The Glimpsing (26 page)

And just as on that night, he let his hand fall to the knob and
push
the door open.

His bedroom came into view.
 
But it was tinted such a deep blue by the light of the early morning sky that it seemed completely unfamiliar.

His eyes were immediately drawn to the bed.
 
There, he saw the lumpish outline of Rose, covered head-to-toe with a sheet.

He began to approach the bed, again being reminded of the way he had approached Portia’s bed that night. Reaching it, he stared down at the woman’s covered form.
 
She looked like something from a morgue.

His hand stretched forward, moving steadily toward the sheet’s edge.
 
He felt a nervous tremor awaken in him.
 
He swallowed hard.

He half expected to hear a loud thud, and one of his closet doors swing open, revealing a mysterious red form inside.
 
But this time there was no such sound.
 
His hand fell to the rim of the sheet without incident.

He let it rest there briefly, his heart pounding in anticipation.
 
He then slowly pulled it down, just three or four inches...
 
then his breathing stopped, arrested by what he saw: the sensuous golden fibers of Portia’s hair.

He brought the sheet down a bit more and watched, star struck, as Portia’s sterling features gradually emerged.
 
He was so awed by her that the sheet slipped from his hand.

She appeared to be sleeping.
 
The blonde hair partially covered one side of her face.
 
Her lips were pouty and pink.

Again his hand went into the air, seeking to reclaim the sheet.
 
It was shaking now, this time not from the ravishments of alcohol, as had been the case on that morning in Portia’s bedroom, but from a sense of his crumbling inner strength, from the icy thought
that already he might be betraying his love for Gabrielle—a love that was no less new and virginal as the body lying before him.

His hand went still when it touched the sheet.
 
Then it quickly wrenched, clutching the material in a tight fist.
 
He offered another moment’s hesitation,
then
snatched the sheet away.
 
He swallowed again.

She was clad only in lingerie, the color of a fully ripened rose.
 
The bra straps were particularly thin, and pressed gently into the flesh of her shoulders.
 
Her breasts, pushed to handsome spheres by cups of smooth satin, quivered subtly with the sheets removal.
 
Her navel was lovely, a winking eye couched in the smooth gradations of her abdomen.
 
The panties clutching her hips formed a deep triangle at the meeting of her thighs.
 
Her legs were thin, milky
smooth,
and very long.
 
He’d never seen a more desirable form.

Gazing at her, he sensed something loosen within him, a restraint that had suddenly grown slack.
 
He tried to strengthen his himself, forcing the image of Gabrielle into his mind.
 
But desire seemed to have shrouded her face.

He forced his eyes away and peered at the end table, searching with desperation for the picture of Gabrielle he’d left there, believing it could silence the power of the body beckoning beneath him.
 
But the frame had disappeared.
 
He looked for it anxiously, peering around the end table, onto the floor, at the gallery of photos across from him.
 
But all that caught his eye was Portia’s painting, the embittered face of Thomas McCain, and the bed that was once again devoid of Rose’s form.

Something moved in the periphery of his lower vision.
 
He gazed downward and was immediately accosted by two irresistible invitations: one, the soft, suggestive gaze of Portia’s radiant blue eyes.
 
The other, the delicate white of Portia’s outstretched hand.

It was happening, just the way he had envisioned it that morning in Portia’s bedroom.
 
She was reaching out to him, wanting him to take her.
 
She was his now, finally, mercifully, his.
 
All he had to do was reach forward and take her hand.

But he could not take her hand, despite the stampede of passion urging him to do so.
 
He stood there numbed; rendered immovable by the sudden realization of what else Rose had seen within him.
 
She had seen both of them, the two paradoxical forces warring in his soul.
 
She saw his love for Gabrielle, and also, his lust for Portia.
 
Both dwelled within him.

Jack then felt delicate fingers, first grazing against his own, and then seizing his hand.
 
She nudged him toward her, at first gently.
 
Then, as he continued to linger, she clutched his hand firmly and pulled him forward.

Jack came, keeping his balance only by placing a knee on the bed.
 
He peered down at her foolishly, trying to convince himself—though he knew otherwise—that none of this was real.

Then he heard her speak, not Rose, not the woman in the painting, but her.
 
“It’s okay,” she said.
 
“I won’t stop you.
 
I want this.”

Another awesome reality struck him then.
 
The woman offering herself to him was not some entity from a painting, not some facsimile of Portia.
 
She was Portia.

And with that blazing epiphany, Jack was overwhelmed.
 
“How is this happening?” he managed weakly.

“Don’t worry about that,” Portia whispered, staring up at him with those eyes.
 
“Just let it.”

And without hesitation, Jack obeyed.

He leaned forward, intending to cover her with his body, but she took hold of his arm, turned it, and sent him flailing onto his back.
 
He lay there dumbly, a bit puzzled as she departed the bed and strolled to its base.
 
She stood there, peering down on him without a trace emotion, and yet somehow suggesting he come to a realization.
 
It eluded him briefly… and then he remembered.
 
In the mirror, her reflection, the way her hair spilled over her shoulders and down her back; the way she was standing there, towering over
his own
reflected form.
 
It was all from the dream, the one he’d long been having of her.
 
She was reenacting that too—only this time, there would be no dark room; no
unseeable
body sliding
over his own
.
 
No mirrors in which to watch the act unfold.
 
This time he’d see every inch of her blessed form, and this time, it would all be real.

He watched as she slowly eased a knee to the bed and began crawling toward him.
 
He could feel the presses of her hands on the mattress—just as in the dream—but this time he could enjoy the
wantoness
of her gaze, see the mild flex in her arms, spy the hang of her breasts.

She lunged forward and let her head settle to his shirt.
 
Her bosom pushed at his loins, making them tighten sharply.
 
In her mouth, she seized one of the buttons midway up his shirt and began toying with it between her teeth.
 
She then bit the thread in two.
 
The button popped free and disappeared in the covers.
 
She then found another button and bit if off as well.
 
She continued doing the same, working her way downward until its lower half was undone.
 
She laid kisses on his lower abdomen as her hands worked, leafing open his pants.

She let her lips roam upward along his stomach and began to nuzzle impatiently, her hot, moist tongue
 
sometimes
slipping forth, spraying his flesh with delicious chills.

Jack had laid an open palm along Portia’s hip, holding it gently.
 
His other hand traced its way down the valley of her back, following the swell of her buttocks until it disappeared beneath her panties.

Portia grabbed the two ends of the shirt and yanked, snapping the remaining buttons and exposing the meaty musculature of Jack’s chest.
 
She plunged into him again,
kissing, sucking, and tasting every portion of the exposed flesh, making it glisten with her saliva.
 
She went higher, chewing at his neck, letting her hands roam through his hair, over his face.
 
She slipped a finger in his mouth, then another, letting him taste them before her own mouth joined in.

Jack’s hands were positioned perfectly.
 
With a delicate ease, he rocked her pelvis back and forth over his hardened loins until he sensed that familiar dewy warmth gathering between her legs.
 
She moaned with the motion, suddenly pulling her lips from his and raising her head as if coming up for air.

She gazed at him intently, her eyes sometimes peering through him, as if distracted by the pleasure.
 
She then began the squeezing her thighs against his sides, writhing and bucking and arching her body in such a way that she actually worked his pants down to his knees.
 
He easily slipped out of them.

Placing her hands on his chest, Portia pushed herself erect and straddled him, her knees at his sides.
 
He reached up and liberated her bra, filling his hands with her flesh.

He had grown statue solid, tense the point of exploding.
 
She, however, was warm and expectant.
 
He grasped her panties with two gnarled fists.
 
She fell to him again, burying his face with her bosom.
 
He pinched the fatty flesh in his teeth.
 
She issued shaky, overwhelmed groans.
 
He then pulled with his fists and rent her panties, causing a neat split down the center.
 
He tried to position himself, all the while silencing Portia’s persistent moaning with a deep kiss.

The image of Gabrielle raised itself briefly in his mind, but it quickly passed, swallowed in a thickening cloud of pleasure as Portia shifted over him, trying to help him... and then there was an abrupt slide forward.

He shivered violently with the eruption of pleasure.
 
His mouth froze, his lips still pressed to hers.
 
His eyes sealed tight.
 
He felt something like lightning pass through him.
 
Time seemed to stop.
 
And just before everything cut to a sterile black, Jack found himself kissing the teeth of
 
a
large and sickening smile.

Jack Parke knew something had gone horribly wrong.
 
It wasn’t just the queer smile he’d felt on Portia’s face while kissing her, nor the apparent blackout that followed.
 
It was something else.
 
Something much deeper.

Part of it was the fact that he was no longer in the bed, but was now peering out at the full spectrum of his bedroom.
 
Except for his change in position all was as it had been before.
 
The bedroom was still awash in that deep morning blue, and he could still hear the early birds
tweeting
their monotonous rhythms in the distance.
 
But something was very definitely wrong.
 
Then Jack tried to move, and he realized just what it was.
 
His body had gone stiff as a board.
 
He could not so much as extend an arm, bend his legs, or wiggle his toes.
 
He tried to speak, but his mouth felt like it had been wired shut.
 
He couldn’t even close his eyes.

Suddenly panicked, he tried to jerk his body to life by flailing his arms and kicking out with his legs.
 
Yet although he could feel his limbs straining to do so, not once did they flinch.
 
It was as if his entire body had been buried in concrete.

He then realized something.
 
Rose had done this to him.
 
That had been the reason she’d stopped kissing him, the reason for that sickening smile.
 
Through some power of her world, she had brought him to this petrified state.

Again he frantically tried to move, straining his entire body left then right.
 
Once again, he was denied.
 
He shot his eyes to the bed, which sat about ten feet in front of him, looking for Rose.
 
Only its messy compliment of sheets and blankets peered back.
 
He glanced at the answering machine, which read 6:59am, then through the bedroom door, down the hallway, and into the darkened hollows of two other bedrooms.
 
He saw nothing.
 
He cut his eyes to the wet bar, then to the mirror between the two floor-to-ceiling windows.
 
He tried to see himself within it but the angle was too severe.
 
He realized that the birds had stopped.

Then he noticed something very peculiar about the bedroom.
 
It seemed to be tilting slightly; the left side was perhaps two feet lower than the right.

Seeing this produced an odd dread within him, but he quickly realized its true cause.
 
In the first place, given his approximate height, he had very likely been propped up in a chair.
 
And in the second, it wasn’t the room that was tilted but
his own
head.
 
It had been leaned against something—judging by his approximate position in the bedroom, the dresser beneath the gallery.

But none of that mattered.
 
Where he was wasn’t the issue.
 
The real question was why.
 
Why had Rose left him like this?
 
Was she going to return, and, if so, what did she intend to do to him afterward?

That thought made him more uneasy than ever, but all he could do was
wait
and see.
 
So that was what Jack did.
 
He sat there like a scarecrow, and waited.

One unpleasant and very disturbing hour had passed.
 
Jack had watched tensely as the bedroom grew gradually lighter, passing from those pale blue shades to the glazed yellow of morning.
 
Peering out of the windows, he could see a lovely day taking shape.
 
Bright sunlight had made the fields of grass surrounding the house seem exceptionally green.
 
The sky was a crisp blue, cloudless and perfect.
 
The trees that lined Langley Drive, the road curving along the southern side of his estate, swayed seductively with an apparently generous breeze.
 
Every few minutes he’d catch a glimpse of a car moving along the road,
then
its dull drone would disappear into the distance.
 
He quickly learned to love the sound of the cars.
 
It was the only thing that broke up the deafening silence.

At 8:45am, the phone calls began.
 
The first to leave a message was Ann Spivey, his secretary.
 
She had called to make certain he had not overslept, and also to remind him that he’d scheduled an appointment with Noelle Chamberlain at 9:00am.

Mark Pirelli called at 9:18.
 
He chided Jack playfully for missing the appointment, then added that he had still been able to convince Noelle to sign a two-year exclusive contract.
 
He wondered if Jack was out playing golf, then joked about deserving a raise before hanging up.

Later, there were calls from Jack’s lawyer, Jacob Roister, two more from Ann Spivey, one from his landscaping company, and no less than four from Taylor Winslow, a pain-in-the-butt twenty-three year-old model who, ever since being featured on the cover of Vogue, felt entitled to call Jack and complain about everything from the hotel she was staying in to the lack of media present at her runway shows.

Most of the callers had given up by 12:15.
 
More than five hours had passed since his ordeal had begun, and he still couldn’t move a muscle.

At 12:47pm Jack became momentarily ecstatic, for the voice on the answering machine was that of Gabrielle’s.

“Hey, it’s me.
 
I’m just calling to let you know I’ve landed.
 
Are you home?
 
I tried your Blackberry.
 
Two o’clock sharp, Mark Joseph’s.
 
Don’t forget.
 
I’ll see you then.”

As the room went quiet once more, Jack’s grimness returned.
 
No you won’t,
he thought bitterly.
 
No you won’t.

Gabrielle called again at 2:25pm.

“Jack I’m… here at Mark Joseph’s… waiting.
 
Did you get held up at the office?
 
If you get this, call me as soon as you can, okay?”

He could already detect an air of defeat in her voice.
 
It was as if she could already sense that something had gone terribly wrong.
 
Her intuitions were right.
 
Something had.

At 3:15pm, Gabrielle called for the final time.
 
Misery seemed to plague her voice.

“Jack… I’m leaving Mark Joseph’s.
 
I just wanted you to know… in case you…
 
Can you call me as soon as you get this?
 
Please.
 
I’ve tried the studio and no one has seen or heard from you all day.
 
If you’re busy with something, I understand.
 
But please, call me back.
 
I just need to know that you’re okay.”
 
She paused,
then
repeated.
 
“Please.”

At that, Jack once more desperately tried to move his body, but could not.
 
He tried to yell out, and for a moment actually thought he heard something.
 
But it was just the drone of another passing car.
 
For the first time in his adult life, Jack Parke actually wanted to cry.

It was dusk now.
 
He peered out of the far window anxiously, chilled by the bruises of red and orange haunting the western sky.
 
As he watched that light grow dimmer, and the haze of darkness begin to creep in, his fear only deepened.
 
He turned his eyes away from the window, and prayed.

With nightfall came darker thoughts.

He had watched as the bedroom slowly darkened, becoming little more than a swarm of barely visible objects.
 
As he helplessly continued gazing into it, his eyes began to play tricks on him.
 
Twice he thought he saw a sooty face with white eyes appear just above the wet bar.
 
The mangled mass of covers on the bed had formed the blackened stump of a severed arm.
 
Almost the entire time, in the periphery of his vision, he thought he saw the form of a man with a stitched face standing behind a coat rack.
 
He did his best to
stay calm, to make himself understand that these were little more than illusions, but he found them frightening nonetheless.
 
He prayed that he’d be able to at least shut his eyes, but they remained open, like those of a dead man.

By midnight a gentle rain had begun to fall outside.
 
The bedroom had thickened with humidity.
 
He could feel its mist-like condensation forming on his face but he paid it little mind.
 
Fear had dragged him elsewhere.

It was the thought of the painting that distressed him.
 
As best he could gauge, it was just a few feet away.
 
At any moment he could expect to hear that signature thud, the sound that always trumpeted Rose’s departure from the painting.
 
Soon he might see her pale head rising before him, blotting out all sight of the bedroom.
 
Or worse, he’d see Thomas McCain emerging from the shadows of the hallway and entering the bedroom.
 
Perhaps that was why Rose had left him here unable to move, because she wanted to see Thomas do it again, wanted to see him wrap those large and powerful hands around his neck and finish giving it the ringing it deserved.

At that, Jack felt a slight loosening of his sanity.
 
He began to laugh inwardly, cackling like an old geezer, as he envisioned Thomas murdering him over and over again.

After another hour, it all became clear.
 
He knew what Rose had done to him; understood what this was really all about.
 
Rigor—mortis.
 
That was why his body had gone so stiff.
 
Because he really wasn’t alive.
 
He was dead.

It was beautiful when he thought about it.
 
In reality, he had not merely passed out when he’d kissed Rose, but died.
 
However, not just any death.
 
It was peculiar in the sense that Rose, through some strange and dark art, had caused both his mind and senses to remain alive, even though his body had long ago died.
 
Yes, this was the reason she’d so casually left him propped against the dresser: because she wasn’t coming back.
 
She didn’t need to.
 
She fully intended for his corpse to remain sitting there for days before it was found.
 
In the meantime, he’d be left to suffer the maddening odor of his own rotting flesh.
 
And that wouldn’t be the worst of horrors.
 
After being found, the medics would arrive and he’d be forced to endure the unpleasant experience of being placed in a body bag.
 
They’d hoist what was left of him onto a gurney, and cart him away.

At the hospital, he’d hear the clacking of the gurney’s wheels as they rolled him into the icy florescent light of the morgue.
 
And he’d shriek inwardly as they laid his body on a steel bed, slipped a toe tag over his foot, and slammed him into a chamber of utter darkness.

A few days later he’d be transported to a funeral home.
 
There, he’d feel tubes being inserted into his body, and gasp at the feeling of his blood being drained away.
 
Then different tubes would be inserted, special tubes, for his new blood, of course:
formaldehyde.
 
His eyes and mouth would be glued shut, and then he’d be dressed in a handsome black suit, in which he’d spend the rest of the night cozily confined in a casket.
 
The next day, at the wake, hundreds would take their turns peering over him, making comments, talking about how wonderful a job the undertaker had done on his face, how he looked as if he were only sleeping.
 
Only he wouldn’t be sleeping.
 
He’d still be conscious, hearing everything.