“Jeff?”
He stepped in from the kitchen wearing an apron, a large serving spoon in hand. “Good evening,” he said through a wide smile.
“What’s all this?”
“I’m making us dinner, steaks-and not just any steaks but top of the line Porterhouses-angel hair pasta with shrimp in butter and garlic sauce, and a freshly-tossed garden salad. I also grabbed a bottle of really good wine, so why don’t you go get changed into something comfortable and I’ll pour you a glass?”
“Jeff-”
“Dinner should be ready in about fifteen minutes.”
She slumped against the counter, deflated. “Sweetie, are you out of your mind? We can’t afford all this.”
“Oh, but we can.” He grinned.
She watched him a moment, waiting. “We can?”
“Remember the job down the cape Craig was up for? He got it.”
“OK. And…”
“He called this afternoon and offered me a position managing the car audio department. I start in two weeks. Don’t have an exact figure on the salary yet but he said it’d be in the same ballpark as what I was making before.”
Eden stared at him as if he’d spoken Swahili.
“Well don’t just stand there looking all gorgeous,” he said, playfully pointing the spoon at her. “Go get changed. Let’s celebrate.”
Without a word she vaulted across the space separating them and threw her arms around his neck with such force they nearly collapsed.
Laughing, Jeff held her in his arms as she peppered his face and neck with kisses. “Oh Jeff,” she said breathlessly, “I’m so happy, I-are you happy?-we were in so much trouble, you have no idea how bad-this is great!”
“We’re going to be just fine,” he told her, his free hand gently stroking her cheek. Feeling her so close to him and so happy filled him with a rush of joy he hadn’t experienced in months, but it made the guilt stronger, too. She was so beautiful, so unaware, so completely trusting. How could he have betrayed her?
Before he could think anymore about it, Eden kissed him again.
One kiss became two, and two became three, and finally, as they kissed passionately she dragged him back across the room until they had both fallen onto the couch, laughing and tickling each other.
“Dinner!” he reminded her.
As they settled down, him atop her, she gazed lovingly into his eyes and held him close. “Let it burn.”
Later that night rain fell over the city but did little to combat the oppressive heat. Jeff drifted off to sleep listening to its steady cadence, oddly aware that the sound was shifting, changing and slowly becoming something else…the faint rhythm of ancient Arabic music echoing in his ears, the ethereal cries of exotic flutes and various percussion instruments dancing and swaying about him like whispered remnants from some distant time. And then from the darkness came blinding light. Stretched out before him was an open expanse of desert for far as the eye could see; the sand so pale it was nearly white. Shuffling beneath a blistering sun, Jeff trudged up the side of an enormous dune. As he reached the summit he saw a lone tree in the valley between this and the next dune. Large and peculiarly jutting up out of the sand, the tree’s branches were long-dead, gnarled and reached toward an unforgiving sky. Lying at its base was a leopard, its deep golden color and spotted coat contrasting sharply against the white sand. As the music grew louder and more intoxicating, a woman emerged through the waves of heat rising from the desert floor as if she’d been burned into existence just then by the relentless sun.
Nude and glistening with sweat, Jessica, curled up next to the beast, her hair a wild and tangled rat’s nest, eyes wide and smeared with swathes of thick black makeup, lips painted blood-red. Her hands slid back and forth with erotic precision along the leopard’s flank.
Jeff froze, heart racing. The leopard blinked slowly, watching him with regal indifference as a low growl emanated forth, majestic and violent.
The distant horizon began to shift and change, growing darker then darker still as the beginnings of a storm roiled and surged across the desert, kicking up great black clouds as if summoned straight from the bowels of Hell.
And somewhere in the turmoil, he heard Jessica laughing seductively.
The sound of voices woke him, luring him from sleep gradually. As Jeff drifted closer to consciousness he realized he was not in a desert but the relative safety of his own bed. Still, he was certain he’d heard voices. The bedroom windows were open, perhaps the intrusion had come from outside and could be blamed on inconsiderate passersby having a late-night conversation.
Still trying to sort out the thoughts filling his head, he reached for Eden. She was next to him, nude and asleep on her stomach, her back rising and falling in a slow and steady rhythm, bare skin damp with perspiration.
The apartment still smelled vaguely of dinner, and as the strange visions from his dream faded, Jeff felt himself smile.
Draping an arm across his forehead, he watched the darkness move gracefully, like water stirred by a gentle breeze. It seemed almost… alive.
He listened a moment. The voices had stopped.
Maybe I was still dreaming when I heard them.
Jeff closed his eyes and zeroed in on the downpour a while.
Through the soft hissing rain the voices returned, this time sounding like they’d been whispered from somewhere inside the apartment. He opened his eyes and looked to the door. It was open.
He brought his hand down to his face, rubbed his eyes and fought a losing battle to suppress a yawn. Once it passed, he drew quiet, shallow breaths and strained to listen. Nothing…
His head tingled, and the sensation quickly moved through him, as if his entire body had fallen asleep. Jeff blinked a few times and ran a hand over his chest. Like Eden, he was damp with perspiration.
He wiped his palm on the sheet and struggled up onto his elbows, propping himself into a semi-sitting position and focusing his vision as best he could.
Something shifted, separated from the darkness…something in the doorway. Or was it the door itself? Was it moving… closing?
Jeff squinted into the darkness. My glasses…
He knew they were on the nightstand where he’d left them, and his mind told him to reach over, pick them up then switch on the nightstand lamp, to call out and warn Eden that there was an intruder in the room, to jump from bed and confront whoever had broken into the apartment. But he couldn’t move. He tried to scream, but could only manage a choking sound.
The door swung partially closed, enough to reveal that someone had been standing behind it all along. An indistinct silhouette crept across the wall…
Foster Hope stood mere feet from the bed, glaring at him excitedly with the same yellow eyes the leopard had possessed in Jeff’s dream.
But before he could fully comprehend what he was seeing, the old man’s eyes turned black and cold and his lips quivered into a hideously demonic grin. A tongue, impossibly long and black, darted from his mouth like a snake, slithering about as if for purchase.
I’m dreaming, I-this is a nightmare, just a nightmare-I’m dreaming .
Hope’s liver-spotted hands reached out through the shadows, the fingernails long and curved, shiny white talons of bone piercing darkness.
The razor-sharp tips dripped what could only be blood, and it wasn’t until he moved even closer that Jeff realized Hope, like them, was completely nude. But something had wrapped itself around the lower portion of the old man’s body and was clinging to his pallid legs. Something alive and moist, coiled about his knees and thighs, writhing and pulsing like some slimy creature, perhaps a skinned human appendage or a thick serpent-like entity with a network of spider-web veins traversing a mass the color of raw meat.