The Story of Her Holding an Orange

by Milos Bogetic

  I sat on our bed, not believing what Trish was saying to me. I was literally speechless. A million different thoughts ran through my mind. How was it possible that the same person was stalking my girlfriend and me before we even met each other? On different continents, at that? Who was the man with Rose? And finally, what the fuck did they want from us?

  SIX

  Come On, Open

  Let’s step back for a second. Be honest, what would you have done in such a situation? Would you have called the police? Contacted your family? Moved away, hoping it’d take her another ten years to find you again? As I mentioned before, I see the world by the light of logic, and I believe (or used to) that everything can be explained with science. But at that moment, when Trish told me that the same woman who had once made my life hell was also following her, I was clueless. So I did what you would probably do as well: I called the police.

  Since I live in a small town that has a population of only a few thousand people, I’ve gotten to know a few of the local cops. As soon as Trish woke up the next morning (I didn’t sleep at all that night), I called my buddy at the station. Luckily, the police didn’t laugh at my story, which I was afraid they might, but there wasn’t much they could do, either. They said that no law had been broken in the U.S., but that if I got more proof of Rose following us, I could file a restraining order. They did, however, keep the Polaroid on file, in case things escalated.

  After my disappointing trip to the local P.D., I decided to go back to Boston and look around the place where I saw Rose. I knew chances were I’d find nothing, but I still had to do it. Trish wasn’t thrilled about the idea, but she sure as hell wasn’t staying alone at home, so she unwillingly came with me. The street I saw Rose on was vibrant with people, but none of them were the devilish woman who was slowly ruining our lives. We spent the next couple of hours in the city, trying to occupy our minds with something other than the fucking orange and the woman who carried it.

  We arrived back in Provincetown at around 6:30pm. Trish and I lived in a fairly large house with five other roommates. When we got into our front yard, we noticed that the front door was open. This wasn’t such a big deal considering how many people went in and out of the house, but with our increasing paranoia, even that was a red flag.

  As we slowly entered our home, we noticed our bedroom door was open. The front door not being closed was one thing, but we always, and I mean always, locked our bedroom when we left. I could feel Trish shaking next to me, and quite frankly, I wasn’t doing too much better myself. I yelled a couple of “hellos” into the hallway, to no response. As we got closer, I heard music coming from my room. Knowing that there was only one way to see what was happening inside, I stepped towards the door, and stopped cold.

  Our room was… changed. All of our pillows were placed on the dresser. All of our towels and white shirts were put on the bed. The bed was completely stripped of all the sheets, which were now lying on the floor. My laptop was on our bed, open and playing music. As I scanned the room for the intruder who did it, my eyes stopped at the middle of the floor. On the spread-out comforter that was on the floor laid two halves of an orange. Trish must’ve seen them at the same moment I did, because I heard a barely audible gasp right next to me. If there was any doubt before that moment, it was clear now. Rose was back in our lives.

  We immediately called the police, and it being such a small town, they arrived only a few minutes later. They took our statements, scanned the house and neighborhood, and gave us their private numbers should we need them. I suppose they started believing us. They chuckled when I asked if they were going to fingerprint anything -apparently, forensics doesn’t come to the tip of Cape Cod for anything less than a dead body. They left within an hour of our discovery, and we were alone once again. Well, alone with the orange.

  At that point, I was worried more about Trish than anything else. She is an emotional person, and these events were taking a huge toll on her well-being. I knew that I had to get her out of that place as soon as possible. But before we could make any further plans, we had to clean our room.

  Trish put herself in charge of putting all of the stuff back to the proper places, and I was to get rid of that damn piece of fruit. When I picked it up, I noticed something. The orange itself looked terribly rotten, and it appeared that it was peeled on one side. I saw a small piece of peel underneath it. The section of peel had two words carved into it. It said:

  AAAJDE OTVORI

  In Serbian, my native language, “ajde” means “come on” while “otvori” means “open.” Now, why was “ajde” written with three A’s? I don’t know. Was that the message we were supposed to receive? Again, no idea. What did “Come on, open” mean? That was the strangest thing of all. As I tried to make sense of this text, I heard Trish behind me.

  “Babe…” she whispered in a voice strained with the effort not to cry. “Babe.”

  I turned around and saw her looking at my laptop. At that moment, I realized that the music that had been playing since we discovered the break-in was the same song on repeat. The song was “Africa” by Toto. That is my all-time favorite song that I started loving as a little child. But that wasn’t what Trish was trying to show to me. She was showing me a picture on my laptop. My desktop background was changed. On it was a photo of two women with two kids; one of the women resembled my mom. They seemed to be in some sort of park. Hell, I’ll include the picture here:

  “Who are these people?” Trish asked me.

  “I have no idea,” I shrugged, still holding the orange peel. “Hold on, let me get rid of this garbage.”

  I threw the rotten fruit in the trash and studied the picture some more. The park in the photograph seemed awfully familiar. I emailed the image to my mom, telling her to call me as soon as she woke up, and Trish and I spent the rest of the night talking.

  At that point, I was certain it was some sort of cult that was following us. No other explanations made sense to me. Trish, coming from an Indian culture, leaned more towards the supernatural side for answers. She claimed that it was a demon that wanted something from us. In her mind, us taking the orange meant accepting the monster and thus becoming demons ourselves. I entertained her ideas, but there was no way I was going to believe in a supernatural entity chasing me across the globe, offering me a piece of rotten fruit.

  At about 3am that night, my mother got on Skype (it was 9am in Montenegro). She said that it was she and I in the photograph. Next to us was my mother’s best friend with her son. The park we were at is in Sarajevo, Bosnia, where we lived at the time. The troubling thing was, this was the first time she had seen this photo. She doesn’t remember it ever being taken. My mom wanted to know how I got it, and despite my determination to keep my parents in the dark so they wouldn’t stress about my problems 5,000 miles away from home, I had to tell her. I spoke for a good thirty minutes, not leaving many details out. I retold the stories of Rose following me in Montenegro, I mentioned Trish’s encounters with her, and I finally explained the last incident in our room. My mom seemed absolutely stunned at the story as she didn’t say a single word while I spoke.

  “Rose… my Rose? From work?” she asked, looking like she didn’t believe a damn thing I said.

  “Mom, I already told you… Yes, your Rose. It’s Rose.”

  “Is this one of your imagination things again?” she asked.

  At that point, I knew I needed to involve Trish in the conversation. When I was a child, my imagination had run wild and I’d often come to my parents telling them there was a strange man under my bed or that the TV would turn on by itself. At this point, I was the boy who cried wolf.

  “Mrs. Bogetic…” Trish sat down in front of the computer and spoke softly, “He’s telling the truth.”

  Seeing my girlfriend with such devastation on her face, my mom started to believe my story.

  Unfortunately, she only ever knew Rose as a nice, chatty person from work with whom she enjoyed spending time with
. Even after some thinking, my mother couldn’t remember Rose ever acting strange or even asking about me. All this Skype conversation did was make my parents worried sick. They were helpless, and by the time I was getting ready to hang up, my mother was in tears.

  “Call your grandma,” she said while sobbing, “maybe she’ll know something.”

  After ending the talk with my parents, it was Trish’s turn to talk to hers. Unfortunately, her conversation was equally unhelpful. Her mom and dad knew nothing more than what they already told her, and now they were worried as well. They invited us to stay with them in Canada, but I needed a visa to go there, and even if I didn’t, I knew that leaving would only be a temporary solution to this painfully permanent problem.

  After talking with our parents and each other all day, we had two definite plans: Trish needed to leave and stay with friends, and I needed to call my grandmother and see if she could help with any information. Both of those things turned out to be good decisions.

  SEVEN

  Grandma's Story

  Trish’s college roommate lived in Pennsylvania and had been dying to reconnect, so we saw this as the perfect opportunity for her to get away from the whole situation. Her health was getting progressively worse from the stress, and knowing that she couldn’t be of much help in my search for answers, I talked her into visiting her friend for at least a week. She argued for a while but finally caved in when I told her that there was a good chance she’d encounter Rose again if she stayed. We decided not to tell anyone about Trish’s whereabouts; I figured if we were being stalked, the less information that was available, the better it was for us. I made sure Trish got on her plane (a direct flight to Philly), and went back to our house. I got a text from my mom telling me that she had talked to my grandma, but that my grandmother knew nothing about Rose. I decided to call her anyways.

  I’ve always had a good relationship with my grandma, Dana. I probably wouldn’t be lying if I told you that I was the favorite of her four grandkids. I’d often call her and spend hours just talking about all kinds of things, from my insignificant problems to her memories of the good old days. When I called her that day, she sounded less energetic than usual.

  “Hey, Grandma, it’s Milos.”

  “Hey, kid. What’s up?”

  “Listen, I know Mom called you and explained what’s going on, and she said you knew nothing, but I still wanted to ask if you’ve ever heard of this Rose woman.”

  After a few seconds of strange silence, she answered with a short and unconvincing, “No.”

  “Grandma, are you sure?” I asked, feeling that she wasn’t telling me everything.

  “Whatever that woman wants you to take, just refuse it and you’ll be fine,” she said, sounding very serious.

  “Look, if you know something, please tell me,” I begged.

  We went back and forth for a good five more minutes, me trying to convince her to speak, and her stubbornly denying my pleas. It took me telling her that both Trish and I could be seriously hurt should the situation escalate for her to finally cave in.

  This is the story she told me.

  ∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

  My grandma was an extremely energetic child. She was never at home; all of her days would be spent outside in nature. Back in the day, parents felt comfortable letting their children run around freely. My grandmother had several places she loved playing in, but none more than down by the river near her house. On this one particular day, none of her friends were available to play, but Grandma decided to head to the river anyway. She did her thing there for a while: built sand castles, fished, all the things that 1930’s kids did for fun. When it started getting dark outside, my grandma decided to head home. Suddenly, she heard her name being called quietly.

  “Dana…”

  She turned around and saw nothing. There was only one path, surrounded by forest, leading to the river, and no one was on it. Then she heard it again, only louder.

  “Dana!”

  Her first thought was that her friends finally showed up and were trying to mess with her. She ran down the road but couldn’t find anyone. She decided to come back to the shore and see if her friends had decided to finally end the prank and show themselves. Then she saw him.

  He was a man of an average height, probably 6’or so, dressed in a black suit with a white dress shirt underneath, and the kind of unobtrusive black hat that gentlemen wore in 1930. In his right hand, he carried a long cane. The strange thing was… he was standing in the water. There he was, a man in expensive business clothes, standing in ice-cold water that was up to his hips. He was smiling.

  My grandmother, more amused than scared, decided to walk over and see what this strange man was doing. She walked up to the water, but stopped when the freezing wave touched her feet.

  “Mister, did you call me?” she asked in her most polite, talking-to-grownups voice.

  “I’ve got something for you, Dana,” the man said while his smile became even wider.

  “How’d you know my name?” responded my grandma, entertained by this strange man. She had already started thinking about how she’d tell the story to all her friends.

  “Oh, we all know your name, Dana,” said the man as he took a step towards her. The water was now at a level a little above his knees.

  “Who is we?”

  The man didn’t answer. As predictable as it’s getting, I have to tell you what the man did. Out of his oversized coat pocket, he pulled an orange.

  “This is your present,” he said, stretching his hand towards my grandma although she was still at least ten feet away.

  My grandmother grew up in a decently wealthy family, and fruit was hardly a luxury, so the orange certainly didn’t cause a “wow” factor with her.

  “No thanks, Mister, I’m alright,” she responded, slowly losing interest in this whole situation. “You can give it to someone else.”

  “Oh, no, Dana, this one is especially for you,” he answered, tilting his head at such a steep angle that my grandma was sure his hat would fall into the water.

  “No, thanks,” she responded, slowly backing up. Even though she was an adventurous spirit, she started sensing something was wrong.

  “You take it, you take it now,” the man said, dropping the smile.

  Now, you have to understand, my grandma has seen some shit in her life. She lived through World War II and the Bosnian War, yet she says that even now, the man’s face that evening is the scariest thing she’s ever seen. She was a young kid with a vivid imagination, but she swears that the man’s eyes got much darker as he spoke those words. She turned and bolted. As she was about to disappear in the forest, she turned around to see if the man was coming after her.

  He wasn’t. He was still standing in the icy river, holding the orange. As she watched, the man put the orange back into his pocket, and then took a golden pocket watch out of his coat. He checked the time, looked up to the sky, as if he were checking the weather, and started walking away. Through the river, the water still past his knees, step by step, he walked away. That was enough for Grandma; she turned around and ran back to the safety of her home.

  My grandmother didn’t see him again for more than twenty years. She grew up, and the man from the river became only a distant childhood memory. She would sometimes tell the story to her friends, but everyone would disregard it as the product of a child’s blossoming imagination. In time, Grandma convinced herself that’s exactly what it was, a small kid letting her mind run wild.

  In 1952, Grandma brought my mom into the world. My mom was her first child, and according to our customs, it was a huge deal for the whole family, even the extended one. Celebrations started on the very day she was born, although my grandma was kept in hospital for two more days for observation. Apparently, there were complications during the birth and doctors wanted to keep an eye on her.

  On the second night in the hospital, the man in the black suit came back.

  My gr
andmother had a room to herself. She was deeply asleep in her bed when a bright light woke her up. In horror movies, you see a flickering light with nobody around, only for the monster to jump at you from behind your back. Well, that didn’t happen. As soon as Grandma’s eyes adjusted to the light, she saw the man standing in the middle of the room. He wore the same black suit, now outdated by more than two decades. On his head was a ’30’s top hat, and in his left hand, he carried the same cane. His right hand was tucked in his pocket.

  She said that a hundred thousand things ran through her mind, but she remained speechless at the scene in front of her. It’s funny how, in situations like that, your brain casts around for all the information it can find, trying to make sense of things. I suppose it’s an evolutionary tool to help us survive. My grandmother’s brain was no match for the irrationality of the situation in her room, which I suppose was what left her speechless. And just as she gathered the courage to speak, she noticed something else; the man looked exactly the same as the day she met him, more than twenty years ago.

  “You did well,” the man said, smiling. He revealed his flawlessly white teeth that went along with his seemingly ageless face.

  “What… what is it that you want from me?” she asked, pulling the blanket up to her chin, as if it had some sort of shielding power to protect her from this ageless man in black.

  “You brought the right one, Dana,” he spoke softly. He took a step towards her, making my grandmother pull the blanket even higher, up to her nose.

  “Brought who, what are you… what do you want from me?” she begged.

  “You only have to take this, and it will all be over, I promise you.” He took another step towards her, pulling an orange out of his right pocket.