So Many Secrets ~ Chapter Nine

Nine

Owen didn’t waste time Googling tile or grout. Instead he dove into social media, plugging the name Natasha Nikoslav into Instagram (nothing), Twitter (nothing), Snapchat (no dice). Facebook.

Jackpot.

And the picture. He placed his index fingers together, rested them on his lips. The profile shot, a spot where most people pinned their most flattering selfie, or some sort of cutesie or ironic icon, was instead... "Sleeping Beauty." In full repose, hands folded atop her chest like a corpse.

A draft settled onto his nape and he pulled his hair from its band, shook it free as he clicked on her name and the picture, brought the whole page up.

A second, larger Sleeping Beauty was tacked up as her page banner and he stared at it, half fascinated, half appalled. This picture, a painting, was again Sleeping Beauty in repose; blonde and almost preternaturally beautiful (“And who does that look like?” he muttered), yet… “Too late to be kissed awake,” he murmured, a little surprised by how oddly romantic - and strangely wistful - he sounded. Yet it was true. The the Sleeping Beauty in this shot didn’t just look like a corpse—she was a corpse. A blade was jammed to the hilt in her chest and a thread of blood leaked from a mouth just as plump and pink as the Tsarina’s. “Fairytales often end violently,” he said, and moved the cursor rapidly over to ‘Friends’. What the hell was all this about? And who were Natasha Nikoslav’s associates?

No Friends To Show

It was just a privacy mechanism, he knew that, yet ‘No Friends To Show’ struck his gut in a way that made him feel hollow. He pushed the sensation aside, clicked on the other pull-down menus. Timeline: no info. Photos: just the two Sleeping Beauties. And no books were listed, no music, no other interests, yet under ‘About’, her biography read: So Beloved

This tweaked his brow. ‘So beloved’—who said that about themselves? It didn't feel like it fit with the quaky hands and troubled face of the exotic Tsarina he’d met in the grocery store.

Although…he had been fooled by a persona before. Had fooled people with a persona before. “But if you’re going to be a liar, be a good one, Tsarina.” Because he, in a mere twenty-second Google search, had already netted a connection to Rob and Jessalyn’s fairytales. Which was something those two should have done themselves. Who in their right mind rented property to people without vetting them first through every set of means possible?

Answer: open-hearted people who thought everyone in the world was as kind and honest as they were. “Fuck, Old Man,” he muttered, to Rob’s absent figure, then grabbed his cell phone to call him.

It chimed in his hand before he could hit his number. A text:

Hard to text with this knife in my back, Night Crawler. Don’t reply. I just wanted you to see this. I wanted you to feel.

A lurch jerked his gut and that hollow, no-friends-to-show feeling widened inside, a greedy thing. Sondra. Wanting him to ‘feel’. He stared at her message. How could she think he wasn’t feeling?

How could she believe that he was?

Christ, he missed her. Missed how her every expression could go from softness to steel in a pulse stroke. The flint-eyed bitch she became always looked like a stranger, and in the end it had become something of a game to win that part of her over, to seduce it the way he could so easily conquer her softer side. She had the ugliest, knotted little hands. But her breath would shudder like she was coming undone when he’d pull each gnarled finger into his mouth, suck them slow. He’d made love to her in the shittiest, seediest dumps because that’s what he’d been expected to do.

And because he’d wanted to.

Night Crawler. His street name. Sort of.

And now…now Sondra had been forced into treatment. Was awaiting trial. And the cell phone she had used for this text was not her number because she would have borrowed it from somebody else, someone smart enough to shut up about it and deny knowing who might have used their phone to send this message to him. And without confirmation, there’d be no proof that Sondra had breached her conditions to contact him. Yet without confirmation there was also no way he could know if by keeping it on the down-low she was protecting herself…or him.

Which, of course, she would be aware of. Sondra was shrewd. Wily.

That’s why he loved her.

He pulled a hand down his face. What the hell had he done? And yet…what could he have done? What had he wanted to do? I don’t know and I don’t know and I don’t know. Was that why he hadn’t he shaved yet? Seen a barber? He did shower (Steve could shove any assumptions otherwise straight up his ass), still…was he clinging to his persona—Night Crawler—because he wanted to be that guy? Or because he was punishing himself by continuing to be that guy?

“I don’t know,” he said again, and when another chime rang from his phone his heart trip-hammered. Sondra again?

No. Rob Haslom. Busy? Can I call u?

Only Rob would seek polite permission instead of just dialing. Owen hit his number “What’s up?” He sounded coarser than he wanted to.

“Would you believe more mail?”

Yes, actually he would. Wasn’t that why he’d told them to go to the police?

“I’m going to send you a picture,” said Rob. “A postcard Jessie picked up today.”

“Postmarked from…?”

“Vancouver.”

Owen glanced at Natasha Nikoslav’s Facebook profile, still up on his screen. ‘I am from eastern Alberta.’ Good enough. But where was her cousin the art dealer from? “Send it,” he said. “Is it a threat?”

“No. It’s just…” Rob trailed off and Owen cringed for him, knowing he was about to employ his oft-used technical term: ‘Weird’.

I’ll call you back,” Owen told him, and hung up. A chime resounded within seconds and he pulled up the picture, read the script on the postcard:

My Dear Mrs. Haslom

How I look forward to seeing you in Vancouver.

I am the most ardent follower of your work.

Any father would be so proud.

A second photo was the picture side of the postcard. “Oho. Game on,” Owen breathed. It was a painting—in the same romantic style as the Tsarina’s dead Sleeping Beauty— a study of castle turrets, flags flapping and stately lawns rolling. In the foreground was a princess, skirt fisted in her hands and the scarf from her cone-shaped hat flying. She appeared to be on the run. “Escaping?” he said, and went back to script of the postcard, re-read it. ‘Mrs. Haslom’. An archaic title—and also inaccurate considering how Jessalyn signed her work ‘Chandler’, a detail he’d noticed when he’d been in her studio. A detail any ‘ardent follower’ would also be well aware of. And that was another thing. The note had said ‘follower’ not ‘fan’—and with a stiffness to tone and a pretentiousness that signified…what? Someone just careful with words? Or a lack of sincerity?

Or maybe indicative that English was the sender’s second language and therefore he (or she) was more dogged about rigid diction. He glanced at Natasha Nikoslav’s Facebook profile again, the memory of her accent settling into his ear.

Back to the postcard. Why send it at all? Weren’t there more expedient ways to get ahold of Jessalyn online? Didn’t she have a fan page? He clicked his cursor into the search cell of Facebook, typed her name.

A page immediately popped up, its profile pic an obvious publicity photo, and the banner shot one of her portraits; a doe-eyed woman in dated couture circa 1982. He scrolled through the posts. Her page had a modest following, many fans ‘liking’ or commenting on the art she had shared. “So why wouldn’t an ardent follower just message her here, free and instant?”

Because snail mail was infinitely more anonymous than a forum like Facebook.

He smiled grimly and hit the back arrow, returning to Sleeping Beauty Tsarina - but frowned as something new chewed at him. Even if Rob and Jessalyn had (obviously) not bothered to research their new tenant, why would Natasha Nikoslav have assumed they wouldn’t have? What were the odds of all of them being that obtuse? He reasserted his gaze upon the murdered Sleeping Beauty. Why would the Tsarina be so blatant? If she was the storybook sender, she would know there were obvious parallels to the fairytales and her Facebook profile.

But, if she was not the sender….

Then this was one hell of a coincidence. Unless…unless someone knew them both.

He pressed his pointer fingers together again and reconsidered the profile, the postcard, and the bizarre, gory storybooks. “Fairytales often end violently,” he murmured and, leaving Natasha Nikoslav’s profile up on his screen, he pushed away from the computer, grabbed his hoodie and keys.

Rob and Jessalyn might be gullible beyond redemption, but he was not—and they needed to be made aware that there was a whole lot more to Natasha Nikoslav than just peaches and cream and bee-stung cherry lips.

©bonnie randall 2005

So Many Secrets ~ Chapter Eight

Eight

Natasha had little familiarity with fairytales. Growing up, Baba had recited folk tales from the Old Country, and while some of the tropes and morals were the same, the names of characters and their plights deviated enough that she now read with close attention, an open bag of potato chips at her feet.

Jakob was present on the sofa, strumming his guitar with such complete concentration he’d barely acknowledged her return. She lifted her gaze from the fairytales, watched him play. He had always quieted his abilities with song; melody seemed to confuse his Shadows, cast them away where he could not read, and they could not show.

Yet he rarely banished his ability on purpose. “Bratranek,” she said. “Are you okay?”

A bar of Brahms drifted by, then “Tired,” he said, and raised his head.

She recoiled. His eyes, road-mapped and bloodshot, were ringed with bluish-gray smudges. “Jakob! You look—”

“You bought research,” he cut in, and pointed to the book.

She splayed a hand over it, strangely self-conscious. “Fairytales often end violently,” she quoted. “I…I wanted to see if that’s true.”

“It’s not,” he said, and sounded every bit as weary as he looked.

—Bratranek—

she tried, but he winced like this hurt. “Fairytales are violent,” he added, “but they never end that way.” A quizzical mar met his forehead. “Didn’t Baba read you stories when we were small?”

“She told me stories. She did not need to read. Jakob, you look—”

“Just tired, Natasha,” he repeated quietly. “And to anticipate your next question, it is because I am seeing…” He paused,a rough laugh tumbling out of his face. “Let me rephrase: I can’t keep up with what I am seeing.”

She sat back, hands at rest on the book.

He set his guitar to the side. “It is like watching two different films and trying to keep score of both, yet…” He gazed across the room, eyes affixed, it seemed, on a cache of carpentry tools neatly stacked near the French door.

Placed there by Rob for Sea-eyed Knight, Owen Brophy. Her mouth twisted.

Jakob said “The storylines tangle. I get…”

“Confused?” She plucked it from a Shadow rising off of his shoulders.

“Ja.”

“And frightened,” she added, and her heart began tripping. Jakob was never frightened.

His face pinched. “You hardly need to look so stricken, Natasha. I may be many things, but I’m hardly immune from witnessing murder.”

She scowled. “Please stop always assuming that I think you’re heartless,” she said. “I am just aware of what you are always only too eager to remind me yourself: that you’re stronger. And so, being stronger, if you are also frightened….” She trailed off, an involuntary shudder quaking her torso.

He read her fear without, she knew, any need for his Shadows. “I won’t let anything happen to you, Natasha.”

This had always been true.

“And I may be stronger, but did it ever occur that you are braver?”

No. Definitely not.

He smiled, soft and…sad. It chipped her heart, and he said “Think about where you’ve lived. Consider all you’ve endured over your twenty-seven years which sadists in that piss-pot have made feel double, triple, that long.”

She swallowed and her hand rose, touched her face where she would forever be able to feel the harsh bristles of a brush, dripping with blood-colored paint.

“I could not,” he said, “have lived like that.”

“I…” She looked down at her lap and the fairytale book released a small shadow, a little girl whose chubby hand had affixed to the tome in the store—and whose brisk, no-nonsense mother had said ‘no’. A parent. A caretaker. She looked to Jakob. “I will not let anything happen to you, either,’ she said. “Which is partly why I am banishing you now, off to lie down with your music.” She pointed to his iPod and headphones, askew on the coffee table.

He affixed a longing sort of gaze to the earbuds and nodded—then grinned. “First tell me what unsettled you so much when you did your shopping. It was not that book.”

“Dammit, Jakob!” She clapped a hand on the fairytales. “Stop reading—”

“I am not reading. See?” He opened empty hands. “No Shadows.”

As if she could see his Shadows. She harrumphed and he laughed, the sound charming her (not that she’d tell him) for how it made him sound boyish.

“You always shovel twice as much of your precious junk food in your face after something’s upset you,” he said.

Her jaw dropped. She wasn’t shoveling potato chips! Was she? She peeked into the bag.

Over half gone. Oh, damn. “I…I met someone.”

“Ah. Who is he?”

“Stop. Reading. Me.”

Open went his hands again and his face? Guileless. She affixed him with a dead-eyed glare. “Turn your iPod on.”

“Oh, Natasha—”

“On,” she said. “Or you hear nothing.”

Sighing, he fiddled with the iPod and within seconds tinny music resounded from the small headphone speakers.

“I’ve seen a Sea-Eyed Knight in my Shadows,” she announced, “And today we met. Owen Brophy, Blue Eyes ‘oldest friend’.” This last she put in air quotes. “I shook his hand and a whole story rushed forth in the Shadows, words and pictures.”

And one fluffy pink peony, as out of place as champagne at a soup kitchen, and she’d glowered at it, hissing silently at her Shadows—Be accurate! I know little enough as it is without you being cryptic.

Jakob said “What sorts of words and pictures?” and this pleased her; normally he would have just helped himself and plucked it all from her mind. With the music on all he could do was listen.

“False friend,” she recited, Shadows that had floated around Owen Brophy. “Betrayal. The words scheme, and plot, and…” a new shiver seized her shoulders. “Night Crawler.”

Jakob’s face was impassive. The under-reaction annoyed her. “When our fingers touched I heard the flick of a lighter,” she said. “Saw a bulbous glass…well, it looked like a pipe I have seen on TV. It stank.”

“So he is a drug user.”

Yes! And was all this not enough?

“Are you sure?”

She gawped. How dare he doubt her abilities? She’d never once questioned his. In her mind she could just see Railey, face affixed in an I-told-you-so smirk, complete with foot tapping.

“Natasha,” Jakob eyed her, oh-so patient. “It is funny, really, how you make me turn my music on when I can read you just as well with no Shadows as with them. Sometimes better.” He twitched a shoulder. “It is also funny how it is I who has to remind you of how your Shadows normally work; you see the past, remember? So this—”

—Sea-eyed Knight—

“—Brophy person, maybe he was a drug user. Maybe someone betrayed him. After all, Shadows or no Shadows, Rob and Jessalyn Haslom hardly look like the type of people who consort with addicts.”

“Perhaps not, but you didn’t see him: Long hair that needs washing, a beard—”

“I wear a beard, Natasha.”

“You trim it! Tattoos all over—”

“You and your idiot friend also both have tattoos.”

“Dost! And…and…” And Owen Brophy was built. Lean yet heavy with muscle. Had those cool, Pacific eyes and a beautiful, dimpled smile… “He is scary,” she said.

“Scary.”

“Ja.”

Jakob slowly closed, then opened, his gold eyes. “You do realize you are judging someone based upon how they look, correct, sestranek? You, of all people, who have lived your own experience?”

“And you, of all people, are scolding me when you’d wear Armani to a lumberyard? You’re the snootiest person I know!”

“Ja, but that’s me.” He shrugged, unperturbed.

“The Sea-Eyed Knight also thinks I’m a hooker.”

Okay, it was rare—and therefore delightful—to see Jakob burst into a belly laugh. Or at least most times it was delightful. “I am so thrilled I amuse you,” she said.

His eyes sparkled. “I should make a point of meeting Owen Brophy.”

“You will. Jessalyn is hosting a dinner party.”

The laughter fell off his face. “Where?”

“Why, where do most people cook dinner, Jakob? Presumably at her home.”

“No,” he said.

“Pardon—”

His hand snaked out, shut his iPod off. “No,” he repeated. “I do not want you there. Natasha, their home…”

She searched through Shadows, grabbed words. “It’s not safe?” she echoed, alarm tripping inside.

“Haslom wants to move,” he said quickly. “He wants to relocate them into his new development. It is why he has taken on too much work; he wants to afford the move even if he cannot immediately sell his own property.”

“Because he knows they’re not safe?”

“Ne. Because their place now…” He smiled and it struck her how affectionate it was. “It is beautiful, yet impractical. Costly to heat, and costly to cool.”

“Uh-huh. And…?”

“And isolated. Look.” He stretched an arm out, invited her fingers.

A gust of Shadows surged forth, and when she followed them she could see all the way down the street to the end of the block. There the boulevard twisted, met the highway traveling outside of town. Shadows rushed her to an intersection where the pavement ended and a gravel road wended deep into a valley. A bungalow nestled there, she could see the warm glow of lights through its many windows.

Jakob disconnected their fingers. “There is nowhere to run. No neighbor to hear someone cry out.”

She absorbed this. “Is…is Blue Eyes moving them soon?”

“He wants to. She is headed to Vancouver, a brief art engagement. He’d like the new property ready to win her over by the time she gets back.”

“And is she safe while she’s gone?”

A hesitation elapsed, then—“Ja.”

“And Blue Eyes? Is he safe while she’s gone?” Shadows flashed and she could see Owen Brophy, sea eyes narrow and one heavily muscled arm wielding a—What is that? A nail gun?—in a bath of light pouring out of Haslom’s homey bungalow….

“Yes,” said Jakob. “Haslom is fine.”

“You…you’re sure?” She was breathless.

“Ja. But Natasha, I do not want you attending that dinner party.”

She ignored the bone-melting relief at being scooped out of a social engagement, for “Why?” she asked. “So what if their property is isolated and vulnerable—they are the ones the Shadows say are in danger. Not me.”

“Our Shadows have become unpredictable,” he answered.

Since when?

He answered without having to be asked. “Case in point: you were so busy being offended by your sea-eyed drug dealer, you did not even notice how you were able to read his thoughts without touching him.”

Her mouth opened, formed shock. That was true. She hadn’t needed to touch Owen Brophy to hear him call her ‘Tsarina’. Amongst other things. And then there was that inexplicable peony. How could that be?

“So how can I condone you visiting Haslom’s when you could be at risk?”

“But you’ll be with me.”

“Does not matter,” he said, and his nostrils flared.

She stared at him and several seconds ticked by until “What," she said,"aren’t you telling me?”

He set his gaze upon hers. “I have told you what I know.”

What he knew, but everything he knew? Jakob was a master of messy semantics, and in her head she could hear Railey: ‘He’s manipulating you.’

“You are humming,” he said.

Yes. There wasn’t much choice.

“I can hear you, in your head, humming. Why?”

“Because I want you to stop reading,” she said calmly, grateful for how well he had taught her to lie. “I want you to take your headphones and try getting some sleep.”

“Ne, Natasha. You—”

“Jakob,” she said, still calm, and swallowing back all alarm. “Your…your nose is bleeding.”

He looked startled and checked. His hand came away scarlet.

“Go.” Her heart hammered. “Lie down.”

He held a cuff to his nostrils, headphones dangling through the fingers of his free hand.

“You are scaring me,” she added.

He flinched and she could see, beneath the haughtiness, and all the arrogance,…hurt. She bit her lip. “I am scared because your Shadows are so unstable they’ve exhausted you. Made you bleed. That…that happens to me, not you.”

“I…” He remained immobile, then—“I only want you safe, Natasha.”

She gestured, obtusely, she knew, to where she sat on the wingback with her fairytale book. “Although I may get up to make tea,” she said.

He hesitated then moved, wordlessly, into the bedroom he’d claimed.

Natasha lifted her hand off the cover of the book, loosed a Shadow that had been pushing beneath her palm. Tremors ate her fingers as she traced the path from whence it came, the list of individual titles on the front of the book. The Shadow swirled, a dark weave through the letters of one in particular. “Sleeping Beauty,” she breathed, mind racing back to piece together the parts of the story she knew: a newborn cast to sleep by a vindictive witch. But…then what happened? “Show,” she whispered, and cupped the curling Shadow.

It responded, euphoric and blooming with a spectrum like colored ink dropped into water. Turquoise. Magenta. Petal pink like the blossoms outside. Petal pink like the baby bootie in all her other Shadows. Babies, the thought occurred and she latched onto it. This is all about babies. “Show me more,” she said and was aware of the wet sensation on her philtrum. Her nose was bleeding like Jakob’s. Still, she rapidly read the words bursting out of her Shadows, silky colors and fine, cursive script. The baby, my Milacek. The baby.

A murmured tone underscored the written words, one she could not discern was concerned or sarcastic. Male or female. All she knew was that it made a chill race through her skin and settle deep in her bones. “What about the baby?” she whispered, shivering, for she could see the infant from her last call to the Shadows, its chubby arms and legs flailing and pumping innocently. Trustingly.

A voice whispered out of the Shadows. Wake up, Sleeping Beauty. Elayna’s baby was cursed from the start.

She started. That was taunting. Wasn’t that taunting? Her heart pummeled and she was aware of her nose bleeding, dripping off her chin and onto the book.

My Milacek, whispered the Shadows, then…

FOLLOW THE NIGHT CRAWLER

This surged through the colors, bold, black direction. Follow the Night Crawler. The Night Crawler. Knight Crawler. Owen Brophy. Her inhalations were so harsh they shredded her throat and she panicked, momentarily convinced Jakob would be able to hear her gasping above his music.

And all around her the Shadows kept speaking, both sensical and nonsensical words and whispers:

Follow the Night Crawler Sleeping Beauty milacek the Brothers Grimm the baby go with the Night Crawler.

Then a picture ruptured the curls of colored whisper, a panoramic view so vivid she shot back in her chair, the back of her head thumping against its cushion.

The Haslom’s bungalow, windows warmly glowing and…she squinted. Shadows, real ones, not psychic ones, darkening the doorway. She held her breath and heard something, a tiny cry, plaintive and “In pain,” she gasped, and leapt, the fairytale book plopping onto the seat with a dull thump. The keys to Jakob’s Maserati were on the kitchen counter. He had parked it in a spot not visible from any windows. He would not notice if it was gone. ‘It is dangerous,’ he had said, yet…never before had she seen him wiped out, or bleeding, from his Shadows. I protect you too, bratranek. And as such, she took her own iPod, plugged it into its speaker, volume set unobtrusively low yet still audible, an extra precaution to prevent being seen, or read.

She left through the back door.

©bonnie randall 2005