Twilight Hunger

She slept heavily, late into the afternoon. But when Morgan finally did wake, she woke all at once. Her eyes opened wide, and she sat up with a gasp, as if something had shocked her out of a deep sleep.

Nothing had. She sat there blinking, pressing her hand to her forehead in anticipation of the rush of dizziness that always came when she sat up too suddenly, or stood up too suddenly, or ran up the stairs, or a thousand other things.

It didn't come, though. And as she sat there, she slowly became aware of the way she felt. She felt... better. Almost good. Frowning, she flung her covers back and got to her feet, testing her balance, waiting for the weakness. It occurred to her that she didn't remember getting into bed last night. In fact, the last thing she remembered was the bath, and...and then the dream.

Closing her eyes slowly, she let her breath rush from her lips. Dante. He had come to her again in her dreams. Squeezing her eyes a little tighter against the rush of sweet pain the memory brought, she tried to recall the details to her mind. But nothing came clearly. Just the memory of his voice, speaking in its deep velvety hush, soothing her. His hand, cool on her face. His nearness. His realness.

Oh, and his taste!

God, had she really dreamt that?

She was losing it, she knew that. Completely enmeshed in the life of a man who didn't exist. Living his stories by day, dreaming of him by night. My God, she was an acclaimed screenwriter. And yet she didn't care. She cared about nothing except him, a man who did not-who could not-exist!

Something compelled her to check the French doors that led out onto her balcony before she did anything else. They were locked. From the inside. Of course they were. What had she expected? Sighing, she turned and walked into the bathroom.

She stopped in the doorway, staring in at a tub still full of water. "That's so odd." More than odd, a voice in her mind warned. It was completely unlike her to leave water in the tub. She was meticulous about this house, had been ever since she had first come to know its one-time owner. To her, this place was Dante's headstone. His memorial. His marker. She honored it.

Another sign of her looming nervous breakdown, she supposed. And what on earth had possessed her to sleep all day long? Hell, she shouldn't complain. As good as she felt, she would be able to make up for lost time long into the night.

Heading back into her bedroom, she decided to get out of the house for a little while. Outside, in the brisk spring air, maybe go for a walk down the beach and into the Norman Rockwell town a mile away. It would do her good. Besides, she couldn't remember the last time she had felt capable of walking on the beach.

She showered quickly, threw on a pair of jeans and a cozy sweater, dressed her feet in a pair of white ankle socks and lightweight tennis shoes. She only towel dried her hair, then left it loose. And she grabbed a handbag she rarely used, and a jacket, just in case.

Then she trotted down the wide staircase with a sense of anticipation she couldn't explain and didn't want to. At the bottom, she caught herself, slowed her pace, mentally reminding herself that she would be breathless and panting if she didn't She wasn't, though. Her heart wasn't even pounding hard.

Maybe she was getting better. Maybe the sea air or those herbal supplements she'd been taking were finally kicking in. Maybe...

She walked briskly through the house, out the back door and down across the sloping green lawn toward the cliffs. For a moment she simply stood there, staring out at the horizon. The sun was setting on the other side of the world. If she were on the West Coast, she could watch it go down over the ocean. A huge blazing ball of fire, quenching itself slowly in the cool embrace of the sea. She hadn't watched the sun set over the Pacific in years. But she could watch it rise over the Atlantic. And tonight she could watch the darkness gradually stealing over the water, changing its color, as the sun set far, far behind her.

She thought about the words that could capture such a sight and describe it. The way the water kept changing, racing, it seemed to stay a shade darker than the sky. The sky went from robin's egg to lilac, navy to midnight blue. The sea from turquoise to purple to ebony.

The wind picked up as the sun sank lower. Salty and ever cooler, it pushed Morgan teasingly, daring her to push back. She stood there for a long time as the first few stars winked to life in the darkening sky. Sighing in appreciation, she inhaled the night air. It tasted good. She wasn't ready to go in just yet. Turning, she headed down the path along the edge of the cliffs to where it rolled downward to the shore at a gentler angle. When she reached the level of the shore, she followed the stony, sandy shoreline southward toward town.

Easton was small. Picturesque, but not enough so that it had become a tourist trap-not yet, at least. The sidewalks tended to roll up early. Morgan veered away from the beach onto the town's main road, just north of the downtown area. She took the sidewalk and walked along, looking in the shop windows, most of which were already closed.

A crowd drew her attention, and she glanced ahead, saw the line forming outside the movie theater, its small, lighted marquee above their heads. The theater was small, two screens, a couple of hundred seats. No surround-sound or giant screen. It was closed until showtime, and the doors opened a half hour before each show and not a minute sooner.

Glancing up at the scrolling marquee, Morgan couldn't help but smile. Her latest film was showing, and underneath the title the colored lights spelled out a message that scrolled past repeatedly. "Easton's own Morgan De Silva has earned a Best Screenplay nomination! See the film tonight!"

She blinked happily. Gee, it seemed she was something of a celebrity around town. Odd that no one had been out to the house to bother her. Of course, she kept a very low profile, rarely ventured out, had an unlisted phone number and a whole lot of electronic security. Maybe people just respected each other's privacy out here?

There had to be more to it than that. Part of her knew what, but most of her refused to acknowledge what that part of her knew. It was silly to believe that people avoided going anywhere near her house because it still emanated the predatory energy of the man who had once inhabited it.

She still carried her jacket. Now she put it on, tugging up its lightweight hood and tucking her long hair inside it. She dug into her purse for the case that held her designer sunglasses and slipped them on, as well. Then she moved ahead and took her spot at the end of the line.

She felt a shiver go up her spine, as if a cold breath had just whispered across her nape, and she turned fast. But no one stood behind her. There was someone standing on the sidewalk, though, several yards away, in the direction from which she had come. A man. He stood in the shadows, all the way at the end of the block, on the corner. And the moment she looked his way, he slipped around the corner and out of sight.

His stance... his silhouette, nothing but a dark shape in the night. And yet she thought... No. She was letting her imagination run away with her again.

"Miss?"

She turned, realized it was her turn to step up to the ticket window. "Sorry. One please, for Twilight Hunger." She slid a ten across the counter, waited for the change, which was a crisp clean five with her ticket on top. She'd been out so few times since coming here mat the low ticket prices still surprised her. She tucked the five in her jeans pocket and held on to the ticket as she moved inside.

She got a seat in the back and sat quietly while the previews began to roll.

Morgan had thought she was the last one in, but the doors opened a few minutes into the previews, and someone else entered. Again that chill danced over her spine, and Morgan turned to look his way.

He was already making his way to the opposite side of the theater, but, like her, he took a seat in the back row. He wore a long coat with its collar turned up around his face, and he, too, had dark glasses.

It was foolish to think of Dante when she saw the stranger. It was just some other lonely soul who preferred to keep his identity to himself. Dante didn't exist. The Dante of those journals, the one who haunted her mind, had never existed. Only a slightly deranged man with a wild imagination and an excellent way with words. The Dante whose life was about to unfold on the screen at the far end of the room was a fictional character. A figment of his creator's imagination, enhanced, perhaps, by Morgan's own. But he wasn't real. And she had to get that through her head. He was not real.

Just because she'd been having vivid, visceral dreams about him...

And just because she had hallucinated those marks on her neck that night...

They were there! her mind insisted. I checked in the bedroom mirror, and they were there.

But gone without a trace in the morning, she reminded herself. And as vivid as her dreams had been lately, how could she be so sure that seeing those marks hadn't been just another part of one of them? "Dante isn't real," she whispered to herself. "And he most certainly isn't sitting in this dark theater, watching me watch this film."

Why, then, did she feel herself sinking more deeply into her seat as his story began to play out for the audience-and as the words across the screen told them all that she, Morgan De Silva, had created it?