She chuffed and he grinned.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
He filled the other animals’ dishes and replenished their water. And he carefully locked the doors to their cages.
The shepherd backed up when he approached her cage and stood stiffly away from him as he opened the cage door and stocked her dishes, as well. He left the door standing wide open and held out his hand to her.
She whined a little, but didn’t come to him. Earlier, still thinking someone might be in the clinic, he’d just grabbed the animals by the scruffs of their necks and hauled them firmly into their cages. Now, she was registering a protest, knowing he could subdue her easily, but tacitly announcing her decision not to comply with the cage routine.
And he knew that in the inexplicable way of dogs, she’d accepted him, but had bonded with Allison.
He knew how the shepherd felt. He wanted to warn the shepherd how hopeless that bonding might prove.
He returned the remaining food to the cabinet, shut the door a bit more carefully than normal and turned back around to face her. “You keep an eye on things tonight, okay?”
She barked once.
“And you’ll call me if someone tries getting in here?”
She wagged her tail.
As he closed the door to the clinic and locked it carefully, he told himself he was being a total idiot, feeling lift in spirits just because a stray mutt was showing a little gumption.
But as he reached the door to his house, he understood why the dog’s behavior had made him feel better; her display of ingenuity, her pleasure in it and her stubbornness later all spelled a healing.
And where one wounded spirit could be healed, so then might another.
Allison felt Chas pull her up and into his arms. She pressed against the cold air wafting off him, the way a fevered person will turn into a cold compress.
Some dim part of her was aware that if she had to, she could rouse fully, become alert again, but resting so easily in his arms, in his house, enfolded into a perfect day and spent by revealing the past, she allowed the lethargy to eke away her strength. She needed his cosseting, his attention, and she needed to think. To really think clearly for the first time in months.
It had taken coming home after all these years to see the past for what it was, a series of really terrible misunderstandings, of human frailty caught up in tragic fate. And it had taken a perfect day with Chas to let her know that by locking those misunderstandings and hurts away in the same dark box as the tragedies in her life, she’d created hurts and pains that had remained scarred for years and years.
Hadn’t that psychologist she’d interviewed said something of the sort? His face swam into memory, a clean-shaved, rather effete man. She could almost hear his voice. Humming something.
Her heart jolted in fear when the memory shifted and she saw another image of him, dark-haired, no glasses. Effete mouth turned cruel with contempt.
She shook her head. They weren’t the same man. Her mind was playing tricks.
“Allison?” she heard Chas ask as if from a great distance.
She struggled to understand the memories colliding in her mind, unknowingly squirming in Chas’s arms.
“Dorchester,” she said suddenly, feeling a jolt of adrenaline shoot through her. She stiffened in Chas’s arms, almost causing him to drop her.
He caught her more tightly and stumbled a little as her sudden shift sent him sideways. “What?”
“Michael Dorchester.”
“What about him?”
“That’s the name of the psychologist I interviewed for Timeline on a piece we were doing about...about love. No. Yes. Something like that. I almost remember.”
She struggled a little more, wanting to be put down, wanting to think. To remember.
Maybe revealing the past had turned a key in her mind, one that allowed the recent past, the very murky recent past, to surface somewhat.
Chas let her slide to the floor but kept his hands on her arms, steadying her. He didn’t speak at all, as if waiting for her to continue.
She had a quick flash of memory, letting her glimpse an image of Dorchester sitting in Studio B, calm, polished, blond haired, wire-rimmed glasses in place, fiddling with his mike. And she had another image of him, dark-haired, no glasses, standing over her, demanding something of her. Something she didn’t want to give him.
“But he had blond hair,” she said.
“Who?” Chas asked.
She told him about the two contrasting visions. “But it was the same man, I’d swear, no matter how little it makes sense.”
“A disguise?” he suggested simply.
And she knew he was right. About all of it. She didn’t know how she knew, but every single instinct in her demanded she pay attention. “A disguise,” she repeated slowly.
She’d been focusing on the problem all wrong, she realized. She’d been trying to understand what was going on in her head. She’d been groping for some rational explanation, when the easiest one had been right before her all the time. She couldn’t hope to understand the reasons for what had been done to her because they were irrational to begin with.
A stalker with a twist. With a terrible, bizarre twist.
And with that surety came more knowledge, as if a floodgate had been opened in her mind. The trigger had been in telling about the past. About Susie. About her pregnancy and the loss of it.
Because she had told someone about it before. She’d told Michael Dorchester. Under hypnosis.
“Th-that’s why he used the...the hand,” she said suddenly. “He knew about it. He knew how it would affect me. He knew.”
“Because you told him.”
“Because I told him,” she agreed slowly, disbelief creeping over her. Disbelief because she’d never told anyone that macabre and terrifying story before. Until she’d told Chas today.
And yet she must have told someone. This Dorchester. This mousy little blond-haired man with wire-frame glasses. This terrifying raven-haired man with blazing eyes that told the story of his madness.
And who would know how to hypnotize someone easily? A psychologist.
“God. He asked me to dinner. I didn’t even think about it for a second. I just said no. I was lighting a cigarette at the time. He said he could help me quit those evil things. I barely paid him any attention. He gave me his card. He said he could do it using hypnosis. He had a surefire cure.”
“And once he had you under, he just—”
“Raped my mind.” Then, at Chas’s wince, she added, “Well, what else can I call it?”
What else did the man know about her? Obviously he knew about Almost. He knew about Susie. He had to know all her inner fears and longings.
“But why did he do it? Because I didn’t accept his pathetic invitation to dinner? Is he so sick that a single rejection tipped him over an edge?”
She could see the answer to that question in Chas’s eyes, feel in the suddenly fearful grip on her arms. But he said, “We don’t know anything about him, Allison. For all we know, he’s done this sort of thing before.”
“Well, we can find out a few things,” she said firmly.
“How?”
“I’m a reporter, remember? That’s what I do.”
And she felt like one for the first time in months. She jerked the phone up from its cradle and punched the number to the Timeline research desk from memory. She smiled broadly at him. He frowned in puzzlement.
“I remembered the number,” she said. “Hello, Jenny? This is Allison Leary.”
Within minutes, she had the information she wanted, but not at all the results she’d expected. She hung up the phone in a mild state of shock.
“What?” Chas asked. “What did she tell you?”
“Dr. Michael Dorchester died two months ago.”
“What?”
“In a car wreck.”
Chas frowned.
“In the same car wreck that landed reporter Allison L
eary in the hospital,” she said dully.
She thought of that list of questions she’d made earlier in Taylor’s kitchen while the boys groused about their cereal. The questions seemed so small now. The mystery so enormous.
When the phone rang, Allison jumped at least a foot into the air and she felt Chas’s hands clench too tightly on her arms, showing that he was equally on edge.
He answered with a short, quick bark of his name. His face softened nearly immediately. “Hi, Carolyn,” he said. “Sammie Jo’s right—Allison’s here with me.” He chuckled falsely and winked at Allison. “The old-fashioned kind. No presents, but lots of decorations.”
He handed the phone to Allison. “She wants to talk to you,” he said.
Allison didn’t want to talk to anyone. She wanted to continue sorting through the strange memories in her head, placing them in alternate piles: things she knew had happened, and those she was confused about.
“Hello?”
Carolyn swiftly recounted what the boys had told her and what Sammie Jo had called about later. “We’ve had at least ten phone calls, but no one’s seen any strangers hanging around Almost. Charlie Hampton’s still a little spooked about what happened here a few months ago, when the triplets found—and lost—that dead drug dealer outside his barn, and he keeps a weather eye out for anyone new. He’ll alert his field hands tomorrow to keep their eyes peeled, too.”
“I really appreciate all this,” Allison said, and was surprised to find tears filming her eyes.
“You’re family,” Carolyn said. When Allison didn’t say anything, she added, “I learned when I came here that in Almost, family is synonymous with being protected. I suppose you’ve been gone long enough that you’d forgotten that?”
Standing in Chas’s warm living room, talking to a sister-in-law she’d never met before the wedding, feeling the nearly palpable caring in this woman’s voice, Allison realized she’d never known that about Almost. She’d never understood it as she was beginning to do.
“We won’t let anything happen to you,” Carolyn said confidently. Calmly. Protectively. “Oh, and I’m to tell you that the boys will be bringing their tapes tomorrow for your expert advice on editing.”
Allison managed to choke out a promise to peruse the tapes, and, luckily for her peace of mind, Carolyn rang off after saying she would drop around in the morning, if the weather cleared, adding that the boys were eager to feed—and play, she said laughingly—with the animals in the clinic.
She numbly handed the phone to Chas.
“She’s a great gal,” Chas said as he deposited the receiver into the cradle.
She smiled, albeit a bit tremulously. “I never knew,” she said.
“You never knew what?” he asked.
“That people could just love. She’s never met me. The only thing I ever did for her was to send something for their wedding, and silver cups or spoons for the girls when they were born. Nothing more. Not even a sympathy card when Craig was killed.”
Chas didn’t say anything.
“And here she is calling me family. And letting me know that I’m important to her.”
Chas still didn’t say anything, but his face held such exquisite pain that she had to look away,
“Oh, Chas...I feel like I’m eighteen again and don’t understand anything. I’m not sure I even know how to accept such things as Carolyn is offering.”
“Sure, you do, Allison,” he said finally. “All you have to do is close your eyes and hold out your arms.”
She did as he suggested. The dark was soft and loving.
And his kiss tender and firm.
And his body firmer still.
The man calling himself Quentin packed nis “toys” into the small duffel bag he’d washed the night before to partially rid it of the copper-scented bloodstains that had marred its nylon interior.
The day had dawned bright and shimmery. Outside his dingy trailer, the world was a gleaming, glittering white, with thick hoarfrost clinging to every branch and fence post. The ground his team of invisible farmworkers had tilled so carefully lay beneath a blanket of sparkling white diamonds.
He smiled to himself. For everyone else, it was a day of rest. Sunday. And everyone in Almost attended one of the Almost churches, Baptist mainly.
Allison had told him that. Dreamily. Softly. Letting him have every morsel of information. Eyes closed, beautiful face in repose, she’d tried resisting his relentless push for knowledge at first, a perfect example of a strong-minded woman. But slowly, inevitably she’d given in to his demands for more. And more. Until she’d told him everything in her mind, heart and soul.
And then, amazingly, she’d just erased him from her memory. Gone.
She was supposed to love him. That was her destiny. His. She would tell him everything, then love him for the telling, for the accepting of this knowledge.
Instead, she’d woken up the last morning without remembering him at all. Gone. All gone. The days of tending to her needs, the times of drying her tears, brushing her soft blond hair, touching her sweet, soft skin...she’d erased it all. Forgotten him as completely as if he’d never existed.
Today, however, she would be made to remember. While all the other pious little hicks hid in the safety of their churches, he would force her to remember him. And he’d force her to be sorry she’d ever forgotten him.
She’d remember him, all right. It would be the very last thing she did remember.
Tock... tock...tock...tick-tock!
Allison sat up in bed without consciously doing so.
The pounding continued.
Disoriented, turning to the window, expecting to see a disembodied hand, she heard a muffled but frantic voice calling, “Doc! Doc! It’s Billy!” It came from the direction of Chas’s front door.
Even as she reached out to touch Chas’s sleeping form, he rolled over and up, his eyes wide open, his entire attention focused on the world outside his dreams.
He was out of bed and running down the short hallway to the living room before the pounding on the door resumed. She imagined she could feel the icy blast of cold air when she heard him wrench the door open.
She’d recognized one of the triplet’s nearly hysterical voice as the instigator of the summons. As Chas pulled the door open, she whipped her legs from the bed, grabbed up some garment from the floor and threw it over her head, tucking her arms into the sleeves. She raced down the hall in time to see a coatless Chas shoving his bare feet into his cowboy boots and half hopping out the front door while zipping up his pants. He’d dragged a sweater over his head and thrust his arms in the sleeves as he galloped across the stretch of ground between the house and the clinic.
She realized she was standing stock-still, watching his ungainly run through the wide-open door.
She flew back down to the bedroom to frantically search for her pants and, finding them flung atop Chas’s dresser, yanked them up while desperately searching for the left shoe. That proved to be tucked under the corner of the bed, and she hobbled down the hall, dragging the shoe onto her foot before grabbing her coat and darting out the front door, slamming it behind her.
She skidded on the icy porch, nearly falling, and slammed into the front support, which saved her from spilling face-first onto the frozen ground.
She could hear the sharp, agonized screams of a horse and the furious barking of a dog. Overriding these panicked sounds, she could all too easily hear the frantic cries of all three of her nephews as a dissonant and frightening harmony to Chas’s deeper, equally frenzied yelling.
She leaped over the steps and slipped on the icy ground. She fell to one hand, wrenching it backward painfully as she heard Chas issue an agonized “No!”
She scrambled on all fours to propel herself forward. Her fingernails found purchase in the ice, and she hurled herself toward the clinic, desperate to be there, an urgency spurring her numb limbs.
She burst through the front door of the clinic, propelled by sheer w
ill and slick surfaces to discover the primary examining room of the clinic in contrasting order and chaos. The animals in the cages, cats and dogs alike, were sounding their alarm and fear. One cage stood open, the cage that had held the shepherd cross. The rest of the clinic seemed perfectly normal.
For some reason, this alarmed her far more than seeing it in total disarray might have done, for she had expected that. Seeing everything in order rang a severely discordant bell in her psyche.
She took all this in during a single breath as she grabbed at the doorway to stop herself skidding into the room, then used the opened door to propel herself to the other side, racing toward the sounds of greater trouble.
She shot through the doorway leading to the stable with no thought whatsoever, only the awareness that one of her “family” was in danger.
The door flew back with a resounding echo that made at least two heads whip in her direction, shoulders ducking as though from a blow. Desperate fear shone from eyes that could have been hers.
“Aunt Allison!” said one of them and raced to throw his arms around her, gripping fiercely. Josh. Sobs racked his thin frame.
“Do something!” Jason cried.
Like a series of still photographs, the situation in the barn revealed itself. A jet black horse with a white blaze down its forehead, screaming in fear and defiance, was rearing up and pawing the air. A young boy with dark hair lay too still upon the hay-strewed floor. And trying to reach his son, Chas was pinned against the back entrance to the barn, a streak of blood trickling down his pallid face, apparently already struck once by the razor-sharp hooves. She saw him frantically jiggle the handle on the barn doors, but they didn’t budge.
Instinctively Allison sought the third of her nephews and found him huddled in a fetal position against a closed and presumably empty stall. The shepherd cross was pressed against him, whining, never taking her eyes from the raging horse.
Allison whirled, shoving Josh away from her and running from the room.
“Aunt Allison!” came Jason’s wail of protest. The depth of his betrayal followed her out the door, tearing at her heart, slowing her for an agonizing second, then dogging her heels as she tore through the front rooms of the clinic and out the door, but she had no time to explain her actions.
Almost Remembered Page 17
