Page 49 of Call Off the Dark

“Why?” Isaac seemed genuinely curious.

She gently hit her hand on the top of the quilt, and in the candlelight, little dust bunnies rose up.

“Oh, that’s fine,” he said. “I’ve been sleeping under the stars most nights. This is downright luxurious.”

“There are extra blankets here,” Helen said, turning to the closet. “Let’s just swap it out, and if you get cold . . .”

She parted the clothing on the hangers, a jumble of extra pants and shirts, then stumbled backward in terror. A knife slashed out at her, making a terrible sound as it sliced the air. She felt it hiss by the front of her chest, its glittering blade missing by millimeters.

Helen’s teeth snapped together as she slammed back into Isaac.

“Woah,” he said, steadying her.

Heartbeat still wild, mind still racing, she shook her head. Already, the knife that had ripped through the air in front of her had turned into a shadowy and vague perception, not something truly there.

Isaac asked, “Are you okay?”

Breathless, Helen clutched at the front of her dress. No, she wasn’t. For a moment, there in the back of the closet, she had seen the masked man who had destroyed everything that fateful night in Seattle.

“What is it?” Isaac’s hands moved up and down her arms, feather light, comforting.

Slowly, Helen became aware that her body was pressed against Isaac’s, her back to his front. She stepped forward, and he let go of her arms. She turned to face him. She couldn’t explain this any more than she could explain the disturbing woman she had seen in the kitchen. Since moving to the farmhouse, she hadn’t had any hallucinations or delusions. Not since the city. And in the city, it hadn’t been scary because it had always been Tyler. The postman’s face would melt away and there was Tyler, asking her to sign for a package. Those visions hadn’t scared her so much as broken her. Yes, she’d feared the masked man, but she’d never seen him anywhere, not until the day she’d come face-to-face again with him in the flesh. But never a hallucination.

Helen reached out and parted the clothing again, and this time all she saw was the back wall of the closet.

“Nothing. I’m just a little on edge tonight,” she said. “I thought I saw a mouse.”

“I scared you when I showed up here,” Isaac said. “It’s my fault.”

“You’re right. It’s your fault.” She said it playfully, not because she felt playful but because she wanted him to believe she did.

He smiled softly as she retrieved a blanket and a folded towel from the closet. She handed them to him.

“Can I make it up to you?” he asked.

“Possibly.”

“Okay. How?”

There was no suggestion in his tone whatsoever, and yet Helen suddenly imagined herself in his embrace. She imagined herself pushed against the wall right here and now, and then she saw in her mind’s eye the time she’d had sex with Tyler in the bed and breakfast, the voices of other guests just beyond the paper-thin walls, and she momentarily remembered the way Wade’s arms had wrapped around her when he lifted her in the air in the early days and how that weightless feeling had made her temporarily forget that there had ever been bed and breakfasts with little angel statues outside the window. She imagined those little statues crumbling now, their faces and wings the first to go.

Isaac was no longer smiling. He was studying her now, as if he were aware that her thoughts were churning out of control.

Helen said, “No, I’m just glad you’re here. It’s nice to meet someone from Wade’s family. There are more blankets in there if you get cold. Where’s your stuff?”

“I don’t have any stuff.”

She didn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to her that it was odd for a traveling man to show up with no traveling bags. “No suitcase? How did you get here? Drive?”

“I’ve been hitchhiking.”

“People still do that?”

“People don’t. I do.”

“You’re Jack Kerouac.” She had no idea if Jack Kerouac had been a hitchhiker, but it seemed like a good guess for a writer of the Beat Generation. Plus she wanted to know if Isaac was well read—the first of many little tests she was suddenly prepared to give him.

“Yeah, except Jack Kerouac didn’t get mugged, did he?”