the visits were finally over…that the “games” Daniel wanted him to play were finally, mercifully over forever. That Daniel had finally decided that he preferred playing the games with Elayne’s body.
Almost-a-month extended with a frightening slowness into a full month. Then to six weeks. Seven. For the first time since he moved into the house on Oleander Place, Miles found himself drifting easily to sleep. It became gradually easier to keep the secret-he had promised Daniel that first time that he would never tell anyone what they did, what games they played, partly because Daniel had made him promise and Daniel was an adult, but mostly because Daniel had made it frighteningly clear what would happen to Elayne’s love for her shameless, deviant son if she should ever find out. If Daniel treated Miles like he did (and Miles instinctively knew that most fathers-even most stepfathers-did not treat their sons like Daniel treated him) then there must be something wrong with Miles as well, something twisted and deeply, deeply perverse. The boy’s inner fear and terror and humiliation that someone might discover exactly what he was became more of a guardian over the secret than Miles’ naive boyhood promise had ever been.
Then, at the beginning of the eighth week…the whispered movement of the door, so quiet as to have been almost silent but even so more than enough to awaken Miles to a panicky tightness in his chest and a clammy sweat oozing through his pores. Then he felt the familiar, hated hand tightening over his mouth. The other hand (even more familiar, even more hated, if that were possible) scrabbling at the waistband of his pajamas.
Miles had refused to wear only underpants to bed for nearly three years, regardless of how hot it might be. No matter how much Elayne had argued about it as she bathed swathes of prickly heat rash along his shoulders and stomach during the frequent 100+ temperatures of July and August, he refused to sleep in anything lighter than full-length, long-sleeved, winter-weight flannel pajamas. Elayne could not understand why. Miles himself could probably not have explained why. Perhaps somewhere, deep in his mind where the horror remained submerged hour upon hour, he held out the frantic hope that the thick flannel might somehow protect him.
But it never did.
Now, after almost two months of blessed loneliness, when the soft, damp hand touched his quivering skin he knew that everything he had hoped to believe had been a lie. The visits were beginning again.
Only now, it was much worse for the boy. Since turning thirteen, Miles’ unwanted but undeniable physical reactions to Daniel’s depredations had intensified. He didn’t want them to; God knew that he despised himself more each time, condemned himself to a deeper level of his own private hell every time his body leaped from his conscious control and responded wildly, almost eagerly to the man’s filthy touch.
But it did respond.
Now even his always fragile sleep was infected by the nightmare visits. He would awaken to hear Daniel closing the door. Knowing that this was real, that he could not awaken from this nightmare, Miles would look up to see Daniel glowing ghostly in the leaden moonlight, leaning over his bed. He would feel Daniel’s rapid touches like a million insects crawling across his naked skin.
And then later-hours later sometimes, each tolled second by wearisome second by Miles’ Big Ben alarm clock ticking metronomically on the nightstand-Miles would finally stumble into fevered sleep…
And in that sleep, something new, a phantom Daniel, ghastly and loathsome in the stark shadows of slanting moonlight in the corner bedroom, would return.
6
Age thirteen shaded imperceptibly into fourteen. There were few changes in the Warrens’ lives, mostly superficial. Daniel contracted for a company to come in and convert the two-car garage into a wide, roomy family room, and to construct an adjoining garage along the side of the property. The garage held Elayne’s aging station wagon, sitting sedately next to an series of new, sporty vehicles for Daniel. Miles had a bicycle that was new when they moved in but that was now covered with a thick layer of dust and rested rather sadly against the far wall on two long-flat tires.
Elayne never complained that her car still stuttered sometimes, or that it continued to make unpleasant noises. She was far too content with her life as she was leading it to let minor inconveniences interrupt. She spent much of her day time in the sewing room making clothing for friends’ children and amassing a wardrobe for the babies she was still sure would eventually come to her and Daniel.
Evenings the three of them spent in the new room, to all appearances a happy, stereotypical Southern California family. They watched television, or read, or played games…usually two-handed card games between Elayne and Daniel. Miles never seemed interested in cards.
And if occasionally Miles chose to huddle morosely at one of the sofa or curl up bonelessly in the recliner, well, wasn’t that usual for teenagers, especially teenage boys? Moody, temperamental, unpredictable?
Neither Daniel nor Elayne knew-or perhaps would have cared to know-that at night Miles was beginning to inhabit a twisted never-never-land that felt as real as the waking world he shared with his mother and Daniel. In fact, the ugly phantasms of his dream-world became incrementally more vivid, more frightening than the painful, mortifying midnight visits he endured. As the months and years passed, Miles slept less and less each night. Most of the time he lay huddled beneath the covers, his eyes little more than black points in the night. In his desperate struggles to avoid the spectral world of sleep, he came almost to welcome the flesh-and-blood Daniel.
Almost.
Elayne finally noted with some concern that the boy seemed too thin and drawn. She saw that he was almost as tall as Daniel and his voice was cracking and dropping more every day, and that a skiff of what just might become whiskers had darkened his cheeks and chin-but in spite of these physical evidences of increasing maturity, he remained strangely childlike. He was increasingly withdrawn, introverted. She tried to talk with him one day.
“Are you feeling well, Miles?” she asked over breakfast. He was supposed to leave for school in a few minutes.
“I’m okay,” he answered, staring into a bowl of rapidly disintegrating Cheerios.
“You don’t look well. You look…tired.”
He looked up at her. At his mother, this woman who bore him and then who married that bastard and even now didn’t know (couldn’t know!) what was going on in another bedroom in the darkness of midnight. For an instant his vision blurred and a voice said tell her, she’s your mother, she loves you, in spite of what he says she’ll understand that it wasn’t your fault, that it was never your fault, that you didn’t know any better back then and that now you do and you want him to stop to stop to stopstopstop.
“Mom,” he said. His voice crackled from bass to treble and back again. “Mom, I…”
Daniel Warren swept into the room. Five years had changed him little. At thirty-seven, he was still successful. His two dealerships had split to become four; he now spent much of his time on the road traveling from San Fernando to Coastal Crest to Ventura to Santa Barbara checking in with the managers at each location. He still dressed expensively, and his tailored clothing complemented his body well. He took good care of his body. It was taut and muscular, younger looking than his age. His mother was proud of how well he had kept himself, even though he no longer came over every Sunday afternoon for dinner. And he smiled a lot, a secretly self-satisfied smile that most people seemed to enjoy but that filled Miles’ throat with bile that burned like acid.
The man kissed Miles’ mother on the lips, then crossed around the table to run his hand through Miles’ hair. Miles tried to duck away and felt the fingers tighten momentarily on his hair, not much, not enough for his mother to notice but enough for him to feel and to understand that Daniel was still in charge. Totally in charge.
“I won’t be back until later tonight,” Daniel said softly to Elayne. His voice betrayed none of the pent-up tension that communicated itself like an electrical current through his fingers to Miles’ scalp. The man sounded for all the world like a normal father talking to a normal mother.
Elayne looked up sharply and opened her mouth as if to speak. Daniel cut her off without appearing to do so.
“Sorry, hon. We’ve got a manager’s conference in Ventura this afternoon. It may take a couple of hours.” He walked away from the table. “Love you,” he added as he took his briefcase and slipped out the kitchen door into the garage. The door closed behind him.
A moment later the whine of the electric garage opener-the first installed on Oleander Place-served notice
