Cast a Pale Shadow

chapter One





Three years later

Nicholas



A thin streak of brown charring snaked across the paper, and Nicholas could no longer make out the signature or the hugs-and-kisses X's and O's Beth had scrawled across the bottom edge. It didn't matter. He knew the whole letter by heart now. A tongue of flame licked at his finger, but he held the rose-scattered stationary for a moment longer until the corner floated away in cinders. Dropping it, he watched it drift toward the fire, then vanish to ashes. Like Beth. She was too hot for him to handle. And she had known it as well as he had.



Nick Sweets,





Gotta go. Sorry but it would have never worked. Hayley Mills needs me in Hollywood. Seems she can't make a move without me. Ha Ha. I took all the money I could find and the ring. Don't look for me. I'm with Mitch. He wants me. And he seems a little less scary than you sometimes.





Ciao, Beth





P.S It wasn't yours, you know.





Beth. Wild Beth. With her sweet, little-girl-lost looks and her wanton ways. Beth had found Nicholas when he wasn't looking, when he had made a conscious decision not to look ever again. Not after Janey. It had taken too long to get over Janey, longer even than Cynthia.

He remembered he had scared Janey, too. And now Beth. She had gone off with Mitch because he seemed 'a little less scary...sometimes'. And because Mitch would help her where he could not. With the money and ring, Mitch could buy for her what Nicholas had refused to buy -- a way out of her predicament -- an end to the life that grew within her.

Nicholas suspected it was not his baby she carried, but he had craved the hope of it. A future. Something beyond the darkness that always called to him. A way to a different kind of magic than the one he always sought. But Beth had been in control all along, and just as he had started to feel the crazy part of him, the scary side, slip away, she had left him.

"Gotta go," she said. "Ha ha."

"Mister, if you order me a burger and a Coke, I'll sit with you and -- who knows?" she had said softly with her baby lisp on the night he met her. He remembered how her voice had jolted him out of his reverie, and, at first, for just a second, he had thought it was Janey's.

He had rolled the window down all the way to talk to her, and she had leaned on her elbows to meet him eye to eye. "Are you hungry?"

"A little." She looked half-starved with her large, hazel eyes and sunken cheek s. She was dressed in some man's old dress shirt, her father's he had supposed at the time. The shirttails stopped just short of her ragged-denim knees. She had a yellow scarf tied around a pert, if scraggly, red ponytail, and she carried a purse that seemed large enough for her to sleep in.

"Get in." Nicholas turned on his headlights to summon the carhop and leaned over to unlock the passenger door for her. "Do you want french fries, too?"

"Yeah, thanks," she said as she scrambled in, pushing her purse to the floor between her legs. There was silence while she settled herself, rooting in the vast caverns of her bag for a coral lipstick, then spreading and blotting it on her lips. A pot of rouge appeared next. Contorting apples into her thin cheeks she patted them with the coloring, blending it lightly over the bridge of her nose and dabbing it on the tiny cleft of her chin. She disposed of her Juicy Fruit gum in the foil wrapper she fished from her shirt pocket, pulled the scarf off, and quickly brushed through her hair until it crackled with static and wisped about her neck in soft, sunset-colored clouds. She studied herself critically in the visor mirror then turned to smile at him. "Don't let the freckles fool you. I'm old enough."

Nicholas frowned and gave his order into the crackling speaker before he responded. "Old enough for what?"

"You know. Whatever. I'm not a street beggar. I intend to pay for my dinner."

"Do you have a name?"

"Elizabeth Barrett Browning," she said, surprising him.

"Oh, a poet."

"Yeah, limericks mostly. I not only write them. I inspire them. Or so I am told."

"And what's become of Robert Browning?"

"A discarded muse. I got tired of counting the ways."

Nicholas appraised her breasts, which made barely perceptible bumps in her loose shirt, and her tiny wrists, which jingled with charm bracelets. "How old is old enough?"

"I could lie and say I was eighteen, but let's just say I'm getting there. Look, if you want your fee up front, we better start now. I like my burgers hot, and they serve fast in this place."

"What is the going rate? Do I get a little more for the fries?" He was amused by her businesslike manner. He was used to shy innocents. She just had the looks of one.

"Nope, one payment for all I can eat." She had unbuttoned her shirt and was wriggling out of her jeans when he stopped her.

"I'll wait. I prefer dessert to appetizers."

"Fair enough. If you trust me. I could just eat and run, you know."

"That would be all right, too."

"Suit yourself, mister."

"Nicholas."

"Is that a first name or a last?"

"First."

"You can call me Beth."

Their meal arrived and Beth attacked it with unrestrained eagerness. "I'll take the onions off. I have to stay kissing-fresh for you, and I'm all out of toothpaste," she said, flinging the rings one by one out the window.

"The onions wouldn't bother me, Beth. But you've decided not to eat and run?"

She wrestled a huge bite down her throat and sighed. "Maybe. You're such a good cook, maybe I'll finagle breakfast out of you, too"

"When was the last time you had two meals in a row?"

Sipping on her Coke thoughtfully, she answered, "I chased some pigeons away from a doughnut this morning. Only had a few pecks out of it, too." When she saw him grimace, she giggled. "I'm kidding. Don't feel sorry for me. I always eat like this. Whether I had a banquet three hours before or nothing."

"Which was it today?"

"Today, nothing."

They continued to eat in silence for a while. Nicholas did not want to frighten her away by asking too many questions. But he wanted her. He knew from the first that he wanted her. That night in his bed, and the next, and the next. It was usually such a painfully slow process for him. The approach, the waiting, the ever-so-gentle seduction.

Maybe just once, he should try another way, with someone who offered herself immediately, no questions, no promises. Maybe it was just the look of innocence that was important, only the package, not the contents. Beth finished her meal long before he did, and he noticed her struggling to keep from nodding off as she waited for him.

"I can offer you breakfast, if you really want it," he said finally. "Pancakes, or bacon and eggs, or even doughnuts, untouched by pigeon beaks if you prefer."

"A motel?"

"No, my place."

"You're not married?"

"No."

"Okay. Sure. Why not?" She yawned and excused herself for doing it with a shrug. "It'll be nice to spend the night in a real bed for a change."

When the carhop took the tray away, and Nicholas slipped the car in gear and pulled out of the parking lot, she snuggled up next to him and took his arm off the wheel to wrap around her shoulder. "That's better," she sighed.

By the time they had reached his apartment, she was asleep. She stirred when he disengaged himself and propped her against the back of the seat to get out. "Are we home already?" she asked as she slid willingly into his arms and let him carry her up to the porch.

"Yes, Beth, we're home." She seemed so light and breakable, like a delicate bisque statue. Nicholas unlocked the door and deposited her on his bed then went back for her purse. When he returned, she was curled on her side with her elbow under her head. He gently removed her shoes and socks and tugged the spread and blankets out from under her and tucked them around her. She murmured something he could not understand and turned on her stomach.

Getting a pillow for himself and a blanket out of the closet, he took them to the sofa. He knew very well she could be gone by morning, but he suspected she would insist upon breakfast first. And he would be most willing to provide it. He was used to waiting.

Nicholas woke the next morning to the smell of coffee and Ivory Soap and the feather-light touch of her lips on his brow. Beth knelt on the floor next to the sofa and chuckled when his eyes popped open in surprise, then she sat back on her heels and sipped from the steaming mug she held curled in her baby fingers.

"You'll get a backache sleeping on the sofa, and what good will you be to me then?" She offered the mug to him. "I like a little coffee with my sugar. I'll fix it the way you like it if this ain't right for you."

It was his neck that had stiffened from his night on the sofa, and Nicholas grunted a bit as he eased himself up to take the cup from her. "Good morning. I promised you breakfast." He tried not to let her see him wince at the tooth-tingling sweetness of the brew.

"My promise comes first if you don't mind." Wrapped as she was in an old, wrinkled sweatshirt of his that hung to her knees and bunched at her elbows where she'd pushed up the ragged sleeves, and most likely nothing else, Beth had neither the appearance nor the skills of a seasoned seductress.

Taking the mug from his hand and setting it on the coffee table, she leaned into him. She planted wet, eager kisses on his neck and up his chin. "Oooh, bristle puss," she commented as she brushed her lips along his jaw.

Her words had a childlike timbre that unsettled him, quelling his growing desire. He placed his hands on her shoulders and put her at arm's length away from him. "Beth, you don't have to do this. I am not in the habit of playing house with hungry little girls. I should feed you and send you on your way."

Her lower lip set itself into a disappointed pout. With a puckered brow that made her look all the younger, she studied him. "I am not a little girl. What do you want, my birth certificate? You wouldn't be the first, if that's what you're afraid of."

Perhaps that was just the point. Without a word, Nicholas stood and picked his way around her discarded clothing to the bathroom, shutting the door in her face when she padded after him on her bare feet.

Her bath had made a shambles of his ordinarily shipshape bathroom. She had used no less than four towels and abandoned them in heaps on the floor. In the scum-ringed tub, the soap was softening in a puddle near the washcloth-blocked drain. The contents of her elephantine handbag had been spilled and scattered over the commode and countertop. Several clean and dripping panties and bras hung over the shower curtain rod. And there was no telling to what uses she had put his now-bedraggled shaving brush. "Damn," he grumbled and tossed it into the waste can.

Ignoring her tapping on the door, he shaved, using his fingers to spread the lather. When he found his toothbrush under a wad of crumpled Kleenex, he eyed it suspiciously, then yanked open the door and confronted her with it. "Was this anyplace other than your mouth?"

Beth stepped back, her hands on her hips. "I have my own toothbrush, sir. I wouldn't think of putting some stranger's in my mouth!"

"Hmmmph," he muttered, wondering at what logic allowed her to be a prude about her toothbrush and loose with her body. He shook his head and retreated to finish his tasks. The folly of his decision to bring her home weighed down on him, and he was determined to reverse it before things got out of control.

It wrangled Nicholas that she had made the approach. He wondered how many others had rejected her before he succumbed. How many other nights had she pulled the same routine? If she could say he was not the first, could she put a reasonable number to his ranking? Or had she already lost count?

No, he decided, he could not replace Janey with this one. He should not be thinking of replacing Janey at all. There had to be an end to it. If he fell into the trap of assuming that anyone, saint or slut, would do, then where was the mystery in it?

He was not being true to the magic if anyone would do, and that would make everything that had gone before more horrible than it already was. Janey was the last. He had to make her the last.

But when he emerged from the bathroom with her repacked satchel and with her wet undergarments rolled up in a clean, dry towel tucked under his arm, Nicholas knew it was too late. It was the sight of Beth tiptoed on a chair, reaching for a jar of peanut butter on a shelf far beyond the tips of her fingers, the effort raising the hem of the sweatshirt to the bottom pink curves of her rump that made it so.

They had two months. Though Beth said she had no experience with kindness, had never expected it from anyone, didn't quite know how to respond to it, for a while she had seemed to revel in it. The brittle edges of her undernourished body softened. A natural bloom on her cheeks belied her need for the rouge that was her addiction. Her hair, always her glory, acquired a deep, lustrous fire of its own.

He gave her money to buy clothes, and she spent her days shopping or watching television and regaled him with daily blow-by-blow descriptions of The Guiding Light and General Hospital.

And Nicholas hadn't suspected a thing until he found the photographs of Mitch in a roll of film he was developing.

"I don't know why you're so upset. I told you it's only sex with him. It's all he's capable of," she had informed him casually.

Nicholas wanted to threaten her with what he knew was in his blood, what it didn't even take fury to incite in him, that slow, smoldering craving for the darkness, madness, and, maybe murder. He could have frightened her with it, he was sure. He had done it before. Janey had packed her bags when faced with the storm of it, small difference that it was not directed at her, nor could it ever be at any woman. It was not a woman's face or voice that ignited Nicholas's black rages.

But he couldn't do it. After Janey, he had worked so hard to get that part of him under control. He could not now use his latent madness as a weapon, no matter how Beth provoked him.

When she demanded money from him to end her pregnancy, he refused. He saw that tiny life within her as a chance. For both of them.

But he hadn't really been surprised to come home to find her gone with only the note for her goodbye. His life would go on without her. In this form or some other.





Trissa



At sixteen, Trissa's body betrayed her, buckled under to the assault of hormones that had set her emotions into rages for so long and succumbed to the curves and shapes she had envied in others and yet feared in herself. Finally, no amount of round-shouldered slouching or shapeless sweaters could disguise it. And without her willing it, the same food she had always eaten, magically transformed itself into round, firm breasts, slim but curving hips, and a slender waist.

If she still saw a wide-eyed, scrawny monkey in her mirror it was because she refused to see anything else. In her heart, she feared others who cared to look saw quite a different reflection.

On the city bus she shared daily with other commuting students, the same boys who had ignored her for her more precociously ripe classmates now cast their less-than subtle eyes in Trissa's direction. What the eyes beheld, the hands sought to confirm, and only her cold looks and her well-placed clutch of books saved her from the worst of the poking and pawing

In April, her mother rallied her dormant interest in Trissa long enough to express her wonder why she had heard no plans for the Junior Prom.

"I can't believe you won't be going," Edie Kirk said one afternoon. "Did you know I was princess at my junior prom? Your father looked so handsome in his tux and boutonniere! I knew I would marry him from that very day. These are memories that you can never replace. You have to go, Trissa."

"I don't want to go. In case you didn't notice, I don't have boys lining out the door begging for the opportunity to escort me," said Trissa, swallowing the comment that she never realized she had a carnation and a rented suit to thank for her miserable life.

"You go to an all-girls' school. Of course, you have to take the initiative to find some one. Maybe one of Lonny's old friends has a little brother who..."

"No! I don't want you to manufacture a boyfriend for me. That is not the kind of memory I want."

In the end, her mother won and she went off to the prom in pink tulle with Steven Maher, somebody's cousin's friend. After detailing his financial outlay for tux rental and flowers, and gas for the car he'd borrowed from his brother, and pizza after the dance, Steven told her she owed him the opportunity to create a few memories of his own.

And so Trissa found herself in one of the parked cars on Calvary Drive on a rainy predawn in May, hidden from view behind steamed-up windows. Trissa tried to imagine herself watching the old Buick from her place on the other side of the tracks, as she had watched so many other old cars and their young occupants the lonely summer before.

It was like watching someone else's dream with Steven supplying what she had only imagined could be going on in the slightly swaying cars. She marveled at the ease at which the intricate hooks and eyes and fastenings of her dress succumbed to his nimble fingers. These same pesky closures had required ten minutes of her mother's fussing while Trissa got dressed. She laughed out loud at his facile cajolery while the barrier of her bra yielded to his onslaught.

"My God, your tits are so soft and sweet. Like ripe, little peaches. If I could just look at them... If I could just touch them... If I could just kiss them..." And he did every 'if' without her saying he could. But then, Trissa never said he couldn't either. She supposed she should be fighting him off, but her hands seemed to clasp only at empty air until he guided them to touch his neck, to reach beneath the popping studs of his dress shirt to stroke his chest, to ruffle through his hair while he kissed her lips, insinuating his tongue between her teeth to tease her mouth. ß

"I won't hurt you, Baby. I'll stop any time you say. No one will know," came his easy promises as his hands ventured lower. Trissa became so amazed and intrigued that this should be happening to her, and that she had no conscious will to make it stop, to test his promise with a "no" that when his fingers reached their secret, magic destination, his words seemed to come to her garbled through a sparkling haze of heat.

A sudden dazzle of light in her eyes and a pounding on the window glass she at first mistook for the pounding of her heart brought the spinning world to a halt. All around her, Trissa heard the grinding of ignitions and the fitful rumble of newly started engines.

"You kids get home now. This here's private property. I give you two minutes and then I'm calling the cops!"

"Damn!" muttered Steven as he scrambled over the seat to get behind the wheel. Trissa had barely managed to reassemble her clothing and gather her scattered wits before she was deposited on her doorstep with a perfunctory kiss and an "I'll call you".

He never did.





Cole



The telegram was creased and finger-smudged from repeated unfolding and refolding, but Cole was sure he had never read the words himself until now. It was dated May 23, three months ago.



DUNCAN BREWER TRANSFERRED TO STATE MAXIMUM SECURITY PSYCHIATRIC FACILITY IN SPRINGFIELD STOP VITAL THAT I MEET WITH YOU IMMEDIATELY STOP





FITAPALDI





Three months. Mechanically, Cole began to pack, hardly aware of how he knew where the things he needed were stored in this unfamiliar apartment, in God knows what city. The telegram was addressed to Erie, Pennsylvania but the newspaper told him Cleveland and the date, if it was a local paper and today's. Maybe he was already headed in the direction of home. He had lost track of his intentions when he had lost track of himself.

It made little difference, a day or two, or a month or two, this city or that. Cole had misplaced more time, great precious chunks of it, on other occasions. He had gone to sleep in Philadelphia or Dayton or Terre Haute and awakened in Detroit or Chicago or Atlanta with no memory of the trips. He found it best to gather the fragments of life without searching for reasons. It was better not knowing what went on in those times and places between.

TWO FREIGHTERS COLLIDE OFF NANTUCKET; 20 FEARED DEAD

Cole read the first few paragraphs of the sea disaster story with its photograph of one of the doomed ships on her beam-ends moments before plunging to the bottom of the ocean, and another of a rescued seaman, round eyed with shock.

He thought it not unlike his own story with two lives colliding, one being sent to the murky depths of consciousness, the other left in startled awareness that some kind of life must go on. He had long since learned to handle such madness with a semblance of sanity. Cole was the only one to suspect the truth of it, that he was his father's son and probably insane beyond redemption.

He found a set of car keys next to the coffee pot. At least he had a car, a Ford this time. He never questioned whether it was stolen, or paid for, or bought on time. Some dab of self-preservation must remain in the dark cavern of his lost time to spare him that. The purchases made, decisions rendered, and actions taken during the blanks in his memory had always been easily reversible, at least any that Cole had found out about. Sometimes he suspected that the prospect of a long-term commitment was what returned him to himself. Cole had learned to be a master of escape and extrication.

He lifted the curtain and scanned the parking lot to see how difficult his search for the car would be. The worn condition of the keys and his obvious and chronic state of financial distress hinted that the Ford would be old. Spying but two likely prospects in the lot, he shouldered his bags with relief and made his way to the dark green '58 coupe parked closest to his own door.

Success. The keys fit and he opened the trunk and loaded his belongings. He would not be returning here. Whatever boss expected him to report for work tomorrow morning would be disappointed. Whatever utility bills he had accumulated would go unpaid. Whatever human connections he had made were just as well severed. When traveling down the road to insanity, one learned to travel light.

The first stop had to be a service station. With the tank filled and the oil, air, and water checked, Cole studied the road map the gap-toothed attendant had provided him. He was in Cleveland, a city he had never visited before to his conscious knowledge.

"Going on a trip, Nick?" the attendant asked as he counted out his change.

It took a moment for Cole to respond to the name. He was not used to being called that anymore. "Huh? Oh, yeah. Ann Arbor," he lied. It was close enough. "Got any advice on the fastest route?"

"Sure. My cousin lives there. Used to go up there all the time and fish with him. Gimme that map."

Cole handed him the map and his pencil, and the attendant sketched out the roads for him.

"Sure would be nice to be able to go fishing right about now. Is that what you're up to?"

"Naw, family business, I'm afraid. Not a vacation." It was another talent necessary to the pretense of sanity -- to be able to fake familiarity with total strangers who knew you on a first name basis -- a first name that wasn't really yours.

"Sorry. Not sickness, I hope."

"Not serious."

"That's good. Here." He poked a grubby finger at the penciled map as he handed it back. "You'll wanna watch this junction at Toledo. Heavy road construction. This way is shorter. I marked it, see."

"Thanks. Catch you in a couple weeks."

"You betcha, Nick. Drive careful now, you hear? Say, hey, what about your gal? You're not leaving her here unattended, are you?"

Cole felt a claw of anxiety clutch at his stomach. "No, uh, she's gone. You know how these things are. Hot one day. Cold the next." This Nick and his 'gals' would be the ruination of him yet. He shrugged and flashed the attendant a knowing, who-the-hell-cares smile.

"Ah, well, shit. Plenty of fish in the sea. See ya, Nick." The attendant thumped the counter to send him on his way.

Images of Nick's gal haunted the drive toward Lansing. Cole would find out soon enough how close the imagined came to the real. There would be a picture of her in the file or undeveloped in the camera. They always turned up there. He had found no other evidence of her in the apartment he had left, so it was probably true that she had gone on her way sometime in Nick's regime.

The headache he had been fighting since he read the telegram burst upon Cole full force, blurring his vision and constricting his chest. He would have to stop near Toledo for the night. The mental disorientation he could manage, but when the torture of it began twisting at his heart, driving was impossible. Not that he would sleep, he couldn't chance the dreams.

He looked like hell when he finally slouched in the chair across from Dr. Fitapaldi. He could see the look of judgmental concern on the good doctor's brow. It was part of his couch side manner, an expression that was probably fifteen percent of his grade in Patient Manipulation 101. That and the smoothly cultivated sincerity in his tone as he told him of his father's present condition and whereabouts had probably earned Fitapaldi a place on the honor roll in his student days.

"The research grant simply went unfunded this year, and the state decided they could no longer manage this placement. The state facility is quite adequate."

"Quite," Cole responded with flat emotion. "I'm sure."

"You needn't worry about him. He'll be taken care of."

"I never worry about him. Your telegram, however, hinted at some urgency in this matter."

"You sensed urgency? Yet, I sent that telegram ... oh, it's been about three months now, I think." Fitapaldi stroked his hand over his hairless pate as he must have done when whatever locks he once possessed fell onto his brow. Taking up his pencil, he made a few notations in the file he had opened on his desk then closed it and shuffled it to the bottom.

Cole straightened in his seat when he saw him open a second file and sift through it. It was Cole's. He knew it. How dare he keep a file on him? When Cole realized that his fists were clenched with knuckle-whitening intensity, he tucked them between the chair arms and his legs. "It took a while to reach me. I've been on the road."

"I want to continue seeing you, Cole."

"Continue? There is nothing to continue. The funding ran out, remember? My father is gone."

"I am very concerned about you."

Concerned. There it was, the key word. Cole knew he would let it slip. They charged by the hour for concern. Setting his mouth in a grim smile, Cole nodded and rose. "Has the loss of my father hit you in the wallet?" he asked scornfully. "What an ambulance chaser you have become, Doctor."

"An ambulance responds to an emergency. Do you feel your situation is an emergency?"

"Do you?"

"There may be danger in it."

"To myself or others?"

"To yourself, I believe."

"Then the danger is as minimal as the victim is meaningless. I was saved once already by the wonders of modern medicine. I can show you the scars to prove it." With deliberate ease, Cole slipped the pencil from Fitapaldi's scribbling fingers and closed the file on his hands. "One miracle to a customer."

"I do not have to see the scars," said the doctor, watching him without blinking. "But they are not only physical."

"Scars are evidence of healing, Doctor. I must therefore be healed, correct?"

"How much do you remember of your father's attack?"

"To which attack do you refer? They were numerous and varied. My father had a talent for torture."

"The last one."

"Ah, yes, the last one. I should invite you into my nightmares sometime. Mere words could not do justice. But, this sounds an awful lot like analysis, Dr. Fitapaldi. You must save your probing for your patients. I have a life to live, restored to me for some momentous purpose which so far has eluded me." Cole raised his hands. "But fear not, I shall continue to seek it. As a survivor, I owe the other victims as much. I suppose this is goodbye then. With my father gone, there is no reason for my return, is there?"

"You know I believe there is."

"You're probably right. But I don't care enough to find out."

"If you don't, perhaps there is someone else in your life who might."

Cole shook his head. Fitapaldi was snatching at dust motes, yet seemed surprised to find his hands come up empty. He should know there was no one. There could never be anyone. He strode the few steps to the door.

"Don't worry. No one ever gets close enough for that. I make sure of it. The victims of Duncan Brewer have ended with me. It is just that I haven't reached the convenience of being buried and forgotten like the rest." Cole paused with his hand on the doorknob. "But that will come. Eventually."