The Resurrectionist Read online

  “D-did they test it against my husband’s?”

  “Yes, we did. Unfortunately, your husband’s semen was a negative match.”

  Sarah felt her stomach drop as if she were back on one of the roller coasters. Her vision narrowed to a pinpoint. She dropped to her knees and began regurgitating violently.

  “How is that possible? Th-they said there were no signs of rape. How is it possible? It was him! It was Dale. I know it was him.”

  Sarah picked up the phone again.

  “What about the drugs? Did they find anything in my blood?”

  “No signs of any barbiturates or narcotics. No sign of hallucinogenics either.”

  “Did they check for roofies? What about GHB or ketamine?”

  “They ran a full toxicology screen. There was nothing but estrogen and alcohol. Look, the mind is a funny thing. You might be blocking it out. That could be why you don’t remember.”

  “I want him arrested. I want my neighbor put in jail.”

  “Are you sure it was him?”

  “I remember him. I can see his face as clear as day.”

  “When I spoke to you before you weren’t certain you’d actually been raped.”

  “But now we know. We have his semen.”

  “I’m still not certain that I can get a warrant to compel him to give us a DNA sample. Not with the evidence we have. I don’t know if your statement would convince a judge.”

  “Wh-what? Well, what am I supposed to do?”

  “I’ll come to your house, we’ll go over your statement again, and I’ll talk with your neighbor. Are you at home now?”

  “No, we’ve been sleeping in a hotel room. I couldn’t stand to stay in that house.”

  “I could meet you at your hotel. Where are you staying?”

  “Hollywood Galaxy. Room 1912.”

  “I’m going to question your neighbor first. I want to see if he’d be willing to give us a DNA sample voluntarily. Will you be staying at the hotel a few more days or will you be returning home?”

  “I’m not sure. I’ll have to ask my husband.”

  Sarah hung up the phone and stared out the hotel window. They found semen. Everywhere.

  Josh was on his knees scrubbing the floor where she’d vomited with a bath towel. He didn’t look up when he spoke to her. He just kept scrubbing.

  “How is that possible, Sarah? They didn’t find any drugs in your system. They didn’t find any bruising. Anywhere!”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How can you not remember someone cumming in your ass? How the hell do you expect me to believe that? How do you think that makes me feel?”

  A sudden rage came rushing through Sarah and it was all she could do to control it. She didn’t want to let this thing, whatever it was, tear her and Josh apart. But she couldn’t stand the thought of Josh questioning her about something like this. How fucking dare he?

  “How it makes you feel? Are you fucking kidding me? Do you know how selfish, how fucking insensitive that sounds? I was fucking raped! It wasn’t you who they found a stranger’s semen in, Josh. It’s me getting violated every night by Lord knows who!”

  Josh shook his head and let out a sharp exhalation of breath that almost sounded like a chuckle.

  “I’m sorry. I am. I just don’t know what you expect from me. I mean, look at it through my eyes. You can’t even explain what the hell is going on. All I know for a fact is that someone else’s semen was inside my wife.”

  Josh threw the towel on the floor and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. He looked away from Sarah, still refusing to make eye contact. Sarah knelt down and put an arm around him. She was still angry but her instinct was still to comfort him, to try to make everything okay.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

  Josh picked up the towel and started scrubbing the carpet again.

  “So what happens next? What happens if Dale’s DNA is a match with the semen they found? Are they going to arrest him? I mean, you’ll get ripped apart on a stand. They’ll say it was consensual. It’ll be your word against his and you don’t have a shred of proof. He’ll say you two were having an affair or something.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  Josh was still not looking at her. He had soiled three towels and was reaching for a fourth. He squirted shower gel onto the floor and continued rubbing the carpet with the fresh towel.

  Sarah took her arm from around his shoulders and stood up, both hands on her hips, feeling that rage boiling inside her again, wanting to explode. She felt the urge to kick Josh in the back of his head. Instead, she took a deep breath and knelt back down beside him.

  “Look at me, Josh. Is that what you think?”

  Josh still did not turn his head toward her when he spoke. She put a hand on his cheek to try to turn his head to face her but he jerked his head away and continued staring at the vomit stain on the floor.

  “I don’t know what to think. I don’t know. I mean, you don’t remember, and I have heard of people getting raped and blocking it out. I know it happens. And with the sliding-door lock busted I suppose someone could have come in the house. But I was home. I was home, Sarah! It’s just not possible that we’re both blocking it out. It’s not possible that someone broke in while I was asleep, fucked you and ejaculated in you, then got it up again and fucked you in your ass, ejaculated again, then got it up a third time and came in your mouth, all while I was snoring beside you. How could that be possible?”

  Sarah shook her head. Her rage turned to a deep sadness. Josh was right. There was no reason for him to believe her. She wouldn’t have believed him if the tables were turned. Whatever was happening to her was about to destroy her marriage. It was rapidly eroding the trust she shared with her husband and she knew that once the trust went the love was next. Tears were streaming down her face. She began to dry heave.

  “I don’t know!”

  Josh punched his fist into the floor and Sarah jumped. For a moment she was afraid he was going to hit her. It was the first time she’d ever found herself afraid of her husband and she immediately felt guilty for it. Josh was big but he’d never been a bully. He was usually gentle and sensitive. This, however, was uncharted territory. She’d never before given him a reason to question her loyalty. Still, Josh was mild and nonconfrontational by nature unless he felt like he was being deliberately provoked. Attacking a woman just wasn’t in him. Sarah thought about Josh storming out of the house with a gun in his hand when she’d first told him that she thought she had been raped. He had been fully planning on killing their neighbor. Sarah wondered if she really knew her husband as well as she thought she did.

  “It’s not possible, Sarah! It’s just not fucking possible!”

  “So you think I cheated on you?”

  “Maybe it was a date rape or something and you felt guilty about it and so you invented this whole thing. Maybe you blocked that out and you really believe that this whole fantasy is true. Maybe you sleepwalked across the street and fucked the neighbor in your sleep. I don’t fucking know, Sarah, but you’re a sex addict, a goddamn nymphomaniac or something! I know I can’t satisfy you. So why wouldn’t you be getting it somewhere else?”

  Sarah reached out for him and Josh pulled away. He was sobbing but he wouldn’t let her see his face. It was some type of pride thing.

  “Josh, I didn’t cheat on you. I’m not a sex addict. You satisfy me completely. We have a great sex life. I’m sorry if I made you feel like I wasn’t satisfied. You always make me cum. I don’t need anybody else but you. I love you and I think you’re sexy as hell.”

  Josh finally turned to look at Sarah. Tears were streaming down his face. Sarah felt her heart break.

  “Then explain this to me. Tell me what the hell happened.”

  “I don’t know. I’m not lying to you and I’m not trying to hide anything.”

  This was so natural for Sarah, comforting Josh when she ought to have been lo
sing her mind, when she ought to have been screaming at him, punching him, and crying hysterically. But flipping out like that wasn’t like her. She had not been herself since this thing started; it felt good to be calm again. This was normal to her.

  Sarah had just gone from vomiting on the carpet to kneeling down to take the soapy rag from his hand and wrapping her arms around him, laying his head on her chest and rocking him like a baby. Surprisingly, the transition felt effortless to her. Comforting him helped take away some of the terror she was feeling. She had to be strong for Josh. He needed her.

  “I’m sorry, Sarah. I know you wouldn’t cheat on me. I’m just so fucking confused. None of this makes any sense. I just don’t know what to do.”

  “Let’s try to figure this out together then. Okay? Look, let’s go over what we know.”

  “Okay. I’ll try.”

  Trying to solve this puzzle would make them both feel like they were doing something. It would make them feel less powerless, more in control of the situation like Sarah felt after they had purchased the gun. Sarah knew that Josh needed this. He immediately became more alert, less depressed.

  “Okay,” he said, turning to face her, “what do we know?”

  Sarah took a death breath and hesitated for a long moment before she spoke.

  “First, I saw you getting murdered by the neighbor. I remember him raping me and slitting my throat. When I woke up the next morning, you and I were alive but the bed was saturated with blood. The dreams or memories or whatever they are seem to come and go. Sometimes they’re vivid and I can remember just about every detail and sometimes I can’t remember anything. I woke up three nights ago and found that the sheets had been changed, the walls and the rug had been cleaned, my gun had been fired and all the bullets had been removed from the clip. But since we’ve been in the hotel there hasn’t been any strange things happening.”

  “Except you did have a nightmare.”

  “Yeah, true, I had a nightmare. But that was it. Nothing in the room had been changed. There wasn’t any sign that anything abnormal had happened at all. No bloody mattress and no missing sheets. And the digital recorder didn’t record anything unusual.”

  “But we know that someone other than me had sex with you on the night before we got here because they found another man’s semen inside you.”

  Josh was staring at Sarah, studying her face, trying to gauge her reaction. It pissed her off. He still doubted her.

  Sarah wanted to tell him to shut the fuck up about the semen. Just hearing him say it made her feel as if there were a cold draft wafting beneath her skin. It made her want to stab him to death just to keep him from repeating it again. She wanted to forget about it, she wanted to pretend that the detective had never called. But she needed to figure out what was happening to her. This wasn’t something she could just ignore.

  “Yeah, okay. They found semen, but no signs of vaginal or rectal bruising or tearing and no drugs in my system.”

  Josh stood up and began to pace the floor.

  “It doesn’t add up.”

  “No. It doesn’t make sense. But we know something is going on. So, what are the possibilities?”

  “You could be sleepwalking and washing the sheets in your sleep.”

  “But then where did the blood in the mattress and the semen come from?”

  “You could be having sleep sex.”

  “I don’t see me being able to leave the house without waking you up.”

  “Well, they didn’t test me for drugs. Someone could still be drugging me and then sneaking in and having sex with you and you could just be blocking it out.”

  “That’s possible. Or I could be drugging you and then sneaking out and having sex with other men and making up all the rest of this.”

  Josh looked at her. Shocked.

  “Somebody had to say it. I know you’ve been thinking it. You’ve damned near said as much. We have to address every possibility. Then we can exclude them one by one. So, is it possible that I could be cheating on you and just making up all of this?”

  Josh blushed, then shook his head, dismissing the notion.

  “It wouldn’t make sense. You were the one who insisted on the rape kit and they would have never found the semen if you hadn’t. Why would you do that if you were cheating on me? I mean really, I wouldn’t even know about any of this if you hadn’t told me about it. It wouldn’t make sense for you to bring all this up if you were fucking around on me.”

  Sarah was relieved. She slapped Josh on the arm.

  “Then why the fuck did you say all that shit about me being a nympho and not being satisfied with you? Why’d you make me think you didn’t trust me?”

  Josh shrugged.

  “I’m sorry. That was just my insecurities talking. The thought of another man having sex with you is just driving me crazy. I want to fucking kill somebody.”

  Josh was pacing the floor, clenching and unclenching his fingers, looking for something to break that he wouldn’t have to pay for. He settled on punching the pillow.

  “Someone could still be drugging us both. They could be using something rare that they don’t test for. We can’t rule that out.”

  “A new date-rape drug?”

  Sarah nodded.

  “Could be, I mean it’s possible. I still think we’re missing something though. We need to think waaaaay outside the box.”

  “Okay, let’s do it. Let’s not rule anything out yet even what we know is impossible. What if everything you remember is true?”

  “You mean that I’ve been raped and murdered two or three nights in a row? That you were murdered too? How would that be possible?”

  “We’re not thinking about what’s possible yet. We’re just laying everything out right now. We can start ruling things out later.”

  “Okay, so then we’ve both been murdered.”

  “But we both woke up, alive.”

  “So somehow we healed. Either we healed on our own or someone healed us.”

  Sarah shivered.

  “Okay, that’s just fucking creepy. What else?”

  “Hypnotism? Some sort of subliminal suggestion or mind control of some sort? Someone could be attacking you and maybe knocking me unconscious somehow and then hypnotizing us both so we don’t remember, maybe making you think you’ve been murdered just to freak you out more.”

  “Even weirder. What else?”

  “I don’t know. Can you think of anything?”

  “Well, we’ve covered sleep fucking, infidelity, drugs, spontaneous regeneration, and hypnotism. I think that about covers it. So what do we do now?”

  “We need to prove that you’re being attacked. Catch the fucker redhanded.”

  “Well, we could always go back to The Spy Shop and buy that nanny cam. If we can get him on camera, then we’ll have our proof.”

  “You’re right, that’s probably the only way. Do you have any money left from the slot machine?”

  Sarah picked up her purse and began shuffling through a stack of bills. They were mostly twenties and fifties with only a few hundreds left.

  “About nine hundred dollars.”

  “We spent sixteen hundred dollars last night?”

  “Well, we spent about four hundred on food and then I bought you that shirt from Armani Exchange and those pants from Hugo Boss and then I bought a skirt from Calvin Klein…”

  Josh shook his head and laughed.

  “Okay, it doesn’t matter. It was your money. I guess that means we can either buy the camera or the alarm but with the money we already spent on the gun, we can’t do both. I haven’t put anything in the bank for next month’s mortgage yet.”

  Sarah didn’t hesitate.

  “Let’s get the camera.”

  “Are you sure? What if we see something…terrible?”

  Sarah thought for a moment. An alarm would just chase the rapist away. Then she’d never know what was happening, who was causing all of this, or if she was crazy. She had to see it
to believe it. But even more, she wanted Josh to see it. She wanted him to see with his own eyes that she wasn’t crazy, wasn’t lying, wasn’t cheating. It made her skin crawl to imagine watching herself getting raped on camera. Her stomach did a little flip as she tried to picture it in her mind. She shuddered and turned back to Josh.

  “We need to catch this fucker. We need evidence.”

  “If we set up a silent alarm and link it to an armed security response, then we might still catch him redhanded.”

  “Might. He might still get away before security could get there. They might get there too soon before he can do anything and he could get off with simple breaking and entering. If I had it my way we’d have both. Catch him on camera and then apprehend his ass coming out the front door. But we can’t afford that. Given our options, the camera makes the most sense.”

  Josh nodded.

  “Okay. We’ll get the camera. When is that detective coming?”

  “She said she was going to talk to the neighbor first. See if he’d give a voluntary DNA sample.”

  Josh turned to look at her.

  “You think he will?”

  “I don’t know. Would you? I mean, after I slapped him and threatened to kick his ass?”

  Josh shook his head.

  “I’d tell you to screw yourself.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

  “It would make him look guilty though.”

  “Yeah, but that’s not the same as actually being guilty.”

  Sarah looked around. Her mind was working overtime. She wanted an answer now. The idea of going back to that house without knowing if she was still in danger was starting to make her panic.

  “Maybe we could steal a DNA sample from him somehow.”

  Josh shook his head.

  “And where would we get it tested? Do you have a DNA lab I don’t know about? We don’t even have the sample they took at the hospital to compare it to and the police won’t test it because it would be inadmissible.”

  “Maybe we could ask that detective to give us the sample she took from me and we could take it to one of those paternity-testing places?”

  “We could certainly ask but she’d be crazy to give it to us.”