Part I

"Be sober, be vigilant;

because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about,

seeking whom he may devour..."

~1 Peter 5:8

Why was it so easy to forget where she was? The windows rattled in their frames, shaken by a stiff breeze. Shadows on the floor cast by light from outside stretched down and then up onto her bed with long fingers. Night – it was still night. But wasn’t it always night?

She sat trembling and waited for her heart to slow – for the nausea to recede. With the covers pushed back, her feet hung over the side of the bed. She used to be scared to do this as a child, but now even in the dark it didn’t scare her anymore. Fox still liked to hide in the shadows and bat at her toes under the bed skirt in an attempt to startle her, but the lack of reaction that she had developed over the years made him lazy.

Through the large windows Eleanor stared up into the sky. The lights from the city reflected off the cloud cover and made everything glow. She couldn’t find the moon. Sure she would feel better if she could only see the moon, she moved to the window. One hand shook and touched the cool glass. The trees bent over in the wind. She wondered what time it was – probably several hours before dawn. She sighed. No more sleep tonight.

In the darkened bathroom, she splashed water on her face. What was the point of switching on the light? For several moments she stared into the glass, her hands balanced on the counter of the bathroom sink. The tremble was passing. Her own shadowed eyes stared back at her.

“Nothing’s changed,” said Harvest as he eyed her in the mirror from his vantage point over her shoulder. “Why do you stand there staring when you know that everything is always the same?”

Eleanor continued to search her face. “I don’t know,” she replied .

Finally she passed one hand over her eyes. “I’m going to check on the children.”

Harvest followed her through the bedroom and into the great room beyond. The twins looked up as they passed, wondering whether they should join the two. Harvest shook his fingers dismissively and they settled back into their corner, curling up on the carpet like two hairless cats.

“Why?” Harvest asked. “Nothing’s changed there either.” They mounted the stairs leading to the children’s bedrooms.

On the landing, an arched window looked out over the driveway and across the street. She paused to observe the neighborhood. It was dark and deserted, the well-manicured lawns separated by lines of chalk-white sidewalk. She grasped the banister to resume climbing.

Harvest continued, “They sleep through the night. Nothing wakes them. They never get out of their beds. You’ve trained them too well for that. So why?”

“Because,” she turned on him as they reached the top of the stairs. “It’s something to do. What the hell do you care anyway?”

He shrugged, “Just curious.”

Irritable, her hand on the knob of the first door, she whispered to Harvest, “Stay here.”

The room was suffused with the soft blue of a sailboat night light burning steadily from the outlet near the floor. She looked down at the boy sleeping wrapped in the handmade quilt that was his dearest possession. The quilt top was rowed with a series of yarn knots, and he clutched one of the knots in his sleep. His ever clean and puckered thumb had slipped from his mouth as he slept. She felt that she should smile at the sight of it.

One hand reached to brush the top of his flaxen head and stopped. Her hand hovered over his cheek, over the hair shining on his forehead.

She turned away from the bed and shut the door in silence behind her. Harvest leaned against the wall next to the door frame.

“See? Nothing’s changed.”

She didn’t bother to answer and continued down the hall to the second door. With the same admonition that he remain in the hallway, she left Harvest to enter the room.

This time the night light was shaped like a ladybug and shined a cheerful yellow. She looked around the room to take in the rows of shelves and their stacks of picture books, the cubbies that held stuffed toys, the child-size table and chairs set for tea, the miniature stable populated by model horses, the white doll’s cradle, and finally the four poster. Sheer curtains marked with tiny dragonflies drifted down behind the bed. She moved to view the bed’s single occupant and wondered, as she often did, what it must be like to sleep so soundly.

The little girl had brown silk for hair and large blue eyes. This was an easy, happy child – quick to smile when awake, and just as likely to smile in her sleep.

Eleanor moved to touch the child, as she had the other, and once again stopped. She merely touched the air around the girl and pulled back. The child stirred. Had she sensed the near intrusion?

She had lingered too long. Back in the hall with the door shut, her heart threatened to begin its pounding again. One hand to her forehead, she felt light.

Harvest sounded bored. “Anything different?”

When she didn’t reply Harvest followed her down the hall into her studio. Along one wall, she ran her fingers at waist height and took usual mental note of the familiar space. Movie posters, stacks of ready canvases leaning near a shelf stocked with painting supplies, a table with her laptop displaying a lazy screensaver of fish underwater. An easel stood in the corner beside a tall cart with her palette, a line of dry brushes, and tubes of paint standing in chromatic order.

A two-foot by four-foot canvas sat on the easel. She regarded it as she pulled a cord to raise the blinds on the floor to ceiling windows with a whisk. Harvest spun in her computer chair. He rotated first to the right, and then to the left, his feet lifted to gain speed. He leaned his head back and chuckled deep in his throat.

She turned with a look of exasperation. “Must you do that?”

He lifted his head to look at her as he dragged one foot to stop the chair. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Am I bothering you?”

She shook her head at the dry sound of his voice and looked back out the window. “Always…,” she muttered.

Harvest started to turn the chair again. She tried to ignore him, but found she couldn’t stop herself from watching as he spun faster and faster. When he finally came to a stop she was slightly dizzy.

“You’re going to make yourself sick,” she warned.

He grinned. “I know.”

Then he promptly leaned forward and vomited black mucus onto the floor.

She stepped back, revolted, “Ugh!”

Harvest laughed.

With a few paper towels off of the roll from the painting cart, she knelt to sop up the mess. She knew that in the morning, the paper towels would be crumpled in the trash, oddly clean, but she couldn’t leave the pile stinking there for any length of time, otherwise it would begin to eat through the floor. The hardwood flooring she had paid to install had been a good investment.

She shook her head in disgust when he started to spin the chair again. "Why are you doing that?” she demanded.

“Because it amuses me,” he smiled. “Much like you, my dear.”

“Well, stop it,” she threw the blackened towels into a bin under the desk. “I want to sit down.”

He stopped and stood. “Of course,” his voice was ironic. “You had only to ask.”

She rolled her eyes as she swiveled the chair toward the computer. Harvest leaned over her shoulder, close enough that she could feel his cold breath.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m going to check my email.”

“Maybe you got a message from Mia?” he suggested.

“Maybe…” She opened a browser window and then looked back at him. “Do you mind?”

He chuckled again and threw himself into the armchair five feet away, near the door of the adjoining bathroom.

“Yes,” he said as she started typing and scrolling through messages. “Maybe Mia wrote you to beg once more that you return home.”

She pretended not to listen. There was nothing interesting in her inbox and certainly no messages from friends. She scanned through two emails from potential clients and then designated spam to be deleted.

“She misses you,” he continued in a nostalgic tone. “She’s lost without you. She doesn’t know who she is now that you’re gone….”

His voice trailed off, and she glanced over to see him picking at his teeth with one long fingernail. This was one of his less objectionable habits. She began to compose a brief message to a gallery owner on the West coast. The keys clicked in their reassuring way.

“You know,” he said after a moment. “I don’t know why you don’t go back. We should go back.”

He sounded wistful. “I miss it there. The heat was always so lovely.”

Eleanor shook her head, something she did often when listening to, talking with, or attempting to ignore Harvest. His words floated something undesirable to the surface -- something she didn’t want to look at or think about. Her fingers continued to move across the keyboard. “This is home now,” she said, mostly to herself. As the words left her mouth she felt a burning behind her eyes.

Harvest scoffed. “This isn’t home. You have nothing here. No past, no history, no friends, no family.”

She jabbed the Enter button and swung around. “Did it ever occur to you that I like it that way?”

He nodded. “Of course it has. I just like knowing that you know you like it that way.”

She made a sound that might have been GAH and turned back to the computer.

“You’re right, you know,” he said as she resumed typing. “You don’t need anyone. You never have. Besides, it’s safer not to trust anyone. Only one thing comes of developing faith in another human being.”

He paused. Her fingers paused with him.

“Pain,” he finished. His voice sounded light. He could have been replying, Blue, to the question, What’s your favorite color?

Her fingers curled motionless over the keyboard and she knew he was watching her. With effort, she forced her hands to move. The keys resumed their steady click.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s better to be alone.”

Eleanor stopped again, sighed and pushed the laptop away from her. She learned forward and lay her forehead on the tabletop.

I’m never alone. Her mouth formed the words, but no sound issued.

The silence was heavy between them.

“I’m sorry,” said Harvest. “Did you say something?”