The Glass Secret (Chain of Secrets) (48 page)

When I returned later that afternoon the book was gone, confirming someone had removed it. After that I left a book for him every other day, some of mine, and others of my favorite authors. Each time I’d returned the books were gone, and a flower had replaced them. How romantic he was.

I devised a plan. After leaving a book, I hid in the corner of the lobby for hours and waited for him to take the book. Well that never happened, he never appeared that day. Evidently, he was on to me.  I continued to leave him books. On the days I actually left when I returned there was always a flower waiting for me on the step. On the days I decided to hide out he never showed up.

Eventually, I gave up on trying to catch him. My feelings grew for my secret admirer. I began to leave him other gifts too, little thing such as a Christmas ornament, or cookies I had baked. He always left me a beautiful red rose in return. Sometimes he tied a gorgeous silk ribbon around the stem. Stems without thorns. I made sure to wrap the ribbons around my ponytail just so he knew I liked them. Other times he left me pretty little antique lace handkerchiefs. My most favor gift that he had given me was a small red antique jewelry box. Our gift exchanging went on for months.

Then one day I left a book, as usual, and when I returned it was still there. Instantly, I felt a sinking feeling. I left it there for over a week, but he never picked it up. Where did he go? I worried about him terribly. The book sat there for over two weeks until I decided to finally remove it. The silly romance felt as if it had ended.

Oh well, strike two in Paris.
It was time to sit back and let love come to me. In the grand scheme of things, I figured when I was truly ready to meet the love of my life it would just click at the right moment, like fitting a key into a well-oiled lock and turning it smoothly and the door opens. That’s how love should be.

In the meantime, I worked like crazy. I still hadn’t heard from Dr. Piccart’s friend, but I took his advice and started writing. I was confident that I would meet the deadline for the first draft in plenty of time even if I didn’t have their names.

As the weeks passed on, it seemed that this was one book that would write itself, and it appeared to be unraveling on the electronic page, literally, words and all, on it’s own. Sometimes, when I woke up, I would open my computer to find new chapters written, chapters that I didn’t even remember writing. I had concluded that I was either sleepwalking, or that somebody hacked into my computer,
but who would do that?

I began to feel an almost constant presence of someone or something with me. The sensation of this presence was with me most of the time as if it were omnipresent. It crossed my mind what if it’s my secret admirer? Had he
returned and broke into my computer? What if he was a ghost? This was absurd thinking on my part. Ghosts don’t leave flowers, nor do they eat cookies or read books. It couldn’t have been my secret admirer. I discarded that thought quickly. But what was I feeling?

Maybe the brownstone was haunted as Dr. Piccart had said. I entertained the thought, anyway. I preferred being haunted by a ghost rather than someone hacking into my files. My own ghost, I could live with that. If it were true, he certainly was a smart ghost, who learned how to use Microsoft Word by watching me. I was sure there had to be a simple explanation. Nevertheless, I made sure to safeguard my files, changing all of my passwords and such; still, my novel had entries that I did not remember writing. I wondered if the ghost watched my fingers as I typed in my password…I laughed out loud at this thought.

There was no doubt, while I wrote, sometimes, I felt a breath tickle against the back of my neck. I could tell that it was a masculine presence. I knew this because when I felt goose bumps, I could detect the raw scent of a man. His spirit seemed to permeate into the stillness of my bedroom at night, and I could hear his whispers trailing in the wind. Yet he kept his distance from me, hidden in the realm of his world.

The very first time I felt his presence inside my home, it took me back to thoughts of my childhood invisible friend, Storm. Could Storm have returned? It didn’t make sense. Impossible. Storm was a voice in my head. This presence was on the outside trying to get in. It was more like the experience that I had felt in the old School in St. Augustine years ago. Yet, this particular time, the experience was even more powerful, more concrete and undeniably more intriguing.

Besides, Storm would not lurk around in the shadows...he was noisy, annoying and intrusive. This presence was patient, mature and simply mysterious!

I didn’t fear his stirring about, as had the previous tenants Dr. Piccart spoke of did. I felt he was keeping me company while I slept. I grew comfortable knowing that he was nearby me.

Once, when I was just about to sleep, I felt the mattress bend behind me, and a warm feeling pressed against my body. I swear I felt a hand slip around my waist. Very, very slowly I moved my hand into his, and we laced our fingers together. I was afraid to speak or even breathe, lest fearing that a ripple of the wind would steal his company from the lonely soul I had become...

I communicated, “You are welcome to stay, but please never scare me by allowing me to see you.”

I felt as if he understood me, and we seemed to have a silent agreement. I began to move around freely during his visits, not understanding what he wanted from me, yet feeling certain that he would never come out of the darkness and into the light to join me. Until then, I was at peace with his occurrences, his companionship and his nonphysical state.

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One Dark Night

Night fell in Paris. Darkness encompassed the walls beyond the brownstone. I felt the presence of someone in the hall outside my flat. Something was wrong. The energy I felt was intense. I ran to my bedroom and locked the door.

I grabbed my phone and stabbed in Nuilley’s number. “Hello, you’ve reach Nui, leave a short message...think green and don’t use up all my space. Tanks.”
Tanks?
That sounded a little too cutesy for Nuilley’s style. Something was up with her.

“Nui, call me.” I tried not to let the tremor in my voice release. I hit the end call button. “Crap...who else can I call?” I whispered to myself.

Since I’d been in Paris working on an intense writing project, I didn’t get out much to make other friends. I spent most of my time with my characters...too bad I couldn’t call one of them to chat with at 12:30am. One of my hot heroes would surely have calmed my nerves.

I dialed my parent’s house then quickly hung up before it started ringing. Crap, it was 6:30am there. Calling them at that time would have been alarming. If my dad would have answered he would’ve have argued, why are you in Paris anyway? He was so against me going there alone. Every time he voiced his disapproval I reminded him I had Nuilley. She lived a mile away. That didn’t work. He didn’t count having Nuilley in my life as a safety factor.

It was time to put on my big girl pants. Typically I didn’t scare easily. Being afraid right now was partially my own fault. I’d invited a few things, okay men, into my life that I knew nothing about. Usually my instincts about people were pretty accurate. I had never feared Rain or my secret admirer; not to mention, the presence I felt lurking around either.

Without giving further thought to the eerie energy I had felt, I brushed away all fears, took a few Tylenol pm pills to help me sleep, nothing strong, and grabbed the romance novel I’d been reading. What had probably put me on edge was the storm that was brewing up outside and knowing I was the only person in the big empty brownstone. Dr. Piccart’s two-month vacation had turned into three months. Things must have been going well with him and his lady friend.

After I had read a few chapters, I reached up and shut off the lamp. Before I knew it I had fallen into a deep sleep. I didn’t think anything could disturb me. Between the pills and pure exhaustion, I was down for the count.

That night the dreams I’d been having about Rain returned. He was smiling down on me. There was a halo of light behind him. He was waving to me. I tried to walk toward him, but I couldn’t move, something was holding me back.

“Brielle, don’t look back, come to me.” His voice was so clear.

“I can’t move,” I cried. Something was wrong again. It was another disturbing dream.

After my secret admirer disappeared, I began having repetitive nightmares about Rain, in which, we were enclosed by a midnight sky, and he lay dying in my arms and then, I saw myself falling over and over off the edge of the earth. Fortunately, I would wake up before I hit the bottom of the dark abyss. I felt this was symbolic of my encounter with him.

These dreams alone gave me reason enough to keep the lights on while I slept. So, I kept my subconscious thus secured within the fortress of my boudoir, with a simple light bulb as my asylum. It seemed to work, the nightmares about Rain faded. Leaving the light on ensured my fail-safe plan to get Rain out of my head forever. At least, out of my dreams.

In hindsight, I know now, the presence of the otherworldly man saw this as his advantage to reveal himself. I felt his somber energy begin to shift when my nightmares about Rain ceased. He wanted more than to stay hidden between my world and the enigma of his world.

Some time ago, in fact, it was before our pact, before the nightmares about Rain began, that I felt he might manifest himself physically. That was when I actually started sleeping full-time with the bedside lamp on. This was when I learned that light was his kryptonite, forcing him to retreat to his dark origin, wherever that might be.

Despite the pact that came later, leaving the lights on assured me that he would stay in the darkness. Like a child comforted by a nightlight, my lamp was working double duty: saving me from the nightmares about Rain and from seeing with my own eyes, the otherworldly entity.

I remember that night so clearly. There were no footsteps that entered into my flat, no doors opened, and no physical point of his entry.

The rain and the wind, of that February storm, were his catalysts into my reality and woke me from a shallow sleep as he had done many times before.

But this time something felt different, he wanted more than I could have ever imagined. I had become the source of his existence, his hunger and his reason for being. I couldn’t see him, but I knew he was there like a predator patiently waiting for my moment of weakness to manifest himself and ravish me.

My keen sense of smell alerted me as it had before when he made his covert visits. His signature scent being raw, beastly and yet, intoxicating, surrounded me more powerfully than it had ever done before.

I felt him on the edge of the night; the darkness encircled me. He was restless, like a menacing wolf, waiting to devour its prey. And, unlike his visits before, it was the first time I truly feared the energy he exuded. It was powerful, I wondered if his physical form may be the darkest epitome of the ‘
beast’
from
Beauty and the Beast,
if such a creature really existed
.

His spirit was swift, like a stealth jet, granting him the confidence to infiltrate the confinements of my room without clearance to do so. Like the beast that lives in every man wanting to break all the rules, he was about to do just that.

I was defeated by my own absent-mindedness that night. I had forgotten to leave the lamp my bedside on during the storm, or perhaps, it was the storm that had knocked out the electricity, rendering me open to his invasion.

I reached for the lamp switch, but exhaustion prevented me from doing so. I was defenseless. My arm would not even move! Something was holding me back. It was the same force I had felt in my dream.

I sensed him moving closer to me. I wanted to scream, to run; instead I was frozen, curled up into a ball of fear. On one hand, I wanted to shut my eyes; I was too terrified to capture even a glimpse of his physical form and, on the other hand, I wanted to see him face to face. In order to conquer your fears, you must recognize them—I had read that somewhere. I was about to do just that. Then it struck me that he may, in fact, be faceless, which has caused him to stay hidden all these months.

Instinctively, my eyes closed when the mental image of him donning a Dorian Gray-like face flooded my mind. I was behaving cowardly, so unlike me, I am a mystery writer for Christ-sakes. But, for whatever reason, lately I had been seriously spooked. I tried to overcome this recently by reading tales by Oscar Wilde and Stephen King’s masterpieces, to no avail.

The storm outside threw wicked sheets of rain, pounding against the old copper roof like bullets. Blasts of lightning flashed behind my clenched eyelids. I wondered if the lightning rod on the building’s roof would catch and disperse the lightning strikes harmlessly into the ground.

I heard a sound that was more physical than audible, unlike before.
He was inside!
The wind carried him through the barely open window into my room. I was panic-stricken of what he was in his hungry state. I’d denied him for weeks, not knowing how to put a name to his existence. His energy hovered over me, an entity, beaming down on his prey. The thin summer gown I wore became instantly soaked by the cold sweat of my terror.

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