The man’s left hand went to his crotch, squeezing his erection, excited by the lifeless form at his disposal. Ethan couldn’t bear what was sure to happen next, but the attacker instead stood up and hurried to the door. He picked up a bag, stripped off his clothes while still excited and noticeably erect, and changed, placing his soiled clothes into the garbage bag. He was returning to Mila’s lifeless form when something scraped the apartment door.
“Fuck!” Ethan heard a familiar voice seethe. The monster froze.
Ethan heard the key inserted into the lock on the apartment door and the sucking sound as the door lifted off the frame. He was shocked to hear his own voice.
“Hey, Mila, are you—?”
Ethan’s heart fell, hearing the sound of his voice, watching himself enter her dorm room. His emotion went hard, blank, and closed off, like cauterizing a wound.
Silence.
He watched himself immediately recognize the now-masked murderer at her bedside.
The attacker headed toward Ethan with the plastic wrap around his fists, as if preparing for his next kill. Instead of attacking, he handed the plastic to Ethan and disappeared out the door with the bag under his arm.
“Mila?” Ethan asked, his voice quiet as if trying not to be heard as he approached the bed. He knew what he was going to find but couldn’t accept it.
Something then shifted inside him. The room he was in was white.
He woke up.
Chapter 46
Ethan’s Timeline
October 1991
Lifting his head, Ethan was shocked to find himself in their bedroom beside Christa’s bloodied corpse. Above her shoulders, there was little left that was recognizable. Her long, slender fingers were bent inhumanly atop what was left of the back of her head, as if she had tried to protect herself.
Havoc had been unleashed throughout the entire apartment. A chill ran up his back and arms that he couldn’t control, yet he could do nothing to affect the situation.
He saw the bloody handprints marking the walls he’d seen before.
Although he was alone, Ethan could see the attacker in his mind, still excited and noticeably erect. Ethan knew the man had changed his clothes, put his soiled ones in a garbage bag, and then disappeared out the door with the bag under his arm.
Ethan felt his energy diminishing, as if the very room was sucking the life out of him. His legs were heavy. Violence was done, and the killing was chasing him.
He somehow got to the phone and called the police. He stopped and turned back to the bed. He looked at her lifeless form again. It was Christa. He went back and touched her arm.
You must get there, Ethan, Mila said, as if her voice was coming from Christa, for all of us.
He looked at Christa’s mangled body again but could take no more. Frightened and confused, he ran to the door and pulled. The door sucked open as if releasing internal pressure.
A moment later, he was in the hall of their apartment building. He couldn’t remember getting there. There was a lot of activity and people around.
“Ethan?” Robbie shouted from halfway down the hall. His face strained with concern. “What the hell’s going on?”
Ethan looked up, recognizing Robbie. He reached forward and touched his friend’s shoulder. Robbie was real. “But I thought …” Ethan started shaking his head, confused. “Christa’s dead, Robbie,” he sobbed. Embracing his friend, he sorrowfully added, “How could he hate her that much?”
Chapter 47
Ethan’s Timeline
October 1991
The events that took place the next day eroded Ethan’s recollection of the dream and what he saw in it. It was simply too painful and seemingly meaningless. His memory was unable to track the order of what happened following his walk up Bronson Street. The events were devastating. He could recall returning from his meeting with Royson with his first movie contract in hand. Feeling ecstatic with the turn his pursuit of movie-making had taken, he told the woman in the elevator up to his apartment about his good fortune of being cast in his first real movie. He remembered telling her to remember his name, though he couldn’t remember hers.
It was after leaving the elevator that things unraveled in his mind. Did he have the dream and find Christa, or did he find Christa and have the dream? The events and when they occurred didn’t match. But to Ethan, it really didn’t matter. He’d lost his love again.
The period after Christa’s death was the most difficult one of his life. He was a mess on the day of her funeral. All he wanted to do was sleep—sleep away the nightmare he couldn’t wake up from. Sleep away who he was. Sleep away and become someone else.
Nothing mattered. He woke up bleary-eyed, his face puffy and swollen from his ten hours of sleep and lots of JD. His first thought was trying to remember what party he’d attended to make him feel so awful. But before the thought had gone far, the answer exploded in his head. Christa was gone—forever! She would never lie by his side again. He fell into a conscious doze of depression, hoping and praying he could conjure her back into existence one more time. Where was his friend Jack? He needed more of Mr. Daniel.
Robbie and Ethan’s father managed to pull Ethan together enough to make it through the service. They were surprised when he asked to speak. He distanced himself from his emotions, pulling everything from his acting toolbox and then some, and delivered a short, comforting eulogy to his love. There wasn’t a dry eye as he spoke of their short time together and his love for his angel. He was certain she heard his words. He spoke to her in the eulogy as if she were standing beside him. Gone was a beautiful, exquisite woman, statuesque in form and person, who cared more deeply for others than anyone he’d ever met. Questions of her death and why she’d been taken would plague him forever. She knew how much she meant to him.
He’d never met Christa’s family until the funeral. They had made their way down from western Canada to bid her farewell. Christa rarely spoke of them, other than to say they still resided in Calgary. He met her older sister and a younger brother. Her brother was a bodybuilder whose handshake nearly crushed Ethan’s hand; he said all of two words the entire time. Throughout the proceedings, the brother kept adjusting the jacket that stretched over his enormous, disproportionate shoulders and narrow waist. Ethan couldn’t help thinking of the Incredible Hulk miniatures on Randy Baseman’s dashboard. Christa’s sister, whose straight, waist-length hair reminded him of Crystal Gale, was the lead soprano in a Calgary choir. (“They’ve toured the world,” her mother was quick to note.) Nearly as quiet as her brother, she was quite thin, with plain, hollow facial features. Her eyes were set deep into her face and seemed sullen, a look that was exacerbated by her lack of makeup. Throughout the time Ethan was with them, her mother continually doted on Christa’s sister with food or drink, asking often if she was comfortable.
Ethan looked for some resemblance to Christa but found none. It was later during the reception that he learned that Christa was adopted. Christa had never shared that with him. Although faded by age and—as Ethan observed—her husband’s imperiousness, the woman’s past beauty was evident. She did not wear makeup either. “None of my girls are going to look like sluts,” the man told Ethan outside of the funeral home’s small chapel. Bunny, as her husband introduced his wife, shook Ethan’s hand politely and retreated to her husband’s side. Their eyes met but once and only for a second. Her dark eyes, darkened further by the circles under them, looked to the ground whenever Ethan turned her way. She seemed a very frightened woman.
Christa’s father, a tall, strapping man, who towered over Ethan, was one of the most vulgar people he’d met. Ethan disliked him immediately. Balding and greasy, Ethan noticed the end of a tattoo that extended beyond the cuff of his sleeve when they shook hands. They met after the service in the men’s room. He spoke of Christa like she was a woman he’d read about in some tabloid.
�
�So, Ethan—it’s Ethan, right?” he said, unzipping his fly in front of the urinal. Ethan nodded. “That’s a strange one. Never met an Ethan before. How long you been seein’ my daughter?”
“About six months,” Ethan replied, not really thinking about it.
“You been livin’ in sin for half the year, have you?” The man spoke without any remorse or feeling over his daughter’s murder.
Ethan found just being in the man’s vicinity nauseating. “We’ve shared an apartment with another friend,” Ethan replied, not wanting to be where he was.
“Where you from, Ethan?” the man asked, speaking into the white ceramic tile on the wall.
“Ottawa.”
“Eastern Canada, eh. Whadaya know? So what brought you here? Fuckin’ babes in bikinis, I’ll bet.”
Ethan didn’t know whether to smile or frown but could have puked into the urinal in front of him. “Actually, no. I work here.”
“Where’d you meet Christa?”
“At a party.”
There was a pause while the man stepped back and shook himself in front of Ethan and the urinal. Ethan did his best to focus on the white ceramic wall tiles. “I’ll bet. Did my little Christa have her boob job done? It’s hard to tell, looking at her in the box.”
Ethan couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. Rage brewed that he couldn’t contain. The man zipped up his fly and moved toward the sink as if he’d just asked for the score in last night’s Raiders game.
“Listen,” Ethan said, collecting himself as best he could, “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear what you just asked me. Christa deserved much more out of life than she got.”
“Oh, come on, Ethan, I’m just shootin’ the shit. We both know why Christa left home and came down here.” The man who represented Christa’s father stepped toward the door without washing his hands.
Ethan was having difficulty peeing because he was so upset. He wanted to get as far away from this guy as possible. “I don’t think you know shit about your daughter,” he hissed and zipped up without finishing.
“Don’t you fuckin’ tell me what I know ’bout my daughter,” the man retorted, sticking his big tattooed arm up to block Ethan’s exit. “I know you were fuckin’ her out of wedlock.”
Ethan’s face flushed. His composure was gone, and he knew it. This sorry excuse for a man—much less a father—was testing every nerve in his body. “If you don’t move your arm this second, I’ll remove it for you.”
“You little fuck! Don’t threaten—”
The man never finished his sentence. In a flash, Ethan’s arm came down on top of the older man’s elbow. Ethan was not a fighter, but he had incredible fight. The man may have been tattooed and tough-looking, but he was fat and slow after too many nights in the local tavern or in front of the tube in the old La-Z-Boy, sipping back one beer after another. Ethan loved Christa more than his own life, and no one was about to tarnish her image. The man grabbed his elbow. Ethan lined a left into his face, not knowing what he connected with but feeling the crunch under his knuckles. He pounded two more quick punches into the man’s soft belly and then left, too enraged to utter another word.
He didn’t see much of the father after that. At the gravesite, the family kept to themselves; the left side of the man’s face was swollen and already bruising. He had found some sunglasses. Ethan stayed close to Robbie for the rest of the day.
A work friend of Christa’s—Ethan had only met her once and didn’t know her name—held a small reception at her home after the ceremony. She introduced herself and told Ethan how much Christa would be missed.
A couple of veggie finger sandwiches and a thin slice of key lime pie were all Ethan could manage. His stomach was mush. He kept imagining Christa’s killer, certain of who it was. He would recognize her ex’s silhouette. It was the familiar sense of the monster in his dream. If only he’d known sooner. He didn’t want the police finding him now. They’d had their chance. His love was gone. He’d start the manhunt himself.
Chapter 48
Ethan’s Timeline
November 1991
Two weeks after Christa’s grizzly murder, Ethan was back at his father’s home in Toronto, ready to quit Hollywood. He wanted his old life back. His movie was to begin shooting three weeks after the funeral, but without Christa, it just didn’t seem important.
At first, he couldn’t bear to think about the movie after seeing Christa’s casket lowered into the dark brown earth. He couldn’t actually remember seeing it; he only had the feeling. Images of earthworms and grubs eating their way through her eye sockets and crumbling ribcage ate away at him. He yearned for his beloved Christa. The days after her murder ran together like a blurred movie loop. He pictured their story in storyboard format, where one scene blended into another, and he stood on the sidelines as a spectator, no longer a participant. It was like grabbing a handful of sand and having it fall through his fingers. Time dripped by. He could find no purpose or reason for pursuing movies—or for that matter, much else—any longer.
On the third night, his father invited him to dinner at a small restaurant on Rideau Street. Ethan wasn’t much in the mood to talk, but his appetite was returning. His father drove, proud of his new black Cadillac. The car was beautiful, with its supple black leather seats and smooth ride.
“So you’re ready to pack it in?” his father asked. Neither had said a word since leaving his father’s downtown condo.
“Pretty obvious, isn’t it?” Ethan replied, his heart still heavy. Sooner or later, he would have to deal with it but hoped for later—much later.
“I really don’t know what to say, Ethan,” his father sighed, wanting to comfort his son in his grief, “but I’m here for you.”
Ethan looked at his father and smiled. He didn’t know how to respond, but the sound of his father’s voice comforted him. It had since his childhood days in hockey, when his father would talk earnestly about how well he’d played. It was the timbre more than the words.
“Dad,” Ethan replied, now seeing his father as just a man who was trying. “Thanks.”
There was little said until they’d finished dinner. They talked a little about hockey and football and his dad’s new car but nothing important. When his father returned from the men’s room, he surprised Ethan with a question.
“What was Christa like, son? Tell me a little about her. I know so little about the woman who stole my son’s heart.”
Ethan thought for a moment before he answered. “Dad,” he started, raising his coffee cup and then setting it down again without taking a sip. “She was perfect. She was very beautiful and intelligent, and I loved her. She was the angel I never thought I’d find after Mila.” He paused and this time took a sip of his black coffee. “She encouraged me. Told me I would make it when my time arrived. Now she won’t see it, and I don’t even want it.” Tears ran down his cheeks. “Dad, I loved her,” he sobbed, wiping his wet eyes. “I can’t stand her not being here. I can’t do this again.” His head dropped forward in his hands as sobs of grief shook his body.
After several minutes had passed, his father said simply, “Grieving, Ethan, is good.”
Ethan heard the words and smiled. He knew what his father was trying to say. “I’m glad it’s good,” Ethan replied, the hint of a smile curving his lips. “I just wish it would go away.”
His father returned the smile.
“I met Christa at an industry party,” Ethan began, remembering much of his troubled times in his first year in California. “We drank a lot, and I woke up the next morning in her bed. We’ve been together ever since.”
Their waitress came by. His father ordered two more black coffees.
“Her ex was nuts. I’m sorry I never told you. He came after me. He shot at me one night after finding out she was staying with me.”
His father seemed to shrink upon hearing of his son�
�s attack.
“Fortunately the bullet only grazed me,” Ethan continued, touching the faint scar on his cheek, “but he thought I was dead and took off. The police never found him. Christa and I moved back to Robbie’s place. It was supposed to be temporary, but things worked out. Somehow her ex found us again. I don’t even know what he looks like.”
The waitress returned with their black coffees. Ethan grabbed his and took a sip. His mouth was dry.
“Aren’t you concerned for your own safety?” his father asked.
“Not at this point,” Ethan said blankly. “It should have been me.”
His father shifted in his seat and then asked, “When does your movie start shooting?”
“In about two weeks,” Ethan answered, not wanting to think about it. “There’s a script meeting later this week.”
“Are you going?”
“No,” he said quickly and then added, “I don’t know. It’s so hard to think about. Christa’s gone.”
The two sat in silence. Ethan’s eyes welled up again.
“I’m not sure I ever told you this before,” his father said, looking at his son. He was bent forward with his forearms flat on the table. Ethan knew that what his father was about to say was difficult for him. “I had a chance,” his father continued but then stopped to sip his coffee. “When I was nineteen, I was invited to the Toronto Maple Leafs training camp.”
Ethan’s hazel eyes widened. He leaned forward. “You never told me that.”
“It was my big disappointment. I’ve hidden it for thirty-five years. I didn’t even try out.”
“You were invited to the Leafs’ training camp and never went?”
“As unbelievable as that might sound, I didn’t. I got scared. There was a lot of pressure. The guys were big. They shot harder. I talked myself out of it. I blamed your grandmother for years, but it was my decision not to go.” The hardness of his father’s eyes softened. “I’ve hidden it too long. You need to hear it.” He again paused to collect his thoughts. “Don’t let it go, son. You’ve been through hell, I know. But come back. Life happens, one way or another. I’ll tell you something else. You know I’m not religious, but we never seem to get more than we can handle.”
The Actor Page 28
