Page 52 of In Her Fears
Alexis.He didn’t know anyone named Alexis.The name meant nothing to him, yet they believed he was somehow connected to her death.
“I haven’t left this house in seven years, three months, and sixteen days,” he murmured to the empty room, his voice rasping from disuse.The words tasted like ash in his mouth.
His gaze drifted to the ceiling, where shadows gathered in the corners.Had he truly not left?Sometimes, in the hazy border between wakefulness and the sleep that never came, he wondered if perhaps parts of him—the essential parts, the soul or consciousness or whatever one might call it—slipped free of his physical form and wandered.
How else could he explain the visions that came to him?The scenes that he painted?
The sheriff had shown him an image on her phone.One of his paintings—a man tied to a tree, staked through the heart.She said it had happened.A real death, exactly as he had painted it weeks before.
A cold dread seeped into his bones.What if he was responsible?Not his hands, perhaps, but his mind?His visions?Could he somehow be making those things happen?
Elias shuffled across the room, the floorboards creaking beneath his weight.Chronic Traumatic Insomnia.CTI.The doctor’s diagnosis echoed in his mind.Triggered by severe trauma—finding Lina’s body, still warm but irrevocably empty of the spirit that had animated her.
Seven years without proper sleep did things to a person.To a mind.Reality became fluid, time ceased to flow in a single direction.Cause and effect became tangled.
His hands trembled as he lowered himself into his chair by the dying embers in the fireplace.He couldn’t remember when he had last added wood to it.Hours ago?Yesterday?Time slipped away from him so easily now.
The paintings downstairs—dozens of them, each depicting scenes of violence beneath a full moon—had come to him unbidden.Of course the settings were modeled on the photos Chris Ashworth brought to him, but what about the victims and their sinister poses?They appeared to him in his waking dreams, demanding to be rendered in oils.He had believed them to be manifestations of his grief, his guilt, his rage.
But what if they were more?What if they were windows, not to his subconscious, but to actual events—past or future?
The thought made Elias shudder.If his visions were coming true, if people were dying just as he had painted them, then the responsibility …
No.He couldn’t bear it.Not another death on his conscience.
The weight of Lina’s ending had crushed something vital inside him seven years ago.He knew all too well that his confrontation, his accusations—however justified—had driven her to that final, irreversible act.
Elias closed his eyes briefly, then forced them open as unwelcome images threatened to surface.He needed to do something.Something to stop whatever connection existed between his paintings and these awful deaths.
Perhaps that’s why he had said he would talk to Eric.After seven years of bitter estrangement, perhaps it was time to heal that wound.To let go of the anger he had nurtured far too long.
If his bitterness was somehow feeding these visions, these deaths, then perhaps forgiveness could end them.
The thought had barely formed when headlights swept across his front window.Elias rose with effort, his joints protesting, and returned to his post at the curtain.
A car had pulled up in front of his house.In the deepening twilight, he watched as Eric Edwards stepped out—older than Elias remembered, his hair more gray than black now, but unmistakably Eric.His former friend.His wife’s lover.
Eric approached the female police officer stationed at the bottom of the porch steps.They exchanged words, the officer gesturing toward the house.Eric nodded and continued up the steps, his posture tense.
A knock sounded, yet Elias hesitated, his hand on the lock.Then, with a decision that felt momentous, he turned each lock—one, two, three—and pulled the door open.
Eric stood on the threshold, his expression guarded.The years had marked him—fine lines around his eyes, a certain weariness in his stance—but there was still something of the young art student Elias had befriended decades ago.
“Elias,” Eric said, his voice carefully neutral.
“Come in,” Elias replied, stepping back to allow his visitor entry.
Eric moved past him into the dimly lit foyer, his gaze taking in the dust, the cobwebs, the general disrepair that Elias had long since ceased to notice.Neither man spoke as Elias led the way to the living room, where the last embers in the fireplace cast a feeble glow.
“Sit,” Elias gestured to the chair opposite his own.The same chair the sheriff had occupied earlier that day.
Eric lowered himself into it, perching on the edge as if prepared to flee at any moment.An uncomfortable silence stretched between them, filled with seven years of unspoken words.
Finally, Elias broke it.“What do they think I’ve done?”he asked.“These people with their signs.The sheriff.What crime am I accused of?”
Eric’s gaze met his, then flicked away.“They think you’re connected to two murders,” he said.“A man named Martin Holbrook in Pinecrest Cemetery a month ago, and a young woman named Alexis Downey, found this morning in an abandoned hunting lodge.”
“Alexis,” Elias repeated, testing the name.It meant nothing to him, yet something stirred in the back of his mind—a half-remembered dream, perhaps.“And they think I...?”
