Chapter 52

I opened my eyes and saw Amber. The fire had died and glowed embers, and aside from the slight heat radiating from it and the heat collected under the blankets that Becky and I had, the room was cold. I gasped when I saw her, tears instantly filling my eyes so that her face lost its shape. I sat up abruptly, standing and stepping out from beneath the blanket. Amber took a step back, away from me, and smiled. But not in a nice way, but more like she was trying to taunt me.

"Amber!" I cried, and reached for her, walking towards her. She walked backwards away from me to the other side of the room, grinning as two fingers touched the circular volume knob on the stereo. She turned the music up, the song Thomas by A Perfect Circle, laughing. I winced, wanting to cry. I didn't understand why she was doing this, but I loved her so much that I didn't care. It was like Pip and Estella, the fascination. I just wanted to be near her, and when she had no more places to back up to I reached out and touched her arm.

She was warm. A shock when through my body at her touch and my mouth hung open. "Turn the music off," I said, begging her. She looked at me without changing expression. "Amber…please turn it off…" tears rolled down my cheeks and I kneeled, holding her hands, kissing her knuckles. "Amber…Amber you're alive…"

"Kane…" Oh her voice!!! So pure, so real! It went through my body, electricity so that I twitched. I dropped her hands and wrapped my arms around her waist, leaning my head against her stomach. The song played, and she sang softly to me with it. "Humble and helpless, learning to pray. Praying for visions to show me the way. Show me the way to forgive you…allow me to let it go. Allow me to be forgiven. Show me the way to let go…"

I looked up at her, at her mercy. "What?" I asked her. Her voice was so pretty, so enrapturing, putting chains around my wrists and bounding us together. She leaned down, kissing my cheek softly and whispering in my ear.

"Show me the way to forgive you, allow me to let it go. Allow me to be forgiven, show me the way to let go. Illuminate me. Illuminate me. Illuminate me. I'm just praying for you to show me where I'm to begin. Hoping to…hoping to reconnect to you…"

"Amber…" I cried, placing my hands on either side of her face. I pulled her close to me, laced her cheeks and her forehead with kisses. She was so soft against my mouth, such a fantasy. "I'm sorry Amber…I'm sorry…I thought you were dead, Amber! But you aren't! You aren't! You're right here and we're together now!" she smiled and put her arms lightly around my neck. I put my arms around her, holding her against me, swelling with happiness and putting my head down to cry. I smelled her hair, her shampoo, her perfume. I felt her body in my arms, her warmth, her volume, the density of matter. I cried with joy and pulled her into the other room, away from Becky, turning the light on to dim to look at her there.

She wore a gauzy white shirt, and a white bra beneath it that I could see, sleeves billowing out and flowing around as she reached up to touch my face. I could smell incense and I couldn't suppress a smile. She wore an equally beautiful white skirt, an Indian style one that flare out, floral embroidery creeping all over it. The purple of her hair was greatly accented by it. "Kane…it's snowing…play in the snow with me…" she said. Her voice rattled my heart, echoed in my head. 

"Amber I knew it wasn't true!" was all I could say, me just ranting to her. "I didn't believe it, I didn't want to! You're immortal, Amber, my goddess! I was imaging everything, all of it, wasn't I? You would never do this to me…how could you? You're too perfect…"

Her hands ran through my hair, my curls twisting on her fingers. I screamed out in agony as she did this, tantalized, confused. I cried, falling before her, my hands touching her, running over the solid of her body. And her skin, her form, pulsed with such light, such life, bursting with warmth into the tips of my fingers, tingling into my hands, my arms. She seemed to glow in her whiteness from the rest of the room as I clung to her pathetically. "Don't ever leave me again," I sobbed. "Please, Amber, don't leave me! I promise I'll never hurt you, I'll never do anything to make you upset! Just stay with me! I love you so much! You're my goddess! Amber! Talk to me! Please! Speak!"

Warmth encased my face as she wiped my tears away with her hands. I nearly convulsed at her touch as it passed through me, electrocuting impulses that danced through us.

"Kane, you don't love me anymore, do you?" her voice was so sweet, so musical, and so malignant with that. Her smile faded and her eyes became glassy. "Kane, why would you do that to me? I loved you, Kane, and now you hate me!" my mouth hung open as I stared at her.

"No!" I shouted, not at her but unable to control the volume of my voice as I so adamantly confessed to her. "Amber, no! And none of that matters now! Why should it matter, Amber? You're alive!!! Amber you're alive! It doesn't matter what happens now because we're together!!"

Amber's face was somber as she paused, and turned her head slowly to look away from me. "Show me the way to forgive you. Allow me to let it go," she whispered. Her hair shifted as if  invisible fingers of wind had played with it, a strand of deeper purple spreading and seemingly becoming lighter. I was obsessed with this, rapt. "Kane," she said sharply. Her tone was angry and strong, and I flinched like an abused animal when I heard her. I began to tremble when she said it, frightening me. Her eyes locked on mine again, holding me down, putting shackles on my arms and on my lungs.  She looked like she would, at any moment, burst into tears, which made me equally miserable.

"I loved you, Kane," her voice hung with her tears. I held my breath as I saw her eyelashes slowly descending, her eyes closing. Thick black curled eyelashes that rode her lids down. They met her cheek without a sound, only a visual, a single tear forming to roll on her delicate face.

But the tear was red, and think, quite resembling blood. I fell backward away from her in horror, afraid of what she was and why this was happening. She opened her eyes quickly, snapping her head up to glare at me, lids revealing empty eye sockets. Blood poured from them, more than a tear now and streaming, gushing fluidly and ruining her skin. It burned, scalded the flesh so that it hung loose from her cheekbones. I screamed and darted away, bolting to the other side of the room and standing. Her head followed me, her eyes gone but still with the voids centered on me, turning to follow my movements. Even when I stood her head tilted upward slightly.

"What the fuck??" I screamed, falling back into the wall. A shelf covered in collectible dolls and daggers came crashing down to the floor, spilling, breaking. I looked down to see a doll of Anne Rice's Armand, eyes bewildered, lower face cracked and crushed in. Armand was Amber's favorite. I looked back up at her quickly, red staining her white dress, covering her face save for the space between her eyes and running down in an aisle to her chin, so that her mouth was clean as well. Her eyeless figure slowly shook her head. Her mouth pulled into a small, evil grin, and she back to laugh. It wasn't just any laugh though, she was laughing at me. I shook, hands trembling, body nearly violently racked by tremors.

"Amber, stop it…" I whispered. I held my hand. "Stop it! Go away! YOU'RE NOT MY WIFE!!"

Her laughing stopped abruptly and she shook her head faster. Back and forth, back and forth, so that her long hair swung around and even drifted across her face, smearing blood.  "I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you! I HATE YOU, KANE!!! AND YOU HATE ME!!"

"No…" my protest was weak and despondent. I covered my mouth with my hand. "Amber I love you! I do!"

"You never loved me!" her head stopped shaking, so quickly coming to a  halt that her hair kept going and it sent little droplets of blood spaying onto me and onto the walls. For the first time since she'd lost her eyes she moved something other than her head. I gasped, coughing and feeling my legs go weak beneath me as she made her way toward me, limbs moving rigidly, like a marionette with an inexperienced puppeteer, twitching as if she were infested with maggots or some other controlling parasites. One arm lifted, outstretching, her fingernails long and covered in glitter polish. My heart thudded in my ears, louder perhaps than the screams that were coming out of me.

And she seemed to weak, so frail, and so much smaller than I was that I easily could've shoved her away, tackled her to the ground, broken her neck or even her body in a few simple gestures, but I just couldn't do it. I was torn, unable to tell what it was in front of me, if it was in fact my wife or just some ghoul. I had no way of knowing, and even if it was either one…it was her body. It would be a terrible sin to destroy such a piece of art. So instead I just screamed, at her mercy as she came towards me, taking forever to reach me.

With a swipe of her hand she reached to hit me, and defensively I put my arm up, my wrist out, only to catch the fury of her nails, four of them slashing me. She grinned again and took a step, back, shoulders jutting out from her frame and legs twitching like something from a Silent Hill game. When she backed off I felt a little safer and looked down at my forearm. Angry red lines left in the wake of her nails crossed horizontally, burning, throbbing and glowing red, the skin around turning pink. She began to scream at me again.

"Look at you, Kane! You're pathetic!!! LOOK AT YOU!!! You're such a freak, Kane! Such a freak!" she said this as an insane person might, like she was repeating it to herself because imaginary voices chanted it around her. I felt my face heat, embarrassed and hurt severely. "You're so…" –in what was there in her expression, disgust joined- "ugly, Kane. You bastard!"

I covered my ears with my hands. "Stop it! STOP IT!!!" she just laughed.

"You're a freak, Kane, you're a freak and you know it," she said, laughing. I finally snapped and shoved her away from me further. She stumbled and hunched over in the middle of the room, like her spine had broken and she couldn't hold herself up. I watched the blood drip from the empty eye sockets down onto the carpet, making such a mess, such a disaster that I wanted to look away, but I couldn't. I stared, curious and aghast, unable to pry my eyes away from the sight. Her arm rose from the mess and reached for me again, so that I jumped back into the doorway between the foyer and the hallway. Her nails seemed like they were aging, becoming yellow and weathered, at the same time that the skin on her hands and arms shriveled. The veins that ran through the limb were accented in deep purple and green, and the skin itself morphed to gray. I was shocked, disgusted, completely startled by it, and I pivoted, running down the hall and into the bathroom, slamming and locking the door behind me.

I watched the doorknob anxiously, panicking when I could hear her in the hall. Specific sounds; a foot dragging on the floor, a body that was pressed against a wall trying to move. The sound of her clothes sliding against the wall as if she were leaning on it, as she would step-slide like a zombie. I covered my mouth with my hand as I heard her approaching, and worst of all as I heard her calling out to me like some haggard, decrepit old woman- "Kaaaaaane!" with a rasp and a sourness to it and made my stomach turn.

Seconds passed and the sounds grew louder, until I saw the slightly traceable rectangular shadows formed in the crack between the door and the floor, of her feet in front. I felt the presence more than I heard her, like some ominous demon that was breathing all around me, suffocating. I backed up against the far wall to look at the door, feeling my body go numb as she banged on it and scratched it.

"Oh God…go away go away go away…" I whispered. "Go away…"

I looked down at my arm to see the wounds open up, skin prying away on either side to form a shallow red gorge that leaked crimson. I touched one of the wounds with one finger, staring at the blood that I'd smeared. I stared for a moment before lifting my head to look up at the door.

Amber was angry.