by Aly Noble
I’d only been walking for five minutes before a semi-familiar blue car passed me, slowed to a stop just ahead, and honked. “Hey, need a ride?” Estelle crowed after rolling the passenger side window down. “Wait, should you even be on your feet?”
“No idea,” I mumbled as I got in and put on a seatbelt, avoiding eye contact with the rearview mirror. “Catherine—”
“She knows. Small town and all that,” she explained as she pushed one of her bracelets further up her forearm and pulled away from the curb, causing a horn to blare behind us. “What happened?”
“I’m…not sure,” I hedged, glancing out the window.
“Don’t give me that. You saw something,” she accused as she drove down the stretch of road I’d veered off of a couple nights ago. I saw my tire tracks in the dirt, but saw nothing otherwise that might help my case. I defeatedly leaned back against my seat—when that was all I did, Estelle persisted. “What did they talk you into back there?”
“Why do you care?” I demanded, fatigue making me cranky. “Is this your interview that you wanted? Because I’m not interested.”
“This isn’t my interview, I’m asking because it’s important.” She scoffed quietly and shook her head. “And because I really don’t want to have been the only one to see something in that creepy old house.”
I froze. “You—what?”
She stared out the windshield uneasily and, while I’d first thought she was pulling my leg to get some information, I recognized that look on her face. I’d been wearing it a lot recently. “When I was up taking pictures of the house, there was this real unsettling feeling around the area. It got worse whenever I walked closer. I figured I was just nervous because I knew I wasn’t supposed to be there. Or maybe because I was buying into the stupid rumors more than I wanted to admit,” she murmured. “But I saw a shadow move through a window. The top left one when you’re facing the front of the house. I know there was no one in there at the time because…well, I may have had some idea that I needed permission to take those shots.”
My bedroom window, I filled in from her description. My stomach turned.
Estelle continued. “I took one more picture after that and nothing looked weird on the camera, but when I got the pictures printed for Catherine’s file…”
“But what?”
She grimaced toward the windshield. “Something showed up in the print.”
I noticed my palms were lightly slick with sweat—she was detailing the same sort of horrible business I’d been experiencing on and off for the past week or so. “What was it? Did you put it in the file?”
“No, I kept it in my stuff. It’s at the office,” Estelle said as she turned into my driveway. “It’s… It looked like a face, but I could be reading into it…”
The face I’d seen behind me in the mirror flickered in my mind’s eye. I swallowed and found it more difficult than expected. She parked behind my car and glanced toward the house looming on the hill. “You’re braver than I am to still be staying in that place,” she stated. “Or stupider.”
“Or worse off,” I mumbled. “But probably stupider.” Yet what had happened on my drive home proved that the strange circumstances weren’t limited to the vicinity of the house. Also that they were becoming dangerous.
“So,” she started again carefully. “What’d you see?”
I hesitated. “A man.”
Estelle’s perfectly plucked brows furrowed. “A man? That’s it?”
“Well… Sort of. He didn’t seem normal,” I murmured uncomfortably. “I’ve never seen him before. He was…” I gestured helplessly, trying to think of the right word to describe his form.
“Broad?” she attempted to fill in my pantomime.
“He was tall for sure. I couldn’t see his face. It was dark and he was just past my taillight beams.”
She shuddered. “What exactly happened?”
“Well, first of all, I hit him with my car.”
Estelle was surprised, but actually seemed pleased with that beginning. “Excellent.”
I snorted softly. “Not intentionally. He seemed to come out of nowhere. And he was lying in the road when I stopped, but I got this feeling that I should stay by the car… I thought I was just being stupid, but I stayed anyway and called 911.”
“Smart. Listen to your gut,” she murmured with tense approval, listening with her full attention.
“I was talking to the operator and answering questions, and then when she asked about him, I turned around and he was just…standing there.”
Estelle’s eyes rounded with dismay. “Ugh.”
“Yeah,” I murmured, glad someone was taking me seriously at last. “He just stood there. Middle of the road. Staring at me. So I freaked and basically leapt into my car to leave.”
“Wait, so did you crash already when you hit him or did that happen after?”
“After. I was in the car and I floored it to get out of there, got to where I veered off the road, looked in my rearview mirror—“
“Please don’t say what I know you’re going to say.”
“—and he was in the back seat,” I said anyway.
“No.”
“I flipped shit, obviously. He grabbed my hair and slammed my head into the wheel. And then I was waking up in the hospital.”
Estelle looked conflicted, but I could tell she was trying to believe me despite the natural skepticism that was pushing her away. “That’s nightmare stuff… No wonder they didn’t believe you.”
“I don’t know how you believe me.”
“Should I not?”
“Well, no, but I’d be kind of skeptical. Or at least I would’ve been before all this started happening,” I reasoned.
She nodded. “Well, the photo messed up what little sense of denial I had left about weird shit in this world,” Estelle noted bluntly. “So I’m not as skeptical as I’d like to be.”
“I’d like to see said photo next time I’m in,” I said, wondering if it was the same face as Mirror Man. “If that’s all right.”
“Well, it is your house,” she pointed out.
“Unfortunately.”
Estelle smirked faintly. “Are you going to be okay?”
I considered that and shrugged. “I don’t really know. I hope so. Is there any other way to work from here that doesn’t go through that stretch of woods?”
She frowned and shook her head, her earrings glittering. “Nope. Sorry.”
I sighed as I unbuckled. “Not your fault. Thanks for the ride.”
“Sure,” she said as I got out of the car and shut the door. Her hand appeared out the window with a business card. “Call if…well, if you need to. You know how late I’m up.”
I took the card, put it in my jacket pocket, and leaned down to look through the open window. “Thanks. Really.”
“Mm-hmm,” she murmured as she put the car back in gear, mauve lips pursed. “Go shower and try to relax. You look like hell.”
I was starting to realize that this was Estelle’s odd way of caring. “Okay.”
She nodded once and reversed slowly down the driveway. I noticed that she shot a wary glance toward the second floor of the house before driving away, a blue blur amongst a backdrop of gray.
I stood there for a few minutes before taking a slow glance around the yard and then pacing toward my car to survey the damage or lack thereof. Rose had been well informed—there was barely a scratch except for the front bumper where it had made contact with the ditch. I ran a hand through my hair and opened the driver’s side door, peering at the wheel. There was a faint smear of blood—probably from my nose or lip when my face hit the metal Jeep insignia—but nothing else. Everything seemed to be exactly where it was supposed to be.
I’d almost shut the door when I saw a dark spot on the seat and pulled the handle again, leaning inside. The mysterious “spot” was a clump of my hair, the little white roots still attached to most of the strands. I rubbed the back of my head until my
fingertips sifted through the teal layers and landed where I now had a small, but tender bald spot.
I gathered up the hair and balled it in my fist before shutting the door and heading toward the house, keeping my head down until I neared the porch steps, which was when I caved and looked up toward my bedroom window.
It was dark and empty.
Chapter 8
As it turned out, blasting a playlist from my laptop helped curb the tension that came with occupying 1 Red Heather Road. At least a little—and only if I didn’t think about it too much.
I spread out and surveyed the four boxed camcorders and the attachable motion sensor I’d filched from Willow Press’s storage closet, contemplating what might be the best spots for each of them based on the activity I’d experienced and where would give them the maximum vantage point. I pulled the first camcorder from its box and went upstairs to my bedroom. Nudging the door open, I glanced around and decided the bookshelf would be the best place to perch it.
I took a good look around as I crossed the room, deciding the space was much less threatening with the early morning sunlight streaming through the windows. I plugged in the camcorder and turned it on, checking the side panel to make sure it worked before hitting “record” and settling it onto the shelf.
Once I was confident that the first camera setup was in good shape, I left the bedroom, pausing at the top of the stairs. I felt my heart grow a little heavy as I remembered standing in that exact place, looking down at Ed waiting for me by the foyer. I missed my cat. The house felt so much lonelier and more empty without him. I gently filed away my own wistfulness and went downstairs.
When I got out another camcorder and its charge cord, I decided the basement stairway was my next target. I’d happened to inhale right before opening the door, likely due to nerves, and it was a good thing I did—it reeked of a dank, rotten smell I could only logically attribute to sewage. I choked on the odor and slammed the door, gagging so hard that I made a dash to the kitchen sink in case my breakfast resurfaced.
I made sure I was okay—or at least not going to puke—before I went back to the basement door. I plugged the charger into the camcorder, switched the setting to night vision, and inhaled to full capacity before throwing the door open again and tucking the camera in the corner at the top of the stairs. I pressed the button to start the recording, but couldn’t find the wall socket before my lungs demanded a refill. I ended up dropping the cord on the stairs and slamming the door again.
This time, I did throw up.
• • •
Two camcorders later—one in the living room and one in the hall upstairs—I was positioning my own personal camera in the front hallway on a stepladder when my cell phone rang. I juggled the camera and cords with the sensor as I fished the phone from my back pocket, answering it on the way up. “Hello?”
“Hey,” came Graham’s begrudgingly sheepish voice.
I frowned. I wasn’t keen on talking to him, but he was doing me a favor by taking care of Ed. “Hey.”
“So, you’re still alive,” he observed, and I heard a loud clap in the background that I figured was Daphne smacking him on the arm, especially when he grumbled something indiscernible a few seconds later.
“How’s Ed?” I asked instead of acknowledging his remark. It had taken me an extra second to realize he wasn’t talking about my car accident—that he didn’t know about it at all—and was instead just being an ass about our last exchange. I opted not to mention it.
“He’s fine. I think he misses you.”
“Is that an—ow—assumption?”
“No, he told me, himself,” he said sarcastically.
“That’s not what I meant.” I backtracked. “Ah, fuck, there’s a word I want.”
“I don’t know your word, but are you asking if I’m trying to butter you up?”
I considered that. “Well, I wasn’t, but now…”
“I’m not,” Graham said firmly. “He keeps walking to doorways and meowing before moving to the next room. If I’m in there or Daphne’s there, he still doesn’t stop in.”
In spite of myself, I smiled a little. “I miss him, too. It’s weird, not having him with me.”
“I bet,” he said. “I am happy to report that he’s not flipping out like he was with you. My house isn’t getting wrecked by cat anxiety.”
Not surprising since I’m now ninety percent sure that it wasn’t him… “Oh, good.”
I slid the phone between my ear and shoulder as he continued to speak, attempting to jostle the cables into place. “Listen… I was out of line the other day,” he began.
I sighed. “I know and—“
“And so were you.”
“Damn, would you let me talk?”
He sighed, and it sounded like he was running his hand down his face based on how his breath came out. “Continue.”
“An apology with an excuse—or accusation—isn’t an apology. I’m aware that I had some part in it, but you don’t have to be a dick about it,” I gritted as I tried to plug in the camera, just praying I was using the right kind of cable.
“Not to flip topics, but what the hell are you doing?”
“Hooking up a thing to my camera.”
“A thing?” he repeated.
“You know, a cord,” I mumbled.
“Oh. That thing.”
“Shut up,” I laughed reluctantly. I hooked up the camera and positioned it to face down the hall, angling the sensor on the wall a few feet below.
“What’s the camera for?”
I hesitated. “I’m helping out on an article.”
“Oh,” he commented. I heard the relief in his voice. “Cool.”
“Yeah.”
“So, you’re busy… I’ll let you go.”
Low-key guilt trip. Nice. “Okay.”
“So… We’re good, right?”
“Guess so,” I said tonelessly, turning on the camera before climbing down off the stepladder. I could feel his discomfort from miles away, but I couldn’t find it in me to care. His parents and Daphne never let him suffer for anything because of his manipulative behavior, and it showed.
“Okay… Bye, I guess.”
“Bye. Thanks again for taking Ed. Really.”
“No problem. I’ll text you pics of him or whatever.”
“That’d be great,” I said, letting up just slightly to ensure I was coming across as sincere. “Take care.”
“You, too. Later.” The call disconnected and I shoved my phone back into my pocket. I glanced up at the camera and then at the sensor before experimentally walking past it. The sensor triggered the camera and the flash popped to life.
I climbed back up onto the stepladder and checked, but the photo of me walking by like a suspicious Beatle on Abbey Road was right there in the SD card memory. I put it back, climbed down, and retreated a step to debate what to do next. The flash was doing funny things to my head and intensifying the headache I already had. I grabbed some aspirin from the kitchen before deciding to go for a walk.
I tied my hair back and tossed Catherine’s Red Heather file into my purse in case I passed Willow Press during my casual walk around town. As I walked by, the camera flash burst to life again. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I muttered as I stumbled, half-blind and agonized, out of the house.
• • •
I ventured past Jill’s and deeper through town, mentally mapping the restaurants, drugstores, and bars I saw if only to soothe my nerves. After circling back, I decided I was hungry and deserved a splurge, so I went into Jeff Sanders’ cozy, dimly lit bar and grabbed a booth. He waved to me as I sat down and I waved back as a supremely Texan woman sidled up to the table, smiling pleasantly. Her lips were hot pink and her hair was enormous.
“I don’t think we’ve met yet,” she said, her voice sweet and not too high. “Jill Sanders, sweetie.”
I smiled back at her. “Miri James.”
“Interesting name,” she commented. “Short for some
thin’?”
“Miriam,” I supplied.
“Don’t hear that name too often anymore. Especially on a young person,” Jill observed. “I like it. Anyhow, sorry—I like to talk. What can I get you to drink?”
“Half-pint of the house, please.”
“Will do, Miss Miri,” she said with a wink, heading over to her husband, who was already filling a stein. I took a menu from behind the shakers near the wall, spreading it out and starting to read—not abnormally, I found myself paying more attention to the prices than the contents. Jill returned and leaned down to set a napkin on the table for my beer, and I got a whiff of her perfume. It was a scent I recognized, but I didn’t immediately place from where—I just knew by the knot that formed in my stomach that it wasn’t a fond memory the fragrance provoked.
“All right. Know what we’re gettin’?” she asked, unaware of my sudden unrest. “The town favorite is our bacon burger.”
“Sounds fantastic,” I said, folding the menu back up. I'd gotten lost in deciding what I wanted, so Jill’s recommendation was a mini godsend.
“Well, that was easy,” she chuckled. “How would you like that cooked?”
“Medium-rare.”
“Truffle fries?”
“Sure, sounds great,” I said without a clue of what truffle fries were.
She nodded and finished writing on her pad before heading back to the kitchen. I wasn’t sure what truffle fries entailed, but it didn’t really matter—I’d remembered why I recognized Jill’s perfume.
Why did such a commonplace perfume have to be the one that Dave had come home wearing on his collar more times than I could count? Now that I’d sorted out the deja vu, I was just perturbed. All lack of commitment aside, he’d been a goddamn fool for not being more careful, more aware of what might get him caught. Then again, a moment had come at some point in which I realized he didn’t care if I found out.
Thinking like this is going to kick you back into your smoking habit, I told myself before I could dwell on it for too long.
