Chapter 20

After a bit of consideration, Mark decided that it was as safe to have Kristen hidden at his house as it was to have his jeep hidden at Steven's. So, after dropping off Kayla, he drove them home to spend their second married night in their own house. Despite the pleasure of having her with him and the energy expended making love a couple of times before going to bed, he slept restlessly, his dreams full of vague nightmares that fled from his memory upon waking. Kristen didn't sleep well, either, instead she tossed and turned through most of the night.

He woke early and switched off the alarm, preferring to kiss his young, gently glowing bride awake. She smiled sleepily up at him, twining her arms around his neck. "I've never been so tempted to skip school in my life," she said wistfully. "It just doesn't seem fair, y'know?"

He kissed her again, smiling. "Yeah, I know. On the other hand, you can go to school and not be distracted, for a change."

"That's true ... but I'd rather spend a week or so really distracted with my sweet, new husband." Her eyes, as she looked up at him were sad, and he pulled her all the way into his arm, kissing her tenderly.

"Just wait for Christmas break, love," he said, trying to comfort her. "It's not that long."

She smiled and tugged him out of bed to shower with her, the slippery, teasing, fun chasing away her melancholy mood. Afterwards, while she was drying her hair, he took a minute to walk out to the mailbox and was surprised to find a thick envelope, addressed to him, from Kristen's father. Opening it, he found the deed to the house he'd been renting and the 10 acres surrounding it.

Mark stared down at the papers, shocked, then picked up the phone and called Steven.

He answered on the third ring. "Good morning?"

"Steven, this is Mark. I just got some most interesting mail."

"Ah." Mark could hear the smile in Steven's voice. "That would be your wedding present."

"I ... I don't know what to say, Steven. Thank you." As he talked, Mark walked over to tap on the bathroom door, waving at Kristen to come out.

"Can't have my baby going hungry because the school doesn't pay worth a damn," Steven said. "Besides, I've been looking through my accounting records. There's a fuck-load of things I'm betting Kris went without over the past ten years."

Kristen shut off the dryer and peeked out the door, very fluffy, and Mark handed her the deed, and she looked at it, confused.

He mouthed, 'Your dad, ' then said, out loud to Steven, "I wouldn't be surprised."

She looked back down at it, blinking, then said, quietly, "Oh. My."

He nodded and pointed inquisitively at the phone, and she nodded. Meanwhile, Steven was saying, "Yes, apparently Kristen is a very expensive young lady. I have about 180K worth of entries just labeled 'Kristen'. And I had a peek in her closet. If anything, she has way less clothing and stuff than even a moderately poor teenager should have."

"So she was embezzling?" Mark asked. "Kristen thought she was putting it back into the account."

"Not that I've found any evidence of," Steven said. "Lots of money coming out, none going back in."

"I see," Mark said. "Hold on... " He handed the phone to Kristen, whispering "Wedding present," into her ear.

She took it with a smile. "Hi, Daddy. You know you didn't have to ... uh huh. Well, yeah, but ... Awwww! Well, um, thank you then. Love you, too." With a bemused shake of her head and another smile, she handed the phone back to Mark and went to finish getting ready for school.

Mark said, "Well, I can't say thanks enough, Steven, but ... thanks."

"No problem. Frankly, it was dirt cheap. You might consider putting a new house on the land at some point, if you decide to stay in this area."

"Yeah, I might. Though that partly depends on things like where she wants to go to college."

"Point," Steven said. "Well, I'm going to have to head back into Dallas, probably for a couple of days. I need to find an accountant and see if I can't get this shit straightened out. Feel free to use my house if you want. There's a guest bedroom upstairs that can be refurnished for you and Kristen anytime. You have my cell-phone number if you need me for anything." "Thanks, Steven." They headed to school, Mark still playing the roll of "teacher condemned by overprotective father to escort child safely to school".

The next three weeks were rather nice. Kayla came over frequently, usually spending at least one night on the weekend. Kristen almost never felt hungry enough during the day to require additional intake, though Mark did notice her and Kayla hurrying to fifth period a bit late one day, looking decidedly mussed. The cellphones he ordered for Kristen and Kayla came in, and even had a fairly good signal for out in the middle of nowhere. Steven began the long process of discovering the damage done by Vanessa; It turned out that she'd extracted, over the past ten years, close to $200,000 "for Kristen's expenses", of which Kristen had benefit of, at most, about a tenth. She had, since being fired, disappeared, likely scared to death she was going to be arrested.

The school was calming down, too. An assembly on sexual harassment, initiated by the school counselor, seemed to have actually helped. The fact that quite a few of the more aggressive boys were still firmly convinced that Mark would beat the shit out of them if they touched Kristen had also helped.

However, both Mark and Kristen were having a lot of nightmares. His, as best he could tell because they were very disorienting, revolved around the events in his house 20 years ago, usually from the viewpoint of Emma Barnes, the woman who was killed.

Kristen's were all disturbingly repetitive. They involved her being stalked by an unseen man, someone who she felt, instinctively, hated her and intended to kill her. The method varied, but somehow he always managed to capture her, after which he raped her and then killed her slowly with a large knife.

The dreams worried Mark to the point where he started doing some research, trying to figure out what happened to Mr. Barnes. It turned out that, after murdering his wife and baby, he was never found, so there was no reason to assume he was dead and haunting the house. That was little comfort, though, so Mark called Steven to find out if Kris' mother had ever evinced any signs of precognition.

To his knowledge, she hadn't, so Mark told him about the dreams, about how vivid and repetitive they were, and about his suspicions that it was either precognitive, or some sort of warning ... that wasn't how Emma was killed. By the end of their conversation, Steven was as worried as Mark was. He extracted Mark's promise to be extremely careful, of course, and persuaded him to get a carry permit and start going armed. He also warned him not to let Kristen just brush off his concerns. Mark agreed completely, and started the process to get the permit the very next day.

Pretty much as Steven predicted, Kristen thought his fears were rather paranoid. She thought it was just stress, and possibly living in a haunted house that had her frazzled. That, plus the death threat she got in her locker that one time were, she considered, a perfectly adequate explanation for stress and nightmares. But at his insistence, she still agreed to be very, very careful.

Towards the end of September, there was another threat in her locker: "You haven't been forgotten. Have you come to your senses yet? Time is running out." The hidden cameras showed, around 3am the previous night, an average sized figure wearing black sweat-pants, black sweater, black gloves, and a black ski-mask. Subsequent examination found a broken windowpane in one of the classrooms. The form was probably too big to be a freshman, but that was about all that could be eliminated. Mark's suspicions turned immediately to the principal ... nobody else knew about the cameras, and he doubted that they would have been naturally that paranoid ... but he didn't say anything. Yet. He bought Kristen another cellphone, the very smallest he could find, to carry hidden on her person at all times and kept secret from everyone but him, Kayla, and Steven.

Kristen was rather freaked out to be receiving a threat after things had apparently calmed down. She was noticeably jumpy after that. Mark set up hidden cameras around their house, as well as down at the pond, and at Steven's house, and tried to hide his own nervousness from her, but he felt increasingly uncomfortable when she was out of his sight.

The first Friday in October, Mark was leaning outside his classroom, talking with the teacher next door (the PE coach who, amazingly, was also a damned fine History teacher) when the sound of Kristen's scream jolted like lightning down his spine. He looked up to see her, about 30 feet away down the hall, fallen against the wall and Dirk, the boy who'd kept her trapped in the bathroom, tightly gripping her arm.

His heart pounded wildly, and his vision went red for a moment. His immediate impulse was to eviscerate the boy. Literally. By the time he took his first running step towards them, he was already picturing the entrails. The extreme violence of the reaction shocked him, but the shock didn't dispel it. He snarled, "Let go of her, Dirk, NOW!" Concealed carry permit or not, the law didn't allow guns on school grounds. Mark wasn't sure whether he was disappointed or grateful, but he knew that it was damned lucky for Dirk.

Dirk, looking seriously confused and somewhat harassed, didn't move away from Kristen or let her go. She was crying as if in severe pain, and the sound was sending surges of protective rage through Mark, tensing his muscles into knots. Gritting his teeth, though, he managed to get ahold of himself enough to notice that she wasn't trying to get away and was holding one foot off the ground. He stared at the foot for a second, trying to cool his brain enough to grasp the meaning, then finally looked back at Dirk. "Sorry. It looked like ... well, never mind." He moved around to her other side and slipped his arm around her waist, holding her up. "What happened, Kristen?"

"I fell," she said, trying not to sob. "Someone ... bumped into me, and I t ... twisted my ankle." Every word was through gritted teeth, and she couldn't stop the tears that trickled down her cheeks, or the shudders of pain. "I can't stand on it."

He frowned. "I think we'd better get you to the nurse."

"I could carry her," Dirk offered.

Mark suppressed another surge of absolutely unreasonable, unjustifiable rage and scooped her up. "I've got her, Dirk, but thanks." He offered something resembling a smile. "I don't want her dad thinking I'm not doing my best to protect her." The boy looked disappointed, but headed off, resigned, to class.

Mark asked quietly, as he carried her to the nurse's office, "Did you see who it was?"

She sniffed, biting her lip. "He really didn't do anything -- ow! -- y ... you know. He just caught me when I was falling."

He nodded. "I know. But that's not what it looked like. It looked like he'd grabbed you and was hurting you," he said tightly. "Did you see who bumped into you?"

She shook her head. "No, it was totally unexpected."