The Way Home
Page 3
He turned from the window, frowning. When had it gotten dark? When had the moon come up? It was still twilight moments ago. Puzzled, he let his eyes take in the moonlit bedroom more fully. There was a mirrored dressing table of white wood next to the door. In the middle of the wall, which was at right angles to the window, was a double bed with a white, wrought iron headboard and pale bedding of an indeterminate colour. Was it pink or mauve? The moonlight was deceptive.
Then Hawk saw her, sleeping on the side of the bed closest to the window. Her forehead was pressed against a little bedside table that held a lamp.
What was he doing in a woman’s bedroom at night? This was an abuse of hospitality. If this lovely creature should awaken and find him here, she’d scream and wake the rest of the house. How would he explain himself? His open invitation to Grange End would be rescinded.
He began to back toward the door, but when he reached for the knob to let himself out, his hand went through the object. Time and time again, he tried to grasp the handle, but it was as if it weren’t really there. It was an illusion. Panic pressed in on him. Think. Think. What was going on here?
Maybe he was dreaming. That would explain how he’d come to be in this room so suddenly after wishing for it. It would explain the way the scene in the garden could change so strikingly. That made perfect sense. He hadn’t noticed those things as peculiar until he’d begun lucid dreaming. Up to then, he’d accepted everything as normal. That was the way of dreams.
Reassured, he moved back across the room so he could get a better look at the woman. The moonlight highlighted her smooth skin and the rounded curves of her features. Rather than distracting from her beauty, her bald head added another dimension to it. She looked like a fairy or elf, and whimsically, he checked her ear to make sure it wasn’t pointed. It wasn’t.
What made her so breathtaking? Was it the perfect skin, the small upturned nose, those huge eyes, now closed, with their long, thick lashes resting like fringes on her cheeks? Was it the wispy eyebrows that curved gently above the hollows of her eyes? They were dark – not pencil thin as was the fashion, but not thick either. Her pointed chin was appealing, too, adding to the pixie impression. Then there was her mouth, lush, full and made for kissing.
That thought had him hardening. This was wrong. He shouldn’t be watching a strange woman while she slept in the privacy of her bedroom, even in a dream.
But though he chastised himself furiously, he couldn’t move away. It was as if his body had a mind of its own. And his body wanted to stay just where it was, drinking her in hungrily. It was as if he’d been waiting forever to see her, to be near her. And now that he was, every moment was precious. Every second needed to be savoured.
He was reminded of that first moment he crossed the threshold of this house. He’d wanted to savour that moment, too. This was that same feeling, but multiplied tenfold. Without conscious thought, his hand came out and stroked the warm cheek. It didn’t feel as potent as he expected. With more resolve, he touched her again, this time with more pressure. Yes, there was sensation, but not as much as he would have expected. Every nerve ending should have been firing from that touch. Instead, it felt like the gentlest breath of air against his skin.
Although his fingertips were incredibly sensitive, he decided he would need to test her skin with his lips. Someone had once told him that the lips were the most sensitive part of the body. He didn’t know if it was true but he was willing to experiment. Leaning over, he let his moistened mouth slide over her cheek. Something… an echo of something… no more.
What a strange dream this was. Usually his dreams were more real than reality, every sense intensified. This… muffled sensation… was disconcerting.
He let the tip of his tongue taste her damp cheek. She tasted… bland. How could such a beauty be tasteless? There was the slightest scent of almonds but no corresponding taste.
As he contemplated this odd phenomenon, her eyes flew open and she stared directly up at him. She gasped and jerked back, hitting her head on the iron headboard. She cried out in pain and reached for her scalp.
In the same instant, he jerked back away from her, standing up straight and stepping away from the bed. This was not supposed to happen. In his dream, she wouldn’t wake. If she did, she’d smile warmly up at him and move to kiss him.
Instead, she rubbed at her naked head and stared up at him, her kissable lips open in a stunned gape.
‘I am sorry. I did not expect to wake you. I will go.’ He began backing up toward the door.
‘Hawk? That is who you are, isn’t it? Your accent sounds Eastern European.’ Her voice was croaky with sleep and shock, her accent upper class English. He’d heard it often enough amongst the upper echelons of the British military.
‘Andrezej Drzewiecki, but I am called Hawk. I do beg your pardon for intruding. I am not sure how I came to be here. I was outside and then I was inside; just like that.’ He clicked his fingers to indicate the speed.
‘How can I be talking to you? How can you look so real? Am I dreaming you?’ She scooted up so that she was sitting with her back braced against the metal headboard.
He noticed she didn’t wear a nightdress but instead slept in a short singlet that revealed the flatness of her chest and her bare midriff. What she wore below her waist he didn’t know, as that was covered by the pastel sheet.
As if seeing where his eyes had wandered, she wrapped her arms over her chest self-consciously.
‘I thought I was dreaming, too, but this is the oddest dream I have ever had. I tried to open the door when I realised where I was but my hand could not grip the doorknob.
‘Well, that’s only to be expected, isn’t it?’
‘In a dream? No, not usually.’
‘No, not in a dream. You’d expect you wouldn’t be able to touch things when you’re a ghost, surely.’
He stared at her blankly for several long seconds. He couldn’t understand what she meant. Ghost? He did understand the meaning of that word correctly, didn’t he?
‘You think I am an apparition?’
‘Well, that’s what Marnie thinks you are. She says you’ve been haunting the place since near the end of the war.’
‘Haunting? Do not believe the fanciful stories of a child. Do I look like a ghost to you?’
‘Marnie isn’t a child. She’s an old lady, and no, you don’t look like a ghost. I can’t see through you. Marnie said everyone who’s seen you in the past could see through you. You seem quite solid to me. Can I touch you?’
Hawk tried to process all that she’d told him. Did his little Marnie have an old relative with the same name? Families did that. But what was this nonsense about being able to see through him? She was right. He was quite solid. Of course he was. Now she was making him doubt himself.
But she wanted to touch him and that was the best idea he’d ever heard. He craved this strange fairy-woman’s touch like a drug. He took a step toward her.
‘You can touch me. I have already taken the liberty of touching your cheek while you slept.’
Her hand came up to her left cheek and she tested the sensation of her palm against her face. ‘I felt something… when I was waking. I felt something.’
He took another step closer so that his legs touched the mattress, but he didn’t feel the bed. Looking down, he saw that his legs weren’t flush with the mattress – they were overlapping it by several inches. Shocked, he jumped back.
‘What?’ She was leaning toward him now, as if preparing to reach out and touch him.
‘That’s not possible. It’s the moonlight. It can create optical illusions.’
‘What do you mean?’
He stepped closer, wary of maintaining enough distance between him and the bed. ‘It looked like I walked right into the mattress. Not just against it or on it, into it.’
‘Do it again!’ she demanded excitedly. It was such a childlike exclamation that he almost expected her to clap her hands in expectation.
The girl leaned over and looked at his legs. ‘OMG, this has got to be a dream! You can’t be a real ghost. I don’t believe in ghosts!’
‘I’m not a ghost!’ His voice was angrier than he wanted it to be. It was rude of him to speak in this fashion to a strange lady in her own bedroom. A strange, bald lady who hadn’t invited him into her bedroom. But fear fuelled his anger.
‘Touch me!’ he held out his hand to her, palm up. It was more a challenge than a request.
Immediately, her hand came out and rested in his. He couldn’t feel her as well as he should but he was solid enough. So was she. They didn’t overlap in the bizarre way his legs overlapped the bed.
‘Wow, I can feel you, sort of…’ Her voice was hushed as she examined their clasped hands. He opened his fingers and wove them between hers. A strange charge exploded somewhere in his chest and he gasped.
The way her breath caught and from the expression of shock in her eyes, he imagined she’d felt what he had. What was going on here?
Without asking permission, he sat on the edge of the bed. He did that well enough, although when he looked down at himself he seemed to be deeper into the mattress than he should have been. Ignoring the phenomenon, he brought her hand to his lap while he stroked her arm with his other hand. He could feel her… just.
She took her free hand and touched the bed, then his leg. Then she repeated the action.
‘The bed feels normal but you don’t. You feel… muted. What do you feel?’ Her wide eyes were filled with intelligent curiosity. As strange as it was, she didn’t seem upset by it. In fact, she was fascinated.
Without releasing the hand he held, he touched his own face with his other hand. It felt normal. Then he touched the bed. His hand disappeared into it as if it weren’t there. He felt nothing but air. Then he touched her cheek. It was somewhere between nothing and normal.
‘It’s like a hologram…’ she said, observing him touching the bed.
‘A what? I do not know that word, I am sorry.’
‘Hologram. Of course you wouldn’t. They don’t really exist yet. They’re more a science fiction thing. Like Princess Leia in Star Wars.’
‘Who is Princes Leia and what is Star Wars?’
‘Movie… Moving pictures. A film. You know those, don’t you? They had them in your day.’
‘In my day? Why do I feel like we are no longer communicating?’
‘Sorry. It’s my fault. I’ve never talked to a ghost before.’ She leaned in and he felt the slightest pressure where her body pressed against his side.
‘I am not a ghost,’ he said with less conviction this time.
‘How do you explain what’s happening then?’ she challenged.
Hawk frowned and reached over to the side table. His hand passed right through it and disappeared into it until it came out beneath the single, whitewood draw. ‘I can’t…’
Suddenly, she was all gentle concern. With her free hand, she turned his face to her and stroked his cheek. The more they touched, the more he seemed to be able to feel her.
‘I get that this is hard for you if you don’t know you’re dead, but how do you explain all the changes? Surely this room doesn’t look like it did in 1940?’
He shook his head without dislodging her hand. He liked her touching him, even when it was muted. ‘I cannot. This should be Marnie’s room. There should be wallpaper on the walls and a dark wood wardrobe where your dressing table is. And there should be model planes hanging from the ceiling.’
‘Marnie was into planes? That’s just like her! She became a physics lecturer, you know.’
‘A professor? But Marnie is only… twelve. She was eight when I was here last, four years ago.’
‘Hawk.’ She met his gaze as she breathed his name gently. ‘This is the year 2013. Marnie is an old lady and I was a friend of her granddaughter’s.’
CHAPTER THREE
Cassie stared at the empty space where only a second ago the Polish pilot had sat. She felt his absence deeply. Glancing around the room, she climbed to her feet. She knew full well he wasn’t there as she had explored every nook and cranny in the room, but she wanted him to be more than she wanted to draw her next breath. He hadn’t just gone into hiding; Hawk had disappeared completely.
She went to the window and looked down into the moonlit garden. No uniformed man stood leaning against the tree, smoking.
It had been the weirdest dream she’d ever had. For the full time that she’d seen and spoken to him, she’d felt awake. Of course, that was normal in dreams. You rarely realised you were dreaming. Yet she had realised and he’d stayed very real – except for the fact that she couldn’t quite feel him.
It had been the slight touch on her cheek that had awakened her. From beneath her eyelashes, she’d seen his face right next to hers as he kissed her. A butterfly kiss… so infinitely soft. It had taken several long seconds of pure pleasure before her body had caught up with the shock of seeing a strange man in her bedroom so close to her she could smell… what could she smell? Starch! Old-fashioned starch and cigarette tobacco. It was no more than a whiff… less.
Then she was jerking away from him, hitting her head. That felt real enough. She couldn’t remember ever feeling pain like that in a dream. Maybe she’d actually jerked up in her sleep and bashed her head. But if so, wouldn’t that have been enough to wake her?
When she looked at him, he’d seemed more surprised than she was. It was funny, but she didn’t laugh because she didn’t want to offend him. For all his dangerous, harsh features, there was something vulnerable and lost about him. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt him.
And the dream had become stranger the farther into it she went. His body appeared as a hologram when he came into contact with furniture, but was perfectly solid when he came into contact with her. It was only the muted sensory perception that gave her any indication that he wasn’t just what he looked like, a handsome pilot with dark hair that curled delightfully over his forehead. The moonlight wouldn’t let her distinguish the colour of his eyes but she imagined them hazel, she didn’t know why.
Why she’d tried to explain what was happening to him in terminology from her time she didn’t know. It was as if her brain was on holiday, but she’d never spoken to a ghost before. Especially not one from World War II who didn’t know he was a ghost. Of course she’d talk in anachronisms. To her, the original Star Wars was old. She hadn’t even been born when it came out, so it made sense that she’d use something old to try to explain a hologram. Just not old enough. Stupid!
And then she’d made the biggest mistake of all: telling him the year. That freaked him out totally. He’d been on the edge right from the start. Each new oddity had moved him closer and closer to melt down. She’d just pushed him over.
And he’d blinked out of existence because of it from one moment to the next. It devastated her more than she imagined possible. Even if he were only a dream, for the whole time he’d been with her, she’d felt happy and alive again. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt truly alive. Back when Fran was with her, she imagined. After her death, nothing had seemed to touch her anymore.
With a little shock, she realised that what she felt when touching Hawk was the sensation her own life had taken on: muted, turned down, there but not. And then the cancer diagnosis had sent her into a different place again, where nothing seemed quite real but felt perfectly fitting. How could she be dying? Everything in her world existed because she was in it. If she no longer existed, neither would everything else… and that wasn’t possible, was it? She had no experience with not being. As far as she was concerned, she’d always been, even though intellectually she knew life existed before her birth and would go on after her death. Experientially, she had no concept of that being so; as such
, life had taken on a surreal sense as if she weren’t quite there. She felt more ghost than real…
Like Hawk.
Therefore, it was easy to empathise with what he was feeling if he really were a ghost and not just a figment of her imagination or a lucid dream from which she still hadn’t awakened.
Opening the side table draw, she checked the time on her phone. Just after midnight. Of course, the witching hour! When else would you expect to see a ghost? But now that he was gone what was she supposed to do? Sleep again? She was so wired now there was no way she’d be able to go back to sleep; if she really were awake, that is.
A brain tumour. Maybe she’d developed a brain tumour and Hawk was part of a psychotic break down or some such thing. She’d been teetering on the edge from the moment Fran died, hadn’t she? Maybe she should get an MRI brain scan. It would tell if there was something wrong physiologically rather than psychologically.
Damn, but she wanted him to be real! Just looking at that harsh featured face softened by uncertainty awoke dormant urges. It had been more than three years since she’d had sex. She’d broken up with her long-time boyfriend, Hugh, about the time Fran took the job in Munich. Fran had been so excited about the software engineering gig, her first real job after completing her master’s degree, that she’d had no time for Cassie. So Cassie had been forced to suffer the aftershocks of the breakup alone.
Well, not completely alone. Marnie had invited her up to Grange End for weekend visits and been a comforting shoulder upon which to cry. If anyone understood bastards, Marnie did. Her husband had up and left her straight after their six-year-old son had died of meningitis. Fran’s mother had been only two years old at the time.
Marnie’s loss put her own experience in perspective. Hugh hadn’t left her, she’d dumped him after she found out he’d been having an on-again-off-again fling with his ex pretty much the whole time they’d been together. She hadn’t been left with the grief over a dead child and the full responsibility for another. Comparatively, Cassie got off lightly.