Shimmer

*****I wrote this story for a magazine then added the steamy parts so it takes a little while to get to the good stuff. Hope you like it.--caitlin****

It was crazy to be going back. He knew it as he felt the wind in his face, thinking of anything but his destination. Anything but the reason for going back. There was little else. He passed a rest stop. He had stopped there once.

"Pull over." Kerry had laughed. "Jayna has got to pee. Look at the poor thing." Jayna looked up and frowned, biting her lip as if in fierce concentration. "Oh no, dad." Gabe said, "I think she's gonna go in your car." Paul laughed, watching Kerry's horrified expression. Jayna hadn't had an accident in over two years.

Kerry was beautiful. Paul had always thought so. His dad thought so too. So much so that he hadn't had a drink in almost three weeks. It wasn't that he was an alcoholic. It was that he tended to get both violent and extremely forgetful when he was drunk. He wouldn't hurt anyone. He'd never hurt anyone, but he had been known to smash the occasional mirror and pick up the occasional prostitute. He had a thing for prostitutes. But he also had a thing for Kerry and Kerry meant business. She told him she would leave if he so much as looked at an alcoholic drink. Paul wondered if she would actually do it. He would find out soon enough he was sure. As far as he knew, his dad had never went more than three weeks without a drink, and it was starting to show. He wanted a drink, but it could cost him Kerry. And Kerry was really something. Even Gabe liked her. Gabe didn't like much of anyone. Not since his mother died. At school he was quiet and distant. His teachers worried. At home, he spent all his time with Jayna. But something was changing in him the more time he spent around Kerry. Something in him was healing. He was almost happy lately. It didn't make much difference to him, taking off on this spontaneous adventure. After all, it was Kerry's idea.

"She's not going to go in the car." Their dad said, "Don't be silly, Gabe." But it was nice to see Gabe being silly about anything. It was nice to see him acting like a kid for the first time since their mother died. Paul felt tears in his eyes just thinking about her. She had been so wonderful. And, at the same time, so unlike Kerry. For Kerry, this trip, this spontaneity, was a last measure. Paul could see that if no one else could. She was trying, in so many ways, to make them a family. Maybe they all could have tried harder.

Paul shook his head, shaking off the memories and the pain that came with them. Sometimes there was a sort of pleasure that came with the memories, but here, so close to where it had all happened, there was only sadness. Sadness and a feeling not too far from terror.

The sun was still high in the sky, giving a faint shimmer to the road far ahead of him. A mirage. It had been raining the last time he was here, or perhaps, that was also a mirage. A mirage in the memory. Perhaps there was a better word for it. He had never been good with words. Gabe had been the one with the gift for words. Gabe, sitting in the back seat of the car, complaining that he could not see to write because of the rain. Of course, it had been raining. No mirage. No slip of the mind. He felt his mind was slipping a lot lately.

There was nothing ominous about the rest stop as he pulled into it. A young girl standing with her dog gave him a wary glance. He rubbed his chin, feeling the stubble that had begun to grow soft. He looked a bit rough when he didn't shave. Throw in the his long dark hair and he could understand a child's wary look. He nodded to her in a way that was polite but not quite friendly. He already looked rough. He didn't need anyone getting the wrong idea.

The place was the same. No different, really, from any other rest stop. But, there had been a difference. Inside.

"What do you think it is?" Gabe had asked, staring down at the toilet.

"Someone threw up. What's it look like?" Like someone had literally puked their guts up. That's what it looked like. Like pieces of stomach mixed in with the blood and puke.

"It's scary. Can't we just go outside?" Paul was getting sick from the smell. Smell of puke and rot.

"We really shouldn't." His stomach lurched. Oh God! The stench! He watched around the side of the building so that Gabe could relieve himself, then took his own turn.

"Do you think they died?" Gabe asked as they walked to the car. "I don't know." Paul answered. They must have been really sick.

"Who's sick?" Kerry asked, looking worried again. She worried a lot.

"In the bathroom." Paul answered. "They're not here now. Someone puked blood all over the bathroom."

"Blood and pieces." Gabe informed them.

"Pieces of what?" Jayna asked.

"Their stomach." Gabe told her. "Huge chunks of it with blood and puke all over the bathroom."

"Ewww!" Jayna said, "Don't say stuff like that. Dad, don't let him say stuff like that."

Gabe shrugged. "She asked."

The blood was long gone. He hadn't really expected to see it. And at the same time he had. Had expected it so that he could almost smell it now. Could hear his father yelling from another room. "Oh God, Paul. I think I'm going to die!" And in the same room, Gabe puking his own stomach out onto the floor in little chunks. Bits of flesh and blood and puke.

"Hey, man, you okay?" The world came back to him with the summer heat. So many memories.

"Yeah. I'm fine."

"Had me worried for a minute there. You were just standing there, like you were going to be sick."

"If I'm lucky." Paul muttered, "Perhaps she will kill me too." He was speaking madness again. He was mad they said. Crazy.

"You don't really believe the things you are telling me, do you, Mr. Ryan?"

The last psychiatrist he went to called him Mr. Ryan. It shouldn't have been patronizing, but it was. "Call me Paul." He said. "Yes sir." She wrote something in her little notebook. "You understand that such a creature couldn't possibly exist."

"And why couldn't it?"

"Do you believe in vampires, Mr. Ryan?"

"She wasn't a vampire."

"My point exactly. She wasn't anything was she."

"She was."

"Was what, Ryan?"

"I don't know. But she was. She just was."

"But do you believe in vampires."

"I don't believe in them. Not really. But I believe in the possibility."

"You believe they could exist."

"No. Yes. Yes, I do. They could exist."

"But do you believe that they do."

"No."

"You've heard of them."

"Yes."

"But this woman. This creature. You've never heard of anything like her?"

"No."

"Why not? If there were such a creature, even one skilled at keeping a low profile among the rest of us, wouldn't there at least be stories?"

They always reasoned it away.

The road again. He would reach the hotel by night. It was a nice hotel for such a place. It even had a bar. His father found the bar that night. And Kerry had found a ride home.

"It was just a few drinks." His father had pleaded from behind the door that separated his and Kerry's room from the one the kids were sharing. Jayna climbed into Paul's lap, crying.

"I like Kerry." She said. "I don't want them to fight."

"Me either," Paul said. Gabe was pretending to be asleep. Paul knew he was crying. Kerry was crying too.

"I thought you were serious." Kerry said. "About me. About us. About being a family."

"I am."

"But you're not serious about quitting drinking."

"I am. I'm trying."

"And I've been trying. Don't you see? Even Gabe is smiling now. He seems almost truly happy at times. And Jayna too. Don't you see that I love them." She didn't mention the stripper. It was probably for Gabe's sake. But Gabe knew about the strippers long ago.

"I love you." His father tried in his broken drunken voice, stumpling over the words. Paul hated his father in that moment. They all loved Kerry. She had become like a mother to them. A mother and a friend. And they were going to lose her because his father was an alcoholic.

"I'm leaving." Kerry said. "I can't do this. You need to do something, Adam. I can't change your life for you."

"I hate him sometimes." Jayna whispered.

"Don't say that." Paul told her, though he had thought the same only moments ago.

"But I do." She said. "Sometimes I wish I was never born, the way my parents are." Jayna had come to them eight years ago. The girl had been frantic. "She's yours." She said, thrusting the baby into their father's arms. "Take her. She's all yours. It's your fault anyway."

Gabe had been too young to understand, but somehow, he did. The girl was Jayna's mother and didn't want her. Their dad was Jayna's dad. And their mom was heartbroken. She had never really accepted that he had truly cheated on her. He never claimed that he hadn't, but he never spoke of it outright, so she could live in her illusions. Jayna was someone else's baby entirely. It was a mistake, her being there. Even the child's beauty couldn't warm her heart. She refused to believe in her as anything. Their father, also was too distant. He didn't want her to see him cuddling Jayna, lest she begin to believe in what he had done and choose to leave him for it. Jayna felt the coldness. Children could sense such things, Paul had seen. He had done the same. She ignored the fact that neither parent seemed to love her, and clung to Gabe and Paul. More so Gabe, though Paul was never really sure why. Ah, Jayna. He missed her terribly.

He ate in the little diner next to the hotel. Some place that served only breakfast. He ordered eggs the way he used to like them. He never ate eggs like that anymore. But he was recreating the trip, both in his head and in this other world.

The waitress hovered over him and his cup of coffee, the one change to his dinner reenactment. "Can I get you anything else? More coffee?" She was pretty. Nice curves. Pretty smile. Blue eyes. Jayna's eyes had been blue.

"Buy me a dessert daddy!" Jayna had begged, widening her eyes. Since Gabe and Paul's mother's death two years ago, she had been fully enjoying the affection her father had begun to shower her with. He had bought her the desert, of course. And one for Paul and Gabe each as well. Got to be fair, he said, though his relationship with her had been anything but for so long.

Paul knew that most of the money they'd had was Kerry's. "It's our money," Kerry would say. "We're a family." Some family.

"No thank you." He told the waitress, who's friendly smile had turned a bit worried. "I'll never sleep as it is."

He didn't sleep anyway. He hadn't been for a while. But here, in this hotel where it had all started, he could never sleep. He wasn't here to sleep. For that matter, he didn't know why he was here at all. Only that there was nothing left to do short of losing his mind but to come here. To come here and...what? He would know when the time came, he thought. He was following the past and when it was time, the future would intervene. Perhaps he was crazy. But what was crazy anyway? Was it simply that what drove other people, greed, lust, love, the desire to succeed, was absent in him. What drove him was something else, something new. Perhaps hate. Hate for the monster that had taken his family. Hate for Kerry for leaving them and giving his father a reason to seek out someone else. Hate for his father. Yes, he hated his father. Hated him for what he was and what he had done. What he had caused. But in a way, he was looking for his father here. Looking for all of them. Looking for her?

She had been beautiful. Perhaps even more beautiful than Kerry though his adoration of Kerry had always caused her to seem something of an angel to him. This woman, for that is what she had seemed to all of them, had been beautiful beyond compare. Like a model in a magazine, but somehow even more beautiful than that. Even the sight of her had been intoxicating.

They had been waiting patiently for their father to arrive. Paul knew what he had gone out after. In large cities such as this, there were always prostitutes. And his father always managed to find one. He was addicted to them as to his drink. Even when he had been with Kerry, there had been other women. They were just as irresistible to him as he was to them. He had always been handsome. This one, like the other's seemed taken with him. Paul, knowing the routine, herded the children into their connecting room and closed the door that separated them. He kept his eyes turned from his father, lest he see the disapproval he felt. It wasn't his place to judge.

"Here," his father handed him a paper bag with the smell of french fries and cheeseburgers wafting out of it, "I even got Gabe one of those salads he likes. There's another one if you want it. Make sure Jayna eats, okay?" Paul nodded. "And go ahead and watch TV as long as you want." Paul heard what he meant beneath what he was saying. Turn the TV on and up so that the kids don't hear anything. "Yeah, sure." He said, glancing over at the girl who had taken her place on the bed, and was leaning against the wall, watching. She was so comfortable. It was probably like home to her, he thought, other people's hotel rooms. She smiled at him and he turned away.

No one mentioned the prostitute in the other room. Gabe and Jayna watched a documentary on monkeys, laughing at the antics of the things. Paul leaned back against the wall his bed was up against, wishing that his bed had been placed somewhere else. He could hear them from here. She was laughing, a very pretty sound, coming from her. His father moaned and Paul tried to shut his ears to what he was hearing. He couldn't help but hear.

Jayna and Gabe fell asleep, Gabe's arm around his little sister. Paul cut the TV off. Even though it blocked out most of the noise from the adjoining room, it was too much for Paul to sleep through. He walked over to his side of the bed and pulled down the covers.

"You need me now." She said from the other room. "You know you do. Nothing will ever be the same and without me, you will die."

"You're crazy." His father told her, laughing a little, almost nervously, "You're beautiful, yes, amazing, yes, but I don't need you."

Paul moved to the door, feeling dirty. He could see into the room through the crack in the door. She was naked, still which didn't surprise him, but she seemed to be glowing almost. She turned towards him. He thought she had seen him, but she was simply turning away from his father. Paul held in a gasp. Her eyes were glowing. Wide and green, powerful even as normal eyes, but they were glowing. He was afraid suddenly. His father turned her toward him and Paul could now see both of them clearly. "Another kiss?" He asked, in the voice that charmed them all. She nodded, smiling. He leaned to kiss her and she parted her lips. A thick smoke poured from her lips and into his mouth, before he kissed her.

No one believed about the smoke. "Perhaps she had a cigarette." They would say, but there had been no cigarette.

Paul put out his own cigarette on the ground outside his hotel door. He walked toward his car, passed it, and continued walking. He needed to think.

Kerry had left them here. That had been the beginning of all of it. They had been going to an amusement park. A little place with roller coasters and crowds. Paul hadn't been to an amusement park in years. He had been just as excited as any of them. Except maybe Jayna, who seemed to have blossomed as of late. She was a beautiful eight year old. Always smiling, always laughing. He wished he could remember her like that. In his mind, she was always dying. Always dying.

Paul gave up on his walk and returned to the hotel room, passing the bar on his way. If only his father had been able to control himself for three more days. Three more days and he would have made it home safe. Jayna and Gabe would still be alive. Yes, he still hated his father.

He was on the road again by morning. He slept some, haunted by memories of a beautiful woman with glowing green eyes. Like a predator, those eyes. But in the dream, he wanted her. He'd had a girlfriend once, Samantha. Samantha was beautiful and happy. She had loved him and he her, but she never believed him. She could never believe the most tramautic event in his life and he could not be with her after that. Once again, he was alone. He was used to being alone.

It wasn't a days drive to the second hotel. There had been plenty of time once they got there for Paul, Jayna and Gabe to go swimming before dark. Then they had come in to shower and their father had went out for a little while. Went out and came back with her.

Paul walked down to the pool and sat back in a chair, watching the children play. He had played with Jayna and Gabe like that. Splashing and laughing. Tears stung his eyes. Oh, he missed them so much.

"Hey." A pretty girl sat down beside him. "I'm Claire." She was a pretty girl. Not too pretty, and he liked that. Liked the sprinkling of freckles across her nose. Liked the way her brows were a little crooked, her lips a little thin, her blond hair a little brown. She was the kind of beautiful he liked. The flawed beauty. "I'm Paul." He told her. She smiled and her front teeth were a bit crooked. Not much but enough that she seemed beautiful to him. There was nothing beautiful about perfection. She had been perfect. And she had killed them all.

His father had seemed almost frightened by morning. They packed their things and put them in the car. He ignored Jayna and Gabe's request to seek out the hotel pool for a few hours. He put them in the car began to drive. There was a terrible look on his face as he drove. Driving back toward home. "We don't have enough money to got to the park. I'm sorry." He told them and Jayna began to cry.

"What are you here for?" Claire asked him. He took in her long legs and large breasts. He may have liked flaws but he was still a man. "You say that like it's a prison sentence."

"Sometimes it feels that way." She frowned a little. He was suddenly glad he was wearing jeans. Anything thinner would have shown just how interested in this girl he was.

"You spend a lot of time in hotels?" She couldn't be a prostitute. She didn't have the look. She looked plain and clean, not over made up.

"Yeah. Modeling." She turned away, blushing. "I'm not bragging. I hate it really." He could believe she was a model. Her smile was contagious. Intoxicating. She had such pretty blond hair.

"Yeah. I'm just traveling to travel, you know. Just getting away." He couldn't tell her the truth. She wasn't Samantha. He didn't want her to love him for who he was. What he wanted, he realized, was to have sex with this beautiful girl. She nodded. "Wish I had somewhere to get away from. I gave up my apartment because I was never there. But I guess you can't really blame anyone else for your problems but yourself, right?" He could. And did. He blamed his father. And Kerry. And her.

"Look," Claire said, "I know this sounds terrible and I would never do it in other circumstances, but do you want to come to my room and have a drink? My agent gave me a bottle of that wine that's so expensive you should never drink it alone, and if I'm alone, he'll want to come in and have a drink. I just can't handle his advances right now."

Paul grinned. "I'll protect you." For the first time since his family had died, he wanted something. He wanted this pretty little blond girl.

She squeezed his hand as she fit her key in the lock. "I'm sorry" she said, laughing a little, "You're just so different from anyone I know." He laughed. "I hope that's a good thing."

She backed against the door to close it and pulled him down to kiss him." He kissed her back and reeled backward. He had seen her. "I'm sorry." She apologized again. "I don't know what came over me." He kissed her again, to reassure her that it was his problem and not anything to do with her, but the feeling came over him again. A dizziness. Lightheaded. He had gotten drunk once. It felt like this. He looked at her. Her skin was glowing softly.