by Holly Lisle
Dark, foaming water rushed around her feet and rose with supernatural speed. She struggled, but her bonds were unbreakable. The water climbed from her knees to her waist to her shoulders to her nose and mouth. She began to drown in the dark and swirling currents. She fought for breath, and cried out, and kicked—
And woke up.
For a long moment, she could do nothing but clutch the covers and shake, suppressing screams. She stared at the ceiling, feeling the lingering residue of helpless terror and the presence of immense evil. She began counting her breaths, exerting effort to slow them down. And gradually, the nightmare’s grip on her loosened. Minerva’s pulse rate dropped fractionally.
It was just another bad dream, Min, she told herself. Get a grip.
The hissing sound continued, though, challenging Minerva’s thin veneer of control. She fought to identify the sound — and when she did felt embarrassed by the silliness of her dark terrors.
That’s nothing but the ice storm — freezing rain on the glass and the roof—
So she heard the ice storm and incorporated it into her dream, creating quite a nasty nightmare out of totally mundane stuff.
But...
The terror of drowning refused to be subdued by logic. With a start, she realized her face was wet. So was her pillow. And the choking sensation was still there.
She sat up, wiping at her face with the back of her hand. The taste of salt tears was at the corner of her mouth.
Christ, I’ve been crying in my sleep again. I am going nuts.
She sagged back onto her pillow and looked over at Darryl’s side of the bed. He wasn’t there. She sat up and rubbed at her eyes. He might be downstairs watching late-night TV, she thought. Or he might have gotten snowed in at work.
It was almost a relief to find his side of the bed empty.
When did I last love him? she wondered. I did, once. I know it. I remember thinking the day began with his first kiss, thinking the world would end without it. I remember when just looking at him made me happy. I remember feeling warm when he smiled at me. I remember feeling loved. When did all of that change?
There wasn’t any sharp line where she could say, “This is when I quit loving Darryl.” She stared at the ceiling some more, and thought about it, and decided instead that not loving him had been the result of a series of disappointments, a series of little betrayals and failures. There were all the nights he’d wanted to watch football instead of making love; all the days when he’d stayed over at work because he was in the middle of some exciting project or other rather than doing something with her and the kids; all the times he’d told her he’d help her with something, and had then forgotten. There were the times when he’d said he didn’t want to do a load of laundry because he always had trouble with the clothes tangling — as if she didn’t — or that he didn’t want to scrub down the shower because she did it better. There was the way he let her work to put him through college, then said that they couldn’t afford for her to finish her education — not with a house and three kids and bills.
Not loving Darryl wasn’t the result of some huge disaster in their relationship, she realized. It was the fact that they really didn’t have much of a relationship — three children and eleven years of marriage notwithstanding.
She held her left hand out in front of her and stared at the wedding band on her ring-finger. Even in the dark she could make out the intricate interweavings of the pattern. The old man at the Renaissance Faire all those years ago had insisted those rings would bind the young lovers soul-to-soul, “across the worlds and through all time” — and Minerva and Darryl, charmed by the fairy tale, had bought them.
And like all fairy tales, that one was just so much bullshit, Minerva thought.
She crawled out from beneath the covers, and her bare skin prickled with the chill. She grabbed the bathrobe that was draped over the bedpost and wrapped the thick, warm terrycloth around her. Then she tiptoed to the window.
Outside, the streetlight illuminated falling flakes of snow and the gleam of drops of freezing rain, and within the circle of its light, a glittering, surreal world of eerie, alien shapes was born — a magical kingdom of diamond-crusted trees and glass-frosted houses. She pulled her glasses off the nightstand and put them on. The scene became clearer, but lost none of its magical quality.
The world outside was incredibly beautiful. A poem she’d written years ago, in the days when she still believed she could be an artist, drifted through her memory, and staring into the snowstorm, she whispered it.
“Another world is mine, that none else see,
Cast from a softer, stranger, sweeter mold,
Created by some laughing god for me
Alone — its colors bright, its textures bold,
Impressionistic sweeps. I look at trees
Like Renoirs, vivid splashes tossed against
The towering thundering, watercolor seas
Of sky. New-washed, chalk-drawn — my world — unfenced,
Unlined, unsigned, it bears no scars of men.
Its velvet folk, androgynous, unflawed,
Move with a boneless grace from home to glen.
I stand and watch in joyous wonder, awed.
I need no spacebound ship, no mystic passes
To reach my world. I just take off my glasses.”
As she recited the last line of her poem, she slipped her glasses off and stared at the blurry, fuzzy wonderland outside her window one more time, and wished with all her heart that the real world could be so beautiful, so peaceful — so perfect.
No school tomorrow, she thought, and put her glasses on again with a sigh. All three kids would be home and in her hair, fighting with each other, whining to go outside, whining to come back inside, bored out of their skulls. If Darryl was home, he would prop himself in front of the television and watch game shows and ESPN and cable movies all day. He’d yell at the kids to be quiet and to play in their rooms, and criticize her for not making them behave. All four of them would leave messes, and she would either nag at them all day to clean their messes up, or save a lot of trouble and just do it herself.
She shivered again, this time not entirely from the cold.
Is this what life is supposed to be? Isn’t there something more? Something important that I’m supposed to do?
All her life, she’d waited for the moment to come to her, for a neon sign to light up, for someone to tell her — Now, Minerva. Now is the time for you do something wonderful. Now is the time for you to save the world. This is what you have to do. But the sign never came, and no one ever told her what she should do to save the world.
That’s just real life, I guess. In real life, married mommies don’t count for much in the scheme of things. We don’t affect politics, or history, or art, or religion — we don’t change the world. We just get married, have our children, bring them up, watch them leave — then we grow old, and die.
Minerva rolled the smooth chintz of the curtain between her fingers, and watched the snow and ice accumulate on the walk beneath her window.
In the scheme of things, she wasn’t too badly off. Darryl didn’t drink, he didn’t beat her, he kept a job and paid the biggest part of the bills. She was employable, even if she didn’t like her job very much, she lived in a nice house, had decent neighbors, and great kids— Minerva smiled when she thought of Barney and Carol and Jamie. She really did have wonderful children, without any temporizing. Plenty of women were married to men they didn’t love anymore. Those women didn’t mope around with pity-poor-me expressions on their faces, did they?
Is there something wrong with me for not being happy? God knows there are plenty of people worse off than I am. Why can’t I be satisfied, when I have it so good?
She shrugged. She didn’t feel like going back to bed. The nightmare, whatever it had been, was still waiting in the back of her mind. She could feel it.
The green glow of the alarm clock’s digital face read “4:23 A.M.” It reflecte
d in the full-length mirror on the other side of the room — and as she watched, the light reflected in the mirror changed from green to blue.
That’s odd. I wonder what makes it look like that.
She glanced at the clock. Its numbers were still green.
A rifleshot crack from nearby plunged the world into darkness. “Aw, shit!” That was the sound of a branch burdened by too much ice taking out a power line. Great. Now she was alone with the kids in an ice storm — in the cold and the dark. Better and better. She swore again softly and stared out the window into total darkness.
But when she moved, she could see her own shadow on the wall, outlined in blue. What—? she wondered. She turned to look in the mirror again—
She stared, unable to breathe, pulse racing. The blue glow had spread — had grown from a hazy pinpoint to a rippling, luminous sheet that filled the mirror. The nightmare feeling grabbed Minerva again, and she backed away. The glowing blue oval of light broke free from the mirror frame and floated over to her, its shape shifting like a column of smoke in a breeze. She kept backing until she felt the cold window glass behind her; kept pushing even then until the bare skin of her neck pressed hard against the icy pane. The blue light kept coming. It brushed against her skin — cold, oh God, it was cold — and then it sizzled and whipped away from her — and shriveled up and vanished.
Released from its spell, she pressed her hand to her mouth and muffled her scream.
Oh God, omigod, ohgod-ohgod!
What had it been? A ghost? A hallucination? Another incident like the dragon in the grocery store? She made herself take a deep breath. She smoothed the heavy terry robe beneath her fingers. She walked toward the mirror.
A muffled crash came from Carol’s room. Minerva froze. Carol shrieked — then something cut her piercing little-girl voice off in mid-yell. Minerva heard a soft popping noise.
“NO!” Minerva yelled.
Bathrobe flapping, she raced out of the bedroom and down the hall toward her daughter’s room.
* * *
Darryl lay on the couch in the lounge with Cindy Morris spooned against his chest. Her hair fanned out over his left arm. Beneath his right hand, he could feel the steady rise and fall of her chest as she slept. He could see the two of them, reflected in the mirror on the other side of the lounge, burnished by the warm glow of the candles they’d found before the electricity went out. He wasn’t happy with what he saw.
The sex had been good — but then, the worst I ever had was good, he thought, repeating an old line. It had been exciting enough for him; just the fact that he’d never done anything like that before — the fact that Cindy wasn’t Minerva — made the whole experience a forbidden thrill. And Cindy couldn’t be much over twenty-one. Her body was young and tight and voluptuous in all the right places. She didn’t have Minerva’s experience, or Minerva’s enthusiasm, or Minerva’s wild imagination; but then, he thought, she doesn’t have Minerva’s brains, either. Cindy didn’t know how to do any of the really neat stuff Minerva liked, and the girl acted embarrassed and awkward when he tried to show her.
However, you don’t expect the first time with a stranger to be as good as any time with somebody you’ve been practicing with for eleven years, either, do you?
You asshole.
He stared at himself in the mirror across the room. His eyes were holes of darker black carved into the shadowed planes of his face. He looked guilty as hell.
He twisted absently at his wedding band with his left thumb and rolled it around and around. The ring seemed heavy on his hand. He imagined it growing bigger with its disapproval. Minerva was at home with the kids — probably in the cold and the dark, without electric. He ought to be there with her. Instead, he was with a naked bimbo on a cheap Naugahyde couch that was getting colder by the minute, a long way from home, feeling like a shit — a feeling he had to admit he’d earned.
Cindy shivered and woke up, and ground her muscular little ass into his groin. “Hey, there,” she murmured. “You awake?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m awake.”
“Oh, good. Let’s get warm again.” She slid one of her cold hands behind her and between his legs, and arched her back like a cat so that her breasts jutted out.
“Good idea,” he said, and firmly removed her hand from between his legs, and pushed her far enough away from himself so that he could sit up.
She sat up and glared at him. “What’s the matter with you?”
“I’m cold, and I’m going to get warm.” He rummaged around on the floor, found his shorts, and pulled them on. He found one sock and put that on, too.
“C’mon — let’s screw some more,” Cindy said. Her eyes seemed even greener in candlelight. Those eyes watched him, alert and not anywhere as sweet and innocent at that moment as they’d seemed earlier.
He raised an eyebrow. “Charming invitation,” he drawled. “But I don’t think so. I have to get home.”
“Home?!” She laughed. Her face was the perfect picture of disbelief. “You’ve got to be kidding. There must be two feet of snow and ice out there by now.”
“Yeah, well—” He found his other sock and put it on, and located his sweater. He shrugged. “I’ll manage. I don’t want to leave my wife and kids there alone.”
“Your wife! And your kids!” She narrowed her eyes. “What an interesting time to be remembering them.”
“No shit,” he muttered. “But you knew I was married. I saw you looking at my wedding band.” He pulled the sweater over his head. His shoes lay by the mirror. He walked over to them, caught a glimpse of the blizzard raging on the other side of the windows in the hallway, and shivered. The shiver was not entirely from the cold.
He bent down to pick up the shoe, and glanced up into the mirror. She was staring at him, her shadow-distorted face bearing little resemblance to the girl he’d met — but it was dark in the room, he thought. Her eyes followed his every move. The green of them seemed to glow in the candlelight. Her expression was unreadable.
“Yes. I saw your ring. I thought it was cool — all those swirls and stuff. Kind of pretty.” Her voice sounded childish and sweet — and it didn’t match her eyes. Her stare burned into his imagination. It seemed dangerous somehow. “Let me see it while you put your shoes on,” she said. She smiled.
There was something compelling about her voice. Darryl started to pull the ring off and show it to her. Then he stopped. “I never take it off,” he said.
One shoe was on. He reached for the other.
“Aw, c’mon, baby. Let me see it.”
The timbre of her voice changed — or was that his imagination? She was beginning to frighten him. He watched her reflection in the mirror. He would have sworn her eyes were actually glowing — like car headlights — and not merely reflecting the candlelight. It was the weirdest damned trick of the light he’d ever seen, and unnerving as hell. He forced himself to look away from the mirror and concentrate on dressing.
A nervous sixth sense made him look up.
The mirror wasn’t showing Cindy anymore. She had been replaced by a glimmer of brilliant blue. The glimmer spread to cover the entire mirror, and he heard Cindy start to laugh.
“We’ll have all the time in the world now, babe,” she said.
He turned to look at her, to ask her what she meant by that.
She was stalking out the lobby door.
Good, he thought. He hoped she’d stay gone.
Movement in the mirror caught his attention. The blue glow was still there, but other things were visible as well. The things he could see didn’t make any sense — they were not reflections of the lounge. He was looking through the mirror at what seemed to be the mirror in his bedroom back home — lit by blue light. The view shifted crazily, and he was staring out the window into darkness and snow that lashed against the glass. Another dizzy shift, and he could see the front of a bathrobe — his bathrobe — as if he were wearing it and looking down at it. Bare feet — Minerva’s bare
feet. The floor and the feet dropped away, and he could see the mirror again, and something blue coming out of it. A ghost, he thought. The shifting, glowing wraith blew toward him— Not me, he suddenly realized. Minerva! It’s coming after Minerva!
She was backing up — he could tell by the way the room shifted, by the way she was looking around for some path of escape. And the blue thing was moving forward inexorably. It reached out and touched her, and he shouted, “NO!”
The ghost whipped away from her and seemed to shrivel. It pulled in on itself, wrapped its tatters of light into a tiny ball — and then it vanished. Minerva’s eyes showed him the darkened mirror, the pitch-darkness of the room.
She’s safe. His heart pounded in his throat. He could hear his blood rushing in his ears.
This is craziness, he thought, staring at the mirror in the lounge. I can’t be seeing Minerva attacked by ghosts at home. He looked away from the mirror, then looked back. All the things he couldn’t possibly be seeing were still right there.
Not good, he thought.
Then his view jerked crazily again as Minerva spun toward the door and started running. She raced out of their dark bedroom and into the puddled light of the hallway. The dim glow of the emergency night-lights plugged into the low wall sockets bounced around the bottom of the lounge mirror. The scene in the mirror rolled and swung — it reminded him of watching pictures taken by a handheld camera in a home movie — hard on the stomach of the observer, and not very illuminating. He wished he could hear.
Minerva slowed, and he got a quick glimpse of her hand shoving Carol’s door wide open. His daughter’s room, also lit by the soft yellow glow of an emergency night-light, was empty. Carol’s blanket was thrown to one side of her bed, and her teddy bear was halfway across the room.
