“No,” I insisted truthfully. Bored wasn’t the right word to describe my restlessness, my sense of being unanchored. “I’m so happy. So lucky. I shouldn’t have said anything. I was being a whiner. It was stupid of me.”
His gaze flickered to my face. “Not stupid. Honest. We’re very isolated here. You’re feeling lonely.”
“No.” The only company I wanted was Evan. If I could be with him more, I’d adore the isolation of Les Jumeaux. I was being incredibly selfish. He devoted his evenings and nights to me. He joined me for lunch on this idyllic spot most days, even when I knew how busy he was.
But still, I wanted more. I was becoming insatiable. I wanted everything, including the Evan who shut himself off in his study. Who occasionally—rarely—seemed so far away from me, even when his skin touched my own.
“I’m spoiled,” I said miserably. “And not in any good way.” I reached out and put my opened hand on his chest. “It’s just… I love you so much.”
He leaned forward and kissed me.
“You are the most unspoiled person I’ve ever met in my life,” he said against my lips a moment later.
One morning later that week, I grew disgusted by my progress on a painting. The sunlight was too bright, saturating every surface, making the mountains seem more one-dimensional than I knew them to be, the sky a flat, uninteresting robin’s egg blue. I stood and walked out farther onto the promontory, squinting down at the water. A dark shadow hung over the large boulders of granite just below me, changing their usually benign appearances into a bed of wet, upturned blades.
Although I’m not usually afraid of heights, a wave of vertigo struck me. My eyes burned from fatigue. Holding my breath, I slowly backed away from the edge.
I haven’t been sleeping well. That’s the problem.
The nightmares had started a few nights ago. For the past few nights, I’d only fallen asleep at dawn. But I’d still gotten up at my normal time. No wonder I was so tired. I should take a break, maybe take a little nap up here on the overlook.
Evan had given me a blanket that I kept on the back of my chair. When I painted early in the morning, it could be chilly sitting next to the lake. I’d sit there like an old woman in a trance, huddled up under the blanket, my hand poking out of my cloak, my brush moving over the canvas.
I spread the blanket on the ground and lay down. The sunlight blinded my eyes, but was kinder on the exposed skin of my legs and arms. The warmth made me drowsy. I turned my face away from the sun’s brilliance, putting my forearm over my eyelids.
Soothing darkness. A warm, gentle darkness, unlike the darkness from the nightmares I’d started having.
In those dreams, I lay in bed with Evan. Not in some vague, dream-like bed. In the very bed in the luxurious suite where we slept at night. Where we made love.
It shocked me a little, that I would dream so solidly and realistically about a room that I’d known for only a few weeks. I dreamed of rooms from my childhood home in Oak Park frequently. Occasionally, I dreamed of other places charged with some residue of anxiety or longing: a hallway in high school and my locker, for which I never seemed to remember the combination; the comfortable, cluttered high school art studio where I’d first felt a sense of pride and mastery in my work; the familiar roads, yards, and long-closed businesses from my hometown. I rarely dreamed of my college dorm, apartments, or rental rooms I’d inhabited in the past few years. They were too impermanent, too inconsequential for my psyche to take notice.
That wasn’t the case with the nightmare. This was reality within dream… or dream within reality? Horrifically, I believed completely that I was awake when the nightmare occurred. I knew it was a nightmare only after the fact though, because I could move again.
During the dream, I was paralyzed, forced to helplessly watch.
I didn’t want to recall the nightmare as I lay there on the overlook in the blinding sunlight, but I couldn’t seem to stop the images—or the fear—from flooding my brain.
I awake with a sense of dread. My head and body are like stones. No nerves connect those inert slabs of flesh to my brain. I find, in my rising panic, that my eyes can move,
however. I make out the shadowed shapes of familiar furniture in the dim room. This is our suite at Les Jumeaux, I tell myself frantically. Of course it is. It looks completely normal. I sense rather than see Evan beside me, a warmth that should have been reassuring, but isn’t.
In sleep, he’s so far away from me. What dreams did he envision within the locked safe of his mind? He seems so unreachable. It makes me desperate, because I instinctively know that the visitor is coming.
My panic mounts. I’m trapped in this stone-body, and she would come. Nothing could stop her.
Evan’s name burns a hole in my throat. My muscles spasm as I try to work them, but I’m incapable of sound. My gaze is fixed on the door of the suite, willing it to stay shut. But I know what’s coming. Fear bubbles up into my throat like acid.
Then the door is open. One second, it’s closed as I watch in rising agony, searching for movement, praying I see nothing. Then it’s yawning open, a black void behind it. It opens in less than a second, in total silence.
I see movement emerging from the nothingness, and my heart seizes.
Her shadow moves toward the bed, slow, but steady. It’s as if she knows my heart is threatening to burst with each oncoming step, as if she’s playing with me. My cell phone is charging on the bedside table. The tiny light on it is inconsequential in the everyday world, but it’s more than sufficient for a nightmare’s purpose. I see her outline clearly. She is narrow waisted with round hips and the hint of full breasts. No clothes. She appears to be nude. Her skin is blacker than black, and appallingly… shiny? Wet? I can’t make out her face. Her shoulder-length hair hangs in defined waves and ringlets. In my panicked, stone-like state, all I can think of is Medusa. I dread looking at her, but I have no choice.
She stands over me. My mind is a prison filled with silent screaming. My senses pour into me, but I can’t react. I smell dampness and rotting flesh and the nuance of a perfume, a strangely familiar one. I hear a soft, raspy intake of breath. She’s preparing to speak. To me.
I don’t want to hear what the nightmare ghost says.
Water spatters on my cheek… one drop, two. I realize it’s coming from her mouth. It’s not just water. It’s her blood. Her rotting essence.