Bones by the Wood (45 page)

“Thea.  Wake up.  Wake up.  For the love of God, sweetheart.  Wake the fuck up!”

Thea shot upright in bed and nearly collided with the shadowed figure leaning over her.  Her sleep-addled brain convinced her that her nightmare was repeating itself in real life.  She screamed.  When the figure clamped a hand over her mouth, she bit it.

“Fuck, sweetheart!  That hurt.”

The voice.  The voice. The voice was... deep breath, deep breath.  Her eyes adjusted to the dark.  The details of the figure emerged.  It was Dizzy.  Ah, that was it.  She was at his house now.  They’d had to give up the apartment.  She was in her bed, but in a strange house. She frantically patted the bed beside her.  Yes, of course.  Josh had wanted to sleep in the room given over to him. He wasn’t with her, but he was safe.

Still feeling the terror of the dream, she needed to see him with her own eyes to confirm that he was secure. She started trying to get out of the bed.

“Where d’ya think you’re goin’, sweetheart?”  Dizzy was perched on the edge of her bed now.

“Josh.  I have to see Josh.”  She still couldn’t draw quite enough air into her lungs.

“Okay.”  Dizzy stood and backed off.  Even with only the combination of the dim dawn light that bled through the curtains and the soft glow of the light from the main room creeping in through her door, she could see that he looked concerned and bemused.

Thea hadn’t even taken three steps towards her bedroom door when a scream rang through the house.

“What the?”  Dizzy exclaimed.

“Shit!  Josh!”  Thea took off at a run. She skidded through the tiny hall and through the door into Josh’s room.  He was thrashing around on his bed, tangled in the covers, screaming like he had that night when she’d been dragged away from him.  So much for hoping the exhaustion would stave off the dreams.

“Josh, bud.  Baby.  Come on, honey.  Wake up, baby.”

Thea gripped both his shoulders and shook hard until, clawing at her forearms and halting in the middle of a scream, Josh woke, gasping for air.

“Mama?  Mama, where are you?”

“I’m here, bud. I’m here, baby.  I’m right here.”  She bit back her tears.  Despite the repetition, seeing her boy so terrified never got any easier.

“Mama.”  He threw his arms around her.  But as he hugged her Thea felt that the back of his pajama top was damp.  Shit.  She turned to check the door.  Double shit.  Dizzy was in the doorway, barefoot, wearing only a pair of sweatpants hanging low on his hips and watching the show with evident concern.

Fortunately she’d been able to slip the plastic sheet over Josh’s mattress when she’d made the bed up without any of the guys noticing.  There was no way she was going to be able to change him and his bed now, though, without Dizzy seeing, not unless she sent him away.  She had a feeling he wouldn’t go.

Hugging Josh to her, hoping he wouldn’t see Dizzy, she motioned frantically with a wave of her hand.  She could tell Dizzy wasn’t going to let this drop, but he moved out of the room, at least out of sight for Josh.  Thea could just see that he was leaning against the doorframe in the hall.

“Come on, bud, we need to get you changed.”

“Mama.”  His sob tore at her heart.  She knew he was mortified by the effects of his evil dreams.

“Don’t worry about it, bud.  Come on.  Up you get.”  Her tone was all false cheerfulness and calm.

Josh slid off the bed, and Thea made as quick work as she could of changing him and the sheets.  He stood and watched without moving or making a sound.  It seemed that he was still half asleep when she tucked him in, so she decided to forgo the milk and toast.  She hoped that he would go straight back to sleep and that he was too muddled to remember that they were in Dizzy’s house.  That would only add to his embarrassment, and right at this minute, it would make it harder for him to get back to sleep.

She stayed a moment, by the side of the bed, looking down at her boy as he closed his eyes and slipped into what initially seemed to be a restful sleep.  He looked so innocent.  That he was mired in this vicious battle with his mind hurt her, a physical pain that clenched like an iron band around her lungs.

She bundled the sodden sheets and clothing in her arms and left the room, carefully closing the door behind her.  She passed Dizzy, who was still waiting, without speaking.  She dumped the bundle into the laundry hamper in the bathroom.  She’d make another trip to the laundromat tomorrow on her way into work.

Shit.  Fuck.  Shit.  That was something that had completely escaped her.  Tomorrow, today, was Saturday.  She was working.  Normally she would have asked Clarice to keep an eye on Josh. She couldn’t very well do that from across town.  She was going to have to ask Dizzy for more help, and that meant she couldn’t avoid speaking to him.

She debated heading out to the porch again.  She wanted plenty of distance between Josh and this conversation, but she was paranoid that she wouldn’t be able to hear him if the dream returned, and the emerging dawn would be cold, very cold.

She walked past Dizzy, over to one of the two sofas and sat in the corner furthest from Josh’s room.  Some of the space on the walls had been given over to bookshelves, which were, she had been surprised to see, mostly filled with books.  A couple of shelves were given over to CDs and DVDs.  The walls were a shade of cream.  Thea suspected that they’d been that color when Dizzy had purchased the house.  The decoration of the interior was mostly devoid of personality.  It looked generic, as though it had been decorated specifically to encourage the sale, a blank canvas that Dizzy had not filled in.

A flat screen TV was mounted on the wall to the left of the door from the porch and the two comfortable, black leather sofas had been arranged in an L shape in the center of the room, so that they were out of the way of the door, but with a clear view of the TV screen.

Thea was wearing a thin cotton pajama set of pants and a strappy camisole.  The leather was cool against her back and arms and her skin pimpled in response.  Dizzy seated himself on the opposite end of the sofa that she had chosen.

“How long has this bein goin’ on for?”  He asked.

Thea shifted so that she could fold her feet under her and picked at the pattern on her cotton pants.  “Since that night.”

“Jesus, Thea, that’s almost a month.” 

Dizzy’s tone was astonished.  That he was so surprised that what had happened had affected her and her innocent little boy so much sent a spike of rage through Thea.

“You think we should have gotten over it by now?” 

She was angry, at him, at the people who had made her and her boy so afraid.  It wasn’t all Dizzy’s fault, but she couldn’t scream at the people who were really responsible.  She had no one to blame but herself, no one to lay the unfairness of it all on.

When Dizzy answered, Thea could see that he was full of anger, too, and it seemed to be directed at her.  “No.  But I don’t think you should’ve been copin’ with it alone.  You didn’t need to.”

Feeling that he was blaming her for her failure to help Josh get better, Thea’s anger grew.  “And what was I s’posed to do, Dizzy?  Waltz into the clubhouse and announce to y’all that we wake up screamin’ every fuckin’ night?  Should I have told everyone that Josh is wettin’ himself every night like a baby because he saw me bein’ dragged off to be tortured and raped?  Maybe I should run into the nearest therapist’s office and tell them all of that?”  Sarcasm colored her tone at the last.

“No.  But you could’ve, should’ve, come to me.”

“And what would you have done?”  Thea asked tonelessly.  Her anger fled in the wake of her mental and physical exhaustion and left her more drained than before.

“I don’t know, sweetheart.  Anythin’ I could’ve.”  Dizzy’s anger had simmered down along with hers.

She looked at him then, really looked at him.  She could see clearly.  He’d switched the wall sconces on when he’d come through this room to wake her. His torso and arms were a mass of marks now, mapped with evidence of the brutality he’d endured, that he’d survived.  The bruising had all gone, but there were shiny new scars of all shapes sizes and textures in addition to the few that had been there before.  Thea looked at them all and remembered what they had looked like when they were still fresh and oozing and bleeding.

“Don’t it bother you at all?  You were hurt worse than either of us.  Don’t you dream?”  Apart from the plentiful new scars, Dizzy had seemed to walk away from that night almost completely unaffected.  Thea was as frustrated as she was curious.

“I won’t lie, that’s the worst of that that’s happened to me.  But, sweetheart, it’s not the first time it’s happened, and it’s not the first time that I’ve been hurt.  I’ve been shot up and I’ve been damaged more when I’ve laid my bike down.  I’ve laid worse hurt on people and watched others lay worse hurt on other humans.  I guess I’m desensitized.”

Thea couldn’t comprehend what that really meant in terms of what Dizzy had seen and done in his life, and what kind of man that made him.  She knew what kind of man he was around her and Josh.  She concentrated on the crumb that offered hope.  “So how do me and Josh get desensitized?”

Dizzy shook his head.  “You don’t want that, sweetheart.  You have to sell your soul for that.  I’m goin’ to hell for what I’ve done.”

Thea felt beaten down and stomped on.  She was tired and hopeless.  “I want it to end, Dizzy, for Josh more‘n me.  I’m so tired. I’m so fuckin’ tired. It’s all I can do to wake up in a mornin’.”

She couldn’t catch the sob that welled up from the depths of her heart, and then the tears were flowing relentlessly.   She’d thought she was all cried out after her revelation that morning to Annelle.

Then Dizzy’s arms were around her.  She was shuddering against that warm and solid torso with just a little golden hair that now tickled her cheek.  She sobbed her anguish out against his chest and let his strong arms hold her.  She couldn’t have moved if she’d tried.  She didn’t have the strength or the energy.  When she was done, she felt him shift as he reached over to the low table in front of the sofa.  Then he was handing her a tissue, but he didn’t unwrap his arms from around her. 

She wiped her eyes and blew her nose and took a deep breath and raised her head, ready to apologize for her outburst and to return to bed for what was left of the night.  She’d embarrassed herself quite enough.  But Dizzy’s arms tightened and when she opened her mouth to protest, he kissed her.   

It was firm, but not hard, insistent but not intrusive.  She took the comfort that he offered and kissed him back.  And for the first time in weeks Thea began to feel something other than overwhelming fatigue and fear.  But she wasn’t ready for that yet.  She wasn’t strong enough to deal with that yet.  And she was nowhere even approaching clear-headed enough. 

When she pulled away, Dizzy let her go, but he didn’t let her escape his arms completely.  She couldn’t, she was backed into the corner of the sofa.

“Dizzy, I’m not ready, I don’t know...”

“Shhh.”  He soothed her and smoothed her hair.  “It’s okay, sweetheart.  We’ve got time.  Lots of time.  But I want you and your boy to stay here.  I want you to spend time at the clubhouse.”

Thea barked a laugh.  “I don’t think wild horses could keep him away.”

Dizzy chuckled.  “True.  If you didn’t come to them, they’d all come to you.  They love your boy.” 

“I know.  I shouldn’t have kept him from that.  I see that now.”  Seeing how happy Josh had been to see the other patches, seeing how overjoyed they were to see him, had cut Thea like a thousand knives.  Seeing him chat, joke and laugh in the clubhouse had rubbed salt into the wounds.

“You couldn’t have known, sweetheart.  But let us care for you now.”

“Okay.”  She hadn’t been doing any better on her own, why not accept his instruction, his invitation.  It sure as shit couldn’t make their lives worse.

“Go on, sweetheart.  Go get some rest.  I’ll be here when you both get up.”  He pulled back a little more to allow her to rise.