"Belle."
There are hands all over me in the darkness, and, panicking, I swat at them, turning away from the man spasming on the end of a rope above me, visible only when lightning paints the night in slashes of silver light.
"Belle."
Am I Mirabelle? Am I hearing Hugolin's voice? Is he trying to save me?
"Belle, don't move." The hands touching me are firm, but they're not hurting me; their fingers are running over my neck and my shoulders as though they're searching for something. What are they searching for?
"Hugolin?" I croak, relaxing into his touch, terrified of the fingers turning cruel again and belonging to the man who dragged me and not to David's great-grandfather. No, Hugolin speaks French, and his voice is coarse and broken, not warm and silky, even when edged with tension as the one speaking to me from the dark.
"Luna, it's me; please don't move; let me see how badly you're injured."
"David?" My heart leaps in my chest, relief washing over me in beautiful waves, my mind clearing of the gathering demons. "David!"
"Yes, it's me, David."
I turn my head towards the sound of his voice, but all I see are shadows and darkness.
"Work, dammit," he grunts. I can hear him shaking and slapping something, and then I'm flinching away from a harsh light shining in my eyes. "Sorry," David mutters, turning the flashlight to shine it down my body instead, and when my eyes finally clear, I can see his shadowy face while he looks me over, his brows drawn together in concern. And a sob of joy breaks from my chest.
"Don't move, Honey," he says when I try to sit up. "You've taken a bad fall; let's first see how severely you're injured." I obediently lie still, waiting for him to run his hands over my arms and legs, feeling for broken bones. "I'm sorry I took so long to come. I heard the crash, but there... some... I couldn't get my bedroom door open. Where does it hurt?"
"I didn't f-fall," I stutter hoarsely, my throat hurting from all the screaming I'd done. "He knocked me down and dragged me..." I choke on the panic rising from my core, numbing my extremities. My eyes dart around, searching the dancing shadows in the area of the balcony for the spectral people I'd seen hanging the man.
"Who dragged you?!" David gasps in shock, turning on his haunches, flashing the light around, searching for looming threats.
"Him," I whisper, raising my hand to point at the general area above my head, and frowning, David lifts the light and follows my gaze. All I can see now are the outlines of the thick beams among the shadows quivering in the faltering light of the flashlight. David is shaking, unable to keep his hand steady and when he turns his head to look at me, I can see that he is distraught.
"They hung him..."
"They? What?" he is still chasing the shadows with his light, his silhouette ghostly in what it catches of the glow.
"The others, they bound him and hung him from there."
My words make no sense. I know that, but everything I experienced until David found me is still vivid and frighteningly real in my mind. I did not dream it. I wasn't sleepwalking. Nothing about it was whimsical and watery, the way saving Hugolin from the sea had been. It's not just a lingering memory I experienced in a dreamy state. But it makes no sense.
Keep the fear down, don't give in to it. Don't give in, stay calm.
"Where does it hurt?" David repeats his question. He is not telling me I'm crazy or lying or anything that would be logical to think about me at the moment, but his jaw is clenched, and I do not miss the uneasy looks he keeps on darting around us.
I remember banging my head over and over on the steps and slamming into furniture with my entire body, but I'm alarmingly pain-free. Am I dead? Is David dead? Were we murdered?
Except...
I hold up my trembling hands, and David runs the light over them, grunting when he sees the glistening drops of blood beading on my torn fingertips.
"Belle," he breathes, his eyes flicking to mine in shock. "Luna... I'm so sorry I didn't get here in time to stop you from falling."
"I didn't fall," I whimper, staring at the aftermath of clawing at the floor, trying to stop the man from dragging me.
"Are you sure you didn't just try to stop yourself from falling, and that's how..."
"He grabbed me by my ankle, David," I assure him, swallowing against the fear floating on the bile rising in my throat, " and dragged me. I think there's a lump or two on the back of my head and bruises probably all over. I wasn't dreaming."
David sets the torch down on my stomach, the weight of it strangely reassuring in its realness, while he reaches behind my head, feeling my scalp with his fingers. It's the second time today that he is doing it, but this time, he looks sad, not amused. "Yeah, there's a small lump here."
I know. It's a bit sensitive, even to his gentle touch.
"Which leg?"
When I point it out to him, he turns, grabs the flashlight and shoves up the leg of my sweatpants to run the light over my ankle. I push myself onto my elbows to see too, and wince at the blue marks startlingly clear against my pale skin. Yes, it is possible that I banged it against the bannister while I fell down the stairs, but that is not what happened. I know it is not.
David doesn't say anything to confirm either my theory or his; he simply pulls the material back in place and places an arm around my waist. "Can you stand?" he asks, and nodding my head, I hold onto his shoulder and pull my knees towards me.
I make it onto my feet, and though I have a few aches and pains and my fingers are burning, I'm not half as battered as I thought I was going to be, leaving me to wonder how much of the excruciating pain I'd experienced was really mine. The fear and shock finally overwhelm me, and I grab fists full of the light jacket David found in his truck earlier and pulled on over his T-shirt.
"David," I sob, leaning into him, and he wraps his arms around me, holding me tightly. I can feel him trembling, his heart beating extremely fast. Whatever he'd experienced between waking up and finding me lying down here in the dark, screaming his name, had really rattled him. That doesn't do much to calm my anxiety. Until now, David had been the calm, steady rock in this storm we're stuck in; I don't know what will happen if he starts to crumble too. He needs to remain solid; I'm already crummy enough for both of us.
"We need to get the hell out of here," he grumbles, pulling me tighter against him and burying his face in my neck. I snake my arms around his waist to stroke his back, trying to reassure him.
Where could we go?
Outside, the storm is still raging, the intermittent lightning testifying to the fact that it's only David and me and the small furniture collection in the foyer. No shadowy people are murdering a man on the balcony, and there's no man with wild long hair and hollow eyes smirking at me, dangling from the ceiling beams. I keep on checking to make sure, and the memory is starting to lose its density, growing hazy at its edges.
I think David realises the same things that I am. He knows we're trapped here, and I can feel the tension in his embrace.
"Let's get the lights on," he says, finally sounding like the calm, practical man I've gotten to know in the short time we've been together. "I think the main switch tripped."
I do not like the sound of that - the switches are in the maggot room! - and involuntarily protest when he loosens his arms from around me and takes a step back, his hands sliding down my arms to hold onto my hands, careful not to touch my injuries.
"Please don't leave me in this house by myself," I beg on a shaky breath, anxiety once again clawing at my stomach.
"Never," David assures me, and I feel a relieved smile plucking at my lips. That was the sweetest word and also a rather disconcerting one. If he is unwilling to leave me, things must be even worse than I feared. "We'll take the truck and drive to the back of the utility room. I should be able to get close enough."
"Past the fountain with the peeing boy?"
"Yeah," he chuckles at the unsophisticated yet accurate name I gave the statue.
"It will muck up the garden."
"I don't care," he shrugs. "I'll fix it. It's important that we get the lights on and make sure that nobody is hiding in here." David runs his eyes over my face, shaking the flashlight when its light dims again. "I'll lose my mind if something happens to you, Bluna."
I almost giggle at the muck-up he is making of my name, but his eyes, dark in the gloom, are boring into mine with such startling intensity that I can only stare back at him, laying a hand against his chest, feeling the strong rhythm of his heart. This is real. David is real. Everything is going to be fine. There were no people here. Nobody dragged me down the stairs. That man, as frightening as he was, wasn't real. This man is real.
Holding the flashlight out in front of him, David leads me by the hand into the short, black corridor and the kitchen beyond. He tries all the light switches on our route, and I can hear them click, but not even the kitchen lights up in its familiar warmth. We pause at the back door for David to grab his truck keys from the key cabinet and to pull on our shoes, David his boots, and I my flip-flops.
I regret not having any rain protection while we dash the couple of steps to the truck and am sublimely relieved when David helps me into the cab and I can pull the door shut. It is cold in the vehicle, but it is dry.
"If I skirt past that way," he explains, indicating the start of the orchard when he is finally seated beside me in the cab. "I could drive through those wild bushes between the orchard and the pond without doing too much damage to the garden. I'm planning on clearing those bushes; they're mostly weeds anyway. I think the truck will make it."
I'll admit that I'm surprised, more than relieved when the truck starts on the first try. The way things are going, I really expected the engine to award us with a dry click, the way my car did all those years ago when I first arrived here in the land of true bliss and absolute horror.
I'm shivering, but it is not just because of the cold. Getting dragged downstairs by your ankle to witness an execution does not do one's mental health any favours, and mine has been shaky for a while now.
"It's going to be alright, Bena... Lulu... I won't let anything happen to you," David mutters, stroking his fingers through my rain-spattered hair, and his touch spreads warmly through my entire body, unwinding the cords of fear spun around my heart.
"I don't want anything to happen to you either," I assure him, laying the palm of my hand against his cheek," Da... dy?"
"Daddy?" he laughs, giving me a startled look. The man probably thinks that my head bounced on one step too many... it probably did...
"Yeah, it sounded better in my head. I was trying to join you in the name game, but I guess I'll just stick with David if that's okay with you."
David's warm laughter bubbles around me in the small space of the truck's cab, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to recall the terrifying face of my assailant and the nightmare trip from the landing to the foyer.
It couldn't have been real, could it? This is real. The rain, the warm, gentle man with the tenderness-filled eyes glistening in the darkness between lightning flashes. Yes, this is real. The fear is not. The panic is not. The dangerous man is not.
"I'm sorry, Luna, I keep on messing it up. I constantly want to call you Belle, and when I redirect to Luna, I get lost somewhere."
"It's okay, David," I smile. "Call me whatever you're comfortable with but calling me Luna earlier really did help me to know it was you speaking to me." I shiver as a horrible memory of the moments when I thought it was David being thrown from the balcony slices through my mind, choking me up, and just like that, the fear is back.
"Okay, uhm... Baby?" David surprises me out of the building panic, and I pull a face, pressing my lips together.
"Babies wear diapers and get fed through a teat... and they can't have any ice cream... or chicken pie," I inform him, sounding a little breathless to my own ears. "I don't want to be a baby."
"Okay, that's a no, then," David laughs, putting the truck in gear and carefully starting the tricky navigation past the washing line to the edge of the orchard. The rain makes it hard to see more than a few metres in front of the vehicle. "How about Honey Pop?"
"What?" I laugh.
"Cupcake," he says when we reach the orchard, and he turns the nose of the truck to point towards the utility room. "Candy Cane... Peanut Brittle... Jelly Bean." I listen to him naming sweet snacks while the truck ploughs over densely growing cobblers' pegs and thistle shrubs, bumping, rattling and bouncing along until we finally stop at the side of the utility room. "Oh, I know!" David grins, cutting the engine. "Sugarplum! They're my favourites."
"Seriously, Dude, are you having some kind of sugar withdrawal, or are you just listing all the snacks you crave?"
"No, but I would really love Sugarplums right now. I could've made us some if we had walnuts, honey, dates, apricots, and orange zest... and sugar." And there I was, my imagination only able to conjure up the real fruit version of sugar plums; so much for the only healthy option on his list.
"We have sugar," I grimace, really sad now that we don't have any of the other ingredients. "Oh! And honey!"
"Could probably make some brittle toffee..." he grins. "Would you like to be called Brittle Toffee?"
"Keep working on it," I giggle when David turns to face me, and he laughs with me, his eyes caressing my face with so much tenderness it is causing me to become light-headed.
"No matter what I call you, Lunabelle Emmerson, I really like you," he smiles and, leaning over, he gently slides his hand behind my head and drags me closer to lay his lips against mine in a tender kiss. I go willingly, savouring the rain-coolness of his lips and the strength of the arms wrapping around me as I deepen the kiss, enjoying the breathless moments of intimacy.
"I'm so glad nothing happened to you," I whisper against his lips when he draws away from me. The skin of his stubbled cheek feels moist against my fingertips, and at first, I think it is because of the rain, but when I sit back in my seat, I realise that I've left a trail of blood behind. Seeing it drags me back into the hell we're in, and I vaguely remember clutching at his shirt and jacket before. I cannot see any blood on it, not in this weak light.
"I'll hurry," he tells me, leaving the engine running and the lights on to show him the way. Getting out of the truck, he rushes into the rain and around the corner of the small building to its door before I can wipe away the blood on his cheek. It doesn't matter. The rain will wash it off. If only it could wash away the solid lump of dread that settled in my stomach.
Lying back in my seat, I run my eyes up the ivy-clad sides of the utility building to the large bay windowed alcove above it. The windows peeking between the leaves are black, as are all the other windows of the living area I can see from here. From my current position, the place is just a house, a rather pretty one, not the home of horrors where I helplessly got dragged down creaking wooden stairs.
The man who attacked me took his time dragging me along, enjoying my feeble attempts to grab onto the floor and the passing supports of the stair railing, relishing my fear. His sadistic enjoyment probably stopped me from being seriously injured physically, but the scars it left on my psyche are deep, bleeding gashes, and I can feel the fear building again, the panic coiling nauseatingly in my gut.
The darkness is cloying and thick all around the truck, and through the pouring rain, loudly drumming on the roof, I can only make out the vague outlines of the boy statue in the pond near me and the edges of the utility building, standing in the black shrubs around it.
Isn't David staying away for too long? How long can it take to flip a switch? What if someone waited for him in the dark little room? Fear of losing David outweighs the fear of something happening to me, and I have my hand on the handle of my door when I'm startled by watery light spilling through the rain, washing the pond and the statue in an ethereal glow.
I tilt my head to look up at the house again, and the windows are no longer black. Did we turn on the light in the living room? It might also be the light in the foyer. I don't care who or what turned on which lights; I am enjoying the way it is chasing away the shadows, filling the world with some warmth.
David appears from around the corner of the utility room, running towards the truck, and I heave a sigh of relief, dropping my head back against the headrest, flinching slightly at the sensitivity of my scalp. I suck air into my lungs in a startled gasp when I spot a silhouette in one of the bay windows. Sitting up straight, I try to get my head into a position against the passenger door to get a better look, but there's nothing now, just the thin, gauzy curtain. Is it moving?
It is hard to see anything through the rain, and I'm still feverishly trying to sift between imagination, fear and reality when David starts the truck's engine.
"You okay?" he asks, and I turn to him, unwilling to tell him that I may or may not have imagined seeing someone in the window. I really do not know for sure at all.
"I will be," I shrug and throwing the vehicle into reverse gear, David starts the careful process of retracing his route back to the kitchen door, where he parks a bit closer than he had before and kills the engine.
"I would ask you to wait in the truck while I check out the house, but I don't-."
"No!"
"Think you'll want to do that," he finishes his sentence with a crooked smile and opens his door. I'm jumping out of the truck when he reaches me and encourages me to run for the house while he shuts the door and follows me.
Once we've rid ourselves of our shoes and shook the worst of the rain from our hair, we stand in the brightly lit kitchen, uncertain about what our next steps should be.
"Do you think it is the same thing that happened to me with the crow?" I ask when, making up his mind, David guides me to a seat at the island and finds the first aid kit under the sink. He hurries over and sits down beside me, flicking through the contents, gathering cotton, disinfectant, salve and plasters.
"I don't know," he whispers, using the disinfectant and cotton to clean my scraped-up fingertips gently; he pauses his actions when I wince and waits for me to nod my head in encouragement before he continues. "With the crow, you were just standing there with glassy eyes, you weren't screaming, and you weren't injured. You only started moving when I touched you, and then I was the one injured by the poker."
My eyes involuntarily flit to the tiny cut at his hairline, and I shiver at the awful memory. "Hey, it's not so bad," David assures me, giving my hand a squeeze before he continues his work. "This is worse. You have splinters," he tells me, searching the kit again until he finds the tweezers.
"What I mean is... ouch!" He pulls the tweezers away from my fingertip when I flinch, only starting again once I relax my hand. "If it's the same kind of event, then there's no one in this house with us. It's just me and my ability to sleepwalk... while I'm awake. My skills keep on evolving. The guy is probably also dead and desiccated, just like the crow... no biggy."
David pauses his ministrations, a nasty splinter clamped in the mouth of the tweezer, but this time it is not because I flinched; he is giving me a completely creeped-out look, and I cannot blame him. Do I even hear myself when I speak?
"Okay," I mutter. "That would be a huge biggy..."
Chuckling softly, David picks up the cotton ball again to clean the freshly bleeding finger.
"We should lock the kitchen and just live in here until we can leave the farm," I make an extraordinarily logical suggestion, and I'm a bit upset when David doesn't scoff at my idea or counters it; he merely takes the tube of ointment and starts to apply it on all the cleaned scratches and splinter wounds on my fingers. He is looking uneasy, as though he's actually considering doing that.
"David?" I ask, not enjoying his lengthening silence and the tension in his shoulders. "What are you not telling me?" That draws his attention to me, his head snapping up, his eyes widening as he looks at me.
Yeah, Buddy, I can read you too now!
"There are no muddy prints in the kitchen," he points out, and he's right; there are none; I checked the minute we came inside. "There weren't any in the foyer either when I flashed the light around back there. If there's someone in this house, they're either very good at cleaning up after themselves, or they've been here all along."
I don't like any of those words, and I would like to rewind and have them unsaid, but looking at his face, the flexing of the muscles in his cheek, fear is gripping like a vice around my throat. My flight or fight instincts are on the verge of kicking in once again.
"David, please don't protect me from the truth," I say in a husky voice I hardly recognize. "I don't like surprises."
"I was sleeping, and I woke up because I heard a loud crash. I thought you'd fallen from the stairs leading to the solarium or something and jumped out of bed, but..."
He swallows, concentrating on wrapping a band-aid around one of the worst injuries near the tip of my left middle finger. I focus on the process too; it is so much more comforting to gaze at my hand giving him the finger than it is to look at his tense face.
"I could hear you screaming my name," his voice breaks on the words as if he is dredging up a painful memory, and he stops for a moment to catch his breath, "but I couldn't get the door open."
"It was stuck? Did the wood swell because of the rain?" Many of the doors here tend to stick because of it.
"No," he says, slowly repacking the first aid kit and zipping it shut before he turns his full attention on my face, his mind finally made up to just lay it all out for me. "Someone was pushing from the other side... someone strong."
☼☼☼