Cause Of Fear

by Robert Ross

Genres: Suspense

Synopsis

She's Been Watching. . .Waiting. . . All her life, Linda Leigh has been a plain Jane--the kind of woman no one notices. That all changes when handsome college professor Geoffrey Manwaring falls in love with her. The only shadow cast over their upcoming marriage is Geoff's son Josh's stubborn refusal to accept Linda into his life--and his insistence that the unbalanced mother who deserted him years before will be return to claim him. . . And When She Comes Home. . . Gabrielle. Everyone remembers how intelligent, witty, and beautiful Geoff's first wife was. Still, Linda is confident she'll be a good stepmom to Josh, once he lets down his defenses. But then the nightmares start. Visions of being burned alive that soon become hallucinations. The same dreams plague Geoff, then Josh, who continues to await his mother's arrival. . . . . .Blood Will Be Spilled Until the day a woman in a red cloak comes up the lane and approaches the house. The wife who walked out on Geoff four years ago. The mother whose memory Josh clings to. The force of evil who wants Linda out of their lives--forever. . . Praise for Robert Ross's Where Darkness Lives "The familiarity of this tale won't keep readers from shivering at the chilling portrait the author paints." -- Publishers Weekly "Robert Ross is a master of the modern-day gothic."--Wendy Corsi Staub "Bentley Little fans are going to love this book."-- The Midwest Book Review

Release date: April 1, 2004

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 256

Sample

Linda Leigh suddenly knows what it feels like to be burned alive.

She awakes to flames. Her room is already consumed, the acrid stink of burning rubber and synthetic fabrics assaulting her more savagely than even the blazing heat. Linda screams for her life, but knows no one will hear her. The fire’s roar is like that of a living creature, an angry beast intent on death, louder than any cry for help she could try to make.

Only her bed remains untouched by the flames. She pulls her sheets up around her as if they could protect her from the encroaching cataclysm. She watches in horror as her bureau collapses into white-hot embers, her television set melts like butter, her curtains catch fire and explode.

Linda screams again. Only this time her scream feels artificial, as if she weren’t really screaming at all. She stares out into the flames that dance in seemingly sadistic glee, teasing her with their plumage of orange and gold.

There’s something out there, she thinks. Something in the flames.

Even in her terror, she tries to see what it is.

The shape is dark and shifting, but it is there. Is it a person—the person who set this fire?

Linda pulls back further behind her sheets as the fire begins to lick her bedposts. She struggles to see. What is out there?

Something large. Something enormous. Something dark, lurking behind the flames.

Come, it says.

Linda gasps. It’s speaking to her, but not with words. With thoughts. Whatever it is, it is communicating with her through her mind.

Come join me, it calls.

“Who—who are you?”

The heat is stronger now, bearing in on her. The fire seems emboldened, invigorated, by the exchange of words. It surges forward, and Linda shrieks.

Feel the warmth of the flames.

“Help me!” Linda screams.

Feel the warmth, the inviting heat…

“Who are you?” she shouts again.

Come join me, Linda.

Linda begins to cry.

Join me in the flames.

“No,” she whimpers.

It is only painful for a moment, and then there is bliss. Such bliss…

“No,” Linda says again.

The fire roars in anger now, furious at her refusal. Malevolent sparks hop onto her blankets like little imps, determined to take her. She swats at them, trying to put them out, as if such action mattered when her room was already a living hell.

She feels the presence in the flames more strongly now. It looms in toward her, a giant shape—not human. No, not human at all. Some kind of creature. Enormous—with arms, or tentacles, or wings—spreading out as if to claim her. It is so close now she can hear its breathing. A shadow passes over her bed.

You cannot fight me, it tells her. Go ahead. Touch the beauty of my flames. See how they dance? Aren’t they exquisite?

Her sheets have caught fire now. The conflagration is upon her.

Linda screams.

Join me, the thing in the flames says again.

And just before the fire devours her, Linda sees its face: huge and overpowering, awesome and terrible, with burning eyes and a forked tongue.

Linda screams again.

“What a dream I had last night,” she tells Megan. “I woke up in the morning and my sheets were drenched.”

Linda reaches for a towel to wrap around herself as they step into the sauna. The heat momentarily troubles her, taking her back to the dream.

“I dreamed I was burning to death. It was hideous. Worst dream I’ve ever had in my life.”

“I told you to go slow on those margaritas at the party,” Megan chides. “Birthday or not, sweetie, you ought to know your limit.”

“I only had two,” Linda tells her. She leans back against the cedar wall, letting the dry heat fill her lungs. “I would never drink too much in front of Geoff. I need to prove I’m a fit mother, after all.”

“Were you surprised when he gave you the ring?” Megan grabs her hand. “Let me see it again. What a rock!”

“You bet I was surprised,” Linda says, the diamond sparkling on her ring finger. “What a birthday present, huh? I can’t believe how lucky I am!”

Little Linda Leigh. That’s what everyone’s always called her, and not only because she’s short. Linda has had one of those lives that just lends itself to the term “little.” Nothing very glamorous ever happens to her. Born on a farm in the Midwest, moving to Boston for college, she’d graduated and found a routine job at an insurance company. Until Geoff, she’s never dated anyone spectacular. All the other guys in her life had been average joes, working the same kind of nondescript jobs she has. They haven’t been unattractive, but neither have they really been handsome—which Linda figured was the best she could get, since, after all, she’s hardly Jennifer Aniston herself. Her hair is mousy brown, her face is small, she gets too many freckles if she stays out in the sun too long. Her figure is okay but nothing great, which is why she’s here at the gym, toning her thighs, sweating off those extra pounds. Ever since meeting Geoff she’s been trying to remake herself into something more worthy of him, because Geoff—well, Geoff could be a movie star.

And he practically is, striding across the Coats-worth College campus with all those students following him around. Dr. Geoffrey Manwaring, tall and broad shouldered, with his cleft chin and iron jaw, is the darling of his department, an eminent scholar of ancient history. It seems incongruous in some ways: Geoff is only thirty-seven, yet he’s a leading authority on vanished civilizations and forgotten religions. Linda always smiles when she hears him speak at symposiums, going on about the pharaohs of Egypt or the hanging gardens of Babylon, because he looks so young, younger even than his years, with only a slight frosting of gray at his temples lending him an air of distinguished seniority.

And now he’s asked her to marry him. As soon as his divorce is final, they’ll be wed in his hometown of Sunderland, in the rolling hills of western Massachusetts, in a white chapel where all his ancestors have been married, dating back to the seventeenth century. It is a dream come true for Linda. Everything is perfect.

Everything except—

“What’s the kid gonna say?”

Linda withdraws her hand from Megan’s grip. “Oh, I dread telling him. Geoff thinks we ought to do it together. I suppose he’s right. Josh is going to have to get used to me sooner or later.”

“I don’t get it, Linda,” Megan says. “You are a likable girl. You are sweet. You are kind. You have practically gotten down on your knees to beg the brat to like you. You have bought him gifts, you have taken him to the circus, you have done everything you can. You have been wonderful to him!”

“But I’m not his mother.” The heat is getting a bit too intense in the sauna for Linda. She stands, making sure her towel is tucked securely around her. “I’m going to shower, Megan. Can I give you a lift home?”

“No, sweetie, Randy’s meeting me. You going out to Sunderland with Geoff this weekend?”

Linda nods. “Yeah. We thought we’d tell Josh when we’re out in the country. He’s always in a better mood out there.”

“Good luck.”

“Thanks.”

She heads out of the sauna and hangs her towel on a hook. She steps into the shower stall, adjusting the water. Her nightmare still troubles her. If she believed in the symbolism of dreams, she’d say it has less to do with too many margaritas than her constant anxiety about Josh. The one glitch in her happiness is that Geoff’s eight-year-old son despises her.

His eight-year-old son—for whom the sun rises and sets! Geoff completely adores the boy, and the feeling is mutual. They’re forever wrestling on the floor or tossing balls in the park, or laughing at this joke or that comedian, or making goo-goo eyes at each other through the rearview mirror in the car. Josh is Geoff’s “best buddy,” and the boy looks at his dad with stars in his eyes.

Except when he sits next to Linda, and then it’s daggers.

Oh, Josh is polite to her if his father is around—but behind Geoff’s back, the boy will stick his tongue out or call her names like “shrimpy” or “munchkin.” He knows she won’t say a word because a scolding from Geoff would only further drive a wedge between Linda and the boy.

“You’ll see,” Josh has told her on more than one occasion. “My mother is going to come back, and my father will forget all about you.”

It’s terribly sad. Josh’s mother left them nearly four years ago. The boy’s memory of her is dim but beatific. He doesn’t remember the scenes Geoff has described for Linda: Gabrielle throwing tantrums, mood-swinging from ice princess to manic monster, threatening to kill Geoff with a kitchen knife. Once he’d come home from class to find her in bed with the paperboy, a sixteen-year-old kid with acne, and it took a great deal of negotiation to keep the boy’s parents from bringing a charge of statutory rape against Gabrielle. Josh doesn’t know about any of that. He just remembers his mother as a beautiful angel, which Linda supposes is a good thing. But that means he’ll forever see Linda as a she-devil intent on taking his mother’s place.

She towels herself dry and gets dressed. She’s meeting Geoff for dinner at a fancy restaurant downtown with two of his colleagues. She’s met them before: Jim and Lucy Oleson, nice enough people, but both are professors and very smart, and around them Linda’s always felt a little self-conscious. They use words like “paradigm” and “egregious” and “deconstructing.” They write books and give lectures on theory for a living. Linda enters claims for auto accidents, and punches a time clock at the end of her workday.

Gabrielle was brilliant, she thinks, looking at herself in the mirror as she applies her lipstick. She would have become a great scholar and author herself. She was a student of Geoff’s when he first came to the college, and he thought she was the most fascinating woman he’d ever met. Absolutely brilliant. She knew as much about ancient Babylon as he did. Sometimes more.

And she was beautiful. Linda has seen the photographs. The ones of her wedding to Geoff are burned into her brain. Blonde and ethereal, Gabrielle was statuesque, elegant, and assured in her white satin wedding dress. Who knew what demons lurked behind that stunning façade?

Josh looks like her, Linda thinks as she hurries out of the gym to her car. More like her than Geoff, to be honest. Blond, already tall for his age, with Gabrielle’s same crystal blue eyes.

“He’ll come to love me,” Linda tries to convince herself as she starts her ignition. “He’s got to.”

 

“You’ve always been good with children,” her mother had told her over the phone. “You were the favorite baby-sitter of all the kids in the neighborhood when you were in high school.”

“That’s because I was their only baby-sitter, Mom, since I never had any dates.”

“That is not true, Linda. What about Andy Hecker?”

“Yeah,” Linda had replied, laughing. “What about him?”

Andy Hecker wasn’t exactly boyfriend material. He was a gangly, pimply kid who preferred building monster models to practically anything else. Geek with a capital G. And all the rest of the letters in caps, too.

Still, her mother had a point. The kids in the neighborhood had liked her. She did fun things with them when she baby-sat. They played Twister. They made pizza from scratch, putting everything from peanuts to marshmallows on top. They stayed up late watching slasher videos.

“The boy will come to love you,” Mom said, “once he realizes his mother isn’t coming home.”

“I hope so.”

“I know so. If his father loves you as much as you say he does, the boy will come around.”

Linda heard the rooster crow on her parents’ farm and felt a little homesick. “If he gives me a ring as I think he will, you will come out here to Massachusetts for the wedding, won’t you? You and Daddy both?”

“Of course we will, Linda, honey. Would we miss our baby girl’s trip down the aisle? And to a man as successful as Geoff?”

They thought I’d never get married, Linda thought. They thought I’d be their old maid daughter. Hadn’t I always been the plain one, “little Linda”? Oh, won’t Mom and Dad be impressed with Geoff’s house, his car, his four published books?

Geoff was even more successful than Dennis Gunderson, the man Linda’s sister Karen had married. Dennis owned the largest chicken-feed supply business in their home state, and Karen had thought she’d made quite the catch when she snared him. Karen hadn’t gone on to college like Linda had; she’d never even left the state for so much as a day trip. But she was the beauty in the family, dark and sultry, busty and hippy. Everyone predicted she’d do better than Linda, and until Geoff had come along, Linda had believed them.

Linda remembered that day at the lake when she and Karen had been teenagers, both in high school. She would never forget it.

How could she? It was burned onto her brain.

Karen was one of the popular girls, with her dark hair and small features and delicate hands. “Cute as a button,” everyone called her. Linda was just small and blunt. Nobody called her anything.

“Oh, come now, Linda, don’t be a spoilsport,” Karen insisted.

But Linda didn’t want to go out with Karen and her friends to the lake. She knew what it would be like—Karen and the girls giggling over boys, Linda lagging behind, no one paying her even the slightest notice.

“Mary Ann and Jessica asked for you especially,” Karen pleaded.

“Right,” Linda said. “So I could lug the cooler.”

“They enjoy your company,” Karen said.

Her mother piped in, scolding Linda for being a “stick in the mud.” So Linda relented, heading upstairs to change into her bathing suit.

“You’re not wearing that, are you?” Karen asked.

Linda had slipped into a striped red-and-blue one-piece. “Why not?”

“Never wear horizontal stripes,” her sister told her. “Especially not across your butt. They make you look fat.”

Linda crossed her arms across her chest. “I am not changing.”

“Have it your way.”

Of course, at the lake, she did feel like a fat troll. She sat with her towel wrapped around her waist, a big floppy hat on her head, her eyes hidden behind large sunglasses. Karen and the girls laughed and chatted, practically ignoring her. When Jake Gandolfini—the hottest boy in the senior class, dark hair and cleft chin and muscles—stopped by their blanket, he kept his back to Linda the whole time, flirting with Karen and her friends.

“I don’t want you girls to burn out here in the hot sun,” he teased.

Silly little Mary Ann dissolved into giggles. Behind her sunglasses, Linda rolled her eyes.

Jake was grinning now with a devilish idea. “Maybe I ought to put some more lotion on all of you,” he said.

The girls squealed. Linda knew “all of you” didn’t include her. To Jake, she was just some maiden aunt. Worse: she didn’t even exist.

So, one by one, the three of them—Mary Ann, Jessica, and finally Karen—peeled down their shoulder straps so that Jake could slather their backs and shoulders and arms with Number 15 sunblock. Just before it was her turn, Karen looked over at Linda and seethed, “Not a word of this to Mom.”

Linda watched from behind her dark glasses, and the image has never left her. It summed up, perfectly symbolized, completely illustrated her life before meeting Geoff: the one outside, watching as the pretty girls exposed their skin, lined up for the handsome jock to touch them, each worthy in a way Linda would never be.

Until now.

 

“Congratulations, Linda,” Lucy Oleson tells her, clasping her hand in greeting.

“Thank you so much.”

“I thought ol’ Geoff here would never again take that matrimonial plunge, but you must have worked your charm,” Jim says, laughing.

Geoff kisses her warmly. How good it feels to be in his arms. He smells great, as usual: that heady scent of aftershave and man sweat.

“Hello, darling,” he says to her.

“Sorry I’m late. Traffic—”

“No problem,” he says, holding out her chair for her as she sits down. “We were just talking a little shop.”

“I just don’t see Ronnie Simms getting the position,” Lucy says, continuing whatever conversation they had been having before Linda’s arrival. “Not with his views of historical revisionism.”

“Well, he doesn’t view the construct in that way, Lucy,” her husband tells her. “He’s a revisionist with a proclivity for obduracy. Really, I would think that…”

Linda feels Geoff reach under the table and take her hand. They exchange small smiles. Is it any wonder she fell in love with him?

They met cute, as they say in the movies. She was getting into a taxi from one side, he was getting in from the other.

“Uh, I was here first,” she insisted.

“I flagged him down,” Geoff replied.

“No, you didn’t. I flagged him.” She leaned in toward the driver. “Who did you stop for?”

“Me, I don’ know, I just pull over.” The Pakistani cabdriver just shrugged his shoulders.

“Look, miss, I distinctly held up my hand and—”

She hated being called “miss.” She folded her arms across her chest. Linda guesses now she was showing, in that moment, a “proclivity for obduracy.” She wasn’t going to budge.

“I have a flight to catch,” she told him in no uncertain terms.

A broad smile spread across Geoff’s face, revealing dimples that made her melt. “Well, as it happens, so do I,” he said. “Since we’re both going to the airport, maybe we can share the ride?”

Funny how fate works. They learned, sitting in traffic outside Logan, that they were both going to Chicago, Linda to rent a car to drive to her hometown of Dowagiac, Michigan, to attend Karen’s wedding, Geoff to deliver a talk on ancient religious practices at some seminar. Though Geoff was in first class and Linda was in coach, they managed to find an empty row somewhere over central Connecticut and sat together, finishing their conversation. They agreed to meet for a drink in Chicago on their way back.

But when Linda showed up at his hotel, eager to get away from Karen’s reception and all her aunts asking her when she—Linda—was going to tie the knot, Geoff was no where to be found. What an idiot I’ve been, Linda told herself. To think a smart, successful college professor is going to be interested in me. What a fool.

“I’m sorry, but is this seat taken?”

She looked up. It was Geoff.

“Did you think I was standing you up?” he asked. “I apologize for being late. Some dreary academic types insisted on challenging my analysis of Zoroastrianism.”

“Well,” she said, laughing, “I hope you told them.”

He ordered a scotch and water. Linda was drinking white wine. She learned he was married—of course, she thought at first—but then found out his wife had left him over two years ago and he hadn’t heard from her since.

“I can’t say I was surprised,” Geoff admitted. “Gabrielle was ill. I think she has some kind of mental illness.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Linda said.

“Well, she began acting strangely….” He seemed unwilling to talk about that time. Linda suspected it had been very painful for him. Her heart melted for this handsome, gallant stranger.

“So of course, I’ve been concerned for her safety. I’ve hired private dete. . .