by Aly Noble
As it drew closer to the time Catherine had told me to come back to Willow Press that day, I sighed heavily, contemplating my future of working with Estelle. “I hope I don’t kill her,” I mumbled, looking down at Ed. “Who would feed you?” Ed just blinked at me slowly. I looked him over. “You would be able to live off your fat for a little while, I’d imagine.”
Figuring I should get a move on, I got up and re-situated Ed on the couch, and hunted down my purse, laptop bag, and jacket to take off. I drove to the Willow’s base of operations and nearly passed it again like before. Catherine was speaking with Carla in the lobby when I walked in. “Right on time,” she observed with a pleased smile. “I’ll show you your workspace.”
I followed her down the hall and into the office I’d toured with her a few days prior. Thankfully Estelle was absent, but Steven was typing away on his laptop nearby and Carla had followed us in and was setting her stuff down at her desk as well. I remembered Catherine explaining that Steven was the Willow’s copy editor, but I couldn’t remember what Carla did. I could only assume she reported, as the paper probably wouldn’t have survived this long with only one contributor—mainly when that contributor was Estelle.
“The technology at our disposal is dated,” Catherine explained with a grimace. “But it’s what we can afford right now. Basically, if you can make the paper look better in terms of layout and graphics, you’re doing your job. I think if we just look better, it’ll help us a lot. And if you can think of anything else along the way—preferably free things—that we should be doing, let me know.”
“Sure, I’ll try some stuff out,” I replied, setting my laptop bag on the desk. “What’s everyone’s email address here?” Catherine, Carla, and Steven all wordlessly handed me their individual business cards. I sat down at the desk and opened my laptop to add them to my address book—once I’d added them, I sent a group email so they could add my address to theirs as well.
“What do you illustrate?” Steven asked after looking over my business card.
“Children’s books, comics, graphic novels… That kind of thing,” I replied as I logged into my laptop and opened my word processing program. “Can one of you guys email me the finalized file for the last issue?”
“Sure, give me just a second,” Steven said, looking off my card as he typed in my email address and set up the attachment. “Anything I would know?”
I thought about that. “There is this newish series I’ve been illustrating called Pilot Patch. It’s like this—”
“That’s you?” Catherine asked behind me, interest captured. “My kids love that series.”
“What is it about?” Steven asked.
“It’s about a kid pilot and his adventures. Sara would like it,” Catherine answered him. I assumed Sara was Steven’s daughter. Catherine turned her attention back to me. “Would you sign some copies for my kids if I bring them in?”
“If you’re willing to part with them for a little while, I could probably get Brenda to sign them, too,” I said, thinking that since she’d written the series, her autograph would be a cooler one to have.
“That would be a great surprise for them,” Catherine enthused. “Oh, I know—I’ll buy new copies to give you and then stash them away for Christmas.”
“So you’re famous now, too?”
At some point in the conversation, Estelle had shown up and was listening from the doorway. Her unamused expression matched the sardonic drawl of her voice, and she sipped the coffee in her hand as she stepped past Catherine to sit down at her desk, which—of course—happened to be right next to mine. I just rolled my eyes and opened the file Steven had sent me, and the conversation died away with Estelle’s rotten attitude.
I spent the next few hours working and reworking the layout into three different proposed formats I planned to show Catherine. By the time I was done for the day, only Estelle was left in the office.
After I emailed Catherine the options I’d set up, I stood up from my desk and put my computer back in my bag. My eyes shifted toward Estelle’s screen and I half-expected to see her dicking around on Facebook or something, but she was proofing what looked like an extensive interview transcription.
“What are you working on?” I finally asked, wondering why I was engaging her in conversation at all even as I did it.
She looked over at me in a dazed sort of way, her eyes glazed over from being screen-bound for so long. After she registered that I was the one talking to her—and that responding was therefore not worth her time, I imagined—she returned her gaze to her transcript. I had just begun to think she was going to blow me off without a response when she replied, “An interview with Jeff Sanders. He owns—“
“Jill’s, right?”
Estelle looked at me with surprise in her tired eyes this time. “Yeah. You’ve made it down there already?”
“Yesterday. He seemed really nice.”
“He is. He’ll be on his thirtieth year of business in about a week, so I interviewed him for the next Sunday issue,” Estelle explained.
“That should drum up some good business for him,” I commented, unnerved to admit that I could stand Estelle right now. She seemed more low-key now than she had been earlier, maybe because now she lacked an audience. Or maybe she’d just had a rough morning.
“I hope so,” she admitted genuinely.
“If you want a second opinion before you send it over to Steven, you can email it to me,” I offered, starting to pluck another of my business cards from my purse.
Even though she was faced away from me, I could still see the jerk of her head as she pulled some reactionary expression I wasn’t privy to, reverting to the Estelle I couldn’t stand. “If I want a second opinion, I’ll ask Carla who actually writes.”
I bit back what I really wanted to say. “Right. Night, Estelle,” I murmured as I put my card back and walked down the hall to leave, stopping by Catherine’s office on my way out when I saw that the light was still on.
I knocked and entered after she gave consent. Catherine was sitting at her desk, working on what looked like a stack of bills. “I’m heading out for the night,” I told her. “I just emailed you three layout options for the paper. If you don’t like any of them, I have a couple of other ideas, too.”
“Oh, good. I’ll take a look at them once I’m done with this—well, there’s one word I can think of to describe it, but I’ll go with ‘stuff’ for now,” she remarked.
I smirked. “Got it. Have a good night,” I told her. I’d almost shut the door when I thought of something and poked my head back in. “Say… Do you hold on to research materials you use for articles?”
“Sometimes. Depends on what the topic is,” she replied without looking up. “Why?”
“Would you have kept anything from Estelle’s article on my house?” Catherine glanced up at me then. “I’m just trying to find out more about it. Not to cause a stir or anything.”
She thought about it before making a decision and reaching back to her filing cabinet. She opened a drawer and sifted through a few manilla folders with her fingertips. “I’m afraid that old place causes a stir all on its own,” she admitted. She’d pawed through a few dividers’ worth of files before extracting one with my address on the tab. “You can take this with you as long as I get it back at some point. I like to keep track of content.”
Not the legalities of said content apparently, remembering my first conversation with her over Estelle’s article, but saying nothing. “Sure thing. Thanks,” I said, taking the file from her and placing it in my bag with my laptop, taking care not to bend it. “When do you need me next?”
“I’ll email you about the layout and that’ll pretty much decide that,” Catherine figured.
“I was also thinking about some things outside the layout today,” I said, figuring now was a good time to bring it up. “It may be worth it to do some discovery work on digitizing the content after the design is finalized. Maybe having a Facebook or T
witter page, too, for digital marketing purposes.”
Catherine paused before nodding once. “I’ll give it some thought. Thanks, Miri, and have a good night.”
• • •
During the drive home, I felt silly for having mentioned the extra work because I figured it made me look a bit desperate. Which, I supposed, I was in some ways. Now that I’d gotten used to the idea of having a semi-steady flow of work, I’d felt a little more balanced and secure, which was what I sorely needed at this point. I just hadn’t realized I’d wanted it until I had it and the potentially temporary nature of the situation had started to work its way in.
I glanced toward the file sticking out of my laptop bag on the passenger seat—it had felt pretty hefty and I was starting to wonder what all was in there. When I pulled into the driveway and saw Ed sitting in the living room window sill, I couldn’t help but smile. I got out, got my stuff, and locked the car before heading up the porch steps and up to the house. As soon as I reached the door, my phone rang. I paused to maneuver it out of my pocket. “Hello?”
“Start looking at your caller ID,” Graham chided without greeting.
“Why?” I asked as I picked out my house key and unlocked the front door. “It’s only ever you or my mom.”
“Because it’s the twenty-first century and you need to be informed when you answer the phone. What if it was some serial killer?”
“I didn’t know smartphones were also murder weapons now,” I murmured as I wiggled the door open and walked inside, closing it behind me and turning the latch.
“Again. Twenty-first century, Miri. There’s an app for everything,” Graham provoked me. “What’s up?”
“First day of the new job,” I said as I set my bags down.
“Ah, right, I knew there was a specific reason I wanted to call today,” he acknowledged. “How’d it go?”
“Fine. I spent the day basically putting three design templates together. Catherine’s going to let me know on edits and all that tomorrow at some point.”
“Was the fugue woman there?”
I snorted as I slipped my jacket off. “Yeah. And I made the mistake of being nice.”
“Oh, no. She’s your best friend now, isn’t she.”
“Actually, I think she hates me even more,” I admitted.
Graham laughed, getting a kick out of that. “You’re making tracks in this new hick town of yours, I gotta say.”
“Listen, I’ve met like eight people here so far,” I grumbled, “and only two have decided they hate me.”
“That’s twenty-five percent. You’re not doing so hot,” he continued to laugh as I took out the manilla folder and opened it on my coffee table.
“Hey, that’s a seventy-five percent for not-hate, which is some form of C,” I defended myself, moving Estelle’s article clipping off the top of the stack to look through the photos and documents beneath.
I chitchatted with Graham while I sifted through the folder—most of the materials were shots of the house throughout the years, which was kind of cool to see, and copies of legal documents that were probably pulled from city archives. The only surprising pieces inside were aerial map printouts, including one with a line of blue highlighter through the house itself, a few instant photos, and a packet of eyewitness accounts that attested to some of the weird things that had been reported inside and around 1 Red Heather Road.
I studied the blue line on the singular map printout, but it unfortunately meant nothing to me. All I could figure was that maybe it was a relatively new pipeline or something close. I was initially enthusiastic about the polaroids, but the only “thrilling” thing about them was that they provided some insight to what renovations had removed. The largest instance of this was some ornate, earth-tone tiling on the kitchen floor that had been replaced by a more standard ivory linoleum at some point in the process. The firsthand accounts ended up being of the most interest to me, but it made more sense for me to read them when I wasn’t trying to talk on the phone. Speaking of which…
“Sorry, what’d you say, Graham?” I asked after realizing I had zoned out, wondering how credible the accounts would be.
“I said you should invest in a spirit board and call out whatever ghost is messing around in your house,” Graham repeated. I rolled my eyes, wishing I’d just continued to ignore him as I thumbed through the packet. “Or a psychic. Podunk towns always have some rogue psychic with a shop setup.”
“Shut up, hippie,” I grumbled, a begrudging laugh escaping me.
“Yeah, you’re right,” he figured as I absently skimmed the first account description. “Small town like that is more likely to have a good exorcist.”
“Graham,” I groaned, shaking my head at both Graham and at the first packet when the transcribed account began to detail an alien encounter. No wonder these had ended up stuffed in a cabinet at Willow Press. Instead of entertaining the thought of extraterrestrials, I moved on to the next one that spoke of a ghost sighting the interviewee initially mistook for her friend’s roommate.
“Fine, moderately good exorcist,” Graham laughed. “Is Ed still scratching at night?”
“Some nights he’s not as bad, but yeah. I can’t get him to come upstairs for the life of me, even when it’s not nighttime and I’m actually up and about,” I replied. “Maybe if I start leaving my door cracked at night, he’ll just come in and settle down.”
“Worth a shot,” he figured. “Weird, I don’t remember you ever being a light sleeper.”
“I never used to be except when I was really stressed out about something, but I’ve had to start my sleep aid again. Sometimes that doesn’t even help. I don’t know what’s going on with Ed or with me,” I admitted, tossing one hand up exasperatedly. “The only stuff that ever woke me up periodically before this were people sounds like footsteps. Then I move to Michigan and suddenly both my circadian rhythm and my cat have turned against me.”
“Didn’t you sleep through an earthquake once?”
“Twice,” I corrected him, tossing the alien account back on the table in defeat.
“Even weirder.”
I shrugged and stood up to go get a drink. “I don’t get it, man, I guess it’s just the new—”
I looked at the mirror above the mantle and saw someone standing in the doorway behind me.
Shock cost me my grip on my phone, which fell out of my hand and ricocheted to the floor with two thunks and a clatter. Distantly, after I whirled to face the doorway in question only to find it empty, I heard Graham’s inquiring voice from under the coffee table.
Hesitantly, I turned my head to look at the mirror again—I was the only one there this time.
I looked back toward the doorway.
Then again at the mirror.
The doorway.
The mirror.
My phone.
I shook myself and knelt down to snatch up my phone, shoving myself back to my feet and staring at the doorway again.
“Hey, sorry,” I interrupted the tail-end of Graham’s tirade.
“Shit, you scared me! What happened?”
“I…” I paused. I felt like I knew what I’d seen, but now that I was about to say it out loud to someone not here, I was having some doubts. Was I hallucinating from sleep deprivation? Did I just get spooked by my own shadow, maybe?
Or had I actually seen something?
“Miri, I swear—”
“Graham, there’s something wrong with…” A few more seconds of rapid, doubtful analysis. “Me.”
“Obviously.”
“Shut up,” I said a little too harshly, and I wondered if hallucinations stuck as clearly as memories. This one was definitely sticking. I sat down and ripped the alien story’s cover page off the packet, flipping it over to its blank underbelly and grabbing a pen from my purse.
“Okay, shit. Sorry. Seriously, Miri, what the hell’s going on?”
I sketched quickly, holding the phone between my ear and shoulder. “I have no idea
. Honestly, I keep seeing and hearing stuff around here, and it’s freaking me out.”
“You’re freaking yourself out. Part of it is that you’re tired. You’re also freaking me out, so chill.”
“I really hope you’re right,” I murmured, ignoring his condescending tone and continuing to scribble out what I’d seen.
“I’m always right,” he remarked. “Just pop a pill and really sleep for once.”
“Because that’s been working,” I murmured. “I already told you I’ve been back on the pills and I actually feel worse when I knock myself out.”
“Then don’t pop a pill and download a damn sound machine app so Ed doesn’t keep you up. I don’t know what to tell you!”
I stopped sketching and let the pen drop from my hand. “…You know what? That’s good. I’ll try that tonight.”
“Thank you. Now, are you okay?”
“I mean, yeah. I will be,” I reasoned.
“Good. Call me tomorrow.”
“Sure thing, Dr. Werner.”
He chuckled frustratedly. “Night.”
“Night,” I said, tapping the “End” button on my screen. I looked down at the paper once the call disconnected, contemplating the frantic lines I’d marked in a panicked frenzy across the page.
The broad, violent ballpoint strokes had come together to form a face.
• • •
I avoided the pills that night and wound down with a glass of wine in the kitchen, Ed nested on my lap. After studying my drawing, I’d abandoned it to the top of the folder—whether the face was the result of a conscious spell of REM rebound or something else I wasn’t even willing to consider being possible yet, dwelling on that sketch wouldn’t do me any favors in getting to sleep that night. I couldn’t chance that, especially when rest might actually be the solution.
When midnight came, I swallowed whatever fear was left around the buzz to go upstairs, keeping the kitchen light on for Ed. On my way up the stairs, I searched for a free sound machine app, downloading one with good reviews while I changed into a nightshirt and pushed my door mostly closed, leaving it ajar to see if Ed would chill out enough to not mark up the baseboards if he had the option to come in and sleep with me.
