“My head, my head,” Dana moaned, the pain throbbing. “I hit my head. It’s so hot. They aren’t men, they’re boys, and they’re going to die! Without me, they’ll die!” Someone was shouting at her and it took a while for the words to penetrate. As she heard David, she slowly opened her eyes and found him standing over her.
“Snap out of it, Dana!” he snapped urgently. “You’ll drive us both crazy! Snap out of it, for God’s sake!” She saw, as she looked at him, how he then realised that she had some measure of sanity in her eyes again. He was breathing hard. Sweat stood out on his collarbone, glistening on the brownness. His firm mouth was distorted into an ugly twist as he fought down his memories. “Don’t go back. They died, Dana. All of them died. Don’t go back! God, I can’t—I can block myself, but I can’t block out you. Don’t, please. It’s over, do you hear?”
As she looked up into his contorted, pain-filled eyes, her own blurred with tears and her face crumpled. “All of them?” she asked brokenly. “Everyone died?” She heard a hiss from her mother.
“All of them,” he replied, more quietly, attempting gentleness. “They’d been killed. A band of the Vietnamese found them and slit their throats. There was nothing anybody could have done.”
“All five,” she whispered.
“All five.” His fingers on her shoulders tightened and he then let go, squatting in front of her chair, still close. She was looking down at him, could see his upturned, strong jawline, the line of his throat that looked at once so strongly corded and yet so vulnerable as she caught a pulse beating on the side. She saw him breathe deeply, the movement heaving his chest, the way his shirt tapered down to his flat stomach.
“Was that when you got hurt?” she asked numbly. “Was that when you were wounded and left for dead?”
“My dear Lord,” Denise said quietly.
“Yes,” David said baldly. His corded hands clasped hers.
“The nightmares are real. You are scared, aren’t you?” Suddenly needing to see for herself, she reached out and pulled his shirt up abruptly, never considering the intimacy of the act, never even thinking of being embarrassed at her own audacity, never even dreaming that he could possibly be offended by such an action.
“Dana!” her mother protested this in a shocked tone of voice, but again neither of them heeded her.
David simply knelt on the floor from his squatting position, holding his powerfully muscled torso straight, arms to his sides. His eyes told her that he understood her need, and she unbuttoned his shirt with trembling fingers, yanking it wide open. Her hands clenched into fists, crumpling the material, and then fell to her lap as she stared at his dark brown chest, a sprinkle of silky black hair at the top of his rib cage that arrowed down to disappear into his jeans. The skin was smooth, hard from the muscle underneath but silken to the touch, she found, as her fingertips touched his stomach, shaking more violently as she traced the outline of a white, old scar, a thick mar against the perfection of his tan. He held himself there, steady and still. In spite of herself, Denise shifted also to look, fascinated. Dana’s eyes, huge in her pinched face, slowly rose to meet his, and he nodded.
“It’s real. It really is real. I’m not crazy. The knife.”
Her hand knotted and she unconsciously shoved it into her own stomach, reminiscent of his own action, thirteen years ago. Her face twisted briefly into agony. Darkness swirled like a whirlpool and her mother cried out as Dana silently pitched forward. David jerked out his arms and caught her before she’d slumped to the floor.
He knelt there a moment, his arms wrapped around Dana’s still, slight body, her head on his naked, warm chest. She was utterly limp. He bent his head to look at her face and saw her eyes closed, and he buried his face for a moment with a deep tired sigh into her thick hair. His shoulders were dejectedly slumped. Then, very carefully, he shifted her in his arms to pick her up. Her head fell back on his arm in an alarmingly lifeless manner, exposing the long, slender, vulnerable curve to her pale neck. “She’s all right, Mrs. Haslow,” he murmured softly as Denise came around the table quickly, her face worried. He looked at the blue vein under her white translucent skin at the side of her neck. Unbidden, the thought that this was the perfect place for a killing stroke came to his mind, followed by an immediate surge of protectiveness for her, along with a sense of anger at himself and the memories he couldn’t let lie. “She just fainted. She’s had a hard ordeal today, and my guess is on little food. Where can I put her?”
He followed Dana’s mother up the stairs and in to Dana’s room, putting her very carefully down on the neatly made bed before looking around him. He bent and checked her pulse at her slim, bruised wrist and found it steady. He frowned at the bruises and then winced at the evidence of Dana’s earlier deadly intention. Then he sat down gingerly on the edge of the bed and stared down at the still face in front of him. It was only as he saw her without any sign of stress or guard on her face that he realised just how nicely proportioned her features were. Dana was, he discovered, quite beautiful. He said to Denise as she moved to the other side of the bed and looked down at her daughter, “I think it would be best, under the circumstances, if I were to leave the area. I think Dana would be better off. She’d be safe.” As he said this, he was surprised to find how hard the words were to say.
“Would she?” Denise said oddly. She passed a gentle hand over Dana’s still, white cheek. “Perhaps if you would sit with her for a little while, I could go and fix us all something to eat. Dana hasn’t had much in her stomach, and I’m sure it will help steady her when she wakens.”
David turned his head to look at Denise sharply, his mouth opened to say something. She met his stare calmly, her own face as lined with stress as either of theirs. He closed his mouth and silently nodded. She left the room.
Dana started to swim up to consciousness sluggishly, the blackness receding to grey and then daylight as she reluctantly opened her eyes. She was on something soft and turned her head as she also registered warmth from one of her hands. David was sitting on her bed, cradling her slim hand between his two. “That was stupid of me, wasn’t it?” she murmured, grinning a lopsided, rueful grin.
He didn’t smile. “No. You’d put up with a lot, I’d say. It was entirely understandable.”
She unconsciously began to tense, but he leaned forward and stroked one hand over her forehead and down the side of her face. She whispered, “What is it?” Her eyes searched his face.
“I can’t keep anything to myself around you,” he said irritably, and she flinched. “I’m sorry, Dana. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded, but—damn, girl, you have to realise how unsettling this is.”
Immensely tired, she turned her head away and nodded as she stared at the other wall. The bed creaked as David moved, and then his hands fastened on her shoulders and pulled her up to a sitting position abruptly. She winced at the pain in her sore shoulder, surprised at his unexpected action, and then one of his hands was dragging her hair and gripping the back of her neck to force her head around. She stared at him with wide eyes as her heart started to pound, and his head moved down, his mouth covering hers.
She kissed his warm, searching lips almost involuntarily, her own mouth falling open as her eyes closed and her arms went around his neck. His own arms wrapped around her so tightly, hard against his chest, that she felt her breath being forced out of her. Then he let her go and she fell back on to her pillow, stunned at her own feelings and the unexpectedness of the whole thing.
“Dana, I’m going away,” he said harshly. “I’m going to re-lease Grace’s house and move. I can’t go on living here, knowing I’m the cause of all your strain and trouble! This can’t continue the way it is and we both know it! You’re too thin, you aren’t eating, and somehow you’re making me open and vulnerable to all of those memories I’m working so hard to bury. It’s best for all of us. I’ll leave as soon as I can.”
Dana had barely enough time to register what he was saying before
the shock hit her. Her eyes fell away and she nearly gasped at the dismay that she felt over his words, surprised that she should care so much. But she did. She cared very much whether she saw him again or not, even though she knew he was the cause of so much of her distress lately. She cared a great deal, altogether too much.
Chapter Seven
“It won’t work,” she found herself saying dully. Silence stretched out in the room and she rolled her head on the pillow to look at David, her eyes as dull as her voice. “It won’t work,” she repeated, at his frowning stare. “Do you remember what Mrs. Cessler told you about what happened when my father died? I felt it, David. I felt it as if it were my own. He wasn’t anywhere near me at the time. Do you really think that you would change things by leaving? You wouldn’t. If I’m as sensitive to you right now, I know that it won’t matter where you are. I’ll still feel your pain.”
Absolutely nothing showed on David’s face, and yet she felt the despair hit him as if she’d physically attacked him, and she winced. “God, why me?” he burst out, half roaring it in his frustration. “Why me? Why the hell did you have to get involved? Why can’t you get free of this, damn it?”
She put up both hands, hiding her face from him. “Do you really think I want this?” she gritted, digging the heels of her hands into her eyes, seeing blind white sparks from the pressure. “Don’t you think that if I could cut that part out of me with a knife, I would? I should have died this afternoon, I should have died!”
“Don’t say that! Shut up!” A hiss of breath, a glare, hands clenched. She didn’t look at him.
Then, she brought her hands down slowly and stared at him, hard. “Besides,” she said softly, “aren’t you as trapped as I am? Because you can never get away from yourself, your memories, no matter how you try. You suppress it and you suppress it, but it always bursts out of you somehow. A nightmare, a sleepless night. A lonely and isolated life. If you could cut that out of you, you would.”
He stood, a violent movement, stalking through the room turning. Though he opened his mouth to say something, nothing came out. They stared at each other, both tense, as the afternoon sun threw a mottled pattern through the curtains, over them both.
Dana was the first to turn as her mother walked into the room, glancing at them both with eyebrows slightly raised. She smiled at her mother, noting the lines still on her face, the greying hair, the fan of wrinkles at her eyes. Denise said quietly, “I thought that you would know when I was through fixing the meal, Dana. You always do. It’s ready downstairs, if you are.” And she looked again at David. He was staring out of the window, his back rigid.
“I’ll come down with you now, Mom,” Dana said quickly, not looking towards the window. “I’m sure that David will want to wash up.”
It sounded flimsy and they all knew it, but her mother accepted her words without question, and they went downstairs to the empty kitchen.
Sitting down to the simple meal, Dana ate without saying anything as she thought about the man who was upstairs in her room. She was startled into jumping when her mother spoke.
“Dana.” She looked up. Denise was looking at her so strangely, and she lifted a brow in question. “Do you realise that you haven’t been sensing me at all today?”
Dana’s face went blank. “W-what do you mean?”
“You know very well what I mean.” Denise studied her consideringly, greying head cocked to one side. Dana flushed and her eyes fell away. “You have always known when to come down to the supper table. I’ve never in my life had to call you. And yet, for some reason and for the first time in your life, you didn’t know to come down tonight. Why is that, do you suppose?”
Looking down at her half-eaten meal, Dana mumbled in a shaking voice, “I don’t know.” Suddenly panicked, she reached out with her mind almost desperately, unsure as to how to do something that had always been second nature to her. She relaxed when she could feel her mother’s quiet, accepting, questioning mind. She said more steadily, “I don’t know. I can feel you there now.”
“But what I’m wondering is why you couldn’t feel me then?” They stared at each other, and then Dana turned before the footsteps sounded at the doorway. David appeared there, wide shoulders filling the space, contrasting with lean hips. His hair was ruffled as if he had run his fingers through it, and his face was tired. He moved slowly, as if he were an old man. Dana knew a surge of tenderness and very nearly stood to go to him. At the doorway he paused, and his eyes ran over them both briefly. “If you don’t mind, I think that I’ll be leaving now,” he said remotely. “I have several things that I need to do.”
Dana didn’t respond as she looked at him, eyes wide, trying with all of her might to sense what he was feeling and thinking. Denise said immediately, “Of course, by all means, don’t feel like you have to stay. You’ve been such a help to us already today. I don’t know what we would have done without you.”
David just looked at her, his expression sardonic, making Dana flush painfully for both him and herself. Then without a backward glance, he strode to the door and left. Dana was left with a bereft, bewildered emotion gnawing at her chest, unable to sense his purpose or to untangle her own mixed emotions.
The next day was very quiet. Dana spent her time indoors, either reading listlessly, sleeping fitfully in the afternoon, or working halfheartedly at her needlepoint. She felt exhausted, drained, hollowed out. When she mentioned this to her mother, Denise merely replied that she wasn’t surprised, considering how emotion-filled and tense the earlier day had been. Dana sighed, knowing that her mother was right, and yet at the same time feeling impatient with herself and the world around her. Everything seemed curiously empty to her. Occasionally, out of sheer loneliness and boredom, she could consciously reach out with her questing mind to reassure herself of her mother’s presence. She was puzzled and uncertain as to why she was not constantly attuned to her parent as she’d always been in the past, and she was afraid to ask why.
The evening stretched out endlessly, and she was more than ready to make her way up to her room at the end of it, tired, and oddly close to tears. She dropped into a deep sleep almost immediately.
Everything was blackness. She’d never seen such a black night in her life. It was hot, it was muggy, it was so stifling and horribly quiet that she thought she might go out of her mind with it. The worst was the tiny shuffling, grunting noises in the dark of the night, for though she couldn’t see what was going on, she could hear, and she knew, oh, she knew what was happening.
They were piling the dead. After taking as many of the soldiers out as possible, she/he had returned to make sure there was no one left after the terrible skirmish between the soldiers and the Vietnamese from the small village. Rage filled her/him at the very thought of the soldiers ordered to shoot on the nearly defenseless villagers who were armed with ancient muskets, pitchforks, knives and other farm implements. The soldiers were sick at heart, the villagers sick with fear, and the whole night reeked with the stench of the fear and the sickness.
It suddenly reeked with something else, too. As her/his nostrils quivered at the unexpected smell of gasoline, something flared to her/his right, unbelievably bright and glaring, and her/his head automatically turned in that direction, hand thrown up against the bright shock to his senses. And he gave a great shout of rage and horror as he saw what was burning.
They were burning the dead villagers. He had never seen anything so utterly horrible in his life.
Screams echoed from the edges of the forest where the surviving villagers had taken refuge, and he gradually became aware that his own shouting had never ceased. His shouting was a scream, too.
Everything became suddenly, intensely hot, and Dana bolted stark upright in her bed, wetness trickling off her entire body, the echoes of her own horrified screams still reverberating through her room and the dark, silent house. Still in the grip of the horrible scene she had just dreamt, she scrambled out of bed and lurched for the bathroom,
her hand clamped over her shaking mouth. There she was wretchedly sick, the vivid memory of the sights and the smells making her retch painfully. Her hands were shaking and she was hiccupping in deep, dry sobs. Something burst into the bathroom and her mother switched on the light, sleepy, confused, asking in a ragged voice, “Dana? Oh, honey, are you all right?”
She didn’t bother to answer, stumbling back to her room and throwing on her bathrobe as fast as her two shaking, weak hands would let her. It was not very quick. Then, stumbling from the shock of the nightmare, the rude awakening, and her own sick reaction, she made her way to the head of the stairs and crept down them, hanging on to the banister. Her limbs were shaking so.
Her mother followed her to the head of the stairs, asking in a fear-sharpened voice, “Dana? Answer me! Dana, are you all right?”
Dana never turned, intent on one thing only.
She was out of the door and into the night, half falling down the porch steps, and then something large and hard came out of the black and still night, wrapping two strong arms roughly around her quaking body so tightly she couldn’t breathe, and the shock of the bodily impact, along with the utter and immense comfort of the knowledge of just who it was that held her made Dana really cry noisily. She tried to talk to him through her tears, unintelligibly.
David was holding her, soothing her, brushing the hair off of her hot forehead as he muttered into her ear things that she never really deciphered. She just clutched at him and shook as she tried to tell him about her horror and the terrible images that still clung like sticky cobwebs to her mind.
“I know. I know. Hush, I know.” He repeated monotonous wording in a half croon until it sank into her mind.
Then a strange voice, also male, impinged on her consciousness as someone nearby said deeply, “Dear Heaven, it really is true.”
Flashback Page 10
