Downfall by S.D. Wasley
****
I went to Gaunt House even earlier than before, trying to catch Cain completely alone. It worked. His bike was the only vehicle in the clearing.
I found him asleep on his sofa. Somehow, in sleep, he looked closer to ordinary. I felt more tender than intimidated. I crept across mattresses to seat myself on a tiny section of sofa beside him, and stared at him: his skin, the stubble around his jaw, the tiny veins on his eyelids, and the shape of his lips. A lock of his over-long hair had fallen across his forehead and cast a shadow on one closed eye. He was leaner than I remembered. When he held me in his arms he felt massively strong and powerful. It just didn’t match up with his appearance. God, what a relief to get a look at him without him looking back at me. My heart wasn’t so crazy and I could keep my breathing even. But it just lasted a few moments before his eyes opened and he smiled his slow smile. Aaand ... there went the heart again.
I couldn’t wait a second longer. I leaned in and kissed him. Cain didn’t move and I took that as permission, kissing up his face. I brushed his eyelids with my lips, marveling over him, tasting summer. When I came back to his lips he slid a hand under the hair at the back of my neck and pulled me in. Was his hand trembling? I clambered gracelessly on top of him, tugging at his T-shirt. That made him catch my hand, shaking his head.
“One of the other three could get here at any moment.”
“You’ll hear them,” I said.
“Not if we’re ...”
He didn’t have to finish and, although I frowned, I knew he was right. Cain took hold of me and pushed me off so he could sit up. It was like I weighed nothing to him, the way he shifted me. I settled myself on the sofa beside him while Cain lit a cigarette and drew on it deeply.
“Francesca,” he said at last. “You’re early.”
I flushed. “Yes. I want to hear more of your story.”
He asked me a question instead. “The visions I told you about. Now you’ve thought about it, can you think of any time when you’ve seen anything like that?”
I shook my head. “Never.”
“What about dreams?” he asked. “Or do you ever sense, hear, or smell anything that seems completely out of place?”
“Smell something?” I smiled. “Only when I touch you.” Cain tilted his head, puzzled. “This might sound corny but when I touch you I can smell the summer air.”
“Summer air?” he repeated, his face blank.
I laughed in embarrassment. “Forget it. Tell me what happened when you were in hospital.”
He nodded and extinguished his cigarette, opening his arms. I all but scrambled into them, and then tried to regain my cool when I saw his smile. I’d heard Starr and Vanessa discussing playing hard to get and knew I was doing this all wrong but I didn’t seem to have an ounce of control.
“Talk,” I ordered, feeling ridiculous.
He obeyed. “Before the vision of me coming off my bike, what I saw had started to change. I’d always seen ordinary, everyday stuff. Fragments of normal situations where people were just, you know, sitting there. Standing at a bus stop or walking through a supermarket. Common things with little significance. But after I saw Margaret’s face and realized I had seen a vision, things changed.”
“Margaret?”
“The little girl in the red coat.”
“How did you find out her name?”
“I told you,” he said. “I got interested in archives, births and deaths.”
“Okay. So how did the visions change?”
“They became longer, more detailed, less ordinary. The people in my visions were obviously in danger. I didn’t see someone waiting at a pedestrian crossing anymore. I saw a car approaching at speed as the person went over the crossing. Not a girl reading on the foreshore while a guy rides past on his bike. Now it was the girl getting followed by the guy back through the park at dusk.” Cain’s face had become tight and pained.
“You saw people dying?” I asked.
“Not always dying, but always in dangerous, desperate situations.”
“How often?”
He thought for a moment. “Perhaps once or twice a day.”
“Who were the people you saw in the visions?”
Cain shrugged. “Just normal people like you or me.”
Some rational part of me protested the suggestion he was normal but I let it slide. “What exactly do you see? Just a snippet of things going wrong for them, or details?”
“Back then, just snippets. But now? Now I see vivid, bloody, violent details.”
“Why? Why should you be tortured like that?”
“Tortured!” Cain stared. “It’s not torture.”
“How can you stand it?”
I didn’t like the way he looked at me like I didn’t get it at all, and like that bothered him. There was something akin to disillusionment in his eyes. I glared at the floor, defensive and secretly crushed.
Cain took my hand. “Francesca. It’s not punishment. It’s a reward. The most awesome, incredible gift anyone could be given.”
I was incredulous. “How can you say that? You have to watch terrible things happen to innocent people! I wouldn’t be able to live with it. I’d rather poke my own eyes out. You don’t deserve to have to see that every day―”
My words were causing him distress. I stopped, scolding myself for getting so worked up over something I had clearly failed to understand. When I stole a look at Cain, I caught him watching me with a sad expression.
“Do you want to know what happened next?”
I nodded wordlessly.
“At first I didn’t know what to do with these new, more intense visions. I couldn’t pretend they were part of my normal life anymore. It was like ... like seeing horror movie trailers. This feeling of foreboding, knowing the person was in danger and unable to do anything about it. I couldn’t help any of these people I saw, in spite of my efforts to find them. If I recognized any of the places I saw in the visions I would go there and wait around for days, too anxious to leave in case I missed the event. Of course it never happened while I was there.” Cain paused for so long I eventually looked back up at him. His dark eyes, made darker by the candlelight, were impossible to read.
“I’m sorry I don’t understand better,” I mumbled. “They all seem to get it.”
“Yeah, maybe they do, but you―you ...” Cain didn’t finish.
Tears welled. I looked away to hide it but he was onto me. He took my face and held it so he could look at my tears with raw honesty.
“You’re crying? Why?”
“I’m not.”
Cain didn’t argue. He just waited as I tried and failed to sniff silently. He touched my hair, tangling his fingers in it and slipping his warm hand around the back of my neck. My God, that felt so frighteningly intimate while his gaze was locked on my face. “Never mind that you don’t get it yet,” he whispered. “You’re the most beautiful distraction in this world.”
That was as much as I could listen to without pushing my lips onto his. He pulled me in tight and we had all of about six seconds of heavenly lip-locked silence before I heard a tell-tale creak overhead. I groaned and he couldn’t help a chuckle.
“I know,” he murmured into my cheek, running his fingers down my arm. “But they belong here, too.”
I grimaced. “Yeah.” Pulling myself free, I headed for the cooler room.
Liz, Owen, and Jude all came in while I got myself a drink. When I returned to the main chamber, Jude grinned at me. That was awkward. I guess I looked so back-to-normal standing away from Cain that his memory blipped out. I smiled ruefully and he remembered, the grin disappearing as he plonked down on a mattress.
During the games and chatter of the evening I tried to concentrate on things like my poker hand but my mind kept flicking back to Cain’s words. Despite all the things he’d told me, the thing that played on repeat in my head was his admission that I was the most beautiful distraction. A distraction? From what? Jude was antiso
“Last game,” Owen announced when the night got late. “Who’s playing?”
“Me,” I said. “I’ll risk all I’ve got and end up with nothing, as usual.”
“Me,” said Liz.
“I’m in,” said Cain, although he rarely played.
We waited for Jude. He flicked through his magazine as though he hadn’t heard us, his hair hanging down to conceal his face.
“You in, Jude?” I asked him at last.
After a long and unsettling moment, he straightened up. “Yeah, okay.”
Owen dealt all around. We bet too much, more from relief than anything else.
“What should I do?” I asked Cain, showing him my cards.
“Play on,” he advised, so I did.
I didn’t win but I didn’t care, either.