by Kris Tualla
He reached toward her and tried to grab her hands, but his fingers passed through hers with an ephemeral chill. She jerked her hands back, her pulse surging with adrenaline.
Disappointment pulled his body downward in defeat. “I thought... I hoped…”
He peered down into her eyes. Hollis clearly saw his soul then: tortured, tired, lonely. So very lonely. Even more lonely and heartbroken than she was.
His voice rumbled in her chest like the thunder from a looming desert monsoon storm. “What now?”
Chapter Two
What now, indeed.
“I must be losing my mind. I need to think about this.”
Hollis stepped away from the—person—and slid her feet back into her sandals. Her heart pounded painfully against her ribs, while the hope this was genuine and the dread that it wasn’t twisted her emotions like a dust devil.
“I’m going downstairs. I need to clear my head. I’m going to interact with the people there.” She glared at him. “The real ones.”
Sveyn nodded. “I understand.”
As she walked to the suite’s door, she checked for her room key with trembling hands; clearly the—whatever—could not unlock the door for her if she forgot it. “Don’t follow me this time.”
“I will stay here if I am able.”
Hollis paused, her damp palm hovering over the doorknob. “What do you mean ‘if’ you’re able?”
The Viking looked apologetic. “It seems that each time that I arrive, I am tethered to the person to whom I manifest.”
“Each time?” The ramifications of those two words began to chase madly around her thoughts like warring cats. Maybe I’ll only get one.
“This is not my first experience.”
Hollis tried to think clearly enough to ask logical questions but her yowling concerns were working against that process. “How long is this ‘tether’?”
Sveyn shrugged. “I believe, based on how far you stood from me when I arrived, that I will remain within eight or ten yards.”
“When you arrived?” This was getting weirder by the minute. Could my brain actually make this stuff up?
He nodded. “I opened my eyes and was standing where you saw me when you walked into the hall.”
Hollis stared at the man—that part she was certain of—completely dumbfounded. This experience was entirely too much for her to take in. But unless she had imagined that she felt him, it could be real.
Either that, or all of this was part of some Chardonnay-prompted, isolation-induced, insanity.
She snorted. Which answer is better?
He smiled softly. “Now you are wondering if you are going mad.”
“Stop that!” She stiffened and pointed an accusing finger at him. “Are you a mind reader?”
“No.” Sveyn wagged his head, his expression resigned. “It is only that almost everyone has the same reaction.”
Almost? Who wouldn’t?
Hollis whirled around and yanked the door open. She ran out so quickly, that she nearly collided with a couple of chattering women wearing the event’s t-shirt.
She threw her hands up as the metal door thunked closed behind her. “Oh! I’m so sorry!”
Two pair of eyes dropped to her event name badge.
“No worries!” one of them chirped. “We are excited to meet the authors, too.”
“And the men, of course,” the other one purred. “Care to join us?”
Hollis nodded past her discombobulation, flashed what she hoped would pass as a friendly grin, and fell into step with the ladies. She never imagined that this event, and its multitude of happy attendees, would turn out to be her salvation after all.
*****
Hollis tried to concentrate on the authors as they introduced themselves, but the ominous—thing—hovering nearby was hard to ignore. True to his explanation, Sveyn was never more than twenty-five feet from her.
She noticed that he was trying to be considerate and not stare at her, but since she was the only one who could see him, his eyes kept returning to hers.
She knew this, because her eyes kept moving to his.
Her attention was yanked back to the program when one of the authors said she wrote historical books with Norwegian heroes. As soon as the introductions were finished, Hollis sought the older woman out.
“Do you write about Vikings?” she demanded.
The older woman laughed. “No, Vikings were dirty and mean. I write Norse heroes from the thirteen hundreds through the eighteen hundreds.”
Unexpectedly offended by the author’s unflattering classification, Hollis wanted to say something to the effect that certainly not all of them were.
She hesitated because Sveyn stepped up behind the woman and grinned impishly over the woman’s shoulder. He lifted one brow. Truthfully, nearly a millennium ago he could have been dirty and mean; she had no way of knowing.
What the hell am I thinking?
Hollis stopped herself from explaining that she seldom read historical fiction because the rampant inaccuracies within annoyed her. Jane Austin knock-offs were the worst, in her opinion.
“Um, thank you. Maybe I’ll try one of your books anyway.” Hollis turned and walked out the ballroom doors into the nearly empty foyer. The hotel bar was just around the corner and promised relief.
“Can I please buy a bottle of your house Chardonnay to take to my room?”
Sveyn leaned his back against the bar beside her. “I have wished for so long that I might taste that.”
Hollis pressed her lips together. How did he do that without slipping through the counter? Clearly she had a lot to learn about her still frighteningly present—apparition.
That is what she would call him. An apparition.
She signed the charge slip, thanked the bartender, and gripped the bottle. The chill of the sweating glass was tangible, and made her feel as if her grip on reality was as well. She did not speak to Sveyn again until she was behind her closed and bolted hotel suite door and she had poured herself a tumbler of the wine.
Hollis decided not to sit on the sofa this time, to see if her conversation with Sveyn played out any differently when she was in a different seat. She knew it was a silly test, but everything about this day was turning out silly in the extreme.
“I have some questions.” She unfolded the paper she had been scribbling on during the author introductions.
Sveyn sat on the coffee table. “As everyone does.”
“Now that, for example.” She raised her eyes from her notes. “What constitutes ‘everyone’? How many times have you—”
“Manifested.”
“All right, we’ll call it that.” Hollis waved her hand in his direction. “Manifested.”
The Viking’s brow furrowed and he stroked his short, neat beard. “If I have not lost count, I believe this is my twenty-third manifestation.”
Hollis’s jaw fell dropped. “Twenty three?”
“Yes, I believe so. But they do not all last for the same amount of time.”
Her hands fell in her lap. “Explain, please.”
Sveyn crossed his arms. “My shortest visit was only five hours. And the longest was twenty-seven years.”
“So, you followed someone around for twenty-seven years?” The possibility that she might be stuck with him for that long was not a happy one.
“I am afraid so. But it was not in any way a pleasant time.”
A sudden and ludicrous worry that he might not enjoy his time with her pricked her pride. “Why not?”
Sveyn shrugged. “Because he never spoke to me, rendering me mute for all of that time.”
Hollis frowned. “Mute?”
“It seems that I have no voice until I am spoken to.”
Relief eased her mood. “And I spoke to you first.”
“You did.” Sveyn placed a fist over his heart as he had before. Obviously this was a gesture that denoted sincerity in his culture. “And for this small act of kindness, I heartily thank you
.”
Hollis was fascinated by the idea of someone experiencing this imposing apparition, but never acknowledging its presence. “Could he see you?”
“Yes. He looked straight into my eyes. Watched me as I paced to and fro in front of him. I even waved, thusly.” Sveyn windmilled his arms. “But all to no avail. He simply refused to speak to me.”
“Why did you finally leave him?”
Sveyn stroked his beard again. “He died. He succumbed to plague. I closed my eyes when he did, and when I opened them again I was sometime else.”
She leaned forward, resting her hand in her chin. Insane as this was, it was also fascinating “So you have no control over when or where you manifest?”
“No. It is like living in a dream.” His eyes narrowed. “You know how it is possible to be in one place, and suddenly you are elsewhere, even though proximity prevents such a shift?”
That explanation made horrifying sense. “Yes.”
“And the longer you remain in one place, how that place expands beyond what is reasonable?”
Just last night, Hollis dreamed she was back with her grandparents in Wisconsin—and their home’s rooms increased in both number and size as the dream continued. “Yes.”
“In my circumstance, as the experience expands, so does my tether.”
“And how does that happen?”
He shrugged, but gave her an odd look. “It varies.”
“How long will you be with me?” She glanced at the clock. “In thirty minutes, you will have been here for five hours…” The thought of him suddenly disappearing illogically saddened her, even though that would mean she had experienced an acute hallucinogenic episode and not an extended one.
Sveyn shook his head, slowly. “I do not believe that I am leaving very soon.”
Her mood brightened illogically. “Why not?”
“Because you touched me. And I felt it.”
“Should I try it again?”
Sveyn spread his arms, his face grim. “As you wish.”
Hollis unfolded from her chair and the paper with her notes fluttered to the carpet. She walked forward on bare feet. She slowly reached out her hand, but stopped.
What if she didn’t feel him this time? Might he blink and be gone?
But wouldn’t that be a good thing if he was?
She retracted her hand, refusing to consider why. “No. I don’t want to push our luck.”
The Viking looked both disappointed and relieved. Hollis picked up her paper and went back to her chair.
“What else did you want to ask me?” he prodded.
Hollis glanced at her scribbles, frowning in concentration. Many of her questions had either been answered, or were no longer relevant in light of what she had already learned. “So you travel around in time…”
“No. I do not.”
She looked up, confused. “But you said—”
“I said, I am sometime else.” He wagged a finger at her. “You assumed the rest.”
“Fine.” She huffed a sigh. “Explain again, please.”
“I only move forward in time. Never backward.”
Hollis chewed what remained of her lipstick off her lower lip and contemplated that as she rose to her feet. She crossed the small living room to refill her tumbler of wine. This bizarre conversation definitely required ample lubrication.
She turned to face him again. “So, when you leave me, you’ll go somewhere that doesn’t exist yet?”
Sveyn nodded. “That has been my experience.”
Hollis sipped the warming Chardonnay and decided that going to get ice would give her a much-needed moment to collect her thoughts. She grabbed the plastic bucket from the bar counter. “I’ll be right back.”
The ice machine was farther away from her suite than she thought, so Sveyn was waiting in the hallway when she returned.
“Ugh,” she grunted, retrieving the room key from the bling-encrusted hip pocket of her jeans. Back inside the room, she added several cubes to her wine, and stuck the nearly-empty bottle in the ice that remained.
“So, do you have a purpose here?” she asked, choosing yet another seat in the living room of the suite.
“Purpose? To what do you refer?” Sveyn looked around, and then sat in her vacated spot.
“I mean, are you here to save someone’s life, or turn their life around,” like mine, “or to make the world a better place?”
Sveyn laughed at that. “I am a reformed vikinger, not an angel of God! I have no purpose. No power.”
“But why—”
“I told you, I do not know.” He leaned toward her. “Listen to me, Hollis.”
When he called her Hollis, a shock skittered through her. “I never told you my name!”
“No, you neglected that bit of politeness.”
She pointed at him with her wine glass. “Then how did you know?”
He laughed again. “I assumed that was your own name on the wallet around your neck. Are you not Hollis McKenna?”
“Oh. Yes.” Hollis’s cheeks flamed. Clearly she was becoming as paranoid as she was delusional.
She drained her wine glass and headed toward the sink. “If I’m going to function at all tomorrow, I should go to bed.”
“That is wise,” he concurred.
A creepy thought pushed past the Chard. “Are you going to give me privacy?”
One corner of his mouth lifted. “Do you mean will I watch you disrobe, bathe, and sleep?”
“Yes. How did—oh, no.” She slapped her forehead with her free hand. “Everyone asks the same thing. Am I right?”
He stood and gave a little bow. “You are.”
“And?” she pressed.
“And I shall grant you your privacy.” Sveyn walked to the couch, dropped onto it, and stretched out, propping his head on the throw pillow, and his legs on the opposite arm rest.
“How do you do that? And don’t say ‘I don’t know’!”
The Viking looked sincerely confused. “Do what?”
Hollis waved her hand in the direction of her thoughts. “Lean against the bar. Sit on the chair. Lie on the couch.”
“And yet, walk through steel doors which are shut in my face?”
Hollis blew a raspberry at him. Sure it was immature.
So sue me.
Sveyn chuckled and patted the sofa. “I must concentrate with intent to move through objects of my own will, such as your door. Otherwise, I only pass through walls, or doors, or any other obstacle if my tether pulls me.”
Hollis folded her arms. “That sounds awfully convenient. I’m not sure I believe you.”
“No? Watch this.” Sveyn promptly sank through the sleeper sofa, leaving his long legs sticking out from one end, and his fur-booted feet resting under the little table with the lamp.
“Stop that!” Hollis covered her eyes. “You are freaking me out!”
His voice was startlingly close. “Do not fear me, Hollis. I never do harm. And I never lie.”
She dropped her hands and recoiled at his proximity.
“It—it’ll take me some time to get used to all of this, you know,” she grumbled.
“I do hope I remain here long enough for that to happen.” With the hint of a smile he looked down into her eyes. “I find you quite interesting, Hollis McKenna.”
Hollis retrieved the bottle of Chardonnay from its ice bath and finished the wine. She didn’t bother with her glass.
Chapter Three
Sunday
September 6
The sudden guitar chords playing on her phone startled Hollis awake. She grabbed her phone and snoozed the alarm, before rolling on her back closing her eyes.
Why do I feel a sense of dread?
The snoozed alarm woke her again, this time from the sleep she had fallen back into. With a sigh, she shut it off, alert enough to note the fringe of headache that wrapped around her skull.
Chardonnay. A bottle and a half.
Why did I drink so much?
/> The Viking.
Hollis sat up like she was catapulted. “Oh, crap!”
She clapped a hand over her mouth and stared at the closed—and locked—double doors which separated the suite’s bedroom from its living room. Was the not-a-ghost still on the other side?
Apparition. “Right.”
Everything that happened last night felt fuzzy and dream-like. Hollis knew in her mind that none of it could be real. And yet, she wasn’t eager to open the doors now and find out that she was wrong.
“I need to shower and go to breakfast,” she stated out loud, continuing the dialog with herself.
Don’t open the doors until you are finished.
“Duh.” She tossed the covers off and turned sideways to slide her feet into her waiting slippers. “I’m not an idiot.”
But you do talk to yourself.
“Shut up.”
Hollis walked into the bathroom to start the shower. She gulped four ibuprofen tablets before standing under the hot stream, letting the pseudo-massage relax her shoulders and ease the ache in her head.
As a grown woman with reasonable intelligence, a university major in world history—earned summa cum laude, thank you very much—and a Master’s degree in Museum Sciences, Hollis always rested on physical proof to logically uphold any theories.
The theory that she was a stressed workaholic was proven by the gift of this weekend from Miranda.
The theory that she might have overindulged a little on the wine last night was proven by the band of pressure around her head this morning.
And the theory that high stress plus alcohol might produce a short-term hallucination was proven yesterday by the impossible apparition she imagined she was conversing with.
“I was talking to myself. Obviously.” With an ironic grin, Hollis rinsed the conditioner from her hair and reached for a fluffy white towel to wrap around her head.
Thirty minutes later she stood in front of the bedroom doors with her hands resting on the lever-shaped knobs and tried to slow her pounding pulse. Did she hope the Viking was gone? Or would she be relieved to see him again—and what would it mean if she was?
Just open it.
