by Kait Nolan
This picture had been taken on her phone, in this room, mere minutes ago.
Evie collapsed back, sitting on the edge of her tub, thumbing through image after image in her photograph folder. This man had taken at least twenty pictures of himself, all while she had been in the shower. And she hadn’t heard or seen a thing.
~*~
Her fingers shook as she dialed 911 on her cellphone, pausing midway, wondering if she was somehow tainting evidence by using the phone to call for help. Then again, she didn’t have much of a choice. Much to her mother’s chagrin (What would happen if someone tried to murder you in your sleep? she had warned more than once), Evie had never gotten a landline hooked up. For one, she used her smartphone for nearly everything, and for another thing, she just flat couldn’t afford an expense like that. It seemed like a luxury.
Now, though, she was regretting that plan.
She dialed the last one and hit the call button, listening to the phone call ring once, twice, three times. Sitting there, in her thread-bare nightgown on her cold porcelain tub, she had never felt more exposed. And the thought crossed her mind that she might not be alone. She stood up quickly and shut the door, locking it, and pulled against the knob to test the strength of the lock. Not terribly strong, but it would hold. She hoped.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“I, uh,” she said, the words stopping in her throat. She felt as if she were hovering outside of her body, watching herself call for help, as if she were starring in a movie, a masked killer just on the other side of the door.
“Are you okay?”
The man’s voice on the other end of the phone was kind but insistent. It snapped Evie back to reality.
“Yes, um, no,” Evie stammered. “I have an intruder in my house. 59 Hill Road. Just outside of Lost Beach.”
She could hear the delicate tapping of fingers on a keyboard. “What’s your name?”
“Evie,” she said, before she corrected herself. “Evelyn. Evelyn Bowen.”
“Are you in a safe place, Evie?”
“Yes, I think so. I’m in the upstairs bathroom. I’ve locked the door.”
More tapping. “Okay, ma’am. I’ve got help coming your way. You just sit tight.”
“Okay.” To her own ears her voice sounded small, like a child’s.
“Is the intruder still in your home?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “I mean, I don’t know.” Evie looked behind the shower curtain as she spoke. She moved next to the linen closet, knowing that no full-grown man could hide there. She looked anyway.
“Okay,” the dispatcher said, followed by more tapping in the background. “Stay with me. Help is on its way. Tell me when you hear the sirens.”
Evie moved to the small window, just beside the toilet and peered outside into the darkness that seemed to have fallen completely and quickly. She half expected to see a shadowy figure of a man, standing just beneath her, but all she saw was the dirt of the ground and the uncoiled pile of hose that she had used earlier when cleaning her paint brushes. Her eyes scanned the tree line, squinting to make out anything in the dark mass. The oak trees, with their hanging moss, shifted in the wind, and for a brief moment, she thought she could see something moving through the thick dark brush. Just as quickly as it had appeared, it was gone.
She blinked and turned around, unable to look outside anymore. “I don’t hear anything yet,” she said. “Where are they?”
“Evie, they’re coming. Sit tight.”
She did as she was told, sliding along the wall and down to the ground, where she sat, knees hugged to her chest. Crying seemed like the appropriate response, but she was surprised to find that no tears were available to her. Instead, she hugged the phone to her right ear and listened to the silent distance with the other.
“Are you still there?” she asked.
“Yes,” the dispatcher said. “Help is here. Do you hear them now?”
She listened. In the distance, the small sound of sirens could be heard, just barely.
“Yes.”
“Okay, Evie,” he said. “I’m going to let you go. The police will help you now.”
Evie nodded and hung up the phone, a few hot tears finally streaming down her face.
~*~
Evie handed her cellphone over to the officer who was standing in front of her. She was still in her nightgown, though she was now downstairs in her living room, surrounded by three police officers. Thankfully, she didn’t recognize any of them as the ones who had been out previously. One of them, a blonde woman, had brought over the afghan from her couch, and Evie gratefully wrapped herself up in it while she looked at the officer who was holding her phone.
“Can you get prints off it?” she asked.
The man shook his head. He was middle aged, maybe late forties, if she had to guess. His hair was still dark and thick, though streaked with gray, the same color as his thick mustache, and his belly paunched out over his belt buckle by more than a few inches. He sniffed at the air and turned the phone over, looking at the back for a moment, shrugging. “This is not a good candidate for prints. I can see it’s smudged pretty badly. Most will be yours. We’ll never be able to separate prints off something like this. Even if we could, it would take a lab months to even do it. Nah, I’d say that prints aren’t an option.” He sniffed again, and rolled his tongue in his mouth, and for the first time, Evie noticed that he was chewing on a nub of what was once a toothpick. Every police officer had introduced him and herself when they arrived, in two cop cars, sirens on and lights swirling, but Evie forgot each name as soon as it was spoken.
The blonde cop, pretty and young, probably just out of school, peered at the phone. “Let me have a look at that,” she said, holding out her hand.
The man did as he was told. “Have at it.” He shuffled over to the other cop, a man of about the same age and stature, who was standing in the frame of the open door.
“Quite a scare, huh?” the woman asked.
Evie nodded. She was cold, and back to feeling numb.
The woman ran her finger across the phone’s screen. “So this is our guy, huh?” She flipped the phone around so that Evie could see the man’s face on her screen.
Evie nodded again, clearing her throat. “Yeah,” she said finally, “That’s him. He apparently took those pictures of himself while I was in the shower.” She physically shuddered. “He was right next to me. All that time. Just outside the curtain.”
The officer frowned, and she turned the phone around, peering into the screen intently. “And you have no idea who this man is? You’ve never seen him before?” She turned the phone to face Evie once more.
Evie shook her head. “No, I told that officer that I hadn’t seen him. I have no idea who he is.” She pointed at the policeman with the mustache, who had first taken her statement. “He seemed to think that maybe this guy was one of the workman, who maybe returned to the house to get some things, and saw the phone, and thought it’d be funny to, I don’t know, scare the shit out of me.” A nervous laugh escaped.
The officer frowned again, the corners of her mouth twisting thoughtfully. “I’d say that was some sick joke.”
“Yeah,” Evie agreed.
They stood in silence until Officer Mustache came back, tapping the female cop on the elbow. “The outside perimeter is secure. No one’s out there. No sign of forced entry.” He turned and looked at Evie. “The house is clear, too. We’ve looked in every room. No one is here except us. Is there anything else we can help you with tonight?”
The woman held out Evie’s cellphone, which she mutely took.
The two officers turned towards the door.
“Do you not need this?” Evie asked, standing up and holding her phone back out. “For, like, evidence?”
Officer Mustache shook his head and began to walk out again. The blonde officer smiled, looking as if she were looking down at a child who had just asked to have a chocolate cake for dinner. “I’ve got what I
need.” She narrowed her eyes, seeing that Evie wanted more of an explanation. “I emailed the photos in question to myself. We’ll have them on file now. At the precinct, we’ll look over the photos, along with your statement, and hopefully we will catch this guy.”
“But you don’t seem confident that you actually will.”
The blonde woman turned to Mr. Mustache and whispered something to him. He nodded and walked out the door, taking the other cop with him.
“I’m not gonna beat around the bush,” she said. “It’s unclear that a crime has actually been committed.”
Evie felt the color drain from her cheeks. “There was someone in my house—in my bathroom—uninvited, while I was taking a shower. I’m not sure how that doesn’t violate some laws.”
The woman held out a hand to silence Evie, nodding all the while. “I understand what you are feeling. I understand the frustration. But we don’t even have clear evidence of breaking and entering. No force can be seen. And no theft has taken place. We’ve got illegal trespass, at best, which is a misdemeanor. Unless this guy matches a description to a felon or someone on our watch list...” She let her sentence trail off into silence and shrugged. “We are going to file a report. You can press charges. We will look for this guy. But this isn’t much to go on.”
“Basically, there’s nothing you can do.” Evie bit her lip and turned the phone over in her hands as if she might find some answers she had missed earlier. “Even with the letters?” she said, sounding more than a little hopeful. “That’s got to be stalking, at least, right?”
The woman furrowed her brow, her frown returning once again. “You’d have to prove credible threat, or aggravated stalking, which would involve a weapon of some kind. There are stalking laws in the state of Mississippi, but it’s awfully murky water to tread. The wording is vague and there’s a lot of room for interpretation. And it’s up to you to provide the concrete evidence, which often proves to be difficult.”
“So you’re saying I’m up shit creek without a paddle.”
“I’m saying that legally you are on shaky ground, but,” the woman leaned her head in and lowered her voice as she continued, “from what I’ve seen here, the letters, the pictures on your phone, I wouldn’t stay out here alone. If you do, lock all the doors and windows. And I’d be careful who I trusted. Being an attractive single woman on her own. Lots of weirdos out there.”
Evie nodded, feeling suddenly heavy with exhaustion.
“Look,” the woman offered, “I can make sure to swing by in my cruiser a few times tonight, for the next few nights even. Keep an eye on things, if that would make you feel better.”
“Thank you,” Evie said, and she meant it.
“But I still would consider finding another place to sleep. At least for the next few nights. We’ll be in touch if anything comes up on our end.”
Evie nodded.
“Be safe,” the woman said, and Evie watched her walk out the door.
Chapter Eight
Evie didn’t tell her mother or her sister what had happened. She knew she would have to eventually. After all, Lost Beach was a small town and news, especially bad news, travelled fast. They should hear it from her and not from some local town gossip. But not tonight. Tonight Evie wanted nothing more than sleep—deep, dreamless sleep.
Officer Mustache had assured her that all the doors and windows were locked up tight, with no sign of forced entry. Still, she had checked for herself after the police cars had rolled away. She had also turned on most of lights in the house, if not to make herself feel better, then at least to offer fewer shadowy places for someone to hide. She felt like a child, not wanting to let her feet dangle over the bed for too long out of fear that some boogeyman might reach out and pull her underneath. But that was how she felt. She made a mental note to call a locksmith first thing in the morning to have all the locks changed. It was unlikely that whoever this man was had a key, but she still would feel better if she took that precaution.
Her phone was charging on the night table beside her, in case she needed to reach it quickly during the night. She lay back against the pillow and closed her eyes, intending to sleep, but sat up again and reached for the phone, unplugging it. Almost without thinking, she dialed Luc’s number.
It rang once, twice, three, four times before an automated message told her that the number was unavailable. She hung up and tried two more times, with the same result. Frustrated, she switched the ringer off on the side of her phone, turned off the light in her bedroom, shut the door, and found sleep quickly after she climbed in bed.
~*~
Her sleep had been deep, the kind that had come with no dreams, and when she awoke, she had no reference as to the time or how long she had been asleep. The room was dark and cast in shadows from the little light filtering in from outside. At first, she thought that it must be dawn, or at least close to it, but she quickly dismissed that idea. The sky was too inky black, with shades of deep blue, suggesting midnight. The light coming in the windows was from the downstairs. Her first feeling was panic, that someone else was in the house, but she remembered quickly that she had left the lights on throughout the house to deter any would-be intruders.
She walked to the window and peered outside. All was quiet and calm, not even a breeze to rustle the moss on the trees. She had once heard someone compare the Spanish moss to hair dangling from an armpit, a visceral image that she disliked. She always liked the moss, the ancient look of it.
Returning to her bed, she picked up her watch to check the time. A quarter past midnight. She would have thought it was later, thinking there was no way she could have only been asleep for half an hour. She closed her eyes and willed herself to fall back to sleep, but found herself listening to the sounds of the house, the kinds of old moans and groans that these kinds of buildings tended to make, as they shifted on their foundations.
Every bump and squeak and scratch made her uneasy, and though she hated to admit it, she wished that she had taken the police officer’s advice and stayed with her sister, or perhaps even had someone stay over here with her, at least until she could get her locks changed. And install an alarm system. Suddenly that didn’t seem like so far-fetched an idea.
In the dark silence, she thought she heard scratching from the floorboards beneath her. A field mouse, most likely, and she almost laughed at the situation. She never imagined she’d be hoping to look under the bed and find mouse droppings. Mousetraps could go on tomorrow’s list of to-do’s. First, call a locksmith. Second, look into some heavy-duty home security. Third, put out mousetraps. She wondered if people still put little blocks of cheese in them. She always thought that was kind of adorable.
That’s a completely normal thought pattern, right? Turn your home into a fortress, but don’t forget the cheese in the mousetraps. The absurdity of it all made her shake her head as she sat up in bed. She couldn’t force to sleep to come, at least not right now. Better to get up and do something useful and try again later.
She swung her feet over the side of the bed, just reaching her toes to the floor when something grabbed her. The monster under the bed yanked her ankles. Her body flew forward. The force of her chest hitting the floor knocked any breath from her body. Her chin cracked on the hardwood beneath the threadbare rug.
Her attacker’s hands were iron shackles around her ankles. They tugged her backwards, pulling her beneath the bed. Her nightgown shifted up around her waist, her panties exposed. An almost inhuman scream ripped from her throat. She clawed for something to hold on to. First the rug, but it just rolled back with her. As her body slid under the bed, she grabbed the metal railing of the box springs, holding tight over her head.
It worked. For a moment, that horrible, dragging movement stopped. She began to kick, furiously attempting to connect with any part of her assailant’s body. Her feet impacted flesh, and she kicked harder until he let go. She let her hands drop to the floor, scrambling out from under the bed.
Once
she was free, she sprinted towards the door.
To the stairs. To the door. To the car.
The words repeated in her head, a mantra of escape. Adrenaline rushed through her body, her heartbeat echoing in her ears. Heavy footsteps pounded ever closer behind her. She sped up, lunging toward the bedroom door, but he was faster. Arms snaking around her waist, he pulled her to the ground. She hit face first, the impact choking her scream.
She tried to stand, but he pushed her back, holding her shoulders down. She twisted beneath him.
“I got a live one here, huh?” He spoke with a rolling Southern drawl, with just a hint of a Cajun lilt.
She peeked over her shoulder and saw a glimpse of the monster—the same man who’d left the pictures on her phone.
A small smile broke across his face. “This oughtta be fun.” He flipped her face up and straddled her waist, moving his one hand down her side, the other still pinning her shoulder. Fingertips traced the elastic band of her underwear. Horror paralyzed her but a voice inside warned that she didn’t have time to waste.
She leaned up as much as she could and spit in the man’s face. When he flinched, his grip loosened. She began to claw at his eyes, his neck, anything she could reach. His hands flew to protect his face, and she shimmied backwards, far enough to knee him hard in the groin. She didn’t wait to see his reaction.
She ran to the door, skidding into the hallway in her bare feet.
Stairs. Door. Car. Stairs. Door. Car.
She heard movement behind her. His fingers swiped at the edge of her nightgown. She took the stairs two at a time. His footsteps were heavy on the wood stairs. His hand grabbed her nightgown. She saw the front door and moved faster but lost her footing and began to fall, pulling him down with her.
Her shoulder hit wood first, pain jolting through her body like a hot knife. Her body slid down the stairs, her attacker’s full weight pushing her down, scraping her belly roughly along the wood of the risers. Their momentum stopped with a thud at the bottom. He tumbled over her, landing in a heaping mass on the floor.
