Page 20 of Fiona's Fury

Without another word, we exit the room and head back down the hall…leaving the light on behind us. At least I feel satisfied that if Quade is in our presence, he knows I’m not ratting him out.

With an arm around Holly’s shoulders, I guide her back to the office bed and we crawl in, fully clothed, and lie down with every lamp in the room still on. We face each other and lie still for a while, staring like two scared rabbits in a headlight.

“You actually threw the lamp,” she finally says, shaking like a child.

“Maybe we shouldn’t talk about it.”

“We have to. This is too crazy…there’s no way I’m going to sleep now. Did you really throw an object in your sleep?”

“Yes. I woke up in time to feel myself picking up the lamp and hurling it.”

Holly’s eyes show a faint glimmer of tears. I want to cry with her, but I’m hard. And angry. Extremely angry that I no longer have the freedom to tell the truth to my best friend in my own house. I watched Quade drive away long ago. It’s very late and he has a flight tomorrow. There’s no way he’s obsessively hiding around the corner right now, without making one single sound, and every ounce of my reasoning knows that. Yet the stakes are so high if I’m mistaken, I cannot take any chances.

“What do you think it means that we’re both freaked out under a full moon?” Holly asks, unwittingly pushing me into territory I don’t want to go in.

“Absolutely nothing, sweetness. Nothing at all. Just a couple planets out of alignment tonight.”

Chapter 10

Bo

It may be only a two hour drive, but headin to this conference feels like the biggest thing I will have done in a long time. Not only because of the extra work involved, but because I don’t normally socialize in groups and it takes a lot to get me to go to somethin like this. After spending the past couple days gettin my orchid crates organized, I’ve still got birds of paradise and numerous miniature sunflowers to sort and stack before I can begin to think about loading. But I have an unusual motivation for this trip; call it a hunch that it’s the right time in life for me to get out and meet people. I try not to read anything more into it, but I shouldn’t have to. Makin a new friend or two will be good enough for me.

As I peel off my gloves and head back to the shed for lunch, I decide to take a detour around the old house for a minute. The siding has held up extremely well, but I need to put up a steel roof before it starts springing leaks. I walk all the way around, peering in through the dusty windows. There’s almost nothing left inside the place, most of it having been gotten rid of long ago.

I’d kept a bed and a couch to move into my shed, added a small bathroom with shower, built a partition to divide the place into two little rooms, and put my kitchen facilities in the main room along with a washer and dryer. I redid all the interior walls, floors, and ceilings with beautiful, knotty pinewood, pale and reflective to maximize the windows I installed throughout. All in all, the shed turned out to be my perfect tiny house.

Even so, I sometimes long for a larger kitchen to prepare my homegrown meals in. I continue my trek around the house, stomping down the long overgrown weeds to get a closer view. I cain’t remember the last time I looked inside some of these windows, maybe never. Peeking into the den gives me a bad funny feelin in the pit of my stomach. Regardless of it being too empty to resemble its former self, the mood of family evenings in front of the TV is still in there. I can hear the conversations and laughter now, echoing through my memory like ghosts. One small table stands at the back of the room where we used to play cards and board games. Oh to go back in time.

Snapping back to my senses, I pull away from the windows and trek back to the shed…wanderin first around the long abandoned swimmin pool. I never do this engaging-in-old-memories nonsense. Hurtin over the past never did no good for nobody. I’ve got a bright life right here in the present, surrounded by all the lovelies. I pass my hands over the soft, rubbery petals of a pale purple rose bush as I brush past, realigning myself with the present. It’s a good life out here, and I have every moment of the day to remind me of that.

Removing my boots at the door, I enter my little kitchen and grab the chicken salad out of the fridge. I spread it across soft whole grain bread and layer it up with garden grown cucumbers and thick slabs of avocado. With no room in here for a table, I simply crash down on the couch with my sandwiches and wolf them down while I soak up the air conditioning. I’ve put in a righteous amount of prep work already today, and it’s turnin out to be a hot one.

After a long afternoon in and out of fields and greenhouses, I get the firepit goin and grill up some shrimp with corn and potatoes…New Orleans style. I usually find it hard to sleep under a full moon, but not tonight. Tuckin into my tiny bedroom, I’m sufficiently exhausted and snug as a bug as I doze off.

At half past midnight, I spring up in bed as a bolt of lightning and thunder hit the farm like a sledgehammer. It was a clear, starry night when I turned in; this one must have moved in fast. The first thing I did after inheriting the farm thirty-three years ago, was to put lightning rods on each building…so I don’t have a lot to worry about. But there’s a strange feelin in the air, and I don’t like it.

Not to mention, I was havin a restless dream. Downright disturbing actually. Images of the same woman I always dream about, except she was in distress with a shadowy man hoverin over her. The man restrained her, and her long hair shook wildly as she screamed and tried to escape. I seemed to be empathically inside her body, and was helplessly tryin to free myself from his grip when that thunder hit. It was a damned unpleasant way to wake up but I’m glad for it, all in all.

I need to get back to sleep, but my mind is now stuck in a quandary over what it’s like to be a woman, or a smaller man for that matter. I’ve never in my life had the experience of somebody grabbin me and tryin anything. It was a terrible feelin, not one I’d wanna repeat, and it gives me a compassionate rage for all the women out there facing domestic abuse.

The memory of Fiona’s phone voice flashes through my mind, as if tryin to soothe me from my angst. But now it’s mixed with the screams in my dream and the vague image of shiny hair swishin in the darkness. I don’t like that one bit. I have a good feelin about that lovely woman, and I don’t like it marred by this sinister fusion of dream and reality.

Now of course, I know Jose’s right about the lady…she could be ugly as sin and not even nice for all I know. But this won’t be the first time I followed my nose and it led me to do somethin I otherwise wouldn’t. And I always find that things work out best if I abandon myself to my inner callings.

An hour later the storm’s died down, but I still can’t sleep. I get up and open the windows all around my bed, ushering in that beautiful post-storm air. There’s a sense of deep dread hovering in my room, invisible but dense as an object. I haven’t felt nothin like it in the longest time. Disturbed, I turn on the bedside lamp and grab a book off the built-in shelving. I’ll distract myself the best I can until I get sleepy. I’ve got much work to do tomorrow. Ahhh…a little Isaac Asimov outta do it. I’ve always been a fan and I haven’t read this one in years.

Five pages in, the remnants of screams have cleared my head and I’m becoming sleepily enraptured by a magnificent, alien world. But just as I feel my first yawn comin on, the stillness of the night is pierced by an actual scream…loud and right outside my window. Big Bo ain’t scared of nothin, but I drop my book and scramble to my feet as another hair-raising screech cuts through the other side of the room. My sense of panic melts as I gain clarity on the fact that the shed’s surrounded by barn owls. And once more…they scream in unison, lighting up my bedroom with the bone tingling stereo of raspy discontent.

I pull the windows shut and try to laugh at myself as I get back into bed, but there’s no question that somethin just ain’t right with me. Stereo barn owls is a bad omen if I’ve ever heard one. For the rest of the mornin, I get scarcely two hours of sleep, tossin and turnin under the weight of an indiscernible moroseness.

Chapter 11

Fiona

I survive Wednesday, again sleeping with a lamp on. In fact I didn’t sleep in any bed, but crashed on a living room couch instead. I figured if Quade decided to enter, I’d hear him coming through the front door and wake up sooner. It would be less shocking than letting him surprise me in a bedroom again; not to mention I wouldn’t be cornered. Theoretically I could hear him in time to sneak off the couch and head for the back door. I slept in pajamas.

As previously agreed, I meet Holly at a Mexican place for lunch, and we rush toward each other upon sight…as though we’ve recently survived a shipwreck together.

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