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The Seventh Life of Aline Lloyd

Page 20

by Robert Davies


  “Did you help Damon with his finances?” I asked.

  She turned to me where we sat on my favorite dead tree trunk, covered in moss and carrying the silent history of an ancient place that became important to me as it had been to Aline.

  “I didn’t give him money, if that’s what you’re asking,” she replied warily. “Why?”

  “Not money,” I said quickly, “he had plenty of that. I just meant advice; you were trained in finance and economics but Damon was anything but.”

  I expected her to nod and explain, but she waited a moment with an odd expression. In a smooth and effortless movement, Aline swung a foot over the log to straddle it like a horse, and she leaned toward me with an obvious frown.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  I said nothing but Aline stood quickly, and I felt my cheeks redden when she turned her back. I didn’t know what to say, but she spun to face me at last and her expression was unlike any I’d seen since we first met on that cold October day. She shook her head as she paced slowly past me, and I couldn’t decide if she carried anger or the sting of betrayal. Either way, our first moment of conflict had arrived.

  “Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

  “What are you talking about?” I demanded.

  She stopped and said, “You’re afraid of me.”

  It wasn’t confusion or mystery; instead, she exposed me like cockroaches in a kitchen scurrying for cover when the lights go on. There was no way to explain in that moment because I didn’t understand enough to make a decent point. It was unnerving to realize she could sense my uneasiness, and with that ability she had become something different—unnatural. They say animals can detect fear, and it shouldn’t have been surprising, but there were no images flooding in—no intense vision as a clue I could recognize. She simply reacted to those markers only she could see and understand.

  “I’m not afraid, Aline,” I answered loudly, “but only an idiot would look at a fight he can’t win and try to act tough!”

  “Do you believe them, Evan? When you look at me, do you see a mad woman—a murderer?”

  “No!” I said at once. “It’s not like that at all, damn it!”

  “Then why?” she asked, moving toward me. “After all this, do you honestly think I could ever hurt you?”

  I had nothing that would explain and no words I could offer to justify the involuntary reaction. I understood why Dumont had died and the rare occasions when we are forced to fight. She couldn’t know he never planned to harm her and her heavy-handed reaction was at least understandable, but the details in Renard’s mountain of papers suggested more in records from the Glasgow Police Department. She waited and watched as I fumbled through my own thoughts, unsure if they would remain my own if I ever angered her and how swiftly I could be made to pay for them.

  “I don’t know!” I thundered, trying to navigate an impossible argument. “I guess it’s human instinct, but how can you expect me to accept all this—what you can do—without feeling at least a little wary of it? You can make me see, think, or feel anything you like and there’s no defense! With a thought, you could destroy my brain, just like you did to Dumont, and I am powerless to stop it.”

  Aline walked right up to me and I had to fight the urge to stand away—to keep her at a distance, as if that would make a difference.

  “I could also draw a knife across your throat as you sleep, couldn’t I? I could smash your skull with a hammer and you would be just as dead!”

  “People go to prison for doing those things,” I replied defiantly. “No one can be arrested for killing people by thinking them to death!”

  “Oh, you poor, stupid bastard!” she said with a sad smile. “It doesn’t take much effort to kill somebody, Evan, and it certainly doesn’t require my abilities. It just takes the will and desire. I don’t have either of those things because I am in love with you and I need you with me as you are!”

  “Is there anything else you haven’t told me?” I asked at last. “What other secrets are you keeping?”

  “There is more but I’ll explain that to you in time.”

  “Explain it now!” I demanded.

  “Not yet, Evan, it’s…”

  “Then when? What’s a good time on your calendar?”

  “You’re still not ready!” she shouted. Aline’s voice echoed through the trees and in an odd, secondary moment I remember being startled by the volume and how loud she could yell. She closed her eyes and waited to calm herself. I waited, too, until her smile returned as she continued.

  “It’s not time yet. I will explain the rest of it at the proper moment. Evan, you have to trust me; I’ve been through this once or twice and I know what I’m doing.”

  I wanted to believe—to understand. I needed to know and not worry, but the truth behind her words held a lethal ability no one else has and it could be turned on me if Aline ever changed her mind. The process took a while to root but finally the connections were made, and I felt bold enough to seek out confirmation, if only to satisfy my own troubled mind.

  “Back in the spring when Renard was here,” I said softly. “Before you showed me…”

  “Yes?”

  “You asked me to tell you the truth before you could continue; you said it wouldn’t matter how I answered, so long as I was honest about it.”

  “I remember.”

  “If I ask something, will you do the same? Will you promise me your answer will be only the truth?”

  “Of course!” she answered.

  “Those images I saw—the visions I’ve had ever since I came up here…that was you, working inside my thoughts?”

  “Yes.”

  I knew the answer before I asked the question, but it brought at least a small amount of relief because she didn’t hesitate, not for a moment. There were other questions and I couldn’t stop myself from asking them.

  “If you can run around in my head, then you know how I feel; you have to know I’m in love with you, too.”

  “Yes, I know,” she replied softly, “and it’s given me more joy than you can imagine.”

  “Is it just my own emotions, made for the same reasons we fall in love with anyone, or do I love you because you made me? Is this what it seems, or an invisible spell I can’t fight?”

  “I’m not a witch, Evan!” she said quickly. “We can’t cast stupid spells!”

  “Just answer the question.”

  She smiled and cradled my face in her palms as I waited out the seconds.

  “It’s only you,” she whispered. “None of this would be worth anything if it wasn’t.”

  “But you could do that if you wanted to?”

  “I don’t really know,” she replied with a strange, distant voice. “I’ve never tried.”

  I felt the doubts ease but not in the sudden, manufactured way you might expect if my relief was made by her hand alone and simply to continue an illusion. It’s not an everyday thing, and we so often take for granted those small details, but trust is always won and never given. In that silent, magical moment, I felt closer to Aline than I had ever been.

  “I need to know one more thing.”

  She leaned her head to one side and said, “What thing?”

  “Did you intend to kill those men in Glasgow?”

  She looked straight at me and nodded.

  “Others were near, and I knew they would call the police, so I ran away before it was finished.”

  “What if no one else had been there?” I asked.

  “They would both be dead,” she replied flatly.

  She sat beside me again and a wash of affection for her swept through me. I can’t explain why in that particular moment, but the sensation was powerful, and I know she could feel my thoughts in hers when she turned and held me. The stark admission without remorse would have made others recoil in disgust but it had no such effect on me, and I walked without worry along a thin, invisible line separating good from evil. What she described was, in any me
aningful way, attempted murder, yet I felt no revulsion.

  “Death penalty for purse snatching?”

  She smiled and shook her head.

  “Robbery was not the only thing they had in mind for me, Evan.”

  Like a bow drawn over the strings of an out-of-tune violin, a screeching sound tore through my thoughts at what she clearly meant.

  “What did they say to give you that impression?”

  “It’s not what they said,” she answered. “Their thoughts were plain and obvious.”

  “You went inside?”

  “It didn’t take much effort. I’ve heard it before when others were threatened, but in those moments long ago, there was nothing I could do. This time it was meant for me and so I stopped it.”

  Perhaps she learned from her mistake when she went too far with Claude Dumont as a young girl, but the lesson wasn’t lost on me and I wondered about the lingering effect on her attackers in Glasgow and how close to death she had taken them. They would remember that night, she said, the rest of their days and without doubt who had done those horrible things. Were the images she made them see as bad as their injuries, I asked, or was it the other way around? Aline stood to continue our walk but she turned to me and said, “They received what they deserved.”

  I don’t know if the months she had sacrificed in a psychiatric ward were worth the effort, but it seemed as though she accepted it in the natural course: a necessary step in a long process and one taken only to protect herself. If the doctors looked and saw a treatable disorder, she argued, they would waste no time entertaining the thoughts that plagued Andre Renard, suggesting an evil serial killer looking only for more victims. I understood the same logic applied to two muggers lying in wait at a darkened bus stop.

  “You didn’t belong in that place,” I said at last. “You weren’t crazy at all—you never were.”

  “No,” Aline replied, “but sometimes it’s better to let people see what they want to see and avoid explaining things that can’t be explained.”

  I remember considering the distance I had gone in so little time, and when she spoke with casual indifference about the manipulation of others as a defense mechanism it seemed suddenly understandable—almost normal. I asked again what she meant when she told me I “wasn’t ready,” but that description would wait patiently for another time when the full truth finally emerged.

  FOR weeks we waited and watched, but there were no visits from the police and no further contact with Andre Renard. Though she offered an escape on two occasions, I didn’t need to be saved and each day put more distance between us and the moment she showed me what she was. It would take some time before I would be allowed to see who she was, but I was at least smart enough to go at a slower pace and take things as they came.

  As the days wore on, I found myself wondering about the nature of her strange power as curiosity and fascination with the impossible finally overran the shock and confusion of knowing it even exists. I learned not to refer casually to any of it as “magic” and invite the immediate nuclear response, and the skill became more valuable when details began to emerge slowly. I asked her if she could make people see and think things not necessarily for the purpose of warning or punishing them. When she demanded to know what I meant by it, I stupidly pointed to our own relationship and the way we interact.

  “I’m not saying you need to,” I began, “but if you wanted, could you slip inside my mind and shape the thoughts to steer me in a particular direction?”

  She eyed me warily for a moment but I think she already knew where I was going.

  “Which direction are you talking about, exactly?”

  It seemed harmless enough, and with that first powerful, lurid dream in mind, I went in with a hopeful smile and the innocence that once kept me happy in my ignorance.

  “Well, romantic things, I guess. If you were in the mood, for example, could you invade my mind and make me desire you so powerfully nothing else would matter?”

  “I shouldn’t have to!” she replied at once and I knew I was sailing blind into dangerous waters. “And anyway,” she said, pouting, “I don’t remember you putting up much of a fight whenever the urge arrives.”

  She was right, of course, but I wanted to experience something she could do that wasn’t painful or horrifying—an experiment, I suppose, but one that wouldn’t put me on the floor in agony.

  “Yes,” I persisted, “and that’s all true, but I just wondered what it would feel like if you decided to pull the strings for something other than making me regret pissing you off; a better sort of demonstration, maybe?”

  “It’s not a silly carnival ride, Evan!”

  I held up a hand in silent capitulation; if she found my questions ridiculous and immature, I understood at least enough to know leaving it alone was my best course. She looked at me for a while and I thought she was preparing for another round. Finally, she sat beside me and said, “Very well—if you absolutely have to know…”

  It took a few moments but when it began the sensation was beyond my expectations. There was no sudden increase in temperature, the way the movies seem to suggest when an intimate moment approaches, but instead it was an odd wash of movement through my neck and back like nerve endings suddenly awakened. Not unpleasant or uncomfortable but enough to remind me they were there. She later told me the tingling sensations are only a mechanism to seize and hold my attention so that nothing else can interfere.

  I’ve thought about that moment and how best to describe it to those who have never experienced such a thing, and the only way I know as an analogue might be a veil made from thin, delicate material draped over you. It lets you see movement, but only just, and it serves to insulate you from animal instincts until the moment they are released. When the veil is removed, a sudden shock of realization is powerful and singular in its purpose. The feeling wasn’t so much a physical sensation but rather an unstoppable wash of pure emotion. Those twinges of desire and arousal, she said, are only extensions of a need that lives in the mind; the goal is not immediate sexual gratification but instead an unshakable devotion and obedience to the desires of another.

  I sat in silence as it came on like a wave, cresting in this moment but ebbing in the next, serving only to tease and enhance the experience. I looked at her and though she appeared no different I was consumed by an absolute and irresistible command to touch her. She moved closer but her expression remained unchanged. Aline watched closely and the power of her gaze was almost tactile and I felt her looking through me.

  At last, the raw images appeared to run rampant through my mind like faded negatives being scattered on the wind, vivid enough but fleeting and incomplete. I recognized them from our earliest encounters, but the effect was powerful. She reached for my hand, guiding it to the buttons on her shirt and we began without a word. I did what she commanded only by the force of her will—precisely how and where—without regard for anything beyond obeying and satisfying her desires. I imagined it would be similar to living inside a dream but it wasn’t like that at all; I was fully aware and awake, yet every movement seemed to be made as a reaction to her orders and I could think of nothing else.

  It went on for a while and she later told me, “You wanted to see and feel what it’s like, so I gave you the full treatment.” I don’t remember all of it because the pace quickened, and her dull expression changed into a powerfully erotic gaze, holding me in its grip with each movement. I did anything she wished me to do, and I went willingly to a darker place not unlike the images from that first dreamlike state in the moments before we met in a snowy field behind her house. The experience became much more than sexual release, and I felt like an instrument in her hands until we lay naked on her living room floor.

  When the sensation eased I could feel myself return to where we started—once more in the quiet moments when reality assumes control. She said nothing until after we showered and dressed, but I suppose nothing needed to be said; I wanted to see and experience
what it meant to be a willing servant to her wishes and she showed me. Today, what I experienced could be regarded more accurately as a symbol of her restraint. It sounds strange to portray it that way, but her demonstration was made for the purpose of showing me a benign example of her abilities and that lesson was made clear. Aline waited a while but then she took my hand in hers.

  “I can make you do those things, Evan; I can hold your thoughts and compel you to want me more than anything in life, but was it ever necessary? You were interested long before I came to you in your thoughts that night.”

  I smiled, but her words brought another truth: I was no longer burdened by the understandable hesitance that tormented me when I came to realize what she could do with a mere thought. The incredible and unlikely power she can wield was part of us and no longer an object of fear or reproach. It didn’t matter that few, if any, knew it exists or the care we would be obliged to observe to keep the secret hidden; I had gone to another place and so long as Aline was there, I knew I would never go back. Of course, the still-hidden truth she hadn’t revealed couldn’t touch me in that quiet moment, but it was always there.

  It brought a quiet sense of relief, the process of becoming a different person, but the remaining, ordinary parts of our lives hadn’t changed and knowing it became an anchor. I had learned not to fear her, too, and the distinction made things easier when we found ourselves in the rare moments of disagreement. It seemed as though I enjoyed a special and absolute exemption from what she could do. “Just because I can,” she said, “doesn’t mean I will.” Aside from her extraordinary abilities, we were just another couple with all the usual joys, disputes and resolutions all couples find when they become committed to each other. Today, I am more grateful than ever.

  I WENT UP to the shop on a blustery day in August to help Aline unpack new inventory and deal with the boxes while they racked their new items. On the way, as I always knew it would, the question of who and how much to tell returned. Obviously, that meant Vienne and the continued prospect of lying to her I hated to consider.

 

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