He could find logical reasons for everything in the nightmare, except for the man with the kind face who had led him up the stairs and had passed his dad the knife. Who was he? In the man’s presence, Nick had felt complete safety, but shortly after his dad was passed the knife, they both turned against him—his dad the minion with orders from the overlord, Mr Kind-Face, to stab him.
Too creepy to think about. He didn’t need to ponder it any longer.
He stretched and yawned, pleased to have gotten some sleep, at least; working Halloween yesterday was hectic and exhausting. It always amazed him to see so many people dressed up. Customers had heaved in and out of Creaky Crystals all day long.
The only comparison he could think of to sum up the craziness of it was the hype at Disney World, the way people bought items they would never purchase if they weren’t in a giant theme park. Disney World hype: Buy a Mickey Mouse hat you’ll never wear! Halloween in Amiton hype: Buy a set of tarot cards you’ll never use!
Nick had only been to Disney World once, with his mum, dad, and brothers, when he was young. His dad was different back then; he didn’t recognise his father in the withdrawn man he’d become.
For work on Halloween, Nick had dressed as a zombie wearing a poncho and a sombrero, which received some interesting reactions to say the least. Michael had been a vampire (surprise, surprise), Mora a witch (though it wasn’t so different from her usual attire), Janet put on devil horns (boring), and Alan dressed as Shrek (huh?).
Friday came around quickly, and Nick headed for Creaky Crystals. On his walk through the lower grounds, a sense of dread grew in his stomach. Ahead of him, he could make out a collection of flowers and other items propped against the bottom of the 50ft wall. He was bemused at first, then realised what had happened. Someone had died there.
But the woman … I saved her, didn’t I?
Quickening his pace, he squinted to get a better view. A picture of a woman had been placed among the tributes. Nick recognised her as the waddling witch wannabe, the customer who’d enquired about different wands a couple of weeks ago.
She’d died here, but how? Why here, in this spot where the woman from his vision had hit the ground?
Under the picture was her name: Rowena Helen Howard.
‘Did you know her?’ a man with short black hair asked. He placed down a bouquet of flowers with a note attached, which read, Rest in peace.
‘No. I work just there.’ Nick pointed towards Creaky Crystals. ‘I’m about to start.’ His voice quavered. How am I supposed to feel? ‘What about you? Did you know her?’
‘We were in the same class at school. She was always nice to me.’ The man seemed unsure of how to feel too. ‘It must be awful for her family, not knowing how it happened.’
‘What did happen?’ Stupid question. Nick bit his lip, frowned, and looked about. There were a couple of girls standing a few metres away. They stared sullenly down, tears in their eyes.
‘No one knows. I saw about it on the news last night. She was found here yesterday morning, but she was too far out from the edge to have fallen. It’s like she was thrown over, or maybe … jumped.’ His face tightened as he peered down at the picture of her. ‘It’s not right talking about it here. Whatever happened, it looks like she’ll be missed by a lot of people.’
At that point it began to rain; the sky had turned a morbid colour. The man had pale skin and his scalp became more visible as his black hair collected the wet.
They stood in silence while Nick watched the memorial notes begin to smudge and crumple. At least the flowers would endure. He wiped a hand firmly over his hair to rinse out the soak. ‘I better go to work,’ he said. ‘Take care.’
The black-haired guy nodded, then ascended the steps to the upper grounds.
Nick might have been prepared for this if he watched the news more often, but he avoided it because it was always depressing. Passing through the door to Creaky Crystals, he came over queasy, his thoughts swimming in circles. Is it my fault she’s dead?
Mora smiled at him on his entrance, then walked past and towards the front door. ‘I’m going on my lunch now, Nicolas. Michael said someone came in to see you the other day. Ask him about it, okay?’ She spoke speedily on her exit.
Nick had little idea who would have stopped by to see him; he wasn’t exactly Mr Social Life.
After chucking his jacket out the back, he returned to the shop floor. Michael and Alan approached him. ‘You’re looking a bit peakish, Nick!’ Alan said and mockingly kept his distance, as if Nick were contagiously ill.
‘I’ve just heard about the woman who fell and died out there. It took me by surprise.’
‘Who says she fell? She might have jumped! Maybe she was pushed … Maybe she was killed somewhere else, then dumped there. Or actually, she probably did fall; it’s not called The Fallend for no reason!’ Alan cocked his head to one side and raised his eyebrows.
Michael interrupted. ‘That’s not cool, Alan. She only died yesterday—shouldn’t be talking about it like that.’
‘Alright, alright. I was only saying.’ Alan looked down at the floor for a second, then swiftly popped his head back up. ‘Hey, Nick, some fit bird came in to see you on Tuesday, didn’t she, Mikeyboy?’
‘Yeah. I told her you were working today. She’s gonna come at the end of your shift to see you. She was tall, blonde, and pretty.’
‘She was fit,’ Alan offered again, with enough enthusiasm to wobble his double chin. Alan was single, in his thirties, and worked full time at Creaky Crystals. He seemed content with that, but then, he didn’t share much about his life outside of work.
‘Okay. Thanks.’
‘Do you know her?’ asked Michael.
‘I don’t think so.’
Smiling mischievously, Michael said, ‘Janet’s probably set you up with her.’
‘Janet needs to set me up with her!’ Alan chimed in. Nick and Michael laughed, although Alan was starting to grind on Nick’s nerves. He was a nice enough bloke, but lately he seemed a bit blasé towards the reactions his comments received. Some things he said came across as just plain hostile.
‘Well, I don’t know who she is anyway,’ said Nick. Alan went to say more, but he was interrupted by a customer wanting to purchase an item. He took her to one of the tills.
‘So, is she as fit as Alan says?’ Nick asked Michael, sarcastically exaggerating the word ‘fit.’
‘Yeah, she was pretty. Not my type, though.’
‘She sounds exactly your type.’ Nick was confused. He had thought Michael would be the one saying ‘fit bird.’ But no, ‘pretty’ seemed to be his word of the day, and with his angel face and unintelligent troll-voice, that word just didn’t suit coming out of his mouth.
‘No. Not really.’
‘You haven’t had a girlfriend in ages. Since Kelly, in fact,’ Nick remarked.
‘I haven’t met anyone I like.’
‘Fair enough.’ Nick shrugged, and the conversation ceased there. Michael approached a woman sifting through a bowl of gemstones and struck up a conversation.
As he dawdled about, Nick was glad to finally have time to think. Because he didn’t know many blondes, he suspected the woman who had come into the store was the gorgeous girl he’d saved. Maybe she’d realised she never said thank you. But how did she know his name and where he worked?
Anyway, Nick didn’t feel like much of a hero anymore, now that this other woman, Rowena Howard, had died exactly where Tall and Blonde was supposed to have hit the ground. Was it Fate taking someone else in exchange? A blip in physics, compensating for what Nick took away? Just a freaky coincidence? Or did she commit suicide? And why her? She was the first person Nick saw and spoke to after snapping out of his vision.
She was too far out from the edge to have fallen … In the vision, the blonde woman had been vaulted a great distance. There were too many parallels. He glanced out of the shop front at the flowers, cringed, and then realised something. The flashes: flo
wers, notes, the lower grounds, cobbles, the wall, tears, pictures, bouquets.
Confused, he went to the staff toilets to compose himself. Those flashes that had given him a splitting headache, they were the future? No. They weren’t like the other visions. Maybe it was denial, but he didn’t want to believe the flashes were a form of foresight, not when the daydreams had been so vivid and clear. Although he’d experienced pain in the vision where he was attacked, he was left in no physical agony when he snapped out of it.
Nobody seemed to notice his sudden disappearance, and when he returned he tried to stay out of the way.
Nearly every customer had something to say about the flowers gathered a few metres from the store. How tragic. What a shame. How young the poor woman was. What a horrible way to go. With every comment, Nick felt guiltier. But what could he do about it?
For distraction he turned to people-watching, keeping an eye out for suspicious customers, like Mora had asked him to. Nothing peculiar caught his attention for a long while, but when something did, it wasn’t a customer acting shifty.
Alan hovered near the entrance, repeatedly glancing around the fairly busy store, as if counting people. Mora was serving at one of the tills, Janet had the day off, and Michael was helping a customer. While serving someone at the second till, Nick pretended to be engrossed in the transaction, but in actuality he was surreptitiously observing Alan.
Two people entered the shop: a tall man with shaved dark hair, wearing a black bomber jacket, and a lady with greasy mouse-blonde hair in a ponytail. Nick watched Alan and saw him give the slightest, almost undetectable, nod to them, seemingly towards the CDs & DVDs section.
Alan scanned the other staff, and Nick had to flick his eyes down to avoid being caught watching. After Nick was done serving his customer, he headed towards the back of the store, as if going to the toilets. Once out of sight, he hid on a corner that gave him a view of the CDs & DVDs section. His heart thudded.
I feel like a spy.
The tall man stood sideways, partly hiding the greasy-haired lady. She had a bag from Crystals Galore, one of the stores in the upper grounds, and slipped a couple of DVDs into it.
‘Hey!’ Nick marched up to them, shaking a little. The man in the bomber jacket turned and glared at him. ‘I saw you put them in your bag. Take them back out please.’
The leggy man rolled his shoulders and tensed his jaw. ‘You saw nothing.’
‘I know what I saw. Now put our stock back where it belongs.’
The thief-lady widened her eyes and gave a dumbstruck face, acting the victim.
‘Leave my wife alone,’ the tall man said with an accent. Nick subconsciously took a step back when he saw the man’s fist clench.
Michael and Mora must have heard the commotion, because they were at Nick’s side before he knew it. ‘What’s going on?’ asked Michael.
‘This lady put some DVDs in her bag without paying.’
‘No. I buy from Crystals Galore. See? I have bag.’ The lady’s voice was shrill.
Mora said, ‘Okay. Well if you did, then you won’t mind showing us the items.’ She held out her hand.
Nick looked over at Alan, who was watching intently until he saw Nick looking and twisted away. He hurried to talk to a customer.
The greasy-haired lady thrust out the bag indignantly. Mora took out the DVDs and turned them over, looking for the Creaky Crystals stickers they attached to most items. She found the labels, of course.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Mora authoritatively, ‘but these are our items and you don’t seem to have a receipt in the bag. What I will do is put them back on our shelf, and if you leave now, I won’t call the police. If I see you in here again, though, that will be the first thing I do.’ She stared firmly at the short lady.
The lady glowered back, then looked at the lanky man for defence; her expression read, ‘Are you going to let her talk to me like that?’
A fist shot towards Nick. He just about dodged it. The fabric of the bomber jacket swept across his face with a swish. He heard the man grunt in anger.
‘Whoa! Calm down, man.’ Michael pushed the guy, toppling him back a few steps.
Embarrassingly, Nick’s body locked up. He was not used to aggression. He hated it. Alan sped over to intervene and said to the couple, ‘Come on. Leave the store now, please.’
The man glowered at Nick on his way out, and the lady held her head high.
With her hands up to her heart, Mora asked Nick if he was okay. He nodded. Then she turned to Alan and said, ‘Thank you for getting them out of my store.’
Alan laughed affably. ‘Scum like that aren’t welcome here,’ he said, then shimmied back to work. Nick frowned. He could see straight through him.
‘Thank you, Nick,’ said Mora. ‘Thank you, Michael. I’m sorry you got put in danger like that.’
‘No worries,’ Michael said. Nick smiled halfheartedly alongside him, and then Mora went to sit behind one of the counters.
Tapping Michael on the side of his arm, Nick said, ‘Just out of curiosity, was it your turn to tag-check the jewellery section last week?’
‘Yeah. Why?’
‘It doesn’t matter. I was only asking.’
‘Well, it was my turn, but Alan asked to swap sections with me, so he did it instead.’
‘You didn’t change it on the rota?’
‘Nah. What’s the point? We still got both areas done.’
‘Okay. Thanks.’ Nick went to tidy some shelves.
So when it was Alan’s turn to tag-check the tarot cards, some were stolen. And then Alan did the jewellery section last week, and Mora noticed some missing. Nick quickly checked this week’s rota and saw Alan was down for DVDs & CDs.
When Alan was due to leave at five, Nick took an opportunity to talk to him on his way out. ‘I know those two people were stealing on your behalf, Alan. You should make it stop. Mora doesn’t deserve this.’
Alan bit his bottom lip. Nick, feeling not so confident himself, could see the fear in his colleague’s face. Without a verbal reply, Alan nodded and hurried off, waving as if they’d exchanged a normal see-you-later.
At the end of the shift, Mora let Nick finish ten minutes early. The woman who’d come asking for him would be there soon, so he got his jacket and valuables from the back of the store and waited outside.
It was dark already, but the lower grounds were lit by lampposts and stores that were still open. Standing facing the flowers was the tall blonde woman. The rain had stopped a few hours ago, and the woman’s hair danced in the wind. She stood completely still, looking down at the picture of Rowena Howard. Her hands were drawn up to cover her mouth.
Nick approached her, scraping his shoes along the ground so she wouldn’t be startled. She turned and looked at him, her eyebrows pulling together. ‘I recognise you,’ she said.
‘Well, I did save your life … I thought maybe you’d come to say thank you?’
Her eyebrows loosened. ‘I’m sorry; I was in shock. I didn’t stop to say thank you; I think … I mean …’ She turned and looked at the flower pile. ‘That should be me.’ She pointed at the picture of the dead woman. ‘I should have died there. But you saved me.’
Nick remained silent. Then the woman asked, ‘What happened here?’
‘She fell, I think. No one seems to know; it could have been suicide or something. Why did you come to see me? How did you know my name and where I work?’
‘Are you Nicolas Crystan?’
‘Yeah. What’s your name?’
‘Juliet Maystone.’
‘It’s nice to meet you again,’ he said, offering a shy laugh.
‘Can we go for a walk? I need to talk to you.’
‘It’s freezing cold. How about we go to the pub on the corner, The Crow?’
‘Sure, anywhere. You’re not going to believe what I have to say ... I wouldn’t believe it.’ And on that declaration, she headed for the pub.
Nick followed. What on earth was going on? J
uliet didn’t walk with him, but slightly ahead at a pace he struggled to match. It augmented the effect of the harsh wind on his face. He shivered, being one to never dress appropriately for the weather, but Juliet had on fine clothes and seemed unaffected by the cold.
They entered The Crow, and Juliet took a seat in a far corner. Nick didn’t feel right using the place for conversation without at least buying something. He ordered an orange juice and offered to get a drink for Juliet. She said no.
While he waited for the bartender to prepare his beverage, he tapped the centre of his left palm repeatedly. Juliet was gorgeous, and Nick wasn’t sure what her intentions were. I’m calm, I’m focused, I’m calm, I’m focused. After being passed his drink, he walked over and sat across from Juliet in a warm and dimly lit corner. The pub wasn’t busy, and the two of them were distanced enough from anyone to allow private conversation.
‘So how did you know my name and workplace?’
Juliet didn’t reply immediately, then came out with, ‘Your mother told me.’
Nick’s heart pulled in on itself with a jolt of pain. ‘She’s alive? Do you know where she is?’ His voice came out weak.
Juliet frowned and fidgeted. ‘Why do you think she’s alive?’
‘She disappeared eight years ago, but you’ve spoken with her, haven’t you? When did you speak with her?’ He held his breath and leaned forward.
‘I’ve gone about this in the wrong order.’ Juliet shook her head. ‘Your mother’s not alive … I’m sorry. I thought you must have known that.’ She winced and avoided eye contact.
Emptiness grew inside of Nick; until right now, he hadn’t realised how much he’d hoped his mum was still alive and about to walk back into his life. Maybe he was more like his dad than he thought.
The Shadow Box: Paranormal Suspense and Dark Fantasy Thriller Novels Page 124
