Sharing The Darkness

Though her heart still hammered in her breast, the pounding now had nothing to do with fear of the night, fear of the rock cave that seemed to spill down a cliff side. Now all her fear was of the man beside her in the dark and it stole her breath and made her legs feel weak and insubstantial.

She felt the dark around her as if it were a living presence. It pressed at her back, at her face, just as his scent did, as his body warmth did. Yet another shiver that had nothing to do with cold ran across her arms, and her fingertips tingled. She fought the urge to send her free hand questing for him in the dark. She wasn’t afraid of what she might find, but of what she might discover about herself.

“I…could we turn on a light?” she asked. She half wondered if he even had anything remotely resembling electricity.

“Afraid of the dark?” he asked, still not moving. His voice carried no trace of an accent and yet seemed foreign nonetheless.

“Yes,” she said, but it was a lie. Before entering his home, she had never been fearful of the dark. And she wasn’t now; she was scared of the tension in her chest, the trembling of her fingers, the ache his voice inspired in her. Most of all, she was terrified of Teo Sandoval.

A sudden clatter of objects striking the stone floor beneath her made her start and step back only to stop abruptly when she stepped on something. It rolled away from her feet, making her shiver in primal fear, only to realize almost instantaneously what the object was—Chris’s red ball.

Somehow, incredibly, in the midst of her tension, her fear, and in this dark hallway of an even darker man, Chris had fallen asleep. Only when trying to please his mother or when asleep, did he break the focused attention on his dancing toys.

“Give him to me,” Teo’s voice commanded.

Melanie shrank back from him, holding Chris fiercely with both arms. She felt Teo’s large hands brush hers as he tried removing Chris from her grip.

“No,” she said.

“Don’t be an idiot,” he said roughly, pushing her hands from their fervent hold.

With as great a reluctance as she had ever known, Melanie relinquished her hold on her son. It was utterly terrifying to stand there in the dark and hand her son to Teo Sandoval, a man who could render a scientist’s mind into a vegetable. But there was no alternative. Besides, if she was to gain his help, she would have to gain his trust.

She heard the faintest of rustles, felt a hint of movement in the air and then heard him speak again, this time from a considerable distance. “Stay there.”

“Wait—”

“I’ll be back,” he said. “For you.”

Melanie called out to him, but received no answer. She stepped forward, nearly tripping over Chris’s fallen toys. Moving cautiously, she stretched her hands out in front of her, but couldn’t see them, could see nothing. She couldn’t feel any walls.

“Where are you taking him?” she called out, but again received no answer. He had gone, taking Chris with him. This was pure torture, she thought. She was not only in a strange place in the dark, but an even stranger man had removed her son from her custody.

She stopped trying to follow when she ran into something, a table or possibly a tall chair. She wished she could feel a resurgence of that anger that had infused her veins earlier, but she didn’t. All she felt was small, alone and very, very frightened.

She clung to the awareness that he said he’d be back for her, and then realized for the first time how he’d said it, not simply that he’d return for her, but that he’d return…for her. She had only been thinking of Chris then, but now, by herself in the blackness, she heard the curious emphasis that had been in his final words.

It seemed hours before she heard any indication of his returning, time that stretched into insanity, filling her mind with horrible visions of what he might be doing to Chris, how Chris might have wakened and been frightened to be with a stranger, away from his mother.

Straining her ears, she heard a dull thud somewhere far away, followed quickly by his light footfalls. For a large man, he moved remarkably quietly. And suddenly she knew he was in the hallway—or whatever she was in—with her. She couldn’t see so much as a glimmer of him, but she felt him nonetheless.

That blessed anger she’d missed earlier returned slightly, attempting to override the terror she felt at being alone in the dark with him. She was furious with him for making her feel this way.

“Where did you take Chris?” she demanded to know.

He didn’t answer her, making her wonder if she’d misunderstood her own conviction that he was even there with her.

But almost immediately his hand encircled her forearm, making her jump in galvanized reaction. She jerked herself free. “Tell me where Chris is,” she commanded.