Eye of the Storm

by Sara Reinke

  Jesus, where did this come from?

  He could still feel blood flowing steadily. He could taste it in his throat, thick and salty and metallic. His hands were shaking, his shoulders shuddering. The blood had scared him almost as much as Emma.

  He closed his eyes and jerked as images flashed through his mind, memories as sharp as a broken spear of glass.

  Cutting the girl, Aimee’s clothes off of her slowly, deliberately, while she was strapped to the chair, just as he had Melaine Geary’s…

  “Uncle Paul?” Emma asked again.

  Taking long silver needles, the kind with the handles used in high school biology dissections, carrying a small silver tray of them, a box of one hundred and fifty toward the chair…

  Aimee whimpers, pleading around the rubber ball in her mouth, and then her voice rips shrilly and she shears her wrists bloody against the manacles as he begins to spear the needles into her, sliding them into folds and crevices, sinking them deeply into the meat of her form

  “God…!” Paul gasped, and he threw the driver’s side door open. He leaned out, jerking his hand, the bloodied napkins away from his face seconds before his stomach heaved, and he vomitted the thin remnants of his chili dog lunch with Brenda Wheaton. Again and again, his stomach wrenched, and he cried out hoarsely, spitting to get the bile and blood out of his mouth.

  “Uncle Paul!” Emma exclaimed, and she began to cry.

  When there was nothing left in his gut to come up, and he’d stopped retching, Paul tried to wipe his face with the napkins. He fumbled behind his seat until he found a bottle of water he kept stowed away for emergencies. This is probably as good a one as any, he figured grimly, and he splashed a palmful of water against his face, trying to clean himself up.

  When he was finished, he looked up in the mirror. His nose had stopped bleeding and the stabbing pain in his head was gone; not even a lingering, throbbing hint of it remained. He could still hear Aimee’s voice in his mind, her frightened, tear-choked pleas. What’s happening to me? he thought. Christ, am I losing my mind?

  He looked over at Emma. She sat in a huddle on her seat, her shoulders hunkered beneath her seat belt, her hair hanging in her face. She made soft, sniveling sounds, tears streaming down her cheeks, and his heart ached. “Oh, Christ,” he whispered, reaching for her, cupping his hand against the back of her head. “Come here, kiddo.”

  He unhooked her seat belt and drew her against him, hugging her fiercely. “I’m sorry,” he whispered as she clutched at him, trembling. “I’m sorry, Emma. I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m alright.”

  “You…you were bleeding…!” she whimpered, her voice muffled against his coat lapel.

  “But I’m fine now. Look.” He leaned back so she could see for herself. “No more blood. Something must have flown up my nose. A bug or something.”

  Emma blinked at him, then his ploy worked and she giggled. “That’s gross,” she said.

  “No, what’s gross is if it’s still up in there,” Paul replied. “Setting up house or something, you know―picking out drapes, ordering cable installation, getting a phone turned on in its name…”

  Emma laughed, her fear forgotten. “You’re silly, Uncle Paul.”

  He looked beyond her, out the passenger side window. Through the trees, the heavy undergrowth along the edge of the highway, he could make out a plane of white, red and blue letters visible in hints and peeks through the foliage. The Liberty Heights billboard. If he squinted just right, he thought he could glimpse a distinctive bright yellow Channel 11 newsvan parked down there, on the narrow, winding access road running parallel to the highway. Susan had a live shot scheduled there, he remembered.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Emma asked, drawing his gaze. Her expression had shifted again, responding undoubtedly to his, and he smiled again.

  “I promise, kiddo,” he said, reaching out and pinching her nose lightly, playfully, making her giggle again. “Come on. Let’s go home. There’s something I want to try and catch on TV.”

  * * *

  “You just missed him,” said Jobeth Montgomery-Frances, Paul’s new sister-in-law. “Jay just ran down the hall to get some ice.”

  “That’s okay,” Paul said, glancing over his shoulder from the kitchen threshold to the closed door of Emma’s bedroom. She was changing into her pajamas after supper, readying for bed, and he’d hoped to talk quickly, privately before she came out to say good-night to Jay. And actually, it had been Jo with whom he’d been hoping to speak. “So how’s the weather?”

  Jo laughed. “It’s beautiful. For now. Sounds like in another two, three days, and it’s going to suck.”

  By seven o’clock that evening, Hurricane Felicia had been upgraded again, this time to a Category Three storm, with top wind speeds in excess of 120 miles-per-hour. She was closing in on the Caribbean quickly, and growing stronger all the way.

  “Jay called the airline this afternoon,” Jo said. “We were going to call you in a bit and let you know. We’re flying back tomorrow evening. Looks like we’ll be back in town by Saturday morning.”

  “Not going to ride it out, huh?” he asked, making her laugh again.

  “Not this time,” she said. “Jay’s got the flight information written down, but I don’t know what he did with it. But he should be back in a few minutes.”

  “That’s okay,” Paul said again, sparing another quick look toward Emma’s door. “I…I was kind of wanting to talk to you anyway, Jo. Just for a second.”

  “Sure,” she replied. “What’s up?”

  “I…” His voice faltered, and he walked into the living room. Christ, I need a cigarette, he thought, pacing restlessly, rubbing his palm against the leg of his sweatpants, struggling to resist the urge. “After Jay…touched you…did you… Has anything weird happened since then?”

  “Weird?” Jo asked. Jo and Jay had met under extraordinary circumstances. She had been murdered in a stairwell at a local mall. He had raised her from the dead. She’d been the first person Jay had ever been able to resurrect completely, body, mind and soul. All of the others before had been restored physically, but had been left in otherwise irreversible vegetative states. Jo had been the first to come all of the way back.

  Paul had been the second.

  “Yeah,” he said, his mouth dry and tacky with anxiety all of a sudden. Christ, I need a beer, too. “I just…I’ve been having some weird dreams lately.” There’s a goddamn understatement. “Strange shit. And I…I think I’ve been sleepwalking…” His voice faded as he thought of the missing cigarettes from his pack the night before, of waking up at his front door, his hand on the knob, and having no idea how he’d come to be there. “Anything like that happen to you?”

  “No,” Jo said. “You feeling okay otherwise? Are you having any headaches? Dizziness? Hearing anything like bells or buzzing?”

  She was a registered nurse, and he could tell by the sudden, mild tone she’d adopted that she’d shifted unconsciously into that clinical frame of mind. “No,” he said. “Nothing like that.” Except for this afternoon, he thought, though he made no mention. I had that weird, stabbing headache and then my nose started bleeding when I remembered hurting that girl, Aimee…

  Imagined! another part of his mind cried out. Imagined it! I imagined that!

  Jo’s voice shifted again, growing gentle. “You know, Paul, you’ve been under a lot of stress lately because of the divorce,” she said. “That’s a huge change in your life.”

  Change, hell, Paul thought, closing his eyes. That was the end of my life, whatever I knew of it, anyway. I feel like a stranger now, Jo. Like I’ve woken up in some godforsaken nightmare and I can’t get out―I’m in someone else’s apartment, someone else’s piece-of-shit job, dreaming someone else’s sick, fucking dreams. I don’t know who the hell I am anymore.

  He might have told Jay this, if it had been his younger brother on the other end of the line, but it was Jo, and he said nothing for a long moment, drawing in a deep
breath to compose himself.

  “They have someone you can talk to through the department, don’t they?” Jo asked, her voice quiet and sympathetic against his ear. “Some kind of counseling service?”

  A shrink. She thinks I need to talk to a goddamn shrink. And Christ, maybe I do.

  “Yeah,” he said, opening his eyes, blinking in start to find Emma standing in the doorway to the living room, watching him. Her eyes were round, but her expression unreadable. She studied him as if she knew what he was thinking, as if she’d somehow been privy to his thoughts.

  He heard Jay’s voice through the phone, and Jo’s tone immediately shifted again, brightening. “Hey, Jay’s back,” she said. “Why don’t we talk when I’m back in town? I know a couple of really good―”

  “That’s fine,” he interjected mildly, having no intention of saying anything more about the matter to her―or anyone―again. “I’ve got a little lamb standing here anyway, who I’m sure wants to speak with her daddy.”

  At this, the word daddy, Emma’s entire face lit up, her mouth unfurling in a bright smile. She scampered forward, hand expectantly outstretched, and as Paul and Jo each traded phones on their respective ends of the line, Emma cried out happily into the receiver. “Daddy!”

  Her enthusiasm reminded him that he was overdue for his own nightly phone call to his daughters―not because M.K. or Bethany ever greeted him with anything like that innocent, wondrous exuberance, but because he still felt it nonetheless to speak with them. He missed them. He walked back into the kitchen, leaving Emma to chatter happily at Jay, and picked up the cordless handset to call home. A knock at his door interrupted him, just as he moved to thumb the pre-set speed dial button. He walked back into the living room, frowning slightly. It was nearly eight-thirty. Who the hell could this be?

  He opened the door and blinked in surprise, smiling to find Susan Vey on his doorstep. “Well…hi,” he said, somewhat dumbfounded.

  She smiled at him brightly, her long, dark hair caught back from her face in a ponytail. She wore blue jeans and old sneakers and a grey T-shirt emblazened with a faded Lake Tahoe iron-on. She damn near took his breath away.

  “Hi, yourself,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind me stopping by so late. You mentioned your building number this morning, and I found your apartment number by looking at the mailbox bank in the lobby.” She shrugged, looking sheepish and shy. “Tough investigative reporting there, huh?”

  He laughed. She was holding a plate covered in foil balanced against one hand, and he could smell something warm, wondrous and garlic-laden hidden beneath. “For me?” he asked, arching his brow at the plate, wondering how in the hell she’d so accurately deduced that he not only loved Italian, but couldn’t cook it―or anything else―worth a shit.

  Susan blinked, and her smile faltered. “Oh, uh, no,” she said clumsily, drawing the plate against her belly as if he’d reached for it. Bright color bloomed in her cheeks. “No, this is for David. I…I’m just on my way to bring it to him. He’s laid up, you know. Hurt his back, and he’s pretty much bedridden. I thought I…”

  “Sorry,” Paul said, trying to rescue her from an obviously uncomfortable moment, feeling awkward and embarrassed himself. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed. I just…”

  “I could bring you some,” she offered. “It’s lasagna. I made it myself. It’s nothing fantastic, but it’s edible…”

  “It smells great,” he told her. “But that’s okay. I…I’ve already eaten.” It wasn’t a complete lie. Neither he nor Emma had felt much like eating that night. He’d made her a hot dog with corn chips, and he’d picked and poked at a plateful of his own.

  “Maybe some other time, then?” Susan said, and he smiled.

  “I’d like that.”

  “I really just stopped by to see if you’d like to run again tomorrow morning,” she said, her brows lifting hopefully. “We could meet out front, if you’d like…? Maybe six-ish?”

  “Sounds good,” he said, nodding. “Sure. Six-ish it is.”

  Her smile widened. “Good,” she said. “Great. I’ll see you then.”

  They stood in awkward silence for a moment, looking at one another, both of them smiling goofily, and then they both laughed simultaneously, shaking loose of the moment. “I’d better get going…” Susan said, but she didn’t move.

  “Your brother’s supper, yeah,” Paul said, nodding again.

  “I’ll see you in the morning,” Susan said, but still she step away from the doorway. She remained rooted in place, as if waiting for something, expecting something.

  Like she wants me to kiss her, he thought, blinking in startled realization. It had been a long time since he’d seen that look of trepidatious anticipation in a woman’s face and he nearly shook his head. She’s young enough to be my daughter. Why in the hell would she want me to kiss her?

  “Well, I…I’ll see you, then,” he said, deliberately stepping back from the threshold, because if he continued in that immediate proximity to her for too much longer, especially with that look of hopeful longing he imagined on her face, he probably would try to kiss her. If only to see if I could.

  “Okay,” she said, nodding, and thankfully, she retreated, backing away from the door. She turned and walked toward the stairs.

  “I’m sorry I missed your live shot,” he said, giving her momentary pause. She blinked at him, puzzled. “The Liberty Heights shot you mentioned this morning, when the station called. I tried to get home in time tonight to see it, but I missed you.”

  “Oh,” she said with a smile and a dismissive flap of her hand. “It was cancelled. Something came up. It’s just as well. Last time I did a live shot there, one of the protestors decided to spit in my face on camera. They were up there picketing, trying to stop them from tearing down the sanitarium.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  She shrugged. “One of those things.”

  “Tough investigative reporting, huh?” he asked, and she laughed.

  “You got it.”

  He watched her walk down the stairs, the dark, wavy length of her ponytail bouncing between her shoulder blades, drawing his gaze inexorably down to the admittedly all-too tempting outward swell of her jean-clad buttocks. Luckily, she was down the stairs and gone from his view before his groin could respond to his admittedly all-too lecherous stare. Hurricanes may be hard to explain away to his niece, but an erection would be even more humiliatingly so.

  He stepped back into the apartment and closed the door.

  “Was that Claire?” Emma asked.

  He turned and found her sitting on the sofa, kicking her heels, watching him curiously. His cell phone was folded closed, resting in the nest of her lap.

  “You finished talking to your daddy?” he asked, and she nodded.

  “He’s coming home!” she said brightly. “Tomorrow night, he told me, so they won’t get stuck in the hurricane. He said he’d call you back later to tell you their airplane numbers.”

  “Good enough,” Paul said, even though he had sort of liked having Emma in his apartment, and felt saddened at the prospect of her visit being cut so short. Even though she was a kid, she was company, someone to talk to and he would miss her. “Come on, kiddo. Bedtime for you.”

  Emma hopped up from the couch and followed him down the hallway. “Was that Claire?”

  Paul turned to her, puzzled. “The woman at the door,” Emma said. “Was that Claire Boyett?”

  Who? he thought, mystified. The name meant nothing to him. “No, lamb, that…that was my friend, Susan Vey.”

  Who’s young enough to be my daughter, he added mentally.

  “Oh,” Emma said, looking equally puzzled, for reasons he couldn’t explain.

  “Who is Claire Boyett?” he asked.

  She blinked at him, as if she’d been momentarily lost in thought, and shook her head. “Nobody,” she said. She rose onto her tiptoes and he leaned obligingly over so she could kiss him on the corner of his mouth. �
�Good night, Uncle Paul.”

  “Good night, Emma,” he said.

  * * *

  It didn’t make sense. Emma had asked her grandmother what had made Uncle Paul’s nosebleed, what had been wrong with Uncle Paul the last few days. Grandma had told her it had something to do with a woman―Claire Boyett, Grandma had called her.

  Emma lay in bed, listening to Paul’s muffled voice from the living room as he talked to M.K. and Bethany on the phone. The woman at the door hadn’t been Claire Boyett. In fact, Uncle Paul had looked confused when Emma had mentioned the name, as if he’d never heard it before in his life. He doesn’t know who Claire Boyett is.

  It didn’t make sense. Emma closed her eyes, snuggling her teddy bear, Mr. Cuddles, beneath her chin. Grandma? she thought, concentrating fiercely, imagining herself at the Kansas farm where Daddy and Uncle Paul had grown up. That was where she always imagined her grandmother when they would talk. Grandma, can you hear me?

  Yes, Emma, Grandma replied, and now Emma could see her plainly in her mind, standing in the side yard again. The storm Emma had seen on the horizon just before Daddy and Jo had married was even closer now; the sky was dark and filled with black, swollen rain clouds. Emma heard the grumble of thunder overhead, and could smell the strong, distinctive fragrance of encroaching rain.

  The storm is coming, Emma, Grandma said, the whipping winds had snatched at Grandma’s words, making it difficult for Emma to understand her. It’s right next door!

  I know! Emma called back, shouting to be heard over the wind. It’s a hurricane, Grandma! It’s coming toward the Bahamas, but Daddy and Jo are leaving. They’re coming home so they won’t get hurt!

  Grandma said nothing. She looked at Emma, drawing the sides of her lavendar cardigan sweater more securely across her bosom to fight the chill in the wind. She didn’t approach Emma, as she usually did. She kept a wary distance, and Emma felt powerless to prevent it, as if she couldn’t move any closer, even if she wanted to.