Girl Desecrated 1984: Vampires, Asylums and Highlanders, page 14
Duncan and his side-kick, Colin stared back at me. White swirls of thick mist curled around their woolen knickers and hand sewn shoes. Behind them a thick fog rolled across a grey countryside.
Happy to see them, I stepped forward, a cry of welcome upon my lips. They seemed not to see me. They knelt and lifted an unconscious man up out of the thick fog, which swirled away from his back, revealing a shock of dark reddish-brown hair.
Angus.
“What’s happened?” My breath plumed, my voice was strained.
Angus’ head was slumped down, his chin touching his broad chest. His feet trailed uselessly behind him as they dragged him passed me.
“It’s awrite,” Colin grunted, while he struggled to heft his half of Angus’ body. “His blood’s too thick, is all.”
Angus groaned, and Duncan said something in Gaelic and somehow, I understood. He said something about me helping Angus.
“I can’t help him…” I started to protest, wringing my hands helplessly as I followed them.
But Colin and Duncan ignored my protests. They lowered Angus awkwardly to the bed, Colin half falling on top of the Highlander. The mattress ropes groaned under the Scotsmen’s weight, but the coils held. When Angus was settled on his back, the two men pulled their hats off their heads and stood, looking down at their friend.
“What should we do?” I interrupted their moment, which looked dangerously close to a last rites ceremony.
They avoided my eyes. “Only you know what to do, lass.”
“I don’t know anything,” I pleaded with my hands. “I don’t even know why I’m here.”
They backed away from me, their hats crushed against their chests.
“Don’t leave me!” I cried as the two men slipped out through the door and disappeared into the grey mist.
The heavy wooden door slammed shut with a bang that echoed up into the endless ceiling.
“Don’t leave me alone with…” I paused. With what? I cast a furtive look around the room.
A whisper broke the silence, “What name have you taken?”
In a panic, I rushed the last few feet to the door, scrabbling at the iron ring with half frozen fingers. The ring was so cold, it burnt my palm, but I clung stubbornly and pulled. The door groaned at my tugging, but it didn’t give. Not even when I leaned back and dragged on it with all my might.
The man’s voice spoke again, the southern drawl seeming to float down from the darkened ceiling. “I could have saved you, if only you had stopped.”
“Colin! Duncan!” I screamed their names, hammering bruises into my hands with the weathered wood.
I screamed out my fear until my voice was a harsh rasp, but they didn’t come back for me.
I slumped to the floor in despair. I hugged my knees and pulled my long skirt down over my legs, tucking it beneath my cold feet.
Angus lay sprawled on the bed where the men had placed him, his body splayed out like a fallen soldier on a bed twenty feet from me. The cold slate beneath my bent legs sent a bone ache through my limbs. Pressing my back against the door, I slowly pushed myself into a standing position. My knees were shaking as I walked to the bed, and to my Highlander.
It was only ten paces to Angus’ side, but it felt like an eternity was passing. And then, finally, I stood beside the bed looking down on him.
His eyes were closed and his leg hung off the mattress. The edge of his boot heel braced against the floor as if he had just flopped onto his back from a standing position. His white shirt had fallen open. A line of dark auburn hair ran up the centre of his belly just above the waistline of his pants. The man was unconscious but he was alive, his ribs expanding in a slow rhythm.
I wanted to wake him. I wanted him to comfort me.
“Angus?”
His shirt was clean, unstained by blood or dirt or any other signs that would explain the reason for his unconscious state. There were no bruises around his face, no broken angles to his bones. He appeared to be sleeping peacefully in the bed much too small for his size.
His arm slipped to hang down from the mattress, his thick fingers pointing at the stone floor. Beneath the clean white roll of his sleeves, the high windows in the room cast shadows along the muscles of his forearm.
I knew this pose. I knew this flesh.
Angus’ arm was like Adam’s in Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel painting. The image had adorned the first pages of my mother’s Bible. Often when I was locked up and ordered to read the scriptures, I would stare at the picture, memorizing the curves and dips of the muscular limbs. Angus’ hand pointed to the floor just as Adam’s hand stretched out for God’s touch.
It was this arm, this slab of muscle that took my eye and would not let go. The threatening roil in my stomach returned, and I recognized it for what it was. It was hunger. A deep aching, cavernous hunger that only someone who had felt starvation could know.
Now, I wanted something else from Angus.
I knelt at his side as I had knelt by the little altar in my mother’s closet. My hand rode his ribs as they rose with each breath, I leaned into Angus’ arm. His living flesh heated my breast until the fire of it threatened to scorch my heart.
“I have waited for this day,” I whispered, desire growing within me like a dragon’s tongue unfurling.
He groaned and thrashed his head, and the movement affected me like a lover’s touch.
Here was my want. Finally, after all these years, here was the cure to my stomach problems. I licked my mouth.
“I can help you.” My words dripped with invitation.
Angus was beyond answering, beyond making decisions.
At his waist was a dagger, sheathed in a leather belt. I scratched at the leather flap as I would have scratched at the front of his pants. The dagger filled my palm, and I raised my hand into the light streaming from the window far above us.
The blade flashed silver. My hand warmed on the bone handle. I could smell the musk of the animal sacrificed for this knife. I could hear its bleating terror as its blood darkened the soil around its panicking hooves.
I lowered the bleating dagger and slit the soft skin on the inside of Angus’ arm.
Blood welled into a red globe that paused, shimmering for three heartbeats, before it trickled down his warm skin towards his hand. The drop’s journey left a glistening trail of red, until finally, the liquid jewel hung, quivering, on the end of his pointer finger.
My chin trembled in response.
The drop welled, the trickle filling the inside of the globe until it grew too heavy to hold onto his skin.
At the second of its release, I swooped and caught it on my tongue.
The sound of the landlord’s children jumping on the floor above woke me. Groaning, I dragged my cotton-head from the pillow. Sunlight streamed through the window over my head, making me vow to never again fall asleep with the curtain open.
Judging by the strength of the sun, it was late in the morning. I should have felt refreshed, but I didn’t. My joints hurt, my head was a stuffed drum, and my eyes burned.
I shuddered at how real my dream had seemed. If I thought about that now, I would surely go crazy.
Digging in the nightstand with one hand, I found the bottle of pills Casbus had prescribed. The small typed instructions blurred. My hand shook as I twisted the cap. Who cared anyways how many pills Casbus thought I should take? I was done with fear. The doctor had promised these would control my delusions. I figured I only needed one more to keep the crazy at bay.
Popping the tablet under my tongue, I lay back down in the bed. It tasted bitter, but I hoped it would work faster if I let it dissolve under my tongue. Staring at the stained ceiling tiles, I imagined the pill’s magic running down my throat with each swallow. A sleepy feeling of calm weighed on my lids. But if I didn’t get up, I’d fall asleep again, and the nightmare would come back.
I threw off the quilts, and staggered out of bed.
CHAPTER 14: ALL ROADS LEAD TO ROME
~
IT’S AMAZING WHAT A LITTLE sunlight can do. My apartment looked much different than it had the night before. The structure was the same, but things which had seemed threatening in the night looked harmless, now.
Except for my bathroom, which had never been normal. My kitchen was flanked by two doors. The one on the left led to a toilet and sink, and the one on the right led to a shower stall that jutted out into the landlord’s side of the basement as if it were an afterthought. It was literally a cage of steel hiding behind a door.
Hammering sounds on the other side of this door warned me the landlord was in his basement, working. There was no roof over the shower stall and sometimes when I showered, I got the creepiest feeling he was teetering on a stool, stealing looks at my naked body.
I decided to skip the shower. Quickly sponging off using the bathroom sink, I donned the same jeans I’d worn the night before to avoid creating unnecessary laundry. Then grabbed a green off-shoulder shirt and slipped on matching flats.
I needed a smoke, badly, but held to my rule of food first. After a few hurried mouthfuls of granola cereal, the kettle started to shriek.
The sound startled me. I quickly shut it off, noticing right away the hammering in the basement had stopped.
The landlord knew I was up.
Suddenly, the air seemed hot and oppressive, sticking to the insides of my lungs and gumming up my thinking. It was an old feeling, pinned to the inside of my rib cage by another man. But the landlord could resurrect it, especially when he arrived unexpectedly to leer and try to convince me to consider sex-trade, rental options. I had to get outside before he trapped me in my apartment.
Taking my teacup, a smoke and a lighter, I made a quick exit up the concrete steps and out into the sunny, fall day.
“It’s about time, lassie,” an impatient voice said, when my head crested street level.
I started, spilling hot tea on my hand.
Angus was sitting on the stone fence that separated my landlady’s flowerbed from the lawn. He looked unbelievably handsome in a cream knit sweater that pulled over his pecs.
“No need to be fearful.” He stood and leisurely stretching out the kinks in his shoulders.
Instinctively, I stepped away from his size and took a good look at his shadow. It was brown and textured looking, like an antique photo. My shadow beside his stood out as a brilliant red silhouette of my body. To Angus, both shadows would look black. He, like everyone else, saw the shadow world in shades of grey.
I ran my glance up his body to his eyes, crinkling in amusement at my discomfort.
“How do you know where I …” I tried to sound outraged but I got caught up in the patch of reddish chest hairs peeking above the V-neck collar of his sweater, “…where I live?”
“Yer raven-haired friend thought ye might like company with yer breakfast,” he grinned down at me.
Unbelievable! This was Lene’s payback for the attention I’d taken for myself at the bar.
He turned his wrist and looked at his watch. “Though, it’s too late fur breakfast, now.”
I said nothing.
Cold sober and on my landlord’s doorstep, I was a different girl than the one Angus had met at the Albion. As well, my impulses were reined in by the meds. I wouldn’t be so quick to throw myself into a risky situation.
I set my teacup on the stone edging and leaned into my lighter flame to buy myself a moment to think.
Blowing the smoke out of the side of my mouth, I said, “Lene was wrong” in my best James Dean.
Angus put his boot up on the stone beside my teacup and leaned on his knee. “Hmm,” he nodded at me, as if we shared a secret. “Sae that’s how it is.”
I gingerly lifted my teacup away from the steel-capped toe of his shit-kicker.
He raised an eyebrow at my discomfort. “Well, Ah’m here now. Might as well stay.”
My heart picked up speed as I imagined what “staying” might mean. I didn’t know the man from Adam, but I knew men. More men than I should have known. Even though Angus was being a little more forward than I liked, I was secretly happy he had found a way to reconnect with me.
Angus watched the thoughts cross my face. “That’s settled, then.”
Taking his foot from the half wall, he placed his hand on my back and guided me back down the cellar stairs. I hesitated just inside the door, remembering my promise to Patrick. Angus turned sideways to get between me and the couch, making no effort to avoid brushing his chest against the front of my body. The scent of cedar wafted up into my nostrils, and I almost leaned in and sniffed him.
He kept going, oblivious to the effect he had on me. My hands hung at my sides, the smoke from my cigarette rising to heat my knuckles, as he walked through my dingy, private space.
My entire home was one big open room, entirely visible from the doorway, except the inside of the washroom and the shower stall. I could imagine how it looked to him—a man of the world.
On the far left, my little white fridge, which was Mayberry old, had one of those rounded tops and a yank down handle on the front door. It could never hold enough food to feed a man like Angus. Hell, he probably ate steak for breakfast, lunch, and dinner to feed those muscles of his.
The guy was like a shiny new coin and it made everything around him look old and ratty. I was embarrassingly aware of the duct tape repairs on my vinyl kitchen chairs and the worn armrests on the grey couch that had been part of my meager inheritance from my grandmother. The more he looked around, the more uncomfortable I became.
“Nae gadgets?” Angus asked me from the living room which was sectioned off from the “bedroom” by the couch.
“I’m sensitive to noise.”
I wasn’t about to tell him voices delivered messages to me through electronics, and after last night, apparently without electronics.
The cassette tape… How could I have forgotten about it until now? My eyes darted to the kitchen table, but it wasn’t there.
“Hmm.” Angus seemed to be thinking about something as he moved to my bookshelf and ran his fingers along the frayed cloth covers of my classic book collection.
“Lots of books, though.”
It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t answer.
I tipped my head trying to peer in the dark corners under the table, but I was too far away to be sure the cassette wasn’t under there.
Angus nodded, as if I had spoken. Then he moved away from me to the opposite side of my antique bed. The ornate wooden headboard was as high as Angus’ shoulder. There was a crack traveling down the centre of the carved swirls, for the wood had been dried brittle by a century of use.
Had I put the tape in my night table? No, I had meant to bring it to Casbus, as “proof”. Only, I didn’t think I had touched it.
Angus stared down at my jumbled sheets, and I forgot the cassette as I blushed at his scrutiny.
While he studied my bed, I studied his handsome profile. With my eyes, I traced the line that flowed from his thick hairline over his intelligent forehead, then down his fine, straight nose. From there, it rippled over his full lips with sharp edges to fall into the dip just before the trim beard covering the strong jut of his chin.
God, he was so sexy. I couldn’t figure out why he was attracted to me. Or maybe he wasn’t. I’d never seen a man so interested in furnishings before. Angus dragged his hand slowly across my pillow.
“Thinking of suffocating me?” I baited, wondering if he wasn’t a serial killer, after all.
“That’s nae what Ah was thinking about.”
I could feel the heat of his gaze from across the room, and he knew it. He held my eyes long enough to make me squirm.
How the hell I was going to keep my resolution and resist this man? My reactions were completely at his mercy, but he didn’t take advantage of my lack of control. Instead, he moved into the neutral space of the kitchen, which was two steps from the bed and pointed at my teacup
“If yer not gonna make me tea, Ah’ll have tae drink yers,” he smirked, revealing that dimple I was growing to love.
Serial killers don’t have dimples, do they?
As I passed him, Angus took my teacup from me, his fingers brushing mine in the exchange. The touch caused my blood to simmer, but I kept moving. My typical pattern would have been to throw myself into his arms with abandon, just to put an end to the sexual tension. I didn’t dare stop.
At the counter, I ran some water on my cigarette and left the butt steaming in the stained sink. Smoking in my apartment was becoming too common. I’d have to get tough on my rules. But maybe not today.
Filling the dented kettle, gave me a chance to gather my wits. I placed the kettle on the element, and Angus stepped forward until he was standing right behind me. He slipped his arm past my waist to turn on the stove element. I was trapped.
His deep voice warmed my ear. “Ah was sorely disappointed when ye ran off last night.”
He wasn’t touching me, but I could feel the heat radiating off his body, and it was making my skin electric. If I turned my face to the side, our lips would meet. I closed my eyes.
His voice was seductively low. “Now’s yer chance tae finish what ye started, lass.”
Oh, how I wanted to, but his “owe-me” tone had to be dealt with.
I twisted my body to face him, making sure not to touch him, anywhere. The oven handle pressed painfully into my tailbone. He didn’t step back.
“And what would that be, Highlander?”
“What?” He considered my annoyed expression and grinned. “Suddenly braw?”
Putting my hand on his chest, I tried to move him back. He was as solid as stone, and like a fool, I stopped pushing, just to feel his heart beat under my palm.
“Seems tae me, we were making progress.” The deep purr of his voice rumbled along my nerves, tickling me in sensitive places.
He looked down at my hand with his eyebrow raised. I couldn’t take it from his chest. Covering my hand with his, he held it tight against his heart, and I languished in his warm calloused grip.
