Dark Avenging Angel

by Catherine Cavendish

  The scene changed again and now I had joined him on the porch. This time he handed me a small bowl of tiny Alpine strawberries. I picked one up and bit into it. The juice squirted into my mouth, Sweet, luscious.

  I wanted to kiss Carlo, to feel his arms around me. I wanted…but I remembered John.

  Guilt.

  No, this was only a dream. That didn’t count, did it? I resisted the temptation.

  “Everything tastes perfect here,” I said as I selected another one.

  “Of course. I told you. You can have anything you want. Everything.”

  The words struck fear into my soul. I prayed I’d wake up, but feared I’d be trapped here forever.

  Behind me, a rumble.

  Carlo’s eyes grew wider. The smile faded. He grabbed my hand and we ran. Down the steps, across the grass. Behind us, the rumble became a pounding.

  “Don’t look back!”

  I didn’t need Carlo’s warning. I panted and struggled to catch my breath as we ran harder and faster over the never-ending expanse of grassland, damp and cold under my bare feet.

  Whatever charged after us was gaining ground. I wanted to scream but hadn’t sufficient breath. Still we ran. I clutched his hand. It felt warm. Alive.

  “Close your eyes! Jump!”

  I jumped. Alone.

  I woke up.

  John was bending over me.

  “Thank God you’re awake. I’ve been trying to rouse you for ages. You’ve been crying out in your sleep and kicking. That’s what woke me. You nearly kicked me out of bed.”

  I blinked and tried to focus, the dream still clear in my head. Adrenaline still surged through my veins from the danger I’d been in. But it had been just a dream, hadn’t it?

  I pushed the duvet back and gasped at what I saw.

  “How did this happen? How can my feet be so filthy?”

  “What?”

  My feet were covered in grass stains and streaked with mud.

  John touched them and mud came off on his hands. “You look like you’ve just run across a grassy field.”

  “I did. In my dream.”

  John stared at me. Then he backed away. He put his hands up to each side of his head. “This isn’t possible. I swear you’ve been beside me all night. Even if you’d sleepwalked, we don’t have any grass. You’d have had to go down the road to find a lawn, and even then, you’d have to slide around in it to get your feet in that state.”

  I got up. “I’m going to have a bath. And I’m going to make an appointment to see the doctor. Something’s wrong with me and I’ve got to find out what it is.”

  “I’m coming to the doctor’s with you.”

  I didn’t expect that. “I really appreciate the offer, John, but I’d rather go on my own. Besides, my GP won’t be able to do anything. She’ll have to refer me to a psychiatrist or someone. Maybe I need a brain scan.”

  John put his hands on my shoulders. “Jane, this is affecting me too. Please don’t shut me out.”

  Now I felt torn. I’d always been so private about anything medically related. Except I’d never experienced anything even remotely like this before.

  “Okay. Thanks. But please don’t worry. There has to be a simple explanation for all this.”

  John smiled and let his hands drop. “Let’s hope it doesn’t involve admitting a dead Italian rock star into our lives. Might get a bit crowded.”

  I stood on tiptoe and kissed his nose. I didn’t imagine him flinch.

  We didn’t discuss my angel. But I had a nagging feeling that what she did to him that terrible night must surely still prey on his mind. Something had changed between us. Something I didn’t know how to put right.

  I thought about little else when I wasn’t at work. I started measuring and weighing my food. At least I could control that. I mustn’t get fat again. John fell in love with a relatively slim woman. He didn’t fancy fat women. He’d told me so.

  The doctor signed me off as unfit to work for a minimum of three weeks and immediately referred me for a CT scan of my brain. The horrified look on her face—as I calmly explained the dreams, along with the muddy feet and my increasing belief in out-of-body experiences—said she must have been convinced I had some sort of massive tumor. The way she looked from me to John and back again made me wonder if she thought he too should be treated. Or maybe she just felt sorry for him.

  She quizzed me about my diet. I wished she’d leave it alone.

  “What did you eat for your main meal yesterday?”

  I told her about roast pork and green beans I’d prepared with sage-and-onion stuffing, apple sauce, roast potatoes and lashings of rich, meaty gravy. John had loved it.

  The doctor took notes, frowned and handed me a diet sheet.

  Once I left the surgery, I glanced at it. The sight of all the food I was supposed to eat had me retching. I threw the piece of paper in the nearest wastebin and went home.

  The results of my scan came through remarkably quickly, within a week, and John and I returned to the GP’s office.

  Dr. Staines smoothed down her black pencil skirt, adjusted her rimless glasses and scanned the sheet in front of her. “I’m delighted to tell you that no abnormalities have shown up. The scan is perfectly clear. So that’s something we can rule out.”

  I hadn’t realized, until that moment, just how scared I had been of a bad result. I exhaled and John squeezed my hand.

  “That’s great news,” he said.

  I squeezed back and wiped away a tear.

  “Are you still having the dreams?”

  I nodded. “Last night, I was back in the ballroom again, drinking champagne and dancing.”

  “And when you woke up, were there any signs you’d been sleepwalking?”

  I shook my head. “Not this time.”

  John cleared his throat. “She did cry out at one point. She said something, but she was speaking so fast I couldn’t make it out. She thrashed about a bit and then seemed to fall into a deeper sleep.”

  “That’s probably when Carlo told me to close my eyes and jump. That’s when the dream ends now. Something is behind us, chasing us and closing in. We’re running, and suddenly he tells me to close my eyes and jump. Usually that’s when I wake up.”

  Dr. Staines had been making scribbled notes as I spoke. Now she set her pen aside. “I’m going to refer you to a psychoanalyst I know. Dr. Moreton is very good. He won’t tell you you’re being stupid or imagining things. He’ll get you to talk about your life, your past and so on. Maybe it will help to root out the reason you’re having these dreams and also what happens to you when you go to sleep.”

  “Does this involve hypnosis?” For some reason, I’d always had a phobia about being hypnotized.

  “It may. That will be up to Dr. Moreton to decide. And you, of course. He won’t proceed with any treatment you’re not entirely happy with.”

  So I agreed, and went back to work. For a while, anyway.

  Until she came back.

  Chapter Thirteen

  It didn’t feel like hypnosis. At least not how I thought hypnosis should feel. I could hear traffic in the street outside Dr. Moreton’s consulting rooms. I heard his calm, soft voice telling me to go deeper and deeper. I could even hear the faint ticking of the wall clock.

  Then, everything went dark. As if a massive black cloud had blocked out the daylight. Or an eclipse.

  The consultant hesitated.

  He’d told me to close my eyes but now I opened them. Straight ahead, my angel watched, her lips turned down, gray shadows swirling in her black eyes. In that second, I realized finally.

  She wasn’t my guardian angel. She never had been. I owed her and she would take payment, one way or another.

  “She’s here,” I said.

  “Who’s here, Jane?”

&n
bsp; “My angel.” I had nothing else to call her. “She’s standing in front of me.” I pointed. “Can you see her?”

  He turned to follow my finger. “No, I can’t. Tell me about her. What does she want?”

  My angel opened her mouth. Her words filtered into my head. This is not for you. End it now. Leave this place. Do not return here.

  I repeated them to the doctor.

  “She’s trying to control you, Jane. But you mustn’t let her. Tell her you won’t leave.”

  The angel raised her arm. The cloak fell away, revealing the bleached-white skin. She pointed at the consultant.

  The doctor’s eyes grew wide. He dropped his notebook and spoke, his voice barely audible, “Oh my God! Is that her? Is that who you see?”

  He clutched his throat. Clawed at it, fighting for breath.

  I leaped out of the chair and raced over to him as he sank to his knees.

  “Please stop. You’re killing him!”

  But she took no notice. She turned her palm upward as I cradled the poor man’s head.

  I tried once more. “Please. He’s done nothing to me. He doesn’t deserve this.”

  But my angel curled her fingers into a fist and a hideous rattle came from the specialist. I felt his body slacken and laid him on the floor. When I raised my eyes from him, my angel had gone.

  I struggled to my feet, dashed for the door and wrenched it open. The receptionist looked up, startled.

  “Call an ambulance! I think the doctor’s had a heart attack.” But, of course, I knew what really happened. I also knew it was far too late for an ambulance. At least the poor man had been spared the torture of the demons.

  Dr. Staines offered to refer me to another psychoanalyst, but I refused. I couldn’t run the risk of another innocent person ending up dead just because they were trying to help me.

  I didn’t tell John about my angel, only about the doctor having a heart attack. He couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t accept Dr. Staines’s offer of a new referral.

  “I’d rather try and manage without. Besides, I haven’t had the dream for a week now. Maybe my session with him was all I needed.”

  Both of us knew this wasn’t true, but John didn’t push it. I was grateful for that. But I felt anything but calm. I jumped at shadows—even my own. I ended up on tranquilizers, but didn’t tell John. He hated such things.

  Every day I feared my angel would return. I knew she would regard the consultant merely as an irritating obstacle she had removed. I still owed her and I still didn’t know what she had written in that ledger.

  But time does strange things to your memory. As days and weeks passed with no dreams and no angel, my fear subsided. I got on with life. Besides, the pills helped. They took the edge off my anxiety and helped me relax.

  John had been promoted and was doing really well. Naturally, the new post brought increased responsibilities and longer hours, but we both welcomed the extra money. We fell into a kind of normality.

  Lucy and I started going for the odd drink after work and it felt good to rekindle our friendship outside the office. Much as I liked her, though, I still couldn’t bring myself to confide the craziness of my dreams, my angel and the real cause of Dr. Moreton’s death. Definitely not that.

  Summer ended. Christmas came and went. We spent it with my mother, who was still enjoying her busy social life, improving her golf handicap and planning a cruise on the Norwegian fjords.

  John’s workload grew ever more demanding, but he never complained. His bosses seemed to pile more and more on him. It even encroached on our weekends, but we made the most of the time we had.

  May. Creamy-white magnolias and cherry blossoms. My favorite month. I had almost succeeded in putting the memories of that poor consultant to one side. Sometimes, I didn’t believe it had even happened that way. The man had died from a massive heart attack. That was on the death certificate. It happened all the time.

  John and I had been out to dinner one Friday evening. As usual, it had been a busy week for both of us, and by midnight, we were tucked up in bed, listening to the rain pattering on the window.

  Within a couple of minutes, John’s gentle snores sounded in my ear. I turned over and then I was back there. In my dream.

  I had arrived in another part of the hotel. Familiar music wafted over to me from far away—“Everything”. For the first time in my dreams, Carlo was singing it. I had to find him.

  I wandered down endless dimly lit corridors, up and down short flights of narrow stairs. At one point, I entered a room where a massive hot buffet had been laid out. I could smell roasting meats and curry. White-jacketed chefs in their distinctive tall hats stood ready to serve. Steam wafted up to the ceiling from large metal chafing dishes. Maybe a hundred people milled around, chatting in small groups. No one saw me. Maybe I was invisible. After all, this was only a dream.

  As I passed, one of the chefs called out to me. “Do you want something? You can have anything you want. Everything.”

  I half ran to get away as fast as possible. Everything about that felt wrong. Everything about this dream felt wrong. That chef shouldn’t have said that. Only Carlo should say that. And I couldn’t find him.

  I kept going through more rooms. All empty. All furnished in the same lemon and white. All with chandeliers. Only the size of the rooms varied. How big was this place, anyway?

  The music grew louder. I must be going in the right direction, at least.

  Then it stopped. I stood and listened. Nothing.

  This is not a dream.

  My angel. She shouldn’t be here. “This isn’t your place,” I said.

  Everywhere you go is my place.

  “Where’s Carlo?”

  He is not here.

  “Yes he is. I’ve seen him. I’ve heard him.”

  He is not here.

  “But this is my dream and he’s always here.”

  This is the real world. Your real world. Your reality.

  I shook my head. “No, I’m asleep. This is a dream.”

  Look at your hands.

  My fists were clenched. I released them and held out my hands, palms upward.

  Slowly, the skin developed a translucence so I could see the veins and muscles. Blood pumped. Tendons flexed as I squeezed my hand into a fist. Horrified fascination took hold of me. My angel moved closer.

  You can see your body full of life. If this was just a dream, you would not see that.

  “It’s an illusion my mind has dreamed up.”

  Soon you will see how wrong you are.

  That fear I had first felt when she attacked John resurfaced. My mouth went dry. Her next words chilled me.

  We have unfinished business, Jane. And the time is approaching fast.

  “What do you mean?”

  She faded. Footsteps approached me. I screamed as someone touched my shoulder.

  Carlo.

  “I do not think I am so frightening.” He seemed happy, as always. He took my hand.

  “She said you didn’t exist,” I said. “My angel, I mean”

  “But you see me. I am holding your hand.”

  “I know.”

  “So how can I not exist?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He laughed. “Come with me. We are very late. They will begin without us.”

  “Begin what?” I followed him back down the same corridors I had come through earlier.

  “The feast. You can have anything you want. Everything.”

  And then we were in the room where the chefs were serving their customers. We joined the queue. The chef who had spoken to me earlier stood ready, plate in hand, waiting for me to tell him what I wanted.

  Such a choice of aromatic dishes, from crispy duck to roast beef, lasagna, curries. I wanted to eat here. I could eat here. I w
ouldn’t put on any weight, would I? “I’ll have roast pork, please,” I said.

  The chef began loading my plate with meat, roast potatoes, peas.

  But I wouldn’t have anything. The pounding had begun. People scattered in all directions. Plates smashed on the floor.

  Carlo grabbed my hand. “We must run. Now!”

  The room disappeared. We were out on the grassland again.

  We raced over the wet grass. A stiff wind whistled around us. Black rain clouds loomed overhead.

  Behind us, the thundering footsteps gained on us.

  “Don’t look back,” Carlo said, his voice barely audible over the wind. “Close your eyes! Jump!”

  I jumped, but with eyes wide open.

  The abyss below opened like a giant maw. A gaping, black hole.

  I fell deeper. I looked for Carlo but couldn’t see him. I couldn’t twist or move. I heard echoes of people crying, screaming. Hands groped me. Black, clawlike, stinking of death. I screamed.

  “Someone help me!”

  “Jane! Jane!” John’s voice penetrated the horror.

  Blissful reality. I was back. I burst into tears and he cradled me in his arms.

  “Oh God, Jane. You frightened the life out of me. You were screaming and I couldn’t wake you. What on earth was it?”

  I told him. All the while, he rocked me back and forth, and gradually my fear dissolved. I wanted to stay safe in his arms forever.

  Eventually, he released me and I lay back. He lifted the duvet to shake it and stopped.

  “Jane, it’s happened again. Look at your feet.” He threw back the covers.

  This time, not only did I have muddy, grass-stained feet, my legs were covered in little scratches. I remembered the claws that had grabbed me and a new wave of fear twisted itself around my gut.

  John made me tea in the kitchen. I joined him after a much-needed shower.

  “I’ve been trying to work out what must have happened,” he said as he handed me a mug. “Your screams woke me up at around two, so I must have slept for a couple of hours. Long enough for you to get up, go outside and find a nice bramblebush, some wet grass and earth or whatever, but the question is, why would you do that?”