The Glass Secret (Chain of Secrets), page 35
There was no doubt, while I wrote, sometimes, I felt a breath tickle against the back of my neck. I could tell that it was a masculine presence. I knew this because when I felt goose bumps, I could detect the raw scent of a man. His spirit seemed to permeate into the stillness of my bedroom at night, and I could hear his whispers trailing in the wind. Yet he kept his distance from me, hidden in the realm of his world.
The very first time I felt his presence inside my home, it took me back to thoughts of my childhood invisible friend, Storm. Could Storm have returned? It didn’t make sense. Impossible. Storm was a voice in my head. This presence was on the outside trying to get in. It was more like the experience that I had felt in the old School in St. Augustine years ago. Yet, this particular time, the experience was even more powerful, more concrete and undeniably more intriguing.
Besides, Storm would not lurk around in the shadows...he was noisy, annoying and intrusive. This presence was patient, mature and simply mysterious!
I didn’t fear his stirring about, as had the previous tenants Dr. Piccart spoke of did. I felt he was keeping me company while I slept. I grew comfortable knowing that he was nearby me.
Once, when I was just about to sleep, I felt the mattress bend behind me, and a warm feeling pressed against my body. I swear I felt a hand slip around my waist. Very, very slowly I moved my hand into his, and we laced our fingers together. I was afraid to speak or even breathe, lest fearing that a ripple of the wind would steal his company from the lonely soul I had become...
I communicated, “You are welcome to stay, but please never scare me by allowing me to see you.”
I felt as if he understood me, and we seemed to have a silent agreement. I began to move around freely during his visits, not understanding what he wanted from me, yet feeling certain that he would never come out of the darkness and into the light to join me. Until then, I was at peace with his occurrences, his companionship and his nonphysical state.
-54-
One Dark Night
Night fell in Paris. Darkness encompassed the walls beyond the brownstone. I felt the presence of someone in the hall outside my flat. Something was wrong. The energy I felt was intense. I ran to my bedroom and locked the door.
I grabbed my phone and stabbed in Nuilley’s number. “Hello, you’ve reach Nui, leave a short message...think green and don’t use up all my space. Tanks.” Tanks? That sounded a little too cutesy for Nuilley’s style. Something was up with her.
“Nui, call me.” I tried not to let the tremor in my voice release. I hit the end call button. “Crap...who else can I call?” I whispered to myself.
Since I’d been in Paris working on an intense writing project, I didn’t get out much to make other friends. I spent most of my time with my characters...too bad I couldn’t call one of them to chat with at 12:30am. One of my hot heroes would surely have calmed my nerves.
I dialed my parent’s house then quickly hung up before it started ringing. Crap, it was 6:30am there. Calling them at that time would have been alarming. If my dad would have answered he would’ve have argued, why are you in Paris anyway? He was so against me going there alone. Every time he voiced his disapproval I reminded him I had Nuilley. She lived a mile away. That didn’t work. He didn’t count having Nuilley in my life as a safety factor.
It was time to put on my big girl pants. Typically I didn’t scare easily. Being afraid right now was partially my own fault. I’d invited a few things, okay men, into my life that I knew nothing about. Usually my instincts about people were pretty accurate. I had never feared Rain or my secret admirer; not to mention, the presence I felt lurking around either.
Without giving further thought to the eerie energy I had felt, I brushed away all fears, took a few Tylenol pm pills to help me sleep, nothing strong, and grabbed the romance novel I’d been reading. What had probably put me on edge was the storm that was brewing up outside and knowing I was the only person in the big empty brownstone. Dr. Piccart’s two-month vacation had turned into three months. Things must have been going well with him and his lady friend.
After I had read a few chapters, I reached up and shut off the lamp. Before I knew it I had fallen into a deep sleep. I didn’t think anything could disturb me. Between the pills and pure exhaustion, I was down for the count.
That night the dreams I’d been having about Rain returned. He was smiling down on me. There was a halo of light behind him. He was waving to me. I tried to walk toward him, but I couldn’t move, something was holding me back.
“Brielle, don’t look back, come to me.” His voice was so clear.
“I can’t move,” I cried. Something was wrong again. It was another disturbing dream.
After my secret admirer disappeared, I began having repetitive nightmares about Rain, in which, we were enclosed by a midnight sky, and he lay dying in my arms and then, I saw myself falling over and over off the edge of the earth. Fortunately, I would wake up before I hit the bottom of the dark abyss. I felt this was symbolic of my encounter with him.
These dreams alone gave me reason enough to keep the lights on while I slept. So, I kept my subconscious thus secured within the fortress of my boudoir, with a simple light bulb as my asylum. It seemed to work, the nightmares about Rain faded. Leaving the light on ensured my fail-safe plan to get Rain out of my head forever. At least, out of my dreams.
In hindsight, I know now, the presence of the otherworldly man saw this as his advantage to reveal himself. I felt his somber energy begin to shift when my nightmares about Rain ceased. He wanted more than to stay hidden between my world and the enigma of his world.
Some time ago, in fact, it was before our pact, before the nightmares about Rain began, that I felt he might manifest himself physically. That was when I actually started sleeping full-time with the bedside lamp on. This was when I learned that light was his kryptonite, forcing him to retreat to his dark origin, wherever that might be.
Despite the pact that came later, leaving the lights on assured me that he would stay in the darkness. Like a child comforted by a nightlight, my lamp was working double duty: saving me from the nightmares about Rain and from seeing with my own eyes, the otherworldly entity.
I remember that night so clearly. There were no footsteps that entered into my flat, no doors opened, and no physical point of his entry.
The rain and the wind, of that February storm, were his catalysts into my reality and woke me from a shallow sleep as he had done many times before.
But this time something felt different, he wanted more than I could have ever imagined. I had become the source of his existence, his hunger and his reason for being. I couldn’t see him, but I knew he was there like a predator patiently waiting for my moment of weakness to manifest himself and ravish me.
My keen sense of smell alerted me as it had before when he made his covert visits. His signature scent being raw, beastly and yet, intoxicating, surrounded me more powerfully than it had ever done before.
I felt him on the edge of the night; the darkness encircled me. He was restless, like a menacing wolf, waiting to devour its prey. And, unlike his visits before, it was the first time I truly feared the energy he exuded. It was powerful, I wondered if his physical form may be the darkest epitome of the ‘beast’ from Beauty and the Beast, if such a creature really existed.
His spirit was swift, like a stealth jet, granting him the confidence to infiltrate the confinements of my room without clearance to do so. Like the beast that lives in every man wanting to break all the rules, he was about to do just that.
I was defeated by my own absent-mindedness that night. I had forgotten to leave the lamp my bedside on during the storm, or perhaps, it was the storm that had knocked out the electricity, rendering me open to his invasion.
I reached for the lamp switch, but exhaustion prevented me from doing so. I was defenseless. My arm would not even move! Something was holding me back. It was the same force I had felt in my dream.
I sensed him moving closer to me. I wanted to scream, to run; instead I was frozen, curled up into a ball of fear. On one hand, I wanted to shut my eyes; I was too terrified to capture even a glimpse of his physical form and, on the other hand, I wanted to see him face to face. In order to conquer your fears, you must recognize them—I had read that somewhere. I was about to do just that. Then it struck me that he may, in fact, be faceless, which has caused him to stay hidden all these months.
Instinctively, my eyes closed when the mental image of him donning a Dorian Gray-like face flooded my mind. I was behaving cowardly, so unlike me, I am a mystery writer for Christ-sakes. But, for whatever reason, lately I had been seriously spooked. I tried to overcome this recently by reading tales by Oscar Wilde and Stephen King’s masterpieces, to no avail.
The storm outside threw wicked sheets of rain, pounding against the old copper roof like bullets. Blasts of lightning flashed behind my clenched eyelids. I wondered if the lightning rod on the building’s roof would catch and disperse the lightning strikes harmlessly into the ground.
I heard a sound that was more physical than audible, unlike before. He was inside! The wind carried him through the barely open window into my room. I was panic-stricken of what he was in his hungry state. I’d denied him for weeks, not knowing how to put a name to his existence. His energy hovered over me, an entity, beaming down on his prey. The thin summer gown I wore became instantly soaked by the cold sweat of my terror.
-55-
In Awe...
I opened my eyes a slight fraction, determined to espy what I had dreaded. It wasn’t that I was ever immensely afraid of him. He had never given me a reason to feel that he was dangerous or evil. It was more because I was afraid of what he would look like.
In the shadows, I could see him poised at the foot of my bed. I pretended to be asleep; my lashes veiled my vision with blurry lines. A heady sensation dulled my thoughts.
The streetlamp backlit his broad shoulders; they sat sturdy upon a lean frame. In the shadows of the light, I caught a glimpse of his face for the first time. I relaxed, but only a little. He was not the monster I had imagined. In fact, he was stunningly handsome in a somewhat unusual gothic way, as roguish faces so often are disarming. He was compellingly attractive.
The storm was directly overhead, lightning flashed, revealing his unshaven and chiseled face. On the crest of the darkness and in just a sliver of light, I could see his eyes cutting into the blackened room, looking for what, I did not know, I supposed it was me. And then, his eyes flashed upon my limp still figure. His pupils were dark pools of dilation, stirring with fire.
My lashes fluttered, for I wanted him to think I was just awakening; fully opening my eyes, they locked with his—the color was deep, darker than gray with specks of black. I would have recognized his eyes anywhere, even in a dream. They were familiar, his eyes—was he Rain, was this all just a manifestation of missing Rain? It couldn’t be, he was something beyond a mortal man.
I wished he were Rain. However, he was not. It bothered me that I was equally as drawn to him, as I had been to Rain. Who was he? This man—no, more like a godly beast, he was not of this world as Rain was.
For a split second an emotion of loyalty for Rain passed through me. Why? Despite my momentary thought, my lustful eyes instantaneously betrayed the feeling.
His alluring good looks suddenly awakened me below the waist. God, I was shameless. My heartbeat steadily rose as my fearful anticipation filled me with excitement and expectation. What did he want with me?
What if—could it be—him, the unrestrained mystery man that taunted me from the balcony when he had caught me there, a voyeur myself, unscrupulously spying on my neighbors. He had to be the voice from the balcony or the otherworldly entity that had been keeping me company. Were they one in the same?
I was prepared to face my intruder straight on. I looked hard into his eyes and when doing so, I recognized that they were the same eyes that I had seen, but only for a second, in the reflection of the lobby mirror that night while watching my neighbors. I had to hear his voice to be certain if it was him or not.
I heard an imperceptible sound, quickly recognizing it was my own breath panting above the whisper. My thoughts at once returned to the devilishly handsome man before me. The blue-black sheen of his long tresses was as dark as the ebony ink stains, dripping into his eyes. My eyes dropped to his mouth.
He smiled without equivocation, filled with lust and inflamed with a strand of sentiment, relocating into an intense stare that radiated from his sexy hooded eyes. The aphrodisiac of his charismatic gaze leaped into my heart and then traveled downward through my body to land…there. Hello! My Inner Siren cried out to be enraptured by this unknown man! She spared no inhibitions. Any fear that I had felt diffused when his lips curled up into the most lustful smile. I was wet with arousal before I could return a smile.
“Don’t be afraid of me. I am not here to hurt you.” His voice was penetrating. “You summoned me here...the light, you turned it off.”
“No. I-I—you.” I could barely speak my thoughts. “Are you—the...you’ve been watching me. But, I thought you were a—I mean, I have sensed your presence here with me. I felt you watching me while I slept. So, you’re the one who has been causing my constant state of goose bumps, huh? I’ve felt you here for months, but you stayed hidden in the shadows, just watching me. Oh jeez. I can’t believe this is happening,” I murmured, repeating my thoughts over and over to him.
He was unbelievable in so many ways, but he stood there visible, as plain as day. My lips trembled when I spoke, and my palms profusely sweated. I shimmied up against my pillow, trying to gain some leverage to a sitting position.
“Yes, I am the one,” he simply said, pausing, then added, “But much longer than months.”
“Who...what are you? How long.” I swallowed hard, and didn’t realize I had been holding my breath.
“For many months, years now, Brielle, I’ve been with you.” The sound of his voice was magnetic and permeated through me like a bass drum.
“Months, years.” I timidly repeated him. A hint of fear left me speechless.
My heart began to pound frantically. I couldn’t think about how many years, days, minutes or even seconds that he confessed to watching me. It felt as if a furnace was turned on, burning my flesh from the inside out. Definitely, in a good way! Beads of sweat glistened on my brow.
“It’s okay, Brielle.” He reassured me.
As we spoke he inched closer and closer to me.
“You know my name—of course you do, you have been stalking me. But, who are you?” I bemused, tilting my head to one side.
“You summoned me here...don’t you recognize me?” He seemingly teased me.
“Your voice...I know your voice,” I said in a raspy tone, almost out of breath. I closed my eyes. Yes, I did know his voice, how could I forget!
My memory reeled back to the night on the balcony, the night I spied on my neighbors. A fleeting heat of embarrassment gushed through me. I certainly didn’t want to bring up that night. But, I knew...he was also the company I’d been feeling, and watching me, constantly. This gorgeous entity before me and the ambiguous voice from the balcony were definitely one in the same.
His eyes continued to adore me as I reflected. The many signs of his constant presence replayed in my mind, he was the one that had caused the spine-tingling chills, and the things that went bump in the night. All results of him lurking around.
I wrinkled up my nose, bit my bottom lip, and flashed my eyes upward and nodded to him, confirming that everything was beginning to make sense.
He mused, in regards to my revelation of him. “I am pleased you remember.”
“How could I not—” My words caught in my throat. He was controlling the conversation as he did the night on the staircase. I was silent for a long moment, absorbing his voice. I needed to reorganize my scattered thoughts. I was flustered and impassioned all at once by the sound of his husky voice and hypnotic energy swarming between us.
“You—I am confused, you took the books, and left me flowers. Right?” I asked, collecting all my thoughts. He nodded. “Why did you stay hidden? Why didn’t you tell me where you went? I was worried about you. Wait. I guess if you’re my secret admirer you didn’t go anywhere because you are also the gho—” I paused. Was he really the ghost too that I’d been feeling? But the cookies, a ghost can’t eat. At least I didn’t think so—fuck, maybe they could. It was time to ask some questions—more questions. “What are these years that you speak of?” I asked formally, trying to quiet my adrenaline, so that I could carry on a conversation.
“I am the one who holds you at night, when you fear to fall asleep alone. I’ve been waiting for so long to be with you. May I touch your hand, now that you have seen me?” he requested, with a hint of respectful reservation. His eyes strayed toward my breasts, then to my hand. My chest rising and falling. I inhaled deeply in long shuddered sighs of fearful excitement.
“Can you touch me? Uh...I don’t know. I’m still trying to figure out who—,” I paused. “Never mind,” I said. I almost asked him if he was my childhood invisible friend. This man—presence, or whoever he was—was absolutely breathtaking. There was no way I was going to spoil things by bringing up anyone from my past, including Storm, at least not at the moment. There would be plenty time for picking his brain later.
I reached out to touch him, but before I could make contact with him I began to tremble.
He took my hand in his and kissed it, dragging his lips along my arm and back around to my wrist. A quiet breath shuddered through him as he inhaled my scent. I could not pull away when he leaned in to kiss my forehead. His lips were moist and tender, coursing his energy through my veins.
Oh Lord, my body felt drunken and languid under his spell.
