Red Heather

by Aly Noble

  When I drew nearer, I started studying my list to avoid looking at him—still, I felt the second he looked at me. Just as I passed him by, I heard him muse casually, “We just keep running into each other, don’t we?”

  My teeth clenched. “Let’s not make it a habit,” I murmured. I was somewhere between terrified and furious, and I had a desperate urge to turn around and punch him squarely in his smug face. Instead, I settled for adding a bottle of gin and some tonic water to my basket before finally gracing the checkout line—as ever, with more than I’d originally bargained for.

  • • •

  “How are you so calm about this?!”

  I frowned toward Estelle as I opened the gin and got two glasses from the cabinet. “Am I supposed to be freaking out?” I asked. “If so, I did plenty of that internally at the store. I’m kind of over it now.”

  Her normally pristine hair was askew from her nervous habit of touching it, and her cheeks were flushed with stress. When she gestured to punctuate her words, she made broad sweeps with open hands like she could pantomime me into a rational response. “He’s publicly antagonizing you! Stalking you!”

  “And we’re surprised?” I countered. “Honestly, are you surprised he’s keeping tabs on me?”

  “I mean, no, but that’s shady as fuck!” she exclaimed. Finally, she groaned and stopped pacing to collapse on one of the barstools stationed at the counter.

  She watched me mingle gin, tonic water, and ice in the glasses and we were silent until I asked, “You have lime juice, right?”

  “In the fridge,” she murmured, her hands pressed against her head as she leaned forward against the countertop. I retrieved it and spritzed it in as well, giving both a good mix with a spoon before sliding one glass toward Estelle. She glanced up and regarded it silently while I unwrapped a popcorn bag and put it in the microwave. “I like fresh lime in mine. And a wedge on the rim.”

  “Wish I had Price’s number—maybe he’d pick some up on the way here and save us a trip,” I remarked frostily as I tilted my glass back and took a sip.

  She just shook her head at me. I shrugged and set my drink down to open one of the three packs of cigarettes I’d added at the register. Estelle gave me a look. “Window,” she muttered tersely before putting her glass to her lips.

  I obediently cranked the window open enough to create a draft before I lit up. “Thanks for not making me go out on the patio again.”

  “If we weren’t being stalked, that's where you’d be,” she mumbled. “Just spray the air freshener in here when you’re done…”

  I watched her walk to the doorway, and I figured she was off to get settled in the living room. It made sense that her nerves were shot. Mine were, too, but our anxieties were manifesting in different ways. I tapped my cigarette against the makeshift ashtray, which was really just an old teacup saucer that had shown up next to the sink on my fifth or sixth day staying with Estelle. Unfortunately this habit was back, but—all things considered—I could put myself through the mini-hell of quitting again once I wasn’t number one on a single-item hit list.

  A loud popping sound issued from behind me, and I grappled with my glass to keep from dropping it into the sink. As my heart pounded, I looked at the microwave, and another pop met my ears.

  Oh, sure. You’re definitely over it, I heckled my nerves, taking a long drag and then a longer sip of my gin and tonic. I finished the cigarette and put it out just as the timer went off for the popcorn.

  I grabbed a big plastic bowl from its cupboard and greeted Estelle in the living room with a snack and the offer of a refill. “Just bring the bottle,” she hedged, accepting the popcorn and tossing a few pieces into her mouth. I returned with the gin and tonic bottles after cranking and latching the window closed and spraying the kitchen as requested. She took the gin and poured it over the ice in her glass, swirling the liquid around before she sipped it deeply.

  “I’m a little disconcerted by how much it helps," I admitted, pouring myself a refill as well, but cutting mine with tonic water like before.

  “I wouldn’t be,” Estelle murmured. “What else are we supposed to do, you know?”

  I shook my head. “Not a clue. I keep wracking my brain for solutions, but… I don’t think he’s going to stop.”

  She shook her head and stared at the wall across from us. “I don’t think so either.”

  As had become ritual, I felt guilty that she’d become involved in this, yet my apologies had been shot down so many times and in so many different ways that I didn’t say I was sorry again. In some ways, it also did what she was doing a disservice to apologize to her for doing it. Like she was a victim. Like we both were. Even though that was true to an extent.

  It was my turn to shake my head a little as I resolved to get us out of this one way or another. He would slip up. He would slip up eventually, and maybe it would be in the vicinity of the police. Something would happen. Something had to give.

  I sank back against the couch and drank and munched on popcorn with Estelle until I could barely keep my head up anymore. I’d switched to water before then, and the buzz I’d developed was on its way to a swift death. I made a loop around the house and checked all the doors and windows before settling back on the couch.

  The last thing I did was check that the gun was where we always kept it before I let myself fall into a half-genuine sleep.

  Chapter 25

  “You’re a goddamn smokestack, you know that?”

  I blew a column of smoke out the window of the car and murmured, "Shut up and drive,” as I thumbed through my phone contacts.

  “You’re also ridiculous, just for your information,” Estelle grumbled, proceeding to rant for a bit. I let her so she could decompress a little. “Rude as hell and smelling like a bonfire.”

  “I like bonfire smell,” I commented as I opened Trevor’s contact page.

  “Fine. Like a gross drug addict.”

  “You smell like a Yankee Candle,” I tossed back at her, watching the trees swoosh by.

  “Better than a lifetime of poor decisions.”

  “I hardly think a gross drug addict would only smell like cigarette smoke,” I argued idly as I hit the “call” button. “Now shut up, I’m calling my realtor.”

  “Does he know how far you’ve fallen in life?”

  I bit my lip to keep from laughing. “I’m not afraid to strike the driver, just so you know. You don’t scare me.”

  “I’ll die contently knowing that I took you down with me when we crash and it’s your fault.”

  “You’re being absurd.”

  “No, I’m being spiteful. ‘Spite’ happens to be my middle name.”

  I smirked. “I thought your middle name was Harriet.”

  “Oh, fuck you, Miriam,” she laughed reluctantly. Estelle glanced over briefly when I took the phone from my ear. “No answer?”

  “No,” I sighed. “Whether that’s intentional or not, I’m not sure. Probably not. Our last conversation went fine. He never did call me back though like he said he would.”

  “Well, this call will be more fun than I thought then,” she mused. “Why are we going to your place again? I thought there was a hellmouth there.”

  “This isn’t Sunnydale, and we’re not going to my house,” I said absently before sucking on the end of my cigarette again. After exhaling, I added, “We’re going to the creek near my house.”

  “I thought hicks were supposed to say ‘crick’,” she pointed out.

  “I’m not a hick,” I countered.

  “Whatever,” she murmured. “You say ‘pop’.”

  “Because that’s what pop is called around here. A soda is different."

  “You’re higher than I thought,” Estelle jabbed easily, pulling up to the curb at the base of my driveway and parking.

  We both gazed warily up the drive to the house before getting out of the car and working our way up. We gave the structure a wide berth as we made for the river and my phone
buzzed about halfway. I answered after looking at the caller ID—one reasonable habit I’d developed after one game of “phone tag” too many with Price. This time, it was Trevor. “Hello?”

  “Hi, Miri,” Trevor greeted me, sounding a little stressed but cheery. “What’s up?”

  I debated how to broach the subject until I simply said, “Something’s come up. Kind of goes hand-in-hand with what we talked about a few weeks ago.” I paused. “Well, it does go hand-in-hand. No ‘kinda’ about it.”

  There was a beat where he hesitated, and then he asked, “Realtor face off again, right?"

  “Please and thanks.”

  I listened to him blow out a breath as I led Estelle toward the trees and then had the thought to look at her footwear. I angled the phone away from my mouth and accidentally interrupted the first syllable of Trevor's response when I asked Estelle, “Is your gym bag still in your trunk?”

  She blinked at me. “Yeah, why?”

  I stopped walking. “Go change your shoes. You have horrific priorities when it comes to aesthetic.”

  “I like these shoes,” she murmured.

  “We’re digging around in a river, and you’re wearing heeled boots.”

  “It’s cold, and they keep my feet warm!”

  “You can put them back on as soon as we’re done. Besides, what if you have to run somewhere?”

  She put her hands on her hips. “Oh, and where am I going to have to run?”

  “To your car to get your damn sneakers. Go,” I snapped, and she gave me the finger before trudging back down the driveway. I watched with a little bit of satisfaction as her heel bit the gravel just before she got to the road. “Sorry, what were you saying?”

  “You’re digging through a river?” Trevor asked instead.

  I glanced around the area as I waited, taking a moment to look at the house to see if Jonah was lurking nearby. He wasn't, as far as I could tell. “You never called me back ‘in a few days’.”

  “I never wh—oh, shit, I did say that. I’m sorry,” he apologized.

  “It’s fine. I honestly forgot until just before I called you,” I admitted, keeping a weather eye on the surrounding woods while I waited for Estelle to come back. “But that’s not why we’re ‘digging’ in the river. That’s kind of a long story. Part of which I called to talk to you about.”

  “Okay?” he said, seeming a little uneasy.

  I hesitated, and a sigh escaped me in that small span of unused time. I decided that coming out with my figurative guns a’blazin’ wasn't the best way to start this—he knew I had them and I could always draw them later after all.

  “Listen…," I began, but then stopped again, not sure how to phrase what I was about to tell him.

  When I paused a beat too long, Trevor calmly supplied, “I am. What’s the big news, Miri? Can’t be worse than our last talk about your house potentially being possessed. Or being possessed. I can’t remember if you were sure or not. What ended up happening with that?” His tone grew more concerned as he progressed through his thoughts. It must’ve been nice to be almost entirely detached from the situation I’d told him about—the way he asked had an equivalent tone to asking about a bad day at work.

  I thought back to what I’d confided in him and had a better picture now for what we’d last discussed. “Oh, right. Well, I was on the right track… The house wasn’t possessed before, but—well—it is now. For sure this time.”

  “I feel like this still isn’t what you called to tell me,” he murmured warily. “Even though I can’t imagine what could be worse than this. You have moved out this time, haven’t you?”

  “Yeah, I’m staying with a friend,” I said, glancing over as Estelle made herself known with the crunch of gravel under her sneakers halfway up the drive. “And it’s not. There’s worse—trust me.”

  He took a big breath and blew it out at once. “All right. Lay it on me.”

  I weighed my words before asking, “Did Connor Price bribe you to keep quiet about his wife’s murder taking place here?”

  Trevor fell absolutely silent on the other end of the call, and that was really the only confirmation I needed. In the background, I heard a few beats that sounded like footsteps and then the distinct sound of a door closing. It sounded like a heavy office door. Then, finally, he asked, “How in the world do you know about that?”

  If anything, I was disappointed in him. In many ways, my anger had waned weeks ago in light of everything else. “He told me himself.”

  Another long stretch of silence, but this one ended sooner than the first. “That’s not possible,” he said in a low tone. “Connor Price is dead. He killed himself out in Arizona after he got there and set up the scene.”

  “No, he didn’t,” I argued quietly.

  “But the papers—there was a body! I saw it myself!”

  “It was a lie,” I told him, walking with Estelle once she joined me again. “I couldn’t explain the mechanics of how he got by with it, but he had help. Up until a couple weeks ago, he was sharing a body with the same entity or demon or whatever that’s now moved into my house.”

  “Miri, you sound insane. You realize that, right?” Trevor asked. “I’ve heard the ghost stories from other residents, from other people who live in that town. In all those, I’ve never heard of anything like this. It sounds crazy.”

  “Of course it sounds crazy,” I mumbled. “It all sounds crazy. But he’s alive, and I’m not the only one who’s seen him.”

  “Why is he back—if he’s back?” Trevor finally asked after a moment’s silence.

  I shrugged helplessly although he couldn't see it. “Originally? I don't know. Maybe just coming back to old hunting grounds. Down to the real issue though—I can’t believe you took a bribe from that monster!”

  Trevor sighed heavily and let the breath weigh in the air before admitting, “He scared me, Miri. He said she’d had an accident and that he didn’t want the house value to plummet, that he didn’t want this light to get cast on them here of all places… He had a lot of excuses.” He hesitated. “Deep down, I guess I knew it wasn’t an accident. But that was years ago. I was hurting for money.”

  “How much did he give you?” I asked warily, if only to avoid asking more about the instance of the bribe.

  “That’s why I own the house,” he murmured. “He said he’d change the deed to my name. Sounded like a great deal. Then all of a sudden he’d killed himself and the will had been changed instead. It was…messy. And I still wonder sometimes how long he’d counted on something like this happening. Legal documents aren’t changed over in a matter of days.”

  I grimaced and stepped over a fallen branch. Estelle was half-listening to the conversation and anxiously searching the trees with the rest of her attention. “Jesus.”

  “I know.” He paused a beat before admitting, “I don’t want to believe you about the demon thing. And I really don't want to believe you about the Price thing. I can’t wrap my head around that.”

  “He’s pure evil,” I murmured. “And unfortunately, he has it out for me, I guess.”

  “That’s so strange though,” he said. “Is it just because you know who he is?”

  “I doubt it,” I said. “He doesn’t seem worried about staying obscure… I think he just does what he does because he feels like it.”

  “Come on, Miri,” he chided me disapprovingly.

  “I’m serious,” I countered with an edge.

  “I’m not saying that what he did to his wife was okay—they probably had an argument, and he may’ve gone off on her, blacked out, and took things too far. Way too far… But that doesn’t make him an animal.”

  That hit me so hard, I had to stop walking. Estelle turned to look at me with an arch in her brow. “Um… Trevor?” I asked, and my tone begged an assessment of his sanity. “Are we talking about the same person? The same psychopath? The same serial killer?”

  He seemed bemused as he asked, “…What are you talking about?” />
  “You didn't know?" I asked in disbelief. Then again, it shouldn’t have been such a surprise, I realized. Because of the news coverage around the murder-suicide, it was more than likely that the only ones who knew Price was a sadistic killer were his victims, and now Estelle and me. Rumors floated, but none of them stuck enough to condemn him.

  “Didn’t know what?” Trevor demanded, defensive from realizing his own ignorance. “This is starting to get a little convoluted, you know that?”

  “It’s all convoluted!" I half-shouted. “It’s all crazy, it’s all unbelievable, but it’s all happening! Okay? You clearly never found the extension in the basement that contains literal appendages in a weird trophy board! I did while I was being chased the other day! If my house weren’t basically the goddamn Twilight Zone right now, I’d take you on a fucking tour!”

  He was silent for a minute or two before warily asking, “…You’re not nearly creative enough to make this up, right?”

  “No way in hell,” I breathed after my outburst. “No one’s this creative.”

  “Shit,” he mumbled, finally sounding like the news was hitting him like a ton of bricks. “This is ridiculous. There can’t just be like no explanation, right?”

  “I don't know,” I conceded after a minute. “I mean… I guess there doesn’t have to be.”

  “I still don’t necessarily believe you… And I find it hard to believe that no one ever found out if Price was really a serial killer like you’re saying… But I didn’t do much in that house’s basement. And I’m not there. So I’m entertaining the insanity that is the possibility that this might be true.”

  “Thanks, I guess?” I glanced over the yard behind us. “By the way, Tom needs to get his ass in gear. My yard looks like shit again.”

  “I’ll give him a call,” he mumbled, sounding suddenly exhausted. “Ugh. Shit. I need to process this. I’ll call you later or maybe tomorrow.”

  “Like for real this time?”

  “I can't believe you're still joking around during all this.”