Barron shoved another gluttonous forkful of milk chocolate into his mouth and Regina rolled her eyes playfully at the fact that Barron had always been able to eat whatever he wanted without any regard to his weight. In high school he worked out, he was not an athlete by any stretch of the imagination, but he never encountered problems with weight after devouring an entire pizza, candy bars, or an entire piece of chocolate cake and Regina was jealous to no end that he had apparently been able to preserve this gift into adulthood.
Theatre was Barron’s trade and he was skilled at his craft. The dynamics of popularity had begun to change when they were in high school, where at one time it was the all American football player that was the star of the campus, it was now the talented actors and singers that claimed the high school notoriety and Barron harvested the fruits of that shift in social status. Just as Barron had always dreamed, he moved to LA right after high school and was still working on blazing a trail to stardom.
“I don’t know,” Regina said finally taking her eyes off of Barron. Regina leaned forward, resting her arm on the table and placing the side of her head against her palm.
“There are just so many possibilities.” She explained her hesitation to jump on the bandwagon of believers. Desperately, she longed for someone to fill the empty space with words, but when no one did, she had no excuse not to divulge the things that weighed heavily upon her.
“I dreamt about her last night.” Regina blurted out nervously before she had time to decide whether it was something that she should have disclosed. Her three friends eyed her strangely.
“I’ve dreamt of her before, but this was different. Frightening. It’s like she wants me to know something,” Regina guessed, trying not to sound too freaky.
They watched each other nervously.
“I know it sounds crazy,” Regina stated as if getting to the punch before anyone else would somehow take the sting off.
“What happened? Did she say anything to you?” Carter asked.
“She said my name, that’s all, but it was not like a regular dream. It wasn’t some smoky montage of scenes. It was as if she was there; I experienced her with all of my senses. I could see her, hear her, touch her…I could even smell her.” Her voice had degraded into a tortured whisper.
Barron’s eyes went wide with excitement at the grotesque detail. “What did she smell like?” he asked.
Regina moved her eyes to focus on Barron in a dull and scolding manner. Two words.
“Not funny.” Regina told him.
She noticed Nikki fingering the gold crucifix, a confirmation gift from her mother that hung around her small neck.
“Sounds bad, but it was just a dream, Regina. You’re in Black Water now, where the two of you spent so much time together and you are dealing with trauma, so it is not surprising that you are dreaming about her.” Barron said finally taking Regina seriously.
“Yeah,” Nikki spoke one word of agreement before excusing herself to the bathroom.
Barron looked at Regina unable to hold back the question anymore.
“… And just what drug is she off to the bathroom to do?” he asked.
“Not drugs. Just the drinks, I believe.” Regina sighed as she corrected the man. Barron looked into Nikki’s coffee cup, shaking his head after seeing that it was empty. “She probably has mini bottles in her bag or something.” Regina gave him the most honest answer that she could.
“I should have gone with her, I need a drink too. All this talk about ghosts and murder is not good for my mental health,” Carter injected himself into the conversation.
“I really don’t know. She still seems pretty functional and she doesn’t look that bad, so maybe it is not too hardcore, you know?” Though she couldn’t explain why, she needed to rationalize her friend’s bad habit.
Barron shook his head disapprovingly again.
Ten minutes later Nikki returned to the table appearing more relaxed.
“You OK?” Regina asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Nikki responded quickly, the next-best thing to brushing off the question altogether.
“Is Natalie coming back?” Regina asked, changing the subject.
“Natalie?” Nikki spoke as if Regina had asked a ridiculous question.
“She’s been back for months now.” Nikki told them as she picked up a fork and dug into the miniature mound of cake that Barron left on the plate.
“What? I thought that she was a teacher or something in Cedar?” Regina questioned.
“She was, but you guys remember how Mrs. Weston started getting ill years ago?”
Everyone nodded with a flare of indifference.
“Mrs. Weston had been suffering all of these years and last year she became bed–ridden.
At first Natalie hired a nurse for her because she didn’t want to come back, but I guess it just got to the point where she couldn’t afford it full time anymore and she had to come back and help.” Nikki finished her story and the rest of the cake in the same breath.
“Did they ever figure out what was wrong with her mother?” Carter asked.
“Not for a long time, but they are now saying that she has some rare form of cancer or something. I don’t know. They don’t think that she will make it much longer,” Nikki added.
“Any more good news?” Regina asked dryly.
“Wow, things just keep getting better and better in Black Water. Everything on the outside seems perfect, but it’s when you get into the cracks of the foundation that you see that everything is coming apart at the seams.” Barron added.
“Are they having any visitors?” Regina asked. “Let’s go see Natalie and find out if she needs anything,” Regina said to Nikki.
Nikki scoffed sarcastically. “Regina, if you want, I’ll go with you, but she doesn’t want to see us. She wants nothing to do with us.”
“She wants nothing to do with us?” Regina’s disbelief was apparent in her tone. “Why?”
Nikki sighed and began the second part of her story. “When she first came back to Black Water, I was ecstatic. I went to see her, but she was as cold as ice. I hugged her and it was like hugging a freakin’ mannequin, she had absolutely nothing to say to me. I don’t know why she’s so mad at us or maybe it was just me. It’s like we all just fell apart.” Nikki reflected mournfully on the childhood bond that she thought could never be broken.
“Ouch” Barron interjected. Regina shot him a dirty look.
“Well, we need to get going. We told our mother we wouldn’t be long, if we don’t hurry up and finish her entertainment center we’ll never hear the end of it.” Barron and Carter began gathering themselves to leave after dropping a crumpled ball of money on the table.
“Thanks. I guess we should go too.” Regina agreed.
“You guys off to see the ice queen?” Barron asked, causing Regina to give him a playful but hard punch in the shoulder. Regina looked to Nikki to get the answer to Barron’s question.
“I guess it can’t hurt to try.” Nikki reasoned reluctantly.
As they walked outside, Regina huffed at the sight of the bikes and massaged her temples. She had forgotten that they had been traveling by this childhood mode of transportation and she noticed for the first time that her vagina was on fire from being perched on a hard seat for so long, just as Nikki had predicted.
Barron called to her as the girls were straddling their bikes.
“You wanna do something tomorrow?” he asked.
“Like what? Cow-tipping?” Regina joked.
“Maybe …” He laughed.
“I’ll call you, house number still the same?” He shouted. Regina nodded.
He recalled aloud “555-1807.”
She smiled, unable to believe that after all of these years, he still remembered her home phone number by heart and she wondered if the fluttering that she felt in her stomach was more than nerves about seeing Natalie, as inappropriate as the timing, she couldn’t help but hope that it was.
“Nothing changes in Black Water,” she yelled to Barron before taking off on her father’s bike.
9
Natalie’s 1920’s colonial home was sided with slate-colored New England panels. As they rode up the sidewalk on their bikes, Regina’s eyes were drawn to the trellis that led up the side of the house directly to Natalie’s bedroom window. It had once been lush with roses of all colors, but was now tattered and choked with disobedient vines. The frame of the front door and windows were accented in a once vibrant white with navy shutters. One of the scuffed shutters hung off the side of the weathered window and foretold the potential damage that lay inside. The grass was high in some places and beginning to yellow. Trees and brush grew tall on both sides of the front yard, isolating it from its neighbors, making it more desolate than any of the other homes on the street.
Regina and Nikki stood awkwardly on Natalie’s porch after ringing the doorbell.
It was several minutes before they finally heard footsteps scrambling inside the house.
The door opened, revealing a short woman in her late thirties; her blonde hair with its black roots was flipped up and sat high on the back of her head with a styling clip. She looked comfortable in scrubs that consisted of purple pants and a top decorated with colorful cats.
“Yes?” the lady asked.
“Hi, is Natalie here?” Regina asked. Nikki stood behind her not saying a word, which was customary for Nikki who was a firecracker with people she knew, but quiet in uncertain situations.
“Sure, come in,” the blonde lady instructed them.
“Thanks” The girls answered in unison as the blonde led them into the home. Nikki turned and closed the door behind them. Right off the front hallway they passed through French doors that led them into the living room that was deprived of light by the heavy drapes that hung limply in the windows.
“Are you the nurse?” Regina asked.
“That’s me.” The lady said pointing to herself with sarcastic glory. “I will get Miss Weston.” She said before disappearing out the glass doors and shuffling up the stairs. Regina could hardly breathe in the house filled with stale and stagnant air.
“It smells like death in here.” Nikki muttered to herself.
Regina knew that it wasn’t polite to meddle with things in the homes of others, but she felt overwhelmingly claustrophobic and decided to open one set of drapes before she passed out. Regina made her way to one of the vast windows at the front of the room and threw the bristly curtains in opposite directions. Light burst into the room and millions of dust particles swam through the dark shadows that were now struck by the harsh rays of autumn light, like lost souls floating aimlessly through the air. Regina shot a couple of quick breaths out through her nostrils to keep herself from sneezing.
“Regina.” Nikki called her name while moving across the room to be closer to her friend.
“What?” Regina asked as she followed Nikki’s nervous stare to several objects around the room. Before the room had been so black and she had been so focused on breathing that she had not noticed the legion of paintings that littered the room, some sitting on easels, others on the floor, a few leaned against the couch and many hung low on the walls. Regina gasped and sucked in as much of the dusty air as her lungs would allow.
“You have got to be freakin’ kidding me,” Nikki whispered.
Regina’s eyes traveled the room, finding that the gruesome paintings decorated almost every free space in the living room.
The first painting she noticed was a young girl sitting at a piano. Her tiny body sat upon a wooden bench and her stocking-covered legs hung down, unable to touch the floor. She wore gleaming black Mary Jane shoes and a dark purple dress with a white collar, fingers poised artfully over the piano keys as if she were banging out a masterpiece. To Regina, the painting would have been beautiful if the girl’s eye sockets had not been ponderous round empty swirling vortexes of blackness. Regina grimaced as she studied the soulless piano-playing girl.
“Oh my God,” she heard herself moan; Nikki was standing so close now that if Regina moved an inch she would have stumbled upon her friend.
In another painting two young girls were surrounded in darkness created by charcoal smear. The two girls were standing at the edge of a stygian forest, the trees were bare and the skinny branches reached up into the midnight sky. Only their backs and the sides of the girl’s faces were visible and they appeared to be leaning forward, peering into the depths of an obscure forest blackened with the heart of every evil creature that lived within. If one looked just close enough, there was the tiny red glow of two eyes in the mass of black as if what they were looking for stood watching them, but it was impossible to tell whether they were going to the evil or if the evil was coming out to get them.
Regina traveled to the wall slowly, in a quest to view the most powerful painting and to put some space between her and Nikki, which was of no use because she could feel Nikki mimicking her every move with the precision of a reflection.
The painting illustrated a cult of naked girls; some knelt down with their foreheads pressed to the ground, while others danced with solemn faces around a gargantuan beast, symbolized in the ways that traditional versions of him cause people to manifest his image in their brains. He sat as tall as the trees that shaded the ungodly ritual that was taking place out of the sight of God-fearing men. No horns, but his entire body was red and not the cherry lipstick red that he is shaded in cartoons or other satirical replicas, but the color of rich rubies. His eyes were black and they glowed into and instantly captivated the soul of those who dared to look into them, let go and allow themselves to get lost. Exceedingly long arms stretched from his statuesque torso, warning that no one was out of reach. His arms were muscular and high above his head he dangled one of the naked girls over his enlarged mouth. The girl cupped her hands together over her abdomen, with eyes wide open; she seemed neither happy nor unhappy in the face of her impending fate, but appeared perfectly resolved to it. Bloody rivulets dripped out of the mouth of the beast as if he had been devouring vulnerable little girls all day long; seductive bastard. Regina was amazed at how real the blood looked on the portrait. The entire scene was almost three dimensional and emerged from the canvas. Regina directed trembling fingertips toward the artwork to touch the drippings that ran from the lips of the beast; the closer her fingers traveled to the face of the wild animal the more real he became to her until her hand was less than an inch from his feral mouth.
“The devil.” A voice spoke.
The girls had been so engulfed in the painting, their eyes so glued to the images, their bodies so rigid with tense morbidity, that when the voice startled them, Regina took a clumsy step back, crushing Nikki’s foot. Unable to hold her ground, Nikki lost balance and grabbed Regina who grabbed aimlessly as both girls tumbled to the floor taking an easel down with them in the colossal collapse.
Both girls scrambled clumsily, getting to their feet again only to meet the cold eyes that shared no similarities to the eyes of the Natalie Weston that they had known years ago.
“Natalie,” Regina said enthusiastically. She wanted to run over and hug the unmoved woman, but the thought of the paintings dampened that feeling and the apathetic expression on Natalie’s face washed it completely away.
“Do you ever think about the devil, Regina?” Natalie asked. A disturbed Regina pondered the question.
“Uh, no …” Regina shook her head. “I suppose I don’t,” she finished.
“I do,” Nikki interrupted, her voice broken down to a childlike whisper by the emotionally draining tension that filled the room.
“Do you know why the angel Lucifer was cast out of heaven?” Natalie asked her next question gently fiddling with her bangs. Natalie’s chocolate brown hair fell over her left shoulder in a thick, neat braid. She wore a long-sleeved white shirt, fitted jeans, and brown riding boots; her eyes sparkled behind her dark reading glasses.
Regina and Nikki exchanged a look.
“He was cast out because God told him that angels were to serve man and in his arrogant pride, he refused. He and other angels who agreed with him were cast out of heaven. Once exiled, the fallen angel decided to take his revenge by tormenting man, his proclaimed enemy. God and the devil have been in a bitter battle over our miserable souls ever since,” Natalie lectured as her copper-colored eyes glared at them from behind her dark-rimmed glasses.
Nikki’s mouth dropped open and she was breathing methodically.
“Why does God allow the devil to touch us?” Natalie asked into the air as she crossed the room and peered into her own painting.
“Because we have free will just like those angels did,” Nikki told her. Regina shot Nikki a fierce look that scolded her for taking part in this ghastly oration.
“I know that.” Natalie snapped venomously. “… But why should we even have a choice? Why doesn’t God just do away with him?”
“Because the devil is powerful.” Regina was not sure this was the right answer, but injected herself into the exchange in order to get through this conversation as soon as possible.
Natalie, who was not even a foot away, turned to face her friend.
“… And doesn’t that scare the shit out of you?” Natalie hissed.
No one spoke. Natalie turned again to face the painting.
“That’s why I paint these. If I explore the abyss, if I get there before he does and I get it all out of me, there will be nowhere inside of me for him to hide. Does that make any sense at all?” she asked as she picked up the brush, adding skillful detail to the artwork. Regina took a deep breath and let her eyes float to the floor before returning her gaze to Natalie.
“I suppose it does,” Regina answered.
“What do you want?” Natalie abruptly changed the conversation.
“I just wanted to see you, to see how you were, to say I’m sorry about your mother.” Regina told her. Natalie motioned to the couch and Regina sat, Nikki followed sitting as close to Regina as possible. Natalie took a seat on the chair that sat on the other side of the coffee table. She noticed the unzipped duffle bag that contained her dirty secret at the end of the couch where Regina and Nikki sat and prayed neither of them would spot it.
Black Water Tales: The Secret Keepers Page 10
