Valon: The Ghost of Cambria - Book Three

Chapter Eleven

Kristen couldn't open her eyes without trouble. Regardless of her intent to awaken, the woman's mind required several moments to cycle and allow consciousness to regain control of her body. But when she could finally open her eyelids and let the gleaming daylight through, Kristen knew at once she wasn't alone in the bedroom.

Tony stood at the foot of her bed.

"Tired?" the young man asked gently, his smooth baritone sounding with calm concern.

The last threads of Kristen's unconsciousness ripped apart, and she sat up in bed sharply as if startled.

"Fell back to sleep?" Tony asked again.

"I guess so," Kristen answered with flat drowsiness in her words.

She swung her legs around to bring her feet to the floor beside the bed.

"It must be the cold," she answered finally, realizing that Tony had not left the spot where he stood. "Where's Penelope?"

He didn't respond to her promptly, waiting it seemed until she looked up at him.

"In the back," he nodded toward the window.

When Tony still didn't leave, Kristen rose to her feet and rubbed at her eyes as if to clear them before looking up at him. A chill ran through her body when she saw Tony's smile. To anyone else, it would have appeared warm and kind, perhaps even loving, but Kristen's dream with Valon was still alive in her mind, and the young man's toothy grin now seemed full of all the villainy in the world.

He moved forward a couple steps, closing the three-foot gap between them to place his hands on Kristen's arms. Again, it was a simple gesture meant to comfort her, but the woman couldn't help her skin from sprouting goosebumps at his touch. Tony kissed her on the lips and again on the cheek, bringing his head to nuzzle beside her. Kristen's body didn't relax upon feeling his warmth, unwilling to fall into his embrace and betray the truth her gut felt certain of.

"I'm off to start my day," he whispered in Kristen's ear, giving her one final kiss on the cheek.

"Okay," she answered weakly. It was an involuntary response, and all the return Kristen could offer Tony's statement in kind.

As he walked away toward the staircase, his footfall sounded as normal and unthreatening as the beat of an easy hits radio station. But the psychologist had long understood how the most unassuming sounds hid the largest secrets. Tony's presence now activated every bit of rational sense available to Kristen's mind, and cold logic again returned to analyze the details before her. Even if the dream hadn't been as perfectly alive in her memory as it was, Kristen wouldn't dismiss her body's response to the young man's embrace.

Fear is an insidious bag, and no one should underestimate the tricks it can play upon the mind. But neither should we ever dismiss our body's involuntary responses. They teach such logic traps in women's defense classes. We are to trust our instincts and not dismiss them over contradicting concerns about being rude or offensive. If thoughts of danger sprang into a woman's mind, it was better to error on the side of safety than good manners.

But Kristen couldn't prove that such a scenario bore any equivalency to this event. She had awoken from a dream that terrified her, leaving her certain she was in danger. Nothing more than a dream. Tony had done nothing to warrant such a view from Kristen, and crippling doubt flooded the psychologist again. If a patient came to her with such stories, such unfounded certainty in their voice, she would unquestionably pronounce them as delusions, possibly the onset of schizophrenia taking root in their mind.

But, not for the first time, Kristen couldn't stop herself.

Poke the dragon—the words ran over and over in her thoughts. It was a mantra that arose countless times in her practice. Faced with a suspicious statement, Kristen would find something provocative to ask or mention to draw out the truth. People naturally lied to hide their insecurities, and they often guarded those lies with illogical statements easy to deconstruct. A simple question or action could draw out "the dragon" within all of us. Faced with doubting questions, the dragon would often rear its head with flaming impatience and spit fiery claims of offense. Sometimes the dragon would go silent and quietly reassess its lies, studying them in a futile bid to shore up their logic holes. In either scenario, the reaction exposed the existence of a lie to a psychologist, if not the details.

Kristen walked downstairs, silently determined not to draw Tony's attention. Arriving on the first floor, she heard him hammering away at something in the kitchen, the echoing racket offering the perfect cover for her experiment.

Kristen opened the coat closet door and slipped silently into the dark space. She didn't turn on the light, but relied on the illumination that entered through the small opening left by the broken door bottom—the part that had shattered upon exploding outward, striking Penelope, if Kristen's dream was to be believed.

The woman lowered herself to a crouching position and moved to the very back of the closet where the ceiling descended under the stairs. There, she found the paneling that created Valon's hiding spot. Kristen startled herself to realize she had only ever witnessed the panel before in her dreams. Along the bottom and side were discolorations, sections where Penelope's nails or teeth had scratched the paint off.

The woman took a series of deep breaths, certain of what would have to happen now to convince her of the truth. Reaching slowly, she placed her palm upon the white wooden panel, remembering every detail of Valon's insistence that his master's treasure lay behind it. Kristen closed her eyes in the darkness and waited, hearing each breath expel from her lungs faster than she wished.

In less that ten seconds, the hammering in the kitchen stopped. Tony's work boots rumbled through the wooden frame of the house as he walked with a determined stride out through the dining room and into the living room. He stopped just before the closet door, and Kristen could see the boots standing there through the broken door.
Involuntarily, she removed her hand from the wooden panel.

The closet door opened slowly, filling the space with the diffused daylight that Kristen's eyes had already adjusted from.

"What are you doing?" Tony asked her, the sound of his voice devoid of any tone of confusion.

A lie, she thought.

Tony reached to flip the light switch, then took three steps into the closet, the furthest he could advance on account of the descending ceiling. He squatted down and stared at Kristen—he didn't repeat his question but waited silently for a response.

"I was thinking about the rats," Kristen eventually answered in a low, even voice. "I thought I would come in here and sit quietly for a while to see if I could hear them."

Tony remained silent—his eye never left Kristen.

"Right here," she said, reaching to run her hand along the section of the wooden panel that appeared sanded down. "This must be where Penelope was attempting to reach them."

Tony remained silent, his eyes still locked on Kristen. He could tell, she realized, that her words were untrue.

"There's nothing in here," Tony finally answered, and he extended his hand to her, implying that Kristen should take it and allow him to assist her out of the low crawl space.

The women felt the signals again, the crawl of ice down her spine, the prickle of her hair standing up in subconscious defense against danger. She didn't move a muscle, but listened to her heart pound in her ears.

Tony's head fell gently to the side in a sign of concern or confusion while his hand remained outstretched to Kristen.

"There's nothing in here," he said again, raising his eyebrows at here.

Kristen willed herself to lift her arm and take Tony's hand, feeling another wave of adrenaline pulse through her veins when he squeezed and guided her forward. In a moment, she was on her feet.

When they were both back in the living room, Tony released Kristen's hand and shut the closet door behind them. Without another word, he turned and walked back toward the kitchen.

Watching him from behind, Kristen raced through a dozen threads of reasoning. She thought of a multitude of explanations, both rational and irrational, discounting each when they failed to satisfy her. There was, however, a word that trailed silently behind each answer, one Kristen would not permit forming in her mind. It was a word created to describe a thought so unreasonable, so secretly overwhelming to the psychologist, that she did everything now to keep it from finding sound in her thoughts. But when Kristen looked down, surprised to notice how her leg was shaking, her fear catching her off guard. In that moment, the word violently sliced through her defenses and landed with a loud, unmistakable clarity.

Demon, she thought and raised her eyes back to the young man.

Tony stopped and turned back with emotionless eyes to meet Kristen's gaze.