The Girl Who Wasn't There

by Nick Clausen

  “You think they’ll ever let him out?” Rebecca asks, pulling Andy from his thoughts.

  He looks at her and sees her staring at the library. It’s weird standing here with her, on the exact spot where they once split up.

  “They say he’ll get life in prison,” Andy says.

  “But that’s only about twenty-five years. I Googled it.”

  “By that time he’ll be dead from old age.”

  Rebecca looks at him critically, and Andy knows exactly what she’s thinking. The things they are saying about Ambroos van de Goor in the media are quite disturbing. Something about his DNA being all wrong, and that he seems to be suffering from some hitherto unknown genetical disease, which causes him to age much slower than normal. The medical examiners reported him being at least a hundred years old, and they noted his body temperature never seems to rise above 70 degrees. The weird DNA also explains why the police investigators could never track him down, although they found DNA from him on both Kristy’s clothes and Lisa Labowski’s body.

  But Andy knows better. He knows it’s no genetical disease which has messed up Ambroos van de Goor’s DNA. The explanation is much simpler: Ambroos van de Goor is not a human being.

  It should be obvious simply from looking at him, really. But somehow, other people can’t seem to tell right away that the wendigo isn’t human; they apparently just see a boney and very tall old man with sharp features, unhealthy, greyish complexion and very dark eyes.

  Originally of European descent, he had lived way up in Canada until forty years ago; that’s when he came down here and began taking girls.

  “Even if they do let him out,” Andy says, shaking off the gloomy thoughts, “they’ll be watching him closely. He’ll never get to kidnap anybody again.”

  “I hope not,” Rebecca says.

  “Come on,” Andy says, placing a hand on her shoulder.

  They go on to the park, where the trees have started to take on yellow colors.

  “You think we’ll get to see them this time?” Rebecca asks, a growing excitement in her voice, and Andy can tell she has put Ambroos van de Goor out of her mind once more.

  “If we’re lucky,” Andy says, smiling. “Keep your eyes and ears open.”

  Rebecca lets Doris off the leash, and the dog immediately begins running around in circles, taking in all the exciting smells. Andy and Rebecca stroll alongside each other while they listen and look up into the trees.

  Andy glances towards the graveyard and is struck by a strong déjà vu from the day he saw Lisa Labowski’s gravestone. He can’t help but wonder once more if the ghost was real or not. He was the only one who ever spoke to Lisa, after all. Wouldn’t that suggest he made it all up in his mind?

  Then suddenly something occurs to him.

  The book. Anatomy of the Human Eye.

  It was Lisa who gave him the title of the book that Ambroos van de Goor took out from the library and never returned. The police found it in his home, and he confessed to having used the book to figure out a poisonous mixture which would blind the girls without taking away their vision completely.

  How could Andy possibly have known the name of that book? He couldn’t. And that’s why the ghost of Lisa Labowski had to have been real.

  “There!” Rebecca exclaims, pointing. “You see it?”

  Andy follows her finger to a nearby tree and searches the trunk until he sees the hole. And at that exact moment—as though it heard them talking—the woodpecker pops out its head to look down at them.

  Rebecca lets out a joyful gasp, and Andy smiles as he closes his eyes for a moment.

  * * *

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Hi there!

  I hope you enjoyed the book. I’m the guy who wrote it. Since you're still reading, I can only assume you want to know a little more about me, so here you go:

  I was born in a small country far, far away, where people eat a lot of rye bread and are generally suspicious of success. I grew up reading Stephen King and still haven't fully recovered. I learned English thanks to Netflix and audiobooks.

  I'm married to my public-school sweetheart and we recently had a son who looks so much like me I fear he'll never get a date, the poor guy.

  My books have been published in four different languages, and I put out several a year. You can join my readers club to be kept in the loop when I have a new release.

  Learn more at nickclausenbooks.com.

  Thanks for reading!

  —Nick

  The Girl Who Wasn’t There

  © Nick Clausen, 2020

  NeverEnd Publishing

  Proofread by Diana Cox

  The author asserts his moral rights to this work.

  Please respect the hard work of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  All books mentioned in this work are real.

  The excerpt in the chapter titled Day 50 is from The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood, and the excerpt in the chapter titled Day 57 is from Solaris by Stanislaw Lem.