Flashback (3 page)

He was regarding her upturned face. “My first name is David. Yours is Dana, if I remember rightly.” He paused and she nodded silently. Then he continued politely and all the while she knew he was just making sounds. She wondered what devil was plaguing him. “Are you home from school for the summer?”

“No.” It had come out very short. His eyes sharpened on her. She qualified what she had said and softened the terse reply by saying, “I’m not in college.”

“So. What do you do, then?” he continued. She wanted to scream at him suddenly. The whole conversation was such a farce, the sounds they were mouthing so meaningless, his interest so false. She could feel just how little he was really interested in her, how she didn’t matter at all to him. That wasn’t any concern of hers, she thought, straightening her shoulders. She’d always dealt with the harshness of uncompromising truth before. She certainly wouldn’t break under the truth now. She didn’t care about him any more than he cared about her.

She toyed with the broken pieces of her pencils, fitting the jagged edges of the break together and pulling it apart again. “Nothing of importance. I don’t work. What do you do for a living?”

“I’m a writer. I do freelance work, mostly.” She nodded without interest. She felt his gaze sharpen even more on her and realised that his regard was fully on her now. His interest had quickened. He’d felt her lack of interest in him almost as strongly as she’d sensed his for her, and it intrigued him enough to catch his attention.

She asked randomly, “And are you working now, Mr. Raymond, or are you on vacation?”

“Call me David, if you like. I suppose that you could say I’m on vacation. I’m taking a sabbatical from work. I’ve been ill and this is a chance to rest up before getting back into the swing of things.” The blue jay that nested in the huge pine shot past with the recklessness of a dive bomber and then landed in a flurry on a low branch nearby, scolding the bird that was too close to his nest.

That’s a lie, she thought, and for one heart stopping moment feared that she’d said it aloud. It was a lie, but it wasn’t any business of hers, and she didn’t want to get into an awkward situation with this man, a total stranger. It was time she was leaving. She stood and, having forgotten her drawing pad, saw it fall on to the carpet of pine needles, pages fluttering. As she bent to retrieve it, she was just that split second too late as he reached forward automatically to pick it up for her. His brown fingers smoothed the pages back into place as she murmured a thanks, and he glanced at it idly before handing it back to her. He went absolutely, rigidly still.

His eyes were riveted on her unfinished drawing, and she felt the shock ripple through him like waves in a pond after a rock has been thrown in, felt it as surely as if it had been her, with the thudding at her own chest and temples. He went totally white, his knuckles tightening on the pad and ruining it. She flexed her fingers painfully. After the first overwhelming wave of shock that had rippled through him, she felt a nameless fear, but this wasn’t coming from him. This was all her own, and she backed up a few steps, eyes huge.

“Where have you seen this?” The question came out of him with the force of a bullet. She flinched violently.

“I was just doodling,” she mumbled, shaking. What was wrong with him? What had upset him so?

“This isn’t the view out there!” he said, from the back of his throat like a snarl, thrusting the picture under her face. “This isn’t an idle sketch!” She looked at her own drawing and moaned aloud, feeling sickened. The landscape she had drawn while idly dreaming there in the sun was totally alien to her and strangely complete, down to detailed work on the foliage. It was like nothing she’d ever seen before. “Where have you seen this?”

She shook her head numbly, nauseated. “Nowhere. It’s my imagination. I made it up.” It was said hopelessly as she backed away, hardly aware that she did so, frightened by the violence of emotion coming from him. The clearing was too isolated suddenly.

“You didn’t make this up. How old are you?” He advanced on her.

“Twenty…” her voice wobbled.

“You’re too young to have been there.” His own voice was hard, harsh, and she wondered, been where? “Where have you seen this?”

“Nowhere! Nowhere, I swear it. Look, you can have the picture, I don’t want it. I was just sketching, really.” She stared up at him, having gone white herself, and she saw the darkness in his eyes, the dilated pupils, the aggressiveness to his rock-hard face, the pulse that beat rapidly at the base of his throat. She felt and saw how very dangerous he really was. It invaded her own blood stream and started her own heart to rattling away in her chest, pounding at her wrists and temples. She suddenly tripped backwards, sprawling at his feet. He reached down and hauled her up unsympathetically, his hand hurting where he gripped the spot that Mick had bruised, but she didn’t notice the hurt because realisation was exploding inside of her like a bombshell, prompted by his physical touch. And the sickness grew in her as she realised that the picture was not from her mind but from his, and she covered her mouth with one shaking hand, muttering, “Oh, God.” He was looking an angry inquiry, more like an accusation, and it was more than she could stand.

She twisted from his grasp and fled.

Chapter Two

The plane was landing, hitting the ground with a rough thump and rolling, and then everyone was shouting and grabbing their things and jumping down on to the ground as shells exploded by the runway. Everyone ran for a squat, oblong building that looked as if it had been pieced together with a few sheets of metal, some glue and a few prayers. Dana picked up her duffle bag and ran with the others. It was the heat that hit her the hardest. The heat, after coming from the relatively cool interior of the plane, was like a furnace blast right in the face. It caught at the blood, made the pulse beat like a warm drum in the temples, made one gasp like a beached fish.

The area looked alien, all greens and browns and strange vegetation, and it was all taken in during that swift dash for the building. She entered with everyone else, and men, dressed in drab olive fatigues, shuffled into some semblance of order while an officer walked up and down in front of them.

A long, long time passed and the fellow droned on and on and on, and Dana’s head started to ache with the heat and the alienation of everything, and the fatigue, and that man’s endless talking. Then everything changed, and the officer was standing right in front of her, staring at her intimidatingly, but she looked him right in the eye, undaunted, expressionless.

He suddenly shouted, “Do you believe in hell, lieutenant?”

“No, sir.” And her voice was deeper, rumbling, and it was at that moment that she knew that the dream was not her own but someone else’s. And it was also then that she knew she was helpless to get out of the dream until whoever it was had finished dreaming it also. She was trapped.

The officer in front of her/him became leering, evil, his face changing into something horrible and horrifying. “You will, boy. Believe me, you will. By this time next year you’ll be wishing you were out of this place or dead, it won’t matter which, as long as you’re out of this place. ’Cause do you know where this is, boy? This is hell.” And it echoed in her mind weirdly until she thought she would scream. This is hell, is hell, ishellishellishell.

Dana bolted upright in her bed, rigid and sweating, crying and panting, and she crouched for some time in her bed, muscles quivering from reaction and weariness in the dark night. Then she slowly, achingly dragged herself out of bed after an incurious glance at her clock. It was only three thirty in the morning and she’d only slept around five hours, but she knew that there would be no more sleep—again—for her that night.

Grey shadows of exhaustion loomed in Dana’s head that morning, as she pulled herself up the stairs to shower. The water she turned on was deliberately cold, and the shock of the icy spray jolted her into a painful wakefulness. She then sudsed quickly, soaped her hair and rinsed it, and then crept out of the shower cubicle, shaking and gasping. Her fingers were tinged with blue as they sorted through her clothes numbly, and she managed to shrug into her jeans and top, coldness making her clumsy. Then she took her hair dryer and worked diligently at getting the long strands of thick chestnut hair at least partially dry. It fell to past her shoulder blades, and she had to bend forward to let her hair fall over her face in order to dry it. Then she swung her head back and her hair settled with a swirl on to her shoulders, the weight of it familiar, not even noticed.

Her jeans were loose at the waist, and she grimaced at that, irritated. At the best of times she was slim, and with her lack of appetite lately her slimness had given way to a more angular thinness, her arms looking like fragile sticks and the elbow bone becoming pronounced. Her hips jutted out more prominently. She glanced at herself in the mirror and thought disgustedly that she looked like a store mannequin, lifeless except for a glitter of something in her grey-green eyes that looked a bit feverish, like something stretched tight. That nervous core of tension still was gripping her. The loss of weight hadn’t done much for her face either. The hollows of her cheekbones seemed to her to be too pronounced, and her neck looked too slender to hold up the heavy weight of her head and thick, heavy fall of hair. No amount of weight loss could take away the fullness of her mouth or the rich quality to her glimmering, heavy lidded eyes, but other than those two positive points, she looked almost like a starved cat.

She would try to eat breakfast today, she decided, after a critical assessment of herself in the mirror. This was getting to be ridiculous.

But later on, when she was seated at the kitchen table and staring despondently down at her food, she found that she just couldn’t force down the meal to her protesting stomach. And so her meal was thrown away, again.

She decided that morning that she would go to visit Mrs. Cessler, the elderly lady who had for many years been their neighbour and who still owned the land and house which David Raymond was renting. Mrs. Cessler had been a nice neighbour, living in a gentle, perpetual state of mild sadness, missing her dead husband and reliving her happier past. Dana was good friends with her, finding her sympathetic and kind, and more than willing to have a quiet, rather withdrawn visitor. Now the older lady could not live at home alone, because of an accident and a broken hip, and so she had rented her house recently to David Raymond and currently lived with her sister as her brittle old bones slowly and painfully healed.

Dana had been to see Mrs. Cessler several times already, and one subject they never broached was just how Dana had known that the older lady had been hurt. Dana had been the one to find her, crouching in pain at the bottom of her stairs. She’d been afraid the first few times she’d gone, that Mrs. Cessler would become curious about that and ask her uncomfortable questions, but the old lady said nothing and Dana gradually grew easier in her mind and relaxed.

After telling her mother where she was going, Dana left the house and headed for the garage, which was a separate building from the house. She entered, opened the garage, and reversed the car competently. Mrs. Cessler and her sister lived on the other side of town, and Dana forced herself to drive very carefully. After two weeks or so of very little or no sleep, she was wary of having an accident through sheer exhaustion. She pulled up by a tiny home that was nestled in a landscape of several neatly trimmed bushes, with two oak trees. She parked just behind a car in the street, in front of the house, and ran up the walk to tap lightly at the door. Footsteps sounded, heavier than she’d expected, and the door swung to reveal to her David Raymond. He stood still, staring frowningly down at her.

She backed up an involuntary step, muttering something; she wasn’t sure what. Then he was swinging the door open wide and calling over his shoulder, “It’s Dana Haslow, Grace. Come on in, Dana.” And she heard the older lady call out a welcome from the living room. She had no choice. Even if she’d entertained a brief, vague hope of leaving and coming back later, she had to go in now.

Stepping gingerly by the silent and still man, she sent him an uncertain, wary look before heading on into the living room with as much of an appearance of normality as she could muster. Mrs. Cessler was positioned on the couch where she spent all her day, still in a heavy cast. Dana noticed with a pang that her hair since the accident had become even more wispy and white, and her lined face seemed to have shrunken in under the eyes and in the hollows of her cheekbones. She had aged.

Dana went over and gently kissed her on her frail seeming cheek before finding the armchair by the couch to sit in. She avoided looking in David’s direction, being painfully aware of his silent wariness and unspoken dislike. She was also overwhelmed in the simple awareness of pain, for Mrs. Cessler always seemed to be suffering some discomfort. She determinedly ignored it as best she could. If the older lady could be silent and uncomplaining, then so could she. These visits were always very hard on Dana, but she knew how delighted Mrs. Cessler was to see her and how much it meant to her. So she gritted her teeth and came anyway.

“Dana, my dear!” Mrs. Cessler said brightly, settling back on to her pillows and smiling. “It’s always so good to see you. But you aren’t looking well, child. You’ve lost so much weight! You and David, I can see, have much in common. Have you met David?”

“Yes, we’ve met,” she murmured, not quite understanding everything Mrs. Cessler had said. She didn’t glance his way and leaned forward in an effort to get control of the conversation. “And how are you doing? You’re looking better every time I see you.”