Maybe I listened to the wind howling, maybe I just watched the walls. Watched for the shadows on the wall. And maybe I thought about everything. Meeting Jörn in the lobby that very first day; meetings with Gerald ….Gerald ….from my days at the bookstore on Long Island ….it made me go over these details with nagging questions in my head. Did Gerald know Jörn before me? Was his being at the bookstore to meet me part of Jörn’s master plan? But then what of ….Willem??? Are they not thick as thieves? How would it even be possible to hide from Willem….
But this is madness!
At this point I find myself aware I’ve been in the room upstairs and Jörn built a fire in this fireplace. It is an old bed and the linens smell like an old haunted house. Which only contributes more to this sense of ….
And now I realize what it was—what the feeling was as I pulled up and at first felt excited to be here —that is until I stepped inside. Even as it had hung in the air outside, all around the house was a mood that can best be described as a graveyard. Now I understand that ….it came from the dreams —Elan’s ….memories ….and something here felt like ….the hut ….of how it became her grave and ….now I feel it again
Did I fall asleep in here? On the bed? I get up off it and brush off my clothes, feeling webs all over me; it freaks me out. I start shaking out my hair and scratching my skin because now it feels I am being eaten alive by a million ants crawling all over me.
“Duva!” it us Jörn in the dark grabbing hold of me
I don’t know why but just his voice in the darkness pulls me back from the webs
“I don’t like this room!” I say
He suddenly lifts me and takes me from the room, as swift as lightning, and then we are downstairs again. He brings me over to a sofa that is still covered in storage cloth, like the rest of the living room; he sits down, still holding me in his long arms and drapes his long legs down the length of the sofa, pulling me to wedge with my back against him, my legs in a limb-lock between his. He holds me there.
For awhile we just listen to the wind howl. I think hours went by just like that. No words. I cannot say where my mind went. I think I just stared at nothing. Watched the darkness outside the window ….and looked for the shadows like bats
it was his heartbeat. I realized when it seemed as though morning began to light the room in a faded gray glow—it was his heartbeat ….snd now, again with my back up against him, lulled by the offbeat metronome …. it is a kind of extra power, like an allure I just never was aware of—was this all my own delusion to or did he always in past hide it well? Until now.I thought of that blue glow beneath his skin I’d never noticed before ….why did I notice it now? Was it always there and I never saw it or, was this something new or
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he says now
“You mean, you can’t read my mind?” I ask him
“It doesn’t work like that,” he sighs with just the smallest hint of frustration
“What am I thinking?” and finally, now, I do look at him. I have to turn myself around in order to, but I need to see his face. His eyes. His pulse.
But my intention to confront Jörn, straight in the eye —got eclipsed by his kryptonite. Oh those vampire eyes, like the icy chill of the Scandinavian Sea, powerful enough to capsize your very life ….
“What about Gerald?” is the only reasonable question I can start with
“You and Gerald should talk ….” he sighs heavily glancing away
“Is that an answer?” I ask this as I pull his jaw to look at me.
He looks
And now this time I keep my head and stare into them,
“Willem?”
He is the master of the staredown. We stay locked like that quite awhile.
Perhaps I read his mind. Perhaps I just know him better than either of us know ….
because I find some answers in his stare
but know these aren’t even the important questions ….are they?
Eventually he lets out a long heavy sigh and he says,
“it’ll likely be ok to drive soon so, we can talk on the drive back.”
“The drive back?” I ask. Even as I should be indignant about his assuming I’d just automatically go with him, the urgent need to leave here makes me forget that detail at that moment but I say, “I drove here—the rental, remember?”
“Yes, I assumed we’d take that” he starts to say
As I ask at the same time,
“drive back where? The city?”
“—didn’t drive out here—I was dropped off; or I should say, I jumped off.”
But ….
He makes a hand gesture; his index finger pointing up, he twirls it around: helicopter
And I recall now….his image from the video monitors in the cage back in the dungeons at the Adirondak property
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