A scratching at the window made him shiver. Snow and ice against the glass-he told himself it had to be that. Not the things he didn't like to think about, didn't usually allow himself to remember. Not the things that slipped their icy hands right through the screen and dragged little children to their deaths.
"Get it out of your head," he said to himself, a whisper in the dark.
Please, Jake. I'm afraid.
The words rose as if from his dreams, just as much inside his head as his own voice. Twisting under the covers, shoving himself against the wall, he turned to face the rest of the room.
Isaac stood six feet away, just as icy blue and dead as he'd been in the dream.
Jake screamed …
… And started awake, gasping.
"Holy shit," he muttered. "Ohfuck ohfuck."
He sat up in bed, morning sunlight streaming in through the windows, melting snow and ice dripping from the roof outside, falling past his window. Just a dream, he reassured himself. A dream within a dream. He laughed uneasily but he was unconvinced, glancing around the sun-soaked bedroom in search of dead boys in the shadows.
The cobwebs of dreams were still in his head and it took him several long moments and deep breaths to dispel them. He felt the chill in the room and the softness of the sheets. He rubbed his eyes, waking further, and became aware of the cottony film inside his mouth. Morning breath. Dragon breath, his mom had called it when he and Isaac were little. That was definitely not the kind of detail that usually populated his dreams.
"Okay," he said. "Not a dream."
Needing to relieve his bladder, Jake threw his sheets back and started to climb out of bed.
"Is it really you?" a small voice asked.
Jake froze. Heart pounding, he turned to look at the open doorway to his bedroom. In the hallway just outside the room stood a small boy who was not his brother, Isaac. Perhaps ten-the same age Isaac had been at the time of his death-the boy had dark blond hair and impossibly blue eyes. His face was smeared with dirt and his nose and mouth were caked with dried blood, swollen and on the way to a serious bruising. He had no jacket and his clothes were torn and dirty.
"Jake?" the little boy said, his voice resonating in the bedroom, a plaintive sound that put the strangest thoughts into his head.
"What are you doing, kid?" Jake asked, grabbing the jeans he'd left crumpled on the floor and sliding into them. "You can't just come into somebody's-"
"Is it really you?" the boy interrupted. He stepped into the room, flinching from the bright sunlight.
A shiver went through Jake. Surreal. Maybe his nightmares were just lingering, but the kid's voice sounded familiar.
"What are you doing in here, kid?" he asked. "You can't just walk into somebody's house. And what happened to your face?"
His memory flashed back to the night before. He'd thought he had seen someone at the edge of the woods during the storm. Standing before him was an explanation.
"How did you-" he started.
"Jake, please," the boy said, his upper lip quivering as tears began to spill from his eyes. "Is it really you? Don't you … don't you know me?"
All the breath went out of Jake. The winter chill in the house sank to his bones. That voice.
"No way … " Jake said. "No fucking way. Who put you up to this you, kid? Tell me right now and you won't be in trouble. You tell me-"
The little boy-this blond boy with the unfamiliar face but the voice Jake remembered too well-shushed him.
"Please," the boy said, glancing around nervously. He came deeper into the room, approaching Jake's spot by the bed. "It's going to be okay. If you keep it secret, if you hide me when the time comes, it will all be okay. We can be together again."
"Isaac?" Jake whispered.
The little boy put out his arms like airplane wings. He smiled at Jake, wiping at his tears.
"Buzz buzz, Jakey," he said.
Jake staggered backward a step, shaking his head, his breath coming in small, hitching gasps. No, he thought. No, no.
The kid put out his arms, reaching upward as if he expected a hug … as if this impossible creature, this dead boy speaking from the mouth of a stranger, thought that his brother would embrace him.
Shaking, Jake moved aside. The hurt in the boy's brilliant blue eyes should have stung Jake's heart. Instead it stoked his fear. That hurt could not be a dream.
"Jake-"
"No!"
He bolted around the kid and raced out the door. Words tumbled through his mind. Ghostdemonzombie. And then another: dream. He went down the steps of the old farmhouse two at a time, flung open the front door, and hurtled himself out into the ice-encrusted snowpack in jeans and a T-shirt, his feet bare. Sometimes, if he was falling asleep while driving, he would slap himself in the face. He did it now, standing there freezing, and the sting of his palm brought him into vivid reality.
"Wake up!" he shouted, feeling brittle reality crumbling around him, remembering the way it had felt that night twelve years earlier, when it had happened to him the first time. This couldn't be real. It couldn't. "Wake up!"
Turning, he saw the little boy through the open door-coming down the stairs, pursuing him, lips pouting, tears on his cheeks.
"Jake," the boy said, the name a tremulous plea. "You've got to be quiet or they'll get us. They'll get us both."
TEN
Doug Manning woke slowly, breathing in the scent of the woman in his bed. A smile crept across his features even before he opened his eyes to find himself spooning behind Angela Ristani, the two of them burrowed beneath flannel sheets and a thick down comforter. He nestled himself more tightly behind her, pressing his face into her hair and enjoying the touch of his bare skin against hers, the softness at the curve of her ass meeting his growing hardness.
"Well, well," she said, her voice raspy as she came sleepily awake. "Good morning to you, too."
She stretched, pressing back against him, and then turned to face him, black hair fanned out on the white pillow. Even with her smeared makeup and the years that were creeping up on them both, she looked beautiful.
"Looks like that wasn't a dream I had last night," he said.
Angela gazed into his eyes, seeking something that Doug hoped she would find.
"No dream, buster. I'm real. And I hope you thought it was a good dream."
"Are you kidding? I wouldn't ever have wanted to wake up."
He touched her face, pushed his fingers through her hair, and then kissed her. She responded with a passion that startled him, cleaving to him and moaning lightly. He felt as if she were opening beside him, as if she had been bound up with tension and uncertainty that fled in that moment of surrender. Emotional, not sexual, and that was what surprised him most. The Angela Ristani he knew, his late wife's best friend, the woman with whom he'd shared a torrid, volatile relationship, had been full of sharp and cynical edges. All that hardness seemed absent now.
Doug whispered to her, urgent words. Primal things. Amazement and wonder. He slid a hand along her leg and then lifted it, resting her knee on his hip as he opened her more fully, his fingers tracing along the inside of her thighs. She shivered and gave a little gasp as he touched her, and he felt the familiar animal need rising within him.
"Wait," she said, pushing his hand away.
He blinked as if waking for a second time. She withdrew from him slightly, closing her legs, and kissed him once before drawing back so that they were face-to-face, but each on their own pillow island.
"Are you going to want me to leave?" Angela asked. "Y'know … after?"
Doug ran his hand over the curve of her hip. "You can stay forever as far as I'm concerned."
She smacked his chest. "Don't do that. I'm asking a serious question."
"Okay, okay. Serious question deserves a serious answer."
He glanced at the window, where the morning sun shone brightly. A small drift of snow had formed in one corner and clung to the screen, but it was all melting now. Icicles dripped water, shrinking. It was going to be one of those days when the whole world seemed to have quieted down. Winter wonderland, he thought. The kind of day that was best when shared. Did he want her to go?
"I don't have to work today," he said. "I'd like to spend the day with you, in or out of bed."
She kissed him, then pulled back to reveal an exuberant grin. Throwing back the covers, she sprang from the bed, picked up her panties and slipped them on, then grabbed the T-shirt he had been wearing the night before.
"Where are you going?" he asked, starting to climb out of bed as well.
"No, no. You stay there," she said, slipping on his T-shirt.
Angela picked up the remote control from the nightstand and tossed it onto the bed.
"Watch TV or something. A morning like this … it's a time to spend cocooned inside. Making love and watching old movies and eating in bed." She went to leave but paused just inside the bedroom door, smiling playfully. "Scrambled eggs with Tabasco and bacon on the side, right?"
Doug laughed. Suddenly the morning seemed just as surreal as the night before.
"You're making me breakfast in bed?"