Born of Darkness. Rita Vetere
overhead fan reached her. Each time she snapped awake, her eyes felt swollen and painful. Through the terrace window, she could see a brilliant full moon, sitting high in an unfamiliar sky.
Charlie’s dead. The remembrance sent her sinking back into oblivion.
She had taken the first of the antibiotics prescribed by the doctor Khalid had summoned earlier, but knew they wouldn’t kick in for a couple of days. A battle raged in her body. Her fevered dreams felt more like hallucinations. Visions of the dark angel who had come to her disturbed her already restless sleep. She glimpsed him in her dreams, prowling the dark night like a panther in search of prey. As she followed him through her confused delirium, he trained his shimmering, gold-ringed eyes on her. An unconscious moan escaped her. Those shadowy eyes aroused her, even in her disconcerted slumber.
In between the haunting visions of the man, her dead husband intruded on her sleeping thoughts, his face a mask of fear, his hand reaching out to her as if in warning. “Charlie,” she whimpered through lips chapped with fever. He was trying to tell her something, but she could not hear him clearly, and could only discern the urgent tone of his far-away dream voice.
She started awake again, shivering with cold and burning with heat. Her bones felt as if they were filled with broken glass. Even the soft cotton sheets caused her skin to hurt. Have to get back home. She had to bring Charlie home, because Charlie was dead, she reminded herself. She had to bury her dead husband.
A vague memory of having spoken to Dora earlier on the telephone to deliver the awful news about Charlie surfaced, but with her fever spiking, she could only recall disjointed snippets of the conversation. Her head throbbed mercilessly, making it hard to think. Even so, she tried to get out of bed. She had to do something. But as she lifted the covers away, blackness seeped into her vision. She fell back onto the bed, unable to get to her feet. Her eyes closed again, and she drifted back into her nightmares.
The next time she opened her eyes, it was dusk. A man was in the room with her, she saw with a start. She stifled a cry, seeing it was Khalid who stood just inside the doorway. He had prepared a dinner tray and encouraged her in broken English to eat something. She shook her head, which still throbbed mightily, and began to ramble, “My husband… Charlie’s dead… I need to…” It was no use. Her stomach roiled at the sight of the food on the tray Khalid held. Still burning up with fever, she didn’t manage to get the rest of the words out before her head sank back down into the pillow. Just before she trailed off into unconsciousness, she saw Khalid leave the room, the untouched dinner tray still in his hand, shutting the door firmly behind him.
On the following morning, she woke with a raging thirst. Her throat was sore and parched, but the splitting headache had eased up. Her fever had broken. She tried to sit up in bed, and succeeded. Just then, a knock sounded at the door and Khalid entered, carrying a large glass of orange juice and a breakfast tray. This time she accepted it gratefully.
“You are feeling better today, yes?” Khalid asked in an anxious voice.
She felt weak and exhausted, but her mind was clear again and her thoughts already racing. She needed to make arrangements to have Charlie’s body released and get back home, away from this nightmare. Far too much time had been lost already on account of her strange illness.
“Yes,” she said, “better. Khalid, I need to get in touch with the Embassy. I need to… My husband… I need to arrange to bring him home.” The words caught in her throat as she forced back the tears that threatened to erupt.
“There is a man downstairs from the Consulate. He arrived last night, but you were too ill to meet with him. The doctor advised him to return this morning. Your sister contacted him yesterday morning. If you are well enough now, I will tell him.”
Relief flooded over her as she mentally blessed Dora. She could only imagine what must have been involved in getting her the help she needed, but Lilli knew well enough how formidable Dora could be when circumstances required.
“Thank you. I’ll get dressed and come down right away.”
* * * *
On the morning of the following day, she walked on still-weak legs along the dim alley to the waiting taxi. Khalid followed, carrying her luggage. While he loaded the suitcases into the trunk, she got inside the taxi that would take her to the train station for the trip back to Casablanca. From there, she was booked on the next flight out to the States. She felt wretchedly alone, and still weak from the mysterious illness. She kept imagining Charlie, lying in a casket soon to be loaded into the cargo hold of the plane. The trip home would be a nightmare, knowing her husband’s body would be in the compartment below, with only the luggage of the other tourists to sit vigil. She could not believe the drastic suddenness with which her life had fallen apart.
Through the rolled-down window, she said a quick good-bye to Khalid. Although grateful for his help, she wanted only to leave this place of death behind.
During the taxi ride to the train station, the events of that night replayed themselves in her mind like a bad movie. What had happened to her? And to Charlie? She’d watched in horror as he’d gone flying across the room, yet nothing visible had propelled him. Hysteria bubbled to the surface every time she pictured the scene, knowing the impossibility of what she had witnessed. The darkly beautiful man who had materialized out of thin air was responsible for Charlie’s death, she was positive. She had been visited by something unnatural, but what? A phantom? He had appeared so at first, but his body had been as solid as her own when she… Oh, God.
Feelings of shame and guilt overwhelmed her again. She had not fought to keep the man, or whatever he was, from her. She had wanted him, lusted for him. God help her, it was true. Only afterward had she even thought about her husband lying dead on the floor. And yet, she knew in her heart the man must have done something to cause her unnatural behavior. She remembered the strange lethargy she’d felt, as if she’d been drugged. No matter which way she viewed what had happened, she was not able to come up with a believable explanation.
Certainly, the police had not believed her disjointed ranting. Yet neither had they suspected her of being involved in her husband’s death. In the end, the officer in charge had assured her solemnly that a thorough investigation would be conducted into Charlie’s murder and that every effort would be made to find the intruder, and she was permitted to return home.
As the taxi turned onto the street leading to the train station, she fumbled through her purse for her wallet. She found foreign currency confusing and didn’t want to take the chance of missing the express train. As she rummaged through her bag, her hand touched something metallic, and she yanked it out, momentarily taken aback. She didn’t remember having put the pendant inside her purse, but that wasn’t surprising. Her mind was all over the place, she hardly remembered packing.
The old silver gleamed in the morning sunshine. It felt warm, a little too warm, as it rested in the palm of her hand. Her thoughts began to blur. The dizzy spells from her illness hadn’t completely left and nausea struck again. She cranked the taxi window lower to gasp in hot but fresh air, big gulps of it, over and over, until her thoughts cleared and her stomach stopped being queasy.
As she looked at the pendant, an eerie sensation rippled through her. For some reason, holding the pendant made her feel inexplicably afraid. The thing seemed…wrong, somehow. She could almost see the bad vibrations coming off it in waves. Suddenly, she knew she didn’t want it anymore. Acting purely on impulse, Lilli put her hand out the open window of the moving car and tossed the pendant. She watched it strike the pavement and then disappear as the car sped forward.
A second later, she worried whether she’d done the right thing in throwing it away. It was a gift from Charlie, she told herself, the last thing he had given her. A shadow of guilt passed over her briefly, replaced almost immediately by an overwhelming relief at having rid herself of the pendant. And soon she would rid herself of this country, a place that had filled her with shocking opposites and that had propelled her from joy and awe to a grief she knew would last forever.
Chapter 3