Old Flames, Burned Hands

by McGregor, Tim

  She closed her eyes only to shoot them open again. A noise, from downstairs. She held her breath but it was already gone.

  “Shane?”

  No answer, no sound beyond the soft slur of bathwater. Settling back into the tub, another sound came but this time from outside. A scraping noise like tree branches blowing against the clapboard but there was no wind. The bathroom window was open, the night air absolutely still.

  Bolting up again, she had the sudden creeping sensation of being watched. The bathroom was on the second floor, the window free of any neighbouring house. Still, her imagination sprinted along goosed by fear. She was alone in the house and naked in the tub, a scenario straight out of every slasher movie she’d ever seen. Michael Myers hiding in the closet. Jason Voorhees waiting under the stairs, face hidden behind the vacant expression of a goalie’s mask.

  Water puddled on the floor as she got out and towelled off. The gooseflesh sensation of being watched jacked up five notches, every dark window a lecherous eye as she dropped the towel and snatched her robe from the back of the bathroom door. Every time she froze and held her breath to listen, there was no odd sound or strange noise. It’s just the house, she scolded. The cat traipsing over the fence in the yard.

  Or the person who had broken into the garage was back.

  The old steps creaked impossibly loud under her feet, her eyes darting about as she crossed into the kitchen. Touching the switchplate near the backdoor, the outside bulb popped on and cast a glow over the backyard.

  The door to the garage stood open.

  Call the police. Call Shane. Run to the neighbour’s house. Three simple options that she ignored. The icy tang of fear in her belly soured into anger at the sight of the breached garage. Who does this bastard think he is? To just break into their home and leave his unwanted crap behind? Did he think he was being cute? Enigmatic? An image of Kevin McQuibbin flashed up in mind’s eye, writing his stupid poetry and those simpering eyes he used to moon at her with. Her knuckles turned white at the thought of bashing his stupid face in with a brick.

  The baseball bat stood in a tall bucket of umbrellas near the door. Her husband’s macho idea of home security. She plucked it from the bucket, threw open the door and marched onto the lawn in her bare feet. She hoped it was Kevin because the urge to hurt somebody juiced her veins like dope.

  She stopped before the garage entrance. “Who’s in there!”

  No answer. The door remained ajar. She put the tip of the bat to the door and pushed it open. Thrusting a hand inside, she bashed at the interior wall until she found the switch. Light winked on and lit up the empty garage. There was nowhere to hide but she checked behind the couch just to be safe. Nothing.

  Something new snagged her peripheral eye. Small and dark, next to the guitar. Approaching it cautiously, she couldn’t decipher what it was. An odd shaped hunk of plastic, spooled with dark ribbon. She blinked twice before realizing that it was a cassette, partially melted into a blob with the tape spilling loose. The label was dark with soot and she wiped a thumb over the thin strip.

  No words. Just three little hearts scrawled in blue ink.

  She dropped it like it was poison, the warped plastic clacking against the floor.

  A sick joke. Who would do this to her? With her nerves peeled raw and too many contradictory thoughts shouting in her brain, she tried to parse what it meant. She had been stalked, plain and simple. Whoever did this had followed her out to the beach that night, watched her burn her trove and then retrieved the cassette from the fire before it melted completely. And then left it here for her to find.

  Why would someone be so cruel? How did they know? There were only two people who knew what was on that old tape, and one of them was dead. Shane didn’t even know.

  With adrenaline doping her blood, fear tipped all the way over into a deep rage boiling her guts. This asshole, this creep, had not only broken into her home but plucked out this painful shard from her past and threw it in her face. The clammy sensation of being violated and exposed became gasoline on her kindling rage and she gripped the baseball bat with both hands and stomped out the door.

  Standing in the grass, she scanned the shadows of the yard for the bastard who had done this. She screamed at him to come out. She knew the perpetrator was male. Only a man would do something like this.

  “What do you want from me?” she barked. The bat held high, her knuckles white over the grip. “Step out, you coward! Let me see your face!”

  The crickets in the grass fell silent but those in the neighbour’s yard chirped on. The warm night ignoring her rage and shrill tone.

  “You got something to say, then come out and say it! Now!”

  The crickets at her feet dismissed her shrieks and resumed their chirping. Tilda lowered the bat and her fury spilled out with nowhere to go. Her arms were trembling and, with the adrenaline burning off, a sharp ache stung her wrist. The old injury, flashing hot in her duress.

  Don’t cry, she scolded. Already the tremors spread and her hands were shaking badly.

  Do. Not. Cry.

  A noise behind her, sharp against the lulling crickets.

  She spun, peering into the darkness near the willow tree, where the light of the patio bulb failed to penetrate. Nothing there, just shadows and her imagination. Then another sound, something scraping against the brambles.

  Two pinpricks of light hovered in the inky darkness. Like fireflies moving in tandem, the small lights tilted and swayed. The bat fell from her hands when she saw that these sparks were eyes, twinkling at her from the dark.

  The fireflies came forward and a dark silhouette bled from the shadows under the willow. He stepped into the faint reach of the patio light, his oddly refracting eyes zeroed in on hers and Tilda felt her heart seize up in her chest. His face made no sense. It was all wrong, as if a Polaroid had come to life and stepped whole and complete before her.

  Gil.

  And somewhere in the red meat of her heart, she knew it would be him. But he was dead, had been for almost twenty years and in this moment, she hated him for that. She didn’t like this dream, this nightmare she was having. She must have fallen asleep in the tub after all. This dream was cruel and it was sick and she wanted to wake up. Now.

  She also wanted to know why the earth was suddenly rising up fast to smack the grass into her face.

  “TILDA? WAKE UP.”

  The voice was far away, like an echo calling to her from the end of a storm culvert. A hand shaking her. Fingers tapped her cheek. She opened her eyes and blinked against the nova of a naked bulb on the ceiling. No clue where she was or what was happening. Or why someone was shaking her. Couldn’t they see she was sleeping?

  “Honey, look at me. Right here.”

  Shane’s face took shape, hazy and out of focus. She felt his hands grip her biceps, pulling her up into a sitting position. His face swam away as her eyeballs rolled back but the snapping of his fingers brought them round.

  “Shane..?”

  “Are you hurt?” He looked her over, searching for some injury. “Jesus, you really scared me. What happened?”

  “I don’t know.” His face was too close, her depth perception all wrong. Looking beyond him, all she saw were blank walls. “Where…”

  Answering her own question, Tilda took in the interior of the studio. No, not studio anymore. Just the garage now, stripped bare of everything except the ratty old chesterfield she lay on. How did she get here? Flashbulb images popped through her memory. The garage door open. The melted cassette on the bench. A figure bleeding out of the shadows.

  “Try to focus, honey.” He knelt before her, searching her eyes like he’d misplaced something within them. “Do you remember what happened? Did you fall or hit your head on something?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Did you fall asleep out here?”

  “No. I was in the yard… in the grass, I think.”

  “Are you sure?” He ran his fingers through
her hair, searching her scalp for a cut or a bump. “I found you in here, lying on the couch. I thought you were asleep but then I couldn’t wake you. Your eyes had rolled over white. Scared the hell out of me.”

  She tried to piece it together but everything was jumbled and out of place. The tape in her hand, the fireflies in the yard. Then other images flashed up, misplaced snapshots of being upside down in the car, blood on her hands and the smell of the lake. A hospital bed. Her wrist throbbing under a cast. A noise from the yard.

  “Someone was here,” she mumbled. “They broke in again. There was a cassette on the bench. I heard something in the yard. Then someone—”

  A snapshot of the figure sklathing into the ambient light.

  Him

  “Someone was here?” Shane’s mouth dipped into a scowl. “Who was it? Think.”

  “I don’t know. It’s all messed up.” She pulled the bathrobe tight and rubbed her eyes. “I don’t know what it was.”

  “Okay, just take it easy.” His hand came up and touched her temple, crimping her hair between his fingers. He whistled. “What did you do to your hair? Did you bleach it?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “This.” He lifted a lock of her hair for her to see. “Here at your temple. Your hair’s gone completely white.”

  BACK inside the house, she stood before the cool glare of the bathroom mirror. Her face was pale and drained but it was nothing compared to the shock of white in her hair. Straying from her left temple, the hair ran hot white from root to frayed ends like a crooked blaze of snow against the dark chestnut. A Bride of Frankenstein lightning bolt stamped into her follicles.

  Stupidly, her next thought was wondering if the white could be dyed over. She had prided herself on passing forty with so little grey but now this, this zap of white. As if her age had held its breath all this time only to blow it all out in one shocking gush.

  “Are you sure you don’t remember anymore?” Shane sat on the edge of the tub, watching her transfixed by her own reflection. “Walk me through it.”

  “I came home after dropping Molly at Zoe’s. Ate leftovers in front of the TV and had a bath.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s all I remember. I was so tired when I climbed into the tub.” It was a reach but she grasped at it anyway. “Maybe I fell asleep. Sleep-walked out to the garage.”

  “You don’t sleepwalk.” He rose and brushed his fingers through the streak of white. “It’s like you had a huge shock. Maybe you should see a doctor.”

  “I’m okay. Really. I just need some sleep.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She reassured him that she was fine, which was a lie, and crawled into bed wondering if she was losing her mind.

  SLEEP was skittish and broken. She jerked awake before sunup, startled out of a bad dream and unable to find her way back to slumber. Tiptoeing downstairs, she made coffee and thumbed through the Saturday paper without digesting a word of it. Last night’s events seemed ridiculous, almost comical, in the bright glow of a sunny morning. Maybe she had dreamt the whole thing. And yet that image of Gil stepping out of the shadows was so clear and sharp it made her dizzy even recalling it.

  Gil. Why had she dreamt of him after all this time?

  Then she remembered the tape, the melted cassette left on the bench. She padded out to the backyard with the keys and unlocked the garage. The guitar lay where she had left it but there was nothing else on the bench. She searched the floor and looked under the couch but no half-burned cassette turned up.

  With no tangible evidence, the logical argument skewed to the fact that it had all been a dream or some kind of hallucination. Then why was her gut telling her otherwise?

  “IT’S stress,” Sarah declared. “Plain and simple.”

  They were folding towels when Sarah called a time-out and told Tilda to spill. She’d been distracted and clumsy all morning and did not want to discuss the bizarre shock of white in her hair. Sarah couldn’t take anymore. Out with it, she’d said so Tilda went over the events of Friday night. Sarah had shrugged, as if this was some common problem like a case of the sniffles. “It’s post traumatic stress. It comes out in weird ways.”

  “Don’t you need a traumatic event first?” Tilda countered.

  “You made a huge change in your life. Same thing.” Sarah watched Tilda’s lips twist with scepticism. “You’ve been pursuing music since you were a kid. And, with the exception of becoming a mom, it’s been the biggest thing in your life. Your sole reason to get up in the morning. Now it’s gone. It’s no different, really, than going to war or suffering a death in the family. You’re mourning.”

  “Maybe.” Tilda shrugged but remained unconvinced. “But what does that have to do with Gil? Why would I see, or imagine I saw, him?”

  “Easy. This grief period you’re going through now got all mixed up with your grief for him. An actual death in the family.” Sarah puffed her cheeks, blowing out a sigh. “Do you remember how far down the rabbit hole you went when Gil died?”

  Tilda hated remembering that awful time. A whole year lost. It was embarrassing and shameful. She clutched at her hair, waving the white shock at her temple. “Then how do you explain this?”

  “I can’t,” Sarah said, leaning in for a closer look. “But you’ve been pretty lucky, getting to forty-one with so little grey. I think it looks cool.”

  “So this blast of white hair and seeing Gil and the melted tape with his song, all of that I dreamed up? Or hallucinated?”

  “I don’t have an answer for that, honey. What does Shane think about this?”

  “I didn’t tell him.”

  “Why not?”

  “I dunno. It just seemed so crazy.”

  Sarah fixed her with a sharp look. “Does Shane know about Gil?”

  “Yeah,” Tilda blustered, a sudden blush of shame on her cheeks. “The basic facts. I never bored him with the details.”

  “You need to. Do you know why? Because you looked really guilty when you admitted that just now. Like it was a secret you’ve been keeping. Tell him all of it. Flush it out and get shed of it. Do that and I doubt you’ll have anymore dreams about dead boyfriends.”

  Tilda rubbed her eyes. “And if that doesn’t work?”

  “Then we’ll burn some sage and toss around some holy water. Exorcise the ghost and send him on his way.” Sarah patted her shoulder and laughed. Tilda tried to force out a laugh in response but it came out all wrong.

  “THAT’S A really bad highlight job,” Molly said upon seeing her mother’s hair. She climbed into the passenger bucket and pulled the seatbelt around. “Did you pay for that?”

  “It’s not highlights,” Tilda put the stick in gear and pulled away from the curb. “It just went like that overnight.”

  “Yeah, right.” Molly reached for the radio. “I’d change stylists if I was you, cuz you got robbed.”

  Tilda turned into an alley to avoid Bloor Street and cut across to Shaw. Molly settled on one of her stations and ticked the volume up. Tension leftover from their previous spat lingered inside the cab like a bad smell. Molly pushing the issue with the radio again. Tilda let it go, forfeiting this round to the kid. “How was the sleepover?”

  “Lame.”

  “That’s nice.” Tilda shot a glance at her daughter but the girl’s face had already settled into a grimace of disdain. Dance beats thumped from the speakers and Tilda bit her tongue as the saccharine lyrics grated every nerve. “Are we still fighting?”

  “I don’t know. Are you still being a music nazi?”

  “I really wish you wouldn’t use that term.”

  “Great,” Molly huffed. “Now I can’t use certain words. Is there any small detail of my life you don’t want to control? Jesus.”

  Tilda raised a hand, waving a white flag, and they drove on in silence. Turning onto their street, Molly darted a glance at her mother’s hair again. “That’s not a dye job?”

  “Nope.”

/>   “It just went like, shazam, hello grey?”

  Tilda wheeled to the curb, shrugged. “Pretty much.”

  “Wow. “ Molly popped the door latch and flung herself out. “Getting old sucks.”

  Tilda killed the engine and watched the girl drag her knapsack across the flagstones and on into the house. “Pretty much.”

  ALONE in the kitchen, Tilda couldn’t shake the tingle on the back of her neck. She kept looking over her shoulder, expecting to see someone there but the kitchen remained empty. It’s just fatigue, she told herself, but logic did little to dispel the prickly feeling of being watched. She closed the curtains on the picture window and avoided the curtain-less window over the sink.

  For company, she lit up the radio and endured a talk show host canvassing mindless opinions until the news came on. She turned to set the salad bowl on the table and startled at the figure in the doorway. The bowl exploded against the tile and greens shot everywhere.

  Shane startled too. “Whoa. What happened?”

  “Don’t sneak up on me like that.” Tilda’s hands quaked.

  “I wasn’t sneaking up on you.”

  “Well… Jesus.” She looked at the mess at her feet and went to get the broom.

  “Slow down.” He took her arm, held her still. “You’ve been jumpy all day.”

  “I know. I’m just tired.” She shrugged off his hand. “Let me clean this up.”

  He bent and gathered up the broken pieces of the bowl. “Have you given any thought to what I said? About seeing a doctor?”

  “I’m not sick.”

  “Something happened to you last night,” he said. “You don’t remember what it was, or you don’t want to talk about it. And you’ve been weird and skittish all day.”