Bethany's Sin by Robert R McCammon

Author:Robert R McCammon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-12-09T16:00:00+00:00

17

* * *

After the Party

ON THE DRIVE back to McClain Terrace, Evan asked Kay what had been wrong.

“Wrong?” she asked. “What do you mean? Nothing was wrong.”

“Oh, yes, it was. I saw the way you were staring at Dr. Blackburn. I saw you reaching for him. What were you going to do?”

She was silent for a long while; beyond the headlights the many layers of darkness swept by. She took a deep breath, let it out. How to make sense of what she’d been feeling? How to explain it to him? And to herself?

“Well?” he prompted, waiting.

“I’m tired,” she said. “I didn’t know there’d be so many people there.”

“Kay,” Evan said quietly. “You’re keeping your feelings from me. I want to know because it’s important!”

She glanced at him quickly, then averted her eyes. “Important? How?”

“You recently told me about a nightmare, something about…killing a man. Do you remember? You said you were on a battlefield, and you were riding a horse, and you carried a battle-ax…”

“I remember,” she said dully.

“Since then I’ve heard you whimper in your sleep more than once. You never awakened, and I never talked to you about it. But I want to know now. Have you had anymore of the same kind of nightmare?”

“I don’t know,” she said, realizing immediately she’d said it too quickly. Liar. Liar. Liar. There had been other nightmares, but she could recall only disjointed fragments. The last one had been particularly bad. She’d been fighting with spear and battle-ax against hordes of dark-bearded, armored warriors. There had been others of her own kind all around her, and as they struck left and right with their axes, chopping flesh, splintering bone, crushing skulls, she’d heard the war cry rising, rising, the most terrible and powerful sound she’d ever heard. The warriors had fallen back for a while, heaps of mutilated bodies everywhere, but then they’d flooded forward against swords flashing red in the harsh sun, screams and shouts and wild cries of pain echoing off into the mountains to startle the wary eagles from their clifftop nests. At that moment she’d wanted to wake up, to fight her way out of this nightmare, but she seemed trapped in it, forced to finish this frenzied, blood-soaked battle as if it were truly a part of her own memory. Fragments of faces, battle blows, ringing weapons, swept past her. She remembered lifting her gore-slick ax, and, screaming in rage and hate, she’d brought the weapon whistling down to cleave the shoulder of a warrior. Then darkness, darkness, the noise and clamor of the battle fading, darkness claiming all. And she’d known she’d gotten away from that terrible place once again, and dear God, dear God, she didn’t want to have to return there when sleep overcame her once more.

“Have you?” Evan asked her. They were driving through the village, nearing Blair Street.

“Yes,” she said finally. “A couple of times.”

He was quiet for a while. They turned onto McClain. Lights were on in their house and in the Demargeon house.

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