Afterlife - Douglas Clegg [27]
Matt lied. “Okay, dad. It’s off. I just like looking through the lens.”
A woman walked along the sidewalk opposite them, and then crossed the street as if coming right toward them. She was pretty, wearing sunglasses, and had pale, freckled skin and shoulder-cut red hair that gleamed as she walked from shadow to sunlight in the street.
“Put it down,” Hut said, and then the video went dark.
Julie stared at the computer monitor.
Then, she heard a piercing scream.
8
It was Livy’s high-pitched squeal, and Julie instinctively leapt out of the chair in the den and went running upstairs to her daughter’s bedroom.
Matt was already standing in the doorway with the light on.
Julie looked over his shoulder—her daughter stood up on her bed, her back against the wall, shivering.
“What happened?”
Matt mumbled something, but Julie passed by him and went to Livy. “Did Matty scare you?” she asked, and then felt her face go red as she looked at Matt.
He glared at her. “She had a nightmare, Julie. I’m not running around scaring my baby sister. Jesus.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Julie said. “I didn’t. I thought maybe she saw you in the dark.”
“Something’s wrong with you if you think that,” Matt said, and turned and went back to his room.
“Honey, what is it? What was wrong?”
“I saw a man,” Livy said. “In here.”
“Was it Matt? Maybe he was going down the hall?”
“No, Mommy. It was like a ghost. It was like a big shadow,” Livy whispered. And then, as if it had just occurred to her, “Maybe it’s Daddy. Maybe he came downstairs again. Maybe he was tired of being upstairs.”
“Livy, there’s nobody. But I think you were having a bad dream. That’s all. It’s not real. If you want, I’ll go check all the windows and doors.”
“Ghosts get through doors,” Livy told her.
9
Feeling a little spooked herself, Julie poured herself the last of the Sterling Vineyards Merlot in the kitchen, into a Dixie Cup, and sipped it as she walked around checking the windows and doors to make sure there really wasn’t the possibility of an intruder.
10
In her dreams that night, the man on the table. Eyes opened wide. They were milky white. No pupils, no iris’. It was Hut, but not Hut. His skin was translucent alabaster interrupted by blotches of bluish bruises. He rose up and reached for her. He had drawings all over his body—tattoos.
She couldn’t move.
He leaned over and kissed the edge of her neck. His lips were ragged and dry and he kissed again, with a gentle suction against her skin.
His fingers crawled down her belly, lingering just above her pubic region, and then twirling the soft hair as his hand pressed down against her, and all the while he kissed up her chin, to her mouth. She felt as if she couldn’t move, push him off her. She wanted to get away from him, but his tongue parted her lips and flickered just over her tongue and teeth.
And then she felt aroused and excited in the dream.
Ready.
“Do you want me?” his voice came to her, but not from his mouth. “Do you want me inside you?”
She awoke, jerked from the dream too suddenly so that when she opened her eyes she wasn’t sure if she was still dreaming or in her bed, but a man stood there, a dark man against the darkness, and for half a second, she thought it was Hut. Her sleepiness was like a pillow smothering her, so that she didn’t have the energy to flick on the light. Didn’t even have the energy to stay awake for more than a few seconds. She felt the narcotic heaviness of deep sleep draw her back from fuzzy consciousness. She slipped back into sleep, and when she awoke well before dawn, she began shivering, feeling as if she had a fever. She kept looking at the doorway as if half expecting someone to be there.
She remembered what her therapist had told her. About her mind at night. Night fears. Thoughts that would keep her up. Even hallucinations? Even thinking someone was in the house? Some stranger? Or that Hut would come home, just open the door and walk back