The Things We Bury - Part 1: In Anticipation of the End of the World [Completed]

Chapter 10: Rough Waters (Parts 4 & 5 of 9)

The bedroom was pristine.  The bed, crisply made.  All the books in the bookcase, in alphabetical order and the spines never bent.  The fresh pink paint, glistening like the surface of a pool of rose petals.  Amy said the color looked like Pepto Bismol.  They had repainted the pink even though she hated it.  There were studies that showed that color had calming effects and made people less violent.

Although if recent events were any indication, those finding were highly dubious.

Horus rubbed the sweat off his forehead with a handkerchief.  The office felt hot although the digital readout showed the temperature at sixty-eight Fahrenheit.  When he finished mopping his brow, there was a trail of red streaking across the white linen.  A tentative finger felt his cut.  It was bleeding again, but just slightly.  The gash still marked him even if the scrape had faded.  He pressed the hanky back to it and waited for Amy to be shown into her room.

She'd been kept in the wolf pen since the incident and the lack of a window had prevented them from continuing their sessions.  Horus counted himself lucky he hadn't been ordered to don a hazmat suit and give her face-to-face counseling.  The past week had almost been a vacation, but that was over.  Maxwell demanded that he be there when Amy made her return.  He had overruled R.J. and wouldn't listen to the administrator's objections that Horus was doing little to help Amy's psyche and may even be doing harm.

   R.J. might have been attacking Horus, but it was clear the man was carrying the blame around on his own shoulders.  Horus could practically see the guilt dragging him into a stoop, like a proverbial albatross around his neck.

Horus wasn't mad at R.J.  In a way, he was grateful.  He would have been happy to be dismissed for any reason.  If his employer didn't have that envelope of evidence against him, he wouldn't leave his house.  The specters of Kyle Silver were multiplying.  And they were coming after him.

But if the bastard had risen from the grave, could Horus be convicted of his murder?  How did the law deal with resurrection?

The door between the two enclosures opened on the pneumatic hinges and Horus pocketed the handkerchief. The drops of blood on the fabric seemed to add weight to it.

Can she smell the blood through the glass, I wonder?

He wasn't sure where the thought had come from but a chill rose out of the depths of his gut.

 Amy stepped in, glancing about suspiciously.  She was dressed in her customary black sweats.  Her face was drawn back inside the hood of the sweater.  The lights sparkled on her flickering eyes as they tried to examine everything.  It was as though they were searching out deeper secrets hidden beneath every surface. 

She passed the dresser and her hand gently caressed the music player.  It sat in a squat docking port with two small speakers.  The screen lit up her palm as it crossed in front of it.

At the dressing table, she lifted up a hairbrush and ran her thumb across the bristles.  She kept walking until she stopped to scrutinize it in front of the office window.  Horus shifted uncomfortably, while she acted as though he wasn't there.

"Amy, I think we should talk."

She dropped the brush on the chair and turned away from him, heading for the night table. 

"About what?"  Amy picked up and put back down the new bottle of moisturizer.  Same brand as before but now full and the seal unbroken. 

"About what happened.  You changed when you weren't supposed to.  That's why we had to move you to the other room."

"I know."  She flipped through the new paperback of I Shall Wear Midnight.  The last page she had read was dog-eared.  Could she tell it was done by a different hand than hers?  "R.J. told me."