Dead Of Winter (The Rift Book II)

by Robert J. Duperre

  “Thank you, kitty,” she says.

  The cat-child approaches her and curls in her lap. “I am here to protect you,” it says. Its voice purrs. “I can be Trudy for you, the one who always protects Lady Madeline from the evil Percy. I will do so forever.”

  Little Marcy tilts her head. “You’re pretty, Trudy.”

  “As are you, Lady.”

  The little girl smiles.

  * * *

  A typhoon of living memory surged through Marcy as she watched her young self. Her knees buckled. She collapsed against the wall and slid down it. She covered her ears and squeezed her eyes shut. Images rolled through her brain, riding the wake of a tsunami she was helpless to stop.

  Landscapes shifted and changed in the blink of an eye. She saw herself at the dinner table with her parents, eating supper and laughing at the stories they all told; experienced her early years of schooling, feeling the shame that came when her schoolmates poked fun at the awkwardness of a young girl who had become the tallest kid in her class, all the while wondering how they could be so cruel; recalled the elation that rushed through her the first time she picked up a crayon and put it to paper, watching the creativity spring from her little fingers like an extension of her soul; watched the transformation from unsure and clumsy child to talented preteen whose brushstrokes captured the knowledge of color’s vibrancy as only a prodigy could produce; saw the expressions on her peers’ faces when she would play her favorite game, guessing what number they’d written on a hidden piece of paper, and remembered how no one believed it wasn’t just dumb luck when she was never wrong; sensed the relief of finally being accepted by her classmates and garnering the attention of boys; experienced the awkwardness of her first kiss, with a shy, pimpled kid named Travis; suffered the fear that came when every night Percy showed up, the serpent in the darkness who tried to tempt her with its exotic mystery, and appreciated that Trudy never once left her side; sensed the fear of having to keep this ordeal a secret, until she broke her silence at fourteen, only to be ushered off to therapy when her parents and doctors thought she might be schizophrenic; watched her grandmother die, the woman who was her inspiration and the only person who did not judge her when she discussed the fear that visited her every night, and experienced all over again the pain and sorrow that comes with the realization that sometimes, when people go away, they don’t ever come back.

  This all happened in a matter of seconds, but it seemed to go on forever. Her head ached from the sudden rush, but oddly enough no fear accompanied the act of reminiscing. It was an experience akin to watching a movie she loved but hadn’t seen in years.

  The world spun around her. Colors blended and amalgamated until they became abstract streaks. She went with it, excited to see what revelation lay around the next bend in the road.

  It was him.

  She saw him standing at the podium in a school auditorium, with long hair draped over a thin frame rigid with tension. A look of civil disobedience stretched across his mysterious yet handsome face. She saw herself in the audience, staring up at this odd boy with a glint of the passion she would experience when she was older smoldering in her eyes. All around her, peoples’ mouths had dropped in shock.

  “Fuck, shit, ass, motherfucker, these are what I say,” the boy said. He was reading from the notes before him. “Cunt, pussy, clit, slit, these are what I lay.”

  He was angry and defiant, and this act of insubordination struck a chord within her. She imagined that she had finally discovered a person who felt as she felt, who desired what she desired, whose goals could be one in the same with her own.

  While he was led off the stage by the angry principal, inside she cheered.

  The scene shifted. The boy stood in the doorway of her childhood home. His expression was cold. “I’ll just walk away now,” he said. “I don’t wanna be with you anymore.” She watched as her younger self slammed the door, only to throw it open moments later and dash outside as his car pulled out of the driveway, screaming while his taillights shrunk away in the distance. “Come back, we can still be together!” she cried. “I love you!”

  As with everything in regards to him, it was to no avail.

  They never spoke again, at least not in her waking hours. Yet sometimes, in dreams, she and Joshua Peter Benoit, the first person she ever hated, would still be together, and in those dreams, their love was enviable.

  * * *

  Marcy cupped her head in her hands. She felt like she might pass out.

  “Asshole,” she whispered. His sad brown eyes gazed at her from behind her eyelids. “What kind of idiot am I?”

  A fuzzy hand touched hers. She was back in the room again. Trudy stood beside her. The second door she had entered performed the same vanishing act as the first. Images of the boy, images she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted, swam upstream against her mental defenses like breeding trout.

  She gazed into the eyes of her catlike friend.

  “What did I ever see in him?” she asked.

  “You saw your own pain, Lady. You saw someone you thought would understand.”

  “How brilliant of me.”

  Trudy licked its nose. “You did love him, Lady. You told me so.”

  “Yeah, I can see that now, but so what? I was a stupid kid.”

  “And so was he. He was scared, and he knew not how to tell you so.”

  “Like you’d know,” said Marcy with a grunt.

  “I do know,” replied Trudy, who then pointed a clawed finger to its temple. “I see many things. I know that he has never forgiven himself for the way he treated you. I know that he has sought you out in his dreams, and I know that you have done the same as he.”

  Marcy chuckled. “I have, huh?”

  “Oh yes, Lady. Look inside. You know it to be true.”

  With a sigh, she slid down the wall and sprawled out on the floor. Remember the dreams she did; calling out to him, pleading for help while her body rocked with pain and he stood helplessly on the threshold, as if a barrier a million miles thick separated them.

  It really was him.

  “So what if it is?” she said. Her head lolled and she faced Trudy again. “What good’s it gonna do me now?”

  “It is a start, Lady. You and he are providence. I hope you will find each other again, but we cannot think of that now, for you must do something first.”

  “And what’s that?”

  Trudy opened its cat-mouth, but shut it quickly. It then ambled about her and crouched down beside her ear. “Lady, do you remember how you arrived here?” it whispered.

  “No.”

  “Think.”

  Marcy closed her eyes. A scenario began to unfold behind her eyelids.

  “I’m starting to,” she said.

  “Tell me the story as it comes, Lady.”

  She took a deep breath and said, “I was in Pittsburgh. I went to school there. Working towards my Masters degree in fine art. It was morning, still dark. Scott Harris was with me. My boyfriend. We were edgy, because of everything that’d been happening on the news, and then everything went all wonky. Explosions, gunshots…you name it.” She stiffened. Sorrow tugged at her heart, and she continued as if in a trance. “Bullets bounced off the walls. We ran down an alley. Scott got shot in the head. He died right in front of me. I kept running. I ran until my feet burned. I fell. This guy came walking towards me. I couldn’t see who it was, but I needed help so I called out to him. He came closer. There was something wrong with his face. It was twisted, deformed. His teeth were huge. This can’t be real, it must’ve been a nightmare…but no, because he bit me on the shoulder…I couldn’t see anything for a while…by body ached…then light flashed in my eyes and I saw another man…a pretty guy, dark skin…I tried to ask for help but couldn’t make my jaw move…then blackness again…then dreams…I was in a prison, then a car, then in some ballroom, and now this…” she shook her head and pressed her palms into her forehead. Tears started to flow. “I’m sorry, Trudy. I’
m not making sense. Everything’s all twisted together. I don’t know what’s real.”

  “It all is,” the cat child said.

  Marcy giggled beneath her tears. It sounded disturbing, even to her. “So am I sleeping?” she asked, her voice cracking.

  “No,” replied Trudy. “You are infected. He has infected you. That is why you are here – to stay hidden, to gather your strength, to be in a place where Percy cannot reach you.”

  Marcy wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand, sat up, and glanced at the remaining two doors. She rose to her feet and stared them down. Her heart rate quickened. There was no need for instruction this time. She knew what she had to do.

  She grabbed the handle of the door closest to her and turned it. It wouldn’t budge.

  “It’s locked,” she said.

  “Yes. You need a key to open it.”

  “So where’s the key?”

  Trudy frowned and pointed in the other direction. “Through there.”

  “Okay then.”

  Turning on her heels, she went for it. Her fingers traced the wall as she walked. It felt cold and not very dream-like. A lump rose in her throat. By the time her hand touched the doorknob, it had progressed all the way into her sinuses.

  “Why am I so scared?” she whispered.

  “You already know why,” replied Trudy.

  “I think I do.”

  She opened the door and stared into a vast black void. She had to turn her head in order to take it in, fearing that to stare into its darkness would mean she’d be forever lost to it. Water dripped in the distance. Fear clenched her chest tight. Come on, just do it, she urged. She took a step forward.

  “Wait,” said Trudy. The cat child stood at her side and yanked on her tank top. “I must tell you something before you go.”

  “What?”

  “I…will not see you again, Lady. Not ever. My time is done here. I have finished what you created me to do.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Every action you have made in your life has been in anticipation of this moment. You can face Percy by yourself now. You are prepared. Once you cross the threshold into self-actualization, the need for me is done.”

  She winced. “What’ll happen to you?”

  “I do not know. It is a mystery to me. As I think it should be.”

  The creature came forward and wrapped its little arms around her. Warmth radiated from its body and filled her up. Tears trickled down Marcy’s cheeks. She suffered that feeling of withering, of loss, which she learned so long ago when her grandmother died.

  “I don’t want to be alone,” she cried.

  “You will not be. I will always be there. You made me, remember? I am nothing but an extension of you, Lady. Henceforth, we can never truly be apart.”

  “I’ll miss you anyway.”

  “I know. Let the Fates smile down upon you, as they always have.”

  With that, they backed away from each other. Marcy turned to face the door again.

  “Lady, one more thing.”

  “What now?”

  “Remember. Remember everything. And then call out His name.”

  Marcy nodded. She took a deep breath and stepped across the margin between light and dark. The door didn’t so much close as disappear behind her.

  She was all alone.

  * * *

  Trapped in the darkness, Marcy lost control of her senses. Pictures flashed across her vision, scenes of places she’d never been, shreds of agony she’d never experienced, faces and voices of people she’d never known. Her feet stuck to the ground. Her voice echoed when she screamed. It felt like she was in a huge fishbowl, but a cramping sensation stifled her. Imperceptible walls closed in. She turned around and darted back from where she came. Nothing halted her forward progress; no door, no portal, no anything. Despite the solid ground beneath her feet and the burn of her lungs as she panted, it seemed like she’d become one with nothingness.

  The memory of Trudy’s voice called out to her. Run, Lady! Do not be afraid! He can sense you when you’re afraid. Her heart pounded in her ribcage. The panicked, alien thoughts of those other than her pushed to the foreground. Stop, they pleaded. Please don’t hurt me, I’ll do anything, I don’t want to perish!

  Another noise emerged beneath her brain’s clamor. It sounded like a wet mop slapped against the floor. She ran faster. Still nothing impeded her.

  Her foot struck some unseen object and she went flying. She seemed to be in the air forever, and she imagined herself soaring above the heavens, staring down at the trees as their branches slapped her feet. Tumbling to the ground, she rolled as if she’d been cast down Niagara Falls in a barrel. After what felt like an eternity the spinning stopped. She tried to catch her breath. Her lungs struggled to expand in a chest that felt sore and bruised.

  The slurping sound drew closer.

  Terror pulsed in her temples. She scurried about on all fours, frantically searching for something, anything, that was solid in this world of black. Her hand landed on a hard object. It was cold. She moved her hand upward, and a velvety surface replaced the hardness. It was tall and gently curved at its crest. The image of the chair that resided in her parents’ living room came to mind. This calmed her, and she slipped her body around it, feeling the rough texture of brick in the space behind. She crouched down, held her breath, and waited.

  Eventually the nightmarish hissing receded, blinking out of existence as if it had never been there at all. A faint white glow then lit her surroundings, and now she could see everything. The place she was in was no cavern, she discovered, as there was furniture and brick walls surrounding her. The object she hid behind was indeed a chair; a purple Victorian-style creation that looked like a throne.

  She stood up and searched for the source of the light. Like before it seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. She traced the walls, which were molded from maroon stucco, similar to the interior of her Aunt Millie’s house in Fort Lauderdale.

  At the far end of the room was a door. The gap between the jam and the door was lit with the same brightness that filled the room. She pushed her feet onward and approached it, wondering why her subconscious would create a place that had so many goddamn doors. She touched the wood. It swelled. Fear clenched her throat, but that fear didn’t stop her from grabbing the knob.

  She pushed the door open. The brightness that had been visible in its seams evaporated and another dim room appeared. A single nightlight was plugged into the outlet beside a child’s bed. She knew immediately where she was; the bedroom from her childhood, the place where Percy harassed her on a nightly basis and where Trudy, her self-fabricated loyal guardian, first came to be.

  The room was not the same as she remembered, however. The far wall didn’t end but stretched, pushing past the barrier where it should have been solid. It was transparent, and it shimmered. The carpet, plush and green, faded out of existence when it reached the glistening partition, and beyond it she saw a dirty cement floor. Reality continued to expand. She could see the demarcation where the yellow paint on the bedroom walls disappeared in this room within a room. Panels of sheetrock rested against bare struts, waiting to be hung.

  She saw them. They were two men, sitting cross-legged and facing each other. They didn’t move or speak, as if frozen in time. The one on the left looked very young, with a spry posture and nappy brown hair that hung just above his shoulders. The other was dark skinned. Unlike his partner, this one’s eyes, watery and intense, stared directly at her. “Hello?’ she said. Her voice seemed to diminish when it left her mouth.

  She blinked and turned away from the illusion of the widening other room, deciding instead to focus on the familiar scenery of her bed and nightstand. Her calf began to itch. She rubbed her foot against the spot, leaning over, placing her hand on the bed for support. The itch progressed up her leg to her knee. It suddenly felt damp. She went to glance down, dazed and confused, but an unseen force snatched her before she could c
omplete the motion. It drove her across the room and slammed her against the wall. The portrait of her dead grandmother rattled.

  “Hello, darling,” said a deep voice. It came from out of nowhere. “Do not be afraid.”

  Tentacles appeared. They wound up her legs and around her shoulders, forced their way into the gaps in her clothing, rubbing against her flesh in a repulsively sexual way. They caressed her stomach and breasts, ripped through the pockets of her jeans, and tugged at her panties like an eager child on Christmas morning.

  The invading members slipped up her back, fondled the nape of her neck, and yanked at her hair. A slimy feeler drew close to down there, and she screamed.

  “Stop it!” she bellowed. “Leave me –”

  The tentacle around her neck constricted, cutting her words short.

  “Do not fret, sweetheart,” the voice said, its tone seductive. “I only want to love you.”

  It loosened its grip on her esophagus. She gasped and muttered, “Bullshit.” A bubble of spit popped on her lips.

  “But I do, my dear,” said the voice. “I have loved you forever, ever since the day you were born.”

  “I don’t care!” screamed Marcy at the invading emptiness. Her terror grew with each passing second. “Now let me go! Please!”

  “I can give you all you have ever wanted. I can end your pain. All you must do is let me inside.” The feeler invading her pants flitted about in her pubic hair. She felt close to vomiting.

  “Fuck you,” she muttered. Her cheeks erupted with heat. “Trudy told me all about you.”

  “Do not listen to the imp. It is jealous of me. It is jealous of what we can be together.”

  Marcy craned her neck, her forehead slipping against the oily appendage wrapped around her. She stared at the two outsiders in the room both outside and inside her own. They still sat in the manner they had been all along, stiff as wood. She squeezed her eyes shut and attempted to call out to them with her thoughts. They still didn’t move. It seemed as if they existed in a different space and time.