Page 47 of The Hangman's Rope

“Let me know what you’ve got later, let’s get on to the next problem before we’re stuck here all damn night.”

Regardless on if Lorelai was the topic of conversation or not, it was shaping up to be a long one anyway. There was a lot of ground to cover to bring all of us up to speed on whatever investigation there’d been about just how Lorelai had found herself on Reaper’s table.

Someone had pissed in our pond, though, and made a big splash. Now to find them and potentially drown them in the turbulent waters. We liked our pond as smooth as glass.

Chapter Fourteen

Lorelai…

After trying on so many clothes I had to practically beg,no more!It was late when they left, one of the men jogging up to the gate to unlock it for them to leave. I watched from the porch and while I didn’t recognize the man below, he raised a hand and waved at me, which was… nice. I waved back and listened to their glad voices as they retreated into the night up the road outside the cemetery gates.

I closed my eyes, breathing in slow and deep the humid night air that was lightly perfumed withsomethingfloral. My mind went two places with that – magnolia or night blooming jasmine… but I couldn’t remember for the life of me which one was actually correct.

I sighed, drawing the light shawl around my shoulders a little tighter, even though it was the furthest thing from cold out here. Really, it was because I had already dressed for bed, and the satin set was beyond cute. A light peachy satin pair of shorts and cropped tank top. Perfect for the hot, sultry Savannah night… but, it unfortunately didn’t leave anything to the imagination uptop, or down below. The shorts cut high in the back baring much more leg and thigh than I was comfortable with, and my nipples pressing prominently to the inside of the thin material.

It was either this, or a long thin satin nightgown that likewise didn’t leave much if anything to the imagination, and if I didn’t know any better, I would have thought the night clothes were less for my benefit and more for Hangman’s… but no, the girls had explained to me that lovely pajamas that were sexy and felt good against the skin was a treat for themselves that they all indulged in and they had just defaulted to the racy attire.

The sincere look on their faces had made me decide they were telling the truth… and yet… and yet I found myself really hoping that Hangman would like them as much as I did.

I didn’t know how to feel about that.

I didn’t know how to feel about anything… while I knew something bad had happened to me while under the effects of the drugs, I didn’t remember – but it was there. This vague, insidious sense of violation that made me want to shower. It clung to me like thick oily ooze. Toxic and foul but it, unfortunately, rode up underneath my skin and no matter how much I showered it wasn’t something that would wash away.

It'd only left my consciousness once since I’d woken up on that cold metal gurney and that had been when Hangman had stayed with me.

I know it wasn’t fair of me to cling to him like a frightened child. I couldn’t even remember what the dream had been about – I’d just woken, feeling like I was choking and suffocating on this sense of violent dread. That the cloying and noxious fumes of it stuffed my nose and mouth and made it hard to draw breath.

I looked back over my shoulder and sighed.

I was tired, the bed calling my name from inside the little apartment… but by the same token, that pervasive senseof wrongness plagued me. As though whatever it was that’d happened to me to put me on that cold table waited for me just beyond the veil of sleep. Squatting, insidious, blinking like a toad waiting to lash out its disgusting tongue and pull me into the depths of madness.

I was afraid to sleep. I was afraid to dream. I didn’twantto remember, but I couldn’t help but feel like it was coming for me.

I sighed, wishing that Hangman would come home soon so I didn’t have to face the prospect of dreaming quite so alone.

I looked up at the camera out here, and it was lit green. I glanced through the windows at the ones in the living room and by the door opposite through the kitchen and they were lit green as well.

I wondered if he watched me and wasn’t the least bit surprised to find that I hoped he did.

There was something soothing about his quiet, stolid, and steadfast presence.

It was like he was a living and breathing talisman against the dark and I worried that it was just so unfair of me to think that way.

I was at war with myself. At once wanting desperately for more time here, for more peace and quiet before having to face the maelstrom of the public eye and my parents who honestly, I felt so detached from. I saw those people on television and I knew they were indeed my mom and dad, but all manner of warmth or feeling for them or even from them felt like it hit some strange barricade in my mind.

The emotions were blunted, stunted somehow, and I certainly felt much more looking at my poor mother cry and beg into the camera than I did my father… but I couldn’t begin to say why.

I couldn’t even fathom what’d happened to me to get to this place of just utterdetachment.I didn’t understand if it wasthe drug or if it was something else altogether. Had something happened with them that I justdidn’t remember?Or was it the drug making me feel this way – or more accurately, making me feel nothing at all…

All I knew was that I wasn’t right, and I didn’t feel right, but that was slowly and I do meanslowlyand agonizingly slowly at that, changing.

It was like I had stepped out of my body and I was coming back into the room of it, and I couldn’t really explain it any other way than that.

The words escaped me.

I rubbed my forehead between my eyes where I’d crushed my brow into a worried frown the more my disjointed thoughts tumbled through my head, seemingly from the sky. I turned from my tumultuous thoughts and went inside, closing the door firmly but quietly behind me.

I moved like a shade or a wraith through the house, my footfalls soft, the old boards creaking and barely squeaking beneath my feet as I padded barefoot out of the living room and into the hall. I slipped into the bedroom and slipped the shawl off of my shoulders, setting it atop the chest of drawers just inside the door.

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