Microsoft word winterb.., p.37
Microsoft Word - Winterborn_final-ADRoland, page 37
Samurai stared at her from the light box. “I know how this will go. I’ll go back to him, and in a month, we’ll be right here again. I’ll be miserable and broken, and he’ll be lost in Sharla-land.”
So don’t go back! Easiest solution in the world.
Stay away from him. Find yourself. Divorce him, find a man you’re not so twisted up in that you
go a little certifiably-crazy when you’re with him.
“Makes sense.”
“What?” Mel froze coming out of the back room, eyes wide. “Was I supposed to do something?”
“No, no. I was just talking to myself.” Tam slipped her iPhone back into her pocket without
replying to any of the messages. Before she even got her hand out, it buzzed beneath her fingertips.
“Oh, good grief!”
The rest of the afternoon passed slowly, achingly slow. The anesthesia wore off and her stitches
itched and pulled. Though a bandage covered the gash on her breast, whenever she moved the rough
gauze weave caught and tugged on the stiff thread. Could there be a more awkward place for stitches?
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And Darien kept watching her. In the two weeks since she started at the shop, he hadn’t ever
spent more than a couple of hours at his station.
Today, he hadn’t left his station for any longer than five minutes. When Mel tried to get close, Mel
with the frightened eyes and the obvious look of desperation on his face, Darien found some menial
task for him to do.
Tam stepped away from her station and into the lobby on the pretense of checking her
appointment book. Mel’s phone number hung off the bulletin board behind the reception desk. The
prefix was common, no problem to remember, and the last four digits had an easy rhythm. Five-four-
oh-four. Five-four-oh-four.
Five-four-oh-four.
Back at her station, she prepped for her next customer, due in twenty minutes. When she
finished, she yawned. “Darien, I’m heading next door for an energy drink. You want anything?”
He shook his head. “Don’t take too long.”
Tam saluted and clicked her heels together. Pushy jerk. After last night, he owed her. “Yes sir!”
Darien rolled his eyes and went back to tattooing Tinkerbell on his client’s butt.
Tam dashed next door and hurried to the back of the store. She ducked behind a tall, rotating
display of potato chips and started tapping out a text message to Mel. Text me AFTER WORK.
She hit send and looked up.
Darien stood not two feet away, frowning, arms over his chest. His sudden appearance startled
her so badly that adrenaline shot through her body like lightning and left her dizzy. She managed,
somehow, to stifle the reflex to jump. “Hey,” she forced out casually.
“You forgot your wallet.” He held out her slouchy, clutch-style bag.
“Oh gosh, thanks.” She accepted it from him and turned toward the row of coolers on the back
wall. Maybe it was her imagination, but the small, stuffy convenience store closed in around her. The
spicy smell of the Middle Eastern owner’s exotic food section clashed horribly with the musty smell of
the aged, damp wood and mildew-stained ceiling tiles. The odors saturated her head and chest.
Nausea threatened.
She fumbled with the refrigerator doors. All of them stuck. Wouldn’t budge. The drinks glittered
under the recessed lighting. Her mouth and throat worked, so dry the muscles stuck together. Her
tongue doubled in size.
Her skin flaked, peeled away from dry muscles and sinews and crumbling bones. She stared down
at her skeletal hand. The phalanges flexed, opened and closed.
Hallucination. She squeezed her eyes shut.
One, two, three, four, five—
Open. Hands were still bones. Loose, dark amber-brown sinews that hung like old rubber bands.
Eyes clenched shut. She counted more forcefully.
ONETWOTHREEFOURFIVESIXSEVENEIGHTNINETEN.
Eyes opened, staring in the single eye of the dark ruby demon octopus. The rubbery shape
expanded, stretched. Tam ground her teeth and yanked open the glass door. She reached for a drink,
any drink. She half-expected a slimy tentacle to shoot out and capture her wrist, suck her into the
cooler, squishing her between the shelves like the oil-slick monster did in that Creepshow II short, The Raft.
I have to get out of here. Ignoring Darien, she paid for her drink and hurried next door, where customers waited.
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Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sleep closed in, a stealthy hunter in the depths of Tam's bedroom. It overcame her best defenses,
despite her attempts to fight it off. She followed the peaceful beckoning of lurking dreams, the usual
nightmares forgotten in hopes of one night, just one dream, of something other than death and pain.
She stepped through blurry shapes and ineffective grasping fingers. The wisps brushed off her
arms like dust particles.
A baby cooed softly, distantly. Tam smiled to herself, savoring the foreign joy of hearing the
sounds of her own child.
A little bubble of surprise popped within. Hers?
The sounds came again, this time a bit more frustrated. Tam pushed blindly through the thick fog,
arms out in front of her.
“Where are you?”
The voice that answered didn't belong to any child. The gravelly, male laugh startled her, chilled
her to the core. This was supposed to be a good dream, not another nightmare!
“Pretty lady wanna drink?”
The fog kept her sightless and dulled her hearing. The mist turned cold against her skin. Water
tickled her toes as it rose to her ankles. The carpet turned to sand and rock.
“Pretty lady wanna tea? Special tea?”
“No, go away.”
Fingers grazed the top of her shoulders. She shuddered and ducked away, a startled sound on her
lips. “Leave me alone!”
“Pretty lady need a drink.” Warm, smooth ceramic brushed her palm. Her fingers closed around
the small cup automatically. A face formed in the foggy play of light and shadow. She rubbed her eyes,
and the fog slid away in a single sheet, gauzy, curtain-like.
Curtain. The sheer curtains billowed into her face. She sucked in a breath of air and batted the
fabric away.
“Pretty lady take Jambo's tea.”
The man crouched next to the sliding glass doors that led to the patio. The orange-red glow of
flaming torches flickered through the living room. Outside, a bonfire snapped and crackled. The scent
of charred wood, cooking meat, and a smell like herbs and sweat and black, moist dirt soaked into her
sinuses. The strangled scream of some animal, a death cry, echoed through the house. It died away in
a nasty, wet gurgle.
A hot, rough hand closed around hers, the one holding the still warm cup. Tam tore her gaze from
the curtain-shielded events in the backyard and squinted into the darkness.
The man whose hand enfolded hers was tall, unnaturally tall, with long, gangly limbs. His height
remained implied, though, since he seemed to crouch, his impossibly long legs bent at the knee and—
They bent backwards.
Tam blinked and stepped back. Her mind tried to reconcile the broken-toy appearance with
reality. The man swayed on his back-bent legs slowly. His dark, dark skin melded with the shadows.
When he spoke in a guttural whisper, his teeth glinted white. “Pretty lady, need a drink.”
“I don't,” she replied, shaking her head while her hand gripped the small cup even tighter. He
took a duck-step closer. The motion set him to bobbing wildly, a jack-in-the-box flicked by an unruly
child. Tam's gaze moved to the shadow-drenched carpet. The man's feet were twisted, mangled,
melted into nauseating blobs of flesh and bone. His big toes stuck out, pointed up at a violent angle,
the horny nails ragged and torn.
The big rough hand guided the cup to her lips. The liquid sloshed against her lips. It burned! She
winced and tried to turn away. “Drink it, pretty lady. Worlds want to tell you something. Big secrets,
lady.”
“No.”
Her lips parted, the bitter tea poured into her mouth. The man clamped his hands over her lips,
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rising up on his disjointed legs until he towered over her.
He was the stuff of nightmares.
Out of sheer shock her throat worked and the hot, stinging liquid went down.
She went with it. Hot, heavy, and necrotic, the dark swallowed her whole.
****
Tam didn't remember getting out of bed.
She awoke standing beside the window in her bedroom, the one that overlooked the front yard.
The woman across the street was at her usual post, on her knees in her flowerbeds, different
gardening tools scattered around her.
The sudden surprise of being wide awake, half-dressed, and standing at a window with the blinds
up drew a gasp from Tam. She skittered back from the window. Her head ached and her eyes felt
grainy, dry, achy.
Like she hadn't blinked in a long, long time. Hard crust at the inside corners of her eyes hurt when she blinked. She didn't bother with a shower, even though she felt slightly oily, icky. She
changed her underwear and pulled on some cropped leggings and a tunic tank top. In the bathroom,
she glanced at her hairbrush, but chose to spritz her hair with some spray gel and rumpled her locks
into mostly-purposeful disarray. She brushed her teeth and applied a quick layer of eyeliner and lip
gloss to the appropriate areas of her sleep-creased face and decided she was as presentable as she
would ever be, considering her current level of motivation.
Silence pervaded the other side of the house when she emerged from her bathroom. A quick
glance out the front window showed her Darien wasn't home. Her car sat alone on the white cement
slab in front of the garage.
She left the window and went back to the living room.
There, in the corner by the doors, the deformed man waited.
She flinched, the jolt bending her nearly double at the waist. A painful croaking sound burst from
her throat. The man sway-bounced slowly, an abandoned jack-in-the-box.
Tam eased into a crouch, arms wrapped around herself.
“Pretty lady wanna drink?”
His whisper echoed around the room like serpents.
“No, no, no!” Tam scrubbed her face with the heels of her hands, doubled her fists in her hair.
The broken man chuckled. The sound was like rocks tumbled together, deep in dark water.
Cold water rushed around Tam's toes. She yelped and jerked upright, high-stepping back full two
feet to the linoleum entryway.
No water rushed through the empty living room.
“Oh God,” Tam moaned. “I'm seriously going crazy.”
But am I crazy if I know I'm crazy?
Tam shook her head and took one step toward the glass doors. Even after two weeks, she hadn't
had any reason to go into the backyard, especially not after Darien told her about his cult. She wasn't
exactly the outdoorsy sort.
She crossed the wide living room and paused a few inches from the doors. The curtains stirred
gently in the slight breeze she created by breathing. With one hand she pushed them aside.
Maybe three feet of grass remained between the small patio and the seven-foot wooden fence.
A big red 'No Trespassing' sign hung off the fence, near a tiny black latch sealed with a thick
padlock. She went outside and paused again, before the gate. Is this the right thing to do? Do I want to open this can of worms?
She could call Sean, ask him to come investigate this with her. The last time she glanced at the
clock, it read ten AM. Plenty of time for him to get here, look around with her, and for her to be able to make it to work on time.
Unless Darien hadn't gone in early, and would be back soon.
She ran back inside and dialed the shop's number. Four rings in, Darien answered.
“Uh, Darien?”
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“Yeah...?”
“Oh, hey, this is Tam.”
She heard the suspicion in his voice. Something in the background clattered, and she heard a
sound like a yelp. “You okay?”
“Yeah. What do you need? I'm sort of busy.”
Another yelp. This time it sounded very, very human. “I can't find a drawing I was working on,
and I, um, was, um, wondering if it was at my station. I'm sort of freaking out because I've worked
pretty hard on it so far and haven't made any copies yet.”
“You need to be more responsible. Hold on.”
He put the phone down with a thump. Again, in the background, she heard that sound, and the
unmistakable hiss of Darien telling someone to shut up. Whoever he was with moaned, low and long,
an utterance that spoke of horrible pain. Chills ran up Tam's spine.
Who was there, and what was Darien doing to them?
He thought about the black woman. Could it be her? Were those two playing some sort of
sadomasochistic game in the shop?
Even while her mind tried to reconcile with that idea, her heart knew it wasn't true. Whatever
Darien had going on in that shop, right now, was much more twisted.
Darien came back on the line. “Nothing here, Tam.”
“Dang it. Okay. I'll check my portfolio one more time. It's got to be there.”
“Figure it out.”
He hung up.
Tam put her phone back in the long pocket of her tunic. No, she wouldn't involve Sean in this.
Darien's demeanor over the last couple of days was so drastically different than before her sleep-
walking trip outside.
Had she seen something that night?
Tam put one hand on the unfinished, sun-warmed boards. With the other she tugged at the lock.
It held; then the hasp popped open. Tam stared in surprise. Well, that was easy. She worked the lock
out of the latch.
The gate swung open. Warm air greeted her with the scent of herbs, charcoal, and something else,
something earthy, green.
No grass grew in the yard behind the fence. Sandy soil baked in the sun. Near the back of the lot, a
low, squat shed occupied one corner. Another big padlock hung from a hasp, and one window looked
out on the yard. A deep recess in the middle of the yard drew her forward.
She neared it and a memory of smoke and flames pouring into the night sky surfaced. Something
had been on the altar— that's what it was, an altar! —that night. Meat, she remembered, from the
mostly-familiar smell. The odor hadn't been quite right. The morbid part of her insisted the burning
stretch of flesh on the low grate set into the pit had been human.
“That's insane,” she whispered to herself.
Was it, though? He admitted the religion, whatever it was, wasn't mainstream in any culture. It
was an amalgam of many others, and none of them noble.
We worship what's in the dark, he said.
Tam frowned. No, Darien never said that. Where had that come from? She could clearly see his
face or hear his voice in her head. Firelight bounced off his curls, and shadows twisted his face into a frightening mask.
He said it the other night, when she wandered outside, drunk from the broken man's brew.
Tam approached the edge of the pit. Within lay the grate, a long metal grid that stood on four
sturdy legs over a pile of charred wood. The grate looked about eight feet in length, three or four in
width. A flash of embracing corpses, blackened to a crisp, came unbidden to mind.
She knew she had never seen that, under the influence of cult-tea or not.
She skirted the grave-like pit and crossed to the shed. The padlock secured the door, so she
shaded the glass in the window from the sun and peered in beneath her hand. Though it was pretty
darn dark, she could make out a chair in the middle of the small shed. Beyond it, on the far wall, a low Winterborn/ Roland
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altar set with candles, statues, and piles of...something. Tattered stuffed animals? The shadows
were too thick back there to see what exactly lay on the altar.
She angled herself, so she could see more of the closest wall. A long form lay on the floor, wrapped
in burlap. Her heart stuttered, stopped. A body? She stared harder, making out the dip of a waist, the
rise of a hip, the decline of thighs to legs to feet. The bump of a shoulder, the deeper dip of the
neck...then nothing.
Go, go, get out of here! Pretend you never saw this, and move the hell out of this nut job's house
NOW!
Tam obeyed that frantic inner voice and bolted for the gate. She slammed it behind her. Only on a
whim did she check to see if it had latched—and it hadn't.
If Darien saw that, he would know she snooped.
She back stepped and made sure it latched. She slipped the lock in, pushed the arm home. When
it clicked, she hurried back in and slid the door shut. Made sure it locked.
The sky seemed darker, forbidding. She kept seeing those entwined skeletons on the grate, flames
leaping around them as they burned to death. Holding each other for one last, desperate moment of
