Vincent Zandri - The remains

Eyes wide open, unblinking, I swear I saw a shadow. The shadow of a man staring back at me from the open bedroom door, as if someone were standing inside the open frame-a silhouette against the darkness.

Was Whalen standing there, looking back at me? Had he violated his parole by sneaking out of the half-way house to come here?

I swear it’s him.

Footsteps along the bedroom floor. The filthy ashtray smell. The cell phone vibrating and chiming.

If only I could lift my arms. If only I could have reached out and grabbed hold of the phone. If only I could have lifted my arms, reached out and picked it up.

I wanted to scream. But want and desire were meaningless.

I felt the presence of Michael beside me. We were not divorced. We were still married and he was sleeping soundly right next to me, close to me, his body curled into my side, his face facing me. Just like it’s always been.

His sleeping breaths were not the least bit bothered by the sounds, the smells, the sights taking place inside this bedroom in the middle of the deep night.

“Rebecca.”

Every nerve in my body was body tingling, twitching.

I can’t possibly be dreaming. Can’t possibly be dreaming. Can’t possibly be dreaming…

I made a wish. Wished the voice away; wished the smell away; wished the figure of a small, thin man away.

The man who took Molly and me.

I began to drift.

As though by some miracle I started falling.

Faster.

Then faster still…

When I woke up the sun was shining through the windows. It seemed like a beautiful day, the terrible dreamt sounds, smells and sights of the night behind me. But not far enough. I reached out for the end table, picked up my cell and peeked at the time.

Six-thirty.

My hands trembling, I opened the phone to see if someone had called me during the night.

Nothing. Not even a new text.

Michael was still asleep. I decided to leave him be. Or maybe I just wanted some time to myself. Time to breathe, get my act together. I needed my routine. Craved it.

I got up, threw on a robe to fight off the chill and got to work on making the coffee. I swallowed a vitamin with a tall glass of orange juice, tried to eat my two ounces of Frosted Mini Wheats, but only managed a couple of bites.

As the rich aroma of the coffee filled the apartment, I began making a check on the living room. I walked the square-shaped room from one end to the other, my eyes examining the floor, the couch, the desk, the bookshelves.

Nothing seemed out of order; nothing seemed as if it had been tampered with. No footprints on the floor, no handprints on the walls. I looked over the windows and the door that led out onto the stone terrace, looked for fingerprints or smudges on the panes and sills.

Nothing. All deadbolts and safety chains secured.

But what about the bathroom?

I crossed over the vestibule, traversed the narrow hall that accessed the bedrooms and my rarely used painting studio, and entered the bathroom. I checked the window over the toilet.

The window was closed.

Reaching up and under the shade, I felt for the lock. It was unlatched. A jolt of electricity shot through my veins. Was it possible that my apartment had been broken into? Had Whalen opened this window from the outside, climbed in through it, slipped into my apartment and my bedroom, whispered into my ear? Just because no visible evidence of a break-in existed didn’t mean that it hadn’t happened. I remembered him as a small man. Maybe even small enough to fit through that open window.

I couldn’t help thinking that Whalen had made his physical presence known inside my apartment last night. Or was I just plain crazy like Harris suggested? The victim of the dreaded PTS? The victim of vivid nightmares?

I locked the bathroom window. Then I went into the kitchen, poured a cup of coffee, sipping it carefully. I tightened my robe against the chill. The old radiant heat system was blasting, but I was shivering cold.

What was happening to me? I knew now that Harris wasn’t kidding when he suggested I see a psychiatrist. Post Traumatic Stress. I also knew that today I would fess up to the detective about the texts. Michael was right. I should never have kept the truth from the cop for even a single day.

I took another sip of the coffee. It tasted bitter-sweet. Today was Thursday. Would Franny have a new painting for me today? Would he be upset that I wasn’t around to see it? That I was spoiling his routine?

Smell and Touch.

Those were the only senses left. They would be the titles of the final two paintings.

I drank some more coffee, picked up my cell phone, and punched the instant dial-up for Robyn. Again, the answering service popped on.

Why in God’s name wasn’t she picking up?

Noise came from the bedroom. Michael was up.

Should I tell him about my sensing Whalen in our bedroom last night while we slept? Tell him about my hearing his voice, smelling his stale cigarette smell? About the open bathroom window? My sense of reason said, yes, tell him everything. But caution told me to shut up about it. Shut up for now. Last night had been as perfect a night as I’d had in years. The last thing I wanted was to spoil it all this morning-spoil it for us. Michael was back in tune with me, with my thoughts and fears. He was here to protect me. I wanted to give him some peace, some space from whatever was happening to me. Was a little peace too much to ask?

“Rebecca?” he called out from the bedroom. “What time is it?”

I grabbed a second mug from the cabinet.

Michael would need a good jolt of coffee before he started biting the nail.

An hour later, I was getting out of the shower when the buzzer sounded on the front door. Michael was at his writing desk in the living room. I heard him curse as he got up from the table and tended to the interruption.

While I towel dried my hair, I heard him open the apartment door, then head up the small set of concrete stairs to the building’s main entrance. From where I stood before the mirror I heard the door open.

No words exchanged. At least, from where I stood in the bathroom, I didn’t hear any.

After a few seconds, Michael came back into apartment, closing the door behind him.

I stepped out of the bedroom.

With one towel wrapped around my body, another wrapped around my head and hair, I saw him standing in the small vestibule, a thin square-shaped package held in his hands. The package looked a whole lot like a canvas wrapped in brown butcher’s paper.

Standing beside Michael I began to feel the now too familiar blood pressure increase; the usual dry mouth.

Michael just stared at me, the package gripped in his hands. Neither one of us had to say a word to know what it was.

“Open it,” I said.

“How about I just chuck it out?”

“Open it. We can’t just ignore it.”

He exhaled, stuck a finger through the paper, tore into it, and pulled it away from the painting. Immediately, even before all the paper was torn away, I recognized the scene. It was a house in the woods. The house in the woods. The one from my dream; the one from my past. Whalen’s house. The house my sister found some weeks before me while on one of her secret expeditions into the forbidden woods. The house I remembered so well; a house that appeared not to have been built from wood, brick and stone, but that appeared to have grown up in the forest out of nothing at all; a house that to me had sprung up from the ground like a thorn bush but that to Molly seemed like a miracle.

The painting was a realistic rendering of that old, long forgotten farmhouse. The house was set in the middle of a second growth forest that had grown up all around it, consumed it for its own once its original owners had died off or simply abandoned it.