Eye of the Beholder Read online

  Flower, moon, and owl feather.

  Build upon the love that’s there,

  Earth, fire, water, air.”

  Three times she repeated the chant and three times she made the same knot.

  Satisfied, she held it up by the knotted string and let it swing for a minute, regarding it hopefully.

  As she went to the door of her sanctuary, she mused on the nature of love spells. Impossible to create love, of course—it had to already be there—but you could help things along. Love could be strengthened, healed, nurtured. Her charm was just a little energy focused in that direction.

  As she passed by the door of Joshua’s room, she saw him seated at his desk with his back to the door, concentrating on his homework. She paused and watched him affectionately for a moment until he was distracted by the sound of the loud Harley coming down the road from the trailhead. Through the window she could see as it paused while Mike got off at the gate and unlocked it, passed through, and then dismounted to lock the gate again. Greer waited until the bike had driven off toward the highway before she commented. “Saturday night. I guess our neighbor is going out.”

  Joshua turned and looked at his mom, surprised that she was there. “Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you. That’s Mike; he stopped by the other day after you left and offered to help out if we needed anything. He seemed like a pretty nice guy. I put his card on the bulletin board.”

  Greer shook her head dubiously. “A nice guy with no consideration of anyone around him?”

  Joshua looked a little taken back. He thought the bike was loud, but cool. As casually as possible he said, “He’s not bad-looking either, and I think he makes really good money with his shop.”

  Greer raised her eyebrows at her son. “Are you trying to fix me up?”

  “No,” Joshua lied. “It’s just that . . . well, I’ll be going off to college soon, and I think it would nice if you had somebody around.”

  Crossing the room as she laughed, Greer laid a hand on her son’s cheek and beamed down at him. “I don’t have a boyfriend because I like it that way. If I meet someone really special, that might change, but I’m not afraid to be alone.” She stroked the cheek and added in a softer voice, “You don’t need to be afraid for me.”

  “I know, Mom.” Joshua shifted away from his mom’s hand, feeling awkwardly too old for such a gesture. “It’s just that I know you compare everybody to Dad, and . . . well, he loved you, I’m sure, but he ended up with somebody else.” There was an accusatory note in his voice.

  Greer sighed and sank down on the bed. “What are you trying to say?”

  Joshua felt befuddled and out of his league. He hadn’t planned to bring this up and didn’t really know what he wanted to say. “I guess I just think . . . I don’t know . . . maybe you picked Dad because he was safer, in a way.” Joshua fumbled and couldn’t recover. “In a very weird way, and you know what? This is none of my business. I have no idea what I’m talking about.”

  He looked apologetically at his mom, expecting her to look angry or, at the very least, annoyed, but he was surprised to see that she was looking out the window with an expression of melancholy.

  “Oh, Mom, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that about Dad—”

  “No,” Greer interrupted him. She turned her sylvan eyes on her son. “You are very intuitive; you always have been. Of course, you are right.” She smiled wryly and said, “Intuition runs in the family, but unfortunately it seldom extends to self.”

  She stood and walked to the door, where she paused, turning back. “Don’t feel bad; you’ve given me something to really think about. Well, reminded me, more like.” Then a grin creased her face and she winked. “And it might be excellent timing.”

  Joshua’s relief at seeing his mom look excited about something—or someone—released him from any guilt about bringing it up. He extended a hand in a blocking gesture. “I don’t want to know any details.”

  She left, laughing.

  Joshua had positioned his desk just under the window for the view, which included Joy’s bedroom. As he turned back to his work, he glanced across the ten yards or so of space between the two windows, which included a few pine trees. The branches were spaced in a way so that if he leaned this way or that he could see part or all of her window.

  He had cracked his window open, and even from here he could hear the distorted booming of loud music playing in Joy’s room, but he hadn’t seen Joy all evening. Just at that moment, though, a figure passed in the gloom on the far side of her room, and the reverb from the overamplified bass ended abruptly. Joshua sat up and watched. Nothing for a moment, and then Joy moved into the failing light from the window. He could see her with something in her hand that might have been a cell phone or maybe a small tape recorder; he couldn’t make it out. She spoke into it several times and then threw it across the room.

  It happened so suddenly that Joshua thought clouds had obliterated what little was left of the daylight. Everything in Joshua’s vision went dark except Joy, and she was a shadowy outline, illuminated solely by the soft glow cast by the image of an eye, cartoonish yet menacing, that had appeared above her head.

  Joshua watched Joy, feeling a complete loss of control and sanity, before he noticed something else: the figure of another girl, just over Joy’s left shoulder. It was too dim to see clearly, but he felt sure it was a girl around Joy’s age. She kept pointing at the eye and then holding her hands out to Joshua. Then both images faded and his vision returned to normal.

  Joshua’s skin felt hot and prickly, but when he put a hand to his brow the thin layer of sweat was cold to the touch. Not again! What the hell was happening to him? Was this what happened when his mother would “see” things? She had always said that the gift was passed to women in the family, and he had felt comfortably exonerated from the responsibility. It couldn’t be, there must be another explanation.

  But with a growing sense of horror Joshua realized he could not logic away what had just happened to him as a trick of the light or give it any other reasonable explanation. Afraid, he looked back toward Joy’s room, but Joy had moved away from the window.

  An overwhelming sense of panic engulfed him. He didn’t understand why he was seeing things, and he couldn’t seem to stop it. He’d never felt so out of control, and the sensation left him dizzy and baffled. But somewhere inside of him another, stronger fear was making its presence known, pecking away at him like a woodpecker smashing holes in his brain.

  Someone was trying to tell him something. He was supposed to act, to help, and he was the only one who could. The symbol and girl had been meant for him to see. He had to figure out what they meant.

  Thinking that he might have to face being abnormal was horrifying. But denying what he’d seen and fighting it might mean that something unthinkable would happen to Joy that he might be able to prevent.

  And that seared his soul with terror.

  Chapter 15

  “Nervous?” he asked the teenager. He had found one who was just what the doctor ordered, a ripe little thing, slightly plump, with a tattoo on the small of her back. He imagined her trussed up with an apple in her mouth, his private feast. He wouldn’t keep this one; he thought she’d be better for a short ride. So he’d brought her to a motel in the next town over, where they took cash and asked no questions.

  She was sitting awkwardly, their knees almost touching, trying to look as if she weren’t frightened, but her eyes darted around the shabby motel room, and her voice was high when she answered, “No.”

  “Here.” He handed her a fifth of Southern Comfort—the young ones liked the sweet stuff—and watched, amused and excited by the inexperienced fear he could see and smell in her body. He put his hand on his crotch and straightened his stiffening cock. Her eyes tracked the move and then looked away quickly. “I got something else for you too.” Her breathing quickened, and she began to look a little panicked. The heat in his jeans increased. “You liked that ride over here, didn’t yo
u? Feel that bike vibrating between your legs—makes you all wet and ready, doesn’t it?”

  Her pupils, already big from fear, jumped a size larger. He’d been polite until now, the perfect gentleman, but now that they were in the room—away from prying eyes and any chance for her to back out—he started to play with his prey.

  “How do you feel?” he asked her, eager to hear her fear, to feel the thrill of dominance, of having the power to do whatever he pleased with her. He was staring at her nipples through her thin T-shirt.

  “I think maybe I’d like to go outside for a minute. Maybe we could go for another ride.” Her voice was trembling; as she lifted the bottle to her mouth, it shook visibly.

  He smiled and reached out, taking the bottle and pressing his forefinger forcefully into her mouth. She whimpered. “I think not,” he told her. “I think you’re gonna be busy for a while. You want another drink?”

  She looked at him, paralyzed with fear, his finger still stuck in her mouth up past his knuckle. She pulled away and he slapped her quickly across the face, took the back of her hair in one hand, and reinserted his finger. Both her hands had flown up to cover the reddening spot on her cheek. He didn’t care if he left a mark on this one. Tonight he wasn’t going to hold back.

  “Do you want another drink?” he asked, as though nothing had happened. She closed her eyes, tears starting in the corners, but she nodded.

  “Then suck,” he ordered. “And let’s remember that I know where you live. Hell, I know where everybody lives.” He laughed.

  She did as she was told. He enjoyed the sensation for a moment, watching the tears that trickled from her closed eyes and ran down her face. This was sweet, so sweet. With his other hand he unfastened his belt, pulling it free of his pants, and then opened his fly and extracted his growing member. Her eyes fluttered enough to see what he was doing, but then closed to try to block the vision out. With a wide grin and a cavalier flair he carefully poured a small amount of the liquor onto his cock, and then, crooking the finger in her mouth into a hook, he pulled her sharply forward off her chair and onto her knees in front of him. “Suck,” he ordered again.

  She started to cry hard now, the sobs gagging her slightly as she obeyed him. He imagined that she thought she’d finish him off and that would be it. He let her work at it for a few minutes, occasionally taking a swig from the bottle as he watched her. Then he pushed her back roughly. She sprawled onto the floor and he stood over her.

  “Get up.”

  He was hoping she would plead; he liked it when they begged. He wasn’t disappointed. “Please, I’ll do anything you want, but don’t hurt me, please.”

  He reached down and grabbed the front of her shirt, yanking her up onto her feet. She yelped and struggled. “But that’s what I want—to hurt you.” He pulled her face right up to him and licked it wetly, from the chin to the forehead. “That’s what I like.”

  She opened her mouth to scream, but he had his hand on her throat fast enough to cut off the sound.

  “Now, now, none of that.” He squeezed tighter. Both her hands clawed at his wrists, and her eyes popped. He watched, applying pressure, until he thought it was just the right amount, a few seconds before she lost consciousness. Enough to control her easily, steal her voice for a while, and then he let go. Her hands went to her throat as she staggered backward, and small rasping noises came from her throat.

  He laughed with the exhilaration of it. Then he grabbed her and pulled her up against him, rubbing and grinding on her first from the front and then spinning her around and rubbing his exposed skin on the back on her super-low-cut jeans—so low that he could see the crack of her ass when she’d leaned over to push her hair up under the helmet he’d given her to wear on the ride over, the one with the dark face mask. He forced one hand down the back of the jeans, and a finger found the place he was looking for. She gasped almost soundlessly, and her body went rigid. He enjoyed himself there for a minute before spinning her again and grabbing roughly at her plump breasts. He squeezed hard and then, grasping the fabric of her T-shirt, he ripped it away.

  She was quivering with fear now, and his excitement was building to a new place, a high he’d never had before. This time he wouldn’t hold back. This time she was his, and he’d use her. He retrieved his belt from the table and lashed it across her body. She cowered and tried to cover herself with her arms. “Take off the pants,” he said in a singsong voice that dripped with malice.

  She was weeping, sobbing in a strange, terrified parody of a horror film without sound. He threw the belt aside and hit her with his fist. The brutal contact shocked her out of crying, and she sank to her knees, holding her jaw and staring wordlessly at the floor.

  “Take off the pants!” he said more forcefully, grabbing her by the hair and pulling her to her feet. She grabbed for his wrists, but he released her with a shove and she fumbled with the fastener of her jeans, her hands shaking so badly she could barely manage it. When she got the pants off she stood there trembling, her knees and her forearms locked tightly together in front of her.

  He let her wait, taking his time as he reached down and unhooked his key chain from a loop on his belt. Casually, as though he were having a copy made, he took a dangling charm off of the loop. Then he pulled a lighter from his pocket and, flicking on the flame, he held the metal charm directly in the fire.

  The girl moaned slightly, but he ignored her until he was ready. Then he went to her and, using his foot, he pushed her back on the bed and kept his heavy black boot firmly on her chest to hold her there.

  “And now,” he said, “the fun begins.”

  As he breathed in deeply the smell of burning flesh, he calmly watched her face. Her mouth opened and her head shook from side to side in a long, excruciating, silent scream.

  Chapter 16

  “That’s not the point, and you know it!” Jenny snapped at her husband, Lewis. She tried to keep her voice down, but it wouldn’t have mattered if she had yelled it out in the noisy bar. It was almost midnight on Saturday night, and most of the customers in the sports bar had had enough liquor to think they were speaking normally as they shouted over the din of the football game and the video machines. The place was packed, and they were huddled together at the end of the bar, where they had come for a snack and a beer after a movie.

  “Well, then, what is the point?” Lewis retorted just as sharply. There was a natural petulance in his full mouth and a lazy prettiness in his eyes, two features that were misleading, as he was both hardworking and masculine. He loved his wife very much, but she still baffled him by sometimes behaving as though he just didn’t get it. He supposed she was right, because he wasn’t getting it now.

  “The point is that you could come in and help me—” Jenny began again.

  “I spent hours fixing that place up for you!” Lewis cut her off.

  “And I spent a lot more hours helping you build your business. Who answered the phone, placed your ads, called in your orders? Sure, now you’ve got a secretary, but before you did, I did it all.”

  “I know; I never said you didn’t help me out.” He felt as if she were sapping his strength.

  “Well, why can’t you help me now?”

  “Because I need to be out there making more money doing contracting. No offense, honey, but the coffee shop isn’t exactly showing a gigantic profit.” Lewis held his hands out as though this were the most obvious thing in the world.

  “But you don’t work every day. Lots of times you have subcontractors in, or you’re between jobs.”

  Lewis leveled a quick warning look at her over his beer. Being “between jobs” was a sore point for him.

  Jenny’s temper flared again. “What you’re really saying is that it’s beneath you to work in the coffee shop. It was fine for me, a woman, to do the grunge work for you when you couldn’t afford help. But you’re a man.”

  What she was saying was far too close to the truth for him to accept it with anything other than a s
trong offensive attack. “Oh, bullshit. And fine, you know everything I think and feel, so you just go ahead and talk—you know it all.”

  Jenny reined in her next cutting remark by finishing off the last of her draft beer and turning out to face the room. “You know what?” She felt drained. She was so tired of the same argument and no forward motion. “Let’s just go.”

  “Fine,” said Lewis, and finished the last swallow. He threw down some money and followed Jenny to the front.

  When she opened the door the blast of noise from multiple Harley engines made Jenny put her free hand up to cover one ear. The parking lot was a sea of bikes, and four or five more were pulling in off the street now, revving their engines.

  Jenny held the door open for Lewis without looking back at him. He took his time getting to it, making her wait—small slights that did so much damage. She looked instead at the bikers, who were now either dismounting or sitting on their parked bikes opening the throttles to display the throaty mating calls of their penis extensions.

  Jenny realized with a vague sense of being out of place that she recognized one of the bikers. It was her mailman, Pistol, his wiry beard notably visible as he removed a black half helmet. He crossed to another one of the bikers, who was standing next to a particularly large, tricked-out bike. Jenny turned away; she didn’t want him to recognize her.

  Near the door, in the light from the windows, Jenny noticed another man squatting as he tried to get a wrench on something in an awkward spot up inside his bike’s engine. He cursed loudly just as the last Harley was silenced, and the wrench clattered onto the black asphalt. Jenny could see the tattoos on his forearms. Unlike the elaborate, colorful illustrations worn by so many people, his were rough and blue.

  Lewis came out the door and glanced down at him. “Hey, Army. How’s it going?”

  Army grunted in reply with an exasperated wave at his bike. As Lewis and Jenny started across the lot, he said by way of explanation, “Plumber. He and his brother worked on the Maser house with me.”