Now You See Her - Michael Ledwidge [40]
Because I was cursed, I thought. Wherever I went, death and craziness homed in on me. I seemed to emit a scent that attracted these things.
I tried to figure out why that was. Was it something in my nature? My inherent gullibility?
As we roared around a long curve of the Overseas Highway, out on the water to my right I suddenly saw a small, distant light. It was the tiny running light of a small anchored sailboat.
Or Ramón Peña, I thought as my ten-ton eyelids began to drop. It was the soul of the man I had run over and allowed Peter to sink in the ocean. Ramón was the reason for my bad luck, the reason why I would always be hounded. Peter wasn’t the only one with blood on his hands.
I deserved to be haunted, I thought, and then I finally, gloriously, passed out.
Book Three
NEW YORK NINA
Chapter 50
I SIT IN WHITENESS, getting ready for my wedding. I’m wearing a fluffy white robe and white curlers in my hair. Even the separators between my freshly polished toenails are a chaste virginal white.
I smile as I suddenly notice the white roses that cover the bathroom’s entire countertop. They glow almost painfully in the undiluted Florida light that fills the room.
As I put the finishing touches on my mascara in the makeup mirror, there’s a pounding on the door.
“Come out with your hands up!” Peter says through a bullhorn. “And those little panties of yours held high!”
I begin to laugh but stop as I hear the coughing sound of a gas engine being started with a rip cord. Is it a lawn mower? I think, turning toward the door.
Immediately bits of wood explode inward, spraying my face, and I see the tip of the chain saw as it cuts a slot in the door. As I watch, the spinning blade disappears, and through the hole a face appears, like Jack Nicholson’s in The Shining. I think it’s Peter, but it’s not. It’s the almost Asian face of the Jump Killer.
“How’s my fair Nina?” he says, flashing me his white capped teeth.
As I turn to run, I trip on the lip of the tub. I grasp the edge of the shower curtain, but the rings pop off the rail one by one, and I fall backward into warm water. As I scramble up, I see it’s not water at all but blood, and in the tub beside me, spooning like a honeymooning couple, are the dead bodies of Elena Cardenas and Ramón Peña.
Covered in blood, I scream, flailing as I see that half of Ramón Peña’s face is missing, the white of his skull stark against the sea of red.
I woke up. Struggling to catch my breath, I looked up into darkness while my heart clubbed the inside of my chest. And I really thought I was going to have a heart attack when I saw a dark figure was hovering above me.
“Angel of Death,” I spat out.
“Mom?” Emma said, clicking on my bedside lamp.
My eyes burned as she started shaking my shoulder.
“Wake up, Mom,” she said. “We both overslept. I can’t find my new AE shirt. You know, the nice blue one? Jeez, you’re covered in sweat. Are you sick? Don’t tell me you’ve got the swine flu?”
I wish, I felt like telling my daughter as I pulled the sheet over my head. You could get over the swine flu. I mopped my clammy brow on the other side of my pillow.
My recurring nightmares, on the other hand, were the gift that kept right on giving.
Even after almost twenty years.
“Oh, I know,” Emma said. “Too much champagne at my party last night. That’s it. You’re hungover.”
Emma was teasing, of course.
“Ha, ha, wise girl,” I said, lifting the cover and suddenly smiling. “Your blue shirt’s crisply ironed on a hanger in my closet, Little Miss Sweet Sixteen. And you’re welcome for last night’s party. It wasn’t like it was expensive or anything. I think it was worth having to eat cat food when I’m old, don’t you?”
Emma stuck out her tongue. I stuck out mine right back. Emma and I were close, like sisters and best friends put together, only better. We even shared clothes. Which pissed her off. I guess it would piss me off a little, too, to have a mother who could fit into my jeans.
“As if you’ll ever be old,” Emma said, climbing into the bed