Nightmare’s Edge (18 page)

“Darkness is fine,” she said. “I used to tell you stories in the dark quite often. Do you remember?”

“Yeah. I finally made you stop when I was about eight. I said I was too old for bedtime stories.”

She reached over and touched his knee lovingly. “Are you too old now?”

“Too old?” He shook his head. “I think maybe I’m finally old enough to start again.”

“Well, this is a story about courage.” She looked at her wounded hand. Blood still oozed into her palm. “Your father learned courage when he and I were courting. You see, we met when I first started playing for the CSO. During my premiere performance as concertmaster, I played the Tchaikovsky concerto, and your father was in the first row. Back then, he was a college student, but he was interning for the summer at an applied sciences company in Chicago. That’s where he learned a lot of what he knows about physics and light bending and creating illusions, but I never understood enough to make sense of it.”

Nathan stared at her. This
was
a story he hadn’t heard. “How old were you then?”

“I was all of twenty-one years old, not much more than a girl, really.”

Nathan reached for his discarded sweatshirt and ripped a piece from the sleeve he had cut earlier. Whatever the black stuff was, it had disappeared. “So, when Francesca Yellow married,” he said, tying the fresh bandage around her hand, “she was a lot younger.”

She smiled as she watched him work. “Yes, and that’s why I’m telling you the story. You see, after that performance, your father waited for me at the door, even though I had taken a long time to come out because of a reception in my honor. Apparently, he was mesmerized by my performance and wanted an autograph, so he paced around the area until after midnight. Unfortunately, a group of four other men also seemed overly interested in seeing me. As soon as I stepped out the door, three of them brandished handguns while a fourth opened a cello case and pulled out a shotgun.”

“A shotgun,” Nathan repeated. “Double barreled?”

“Yes. As a matter of fact, it was.”

“Did the guy have a gray beard?”

“He had a beard, but it wasn’t gray.” She squinted at him, darkness now shadowing her features. “Why?”

“Just thinking. Go on.”

“Well, at first your father — ”

“No! Wait!” Nathan felt for the violin in her lap and picked it up. “Play it, and show me.”

“What do you mean?”

Nathan tried to see her facial expression, but it was too dark. Still, her inquisitive motherly stare came through in his mind. “We’re in the dream world,” he explained. “Show me, like you did when you played the scenes of you growing up and getting married.”

“Can we do that from inside the dream world?”

“There’s no dream going on right now. And I have a hunch about those gunmen. I want to see what one of them looked like.” He found her wrist and set the violin in her arms. “It won’t hurt to try.”

She laughed under her breath. “It certainly
will
hurt, but I’ll do it.”

“Oh, yeah,” Nathan said, grimacing. He reached to take the violin back, but grasped empty air.

“Just watch and pay attention,” she said. “I don’t want to do this more than once.” She paused for a few seconds, the sound of her tuning the violin breaking the silence, then her words blended in, spiced with a doubtful tone. “If it works at all.”

She began humming the opening of the Tchaikovsky piece, the orchestra’s introductory measures, then, after a short pause, she played.

Nathan leaned close. The vibrant tones sounded more beautiful than ever. Somehow the darkness enhanced the music, allowing only his mother’s song to penetrate his mind. In a way, he felt like Felicity — his eyesight impotent, but his other senses acute. He breathed in deeply. Each note had a smell, even a taste, as the music-saturated air rushed into his nostrils and then out his mouth, passing over his tongue with a sweet caress.

The sensation reminded him of Scarlet. Her eloquence hadn’t emerged in a while. Had he lost touch with her spirit? Would it ever come back? Nathan let out a sigh and concentrated on the music again. This was no time for mooning over his lost friend.

Soon, a dim light illuminated the area — a lamp perched high above a street about twenty paces away. It shone on a set of four wood-and-glass doors that led into a brick building, and lights attached to the façade on both sides of the doors cast their glow on the wide walkway in front.

Nathan rose to his feet. He stood across the street from Orchestra Hall, deep enough in the shadows to escape notice if someone in the dream world should walk by.

A raven-haired young woman stepped out of the hall. Dressed in a flowing black gown, she smiled at an older woman, also dressed in black, who walked at her side.

“That’s Mom,” Nathan whispered to himself. Staying low, he hurried across the dark pavement and ducked behind a car parked at the curb. Now that he had stepped fully inside the dream, the sounds of his mother’s violin faded away, replaced by the voices of young Francesca and her companion.

“Tchaikovsky himself would have asked for your autograph,” the older woman said. “It was superb. Magnificent.”

Francesca blushed and touched the woman’s hand. “Clara, you’re too kind, but I’m thankful for your encouragement. I was so nervous I almost got sick right on the conductor, and now I don’t remember a single note I played.”

Nathan tried to slow his heartbeat. His mother had just exited the orchestra hall with Clara, his tutor, not too long before he was born. This was way too strange.

A man walked out of the shadows holding an open book and a pen. “Excuse me, Miss Malenkov. May I have your autograph?”

Francesca stepped back, her eyebrows raised. “Oh! . . . Well, yes, of course.”

Francesca held the pen while looking at the man’s beaming face. “And to whom shall I sign it?”

“Solomon.” His voice trembled, but he quickly brought it under control. “Solomon Shepherd.”

Francesca smiled. “I like that name. It carries a pleasant melody.”

“I know this young man quite well.” Winking, Clara shook a finger at him. “Do you often wait two hours after orchestra performances to get autographs?”

“Uh . . . no.” Solomon shifted his weight from side to side. “This was my first time here, and I was so transfixed by Miss Malenkov’s performance, I just had to meet her.”

“Well, she really needs her rest.” Clara hooked Francesca’s arm. “We have to — ”

“Oh, Clara.” Francesca’s eyes sparkled as she gave Solomon his autograph book. “It’s all right. I can sleep in — ”

Four men jumped out of a car parked in front of the one Nathan hid behind. Three ran toward the door, handguns drawn, while the fourth, a bearded man, lagged behind, carrying a cello case.

Clara pulled Solomon in front of her and Francesca. “I hope you don’t mind being a shield.”

“Shut up, lady,” one of the men said, “and step away from Malenkov.”

Clara wrapped an arm around Francesca and pulled her close. “Or you’ll what?”

The bearded man withdrew a shotgun from the cello case and aimed it at Solomon and the two ladies. “Or we’ll have to drag more corpses away than we counted on.”

Solomon leaped for the shotgun and wrestled it away. One of the men shot him in the chest. As Solomon backpedaled, he returned fire, blowing away his attacker with one barrel and two more with the other. With blood soaking his shirt and suit jacket, he glared at the fake cellist. “Drop to the ground,” he said, breathing heavily, “before I kill you, too.”

The man laughed and dug into his pocket. “You might need some of these,” he said, displaying a handful of shells.

“Not when I have a club.” Solomon reared back and bashed the man’s arm with the shotgun, knocking him down. Then, gasping and gurgling, Solomon wobbled back and forth before toppling to the concrete. The attacker scrambled along the sidewalk toward the gun, but a high-heeled shoe stomped on his wrist.

“That’s far enough, cello boy!” Clara said, aiming a handgun at his head.

As a siren wailed, the man looked at her with menacing eyes. “I have friends in high places. I will be back to kill the gifted one.”

Nathan crept closer to get a better look. There was no doubt about it. The guy with the shotgun was the same gunman who had chased Clara and him through the streets of Chicago and then stalked Kelly and him in the observatory. His beard was dark back then, but it was definitely the same guy.

Francesca cradled Solomon, crying and mopping his brow as they whispered to each other. Nathan tried to listen, but two police officers ran onto the scene, one barking into a radio about needing an ambulance while the other shouted commands.

His heart again beating wildly, Nathan backed away to the street and then completely out of the dream. With the glow of the streetlight guiding his way, he found his mother, still playing her part of the Tchaikovsky concerto.

She opened one eye and smiled. Then, easing through a final note, she let out a long sigh. “The bullet missed his heart, but there was quite a bit of damage. He almost died from loss of blood. He was in the hospital for over a month.”

With the light from the street beginning to fade, Nathan sat down and tried to calm his heart. “I saw you whispering, but I couldn’t hear what you said.”

She gave a gentle laugh. “I’ll never forget his words. He said, ‘It will never hurt worse than it does now.’ So I asked him what he meant, and he said, ‘Protecting you. I took a bullet for you. I will gladly take another.’ ”

She drew a fist to her mouth, covering her trembling lips. “He told me later that what he did was really an instinctive jump, but since then he’s never let fear stop him from doing anything. It’s as if he faced death and stared it down.”

Nathan touched her arm and replied in a near whisper. “And Solomon Yellow never had a chance to do that. That’s why he’s so different.”

She nodded, took a deep breath, and composed herself. “I assume Francesca Yellow is not yet concertmaster of the CSO, so I wonder how they met.”

“I guess Kelly and I talked her into marrying him,” Nathan said. “Since she spent so much time in the other Earths, she missed some years on Yellow and lost ground. She was kind of hesitant, because she was so young, but they managed to get together.”

She stroked her violin with tender hands. “Well, as long as they married and had a baby they named Nathan, I assume it will all work out.”

“But that Nathan won’t learn what I learned from Dad. Solomon Yellow won’t be able to teach him to stare down death.” He touched his chest. “I learned not to let fear stop me from doing anything.”

She lifted her eyebrows. “Oh, is that so?”

“Well . . .” He let his hand drop. He was no match for his mother’s skeptical stare. “I think it’s so.”

With only the slightest of glows still radiating from the dream, she was barely visible as she wiggled her fingers across imaginary piano keys. “It moved by very quickly, but I recognized what Kelly played in her dream. I know what you fear.”

Nathan’s heart thumped faster again. “Are you saying I’m scared to talk to her?”

A knowing smile stretched her lips. “She’s dying for you to talk to her, Nathan. Begging. Praying. Pleading. But she won’t ask you herself. You have to be the one to reach out to her.”

“She keeps saying she’ll wait for me, as long as it takes. I thought maybe she wanted, you know, to be my girlfriend or something.” He pointed at himself. “I mean, I’m only sixteen. I don’t want to go there yet.”

“I don’t think she wants to go there yet, either. I’m not sure she ever wants to go there. She’s not hoping to marry you someday.”

“So what
does
she want? Just for me to talk to her?”

She nodded. “That’s all. Love that doesn’t demand something in return. No one has ever loved her that way before, and she sees it in you. She doesn’t want a boyfriend. She just wants to know that her past is erased in your mind.”

“But I thought I was supposed to tell her about my faith in God. Her song made it sound like she already believes. Maybe I don’t need to say anything.”

She took his hand and massaged his thumb. “She’s trying her hardest to believe, but she won’t truly understand forgiveness until you show it to her. She can’t believe God would really forgive her for what she’s done.”

“But what did she do? I mean . . .” He hesitated, wondering if he should go on. “Do you even know?”

“Yes, Nathan. She told me.” Three deep lines creased her brow. “It was hard to understand everything, because she was crying so much, but she told me.”

“So, what did she . . .” Nathan hesitated again. Did he really want to ask what she had done? Did he really want to know? After a second or two, he took in a deep breath and said, “Was it really all that terrible?”

Her voice cracked. “Yes. Yes, Nathan. It was.”

Nathan swallowed. Tears welled and trickled down his cheeks. “So what do I do?”

As she folded his hand into hers, her voice spiked with passion. “Forgive her, Nathan. Forgive her with all your heart. She’s already heard about faith from a hundred TV sermons, but she has never seen the real, vibrant, down-to-earth forgiving heart of Jesus lived out in reality, certainly not in her father or in her mother.” Now weeping, she lifted his hand and laid it on his chest. “She needs to know that this brave-hearted young knight will treat her like the fair maiden she so longs to be, no matter what she’s done to soil that label.” She loosened his bandage and unwound it until his bloody wound lay exposed. “She has crucified herself a thousand times for her sins. It’s time for you to put an end to her suffering.”

Nathan stared at his hand, barely visible in the waning light. A tear fell from his mother’s eye and landed on his palm. As it trickled into the wound, the salt stung, but he didn’t flinch. Somehow the pain felt right.

He rolled his hand into a fist, letting the pain increase. It was about time he took the brunt of the pain. So far, Kelly had risked her life time and again for his sake, and all he had given her in return was halfhearted acceptance. She longed to be loved by someone she perceived to be pure, but he had put up a barrier — a brick wall that said purity, once lost, could never be regained. But it was just a smoke screen, a smoke screen to hide his fear.