Thick, black lettering which looked like it had come from a laser printer rather than the shaky hand of an angry and excitable protester. Almost identical to the PHONE sign from the balcony two weeks ago. If not for the sign on that afternoon, perhaps she could convince herself this sign was a coincidence, nothing to do with her, and the 6 o’clock local news would confirm there had been an animal cruelty rally somewhere nearby that morning. But that idea was shot from the moment the person stopped right across the road.
The person in the black hooded top turned slowly to face Sarah, letting their right hand drop until the sign was no longer rested on their shoulder, but pointing right at her. She was fixated on the sign for a moment too long, and realized she had missed a chance to see the person’s face. She tried now, but they slowly turned back to a sideways stance. She searched for clues, distinguishing features, anything she might need to know in order to identify the person sometime in the future. Her instinct told her she may need to, not particularly in a police line-up sense, but maybe just so she would recognize the person if she saw them again in different clothing. The thought of police identification suddenly seemed a possibility too, the longer she dwelled on it.
Aside from noticing the person was Caucasian, she hadn’t picked up anything useful. The hood concealed too much of their face, and even when the person had stood facing her, their head had been tilted forward anyway, making the dark space beneath the hood even murkier. As the person turned, they immediately took up their now familiar stride, not rushing to get away, just picking up the same pace they held before. Precise.
“WHAT DO YOU WANT?” Sarah’s own voice caught her by surprise, and the forceful yell she sent across the street came from somewhere deep inside her. A place she didn’t know existed, but a place that nevertheless contained a courage she was unaware she possessed. Before her nerves could kick in to stop her, she side-stepped off the porch towards the waist high gate that kept her from the sidewalk, and she yelled again, this time even louder, but edged with some fear. “WHO ARE YOU?”
She reached the gate, and to her own amazement, her outstretched hand touched the top of the gate before she realized what she was doing. She was about to chase after this person. This potentially dangerous, hooded figure who was clearly intent on terrifying her, at least in an emotional sense, and for all she knew, was a very real threat to her physical well-being also. Her other hand also grabbed the top of the gate before the sudden and unexpected abandonment of her fears came to an end. Now, she gripped the gate tightly because she didn’t know where to go. Part of her still wanted to fling the gate open and run after the person, but the more sensible part of her (or at least, the more familiar part) had taken over and she wasn’t going any further, no matter how badly she needed answers.
Did I really just yell at them? Sarah thought to herself as she looked down at her feet which had come so close to leading her into a very unpredictable situation. She smiled nervously when she realized the answer was yes. She smiled because she could hardly believe it herself. The woman who fell to the floor in the grocery store less than a month ago, stricken with fear and paralysis because a man glanced in her direction, was now yelling across the street at a genuinely threatening stranger. The nervous part of her smile was for exactly the same reason, such was the way her emotions were polarized by her actions.
She looked back up, her eyes searching to her right down Western Avenue, and saw the figure was still moving, and was now far enough away to no longer be a threat. She took a cautious step back towards her house, uncertain if she was really OK with what had just happened, and to her surprise, the other foot followed along without protest. No shaking, no stumbling, no nausea in the pit of her stomach, just a desire to get back inside and sit down. She put it down to adrenaline, and thought she should really be more troubled by what just happened.
She locked the door behind her when another thought entered her mind. If that had been the mysterious balcony person outside just now, would she see any follow up activity from her back porch? Unsure if she wanted to know the answer, she had reservations about seeing anything else today except perhaps the six o’clock news tonight. A naïve part of her still held out hope there had been a protest nearby this morning and the sign carrying weirdo on the street had in fact had nothing to do with her. She didn’t even want to go back to her article now, despite the element of urgency in getting the work done.
The truth though, was the person who lived on the second-floor of the apartment building on Selwood Avenue (she had looked up the street name after the last encounter) had somehow known what she was working on, and that only served to make it more of an uncomfortable task to complete. She knew as soon as she sat down to write about the high concentration of B-group vitamins found in legumes, all she would see was the shadowy crater where her tormentor’s face hid, and the definitive way they walked. The exactness. The precision.
Still, whatever it was drawing her towards the back door was in control now, and her hesitations weren’t enough to stop her from stepping onto the back porch. She stood to face the balcony front-on with her legs apart and arms by her side. It was false bravado, but it was more than she was usually able to muster in anxious situations.
What she saw as she stared upwards to the balcony frightened her immediately. The sliding door was driven open in a forceful push, quickly reaching the end of its tracks and jarring to a stop. The hooded figure no longer moved with precision, but with the same bravado and manic movements she had displayed when barging out the back door. Except she knew there was nothing false about it. It was wild, almost angry, and most certainly intimidating. The balcony person displayed all the traits Sarah herself was faking – the anger, the intimidation – but none of the fear that began to take over her outward demeanor.
The hooded figure still carried the sign, and it struck the side of the sliding door on the way out, something that their deliberate movements of other times would not have allowed. The sign was quickly slammed down onto a small table standing on the balcony. It was too far away to see it clearly, but Sarah imagined it would be no different to the round, glass-top table that sat to her right. The Tormentor (Sarah’s new and very apt name for the person on the balcony) reached down to their left and grabbed something from the balcony floor before working on the sign in some way. She couldn’t see what was being done, it just looked like a lot of wild hand movements. She did notice a pot-plant on the balcony she hadn’t seen before. The plant itself was reasonably tall, and its body was bumped several times as The Tormentor carelessly flailed their arms around. She wondered if the plant had been there all along and she hadn’t noticed it, or whether it was a new addition.
Her question was answered immediately, and she became aware that the pot-plant served no decorative purpose and held no sentimental value to its owner, as the stake of the picket sign was driven into the pot violently. There would be little hope the roots of the plant would survive the ambush, however the fate of the leafy green plant fell from her mind like the rocky edge of a cliff face into the raging waters below. The raging waters of her own terror, which were rising sharply. The sign had been altered, painted in a very crude fashion. No longer was it the neatly printed piece of picket line artwork she had seen from her front yard, but a splattered mess of thick, black brush strokes.
The figure on the balcony stood menacingly next to the sign, glaring down at Sarah with hooded eyes she couldn’t see, but could feel. The eyes, even if they were the black, recessed craters she imagined, burned into her from a distance, and she felt her legs losing strength through increasingly twitching muscles. The wind had picked up and blew strands of hair in front of her face. Hair she had thought about having cut and was now wondering if she would ever get the chance. The wind also blew the sign a little from side to side, but it was jammed firmly into the pot and didn’t seem at risk of blowing away any time soon. The area of the sign which had been frantically brushed with black mess was beginning to run, li
ke black tears rolling down the pristine white face of a geisha girl.
But the effect of the painting was very clear to Sarah, dripping black paint or not. The bottom section of the sign was still printed in sharp, bold lettering, despite being gradually obscured by the leaking black tears of (blood) paint.
MURDER
She didn’t need to see any more, and didn’t feel the need to continue putting her made-up strength into the ring with the obvious insanity of The Tormentor. She didn’t want to stare them down anymore, and didn’t want to win their long-distance intimidation match. She just had to be inside, and that was exactly where she went. Slamming the door behind her, tears poured down her face as though a dam wall had burst behind her eyes. She slumped to her knees and both hands were holding the door closed as though something was trying to get in, but there was nothing there. Not within two hundred feet at least. And unless the menacing, hooded figure on the balcony was as gifted with flight as they were with intimidating vulnerable women, nothing would be trying to force their way into the house in the immediate future.
It was at that moment her mind sharpened, and through the tears, she could see the horrifying truth of her situation. The last sign had read PHONE, and seconds later, her phone rang. This sign had read MURDER.
She was frozen in position, on her knees with the palms of her hands pressed against the wall and while nothing was breaking down her doors this instant, they would be coming. Something would be coming.
CHAPTER 12
It had been a week since her last encounter with the odd figure on the balcony, and Sarah was finding it easier to not think about it. Despite the terror she had felt at the time, it was to forget something when there were no recurrences. Not forget, but to push it deeper into the back of her mind. There was no doubt she had become part of something sinister and dangerous, something which lurked in the shadows of Calston, unseen by the rest of the town’s eyes but very much in her focus. As though there was an alternate reality occurring. A sneaking, hidden theatre performance being played out in the darkest parts of the normally quiet town, to an exclusive audience comprising only of her.
She was sitting in the outdated, yet perfectly comfortable brown lounge chair, mindlessly watching whatever floated across the TV screen in front of her. Currently it was some sort of science show featuring a host who was far too good-looking to have ever spent too many nights studying for science exams. Yet he led the viewers through a range of fun scientific experiments all the same, maintaining a child-like wonder at the results, which further strengthened her idea the host was as bemused by the content of his show as the home audience would be. Her mind drifted back to Jason and the kids. Lizzy would have been fifteen now.
Typically, her past was the biggest of all the secret memories tucked away at the back of her mind. She’d not only tried to hide the memory, but piled memories on top of it, allowing the least chance of it surfacing. It hurt her too much to remember, and she was sure every psychiatrist in the world would tell her she needed to keep their memory alive. To live her life for the ones she left behind. That they weren’t really gone if she remembered them. But Sarah was too cynical for that line of thinking now, even if it proved to be true for every other patient in history. The fact was, her family was gone. She couldn’t keep them alive now any more than she could eight years ago when the flames had surrounded them from all sides and taken their lives.
Still, they had been her life. Her world. The world that ended for her on November 28, 2009, burning away in a tower of flames so much brighter than her world had been back then. She could try to hide the memories away, but like the secrets of a lost civilization buried deep within underground tombs, there would always be someone or something to dig them up if you waited long enough.
Out of all the times she let herself remember, times like today were the worst. Where she couldn’t stop herself from thinking ‘what if’. She didn’t want to live that way and saw no value in wondering what might have been. Especially when there is no possible way for those things to ever be. Like thinking how wonderful it would have been to travel on the Titanic’s second voyage, the thought process is pointless, because there quite simply was no second voyage.
Yet her mind continued to drift down the river of her memories in that direction, conjuring up images of Lizzy trying to leave the house to see her friends, wearing a skirt that was too short or a top that bared too much skin. The ensuing argument as Sarah insisted she would not be going anywhere dressed like that. Thirteen-year-old Noah would be on the couch, video game controller in hand, averting his attention from the TV long enough to make an unwelcome verbal contribution which only served to make Lizzy even angrier.
She thought it was strange to imagine such a scene to be an integral, cherished part of her life that could have been. It wouldn’t have been an enjoyable experience, the hormones of a teenage girl doing battle with her own emotions already exhausted by the daily grind of raising a family. Yet she still recognized such unfulfilled life events as being important in piecing together her imagination of what could have been.
Turning away from the more tiring aspects of family life, Sarah imagined a different Lizzy. A studious Lizzy, dedicated to the dance classes they had put money aside for. The feeling of pride that would fill her heart as Lizzy performed in her end of year concert. Sarah sitting in the audience with Jason, who would take her hand and turn his head toward her in pride for the beautiful, talented young girl they had raised. She would smile back at Jason, with no words needing to be spoken. Their faces would speak volumes for the love they had for each other and their children.
She pictured Noah, standing on the side of a basketball court, an oversized school team jersey hanging loosely from his shoulders. The jersey Sarah had wanted to buy him two sizes smaller, but he had insisted that the larger one ‘was how they’re supposed to be’. He stood with his team mates, his shaggy brown hair hanging over his ears, making him look like a young version of Jason. The boys would all have the same oversized tops on, just as Noah had said they would, and they would be listening intently to the pre-game instructions from their coach, who would turn his head and point to the court, gesturing about one textbook play or another. As the coach would turn, she would see it was Jason coaching their son’s school basketball team. Jason, who would have been manifestly ill-equipped to perform such a role, considering his lack of interest in any kind of sports, yet for the love of his son would do anything to make sure Noah saw him as the world’s greatest dad. The dad he never had himself.
These times were the worst, not because it was depressing to think of what could have been, but because her emotions became a tangled mess. As though her feelings were living in a flower bed, each plant fighting for their share of the water, the roots twisting around each other as they battled for every inch of the soil below them. The feelings of sadness generated by the made-up visions would find the roots of happiness curling around them. Happiness that only existed in the imagined scenarios she created yet still found a way to grow. Trying to steal the soil’s nutrients was also the hard to stomach feeling that she was blessed in a way. Blessed that she never had to experience the worst parts of seeing children grow up. The sicknesses, the tears they cried over their first break ups, the possibility they could run afoul of the law. Sarah didn’t need to go through that, and it brought a sense of relief. She knew these thoughts were only a defense mechanism to mask the pain, though.
But the strongest plant would always overpower its lesser neighbors. It grew stronger, faster, and dwarfed all of the other feelings. It climbed higher to the sun, greedily soaking it in and throwing shade on the happiness, the sadness and the relief. The monstrosity of regret would always win, and she knew why. It was the only one that really existed. Without the regret, the other feelings didn’t exist at all, and that was Sarah’s lot in life. If her family was alive today, the feelings of happiness and sadness would be real. She would feel both of those things for her family as
a real life with them unfolded. As it was, they only existed in her mind when she invented their history.
In the early years of her life with Jason, she had always felt like the stronger of the two. Not that she was a better person than him, but their lives before they met had been in such a stark contrast. She found herself in a relationship where she could take some control. She would need to take care of the household finances and make the important decisions about their future. While she didn’t set out to find a relationship like that – she wasn’t a controlling person – it was how things landed for her.
For Jason’s seemingly relaxed and simple demeanor though, she came to learn that she had been wrong about him in a lot of ways. It was probably his upbringing that bore both his quiet manner as well as his emotional strength. He didn’t give the impression of a man who was comfortable with his feelings. It was never something he spoke much about, but as her problems surfaced she grew to understand there was an incredible strength lying underneath the man she loved for his simple, easy-going nature.
She began to wonder if Jason were still alive, would he still be the rock she could lean on? He had been the pillar holding their family together in the two years before his death. A more capable parent to their children, and a far more competent husband than she had been a wife. But eight more years would have taken its toll on anybody. She had been on her way to recovery before the fire, but what if it had only been one peak in a long stretch of troughs?
If the fire had never happened, and she found herself to be a forty-two-year-old woman still frequently incapable of leaving the house and unable to be a parent to teenage children, she doubted her family would have been together anyway. Even back then, she would be lying if she said it never crossed her mind that Jason and the kids would have been better off without her around. After all these years, her thoughts hadn’t changed much on that point.
Sarah Before Page 10
