Read Caraliza Online

Authors: Joel Blaine Kirkpatrick

Caraliza (30 page)

There was indeed a murderer there; she had seen him. She looked into his eyes as he watched to see if Evan moved or died. Sareta saw a form she had never seen, it was not Papa, it was a monster of a man, and he was pleased he had strength still, to push a youth to his death. It was not Papa. Menashe Reisman died talking to the spirits. He had not remained to torment them. It was not Papa, and Sareta knew how to prove it. Evan would know how to help, but Shelly must never come.

 

“
Richard, take me home. This is enough for now. We will die from this without rest.” Sareta held her hand for her son to help her up from the couch. Shelly lifted her head and began to wipe her tears. “Shelly, you may stay here tonight, Evan needs you. But you will take your ass to your father’s in the morning or I will hunt you down. You promised me a week and it will be paid. Evan, you will call me when she leaves.” And with still more to say, she pulled Richard to the door. “Shelly, I will rip your branch from this family tree if you disobey me again, and Evan will be the only thing left in this world to comfort you. He will not be enough.”
Evan was in awe, the full power of Sareta Reisman thundered out of his apartment and the ground quivered beneath every member of the clan all over the city. Shelly shook with fear and could not stop until the woman was miles away.

 

She said nothing as she helped him to his bed and removed his clothes. She would stop and kiss his skin as he was exposed, and would caress the bruises with her lips. She raised bumps and tickles on his skin with her hair, and she bathed him with a warm cloth. Evan was lucky to have been able to walk out of the building. Any single blow to his head and he would never have reached the bottom and lived. But he bruised every other limb instead. Both ankles were horrible to move. If they began to swell, Shelly promised to take him to the hospital to see which was broken or sprained.
She did not once say she was sorry, he did not once say he forgave her. Their first touch, when they were left alone, after the thunder of Sareta faded away into the city sounds outside the open window, that first touch spoke all the words they would need to say. Shelly did not sleep for a moment, but Evan was exhausted beyond his ability to do more than place his cheek to her breasts and breathe but a few times before he fell deeply asleep. Shelly talked in whispers to him the entire night. She told him every thought in her heart, every ache she felt, believing him lost. She named the children she desired to give him. She told him every secret she had, laid every wish in her heart into his ear that he may know them too. Shelly kissed and tasted his neck and his sleeping lips. She breathed in his sleeping breath. She made a promise to him. She understood what powers it contained, that promise. Shelly would kill for Evan.

 

She would not lose him, if murder would keep him. If to save Evan, another must die; Shelly had the strength. The dreams he dreamed in her arms were soft, warm, arousing, until those words. He slept, but his dream grew dark, unclear as Shelly whispered her vow. His heart grew sad and his dream took him further, further away from the warmth. It was cold, very dark is if in a deep place. His cheek against her breast did not feel her softness; it dreamed it felt dirt. Cold, foul dirt. Her hands on his sleeping body had nearly awakened desire, but he dreamed he was being clutched, pulled deeper into the darkness.
Shelly whispered love and hope into his ears as he slept, but after her vow, he dreamed he heard laments and curses. Evan wanted to wake. He wanted to hold Shelly desperately, but he could not move. In his dream, his body, bound in raw hands and arms, was pulled into the soil of the grave behind the Reisman Portraits.
When Evan realized he was awake, the dream was gone and forgotten. Shelly was not gone, she was beside him, and she roused him very carefully. He would not go back to sleep, and Shelly would not be leaving yet. She remembered well what she told him in the night. He remembered nothing of how her words burned his heart. If something still burned inside Shelly, which made her dangerous to Evan, as it had before, it was not going to hurt him just then. Shelly had more control of her senses now as she woke Evan, than any spirit hiding deeply inside her own soul.

 

They had breakfast as the sun began to peek inside his bedroom window, bouncing from the buildings across the street. She brought up a bag of the nastiest, sticky pastries, but she found some marvelous coffee. They made a mess of his pillow; she simply poured the bag of goodies next to him and ran a very hot bath for him while he picked his favorites from the goo. She was completely Shelly. He was not completely Evan.
When she finally returned, he noticed, and was properly ashamed, she had gone down after the breakfast in nothing more than her jeans, and his unbuttoned shirt. He was thankful the word on the street was that Evan Bryant was dating a complete kook. She would not have been pestered by anyone at all, but would have turned a lot of appreciative heads.
He was too sore to be himself, or they would have stayed longer in bed. She cried before she left, kissing him and finally saying how terribly sorry she was for bashing his skull again with her other personality. He forgave her and invited the vampire back because she hated wearing clothes. Neither of them was satisfied with the single night. Neither of them was calmer than they were the night before. Only one thing changed while Evan dreamed his troubling dreams; he dreamed them in Shelly’s arms. All the other horrors of the day before, woke again with the same dawn, which brought the worst cheese Danish Evan ever choked down. Shelly was going to regret leaving his apartment late, so he pushed her out, after making sure she was properly dressed, and then lowered himself into the bath to soothe his aching limbs.

 

Shelly was properly terrified of Sareta this morning, the fright of the night before not the least bit forgotten. She did exactly as she was told. She was home before they even expected Evan’s call.
Evan picked up the small notebook as he lay down on the couch and turned it over in his fingers. It did not have many pages at all, just a few dozen, and only two of them were written upon. The tragedy of those simple words became more compelling as he saw them written in the small, beautiful hand of the two young lovers who wrote them.

 

Evan was moved, as he was the night before, but he was troubled as well. Why were the police not sought?
Sareta wanted Evan to meet her at the shop, before noon if possible, she knew he had other work to do and wanted to be out of his way to let him do it. He was not going to like her suggestions, but it did not matter. Her determination was as severe as her anger, he would not be able to get around it and it would be unpleasant to try.
Evan felt much better after the rest, the wonderful cozy way he was awakened, and the bath. Half a dozen aspirin and two more cups of coffee, and Evan would be fine for a few hours. He could not imagine what Sareta planned, but he was sure it would allow time for a contractor to be spit out into the grave in the back of the building, the one he was supposed to dig out into a basement long before the sun came up.
Evan still had no clue what he was looking to find, but as long as he stayed away from the attic, he would be left alone to find it. The Reisman Portraits did not expect either of them back; it was still waiting for young Shelly.

 

“
You are not serious!” He said in disbelief. “Are you serious?”
“
Yes.”
Evan just shook his head.
“
Shelly’s had some terrible frights in that closet. I don’t care how many times we have enjoyed what we felt, there is nothing in there to control. That is their space. You get what they give and it can be devastating to feel.”
“
And that changes my mind how?”
“
Sareta, if you go into the darkroom closet you will be surrendering to whatever they want to show you, or say to you. We don’t know what else is in there besides Yousep and Caraliza.”
“
Then you should be ready to save me.”

 

Evan could only laugh. All the charlatans in New York who create entire productions to fool people into thinking they could summon the dead, and Shelly’s Grandma Sareta was going to step into the darkroom closet and chat with some departed souls without any money changing hands. If he had not already done it himself, Evan would have run screaming at the suggestion. He reminded her, there was no way to control what might happen. She might not be able to cry out.
“
You’ve already told me, boy. It’s dangerous. I get it.”
“
But Sareta, we know what Caraliza was hiding from and it might not remain upstairs. You say you’ve looked into its eyes.”
“
It haunts upstairs, doesn’t it? Weren’t you told to stay away? Wasn’t I told you were safe while it stayed up there?”
“
And if we are very wrong.”
“
Then I get thrown out of the closet? What do I do when I go in? Do I need to say anything?”
“
No, Sareta,” Evan bit his lip and winced, “you just go in and wait.”

 

The closet was smaller than it looked from the outside. The bench and the shelves took up all the room inside, but the barest spot for a person to stand. Step forward once and you were against the bench. Step back once and you were against the door. And the darkness was complete; there was nothing to see after even a half hour in the blackness with the door closed. Sareta closed her eyes and imagined the space to be wide as a ballroom, and filled with sunshine. She hadn’t the strength to tell Evan, she panicked the moment the door closed.
He spoke to her every few moments to remind her he was just a breath away, but it may well have been nearly eighty years away instead. Sareta was a very young girl, no longer in the shop and she no longer heard Evan outside the door. She heard her mother call her to dinner and there was grain at her feet. She was in her father’s barn. She was alone, she loved to play in there, but the grain was sticking to her feet and it never had before. The grain was always soft and dry. This was wet. She did not like it. It was red. Sareta looked to see where the red came from.
Evan did not hear a sound from the closet.

 

Sareta screamed at the blood dripping into the grain, sticking to her feet, dripping onto her hands. She screamed until rough hands gripped her arms and lifted her into the air. She screamed and kicked as she was pulled away from the body hanging above her.
Evan called her name and heard nothing from the closet.
Sareta could not breathe; the screams would not let her. And she was covered with a dusty cloth and she felt bound up as if she would never be free again. Something held her, would not loose its embrace and her kicks and cries made no difference at all. She could not get away, and she must.
“
What matters the child that she screams so?”
“
The hog, butchered this morning. She played and got in the blood.”
And Sareta screamed into her father’s shoulder and kicked her legs to be free of the closet, and he hugged her to soothe her and her mother laughed with sympathy, and Evan heard the laugh, which had been upstairs. He knew the upstairs was empty today.

 

Sareta was against the door and he could not free the latch, it was too old, too unused to pressure she put against it. Evan could feel the entire closet trembling, but he was unable to get her to respond as he shouted and pounded on the door. When he finally freed the door and opened to catch her to prevent a fall, he was as surprised to see her standing where he left her, a bit shaken but in control. He wished he felt as calm as she appeared. Sareta glared at him and stepped out when he offered his hand, too many questions on his face to even begin with the first one on his mind.

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