The Lebrus Stone (25 page)

"Mother, are you agreeing?" Zella asked as she slurped on her apple juice.

"I am saying we will leave alone what may be," Isobel answered. "For now."

Zella frowned, confused, though she continued to eat.

I was glad.

We ate in silence. Well, as silent as we could since Reverend Sinclair chewed and snapped bones like a crocodile.

Everything was going well until Zella spoke again. "Cray, are you going to be with Crystal?"

"What do you think?" Gal grunted.

"Like I said, they have my blessings," Sinclair said. He even raised his glass of wine to propose a toast. Isobel was the only one to oblige out of what was probably courtesy.

I tried to make Cray acknowledge me and say something, but his eyes never left his plate.

Eventually, he pushed back his chair and rose from the table, finishing his glass of water.

He slammed it down on the table and stalked out. I fought the urge to go after him.

"Kellice called," Zella yelled to him. "She's on her way to see you."

He slammed the front door to the manor.

After dinner, Kellice didn't arrive. It was probably just a front to get to Cray, which was just as well, considering he wasn't at home and I didn't want to see who she was.

He had been gone all night. No one was concerned but me. Maybe he was right and I was going to be constantly disappointed. His moods changed too quickly for me to keep up. But at least he opened up to me. All I could do now was relax and wait to see what happened.

As for Reverend Sinclair, he stayed unlawfully long. Didn't he have prayers to finish? Godly duties to tend to? Apparently not, and his time was invested in preaching to me. He even offered to baptize me in the bathroom.

When he and Isobel retreated to the study, I took refuge in my room. I called Jess and told her about my meeting with Elandra, but she didn't have much to say about it. She just said she knew of the story. I called home to speak to Jared. There was no answer. I left a message.

There wasn't much more to do. There was no way to delve in the mystery behind Thorncrest. There wasn't even any one to complain to. They had better things to do, places to go, people to see, including Isobel. And it only took one guess for me to decide where Cray might have been.

He couldn't wait for Kellice, so he must have needed to see her. Or perhaps he didn't want me to see their lurid acts of love. Whatever it was, he was more troubled than I had initially thought.

His ever-changing emotions were like a flit of paper written upon then erased. It was at a speed that would gain conviction then skid to a vacillating stop. It didn't remain as one thing at one time. He might have had to change every few hours, minutes. Until a confession led him further up the creek.

Isobel seemed resolved to keeping an open mind at least. Maybe that was because her mind was occupied with Reverend Sinclair. I couldn't have been imagining things in my waking hours. Something was riveted between them. It was like an itch unscratched, a wound unhealed. They were that way inclined, possibly harboring some secret rendezvous in the chambers of the study.

Did the rest of them not question it? Did they know about it? Was it approved of? Could the Minister be thrown out of the chapel for such a scandalous affair? God only knew, even if the Minister did have first-hand contact.

But they were the least of my concerns. Behind everyone else that had taken a back burner to my priorities.

Later that evening, I helped Milton plant new Alcea roses in the back garden. It was therapeutic. It was understandable why he liked gardening so much. At first, I thought it was tedious and inimical to hygiene. Now I saw it as another art form. We began to work in an easy silence. Words weren't necessary, just a team building effort to plant fresh flowers.

"Crystal, darling! Crystal!" Isobel called from the kitchen door.

"Yes, Isobel!"

"Come inside, dear, we need to talk."

I slipped my gloves and shoes off before heading indoors, then made my way to the study. Isobel wasn't inside. Not even her sidekick, Reverend Sinclair.

I found her sitting on the top step to the manor, visible a little by the porch light. She motioned me to sit beside her.

The first thing I noticed was her face. It was a slight pink. Her lips were a bee stung red. I pushed the image of her and the Minister ravenously kissing in the study from my mind.

"Cray is still absent," she said, as if I had asked the question. "I pray he returns." Her voice caught as she said it. She must have been upset.

"I'm sure he's fine."

Her lips downturned, her eyes were so dark I couldn't see them.

"Perhaps," she agreed with a nod, but didn't continue.

A few seconds later, her hand grasped mine. "I would like you to be careful, Crystal."

"Careful?"

"With Cray, if you were to begin a relationship."

"Nothing serious is happening, Isobel," I lied. Well, it was a lie on my part.

"But it shall if you choose to be together." She closed her eyes and waved about her handkerchief. "Forgive me, Crystal, I am simply concerned about what your actions may cause."

"I'm sorry if you don't approve of…" I wasn't sure what to call what Cray and I were becoming. I wasn't sure if we would ever become anything. "Our growing friendship."

She rubbed her chest and replied in her usual, calm yet bold manner. "It is not that I disapprove, darling. It is just that we all make rash decisions. Yours, too, shall be rectified."

I wasn't sure what the rectifying would entail. I had ideas, such as aborting any unplanned pregnancies. Surely Isobel wouldn't be so cruel as to control my decisions. Or was she afraid of Jess's theory? It's not like she was clueless to Cray having previous relationships. Although like me, perhaps she hoped he wasn't promiscuous.

I braced myself to delve into her reasons, but Isobel interrupted. "I suppose I will not be against any courting if it is to be, after all, fated. Although I would prefer you to remain celibate until any hand in marriage may one day be thus proposed."

I nodded. I didn't even want to tread a toe in the territory of marriage. As for celibacy, it was what I had planned. But that was fading the more I was around Cray.

"I would love you to become a further part of this family, Crystal. But these involvements take time. You must get to know one another. Talk. Exchange opinions, principles, values."

"Isobel?"

"Hm?"

"Is this to do with what Jess told me? You know, about what happened to all the females in my family?"

Isobel nodded, undeterred. My heart thumped. I had a feeling it had been.

"Oh, do not worry. I'm sure you and Cray will have remarkable children someday. But now is not the time, I assure you." Her mood brightened.

I figured it was her way to make me forget.

"You have to commit. Be a wife before a mother. It is a must. The Lord cannot abide illegitimate offspring." Her voice grew loud, almost a shrill. "A blessing of this kind has to be honored."

She patted the bun in her hair and the collar of her blouse like she did when unsettled, then spoke in an over sweet, but curt manner. "It will be for the best if you both took your time."

She kissed me on the cheek, stood and headed into the house like she hadn't wrenched my heart out and threw it back in all the more scarred and damaged. But Isobel was right, the story about my ancestry had to be a superstition. Yet that didn't solve why so many women died after childbirth. Isobel obviously felt unnerved by it to an extent, even if she did see it as hokum.

And as far as she was concerned, she had everything under control.

I really hoped she did.

~ * ~

A loud bang woke me in the middle of the night. I panted, expecting another episode like the first night. But there was nothing. There were no sounds coming from my bathroom. My alarm clock beamed 5:19 am.

I was wearing nothing but my panties and chemise. These days, and some nights it was warm, not cold. Tonight was one of them.

I was about to lay back down again, but flinched when something made a sound. It was similar to a rough bristling of fabric, and was coming from the rocking chair in the far corner. The one that had always been closer to the bed and which was now by the cupboard. Shadowed. Masked in a way, as if on purpose. My heart pounded.

The movement happened again. This time it had been with a flash of white; clear, but too quick for me to be sure of its realness. I waited for something else, a breath, a hand, the tip of a shoe in the sliver of moonlight. My body relaxed as I came to realize who it might be. It was a person sat there. I just knew it. I always detected this particular presence. The one person I wished it wasn't right now. Not when I was dressed like this.

"Who's there?" I whispered, holding the sheets to me. "I can see you."

Something moved; it sounded like wet feet squeaking against smooth leather.

I climbed out of bed with the sheets still wrapped around me. There was a chance it wasn't Cray. It could have been somebody else, Gal or Zella, an intruder. But deep down I knew it wasn't. I could feel it was Cray. The scent was undeniably his, its effect on me too.

I could feel my desires for him entering me against my will, spreading all the more open.

"Cray?" I took a few steps. It grew colder and airless the closer I got.

I wasn't frightened. Somehow I never could be. I was just afraid of how he might react. How he would see me each day. Whether I was to be noticed or given not one glance. He changed so much it was dizzying.

"Cray?"

The corner of the room was as dark as soot, with dust swirling in the moonlight from where I could see a chair's armrest.

A hand slipped into sight; fingers clenched around the carved shape of a rose. It was long, slender, but strong. Cray's hand.

I hurried forward, letting the sheets fall from my shoulders.

Cray sat absolutely still, his head bowed.

"Cray, what are you doing?"

His eyes flickered to mine. The pupils appeared to be frozen over, paler than his face, though his lips were a brilliance of red, luscious and full like they had been imbued with a raw heat.

His eyes flickered to the window. I walked over to him and crouched by his legs. He had on the same clothes from earlier. There were darker shadows under his eyes.

There was also a dangerous air to him. But the danger wasn't just in the way he came across, but the way he sat, perhaps thinking, keeping it all to himself, being sure to let me know I was a part of the imagery. Stuck, like a record.

I placed my hand on his. There was an oiliness to the top of it, a thin film.

"Speak to me, Cray. I know you have something to say."

I couldn't hear him breathing. I just saw his chest rise and fall quickly.

I held my hand to his chest. His heart didn't seem to be beating. I touched his neck. It also had a slight film of oiliness, even his hair. He had no pulse.

His eyes were open, but he wasn't awake. It only looked that way. He seemed somewhere else. I grabbed his face and shook it, but his eyes never blinked. They just glazed over with an extra layer of white, becoming less translucent and more and more matte, closing into a gray pupil.

"Cray, listen to me." I shook him harder. His arms tensed and bulked through his shirt, his breathing quickened. Something then tapped in his chest. Pressing my ear to it, I could feel something moving, prodding my cheek. But it wasn't his heartbeat. It was too phlegmatic. I didn't freak out. I was too worried about him.

I didn't know what to do. Somehow I knew I might endanger him if I dared try. But I couldn't sit and watch. He was transforming. He was no longer a person in a way. Everything about him looked artificial, made from rock.

And when I took a closer look at his face, it was bloodless, powdery like chalk. His eyes were a cool, liquidized frost.

I shouldn't have, but I kissed him. My lips plunged illimitable into his raving heat, no matter the placidity of his non-beating heart. I stopped kissing him and then did it again, softer, fuller, deeper, for much longer lengths of time. In my mind I was resuscitating him, bringing him back. In my mind I was no longer angry for what he did today. In my mind, I needed him all the more, needed the chase, the thrilling tenderness of his fingers that began to make their way up my spine.

He gasped and shot back his head, blinking until the whites of his eyes depleted back to black. He panted faster, loud and laborious, like someone rising from the deep shore of an ocean.

His eyes gazed around the room, absorbing everything except me. I sat back, dejected at how he wasn't noticing me. I wondered if I should curl up and die from the gluttony of his constant punishments, but I was pushed back by the heavy cling of his weight.

His lips found me first, his hands followed, groping my stomach. He wasn't cautious with every touch to my growing hot body. He pushed me so deftly on to the floorboards, I felt swallowed by the grains, the splinters of wood imbedding to my skin. Yet it didn't matter. I didn't feel any pain, only a glorified sense of being opened and dissected from the core of an inner, unidentified shell.

I gasped against his mouth, feeling sanctified by his body reacting so insistently to mine, rushing through me like an electric jolt of uncontrollable sensation flooding through my veins. He tore away what little clothing I had on and peered down at me, admiring my nakedness under the moonlight. His eyes travelled the length of me. He touched my face, my neck, uttering how beautiful I was before trailing his fingers down my chest to stop just between my breasts. He said my name like he was pained by it, but at the same time, immensely pleasured by the sound. He leaned forward and kissed me, roughly, without any signs of holding back, plunging his tongue into my just as hungry mouth as he peeled off his shirt and tossed it behind him, leaving us skin to skin, breathless and deliriously wanting the intensity to never stop.

The room spun and our breaths became all the more frantic. A light looked to have emerged from my birthmark to enter his chest, clasping his soul like a hand that seized a facet of his every tone and color. His want for me burst into the biggest awe inspiring blue that circled us, so that my heart no longer suffered. Not even when the light vanished. Not even when our moment came to an indescribable end.