediately stood up in the tub and reached for the towel she had placed on the floor. Her modesty seemed somewhat unimportant to her at the moment. “Willie, so help me God, if you lay a hand on her...”
“I’m not here to harm her. The danger she faces is far more evil than I am. I know that’s hard for you to believe, but it’s true. I am not the bad guy here. I’m just a guy stuck in a purgatory time warp. I have a thousand souls to save before I get out. I’m not even close, if you’re curious. I can only see far enough into the future to see the Reaper hovering, and I can try to guide the mortals away from him, but they never listen.” He shook his head. “Little lost lambs, they’ve been a problem since the Bible.”
“Who are you kidding? You’re never on time. An innocent child is already dead. Couldn’t you have stopped it? Doesn’t a child’s soul count for you?”
“If the truth were known, her soul wasn’t even on my radar.” He moved to the edge of the tub and pulled the stopper out. The water started to swirl against the gravitational pull. “I don’t know why that always happens,” Willie said, perplexed. “I’ve never been able to wear a watch either. The hands go counter-clockwise.”
“Quit changing the subject, Willie.”
“Why? Isn’t that what you do, Helen? Don’t you change the subject every time paranormal conversations start around you? I love this floor tile. It reminds me of Grecian bathhouses.” He glanced at Helen with the devil in his eyes. “Sorry, my bad. I’m not supposed to save lives, Helen. I’m to save souls. Not the same thing, unfortunately. The life saving I leave to you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I couldn’t have done anything.”
“How’s your head, Helen? Does it still hurt? You should ask Helena for a diagnosis. Are you mildly schizophrenic with these voices in your head, or is it more like a massive high-pressure system causing a storm on your psyche every time you try to shut one of your visions out?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Mendax, mendax, tuum braccare flagare,” he insisted, waving his finger in front of her face. “Latin good enough for you, Miss Pants-on-Fire, or do you need it in Italian?”
“Shut-up.”
“What did you see in that vision of yours, Helen? Did you see another innocent child being killed tonight? I think you did. Are you going to do anything about the actual life, Helen? I didn’t think so. Can you live with that if your vision turns out to be true? At least Ellie wanted to find the little girl before it was too late. You’re washing your hands of the whole thing. Maybe I need to pull you out of your bathwater and take you on a night-journey? I thought we were past all that.”
“You have a peculiar sense of justice, Willie.”
“Moi? Do you know anything about your next door neighbor being in jail for a crime he didn’t commit? What is his name? Ryan? Well, he is.”
Helen smiled.
“See that?” Willie laughed. “You’re glad he’s behind bars and away from Ellie. Is that why you haven’t done anything about it, Miss Scales of Justice? Girl, you are going to get psoriasis, washing your hands of so much.”
“Why don’t you just go.”
“I can’t, Helen. I’m after a soul. Not just an ordinary run of the mill human spirit, but something a little more...enriched.”
Helen’s hand went to her mouth. “Ellie?”
“Ellie is safe in her bed right now. But mark my words Helen, that sweet slumber she’s enjoying right now is going to be the last one she has for a while.”
“Don’t threaten me,” Helen snarled. “You know damn well if Helena gets a whiff of this, or a whiff of you, there will be hell to pay.”
“Maybe,” Willie said, turning to look in the mirror hanging above the sink. “That woman can do some damage when she puts her mind to it. But Helena’s powers aren’t yours.” He wiped the steam off the glass and looked at H
elen’s reflection. She was as beautiful as he remembered. “Helena will destroy anything in her sight that threatens you or your daughter,” he continued, “but here’s the problem... those darn lost lambs. What if Helena can’t find Ellie? What if only you can do that?”
Helen lunged towards Willie, her hands reaching for his neck.
He grabbed her. “You need me, Helen. You need me more than ever.”
“How could you do this to me?” she asked. “You know I vowed a long time ago, never to use my gift of seeing. I shouldn’t have to remind you that for every reaction there is an equal and opposite reaction. Hell, you were probably there when Isaac Newton figured that out. You know the price I pay every time I listen to one of those voices.”
“But is it worth Ellie’s life, Helen? Ignorance is not bliss. Let me spell it out for you as much as I’m allowed, because evidently you’re not listening to what I am trying to tell you. This chapter of Ellie’s life began the moment she was born. Like you, and your mother before you, and her mother before that, she is a gatekeeper. It’s in her blood. But let’s face it. The girl hasn’t a clue about what to do. So unless she gets some help fighting thisdemon, the chances of her survival are slim. Newton’s theory is already in motion. He had more than one theory, as you may recall.”
“Demon? What demon? What do you know that I don’t?”
“Didn’t she tell you, Helen? Is Ellie keeping secrets like you do?”
Helen remained silent.
“We weren’t alone in our dream, Helen. We had a visitor.”
“I know, the little girl. She told us about that.”
“But did she tell you about the boy? Of course not. Girls never tell their mothers about the boys,” he sighed.
“What boy? Does this have something to do with Ryan? With Tom?”
“You should be so lucky,” Willie said. “You could ask Helena,” he teased, “but no, I’ve said too much already. I really have to be going. Let’s do lunch sometime. Call me.” He held his thumb to his ear and poised his baby finger by his mouth before exiting the room.
Helen paused at the bathroom door, debating whether she should follow him or not. At least he was being polite. At least he used the door. Or did he do that just for effect?
“He wants to drive me crazy,” she sighed. “He wants me to follow him down the hallway and up to Ellie’s room, just to show me he still has power over me. Well, I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to let that man run my life.”
She heard a moan rumble through the hallway.
“Okay. Maybe I am,” she reluctantly admitted.
Helen opened the bathroom door slowly, peeking around the opened frame, giving her eyes time to adjust to the darkness of the corridor. “So far so good,” she noted. “There’s no tall, dark and slightly handsome, in an evil-kind-of-way man, lurking in the hallway. Hmm, where the hell did he go?”
She began making her way down the hall, taking care not to step too hard on the cold, old floorboards. She didn’t want to give away her approach.
“I’ll have to talk to my mother about getting some wall-to-wall carpeting,” Helen thought to herself. Carpeting—practical in so many ways, helping her sneak around being one of them.
She had only seconds to formulate a plan. She needed to creep by Helena’s room without disturbing her, and on up to Ellie’s floor to ensure her daughter was safely asleep in her room. There was no sense bringing her mother into this if there was no danger. Willie could have just been yanking her chain. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Her thoughts were interrupted by another lengthy moan. This time it was closer to where she was standing. The voice didn’t belong to Willie, it belonged to a female.
“My God,” she gasped, not knowing what to do. “He’s in Mother’s room. He’s not after Ellie, he’s after her.”
She ran to Helena’s room, leaving slippery wet footprints behind her as she made her way down the hall. She reached for Helena’s doorknob. The door was locked. “Sure, this door she locks,” Helen said in frustration.
Then she heard Helena moan again.
“Willie, if you think a lock on a century-old door is going to stop me from saving my Mother, you are sadly mistaken.”
Helen stepped back as far as she could from the door, pushing her back up against the wall across from it. There wasn’t much room to take a running shot at it, but she was going to have to do the best she could within the confines of the tiny hallway to break the damn thing down. She turned her right shoulder towards it and charged at it with all her might.
The weight of her shoulder against the old door actually managed to break one of the decorative panels. Helen slid her hand through the splintered wood and released the lock from inside Helena’s room.
“Helen, noooo...” she heard Helena scream.
“It’s okay,” Helen assured her “I’ll be right there to help you. That bastard doesn’t know who he is dealing with.”
She entered the room and immediately the adrenalin in her body began to pump. Her vision quickly adjusted to the candlelight in the room, and she saw him, illuminated by a flicker of light on the wall. He had straddled Helena’s body like a deranged killer about to snuff the life from her.
“Get off her,” Helen screamed, leaping onto his back.
Before he could turn around, she hit him with an uppercut to the head that knocked the senses out of him. She rolled him on to his back, ready to deliver a left to his jaw, just to keep him from uttering any useless pleas of mercy. She couldn’t wait to see the stunned look on that smug face of his when he finally realized who his attacker was.
“Uh-oh,” she said, pulling back on her follow-up punch.
“Hellsbelles!” her mother shrieked. “What in the name of Hades did you do that for?”
“I thought it was Willie,” Helen gasped, her hand going over her mouth.
“Willie? What would Willie be doing in my bedroom? That’s Roy!”
“I can see that now,” Helen sighed. “What’s he doing here...oh...oh...”
“Roy...are you all right?” Helena asked, giving him a gentle shake. “Helen, go get me some water and some ice. Don’t just stand there gawking at us.”
Helen sheepishly headed back towards the bathroom. How was she to know her mother was entertaining in the boudoir?
She took a facecloth from the towel rack and rinsed it in cold water. What if it really had been Willie? Did Helena stop for a minute to consider that? She had only been trying to protect her. And speaking of consideration, did Helena stop for a minute to consider that there was a teenaged girl in the house? Obviously not! What if Ellie had walked in on the two of them? Seeing your own mother with her legs apart waiting for her man was bad enough. Imagine if it were your grandmother.
“We are sooo going to talk about this,” Helen seethed. She reached for the plastic cup on the sink and poured water into it before storming back down the hall. Helena could have got him some water herself. She still had to check on Ellie, and the two lovers had already caused her an unnecessary delay. All the commotion probably woke Ellie up.
Helena gently lifted Roy up and cradled him in her arms. “I am so sorry, Roy. You would have thought she’d gotten the hint when the door was locked.”
“What hit me?” he asked.
“You were belted by one hundred and forty pounds of Hurricane Helen.”
“Who taught her how to fight? She should become a pro-wrestler.”
“I did,” Helena said. “But I’m not particularly proud of her right now. We are sooo going to talk about this,” she echoed.
Sunday...