Seeking Samiel

by Catherine Jordan

  10

  I chased Caroline in the car, following her with the headlights whilst she ran down the path, through the trees and past the gate. She dropped onto the warm pavement hugging her knees to her face in the middle of Victoria Road. I pulled over against the curb and got out.

  "Caroline. What happened?" No answer. "Get up and get in the car. C'mon."

  I pulled on her arm. She slapped at my face and kicked with her one-heeled foot. "You can't sit here in the middle of the road. Cars come flying around this bend all the time. Get up."

  The beam of approaching headlights followed my warning. "They can't see us. Get up." My eyes swung from Caroline to the oncoming car. I slid an arm under her knees, and attempted to lift. She must have swallowed a cow. Either that or she had glued her bum to Victoria Road. "That car will hit me, too. Is that what you want? Move!"

  With a slow groan she rolled onto all fours, staring into the approaching headlights. "Move!" I screamed. "Go!"

  She crawled like a wounded tiger, leaving remnants of her dress on the road. Her other shoe scraped off and she left it behind. The car whizzed by, horn blaring, wheels shooting gravel and sand like shrapnel into my face, neck and arms. "Keep going. Move, before another comes."

  Caroline reached the guardrail and rolled onto her back. I stood beside her, relieved for the moment.

  She threw a ragged hand over her stomach. The dress clung to her form, wet with sea spray and humidity. "I'm sick," she said.

  In order to get the car, we would have to walk back across the narrow road that curved sharply to the right. "Can you stand?" I asked.

  "No."

  "I have to get the car," I said. "I can't leave you here. No one can see you. You're too close to the street." I couldn't believe I was actually considering leaving her there. "No," she said.

  She left me no other choice. I massaged my brow wondering if her recent inertia would hold, hoping. "All right. I'll be back. Don't move."

  Caroline climbed into the car and leaned her head against the door's soft leather.

  I drove with the windows down, airing out Caroline's stink.

  Her stink.

  There it was again, that voice I heard inside my head, like it was not my own.

  This was your night, your moment. She's ruining it, on purpose.

  "Stop it," I said out loud, pushing the thoughts away, concentrating on the road ahead.

  Streetlights illuminated Victoria Road, comforting the weary traveler along the steep mountainside. The sea below crashed upon the sand, providing the missing music from the party. The waves were maestro's wand in the ocean's symphony, peaceful waves I hoped to ride all the way home.

  I considered asking her about the scarf. My eyes darted from the road to Caroline's clutched hands, her lap. If she had dropped it I didn't see it fall.

  Mother hanging.

  I shivered and squeezed the memory from my mind as I clenched my jaw.

  Headlights caught the yellow glow of an animal's eye in the middle of the road.

  "What's that?" she asked, her head snapping to life as I slowed the car to a crawl.

  The large animal stood at an angle, staring into the car. Teeth protruded from black gums, chest pulsating with each pant. Its short grey coat glistened in the headlights. "That's a lion dog," I said. "Maybe if we move forwards a little it'll get out of the way."

  The car crept, closing in on the animal's fluorescent eyes.

  "Doesn't look too friendly," Caroline noted.

  "No, he does not," I agreed.

  A sharp blast from the horn and the dog still wouldn't budge. It replied with a fierce growl.

  "I think you made it angry," she said.

  The bumper tapped the dog's neck. After giving the car more gas, neither the car nor the dog moved. "This is ridiculous," I said, quickly losing patience. "We're in a car. This animal will move or we'll move it." Tires screamed on the macadam, rubber burnt in the air. The animal was a brick wall and it growled deeper, saliva stringing from its mouth.

  "Are you in park?" she asked, her voice bridging on hysteria.

  I checked the gears. "No," and stomped the brake, throwing the car into reverse. The dog, rooted to his spot, began to howl. "Whose dog is this?" I asked, checking the sides of the street for an approaching owner. But there was no one. "Call the police," I said.

  As Caroline searched the cubby for the cell phone, the beast leapt into the air, landing on the passenger side bonnet. Caroline screamed, dropping the cell. The dog crouched over the bonnet, its heavy-lidded eyes staring through the windshield at her. Caroline kept screaming.

  I ripped the gears into drive; the dog slid with a yelp. I didn't hear it hit the ground or watch where it went. Didn't really care. I just wanted it gone. I had to escape all the noise--the screaming, the gears--that pounded against my eardrums.

  Speeding down the road with the pedal floored, I repeatedly checked the rearview mirror. "It's gone, Caroline, it's gone." My head hurt. "Please stop screaming." I put a hand on her thigh and said, "Pick up the cell and call the police."

  My pounding head wouldn't calm and I never bothered giving Caroline as much as a glimpse until we were within a few kilometers of the driveway. We had arrived at her house safely, although shaken, and pulled into the well-lit garage. I parked next to Caroline's yellow Jeep Wrangler and cut the engine. What a beast. What a night. Couldn't wait for it to end. My forehead fell on the steering wheel in relief and I released a sigh, exhaustion whooshing out with each breath.

  I walked around the car to help Caroline, and stopped. The Town Car's bonnet had four perfect paw indentations in the bonnet, as if the animal had stood in wet cement. "Gads," I said, running my fingers inside the sunken paw prints. "What kind of animal could have caused such damage?"

  Caroline whimpered. I tried to open the door, but it was locked. "It's okay," I said. "You can get out." I didn't really believe that it was okay, but I felt compelled to say it, to her anyway. "Open the door." But she wouldn't. My shaking hand fumbled with the key, then dropped it on the concrete. When I opened the door, she fell into me and I turned away from the smell that clung to her.

  The police car skidded into the driveway, siren blaring, casting a blue and white beacon over the house. Gads, the police. I almost forgot. I straightened Caroline in her seat, gently closed the door, and jogged out of the garage to greet the policeman.

  The young, long-legged officer emerged from his car. "What is the problem?" he asked, relaxing lazily against the car's grill. He wiped a handkerchief over his dark-skinned face and looked towards the garage.

  I immediately regretted the call. Father warned me, just after he had moved to South Africa, never to trust any official within the country. "We saw a dog," I quickly said. "Some big, dumb dog. Scared my girlfriend." The heat had withered my disposition and I wanted to go inside and close the door on the entire evening.

  The officer clucked. "Maybe you should have called an animal catcher?"

  "Did you see a dog on your way here?" I asked, hoping for some validation.

  The officer shook his head. He looked down at his shoulder and adjusted the large gold S.A.P.S. pin buttoned above his sleeve. "You like wasting my time?" the officer asked.

  "Here, this is for your trouble." I handed him a wad of Rand, everything I had in my wallet. The officer snatched the money, slipping it in his shirt pocket. He tipped his boxed navy hat and drove away as loudly as he had arrived.

  11

  I could've spent the rest of the evening trying to make sense out of what had happened, but I was too tired. I'd seen plenty of nonsensical things in my lifetime to know there wasn't any point. I'd lost enough sleep--many nights spent working until after three in the morning trying to figure out exactly how much damage Father had made. And why. I'd yet to come up with a plausible answer. The rest of the night would not be sacrificed going over things I couldn't explain or understand.

  And the scarf--Caroline wouldn't tell me where she had gotten it o
r if she still had it. I looked around the room after I tucked her in bed, but didn't find it. I had never told Caroline about my mother's suicide, and I had no intention of ever telling her what I had witnessed as a child.

  Lindsey, her mother, wasn't home. Tatwaba, the housekeeper, had the evening off and I had no idea if Edward would be soothing the daughter whose party was disrupted, or if he'd be on his way to soothe the daughter who shouldn't have been there. I'd stay the night.

  The hot shower hadn't relaxed me, and after calling into my home messages to retrieve yet a third call from someone claiming to be with the government, my hands began shaking again. The government wanted to know to where Father had escaped. "I already told you that I don't know," I said to the receiver as I pushed the pound sign, deleting the message.

  I massaged the mild ache growing in my molars. The syndrome--my doctor called it TMJ--was brought on by stress. I wanted so much to gain back what I was losing--money. Money was swooshing from my accounts like air from a popped balloon. Money, my father had said, bought anything and those who thought otherwise either didn't have enough or didn't know how to spend it. Father had told me more than once that love was for fools. Money, he said, could buy any comfort.

  I lay on the couch, my feet stretched against the white arm. White walls, white furniture, white carpet. White, she had read in one of her hocus-pocus books, held all colours of the rainbow, and attracted good fortune. Caroline lived off her parent's allowance, but as of last week, my financials had begun to snowball when another client served the firm with lawsuit papers. I expected more. "Maybe I should redecorate with white," I said aloud. Would have to start selling my own furniture off, too, if the house in London didn't sell soon--it was the only property left to go, as the others had sold quickly.

  The ceiling thumped overhead. I should check on her, but she had given me such a hard time when I put her to bed that she had worn me out. I had been so tired lately--I never knew how exhausting worry could be.

  But, wait. She was sick. "What are you thinking?" I asked myself, swinging my legs off the couch. When I reached the bedroom door, her moans and the creaking bedsprings told me that although she was in bed, she hadn't settled in. Of course she was restless, as was I, and probably didn't want to be disturbed. I tiptoed back down the stairs to the couch.

  The open living room windows let in the moonlight and a warm cross-air. Sleep took me in a breeze--welcoming and quiet.

  I am in Egypt. I am the Hysok army, Egypt's enemy. We have spread out over the desert and down the dunes, covering the sand like beetles. Daylight has descended behind the pyramids, beyond the Valley of the Dead, and below the walled city we are about to attack.

  Massive stone gates roll open, scraping through the dirt. They part only a crack, enough to allow the front line to see a woman draped in white--white skin and white hair. Helmets guard our faces, but a sea of eyes stare out from metal heads as she approaches. Armed soldiers await the battle cry with locked knees and gloved fists clenching sharpened scimitars at the hip, itching to surge forwards.

  She saunters outside the gate and the men on the front line are face to face with this woman, her green eyes holding us in place.

  Who is this woman, we wonder. A white flag of surrender? Or a sacrifice to appease the gods? She reaches out in a wide embrace, her white sleeves forming an extension of herself, like a ray. She's an angel, we think, sent as guidance. A high pitch whistles in our ears and we feel a warm trickle run down our necks. The front-lines' last vision is of the woman opening her mouth, sensually, leaning in for a kiss. Then a black cavern opens behind her long, carnivorous teeth.

  I hear the hardened breath of my fellow soldiers and feel the fear of more than a few clustered men pressing against me. I wanted to hear the roar of blood thirsty men, clanking of swords, screams of fury, arrows whistling through the moonlit sky. But that does not happen. The entire front line falls as she steps into their midst like a poison cloud. The second line falls, then the third. Men fall in synchronicity, some collapsing first to their knees before plummeting forwards into the laps of dead comrades. Others drop to the ground like sacks of grain.

  She walks onward, planting one foot firmly into the line of the living and pulling the other out of the dead. No man draws his sword or pulls an arrow, not one cries out to challenge, so unknown is her menace.

  My eyes narrow, the weathered skin between them wrinkling. The line of men in front of me topples over, clinking into each other like bottles. In the left flanks, at the 152nd line, I am the last man, one of over three hundred thousand. A high pitch pierces my ears, my wrinkle smoothes and my knees unlock. My elbows relax, hand releasing the scimitar. Down I go; a dead soldier.

  "Jeffrey!" Far away, Caroline screamed my name again.

  12--JEFFREY

  "Jeffrey!"

  The ceiling muffled Caroline's wail. Though half asleep, my weird dream of the woman in white was vivid. On unsteady legs, I scrambled off the floor where I'd fallen, panting, heart racing. Her screams echoed against the walls of my skull as I stumbled up the stairs.

  A cold blast greeted me at the door. The room smelled acidic and damp. She was sitting up in bed, and her final scream ended.

  I flipped the light switch up and down, but the globe must have burnt out. "Can you get me a glass of water?" she asked.

  Sheets and pillows lay on the floor with stuff strewn about. The broken mirror over the vanity had scattered glass shards across her dresser, in the open drawers and over the floor. Her closet door hung open on its top hinge, clothing thrown about. Her vanity was swept bare; bottles of cologne were broken open, powder spilt in white clouds, liquid makeup splattered against the wall and carpet. And that smell.

  "Gads, when did all this happen?"

  My cautious eyes searched for someone, an intruder. Not possible, I thought. No one could've broken through the front door without making enough noise to wake me, and the bedroom window was too far from the ground.

  I wrapped my arms around my chest and marched over to the bathroom, stopping in front of the air conditioner. My hand hovered above the grid. Nothing. I rapped it with my fist, convinced it was the source of the cold air.

  I went to hand Caroline her water and almost dropped it. "Caroline?" I had gazed into that face of hers many times, every day since we had been together, and it had not lost any of its beauty, ever, until that moment. In the dim glare from the hall light, an unrecognizable face had been painted over her's. The whites of her eyes bulged. Her face and jaw-line tightened, stretching her neck, reminding me of Eva's tightened face when she levitated in the air. I leaned in and reached for the bedside lamp, but it wasn't there, and when I turned back to Caroline, her pretty face had returned.

  She lay in the bed in her underwear and a tank top that had gathered above her waist, exposing her belly. "I saw something," Caroline said, attempting to explain the room. She twisted the sheet underneath her crossed legs. "Something. I threw the lamp." Her coughing kept interrupting her. "No. It. It hit the mirror."

  The lamp remained on its side, globe smashed to dust, shade mangled.

  Untangling the thin sheets from around her feet I pulled them up to cover her. "You're cold," I said, grasping the corner of the sheet, holding it over her waist. A thin stream of white fluid pulsed from her navel, running down the side of her rising stomach. Hesitating at first, I swept a drop on my finger. The fluid dried into a powdery substance. Rubbing my white tipped fingers together I once again noted Caroline's talcum powder spread in puffs and sprinkles all over the room. She must've splattered it all over herself, and mixed it with the liquid from broken bottles spilt on the floor.

  I tucked the blanket under her chin, and Caroline began to describe her dream. A serpent stretching its neck to devour her, she said, haunted her sleep. "So many. There were so many."

  "You were sleepwalking again," I said. She had had a nightmare--a violent nightmare and must have been walking and reacting in her sleep.

 
Sleepwalking was nothing new for her, but the trail of destruction left in that room was. Once in a while--the occasions had been irregular--Caroline would sit up in bed mumbling incoherently to herself. Sometimes she stood and wandered the bedroom, aimlessly until guided back. "I have sensitivities," she explained after I'd witnessed her first nighttime travel.

  I loved Caroline for her sensitivities. She yearned for security--emotional and financial.

  Money buys anything.

  I would do anything to give both to her and I tried to be as generous as possible; it was something I wished my father could've been. I pushed back the memory of my mother hanging from her bedroom doorframe by a Hermes scarf, her anniversary present delivered that morning by my father's mistress, the firm's paralegal. I watched my mother shut the front door on the tall blond, unwrap the package, and then cry as she put the paisley silk to her nose, inhaling the strong perfume left behind from its previous owner.

  After she died, Father gave me little comfort. Tears and doubts went without solace. I couldn't bring myself to hate the man, but I didn't love him and hoped never to become anything like him.

  Love is for fools.

  "Try not to think about your nightmare," I said, sitting on the edge of the bed next to Caroline. "You'll forget the whole thing in the morning. That's what I do when I have a bad dream." I grabbed a blanket off the floor and wrapped it around my shoulders. "Think about good things."

  From where I sat I noticed a small hole about the size of my forefinger in the wall, right above the floor behind the open bedroom door. A dusting of drywall piled on the carpet.

  Caroline snuggled against me. "Did you have a bad dream, too?" she asked.

  "No," I said, shivering, pulling the blanket tighter, wondering what she had thrown that would've made such a ripped, irregular, convex hole, almost as if something had tunneled out.